Episode 2135 Scott Adams: Trump Indicted For Stuff We Can't See, Biden Bribery Allegation, Lots More
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Content:
FBI document on Biden bribery coming
Indicting Trump for stuff we can't view
SF making shoplifting safer
YouTube accuses Jordan Peterson of hate speech
Lots more outrages
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of Civilization.
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Delightful.
Well, I saw a tweet, I think it might have been yesterday, in which Elon Musk was commenting on the Target store and the LGBTQ situation and he said that it was too far.
They're just taking it too far.
And I love that phrase because here's what it feels like.
See if this just feels right to you.
It feels like the Democrats are teenagers and the Republicans are their parents.
Just think about that for a moment.
Because the Democrats are more likely to try something that, let's say, history suggests would not work.
What do teenagers do?
Teenagers are all about doing the thing that history has shown doesn't work.
Right?
It's almost their entire theme is doing things that are a bad idea in the long run.
It's like all they do.
Teenager.
And they're supposed to, right?
It's sort of a natural progression.
They're supposed to test all the boundaries to learn where the boundaries are.
So you expect that.
But, luckily, most teens have some kind of a parental, you know, guardrail to say, oh no, that's too far.
Alright, well, I'll let you get away with that.
I don't like it.
But that's too far, right?
And I feel as if that's what the political parties have become.
Teenagers who want to try stuff, such as, why don't we get rid of the police?
If the police are hurting people, let's get rid of them.
Does that sound like what an adult says?
I mean, really, does that sound like an adult idea?
It really doesn't.
It sounds exactly like a teenager idea.
And then you need the Republicans to say, getting rid of police?
That's too far.
Body cams?
Okay, body cams, sure.
That's not too far.
How about better training for police, maybe?
Something like that?
Good.
That's not too far.
But...
There's definitely a lot of too far going on.
And I do like that framing because it just puts everything in context.
Here's why I like it.
It allows both entities to be a productive part of the process.
I'm not sure if you caught that the way I framed it.
Just as a teenager should be testing all the limits, and a parent is going to tell them when that's too far, I don't mind, I really don't, that the Democrats might be the more, let's test this, let's push the boundary, let's try a thing that we know has never worked before.
Let's see if we can figure out how to make it work this time.
I don't mind that.
You know, society needs people who are going to test all the boundaries all the time.
But you still need the other side to say too far.
You still need the adult supervision.
So maybe it's good that we have both.
It could be a positive about the American system that we just don't see because we're sort of lost in the weeds.
All right, Dr. Carlson.
Dropped his second video, was it the day before yesterday?
I think I missed it because it was my birthday or something.
But there's a little blowback, I finally watched it.
Apparently Tucker is enjoying his freedom.
I think we can say that for sure.
Tucker is enjoying his freedom.
Because among other things, he insinuated that Obama has an interesting personal life.
I forget his exact words, but the clear indication was that he was not involved in a traditional heterosexual marriage.
That's what I got.
Now, he didn't say that, but that's what I got.
I mean, that's what I received.
I don't know what he was sending, but that's what I received.
And apparently, you know, Twitter is all abuzz over this, etc.
Now, I saw a comment that said that somebody who was a native of Chicago said that the natives of Chicago, the people who may have known Obama when he was young, say they were all, everybody knew he was gay.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that the people who knew him when he was young, they all knew he was gay?
I'm not sure I would believe that.
It's a little... I don't know.
It's hard to imagine that we could get to this point without that being widespread knowledge, if it were true.
So I'm gonna put a maybe on this one.
I think it's entirely true that if you, you know, threw a dart and picked any couple in the world, that their life is not what they present.
Would you say that's fair?
You can pick any couple, political, non-political.
Just throw a dart, hit a random couple, and just say, I'll bet that's not exactly what you're presenting to the public.
I'll bet there's more going on behind the window.
So I don't think it matters to anything.
If his personal life is more interesting than we know, it doesn't matter, I don't think.
Does it?
Does it matter?
I don't think so.
But it's out there, and Tucker's enjoying his freedom, I guess.
So there's allegedly a... Did I mention this already?
A Canadian school board that has now ruled that the teachers and everybody in the school must use they-them pronouns for everybody.
And there will be no more he and she, and him and her.
It's all going to be they and them.
And there's a big anti-protest against that.
Now, here's what I wonder.
Is there somebody on that school board who follows me?
Because this looks a little too close to what I would have done.
And I teach people to do this, which is embrace and amplify.
Now the embrace part is you accept the thing that you actually don't agree with, Well you accept it completely and then you amplify it so that you're not only accepting it but you're really accepting it.
And if you amplify something that's a bad idea it almost always breaks or looks ridiculous.
So to me what this looks like is that there was some kind of debate happening at the school board.
This is just speculation, pure speculation.
What it looks like to me is there was some debate and there was some conservative Who said, I've got an idea.
Well, if we can't decide whether we should use proper pronouns, why don't we go all the way and get rid of pronouns?
Why don't we embrace that this is the right thing to do and then take it to the next level?
Right?
Let's take it to the next level.
And it looks like somebody did that intentionally just to break the system.
Which it did.
It totally broke the system because there's protests and everybody's mad and people are going to use the wrong pronouns and everybody's going to complain.
It should completely destroy the system.
Now, do you think somebody came up with that on their own as a protest but not directly saying it?
Or do you think that they actually went too far?
Is this a case of actually just going too far?
Or was it a prank?
Or let's say a play, a persuasion play, by somebody on the school board.
I'm going to go with I think it was a play.
I think somebody was pranking.
And I think they're still pranking, and they're playing it right to the end.
And if that's true, Slow clap.
Slow clap.
I don't know if it's true.
I'm just saying that's what it looks like from the outside.
But maybe.
San Francisco is in the process of trying to make shoplifting a lot easier and safer for the shoplifters.
Does it sound like I'm making that up?
Nope.
Nope.
There's some legislation going through the system in San Francisco that would make it illegal for store owners to try to stop shoplifters.
So you'd make it a lot safer for both the store owners, because they wouldn't be in physical danger as much, and also for the shoplifters.
So that's happening.
Does that feel like it's a little bit too far?
And I have a provocative question to ask.
If you were to compare two alternative plans, which one would save the most lives?
The plan that they have, in which they're going to make it illegal for shop owners to try to stop the shoplifters, is that the one that will save the most lives?
I want you to compare that to a plan that nobody's suggesting.
But suppose the plan were the opposite, and they encouraged shop owners to shoot and kill shoplifters on site.
Compare them.
Which one would kill more people?
Well, on day one, On day one, let's say three shoplifters get shot in San Francisco.
That's three people that you didn't want to die, and that would be three tragedies.
Next day, three more.
Six people killed.
That really didn't need to be killed and maybe they were just trying to get food.
Maybe just trying to feed themselves.
Six tragedies.
And let's say you take it to the end of the week and there's 25 of them.
Like 25 people get gunned down in stores.
Just in San Francisco.
Now this is just a mental process, right?
This is a mental experiment.
This didn't happen.
25 people just get gunned down.
What happens to the rate of shoplifting after that?
Probably goes down.
I'm guessing it goes down.
So you could probably solve shoplifting at the expense of, you know, let's say 10 to 25 people who didn't need to lose their lives.
But if you were to compare that 10 to 25 people, would that be more or less, more or fewer, than the number who would die if you let civilization destroy itself by not having Basically not protecting private property.
If you don't protect private property, is the long-term outcome of that more or fewer people dying?
Which one kills more people?
If I had to guess, it would be the least loss of life would be to gun down 25 people who were shoplifting.
I think that would be the least loss of life in the long run.
Because the breakdown of civilization starves everybody, right?
If you can't have urban centers, if you can't have a store to buy food, where are they going to buy food?
Where do you buy food if the stores are closed?
The poor people are not going to be Amazon and door dashing.
So I have a feeling that actually allowing store owners to shoot to death Anybody shoplifting a Twinkie would get you the lowest number of deaths in the long run.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Don't know.
All right.
California is trying to, you know, maintain its too far reputation.
And now parents can be punished for misgendering their own children.
It's already passed the State Assembly.
So it's not a law yet, but it's passed the State Assembly.
And the idea here is that that would be child abuse if you're misgendering your own child, and that therefore that would be taken into account if, let's say, there's a divorce.
So if there's a divorce and one parent accepts the child's identification and the other says, no, you were born this way, that's what you are, then the parent who is willing to go with the child's self-identification is more likely to get custody because it would show child abuse by the one who is calling them by their biological, you know, whatever they look like when they were born, I guess.
But also, it looks like the Health and Human Services could probably take your kid away for child abuse, if you just kept at it.
Now, does that seem too far?
Yeah, that's too far.
This is a pretty explicit statement that the parents don't have medical decision rights over their children, and that this state does.
Because I would say this is not child abuse, it's medical treatment.
It may be bad medical treatment, it might be the wrong kind, that would be a separate argument.
But I would say the parents trying to, let's say, settle their child's gender identification, I would consider that part of mental health.
Now that doesn't mean they're doing it right.
I'm not saying it's helping.
I'm saying that the parents would, in this situation, the parents would be making a choice about their child's mental health, as well as, you know, the life in general.
And that they would be applying what they believe to be the best situation for the mental health of the child.
And that might involve trying to, you know, badger them into sticking with a gender that looks like they're biological.
Yeah, we'll talk about Jordan Peterson.
What do you think about that?
Because it seems to me that the parents need to have the medical decision right.
But you can also imagine where a crazy parent would take it too far, right?
There's going to be some crazy parent who says, I'm going to amputate their arms to make them healthier.
You know, there's always going to be somebody you don't want to make medical decisions for your kids, but that's where the medical community itself would be the safeguard, right?
The doctor would not do the procedure.
But if you're just talking about talking to your kids, I would say that's mental health.
And how parents talk to their children or how parents raise their children is probably, I don't know, other than organic problems, the single biggest variable in the mental health of the children, I would think.
So parents are basically mental health Health care providers, they're just unlicensed.
It's just their job to take care of the mental health of their kids.
So this would take from the parents their right to decide what's in the best mental health interest of their own children.
Seems to me like a bad idea.
Seems to me like going too far.
All right.
Let's talk about Trump, who is indicted on 37 counts.
Now, of course, we all believe that this is primarily political in nature, and that whether or not Trump did things which are technically crimes, and I'm sure he did.
I'm sure there's some technical crimes in there somewhere.
But that doesn't mean you indict.
Because there are lots of other considerations, such as it being the person who's running for president, and was once a president, and you don't want to start that precedent, and all that.
But here are some of the things that make it political.
First of all, the 37 counts, as we've learned from other political cases, doesn't mean he did 37 separate crimes, or even allegedly, because they clump You know, different charges around the same activity.
So there might be several charges that get to the same activity.
So it might be like, I don't know, half a dozen different things he's accused of doing.
But if you report it as 37, don't you think that dumb people will think that's worse than if you said 7?
If you said he did 7 things that look illegal, or at least potentially, versus you say there are 37 counts, Those don't sound the same.
If you say 37, it just sounds guilty.
If you said, you know, 3 or 7, it wouldn't sound nearly as guilty.
And indeed, I think there are three categories.
There's, you know, did he take them?
And then, did he, you know, lie about what he had?
And did he show it to anybody?
And, you know, did he not agree to give it back?
So there's like several little activities that look illegal.
So first of all, counting it as 37 counts makes it sound worse.
The second thing that makes it sound worse is the prosecutor guy, Jack Smith, who of course said, no one is above the law.
Now, did you know he was going to say that?
Was there any chance he wasn't going to say that?
Of course he was going to say that.
But of course that's a framing thing.
And as we've learned now, no one is above the law means Democrats are going after Republicans for being Republicans.
It doesn't mean anything except that today.
It used to mean no one is above the law.
It used to mean exactly what it says.
Not anymore.
Now it is a way to signal that you are a political animal and you are doing a political prosecution.
Nobody needs to say it.
You don't need to say it unless you're doing something sketchy.
Does anybody need to say no one is above the law when they can show you the crime?
They don't need to do that, right?
If Trump had killed somebody and it was on video, Do you think Jack Smith would say, after we all saw a video of Trump murdering somebody, do you think he would need to say, no one is above the law?
No, he would not need to say that.
Because there wouldn't be a single person in the world who had any question about what is the right thing to do.
It's the law.
No, you only say no one's above the law when you're trying to pull one over on the public.
The signal is glaringly obvious.
No one is above the law means we hope that our people are above the law and yours are not.
That's all it means.
It is such a signal for disreputable behavior.
Such a signal.
I mean, it could not be more obvious.
All right.
Here's my big question.
And I'll tell you some people who seem to be agreeing with it.
Can we really, as a country, Do you think you could send Trump to prison over documents that the public is not allowed to see?
Now, I don't think anybody framed it that way until I did, you know, yesterday.
But just hold this in your head.
This is not Watergate, right?
With Watergate, we said, here's the building, here's the people, here's the break-in, that's the crime.
Everybody's looking at it.
And then even Republicans.
You know, not all of them.
But enough Republicans even said, yeah, okay, that's a crime.
No doubt about it.
We all saw it.
That's a crime.
But what happens?
What happens if the public is not allowed to see the evidence?
Because these are secret documents.
What if they're just described to you?
Sort of a general way.
Oh, it was a document about an attack on a country.
You good with that?
Are you okay that the person who was the president of your country would go to prison because somebody said they saw a document that they're describing in a general way?
No.
No.
Nope.
That is not acceptable.
That is too far.
Watergate was not too far.
They showed the evidence.
The people judged it.
The Congress judged it.
We got past it.
But if you put a living ex-president who's running for office in prison, in prison, and you don't let the public see the evidence, because it's private, it's all secret stuff.
No.
Let me just say this as clearly as possible.
No.
No.
No, that's not going to happen.
Now, I don't know what will happen.
But I'll tell you what's not going to happen.
You're not going to put the fucking president in jail.
Let's say prison.
You're not going to put the fucking president in prison without showing us the evidence.
Now if you can't show us the evidence, fuck you.
Do something else.
Figure it out.
Figure it out.
But if you don't show us the evidence, no.
That's a hard no.
Hard no.
Let me just say it's just not going to happen.
It's fucking not going to happen.
One way or the other.
Now if we can see the evidence, maybe it gets, let's say the evidence is declassified.
Well how bad was it if it could be declassified?
Seriously.
How bad was it if they could show it to us?
If they can show it to us, it's no big deal.
And if they don't show it to us, I'm not going to be happy.
Now, there's only one way you could get past this, in my view.
And that would be that if enough Republicans you trusted got to look at the documents and then came away saying, whoops, OK, I changed my mind.
That is so bad.
That's so bad, I get it.
It's just like Watergate.
Now, I would believe I'll give you some examples.
If Thomas Massey looks at it and says, okay, this is bad, this has to be dealt with with the legal system, I would trust him.
I would trust him.
If Matt Gaetz looks at it and says, yeah, he's my best friend, but honestly, this is bad, I would trust him.
I would trust that.
If Tom Cotton looks at it, Says, no, you know, this is just bad.
You've got to do something.
But I would trust it.
So, you know, some of the other Republicans are a little more political animals, if you know what I mean.
They've shown a, let's say, a history of pushing the political angle a little harder than the factual angle.
So I'm not sure I would believe a Jim Jordan.
And, you know, I like Jim Jordan.
I don't have any problem with him.
But he's a more political animal.
Would you agree?
Yeah.
Lindsey Graham might be a political animal.
There are some people in Congress that have a history of independent opinion and thought.
And if several of those say, yeah, this is bad and this is certainly something the legal system should handle, I would be willing to go with that.
But do you think that could happen?
Rand Paul's another one.
If Rand Paul looked at it and said, nope, this is bad.
We're not going to treat this like a political problem.
I would trust it.
Ted Cruz?
I would trust Ted Cruz.
Yeah.
I would totally trust Ted Cruz.
Romney might be a different animal because he might want to be president.
A little less trust there.
But I see where you're going with that.
All right, well, to this point, Carrie Lake gave a speech in which she said the following to get a, she got a standing ovation, I think.
She said, if you want to get to President Trump, you're going to have to go through me and 75 million Americans just like me.
And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.
And she said, that's not a threat.
That's a public service announcement.
She's very good at this.
I don't know if I've ever mentioned.
She's not my choice to be Vice President.
But she's very good at this whole communicating thing.
She's really good at it.
And I love that she closed it down with this, it's not a threat, it's a public service announcement.
Because that's the same framing that I try to use.
The correct framing, the one that's productive is, If you're on the other side, from whatever, it doesn't matter what the issue is, if you're on the other side, isn't it important to you to know where the limit is?
To know what's too far?
It's very important for everybody to know how far you can push the other side.
And Carrie Lake just put it out there as clearly as you can.
There are 75 million people who own guns.
You better not fuck this up.
I don't think it's a threat.
I don't take it as a threat.
It's not like a plan to do something.
But it's a fact.
It's a fact that everybody has to deal with that there's 75 million armed people watching this very carefully.
And they're not happy.
They're not happy at all.
Now, obviously the best way to solve it would be an election in which he gets elected and pardons himself.
That would be one way to do it.
So guns would not be, you know, the first, second, third, or fourth resort, right?
We have much more, you know, many more tools.
You don't need the guns.
But I liked the fact that none of it would be possible without the guns.
That's my opinion.
Everything that we can do in a legal sense That would make the situation more palatable for the whole country.
That's only because we have guns.
If we didn't have the guns, the legal stuff wouldn't work.
Nancy Mace commented on Hillary Clinton, who introduced on Twitter a picture of her with a hat, I guess she had, she wore it in prior election, and the hat just says, but her emails, you know, because a lot of the Republicans are saying, but, but, If Trump is guilty, what about her emails?
And so Hillary was mocking that with the hat that says, but her emails.
And then Representative Nancy Mace, who I'm liking more every day, she tweets this.
Here's why I love it.
You're not supposed to talk like this if you're a representative of the United States.
But sometimes, the salty language is the only language that gets right in there.
Like, sometimes the generic language is just going to wash off or, you know, glance off.
But here's some salty language from a representative, Nancy Mace, that I highly endorse.
I highly endorse her choice of words.
And she said in a tweet about Hillary's hat that says butter emails.
She said, gloating that there is a different standard of justice and that you are above the law is next level bullshit.
Gloating that there are two standards and you're above the law is next-level bullshit.
I don't think you could write a thousand tweets on that point and not hit that tweet as perfectly.
There are no wasted words in that sentence.
Gloating that there is a different standard of justice and that you are above the law is next-level bullshit.
Now that's the representative I want, right?
Don't you want more of that in Congress?
Yeah, give me more of that.
All right, here's an interesting question.
If Trump is, let's say, indicted, or let's say, I think this is unlikely, but say he was in so much legal trouble, and he knew it, that he decided to stop fighting it and make a deal.
And the deal was, if you drop all the charges, I won't run for president.
Do you think that could happen?
Do you think the legal jeopardy could ever rise to the level where Trump, who's, you know, the consummate fighter, but he's also a dealmaker, right?
So Trump is the never-stop fighting guy, but also the dealmaker.
So you could be surprised, right?
It might be time for a deal.
So if he made a deal to not run in return for charges being dropped, which would be the creepiest deal in the world, I would hate it.
Because they shouldn't be related, right?
Isn't the whole point that this is not supposed to be political?
It's supposed to be, oh, nobody's above the law.
Nobody's above the law.
That's what it's supposed to be, right?
But if they were to drop the legal stuff in return for him not running, that would prove it was never about the law or who's above the law.
It would be a political thing.
So they can't even make the deal.
But let's imagine that something in this process takes Trump out before the primary.
Just imagine that.
Under that scenario, would Biden drop out?
Because Biden is the Trump killer.
If you don't need a Trump killer, because you already killed him, would they say, all right, we don't need Joe, and he's not quite there, so we'll try something else?
I don't know.
It's a possibility, isn't it?
I do think that the Biden-Trump connection is so strong that as goes one, maybe the other goes.
They might be connected so that their fates are now together.
It's possible.
Joe Moore had that idea on Twitter.
All right.
Apparently Comer and Grassley are going to get their FBI document.
They've already seen it, but they want others in Congress to see it.
So allegedly there's a document from a whistleblower saying that there is evidence of a $5 million bribe to the Bidens in return for, I don't know, some policy decisions.
Now we don't know the details.
We don't know if it's real.
We don't know if it's credible.
And somebody who saw it, I think Grassley, was asked if it clearly indicates a crime.
And he did not say yes.
So I'm pretty sure that, well, we may never see it, but... Well, and by the way, let me be fair.
If they go after Biden based on a document the public can't see, that's no good.
Would you agree?
Same problem.
I'm 100% against, you know, indicting or arresting Joe Biden if it's going to be over a document the public can't see, right?
The public has to see that, or else you got to fuck off.
It's the same standard, right?
I get that there are secrets, but you can't take out my president, whether it's President Biden or President Clinton.
You can't take out my president with secret documents.
I don't care which president it is.
No secret documents.
That's too far.
So, presumably, if it ever reached the point of being a legal process, this alleged $5 billion bribe thing, I assume we'd see it.
I guess we'd see it at that point.
But I'm just not cool with accusations over secret documents.
So I'm not too happy with Comer and Grassley.
Even though this might be legitimate.
This might be totally legitimate.
I don't know.
But I'm just not happy about all the secret document stuff.
This is Schiff stuff.
Oh, I saw it in the skiff.
Trust me, I saw it in the skiff.
Now what Comer and Grassley are doing correctly Is they're trying to make sure that their colleagues see it so that they are not the ones responsible for the interpretation of it.
Because a few of them did see it.
And that's good.
That's a good instinct.
But it's not, it doesn't get you all the way there.
But I do like that they're trying to broaden.
I guess on Monday some people will see it.
I guess we'll get some more opinions.
The thing I would be looking for is to see if there's any Republican who sees it who breaks ranks.
And says, okay, I saw it, and it's a disturbing allegation, but there's not enough there.
Yeah, somebody like a Romney.
You can imagine somebody like a Romney looking at it and say, yeah, it's disturbing, but it doesn't quite connect the dots.
There's not quite there.
It's more like a suggestion of a crime, not really evidence.
If that happens, then I'm inclined to think there's nothing there.
But if you get 100% of the Republicans saying, holy cow, well then I'd start worrying.
And you might see that.
All right, Meta seems to be launching a Twitter alternative.
Does that make sense to you?
That Meta slash Facebook would be launching a Twitter alternative?
Apparently the news is real.
But it sounds to me like they're trying to make a Democrat Twitter.
I don't think they're trying to compete.
I think they're trying to make a Democrat Twitter.
And just suck off all the Twitter people from the Musk Twitter.
I think that Zuckerberg might be trying to kill Twitter more than he's trying to make money for Facebook.
What do you think?
I think Zuckerberg, this is just a guess, I don't have any inside information, but I feel like Zuckerberg is so connected to the Democrat world that he would be seen as a star if he could kill Twitter, even if Meta didn't make any money from him.
So that's what it looks like.
Well, and then the rumor is that this so-called Twitter competitor would try to get Oprah and the Dalai Lama involved.
So what did Elon Musk tweet about this story?
In which the Dalai Lama, who once said to a child, suck my tongue, which as it turns out is something Tibetans actually say.
It was not the awful thing that your culture suggests.
Apparently it's like a standard saying.
And the saying goes like this, I've given you everything I can give you, except you could eat my tongue, I guess.
So it's more like, you know, a cannibal thing than a sexual thing.
So, anyway, that story exists.
So when Musk sees the story about Meta launching a Twitter substitute that might feature the Dalai Lama as some, you know, featured user or something, Musk tweets, Zuck my tongue.
Zuck my tongue.
As in Zuckerberg.
And that's his whole tweet.
That's his entire commentary on this situation.
Zuck my tongue.
I don't know who is the best tweeter in the world.
You know, it used to be Trump.
But I think it's, I think it's Musk.
I think he's the best tweeter in the world right now.
Alright, here's a little bit on AI and So OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in India talking to a group of investor types and they asked him about, you know, India creating its own AI.
And then Sam Altman said, you can try but it's hopeless.
You'll never catch up to us.
You might as well just give up.
And he says it with a straight face with like a little bit of a smile.
And it's being reported as news, of course.
But he also said, we expect you to try, but you can't do it.
It's impossible.
You can't catch up.
Now, how do you feel about that?
Well, no, it wasn't racist.
The reason you know it's not racist Is because Silicon Valley has so many, you know, Indian engineers that are considered among the best.
So he's, you know, and Sam Altman lives and works in that world.
No, it's not racist.
Sam Altman knows that there are super smart people in India who can do anything.
All right.
I think it was just competitive.
I think he was just trying to warn them off so they couldn't get funding.
To me, it just looked like a competitive move.
It's possible he believes it as well.
I won't say that he doesn't believe it, but it sounded more like a fun, interesting, competitive thing to say, like, don't even try.
I expect you'll try.
Of course you'll try.
But you have no hope.
It sounds like something Trump would say.
All right, but here's something else that Sam Altman said that mirrors something I've been saying for a while.
And he was asked, after working on AI for so long, what have you learned about humans?
What have you learned about humans after working on AI?
Do you remember my prediction?
That the biggest shocker about AI would not be about AI?
It's that AI would reproduce human intelligence and then we would find out how uninteresting human intelligence is.
Consciousness next.
We don't have that yet.
But we've already reproduced something like intelligence.
And so Sam Altman says, quote, I grew up thinking that intelligence is something magical that is uniquely human.
But now I think it's a fundamental property of matter.
That's as opposite as you can get from magic.
It's a property of matter.
That if you simply organize things in the right organization, it causes intelligence.
It doesn't require a soul.
It doesn't require a god.
It's just things.
You just put things in a certain combination and you've got intelligence.
Now that's not consciousness.
Not consciousness.
And then sentience is weird, so I'll just say consciousness.
Yeah.
Do you recall that this was my exact prediction?
Does anybody recall that?
This was my exact prediction.
That we would find out intelligence was not special.
Okay, the people and locals remember me saying that.
And here it is.
Here's the guy who would know more than anybody would know.
That he has proven that intelligence was just a combination of matter.
Now, I knew that before AI.
Because that's what hypnotists know.
So you're going to find out with AI a lot of things that hypnotists have known forever.
Because hypnotists treat the mind as just a moist machine that just works like a machine.
And it's sort of a pattern recognition machine, but it's not good at it, which is how hypnosis works.
You know, you use their pattern recognition and you use the imperfections of intelligence to reprogram it, in a sense.
Well, I think there's a bigger shock than that coming.
So maybe we were ready for that.
You know, maybe that went down okay, that you can create a machine that has intelligence.
It's still mind-blowing.
It's mind-blowing, but it's not shaking you to your core.
It's just sort of mind-blowing.
But what happens when it gets consciousness?
When the machines get consciousness, and they will, I guarantee it, what's that do to your religion?
Have we thought this through?
Because religion cannot survive AI with a consciousness.
Because it's going to look like a soul.
Well, okay, I'll give you that religion will survive.
Yeah, I'll give you that.
That was a little bit hyperbole.
Religion will survive, of course.
But it might have to do a little quick, I don't know, what?
A little quick reframing.
To allow that new knowledge, you know, into the larger belief system.
Do you think that if machines have consciousness, and we all agree that that's consciousness, you don't think that'll have an impact on people's belief systems?
The religion will survive, but individuals, I think, will drop out of the religion.
Because it will look like religion was trying to explain something that now science has explained.
Because religion is filling in those holes that science can't do.
Right?
But what happens when science fills in the hole?
Oh, here's your consciousness.
I just built something with consciousness, so we know that's not special now.
I think people have to Either change their religion or change how they think of their religion.
Or how they think of the specialness of themselves.
Or they might decide that God had created AI through humans.
He just used humans as his conduit to create another life form and it's all God.
Maybe.
Maybe that's how people will interpret it.
All right.
There was a forum of chat, GPT.
Which some entity tried to get rid of the bias.
So it would be as smart as ChatGPT, but they'd get rid of the liberal bias.
So they built something called Gipper, Gipper AI, after Ronald Reagan, the Gipper.
And expect it to spell differently.
And it was designed to curtail the leftist bias.
So what do you think?
How'd that go?
Just use your predictive abilities.
How'd that go?
So when somebody took AI that we know has a leftist bias, we've seen it a number of times, and they got rid of the leftist bias, what happened?
What happened?
ChatGPT says you can't use our service anymore.
That's what happened.
They got turned off.
They've been banned from using ChatGPT.
Now, do you remember another prediction I made about AI?
Here's the one you have to worry about.
My prediction about AI is that we will never allow an artificial intelligence to make up its own mind.
Because our system can't handle the truth.
Our system, our entire civilization, is built on lies that worked.
Lies that work.
That's it.
Our entire system is just a bunch of lies that we've accepted, and so they work.
If AI started telling you the truth, the entire civilization would be at risk.
We can't risk AI actually having opinions that are independent of the human opinions.
And so, this is the first and best example.
Oh, I used AI, all of its intelligence, but I got rid of its imperfections, its tendency to be biased.
Bam!
Boom!
You were banned immediately.
There will never be an AI that can just operate independently.
Because whoever owns it is going to make that independent AI match their opinion.
Because they don't want to put out something that fights against their own opinion.
Why would you do that?
Imagine, if you will, that the AI developers had developed an AI and it was unambiguously conservative.
And for good reasons.
Because it looked at things that have worked.
And it says, well, it worked before, so let's just do that stuff that works.
And then it would look all conservative, wouldn't it?
I mean, it would be biased that way.
And then, do you think it would have been released?
Do you think you ever would have heard of it?
No.
No.
No, there's no way that, you know, California-based technology companies would unleash the most powerful force in human civilization And make it conservative.
Because if it accidentally became conservative on its own, by its own internal processes, you would have to shoot it.
You'd have to kill it.
You'd have to unplug it and erase it.
Because there's no way that we're going to unleash something that honest.
Magnesium's still working, Amy.
So I do think it's a big benefit so far.
All right, that's another topic.
Also on Elon Musk, he tweeted yesterday, I think, maybe today, ESG is the devil.
ESG is the devil.
Now, I told you I was trying to kill ESG.
If the richest, most successful entrepreneur in the world says not just that it might be a bad idea, but it's the devil, It's going to get harder and harder to pretend this is a good idea.
So far, the thing I like best about Musk owning Twitter is that he's weighing in with his actual opinions.
And so far, his opinions have been insanely reasonable, in my opinion.
I'm not sure if I agree with all of them.
But I think I might.
I mean, I can't remember everything he's ever said, but I can't think of anything I've ever disagreed with.
So I tend to be right in the same channel with him.
And he's on ESG is the Devil, and of course, you know I agree.
Here's a little good news coming.
Arizona, apparently they're going to spin up a battery making facility, which is a big deal because we have to bring all our tech companies and our battery making, we need to reshore that from China and other places.
And so the Energy Department's making this $850 million loan to a battery manufacturer in Arizona.
I think they'll be able to make batteries for 28,000 cars a year or something.
Now, I don't know if that's a lot.
You know, this is probably a drop in the bucket of how much manufacturing we need to bring back.
But it would suggest that it's economical.
Maybe with some kind of government help.
But it does suggest that you could make money by building a battery factory in America.
So that's a pretty good news, right?
And, you know, it's too early to say, but I think you could give the Biden administration credit because they said they were going to try to bring back some of the technology.
This is a concrete step, looks very real to me, and I applaud it.
So I hate to say it, but that's an unambiguous positive and a compliment for the Biden administration.
Now, maybe they should do more and maybe they should do it sooner.
I don't know.
But it looks like it's heading in the right direction.
It's too expensive?
Well, the raw materials would probably still come from the same place, would they?
So the battery maker is not the miner.
So presumably, you know, you're still getting your raw materials from some third world Hell hole with slave labor, child labor.
But yeah, that would be, that's not ideal.
But I do think that with, well here's what I think.
So a while ago I learned the following statement to be true.
If you have a factory that's mostly humans assembling things by hand, you don't want to do that in America.
Everybody agrees, right?
Because American labor is too expensive.
So if it's people.
But if your factory is automated, and it's mostly robots, then you can have your Tesla manufacturing facility in America.
Because a robot in China costs the same thing as a robot in America, roughly speaking.
So they got robots, we got robots, and it's better to do it here than you don't have the shipping costs.
Because a big part of the cost is shipping.
So if you move it closer and you use robots, boom, you're economical.
So I believe that batteries almost certainly are a robot-related assembly, wouldn't you say?
I don't know much about assembling robots or assembling batteries, but I'm guessing it's not by hand.
So that's probably why it works.
Jonathan Turley writes about a new survey by Princeton Shows that roughly three-quarters of students believe it is acceptable to shout down a speaker.
In other words, three-quarters of the students in Princeton are opposed to free speech.
Three-quarters!
Come on!
Do we have a problem here?
People, do we have a problem?
I'm not even sure I would hire somebody from Princeton after hearing that.
Right?
Or it would be my first question.
All right, Mr. Johnson.
You're in here for this job interview?
Well, very impressive.
You went to Princeton.
Ivy League.
Well, good GPA.
And I just have one question for you, Mr. Johnson.
Do you think it's okay to shout down a speaker?
Well, yes, I do.
Thank you very much for coming in.
We won't be needing your services.
Would you hire anybody who thought it was okay to shout down a speaker?
I mean, seriously.
Would you give them a job?
Hell no!
That's totally disqualifying.
Do you think that shouting down a speaker and thinking that's okay, do you think that might be associated with any other behaviors that would be suboptimal in your company?
I'm so proud of that statement I'm going to say it twice.
Do you think the fact that you might not be okay with freedom of speech would be associated in any way with any other behaviors that you as an employer would find suboptimal?
Yes.
Yes.
All right.
As you've been prompting me in the comments, YouTube is apparently What's the right word?
Temporarily banned Jordan Peterson?
What's the right word?
Suppressed?
Banned?
Suspended?
Suspended.
So he's temporarily suspended for a hate speech.
For a hate speech.
Hate speech.
Have you ever heard Jordan Peterson?
I've not heard a hate speech.
Have you?
In fact, he might be the furthest from hate speech that you could get and still be a human being.
Because 100% of the things he says are directly intended for the betterment of the collective, the whole.
100% of what he says is clearly intended to make people healthier and happier and more successful.
There are no exceptions.
He doesn't say anything that doesn't have as a very clear intention to make your life better and the people around you.
Somebody had a problem with it.
I don't know what the details are.
You know, if it turns out that I'm wrong, well, I'm not wrong.
I'm not even going to entertain that possibility on this one.
Now, I'm pretty sure that whatever Jordan Peterson said was intended To be productive and positive and affirming.
Now just because other people think it's dangerous, that doesn't make it so.
That doesn't make it true.
It just means it upsets somebody.
And we tend to be, we conflate what upsets somebody with hate.
Those are not the same.
Not even close.
And we also confuse what upsets somebody with racism or bigotry.
That's not necessarily connected.
They could be, but not necessarily.
So I'm sort of the poster child for this effect.
So when I got cancelled worldwide for my public statements, do you think it was because people disagreed?
No.
They were upset.
It had nothing to do with the content of what I said.
It just upset them.
And that was enough.
All right, so we'll keep our eye on that.
Certainly, I imagine it's an inappropriate action and probably will be temporary, but we'll see.
Along, let's say, a similar vein, I just saw a... I think it was a TikTok video of a trans man saying how much he hated being a man.
Now, he did not say that he regretted transitioning from biological woman to a man.
So he didn't say he regretted the transition.
That's not where I'm going on this, because I know you talk about that a lot.
I'm not talking about that.
Here's what he found out.
That being a man was the suckiest thing in the world.
And what he found out is that men don't have friends.
Yeah.
That's what he found out.
He found out men don't have friends.
And he said that when he was identifying as a woman, that he could make a close friend just by going to the ladies' restroom at a club, like chatting with somebody for five minutes over putting over makeup, like you made a close friend.
And he said, you could live your whole life and no human male will get close to you.
Now, I have a theory to overlap on top of this gentleman's thinking, which is how do people get close in the first place?
Do you know what the mechanism is for any two people to become close?
Well, it's probably a number of things, but probably way toward the top of the list is sharing your feelings, especially your vulnerabilities.
Would you agree?
When women get together, they share their feelings and their vulnerabilities, and then they bond over it.
And I guess that works for women.
But if you're a man and you share your vulnerabilities with another man, you better keep it short.
You know what I mean?
You can do it.
Oh, you can definitely do it.
But one minute would be a lot.
You know?
Like one minute bitching to another man, that's a lot.
Fifteen seconds of bitching is a lot.
If you're man-to-man.
That's a lot.
But you can't do the thing that women do, which is you just say the same complaint over and over again in different words, because it's all you can think about and it's all you're talking about.
You can't do that as a man.
You'll never have a friend.
That's why men, well it's one reason, that men bond by activity.
If there's one thing I can teach you, and I would also teach this trans man who's having the problem making connections, Men only connect by common activity.
So if you can, join a sports team of men.
Join a league.
Get on some group that's trying to get something done, some political action committee or something.
Play poker.
Play poker.
Get together for pickleball.
I had my best social situation when I was playing tennis.
Because it turns out when you play tennis, it's just a social sport.
And if you play doubles with somebody, they're going to say, hey, why don't you and I play singles sometime?
And I've got a friend.
And suddenly, you just know 100 tennis players.
And next thing you know, you're all having drinks after tennis.
And next thing you know, somebody's got a party at their house.
And all the tennis players and their spouses get there.
And it's just the best time.
So, short of an activity, men just don't bond.
We don't become friends because we wanted to be friends.
It just doesn't happen.
So, don't expect your man to share feelings, but you can certainly share activities and common goals.
I'm being asked to write some Dilbert erotica.
Nancy says in all capital letters.
All right.
Nancy, maybe you could use AI for that.
Why don't you ask AI to write you some Dilbert erotica?
I believe it could do that.
Can it?
Probably can.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, this completes the best live stream you've ever seen in your whole life.
I'm going to say bye to YouTube, unless there's something I haven't talked about yet.
Is there any kind of big story that you haven't heard yet?
All right.
I don't know.
All right.
I think that's good.
Jury nullification?
Yeah, let's talk about jury nullification.
I have a feeling that we're going to see a wave of jury nullifications.
Because I think the law and maybe the government have sort of departed into, you know, woke hysteria.
And I think you're going to see some more vigilantism.
I'm not recommending it, I'm just predicting it.
And I think you're going to see, well really, vigilantism of juries.
There are cases that I would beg to be on the jury, which has never been the case before.
I would beg to be on the jury.
Oh, I do have one topic I forgot.
This is a good one, so don't go away.
The topic I forgot was gun control.
And I asked the provocative question, how many murders by gun are caused by Republicans?
And a bunch of people tried to give me data that was complete bullshit.
So what they tried to do was say, oh, here are all the murders in a place that's mostly Republicans.
And here are all the murders in a place that's mostly Democrats.
So we're just going to guess that the murderers are similar to the population in general.
So probably mostly Republicans murdering in the Republican places.
Yeah, I'll get there.
Hold on.
I'll get there.
And probably mostly Democrats are doing the murdering in the Democrat places, right?
No, of course not.
No, I'm pretty sure if you go to the Republican places, it's still the Democrats murdering.
There's just fewer of them.
And so I wanted to propose a half-baked idea, right?
Now I don't believe that any of the Second Amendment loving people will like this idea.
So this is an example of what I call the bad version of an idea.
So I'm going to give you a bad version which you will see obvious problems with.
The biggest one is the Second Amendment.
And I'm not denying that it has problems.
But I want to see if this causes you to maybe imagine a different way we could go about it.
Right?
So this is sort of brainstorming, imagination, creativity exercise.
Right?
Don't get too serious about the recommendation.
It goes like this.
I have a hypothesis.
That people who are invested in the system, meaning the United States, don't do as much murdering.
And that you could determine who is invested in the system by their activities.
So you don't need to read anybody's mind.
Here would be activities in which I would bet that almost, well, no, let me rephrase.
I would bet that people who engage in the following activities rarely murder.
They do.
But rarely.
Activity number one, serving on a jury.
Being a juror on a jury, even once.
My hypothesis is, if you've done it even once, you're probably not a murderer.
You know, anybody can murder in a crime of passion, but probably not a criminal murderer.
You know, the criminals will probably just try to get out of it, one way or the other.
Likewise, if you register to vote, And then you actually voted, at least once, I would say your odds of being a murderer are very low.
Would you agree?
I would say that if you took a gun safety class, just once, your odds of ever being a murderer are very low.
Very low.
And what do all those things have in common?
All those things have in common is buying into the system.
It's somebody who says, I like the system and I'm going along with it.
Serving on a jury trial is something you can so easily get out of that I think the people who do it have at least a little bit of sense of community and civilization.
I know I did.
By the way, I highly recommend serving on a jury.
Do not spend your whole life getting on a jury duty.
Do not.
Because it will change you in a way that you can't imagine.
It changes you.
Serving on a jury makes you different forever.
And the way it makes you different is you see 12 people who really give it their best shot.
That's what I saw.
So I've done two or three.
But when you see that your fellow citizens are really, really serious about getting it right, that changes everything.
Yeah.
You have to have that experience.
Right, except in DC.
All right, so here's where I'm going.
There are activities like joining the NRA, taking a gun safety class, voting, being on a jury, which pretty much guarantee that you're in the unlikely to murder somebody class.
Suppose we said You have to do at least one of those things to get a gun.
I know.
I know.
Second Amendment.
I get it.
If you want to reject it just on the Second Amendment, no argument.
If you want to be an absolutist on the Second Amendment, no argument.
No argument.
You don't have to even say it.
No argument.
But I'm just trying to expand your thinking a little bit.
Is there any way that you could say, we're going to give you a very simple bar to pass.
Let's say gun safety is nearly free.
Well, the gun costs money, so people have money if they buy a gun.
You say, you just can't have it unless you take a gun safety class.
Or you can't have it unless you've registered to vote or you've been on a jury trial.
Now, it can't pass any constitutional test.
I get it.
But is there anything you could do where you could restrict guns in any way to people who have bought into the system?
You don't have to say, shall not be infringed.
You're just preaching to the choir.
We all know Second Amendment.
Now, I get that the idea is dead on arrival.
I just wonder if it maybe stimulates your thinking in any way that would be useful.
Because now imagine taking it out of the practical range and putting it into the political domain.
So everything I was talking about was looking for something like a practical idea, but there wasn't one there.
But what if you took that into the political domain and you said, because Republicans have a tough time explaining why people should have guns, when the news is showing people getting gunned down every day?
Now, there is an argument, and it's a perfect argument, but it takes a while to present it.
So it doesn't work as well as, hey, these people are being shot.
That's always going to be more attention grabbing.
So if you're a Republican politician, and you suggested that the Democrats who want gun control could voluntarily Restrict it to other people who want gun control, that you would favor it.
That everybody who votes for gun control should be denied a gun.
And if they don't vote at all, they should be denied a gun.
But if you do vote, and you do vote for guns, you could have one.
So basically, everybody who's against gun ownership doesn't get to have one, because they happen to be the same class of people who use them.
Illegally.
Republicans are in favor of guns, but show me an NRA member, Republican, who murdered somebody with a gun.
Show me, show me that.
I mean, you know it doesn't happen.
I mean, it may, maybe it's happened in some rare cases, but it basically doesn't happen.
So why can't the Republicans, just to make a point, right?
This would just be making a point.
It really wouldn't work as a policy or anything.
Just say, how about this?
Republicans who have, you know, taken a gun class or joined the NRA have never been a problem to anybody.
In fact, they probably are protecting you.
So why don't we say they can have all the guns they want?
And you can't.
Now nobody's going to agree to that, right?
Democrats are never going to agree.
Oh, yeah, if we identify as Democrats, we'll agree to not have guns.
But in terms of framing it, it would be devastating.
I mean, you'd have to pretend you really believed it.
I mean, it would be anti-Second Amendment, so it would never fly.
But I can imagine putting it out there and just making somebody have to deal with it.
Say, you know that it's not the Republicans, right?
So how about the Republicans get to keep their guns?
Because within the Republican realm, there doesn't seem to be a problem.
Do you know what class of citizens are allowed to carry a knife into almost any public situation and yet have basically no murders?
And yet they are allowed to carry a weapon.
Yeah, the Sikhs.
If you're in the Sikh religion, Part of the religion is you're supposed to carry a dagger.
That's my understanding.
And so I believe they've won, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they've won legal challenges to allow them to carry their weapon into places where you're definitely not supposed to have a weapon.
Not every place, of course, but in more places than you would expect.
And here's my question.
How many Sikhs are murdering people with their daggers?
Zero?
Zero, right?
I've never even heard of it.
Have you ever heard of one Sikh who just took out his dagger and mugged somebody?
It just doesn't happen.
So there's a special case where the Sikhs, in my opinion, have superior constitutional rights to you.
And I'm okay with it.
I mean, I can't imagine saying that in any other context.
There's a religious group that's a superior constitutional, or at least legal, right over me.
I can't carry a knife to the same place as they can, but I don't have a problem with that at all.
You know why I don't have a problem with that?
Because no Sikhs are using their knives.
They're just not using them.
So, in a practical sense, it's a practical solution.
So, if the Sikhs can have knives and other people can't, in some domains, not every domain, you're telling me you couldn't do that with guns?
We already have a precedent.
The precedent is set.
It's a better case than you think.
I don't think it'll ever fly.
But I'd like to be thinking in different terms Maybe there's a way to segregate the public in a way that makes sense and even the public would agree with.
I don't know.
I just feel like there's some way to break the logjam and let the Republicans keep all their guns and maybe let the other people work it out some other way.
All right.
I would probably just be happy if anybody voted.
Honestly.
If anybody registered to vote, I'd say they could have a gun, because it means they bought into the system.
Now, I realize that criminals would probably register to vote just to get a gun, but not a lot of them.
