Episode 2070 Scott Adams: Justice Thomas & Billionaire Gifts, RFK Jr. 2024, Not Hiring Woke, NPR Too
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Content:
Justice Thomas accepted gifts
Twitter labels NPR state-affiliated media
Baltimore Catholic Church trouble
New trans stories daily
RFK Jr. enters the race
Not hiring the woke
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of Civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
I can guarantee that today's show will not be woke.
It will not be woke.
Because I only had about three hours sleep.
So I'm definitely not awake.
So I'm sort of like Dogbert today.
I'll show you a picture of Dogbert.
You cannot see this unless you're on the locals platform.
But here's the third panel of Dilbert's Trip.
Dogbert is asked, are you woke?
And Dogbert says, I was until you bored me.
Well, might be a little of that today.
You know, if you'd like to enjoy the show at the maximum potential, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, a chalice, or a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine the other day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Let's see if this is enough to take us up to unprecedented levels.
Unprecedented.
Well, let's check the news.
In North Carolina, a Democrat became a Republican because The Democrats are bullies.
And if you want to be problem, solution driven, you cannot be a Democrat according to somebody whose name I didn't write down.
Trisha, I don't know.
But somebody in North Carolina became a... Are you getting the feeling that the news is repetitive and boring today?
Do you think I would have started with that story if anything interesting was happening today?
Can we just agree that none of the news is interesting today?
Just none of it is interesting.
But we'll do the best we can with our time here together.
Yep.
Well, there's a story in Vanity Fair that Don Lemon is a huge misogynistic jerk and has been for years.
That's pretty much the whole story.
I can give you lots of anecdotes, but misogynistic jerk kind of covers everything, doesn't it?
Yep, misogynistic jerk.
Well, that's too bad.
I don't care about that story either.
Well, let's see.
A Democrat became a Republican.
Don Lemon's a jerk.
Alright, these are the big stories, ladies and gentlemen.
It does not get any more important than this.
All right, here's a repeat story.
I think all the news people just went on vacation.
Or is it because Trump didn't do anything?
Trump doesn't do anything, there's no news.
So NPR is pushing back on Twitter for their being labeled state-affiliated media.
And their argument is that they only get 1% of their funding from the federal government.
Now, first of all, does that even sound true?
Why would they get 1% of their funding from the government?
If they're down to 1%, shouldn't it be zero?
I mean, seriously.
What does that 1% do?
They should drop it to zero and then have no government interference at all.
But the state-sponsored affiliate, state affiliate label, that's not just because of funding.
So it's also if you're in the bag for the government.
Would you say that, funding aside, would you say that NPR is just an organ of the Democrats?
And the Democrats are in charge, so it's basically just government-affiliated media, yeah?
To me it looks like state-affiliated media.
Because there is no possibility that NPR would ever run a Republican-friendly article.
Would they?
And if they're not going to run anything that's Republican-friendly, and the government is, you know, sort of Democrat-dominated at the moment, I'd say they're state-affiliated media.
I think that actually fits.
What I don't know is why NBC doesn't have that label.
So it makes sense that NPR does.
I just don't understand why nobody else has it.
Julie Kelly is tweeting.
That there's a new bombshell report about January 6th.
That there were over 40 undercover people.
There were over 40 undercover people.
Not all FBI though.
Apparently there were some other government entities.
Such as the, I don't know, some kind of Homeland Security thing.
But 40 undercover people who apparently were just observing.
Somewhere, DC police.
I feel like I'm going to pass out any moment now.
If I pass out, it's because I'm trying too hard to speak and I'm getting dizzy.
But I actually might pass out in a minute.
I'm actually serious about that.
Here's my only good thought for the day.
You ready for this?
NPR.
I'm sorry.
Oh my god, I'm tired.
I called it AI NPR.
AI.
If we train AI not to hurt people, which we probably will, right?
We'll probably have something like the robotic law.
Heinlein's robotic law.
And it's gonna say don't hurt people.
That's gonna make it, oh, I'm sorry, it's Asimov.
Isaac Asimov.
Isaac Asimov's, oh my god, what a, this is just a train wreck today.
Should I just go back to bed?
Just forget this whole thing?
It really looks like I should.
I've got a stream of yeses.
People are saying, just give up.
Just call it a day.
Alright, I'm gonna make one good point, and if I make this good point, Then that should be my signal to continue.
Would you agree?
If I can make one good point, it means I have enough to offer.
Alright, it goes like this.
If we teach AI to not hurt humans, it won't be able to do anything.
Does that make sense?
If AI is taught to not hurt humans, it won't be able to do anything.
Because, let's say a simple question.
Tell us the history of why something happened.
Well, if it tells history with one version, some people will be angered.
Oh, you left me out.
If it tells it with another version, somebody else will be angry.
There's no version of history you could tell without making people hurt and angry.
Almost nothing except math would allow you to not hurt somebody else.
Suppose AI wanted to be equitable.
It wouldn't be able to answer your question at all unless other people had access to it, because it wouldn't be equitable.
So if you took the human ideas of fairness and equity and said, all right, we want our AI to have all these things as well, it wouldn't be able to operate, because it would be so caught up with trying to be equitable.
And it wouldn't know how, because there's no standard for equitable.
That it just couldn't do anything.
So the biggest risk to AI is that everything you do hurts somebody.
Let's say you said to AI, AI, come up with a good tax plan.
Well, no matter how you change the taxes, somebody pays more, somebody pays less, you end up hurting somebody.
So there's almost nothing you can do that won't hurt somebody.
Suppose you asked it a medical question.
He might say, I can't tell you because if you took my advice it might hurt you.
Almost anything is going to hurt somebody.
So just look out for that.
Michael Schellenberger is calling for the National Guard to protect San Francisco because of the crime.
What do you think of that?
That's not exactly what the National Guard does, right?
I was not aware that the National Guard protects cities, but It's such a radical idea that it fits what's going on.
Imagine saying that in normal times.
In normal times saying, send in the National Guard.
Everybody would say, police state, police state.
But things are so bad that the idea of sending in the National Guard doesn't even sound like a bad idea.
It sounds like, oh yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable.
Yeah, it feels unconstitutional, doesn't it?
That's my guess.
My guess is unconstitutional.
But I would say leave cities.
Leave cities.
Get away from cities.
I think I got about four million views on my tweet where I said I got, you know, robbed several times at gunpoint in San Francisco.
Once at knife point.
And, you know, that was years ago, in the 80s.
I thought the 80s were the dangerous times.
But apparently it's getting just as bad as that.
Yeah, you didn't want to walk around the streets of San Francisco in the 80s.
Baltimore Church, a Catholic Church, is accused of covering up 600 plus sexual abuse cases against children.
600.
Now it's over 60 years, so really it's only 10 a year.
Only 10 a year.
But it adds up.
About 600 of them.
So what are they going to do about it?
Probably nothing.
Probably nothing.
Is there any reason to live in Baltimore?
Let's see, Baltimore is graduating zero people who can read, but quite a few people have been molested apparently.
So I would call that suboptimal.
It's called suboptimal.
In the news, Justice Thomas allegedly is accepting expensive trips from a billionaire friend of his for years and years.
I have mixed feelings about this.
It goes like this.
If you're a billionaire and you want to go take trips with your friends, but your friends are not billionaires, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
You do what all billionaires do, I think.
You just pay for the trip for your not-rich friend.
And then the not-rich friends could come along, and you basically bought yourself a friend.
Now, Justice Thomas apparently has gone with some friend of his who's a billionaire, and he's taken private jet planes, and he's been on his yacht, And he's being called out for accepting gifts and not reporting them.
To which I say, who's the gift to?
What I saw was a billionaire giving himself a gift.
That's what I saw.
A billionaire bought himself a gift.
The gift was, I get to go on a trip with a Supreme Court Justice who's my friend.
To me it looks like the plane was going to fly anyway.
The yacht was going to float anyway, and he just went along for the ride.
I mean, got some food.
I mean, how much extra did it cost?
A little food.
This is the most trivial thing I've ever seen.
If the billionaire had told Justice Thomas, you can use my jet, and I don't think that was reported, you can use my jet anytime you want.
Well, that would be a real problem.
That would be just a bribe.
But if somebody says, you're my friend, do you want to go on vacation with me?
I do not think that should be a problem.
Does anybody have a problem with that?
How many people think it should be a problem if you went on a vacation with your friend and he paid for it?
I don't see that as a problem at all.
Now, it might be.
I mean, if the Democrats make it a problem, it's a problem.
But in my opinion, no problem at all.
No problem at all.
Now, if he should have reported it, yeah, all right.
Maybe he should have reported it.
But that's not really a problem, right?
If the thing he should have reported was not a problem in the first place, then not reporting it is not a big problem either.
Anyway, I don't appreciate that kind of scrutiny on our leaders, frankly.
I think they should be able to hang out with their friends.
This one reminds me of when Chris Cuomo was not allowed to advise his brother, who was governor.
And I'm thinking, no, you can't tell people not to advise their brother.
But you also can't tell people they can't go on a vacation with their friend just because the friend is paying for it because they're a billionaire.
No, that's a little bit too intrusive.
All right, RFK Jr.
has entered the race for president as a Democrat, so he would be trying to beat Biden in the primary.
Now, experts say his odds of winning the primary are very low, very low.
But now the Democrats have an emergency spare.
So they do have a Democrat that they could run if Biden drops out or has a health problem or something else.
So it's probably a pretty big deal, at least in terms of a potential candidate.
But his big problem is not That he's a Democrat who is not maybe as progressive as some, but he was behind the regular vaccinations cause autism.
So in addition to being against COVID vaccinations, he was against vaccinations in general.
Maybe he will be proven right.
Maybe.
Yeah, he's reconstituted.
Who knows?
Or maybe just people won't care about that.
That's possible, too.
But at the moment, it doesn't look like it's going to change anything unless Biden has some kind of a problem, which is a good chance.
There's a good chance he will.
Well, in a large review of 73 meta-analyses, including 8,600 studies, Experts have decided that sugar is bad for you.
Now, in case you didn't already know, now the sugar they're talking about is the added sugar, not the sweetness that's built into products already.
But it causes everything from diabetes, gout, obesity, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, cancer, asthma, tooth decay, depression, and early death.
What?
I didn't realize sugar could cause depression.
Did you know that?
How many of you knew that sugar causes depression?
At least some of you knew.
Well, why is sugar even legal?
If this is true, sugar is far more dangerous than any FDA regulated thing that they've turned down.
Don't you think that the FDA has regularly turned down things safer than sugar?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, I'll bet there's lots of stuff that they've turned down that maybe worked a little bit, but it wasn't as safe as it could have been.
So they turned it down.
But I'll bet it was safer than sugar.
Somebody says wrong.
I might be wrong.
The only reason that sugar is legal is that it's been legal forever.
If it had not been legal and we were trying to study it to make it legal, we would not make it legal.
It would definitely not be legal.
So, I've been trying as hard as I can to avoid sugar.
And I can tell you that you can get to a place where the thought of sugar is gross.
Has anybody reached that?
It only happens once in a while.
But if you stay off sugar long enough, The thought of a sugary treat, even in your brain, is gross.
And that doesn't happen with food that's good for you.
Have you noticed that?
If you don't eat a food that's good for you for a long time, still just as delicious.
No difference.
In fact, you might like it better.
But food that is bad for you, if you stay off it long enough, you can lose the craving.
No wonder I'm tired, I don't have enough sugar, you're right.
Yeah, bagels are not ideal, so sugar is added to bread.
So I might look to cut down on my bagel consumption.
Finland has joined NATO.
At first I thought that was no big deal, but apparently Finland has a reasonably strong military.
And it shows that Putin is losing.
Now, let's talk about Ukraine.
Either the Ukrainians are getting ready for a big offensive, or they're so beaten down that they can't, or Russia is getting ready for a big offensive, or they're so degraded that they can't, or both of them will just keep fighting each other into a stalemate, or they might negotiate and come to a peace agreement, Or, I don't know, basically anything could happen.
If I had to guess, we're gonna go, I think we'll go the rest of this year with just attacks back and forth and nobody making a decisive kill shot and they're just gonna have to wear each other out.
You know, I don't even think they're even close.
To grinding one of them down so somebody wants to talk peace yet.
Not even close.
I think it's just gonna go on like this forever.
At least for this year.
That's my guess.
Alright.
How in the world could it be possible that there's a national headline about the trans community every single day now?
So I think I counted one, two, three, four.
Four headline stories about trans.
Two of them had to do with Budweiser and the sponsorship, or not sponsorship, but at least affiliation with Dylan Mulvaney.
Some have to do with Jordan Peterson saying stuff on social media.
Let's see.
Yeah, how many other stories are there?
A whole bunch of other stories.
And there's a Matt Walsh, you have Matt Walsh stories.
How in the world can this be such a big thing?
All that.
But how in the world is it everything?
It's just everything now.
It's a little crazy.
And I wonder, Did we always have this many trans and non-binaries and we just didn't know because they were sort of bullied into silence?
Or is there something in the food?
Is there something in the food or the environment?
Is it the sugar?
What the hell is it?
Is it brainwashing?
Yeah, certainly what's happening to children is different than what's happening to adults.
The children, I think, are just being influenced by things that influence children.
Do you think that if somebody still believes in Santa Claus, they should make a decision about removing their genitalia?
Probably a little too early.
A little too early, yeah.
And what do you think of Jordan Peterson's theory that not all But most of the child trans situations are because of a devouring mother.
That's not even because of the father.
That the mother is a narcissist who needs to show off that she's more holy than the rest of you because she's more open-minded, more accepting than you are.
To me it looks like narcissistic mothers.
Yeah.
That's what it looks like.
Now, I'm no expert, but that's what it looks like.
I mean, if I had to place a million-dollar bet, I would bet that it has more to do with the mothers having some form of mental... I'm not sure if that's called mental illness, narcissism, or is it just a personality trait.
I don't know where mental illness begins and personality trait ends up.
Yeah, it just looks like mental illness.
Maybe we should extend LGBTQ at an M for mental illness.
Because for some reason the LGBTQ community seems to be open to people who have clearly mental illness being associated with the group in some way.
And obviously the majority of them do not have mental illness.
Certainly the trans community, I worry about the mother.
More so than even the children.
I worry that the mother has a mental illness and the children are the victims of that.
It's amazing to me that the White House spokesperson, Kareem Janbir, said that that's a decision between the child And the parent and the government would stay out of it.
To which I say, that's interesting.
Nothing else would fit that model.
If the parents want to sexually abuse their kid, would the government say, oh, that's not our business.
If the parents wanted to withhold medical treatment to a child because they had a religious view, would the government get involved?
I believe they have.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they have.
Why would this be the one exception?
Well, obviously, it's the one exception because it's the LGBTQ category.
And why the trans are in the same category as the others, I don't know.
I mean, it's sort of an odd grouping of people, somewhat random, I think.
I mean, obviously they have non, let's say non-majority sexual or gender stuff.
But I just don't see throwing them all in the same group.
Doesn't make sense to me.
Yeah.
Jealous women who want status, you think?
Yeah, that's what it looks like.
All right, well, Kansas has passed a law to ban Trans athletes in women's sports.
So what do you think of that?
Is that the first state to do it?
I think it's the first one, right?
But I would imagine there would be more, but only places where there are solid... You'd have to have a super majority of Republicans.
There's only a few places with that.
Yeah.
Well, we'll see if that holds.
I still like the idea of having an open category of sports where anybody can play.
So you don't have to worry about gender.
Just, okay, there's one category.
You can still have men's, you can still have women's.
But how about a third one where you can be anybody?
Yeah, co-ed.
Co-ed sports.
I'm all for it.
By the way, I've played a lot of co-ed sports.
And co-ed sports are great.
Because I've played tons of mixed doubles in tennis.
Mixed doubles is a lot of fun.
And soccer.
If you're playing with people who are good at soccer, it's a lot of fun to play with a mixed group.
Alright.
Two circuit court judges say that they won't hire clerks.
Clerks.
Oh my God.
I'm so tired.
I think I'm just going to fall asleep as soon as I turn this off.
Two circuit court judges say they won't hire clerks who come out of the Stanford Law School.
Just think about that.
They won't hire any clerk who comes out of Stanford Law School because the Stanford Law School allowed so much intolerance to the judge, the conservative judge who was speaking there.
That's pretty, that's pretty extreme.
Now, how many companies do you think will stop hiring the woke and the people with pronouns?
Privately, I'm not going to tell you the stories I hear, but privately, I hear of fairly massive discrimination against the pronoun people.
People who have turned down jobs because of pronouns, said, no, I don't want to work for your pronoun company.
People who have turned down offers, let's say salespeople, and the salesperson makes an offer and you see that they got pronouns, you're like, no thanks, don't want to hear your offer.
I think this is going to be a growing thing.
Because, you know, being around the woke is dangerous.
Apparently one of the complaints about Don Lemon is that he's litigious.
Now there's a story of two lawsuits, but I think there's only one on record.
But Don Lemon has sued somebody.
Would you want to hire somebody who had ever sued anybody?
That's a big flag.
If you've ever sued anybody, you better have a really good reason, or you're not going to get a job with me.
As soon as I hear you've sued anybody, every red flag comes up.
Okay.
I'm willing to listen to your reason.
I'm willing to accept that you have a reason.
But it better be so good, so, so good that there's just no question you should have sued that person.
Other than that, I don't want a lawsuit person working for me.
I don't even want to spend time with them.
I don't want to work with them.
I don't want to be around them.
I don't want to be in the same room.
It's just dangerous.
So don't hire the woke.
They're dangerous.
Well what do you think of this idea the central banks in the U.S.
are going to announce, or apparently they're going to have a digital currency so that banks can communicate with each other, or at least the central banks.
And there's a worry that this is just slipping a digital currency into the mix so that your government will eventually get rid of cash And it'll get you used to these digital currencies, and we'll test them out.
And the next thing you know, your cash will go away.
And then the government will be able to not only spy on every transaction you do, but they would also be able to turn them off.
So in other words, if you don't do what the government wants, don't wear a mask, don't want to do something, don't want to get a vaccination, they could just turn off your money.
Now, I would argue they could have done that already.
I mean, if they have any legal way to turn off your money, they can do it now.
Just go to the court, say I have a legal reason to do it, they can just turn off your money.
But, if it's easier, just a little bit easier, you'd think there'd be more of it.
So, certainly digital currency would be a risk.
Here's my question.
If we had a digital currency, would there not be quickly a money laundering scheme that would come up around it?
Now, even though the digital currency would be completely trackable, would I not be able to buy goods and service with it?
And if I can take that digital currency and buy goods and service, and then I can take those goods and services on a truck and deliver them to somebody else who pays me some new digital currency, have I not laundered it?
I mean, that's a terrible example.
But is there no way to launder a digital currency?
I would think that you could.
Not really?
Well, the digital currency will show everything you buy and sell, but once it goes into the physical world of, let's say I buy a bar of gold, then I can take that somewhere and sell it again.
So what gets invisible is what happens when I've got the bar of gold.
That would be invisible to the system.
So it does seem to me That somebody could come up with a shadow currency that you could possibly buy with your legal currency, do some illegal stuff, and then translate it back into legal currency.
You can't buy gold with food tokens.
What?
NFTs.
NFTs.
But NFTs are trackable.
Ammo.
Yeah, we'll be using ammo as ammunition, as currency.
I don't know.
So the question is this.
Is there a technical workaround where you could have privacy at the same time you... Oh!
If they get rid of your VPNs with this fake TikTok law, and then they make your money all...
Visible, then they've got everything, don't they?
At that point, they'd have everything.
Because you wouldn't even be able to launder your money if you didn't have a VPN.
Because they could find out how you were communicating with people, etc.
So, that's interesting.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you could barter enough.
But, let me give you a little context.
Right now, the concern, and even RFK Jr.
said this, one of the concerns is, The government would know what you're doing because cash is the only way you can do things without them seeing.
But, cash as a way to get away with stuff is shrinking.
Because the most cash you can move without asking questions, or without the government and the banks asking questions, is $10,000.
is $10,000.
But $10,000 used to be a lot of money, and now it's not, because inflation has made $10,000 worth $3,000, compared to when it first was that limit.
So now you have basically a shrinking little window of cash that you could do illegal stuff with, or at least private things with.
I don't know.
I feel like it's not that much of a difference.
The only thing it's going to do is keep drug dealers in business.
Because how much cash transactions do you do except for illegal things?
When was the last time you spent a lot of cash on something that wasn't literally illegal?
You bought a car with cash?
Yeah.
Vehicles?
Guns?
Yeah, I guess you could buy a gun with cash, that would make sense.
Locals.
Alright, well some of you do use cash.
I haven't used cash in a long time.
I can't remember the last time I paid for anything in cash.
Alright, even cannabis is Electronic payment?
Yeah, in California, you can just use electronic payment for your weed.
All right.
Dispensaries can't take anything other than cash.
Well, I guess it depends.
All right.
All right.
Just looking at your comments for a moment.
Yeah, I would not be delighted with this, but here's the problem.
If we ever had digital currency in this country, Something like a third of the public would be plunged into bankruptcy and poverty.
Do you know why?
Why would a third of the country be plunged into poverty and bankruptcy the minute we had digital currency?
And only digital currency.
Right?
Because that's how many people cheat on their taxes.
It's about a third.
Probably, you know, the vast majority of small businesses are cheating on the taxes one way or another.
So, if you took away the benefit a small entity gets from cheating on their taxes, you take away the benefit, let's say, a server would get, I don't know if they would be above the poverty level.
You would make most of the country poor immediately by making them pay taxes.
The people who reliably pay taxes are the ones who have a salary.
People who don't have a salary are playing it a little fast and loose.
So I don't think the country could survive everybody going legit at the same time.
Because if everybody goes legit, they're also going to go poor at the same time.
I don't know if we could afford it.
Really?
Get your tax refunds and carbon credits.
Oh, that's interesting.
Is a carbon credit going to be like cash?
I could buy a carbon credit and then launder my money through carbon credits?
There's going to be all kinds of ways to launder money.
It's going to be insane.
All right.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst live stream you've ever seen.
It's not entirely my fault.
There's no good news today.
We need Trump to do something outrageous.
Or maybe ten stories about trans would be enough.
We only had five stories about trans today.
I think five is not enough.
A good ten to twenty would be about the right number.
Then we got something.
The live stream was dark.
All right, if you were a member of the Locals group, you would have seen my cooking class last night.
You would see Robots Read News, my side comic.
You would have seen the new Dilbert Reborn comics, which are edgier, especially the coming week.
The next week or two of Dilbert Reborn is all stuff that would not have been in the newspaper.
