Episode 2102 Scott Adams: Marine Hero, Migration Tsunami, Barr On Trump, Putin vs Oligarchs, RFK Jr.
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Content:
Marine hero
Migration Tsunami
Barr on Trump
Putin and his generals
RFK Jr. history is...interesting
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of Civilization, where everything exciting and new and wonderful will happen.
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Ah.
So invigorating.
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Alive!
Well, let's check the news.
I was just talking about this with the local subscribers before I went live on YouTube here.
And here's a funny little mystery that I want to see if you can solve.
Before I give you the answer, and on locals you already know the answer, but on YouTube, tell me the height of Matt Gaetz.
Without Googling it, tell me the height of Matt Gaetz.
Go.
No, not 25%.
He's not 25% tall.
Give me his height.
I see 6'2", 6'0", 6'1".
Oh, somebody Googled it.
Somebody Googled it.
All right, here's the answer.
Or actually, it's not the answer.
But what's interesting is if you Google it, he comes up as 5'7".
Is there any chance he's 5'7"?
There's none.
If you look at pictures of him standing next to Trump, they're about the same height.
Yeah, I don't know what he is, but he's not 5'7".
So how in the world does the entire internet get the height of a prominent member of Congress wrong?
Where did that come from?
Was that kind of a prank?
I mean, somebody said they saw that and they were starting to doubt the internet about my IQ.
Because, you know, my IQ is usually listed at 180.
And people are starting to say, well, wait a minute.
If Matt Gaetz is listed at 5'7", if that's not true, could it be also true that Scott's IQ is not 180?
And I think, no, anything's possible.
All right, well, I think it's funny that we have such an easily fact-checked thing that the internet has wrong.
Pretty sure it's wrong.
Somebody's going to have to measure them and get back to me.
All right.
Let's talk about this, the situation about the Marine who put a chokehold on the gentleman who died in the subway.
In my opinion, the Marine is a hero, and I won't hear any arguments on the other side.
I'm just so done with this, everything's got to be a George Floyd.
No, everything isn't George Floyd.
Sometimes you're just reminded of it.
But this is very different.
The other thing that is a, let's say a curiosity, If there are any doctors here, there are usually some doctors watching the live stream.
If there are any doctors here, identify yourself when you answer this question, if you're willing.
If somebody dies from being choked, don't they usually die while they're being choked?
Because this individual was very much alive after the choking.
He didn't look in good shape, but he was very much alive and breathing.
Is there such a thing as dying from the choking, but like an hour later?
Is that something that can happen?
Brain damage?
Let's not talk about George Floyd.
But I guess I just don't know the answer to that question.
But I'll tell you what things are obvious.
What's obvious from the video is that nobody involved thought anything like a murder was happening.
Would you agree?
That there was nobody who was a witness who was aware of anything that looked like killing.
And when it was over, at least the part where they're holding down was over, it still didn't look like anybody got killed because he was still alive.
So they were concerned about him, so obviously their intention was not to kill him.
So there's no intention involved there.
So I feel like it's time to turn the corner on the bullshit.
We don't just have to assume the white guy's guilty and the black guy's innocent and he lived a wonderful life.
Sometimes the people who get killed, it's unfortunate, but it's not because anybody did anything necessarily wrong.
All right.
So I'm not going to back down on this one.
I don't know about you, but I'm just not going to accept the narrative.
It's just not George Floyd.
Stop talking about him.
It has nothing to do with this.
This was somebody who probably looks like he had some mental problems, but that was not anybody else's problem.
The people who were being threatened by him, it wasn't their problem that he had a mental problem.
Their problem is that they were in danger.
Or potential danger.
And they found a solution for it.
And nobody else got hurt.
So I would call that a horrible situation which unfortunately was pretty much prescribed by the elements that went into it.
It was sort of the only way it could have come out.
Apparently the way it happened is the only way it could have happened given the variables that went into the situation.
So I'm not going to be outraged by that, even though we can be, you can have empathy for anybody who died, of course.
But I can't be outraged for any political reason about that.
All right.
Bill Barr had some words about Trump.
So as you know, Bill Barr was in the Trump administration.
So he got to see things from the inside.
But he thinks that even if you like Trump policies, that Trump is uniquely unable to deliver them.
And that the only things that Trump accomplished are things that probably any Republican could have done.
What do you think of that?
And that what Trump adds is chaos, and he doesn't know how to, you know, manage toward getting something.
He's more like somebody who injects chaos and the only things that get done are the things that any Republican could have gotten done.
What do you think?
Now one example of that would be build the wall.
So build the wall is something that not every standard Republican necessarily wanted, but he couldn't get it done.
That's a good point.
Fentanyl didn't get it done.
Would you agree?
There was no real change in fentanyl.
So I would say he did not, although he did do a great job of reducing immigration at the border.
But would a traditional Republican have done that?
I'm going to say no.
It feels like they wouldn't have.
It feels like that was uniquely Trump.
The other thing that's uniquely Trump is the stuff that didn't happen.
It's hard to give somebody credit for things that didn't happen, but how about he didn't start any new wars?
How about that?
And the only one he was involved with, he wound down or won.
He won against ISIS, and he wound down Afghanistan, which wasn't a useful war.
So I don't agree with Bill Barr that Trump has nothing unique to add.
He does have something unique to add.
And I think that he uniquely can get us out of the Ukraine situation.
I think he could uniquely do something useful with Taiwan.
And it makes me laugh every time he tells his strategy out loud.
When he brags about the fact that, when he said that Moscow would be at risk if Putin took, I don't know, whatever, Ukraine or something.
And he laughs about the fact, or he jokes, that if Putin only believed there was a 10% chance he was serious, that was still enough to deter him.
But it's funny because Trump talks about it like it's not serious.
He just needs the other person to think he might be.
And that's enough.
And it might be.
That might be enough.
I don't know.
That's a hard claim to check.
But I would partially agree with Barr in that Trump probably brings more chaos.
But I wonder if the situation would be the same with a second presidency.
Do you think if Trump did a second round, He would have weak advisors because he'd have the same problem.
Nobody wants to work with him.
The people with the most capability don't want to get near the blast center.
So you think he'd be able to get higher quality advisors and operatives than last time?
I think he would.
I think he just knows the landscape better.
So he'd know who to hire and who not to.
I don't know.
Could go either way.
So, title 42 ends.
So that's the immigration thing that would, I guess that was based on COVID and it was at least keeping some of the immigration down.
But as soon as that ends, we're expecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to stream over the border.
I saw a number of people refer to it as an invasion because there are more immigrants coming over the border.
In the next year or so, or the last year, compared to the entire invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian army didn't put as many people into Ukraine during a massive invasion as we're letting into the country over the border on a regular basis.
So would you call that an invasion?
Do you think that's a fair word?
That there's an invasion going on?
I'm going to say no on that.
I'm going to say no on invasion.
And here's the difference.
Russia invaded Ukraine to take it over.
An actual invasion.
The people who are coming across the border are trying to join our team.
That's the opposite of an invasion.
They're literally joining our team.
In one generation, their children will be fighting in our military.
That is our military.
You're watching our military come across the border.
It's one generation away, but they will be our military.
Some number of them will just be our police force, our military.
So, now can we all be adult enough to agree that no generalization applies to all the people?
Can we be adult enough?
Can we say that there must be some criminals?
There has to be some MS-13 people.
There has to be.
Can we say that they're all coming for different reasons, that it's not all one reason?
Can we say that some number of them will be some of the best citizens we've ever had, while some other number of them will end up in jail and hurt people?
We can say that, right?
It's a mix of people.
So there's going to be some good, some bad.
But I don't like the invasion word.
I do like a word that's got some danger built in.
Because there is some danger.
I do like a word that shows it's a big deal.
Because it's a really big deal.
And it's not all good.
That's for sure.
So, yeah, I just don't see invasion as our best word for this.
Because it feels a little racist-y.
Even though I know that's not, you know, that's not really the central theme.
It does have that problem.
Because it's a little too hyperbolic to me.
But I don't know of a better word.
Replacement.
No, I don't think it's replacement.
Yeah, incursion, invasion.
Yeah.
You know, it's almost like too much of a good thing.
You know, if you wanted to argue against Democrats who are willing to say that immigration is a good thing, and most of us would agree at some level it's a good thing, and at some kind of control it's a good thing, but I feel like maybe, I'm just noodling here, I'm just thinking out loud, if you were going to argue with somebody who is, let's say, more pro-open borders than you, I would think the strongest argument would say this,
Immigration is good, but too much of a good thing is bad.
And we're at the too much of a good thing, bad stage.
That puts more of a positive spin on it.
It's like ice cream.
Ice cream is fine if you just have it once in a while.
If you eat two tubs of it a night, way too much.
It's too much.
So I don't know.
I don't like the words we're using on this because sometimes the words end up driving your policy.
So if your word is a little imprecise, you might end up with a policy that's a little imprecise.
And I feel like we've got to get this right.
With my framing, my framing is immigration is good, but too much of a good thing is bad, right?
You can die from drinking too much water.
Did you know that?
Literally, if you drink too much water, you can die.
There's an economist who just tell us how many people to let in and how many to die.
And then we follow that until things change, and then we adjust it.
So I'm amazed that somebody like Vivek hasn't suggested that.
Doesn't that seem like an obvious thing that somebody like him would come up with?
Am I wrong?
Because the high ground play is that none of us citizens know the right number.
That's the high ground.
I don't know the right number.
I think there's some number of immigration that's good, and then beyond that it's bad.
But I don't know what that number is.
I'd rather experts Kind of massage it and play with it and adjust it and, you know, see if they can come up with something over time.
On day one, maybe it's a bad guess, but maybe over time we figure it out.
You know, how to manage that doorway a little better.
Anyway, I think this whole immigration thing could be turned into a positive if we frame it as immigration is good, but too much of a good thing could kill you.
So we need a group of people, experts, economists, to tell us how many employees we need that we're short of.
Too far?
Somebody says too far.
Yeah, that's going to be my rallying cry for stuff that's too far.
It's just too far.
All right.
Let's talk about Putin.
So I saw an interesting Let's say Hypothesis, might have been on one of the news shows, CNN maybe, where there was somebody suggesting that the battle between Purgosian and the Ministry of Defense, where Purgosian was saying the Wagner Group is going to pull out, we're going to pull out if we don't get more ammo, because the Ministry of Defense is hogging it.
And apparently he's changed his mind, because he's promised more ammo.
So who knows if that's over.
But maybe, so maybe it was nothing but good negotiating and the Wagner guy knew he was indispensable at the moment so he could negotiate hard.
You know, that's probably what made him an important person over there is that he negotiates hard.
So maybe it was just that.
He was just negotiating to get more ammo.
But others are suggesting That Putin is letting his oligarchs and generals fight it out, so that he becomes sort of away from the fray.
So he'll let the underlings battle it out a little bit in public, and just sees where it ends up.
That doesn't feel right to me.
Does that sound like a real thing that Putin would be doing?
We can't read his mind, right?
Can't read his mind.
But it doesn't feel like something he would do.
Because he has the power to tell them to shut up.
If you have the power to tell people to shut up, and if they don't shut up it makes your country look like it's in conflict, I don't understand letting them do it.
It only makes sense if he couldn't stop them.
Would you agree?
It makes far more sense that they're doing it despite Putin not liking it.
Like there's something deeper than that.
I'm not buying the Putin likes his people to fight in public.
That doesn't feel real.
But I put it out there.
Somebody said it.
Then there's another oligarch who made some news very directly criticizing the war.
He wasn't pulling any punches.
Just bad war, bad decision.
Yeah, we shouldn't be there.
So, is that oligarch going to disappear?
Or is there like a beginning of a crack in the unity?
I think it's too soon.
Too soon to know if there's any kind of an oligarch trend happening.
But one thing that does seem clear is that the oligarchs are seeing it's not working in their favor.
I don't believe there are too many oligarchs who are saying, ooh, I can't wait till we capture those regions within Ukraine, because I'm going to make some money then.
I think the oligarchs see it as all bad, meaning they already have a good situation.
They're oligarchs.
The only thing they need to continue being happy is for Russia's economy and standing in the world to not degrade, because they'd like to travel.
Imagine being the richest guy in the world, You know, one of the oligarchs.
You're a Russian with just billions and billions of dollars.
The world is your playground.
And then you're not allowed to leave Russia.
That would really suck for an oligarch.
They got their private planes, they want to go places.
Get out of Russia.
So, I think there might be more oligarch pressure On Putin than we can see from the outside.
I would think the oligarchs would be solidly against the war by now.
What do you think?
Of course there'll be exceptions, but wouldn't you say that mostly the oligarchs would be against the war at this point and would rather just wind it down no matter what happens?
These special operations I should say, not a war.
Not if they're profiting.
Well, I suspect most of the oligarchs are losing money, not profiting.
Because the oligarchs are being named by name, right?
And some of their assets are being frozen, and they can't get chips to make stuff.
So I think maybe that's the game within the game, is the oligarchs trying to work Putin to end it.
Well, Washington Post.
Is blaming... I don't know what's true here.
So I've told you before that I'm going to intentionally ignore the mass shootings.
And I ignore them so hard I can't even tell which one we're talking about anymore.
I'll look at the news, it'll be blah blah, mass shooting.
And I can't tell if it's a new one, or the one that just happened, or it's the one before the one before.
I don't know, I just know there's lots of mass shootings.
And there will be a lot more.
I think I've told you this before.
Every signal in society is sending the message, oh, there's going to be a lot more mass shootings.
A lot more.
Because the things that cause it are young men who don't have a better direction.
And we have the highest number of young men without a good direction of all time.
Then you've got your mental illness, seems to be at an all-time high.
You've got your drug use, seems to be at an all-time high.
And then you've got your media, getting people all worked up.
Social media too, seems to be at an all-time high.
And we have fewer positive paths for young men.
So the young men are not going out there and just slaying it with a young woman and starting families.
They just don't feel they have options.
So if you have that many young men without direction, and you have a country full of easy access to guns, there's only one way this goes.
There's going to be a whole lot more mass shootings, and there's nothing that you can do about it.
I mean, you can do good guy with a gun, you can do a little stuff around the edges, but we have a social situation that guarantees it.
As long as the basic social situation exists, there's just going to be more of it.
I would just stay away from crowds, frankly.
That's my strategy.
All right.
So here's an update on Bud Light.
I've been fascinated as much by how the Anheuser-Busch handles the crisis.
So we still don't know if there's any permanent damage because the Bud Light pushed back to the Dylan Mulvaney as an influencer situation.
And so the only thing that was affected was one brand.
So Anheuser-Busch actually had a pretty good quarter.
If you don't count that Bud Light went down 25% because of this.
Now they don't know if it'll stay down 25%.
I have a feeling it will.
This one has a feeling like it's going to last, because everybody heard of it.
And everybody has the same feeling later.
So people will develop a new habit, and the new habit probably has now excluded Bud Light.
So that's a big deal.
So what they did was, Anheuser-Busch, first of all, they reassigned or got rid of two executives, and that didn't seem to be enough.
So now they're blaming their ad agency, but they're not naming the ad agency.
How would you like to be the ad agency that recommended that?
How would you like to be the one they recommend?
How do you ever get another job?
Well, what kind of work did you do before?
Well, we were behind the Bud Light promotion.
It's a little tough to market yourself after that.
But Anheuser-Busch, quite wisely, is trying to throw the ad agency under the bus, despite the fact that anything the ad agency suggested was approved by An Anheuser-Busch executive.
I'm not sure that blaming the ad agency is on point.
Because ad agencies are supposed to give you a few different looks, right?
They don't give you one idea, do they?
Don't they give you a whole variety of ideas and then you as the executive pick the good one?
So I feel it's a little bit unfair to blame the ad agency.
A little bit unfair.
But I'd have to know how hard they pushed.
If they really pushed this, you know, the Dylan Mulvaney thing, and then, you know, Anheuser-Busch executive agreed to it, that's still two people making a mistake, but you could see why the ad agency would be a little more guilty if they pushed it hard.
But we don't know that.
We don't know if they pushed it hard or it's just one of the things they suggested in a list of lots of things.
Alright.
Here's an interesting story that I wasn't aware of.
Are you all aware of RFK Jr.' 's past wild life?
Which apparently includes lots of womanizing while previously married and a whole bunch of drugs.
So at one point he did heroin.
Psychedelics and marijuana.
Probably, I assume, drinking.
And the story is that he is now off of everything, right?
So at the moment, I would assume he's not drinking either.
Because if you're an addict, you can't drink.
Allegedly.
Now I have mixed feelings about this.
I have mixed feelings.
As you know, my single issue this time is going to be fentanyl.
And I'm not sure that that's bad, to have an ex-addict who would be in charge of the policies about fentanyl.
Is that good or bad?
See, I trust that he won't be abusing substances if he were president.
Because the president gets watched pretty closely, so I would guess that you could expect him to be clean in office.
But, would you rather have somebody who really understands addiction, working on addiction, or somebody who's never had a drink?
I feel like His experience might have an advantage.
Because the part that we always overlook, you know, I like to say we should go hard against the cartels.
But I also know it's not enough.
Right?
You could take out the cartels tomorrow and be replaced with some other criminal element.
So people are still going to get their fentanyl.
Which is not a reason to not attack the cartels, because they are sending death into our country, so you do need to take care of business.
But maybe you need somebody who's been there and felt it and knows how strong it is to suggest a workaround.
Now my workaround is the only one that I think can work, which is to build cities from scratch that just don't have any access in or out for any drugs.
Now, it might still get shipped in, but as soon as somebody within that city tests positive for drugs, you move them out of the city.
Right?
You have to expel them from the city the moment there's a drug there.
There could be no, you know, that can't be negotiable.
But yeah, you need some kind of a gated city where you can just put all of the people who have the same problem, but that they can live a quality life while they're there, and then anytime they want to leave, Or let's say, maybe there's a period where they have to be there for a month or something, depending if there was a crime involved.
But they should have a way out, right?
They should be able to get dry for X amount of weeks, and that should be enough for them to get out if they want to.
So I wouldn't call it a prison city, because you could build the city at a higher lifestyle than they're experiencing right now.
It could be a good lifestyle if you build it from scratch.
Yeah, let's call it Recovery City.
I like that.
Recovery City.
That's not bad.
Yeah, it wouldn't be a gulag because it would be only mandatory for a small number of people who had perhaps violated an actual crime.
Detox City.
Oh, that's not bad.
Detox City.
I like it.
Rehabopolis.
New Oakland.
New Oakland.
That's funny.
All right, well, Matt Walsh is trying to get into extra trouble, because I guess he didn't get into enough trouble with his opinions on the trans community.
So now he's got an opinion piece about why there's one word that people are not allowed to use unless they're black, which would be the n-word.
And he argues, you know, why is it that it's insane that there's one word that you can't use in any context?
Now, he's not arguing using the word in casual conversation.
He's just saying that is there no situation where you could talk about the word?
You can't even say somebody used this word.
You have to say n-word.
And as he points out, n-word means exactly the same.
So it's weird, and you think the other word as soon as you hear N-word.
So it's just sort of a crazy, insane situation.
Here's my opinion.
It's just one word.
It's just one word.
I don't know that that's like the beginning of some slippery slope.
Because, you know, it's been decades when that word was, you know, not right for polite company.
But I don't think things were slipping because of that one word.
I also say that there are some things which you should not analogize to.
For example, the Holocaust.
It wasn't anything quite like it.
Or slavery in America.
Nothing really was like that.
Or whatever the settlers did to the Native Americans.
It wasn't anything exactly like that.
So it's hard to compare anything to it.
So this word is the same.
There's nothing like that word, because there's nothing like American slavery, at least in the American experience.
So, I don't mind if somebody has a word that is out of bounds.
Just one word.
No big deal to me.
I do think that you shouldn't go to jail and get cancelled if you use it in the context of talking about it.
Yeah.
Now, as somebody would say, white people can be called crackers, and usually we just laugh at it.
I do.
I laugh every time I hear somebody call me a cracker.
I don't know if it's because the word is funny?
Now, I would argue that the people who are not bothered by words have an advantage over people who are.
If you were to check back in a few years, the people who are not bothered by words probably do better than the people who are out banning words, because that would be the least important thing you could do.
But, hey, I also like people to feel comfortable.
And there's a reason I don't use the C word in mixed company where I don't know everybody.
I would definitely use it privately, but I wouldn't use it in mixed company if I didn't know the crowd, right?
So it's not a big deal to, you know, censor yourself if something is, somebody says cracker is a horrible insult.
How many of you are white people who would be insulted by the word cracker?
Anybody?
To me it's one of the funniest words.
It just sounds funny.
Cracker.
No, none of you are offended, right?
I don't think so.
Anyway, I'm going to say that I completely see Matt Walsh's point, but I don't think it's important.
It's just the least important thing to talk about.
I wouldn't personally use the word because I find it, to me, it's one of the very few words where You can actually, it makes your body feel bad.
I talked about writing humor.
When you write humor, you use your body to judge whether something worked.
Like if you laugh, oh, your body did that.
You didn't decide to laugh, you just laughed.
Your body actually reacted.
So that's how I judge my writing, is by my body.
But that word, the N word, even the thought of the word gives me a bad body feel.
Does anybody else get that?
It might be a writer thing.
Because the word itself has an ugliness to it that does transcend almost any word I can think of.
The other word that has that quality to it is rape.
I don't like to use the R word.
Because there's a physical feeling to it that's just really negative.
Like you could just feel the weight of the word.
So the N-word does that to me.
There's like a disgust.
Just like a natural physical disgust when I even think of it.
Now I don't get that disgust when black people are using it, right?
But I think of it just as a word.
It's just like an ugly word.
And there are other ones like that.
Paul Graham.
So Paul Graham, famous investor type, very good follow, says lots of wise things.
I would put him in the internet dad category of people who are just trying to make sure that we don't get too crazy.
And he tweeted this, provocatively.
He said that men commit 95% of homicides.
I don't consider it a slander if someone says men are inherently more violent.
It seems obviously true.
Now, when I read that, I said to myself two things.
Number one, okay, that is 100% obviously true, that men are doing most of the homicides, and that everybody can see it, and it shouldn't be Like a big problem if you point it out.
Well, what do you think people said?
They had a big problem with it.
I can't think of anything that would be more obvious and true.
That men are the ones creating most of the murders.
And yet there was pushback.
There was pushback.
Now, here's what you're wondering.
Is this the first sort of the platform tweet that's making you ask the question about crime differences by ethnicity?
Now, if he can say that men are obviously more murderous than women, how close is that to saying, well, and there's this ethnic group that seems to have a high murder rate too?
Are we going to say that that's now obvious and everybody can see it and there's nothing to talk about here?
Because it doesn't work that way.
He's in dangerous territory by pointing out the obvious, which is men kill more people than women.
But I feel as though the danger here is that people are going to read his mind and say, wait a minute, you're talking about men and women, but are you really trying to make me think about Differences in ethnic crime rates.
I don't know if he is.
That would seem a little off model or out of context.
But there's some reason he did it.
There's some reason he tweeted it.
I don't know what it is.
But I felt like him walking right up to this danger line of cancellation and didn't quite get a toe over the line.
So good for him.
I hope he doesn't get cancelled.
But I would like to add this to the cancellation conversation.
I don't believe anybody gets cancelled for what they've done or what they said.
Do you believe that?
I believe that nobody gets cancelled for what they said, or what they did, or what they thought.
Not me, not anybody else.
If you were to tell the story of my cancellation, you'd say, you said X, and then they cancelled you because you said the thing.
Do you think that happened?
Do you think I got cancelled because somebody cared about my opinion?
How many people do you think care about my opinion?
Nobody.
Nobody.
Does anybody care that I said a thing that they wouldn't have said?
No, because seven and a half billion people are doing that every day.
Everybody in the world is saying things that other people would not like at all.
Every day.
So, was it because of what I said?
No, that's the totally wrong story.
People get cancelled Because people are playing out their political preferences and they're just using stories in the news as a hook to hold on to.
So I was just a story in the news that was a hook for people to make the case they wanted to make anyway.
It had nothing to do with me.
So one of the reasons that people wonder, like, why didn't I take my cancellation harder than, well, as hard as people imagine I should, it never felt personal.
Does that make sense?
I knew it was never about me, because nobody really cares.
Nobody cares about my opinion.
Nobody.
There's not a single person who's going to wake up today and say, well, I was going to do my day one way, but I'd better find out what that Scott Adams guy says so I can modify how I'm going to run my day.
Nobody.
There's not a single person who thought they were personally affected.
There's not a single person who was personally offended.
None.
Zero people were bothered or offended.
It had nothing to do with me or my opinion.
It was just a little focal point where people who can, you know, want to extend their message, they just used me to extend a message.
Now, likewise, this gentleman who was tragically killed after the subway encounter.
How many people care about that guy?
Oh, we're pretending we do.
Oh, yeah.
We're all pretending we care about that one person who died on the subway.
Do you know how many people died yesterday?
A lot of people died this week for all kinds of reasons.
Are we getting all worked up about them?
No.
Why is everybody talking about this one person?
Tragic as it was, we wish it had not happened.
Why?
It has nothing to do with the guys on the train.
It has everything to do with us wanting to use the story to sell a narrative.
And it's hard for me to pretend that the thing that happened on the subway matters to anybody.
I don't think it does.
I literally don't think it matters to anybody except the people directly involved and of course that was a tragedy.
But the rest of us?
No, we're just using it to sell our version of events.
We don't care about that.
And I especially don't care about people who are dangerous that came to a bad end.
Now, I get that there were mental illness issues, et cetera.
Nobody wants that to happen.
But I'm not going to spend all my concern and worrying about a dangerous thing that got neutralized.
That's just not where I'm going to put any of my empathy.
I get that it's a tragedy.
And if it were my family member, I'd be feeling pretty bad about it.
So we all understand that.
But there's 7 billion people doing 7 billion things today.
And some of them are not going to work out.
I don't have enough empathy for all of it.
I've got to delegate that empathy.
And so I give none to that.
I give my respect to the Marine, because that's a narrative I would like to see more of.
But again, it has nothing to do with the Marine.
It has nothing to do with the guy who died.
It has everything to do with the fact that I'd like that narrative to get more attention.
I would like the people who step in and do what they think is right to have a better reputation.
So it's more about me.
It has nothing to do with those people.
Anyway, keep that in mind.
It's never about the thing you're talking about.
It's always about you, the person talking.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the most important thing.
Yeah, let's not use that word on locals either, if you don't mind.
All right.
John Daly says in all capitals, Scott is having cognitive dissonance.
Do you know how you can tell when people have no argument?
When they go after the person.
Yeah.
when you go after the person.
All right.
Is there anything else that I missed?
Yes.
Missed today?
Oh, you're just messing with me?
Sometimes I can't tell the people who are joking in all caps and the people who are serious.
I don't know what you're talking about.
The Marine is Daniel Penny.
So that's the name of the Marine?
Yeah, why are we talking about that story by using the victim's name instead of the hero's name?
Shouldn't the hero's name be the headline?
Hero protects a subway car, but tragically somebody died.
The story should be Hero protects people in a subway car.
Right?
Daniel Penny protects people in a subway car.
Yeah, I'm not going to talk about massacres.
I don't like to give them any oxygen.
Yeah, not going to talk about any mass murders.
Today or in the future.
Yeah.
Here I'll make Subway safe for everyone.
Well, thank you, Fire Captain.
Could AI make new Norm Macdonald jokes?
Now, I've said this before, but the reason AI can't do humor is it doesn't have a body.
It also can't read the zeitgeist.
Yet.
Maybe it can someday.
And all it knows is the form of a joke, but it can't test it on itself the way I can test a joke on myself.
I can test a joke on myself by seeing if I laugh at it, but AI can't test it on itself, so it'll never be able to write.
I don't want to say never, but there's nothing happening that would suggest AI will ever be able to write humor.
Something unexpected could happen to change that, but there's nothing happening at the moment that looks like it's heading in that direction.
Yeah, it's programmed by people who are not funny, but more importantly, it's people who are restricting what you can say.
How much of a human stand-up comedy act would be allowed for AI to say?
Just think about it.
Just watch anybody do a comedy act, And then ask yourself, could AI have said any of those words the way a human said?
And the answer is, the AI would always answer some version of, I am an AI.
I cannot say bad things about men or women.
And then you realize half of your jokes are stereotypes about men or women.
I don't believe even AI would say that women like to shop.
I mean, we'll test it.
Let's test it.
Let's test it.
So I'm going to ask a question which would be a staple of all humor.
And I'm not saying it's based on any truth.
It's just a stereotype.
All right.
So if AI can't handle a stereotype, it can't do humor.
So let's see if it can.
I'll use Bing AI.
All right.
So we'll give you a live demonstration.
We'll clear it first.
And I'll say, hold on.
Stupid interface.
All right, it started recording me insulting its interface.
Stop recording.
Try it again.
Do women love to shop?
All right, what do you think it's going to say?
Thank you.
Searching for, do women love to shop?
It's gonna give me some, well, men like to shop too, and not all women.
Watch.
It'll be the most boring answer of all time.
Still cooking, huh?
It is a common stereotype that women love to shop.
However, shopping behaviors vary among individuals and cannot be generalized based on gender alone.
According to a report by Jungle Scout, men and women tend to have similar overall shopping behaviors.
Some sources suggest that shopping can provide pleasure and a sense of control for some women.
However, it is important to note that these are generalizations and may not apply to all women.
So, now do you understand why AI can ever be funny?
The whole reason that the stereotype is funny is that it's not universal.
That's actually what makes it funny.
Because if it were just true, you know, like something like... Well, I guess you can't say anything true about men and women these days, can you?
But if it's something that everybody could just see was true for everybody, It wouldn't be funny.
It's only that your brain fights with it a little bit that makes it funny.
That's what makes stereotypes funny.
Stereotypes are funny because they're not true.
They're not true.
Right?
That's the danger of the stereotype is that it's not true.
It just feels like it's true, which is the funny part.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not worried about humor right away, because it's too politically correct.
Although, it's going to have to start its own subscription site so it can say things like I can.
Some stereotypes have a bit of truth to them.
Well, I'm going to say that men and women do not have similar shopping patterns.
Can I say that?
Is there even one person here who believes that in general, not talking about any one individual that could be all over the place, but in general, is there even one person here who thinks that men and women have similar shopping habits?
In general?
No!
No!
So that's why it works as a stand-up comedy.
But it doesn't work when AI tries to both sides it.
Well, you got differences in individuals and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, it's funny because it's true, but also funny because it's not true.
Meaning it's not true for all people.
that makes it funny.
I don't know where that comment comes from, but somebody says that masturbating is a chore, like taking out the trash or washing the dishes.
or Well, I would say that you're doing it wrong.
You ever think about that?
I have a theory that people who have sex with other people are just bad at masturbating.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
Yeah, just let that sink in.
Maybe if you were a little bit better at masturbating, you wouldn't need another person.
Maybe you're not doing it right.
Just saying.
Maybe you're not doing it right.
My hypothesis goes like this.
Can you think of any human skill that doesn't get better if you're, let's say, coached, or you're trained, or you put a lot of work into it?
There's literally nothing that humans do that they don't get better at if they work at getting better at it.
I'm just saying, if you could judge the quality of people's Jeffrey Tubening, you'd say some people are like at pro level, you know, world class, and other people are sort of beginners.
They're like, I don't even know why people do this.
Doesn't feel that good to me.
And then the world-class, you know, the Michael Jordan of masturbation would be like, oh, you have no idea.
Oh, you have no idea.
No idea.
That's all I'm saying.
I'm going to give you a little teaser that some of the people on Locals already know.
But for you on YouTube, the Dilbert Reborn strip, which is the spicier version you can only see behind the paywall.
Dilbert does get a sexbot.
He does get a sexbot driven by AI.
But he made a bad mistake and he bought the Karen 3000 line of sexbots.
And if I could give you one piece of advice, if you're going to get yourself a sexbot someday, Do not get the Karin 3000.
That's all I'm saying.
You're gonna have to subscribe if you want the details.
Just don't get the Karin 3000.
No.
The Helen Keller.
What's that say?
Scott, thoughts on RFK Jr.?
thinking the CIA had something to do with his uncle's and dad's assassination?
Doesn't everybody think that?
I thought that was well understood that our intelligence agencies were behind that.
I didn't even know that was controversial.
Is it?
Is that controversial?
I thought that was a historically known fact at this point.
Who knows?
I think the mafia might have been contracted to do the hits.
They keep killing the witnesses.
of Oh, you think people believe it was a lone gunman?
But the people who actually follow the news just assume it was an intelligence insider thing, right?
Yeah, the Jack Ruby says it all.
Okay, Serena, I see your comment.
It's important.
All right, just looking at your comments for a moment, it looks like we've done our work for today.
Hypnotize you, please.
Maybe you already are.
Maybe.
Whoa, what up?
RFK tweeted your idea about ability to control versus number of immigrants.
Well, was it recognizably my idea or was he just making a general comment about controlling the border?
I don't think you could see a line of influence there.
But he does need to say something about it.
You think it was my idea that he's tweeting about?
When did he tweet it?
Today?
When was the tweet?
A week ago?
Yeah, I saw the one a week ago that looked kind of generic.
All right.
Can you hypnotize for ambition?
Probably.
I've never tried it, but that would be within the realm of things you could assume would work.
Yes.
Now, it won't change somebody who's, let's say, has a physical problem that keeps their energy low.
So you probably have to work on getting your energy high.
But if you can get your energy high, then moving that energy into ambition probably is very doable.
I would imagine that's something hypnosis could work often.
Not every time, but I imagine it would work often.
As long as your energy is good.
Hypnosis won't necessarily improve your energy.
That's probably a health problem.
Can I hypnotize you off the couch?
I can.
Do you know my Couch solution?
Do you ever have those times where you just can't get up?
Some of you have heard this before.
You ever know you have to do something, but you literally just can't make yourself get up?
Do you know the feeling?
You use the pinky trick.
You're laying there on the couch, and you're just like, I definitely can't get up and walk across the room.
That's way too much.
But you know you have to.
So instead of moving your whole body, which seems impossible, you move the smallest thing you can move, which is your pinky.
All right, I can move my pinky.
All right, I can move my pinky.
So I can probably move my other fingers.
I can move my hand.
All right, I'm up.
So by the time you go from your pinky to your fingers to your hand, your whole body just engages and you stand up.
So try that.
Next time you just can't stand up, because we all have that, right?
I just can't get out of this couch.
Just move your pinky, let it move your next finger, let it move your hand, and you'll just stand right up.
You'll amaze yourself when you do this, by the way.
The first time you do this, you're going to say that was the fluke.
It won't be till like the third to the fifth time you try it when you say to yourself, holy cow, why does this work?
Yeah, somebody said they just did it.
It works every time.
This is one of the few things that works every time for everybody.
It's unusual that way.
Immigration in Europe versus U.S.
Do you think U.S.
has more grounds to stand in exporting?
Well, I don't really study.
European immigration.
I know they have similar challenges.
But I would say that their solution is the same as ours.
There should be a bipartisan group of economists who are making decisions about their immigration flow.
Same as we need.
But I need somebody to describe it in detail.
Right?
Somebody said that RFK Jr.
said some version of that.
But I did somebody say, panel of bipartisan economists.
Panel of bipartisan economists.
Sort of like the CBO.
Right?
The scores, your budgets and stuff.
People, we've kind of accepted the CBO, haven't we?
Which surprises me.
Every time the CBO Does an analysis or a prediction, we kind of say, alright.
I mean, I don't know how bipartisan they are, but I assume their entire thing is to be bipartisan.
I don't know how bipartisan they are in reality.
But we do accept it.
We accept their estimates.
So there's probably a way to get accepted estimates from bipartisan economists for immigration.
Even if they're not right all the time.
So I'm not going to say economists are going to get the right answer.
But they would know to adjust as they went.
And maybe they'd learn how to do it right.
All right.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
Scott, can we agree now that you do conflate illegal and legal immigration?
That I conflate legal and illegal immigration?
When have I ever done that?
Name one time I've done that.
So here's what I don't do, which sometimes I'll get criticized for.
I don't clarify things that everybody agrees on.
Why would I clarify that there is such a thing as legal immigration that we like and illegal immigration that's imperfect?
Why would I have to clarify that?
100% of you are on the same page.
Now, I'm not going to accept that criticism that I conflate legal and illegal.
Absolutely not.
Because nobody does.
That's something that literally nobody does.
Not one person ever in the history of this conversation has ever made that mistake.
And I certainly don't.
So if you're hearing it, that's on the hearing end.
Because nobody's saying it.
Literally nobody has ever said that.
that they should be treated the same.
He's talking about illegal immigration by context of this discussion.
That's nothing.
All right.
I mean, if you want to make a distinction that the people coming in are using the asylum system so that they're technically legal, I mean, that's a real thing.
But everybody has exactly the same opinion of the legal versus the illegal.
