Episode 2142 Scott Adams: Trump & Truth, Systemic Racism Cortisol Theory, Schiff Censure, AI Debates
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Trump and Truth
Using AI to debate
Battery breakthrough
Juneteenth
Cortisol and systemic racism
Schiff censure 2.0
Ukraine does stuff
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to anybody in the history of the universe.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
And aren't you glad you're here?
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah.
And if you'd like to take this experience up to levels where... How can I explain it?
What kind of a level could we take this up to?
The level where you could build Let's say a railroad from here to the Indian Ocean.
That's how good it's going to be.
And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything awesome.
It's called the Simultaneous 7.
It happens now.
Go.
Yes.
Alright, we're private on Locals, and we're public on YouTube, and it's time to go.
So, did anybody notice that there's no news?
That the news just stopped?
If there's anything that would tell you that all the news is artificial, it's that as soon as summer vacation comes, as soon as it's summer vacation, the news stops.
Come on.
Doesn't that tell you the news is fake?
That the news stops when the reporters go on vacation?
Like, how can that be?
Well, that's not going to stop me from talking about things that are fascinating and interesting and will make you so happy that you're here.
I don't know.
I think it might be the best day you've ever had in your life.
Now, I'm going to be hypnotizing all of you with casual conversation.
Here's what I'm going to do.
This is going to be very simple hypnosis.
It's the simplest form of hypnosis, which is associating something with another thing.
Have you noticed that your mood can be influenced by other people?
You've all noticed that, right?
Somebody sad comes into the room and you're like, ugh, your energy goes down.
But somebody happy comes into the room and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, all right, that took me up a little bit.
Well, here's what I'm going to do to all of you.
I'm in a better mood than you are.
It's true.
I'm in a great mood.
And my good mood, just by itself, is going to start to seep into your being.
Your mere exposure to my good, happy mood today will make you happier.
You don't have to do anything.
Just sit there and let it happen.
Go!
First story, good news, there's another battery breakthrough.
Looks like, who did this?
Big ol' car company.
Who's, maybe Toyota?
Doesn't matter, it's some big car company.
They've got some new solid state battery that's way cool.
It'll give you almost a thousand mile range and ten minute charge.
Does that sound pretty good?
932 mile range and a 10 minute charge.
And apparently it's all doable.
You know, the technology can be demonstrated.
It looks like it can be scaled up for mass production.
And it's solid state.
So it'd be lighter and well, they can pack more goodness into a smaller space.
Anyway, compare that to Tesla Model Y that has one third the range, sort of.
And 15 minute charge.
15 minutes, not bad.
But one third range.
So this is not the only battery breakthrough.
I always tell you about all the new battery breakthrough things.
Because I think the battery breakthrough is everything.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the big problem with green energy is it doesn't work when there's no sun and the wind isn't blowing.
But if your batteries get cheap enough and awesome enough, and here's a gigantic step in that direction, Then all problems are solved.
You just store your energy until you need it.
All right, I'm loving the hashtag wannabe dictator.
You know that came from the Fox News Chiron hero who referred to Biden as a wannabe dictator in the last Chiron that he did before he was let go.
It's still the best.
It's the best quitting story I've ever heard.
Nobody's ever quit a job better than that.
That is the highest style points for a job quitting there has ever been in the history of the universe.
But I'd like to check in on the wannabe dictator Biden's health.
Let's see, he still wants to build a railroad to the Indian Ocean and God save the Queen.
Why do you say God save the Queen?
At the end of his speech?
Nobody really knows.
Maybe it was something about trans and LGBTQ, but I don't think so.
I think it was just some kind of a brain dysfunction.
But, you know, I always tell you, my mother told me when I was young, that you could get used to anything if you did it long enough.
Including hanging.
And I don't think she made that up.
I think that was an old saying from somewhere.
But have we gradually gotten used to how degraded Joe Biden is?
Is it my imagination or can you tell me if I'm exaggerating?
I can't tell if this is hyperbole.
But it seems to me that Biden is about 10 minutes from what I'll call the taxidermy phase.
Where they literally just stuff him and wheel him around on a cart, and everybody acts like he's still there?
Because we're acting like he's still there now!
Could you ever imagine we would be in this place?
Could you ever imagine that the President would say in public, God save the Queen, randomly, and we want to build a railroad to the Indian Ocean?
And that we let those things go.
I mean, we talked about them.
They were both news, and we had fun with it, and we tweeted, we made some memes.
But generally speaking, we just gave it a pass.
We actually got used to having a brainless president.
Now, is my mother a genius?
Is my mother the smartest person who ever lived?
When she said you could get used to anything, I didn't believe that.
I didn't believe you could get used to anything.
I thought it was like an exaggeration.
As in, well, you can get used to some things.
There are some things, a small group of things, that you might not think you can get used to, but this small group of things, actually you can.
You can get used to them.
But no, it turns out you can get used to anything.
Anything!
We're gonna stuff this motherfucker like a pet bear or whatever you stuff.
We're going to wheel him around in a cart, and the Marines are going to salute him.
The Marines are going to salute.
They're going to wheel this fucker to the helicopter on a cart.
Like this.
And the Marine outside the helicopter will be.
And everybody will act like nothing happened.
I don't know.
I think it's funny.
Apparently on June 22nd, I saw a Clay Travis tweet on this, on June 22nd, which is just a few days from now, Trump's exclusive contract with Truth Social ends.
Meaning that he can tweet anywhere he wants, anytime he wants.
At the moment he's limited to Truth.
Now what do you think he's going to do?
Because if Trump starts tweeting on Twitter, and it's the same tweets, why would anybody be on Truth?
I mean, it might just destroy the entire model, if it's working at all.
So I don't know if Truth is on the way to make money or not.
But he's got a big decision, because I believe he's got a sizable equity interest in that.
He would like it to work.
On the other hand, he wants to be president.
You know, I'm almost... I'm semi-convinced that he should stay on Truth for his presidential benefit.
Do you know why?
Because the less that people see of him, the better.
But the people on Truth are the people who absolutely want to see him.
Those are the people who said, I'm here to see you.
Give me more of you.
And then he gives it to them.
And all the people on Twitter Would only benefit from less of him.
Am I wrong?
They would only benefit from less of him.
Yeah, people do retweet him, but it doesn't get the same energy.
I almost never see a Don Jr.
Actually, I'd never seen Don Jr.' 's tweets.
I just realized that Don Jr.
is completely removed from my Twitter feed.
On a side note, The stuff that is surfaced to me on Twitter is so different than it used to be.
But I can tell that people I really would like to see their tweets are just gone.
So why is it the people I follow I don't see their tweets?
Like at all?
Isn't the whole point of following somebody that you would see all of their tweets?
Like in theory wouldn't I see a hundred percent of his tweets, right?
But I don't remember the last time I've seen one.
So there's something going on with the Twitter algorithm that's not cool.
Because I'm following people and I'm not seeing their tweets at all.
Like zero times.
What's up with that?
I mean the most basic thing of Twitter is you follow somebody so you can see their stuff.
I don't follow things so they can show me whatever the fuck they want.
But that seems to be what's happening.
I don't understand it at all.
So anyway, that needs to get fixed, I think.
So I saw a funny meme, if you call it that, video that was an AI version of Biden and Trump doing a debate.
Now it was a funny version where they were just doing insults, but I thought to myself, suppose you've got two candidates who don't want to debate.
Could be in the primary, it could be anywhere else.
How hard would it be To create an AI deepfake of both of the candidates, train them both on all of the policies and all of the recent speeches.
You don't want to go back too far, but just say recent speeches, you know, last two, three years, something.
You don't think you could get the AIs to do the debate and you would learn as much?
Would you not learn as much as if you saw the real people debate?
Because ask yourself, what's the point of a debate?
What's the point of a debate?
Do you know the only thing we get out of a debate is fake gotchas?
That's it.
Fake gotchas.
Because in terms of policy, it's already published, right?
Their policies are already on their websites.
They say it every day.
So you could certainly teach the AI to answer any question about policy.
Have you used AI enough to know that that's true?
ChatGPT would give you a perfect impression of their policy preferences and could answer a question, actually answer a question, based on the policies.
And it could give you a good answer, a very complete one with caveats and everything else.
In fact, it could do it better than the candidates themselves.
Do you disagree?
I think A.I.
could represent its real person better than the real person could represent themselves.
Because the A.I.
would not get flustered.
The A.I.
would not do a human thing that shows its flaws.
And A.I.
would not forget what it was going to say.
It would not get excited about something.
It would not give the stupid answer.
And if it did give a stupid answer, you wouldn't blame the candidate.
You'd blame the program.
So it could actually make a mistake, and then the public wouldn't care.
They'd say, well, that was just the AI.
That wasn't the candidate.
So you don't think that there will be a debate between Biden and RFK Jr.?
Prediction.
Prediction.
There will be a debate, but it will be two AI characters.
How much attention could a real debate between two AI characters get Like, how many views would that get?
An actual, let's say, one-hour debate with real deepfakes.
Real deepfakes.
I believe it would get millions.
Yeah, I think it would get millions.
Because I would not be less interested in the AI version.
I would be fascinated to see how the AI handled their two competing deals.
There's some of you wouldn't watch it and I get that.
But it would be really interesting.
I think a lot of people would watch it.
Now that's another, that's interesting too.
The deepfake, here's what I would do if I made the deepfake of RFK Jr.
I would start with his actual voice as it is today, and then in fairly short time, I would improve it as he talks.
So that you'd almost not notice that the imperfections start to decrease, and then say five minutes in, it just disappears.
And you're just listening to everybody else's voice.
That would be cool.
Now, it might also be insensitive to people with disabilities.
Do you see that?
I think it would be insensitive to take his disability away in a public forum.
Because that would be sort of like saying you have to change him to make him better or something like that.
I don't know.
I feel like people with actual other disabilities might be insulted just by the fact that the AI thought it needed to fix it.
You know what I mean?
Am I all alone on this?
I think I'm all alone on that.
I don't know.
I feel like there's a sensitivity there where we should accept him the way he is, not imagine that we need to fix him in our minds.
I might be a little sensitive to this because I had the same issue with my voice, so I might be a little tightly wound on that topic.
Alright, I'd love to see it though.
So I guess Juneteenth is, Monday is the celebration of Juneteenth, which I understand to be the last day that slavery was legal in an American state.
Now what do you think of Juneteenth?
Do you think it in Texas specifically?
And what do you think of that?
Should we have that holiday?
Or are you against it?
Anybody opposed to it?
Yeah, I see people saying F that and blah blah blah.
All right, I want to tell you how easily I was persuaded.
All right, I have to admit I went into it with a little bit of, all right, this might be a little overwoke.
You know what I mean?
Because if you read enough right-leaning media, there's like a little bit of a sense that maybe it's a little unnecessary, a little too much, a little too for one group, maybe a little too woke.
And I have to admit, I was leaning in that direction.
I had no problem with it.
I mean, I didn't have a disagreement with it.
I just thought, you know, sign of the times.
It's a sign of the times.
Then I saw a quick video clip of apparently the woman who seems to be behind it becoming a big deal in the United States.
She was a black woman.
She looks like a grandmother now.
And it was just a little clip.
Probably a 10 second clip of her making her point.
And in 10 seconds, she completely changed my mind.
And I'm going to quote her, roughly, paraphrase, and I'm going to see if I can do the same to you.
So she's talking to the crowd about the importance of Juneteenth and she says something like this, rough quote, it's not about black, it's not about white, it's about America.
It's an America celebration.
Sold.
Sold.
Don't say anything else.
Do you know what I always talk about?
Don't keep selling past the sale.
Once you've closed the sale, shut up.
Shut up.
You just made the sale.
It's about America.
Sold.
Good.
I'm all in.
100% sold.
The person who came up with it tells me it's about America.
Yep, I'm in.
So let's celebrate that on June 19th.
All right, here's my bottom line at the moment on those Mar-a-Lago boxes.
See if you agree with these following statements.
Professional lawyers, the best lawyers in the world, cannot agree whether a crime of any importance was committed.
True or false?
There are definitely top lawyers who say yes, but are there not also top lawyers who say no or maybe?
So without saying whether it is a crime or is not, Can we simply agree that the biggest experts on what is a crime can't tell?
Meaning they don't agree.
I mean, if you ask them, they say they can tell.
But they don't agree.
Now, number two.
I think you can agree on that.
Number two.
The public is unlikely ever to see the documents to judge for ourselves whether these are important secrets that got released.
Now, I'm not saying that we should.
Somebody on Twitter, like a very dumb person on Twitter, said, are you saying that we should see all of these secret documents?
No.
No, I'm not saying we should.
I'm saying we won't.
In all likelihood.
In all likelihood.
Because if the documents were so unimportant that they could just declassify them today, then that would take away the whole point of the case.
Not the whole point, but it would weaken the case because that would be an admission there was nothing there of importance.
They just showed the public.
But can you live with this situation that might be developing?
Can you imagine putting a past president and current candidate in prison for life for something that the best lawyers can't even agree is a crime And the public is not allowed to see the most important part of the evidence.
Can you even imagine it?
Honestly, I can't.
I actually can't imagine that.
Like, actually can't.
Like, when I say I can't imagine it, I mean my imagination literally can't concoct it.
I can't play it as like a little movie in my head.
It's just too far.
So this is what I mean by too far.
That's just too far.
And so when I say it's not going to happen, I don't mean, you know, I'm going to do some personal thing that would make it not happen.
I mean, it's not up to me.
I'm saying it's not going to happen.
Because one way or another, the country won't let that happen.
We won't let it happen.
Collectively.
And I don't have to say what will the country do, what will be the response.
I don't think we're talking about an armed revolution or anything.
Nothing violent.
I'm just saying, no.
No.
Absolutely not.
That's just too far.
And whatever it takes to make that stop, short of violence, we don't need that.
But whatever it takes.
I don't know, it might be extreme civil obedience.
I was sort of half seriously saying that people might stop paying taxes, but realistically it's kind of hard to do that.
I think something would happen.
I think something would happen.
It wouldn't surprise me if everybody who had a gun decided to march down the street with it.
Imagine how scary that would be if just everybody who had a gun just took it out and just started marching down the street.
Didn't say anything.
No words necessary.
Just take all the guns out.
If you got three guns, take them all and just walk down the street all together.
Now, that's not a suggestion.
I'm using that as a example of there's probably something that the public would do But there's no way they're going to let that happen.
There's just no way that with what we know today, they're going to put him in prison.
So I would see it as more of a political move to try to suppress his election chances.
But I'll tell you, here's how I read the room.
I think Trump is getting more popular every day.
And some of it has to do with the fact that the media is reducing his visibility.
I think it's working for him.
They're reducing his visibility at the same time they're sucking all the energy from the other candidates.
It's sort of the perfect situation.
Because they can't stop talking about him.
But they're trying to keep the talking about him in this little narrow area of his bad behavior as they see it.
Except that so many people don't see it as that bad.
That they're spending all the time on the thing that people really don't give a shit about.
Do you think there's actually a Democrat who cares about his Mar-a-Lago boxes?
Like actually really care?
Like even one?
In the whole world?
Do you think there's one?
You know what would be funny?
To see if you could get that person to say it on video.
Hey, what do you think about these Mar-a-Lago boxes?
Well, I believe we'll need to bring somebody in for that.
Dale?
What do you think of President Trump and those Mar-a-Lago boxes?
Pretty bad.
Worst thing in the world.
Is it worse than inflation?
religion.
It's not worse than inflation, but second worst thing in the world.
Is it worse than potential nuclear war over Ukraine?
Not worse than that.
Third worst thing in the world.
Is it worse than The high unemployment.
It's not worse than that, but it's the fifth worst thing in the world.
And then you just keep going.
You get to see where Dale takes his stand.
All right.
This is the farthest I'm going to go.
It's the 27th most important thing in the world.
What about climate change?
28th.
28th most important thing in the world.
And so it goes.
But seriously, you know, joking aside, do you think you could get an actual regular human being on, you know, on video to say, yeah, I'll tell you those Mar-a-Lago boxes are keeping me up at night.
I was worried about the climate frying the world.
I was worried about nuclear holocaust because of the Ukraine war.
But not anymore.
Nightmare.
Now it's the Mar-a-Lago boxes.
I can't tell you about the nightmares I've had about the boxes.
And when I imagine in my mind Trump rustling papers and talking about secrets.
Oh no!
No!
This sound!
Here's some secrets!
Here's some secrets!
I just hear it in my mind!
And it makes me crazy!
I mean, in all seriousness, wouldn't it be funny to get somebody to try to tell you that they really care about the boxes?
That they actually care about them?
That would be hilarious!
Because at first they say yes, but then you push them on it.
Where is this?
Where is it in your list of priorities?
If you were to compare the Mar-a-Lago boxes to, let's say, the health of your family, Is that higher than that?
You can see where that would go.
Get back in the box, Dale.
All right.
One of the things I've been waiting to see is something that famous investor Bill Ackman wants to see as well.
You're aware that Joe Rogan did an extensive interview with RFK Jr.
And RFK Jr.
made a number of claims about vaccinations and cell phone calls and being bad for you and basically vaccinations and some other things.
So if you're just listening to one person make claims, they would be very persuasive.
Have I ever taught you that listening to one lawyer talk about their case tells you absolutely nothing about the truth?
Nothing about the truth.
Because a lawyer, by training, and that's what RFK Jr.
is, they're trained to give you their version of things, and they're trained to make you sound persuasive as hell, until you hear the other side.
It's hearing the other side where everything falls apart.
So there's a three-hour Joe Rogan.
Was that a useful service to America?
Do you think?
Because I consider Joe Rogan a national treasure.
One of the most useful, useful citizens America has ever produced.
And his show is a, you know, it's a force of nature.
All right, but everybody who said that's useful, you are so wrong.
Oh my God, you're wrong.
You could not be more wrong.
There's nothing more destructive than three hours of one lawyer's opinion.
In fact, if you were making a list of the worst fucking things you could ever do, that would be it.
That's the worst thing you could do.
So I would say that the Joe Rogan three hours with RFK was damaging to the country.
That was just bad for the country.
Absolutely fucking bad.
Really bad.
Like, seriously, seriously bad.
It's like one of the worst things that's happened this year.
Now, am I saying that RFK was wrong about anything?
Nope.
Nope.
You didn't hear that.
That was not in my opinion.
Do I think he's probably wrong about some things he claims?
I would put a really big bet on that.
Because when I listen to him talk, I hear a lot of correlation that he thinks is causation.
And I can't, I just can't buy into that.
I understand the correlation, and I understand it would be worth looking into.
I agree with that completely.
But to assume that we know something because of correlation is a really big ask, and I can't get there.
So here's what would have been useful.
What would have been really useful is somebody who had the same amount of knowledge as RFK Jr.
has, but has a different point of view.
And have both of them on for three hours, and one says a claim, the other says what they think, then maybe, maybe you would have something good for the country.
But whether Joe Rogan had RFK Jr.
on, or somebody just as powerful who had completely opposite points of view, my opinion would be the same.
It wouldn't matter if you had RFK Jr.
for three hours or somebody disagreed with everything he said for three hours.
If you have them on by themselves with just Joe Rogan, that is a huge mistake and a disservice to the country.
A very big one.
It's a really big disservice.
And I think, because I love me some Joe Rogan, as most of you do.
And so, you know, I have ultimate respect for everything he's doing.
But that's a real big mistake in terms of benefit to the country.
It's real good for ratings.
It's good for entertainment.
But in terms of informing the country, it's a disaster.
It's a fucking disaster.
And not because RFK is wrong.
You get that, right?
I'm not saying RFK Jr.
is wrong.
I'm saying if you don't put the other side, when there is such a big other side, if you don't put them on there at the same time, you are misinforming the public, period.
Period.
That's just propaganda at that point.
Now it's accidental.
There's no way that Joe Rogan is intentionally trying to mislead people.
There's no way that's true.
We've all watched him long enough.
We know he's pretty dedicated to what's true.
So there's no way he's trying to do anything that's misleading.
It just works out that way.
That's just the outcome.
So I would bet there's a whole bunch of people who are very persuaded by RFK Jr.
and you should not have been.
And I don't mean because his arguments are not good, because they're actually quite good.
His arguments are very persuasive sounding.
I just can't judge them.
Yeah, you would be very, very poorly served if you watched that.
In fact, that's the reason I didn't watch it.
I saw some clips, and I said, I'm not going to watch this.
This is not good.
This does not help anybody.
All right.
However, I love the fact that RFK Jr.
will go anywhere and talk to anybody.
He can do it without notes.
He can do it persuasively.
He's impressive as hell.
So let me say that.
RFK Jr., impressive as hell.
Doesn't mean he's right, and I've got some big questions about that.
But, impressive.
Alright, I did see a Twitter user called BadStats, and I retweeted it if you're looking for it, in which he went through and tried to... I'm going to use the word debunk, but since I don't know which one is right, don't assume that the debunker is the right one.
I'm just using that as a shorthand.
So somebody who disagreed.
And it was a long thread in which he went through various things and showed his work.
So that was useful.
If the only thing you saw was RFK Jr.
on Joe Rogan, you should see somebody who's got a different opinion and some knowledge pushing back on it.
The pushback is just as strong.
Right?
If you listen to RFK Jr.
by himself, you're totally persuaded because he's very persuasive.
As soon as you see the thread that calls out some, let's say, I don't want to say flaws, but a different opinion on the same situation, you completely change your mind.
You're like, oh, ooh, I didn't know that.
Ooh, really?
Really?
That's a correlation, not a causation?
Ooh.
But then you look at the debunk and you say to yourself, OK, there's one part of this debunk that I know looks like bullshit.
And then you say to yourself, all right, who's behind this debunking?
Is it Big Pharma?
So you never really can get to full confidence.
I'm just saying if you haven't seen both sides, you've seen nothing.
All right.
I have a theory of systemic racism that cortisol levels could be measured to find out where systemic racism is bad.
And then you could use that, that knowledge, To know what to do about it.
Now, cortisol is the chemical released when you're under stress.
And what happens is if your cortisol level goes up... John, are you stupid?
I can't tell.
Let's figure out if John is stupid.
Here's what he says.
It's Scott Scott.
Big issues with RFK, but little mountain with his argument is because he refuses to hear him speak.
So somebody's saying that my refusing to hear one side is making me dumb.
Whereas my only point was you should hear both sides.
But you think that refusing to hear one side by itself makes me dumb.
John.
Do better.
Do better, John.
You can do better than that.
Who argues against hearing both sides of an argument?
Besides John.
on.
Cortisol.
So if your cortisol levels are high, it lowers your cognitive function.
Did you know that?
If you're stressed, you actually can't think as well.
And if it's long term, you're just not going to do as well in school.
So your academic performance, your actual IQ will drop if you have enough cortisol for long enough.
So that's based on stress.
Now, where would cortisol be highest?
Where do you think would be the highest cortisol?
Well, I'll speculate.
I would imagine if you were poor, you would have higher cortisol.
There's at least one study that shows a strong correlation.
So poverty alone would give you higher cortisol.
But also, I would think living in a high crime area, You know, dangerous neighborhood, high cortisol.
I suppose, logically, if you had one parent, you might feel a little more anxious than if you had two.
If there were, you know, two good parents who were taking care of you, you'd feel a little less safe.
So you could imagine a whole host of things that would make you have high cortisol if you lived in some urban, high-density, high-crime area.
Doesn't that almost perfectly explain the situation?
That the people who are in the place that creates high cortisol are the ones who are performing poorly.
They're not doing as well in school.
Now, I'm not saying that's the one thing that's causing it.
I'm saying that it's a really big thing.
And if we were to only measure the cortisol levels in, let's say, the entire black population versus the entire white population, that would tell you What the difference is on people's actual reality, their bodies.
Because if black people in general are having high cortisol situations, just because of where they live mostly, you would expect that would be a huge drag on performance.
But it would also give you something to fix.
Or at least something to test.
So you could test the cortisol theory fairly easily by taking some, you know, random black kids out of an urban area, putting them in a, let's say, a nicer environment.
Remove all the danger.
So just put them in a no-danger situation where they still have a path to success.
Just see what happens.
First of all, see if their cortisol levels go down.
So that's the first thing you test.
And I think it would.
And then you test if that seemed to be correlated with better academic achievement.
Probably would.
Now, you also have other influences in the inner city, drugs, etc.
But I'm going to dovetail this into my bigger point, which is the big secret of personal success Is to decouple what is true from what works.
And that's totally counterintuitive, and I think that's one of the biggest problems in the world, is that that's counterintuitive.
And it's been my, sort of my recent life's work, you know, the second half of my life, has been specifically on this.
This illusion.
The illusion that you have to focus on what's true, as opposed to what works.
Here's the perfect example of it.
Systemic racism is true.
Now I think that there's a systemic poverty problem that's the bigger part of it.
So if you're a poor anything, if you're just poor, that's going to have an effect on your generation and maybe the next one too.
But systemic racism is real.
So if you say, but what's true?
Is systemic racism true?
Yes.
Does it have an impact on some people?
Yes.
So what do you do about that?
It's true.
Has an impact.
So that's where you put your resources, right?
That's the thing you fix.
Because it's true.
And it has a negative effect.
So you should go fix that thing.
That makes common sense, right?
That's straightforward.
Here's my problem.
Here's the solution.
Everybody agrees.
The trouble is that gets you a terrible outcome.
Sorry.
I'm sorry the truth gets you a bad outcome.
So if you want a good outcome, you have to go a different direction.
Which is, you don't ignore the truth that systemic racism exists.
So you don't ignore it, you just find a way to slice through it.
Which is to focus on personal success strategies.
Make sure that you go to school, even if other people don't.
Make sure you don't get on drugs, even if other people do.
You know, basic stuff.
Stay off of drugs, don't get anybody pregnant, don't get pregnant too early.
Build a talent stack.
Systems over goals.
Make sure your sleep and your diet are on point.
I mean, the methods for being successful have always been the same.
They improve a little bit over time.
But how to do it is pretty well defined.
People do understand how to be successful.
The trouble is, if you're focusing on what's true, you're going to go the wrong direction.
You're going to feel a victim.
Do you know what happens if somebody tells you you're a victim and somebody tells you that you're a victim of discrimination?
It raises your cortisol levels.
It would be another form of stress.
All stress raises your cortisol.
So telling people that there is systemic racism and it could hold them back should make them fail.
Everything we know about everything Says that telling people that they have an obstacle they can't easily get past will make them fail.
However, everything we know about the world suggests that if you tell people that nothing can stop them, which is what?
It's a lie.
That's a lie.
Of course things can stop you.
There's a lot of stuff that can stop you.
Stop you right in your tracks.
But if you act as though that's not true, when it's clearly true, your result will be way better.
Because you're going to push through the smaller problems.
You're going to say, well, there's a door in front of me that's locked.
I guess I'm done here.
Systemic racism.
It's a locked door.
What can I do?
But if you told yourself that nothing could stop you, You'd find the keysmith, you'd figure out how to pick a lock, you'd go to the gym until you could kick that door down.
And then you would kick it down.
And then there'd be another obstacle, and then you'd say, ah, another obstacle, just like I expected.
And then you dismantle the wall one brick at a time, and you go to the next one.
That's life.
That's life.
Now here's the biggest problem with systemic racism, in my opinion.
I was raised to believe that.
That's exactly how I was raised.
To believe that I could push through any obstacle.
Were you?
How many of you were raised that way?
To believe that you could push through whatever you needed to push through?
And I'll bet you all the people saying yes did okay in life.
You probably raised a family, took care of your retirement.
I'll bet you did.
And I'll bet you if you looked at the population of people who told they couldn't succeed because of this big old racist country that's working against them, I'll bet they didn't do so well.
And I'm sure there are lots of reasons for the differences in performance across groups.
There are lots of reasons.
But I'll bet if you just removed this one thing, you'd have the biggest improvement.
If you could just convince people that, yeah, systemic racism exists, and you can slice through it like it doesn't.
Is that true?
It's true enough.
It's true enough for the purpose that you want it to be, which is to inspire people to do their best.
But it's not true, true.
You know, like true, true, capital T, true and, you know, that kind of true.
Because a rock could fall on your head and kill you.
A drunk driver could hit you tomorrow.
No, you can't do anything that you want to do all the time, but if your mindset is that you can, you're going to do better.
So there's no way to separate the fact that personal success requires believing, or acting as if you believe, something that's absolutely not true.
You get that, right?
Does everybody get that?
That personal success requires you to accept that which you know not to be true.
That you can do anything.
You can't do anything.
You can't flap your wings and fly.
But you can get through most problems.
You can solve most problems.
That is true.
And I would even go further and say that if you were, let's say, a black American, you could take advantage of the Various advantages that everybody has in different categories, right?
Your personal advantage might be different than mine.
So my advantage might be that, let's say, I could get a job with a bunch of racists, if I'm the same color, but you couldn't.
So there'd be little pockets of things where I've got an advantage.
But then if I went to a Fortune 500 company, who's trying to improve their diversity, and we walk in with the same qualifications for the same job, Black guy gets it every time.
Every time.
100% of the time, the black guy's gonna get the job, equal qualifications.
Because he's a twofer.
The black guy's a twofer, but I'm a onefer.
I give them just a good employee, I hope, but the black guy gives them a good employee and solves their diversity problem a little bit.
It's a twofer.
Of course they're gonna pick the twofer.
Why wouldn't they?
You would be an idiot if you didn't.
I would.
I would do the same thing.
So, everybody's got an advantage, you just have to find it.
Instead of complaining about the other person having an advantage.
Which they do.
Alright.
Apparently this Adam Schiff censure, which I was opposed to when it included a $16 million fine, but I guess it's going to be reintroduced without the monetary part.
So he'll just get censured, which I think should be enough to get all of the Republicans to vote for it.
So I think there's a good chance he'll get censured.
And I think this is a far better outcome because I don't want to set that precedent of Congress fighting each other.
Like, that would just be the end of any useful Congress, if they're useful at all.
All right, here's the latest on Ukraine.
Ukraine is just such a weird thing to talk about because there's such a lack of information.
But now there's talk of giving Ukraine what they would call Israel status.
Israel status.
Meaning that with Israel, we give them permanent, ongoing, regular military assistance, just sort of forever.
And the idea is that instead of coming up with specific funding for Ukraine for a specific war, that they would become our, let's say, military dependent forever.
Yeah, we must be pretty dumb.
We must be pretty dumb.
I don't really understand what's going on there.
It's got to be that the neocons are just trying to destroy Russia, and they just don't want to say it directly.
Although they do say it directly, some of them.
Yeah.
The whole idea of making Ukraine NATO, unless, well let me put it this way.
If we could destroy Russia, then making Ukraine NATO might make some sense, I suppose, just to keep the lid on the thing you destroyed.
But if you're not going to destroy Russia, it doesn't seem like a good idea to keep attacking it with more and more NATO surrounding it.
It feels like a really bad idea.
Yeah, it feels like the military-industrial complex just wants another permanent piggy bank.
And there you go.
Make Russia the 51st state.
Yeah.
Alright.
So that should be alarming.
And then here's the news from the Ukraine counter-offensive.
And remember I've taught you that if there are too many explanations for a thing, all you know is that nobody knows about the thing?
Listen to how many explanations there are of what's happening over there.
Because the counter-offensive is moving very slowly, right?
There's almost nothing happening in terms of change of territory.
A little bit, but nothing important.
So one take on it is that what the Ukrainians are doing is a strategy of testing all the front line.
And as they're testing, they're learning.
And really the testing phase is a legitimate military strategy in which you test, test, test.
And then once you find the weak spot, then you mass up and you go through the weak spot.
So is that what's happening?
Are they probing?
Are they probing and learning?
Maybe.
That's one possibility.
The other is that they're waiting for the Russians to make mistakes, and because the Russian military always makes mistakes, all you really have to do is get them to react.
So simply getting them to react will cause them to make mistakes, and then you let them make the mistakes.
Another take is that what the Ukrainians were doing was trying to wipe out the Russian conscripts first.
Instead of going after big assets, that they were going after troops, because if they could kill enough of the troops, it would have a devastating effect on the psychology of the Russian citizens, who might try to stop the war.
The other is, it's really all about cutting off Crimea, And making it look like, you know, they better negotiate because, you know, that would be a big win if they could do it.
So, how many billions of dollars are we giving to Ukraine and our press can't tell us what the strategy is?
Now, are you bothered by that?
Now, I'm not sure that I want the press to know, you know, detailed military strategy because then the other side would know too.
Don't you feel that for our billions and billions of dollars we should have some idea what they're trying to do over there?
Are they really trying to win?
Or are they trying to just negotiate better?
Or is the entire thing about creating a permanent system so our military-industrial complex can just feed weapons there forever?
I have no idea what we're doing there.
But I know it's expensive.
So to me it looks like nothing but a military industrial complex play that has nothing to do with American interests.
That's what it looks like to me.
It's hard for me to be in favor of this war because I just don't see the reasons.
So yeah, it looks like a money grab to me which will kill millions of people.
Just like usual.
In other words, you can get used to anything.
We actually watched this happening, and then we just go to lunch.
There are too many outrages.
I feel like when the Vietnam War was on, the total number of outrages was not that many.
So you could really get mad about this one thing.
Oh, this war.
But now we've got everything from climate change to, you know, January 6th insurrection and things that they make up every day that are not even real problems.
That any one problem, it's hard.
I can't muster enough outrage.
We're spending billions of dollars on a war that's probably only making us more, you know, more at risk.
And I can't even get outraged because everything else is outrageous at the same time.
It's a cortisol industry.
Gold diffusion.
I think it's outrage diversification.
Outrage diffusion.
By the way, I think that's a real thing.
The outrage dilution.
That we're just outraged at so many things we can't be outraged at anything enough.
Outrage dilution.
Not saturation.
My hypnosis is failing.
Yeah, I think it's my problem.
Call everyone a Nazi.
Rage diversity.
All right.
Is there anything else happening?
It's another slow news day, but that's the end of my prepared comments.
Have you noticed that your mood has improved or did all the news make you feel sad?
How Amazon locks you out of your house if the driver accuses you of racism.
Can Amazon do that?
Lock you out of your own house?
I've never heard that story.
I bummed you out Well Oh yeah, there's a story about Joe Biden grabbing some side boob of Eva Longorian.
And the video is showing the slow motion of her grabbing his hands.
He goes in for the hug, but then he slides his hands past her side boob on the way out, and she grabs his hands and twists his thumb over and hands his hands back to him.
All right.
Black, I'm going to lock that up by Amazon.
Wow.
Amazon locked the smart home device?
Oh, he just locked the man of his devices and his... Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I'm sure that's happened to him before.
That's true.
I did watch the Black Mirror episode.
So there's a new episode of Black Mirror.
Let's say it deals with the simulation idea, but in a very clever way.
You could see it coming, but it was still super clever.
Really good writing.
Great show.
I watched it last night.
It was terrific.
Best one I've seen, actually.
Of the Black Mirrors, it's the best episode I've seen.
Also good acting.
Good writing, good acting.
It was really well done.
All right.
Black Mirror is on Netflix.
All right.
What about Peter Zahin take on Russia invading?
I haven't, I haven't catch up with Peter Zahin lately.
What's he saying about Is he saying that Russia is totally, definitely going to win?
Do you think anybody knows that?
Do you think there's anybody in the world who can tell you where the Ukraine thing is going other than it's going to be roughly the same now as it will be later?
All right, here's my prediction.
That neither side can win and they will have to negotiate.
Now it might be after Ukraine Maybe put some threat on Crimea.
Because some people are saying that Putin can't risk losing Crimea.
So if it comes down to it, it looks like they do have a lock on taking Crimea back, that Putin will get flexible in his negotiating.
Because if he can negotiate to keep Crimea, he can claim something good happened, at least he kept Crimea.
But I don't see any way that the I don't see any way that the war ends in anything that looks like a victory.
It has to turn into either a permanent war or a DMZ or a negotiated settlement.
I think Putin's too smart to have a permanent DMZ.
I think nobody wins with that.
So I think he would negotiate.
Because I think he's not crazy.
Do you remember in the early part of the war when all the propaganda told us that Putin was sick and maybe crazy?
Do you remember that?
And from today's perspective, isn't that really obvious that you were being propagandized by your own country?
That was such propaganda.
It doesn't look like any of that was true or even a little bit true.
Yeah, I said it too, probably.
But what it looks like is that now we have a better understanding of how the Ukraine thing emerged.
It looks like Putin was pushed into his position by NATO.
And it looks like he was acting somewhat rationally the entire time.
And I'm not sure we were.
You know, if you're going to argue who was being irrational, it looked like my team.
It looked like my team was the irrational ones.
That's what it looks like.
Now, that didn't look like that in the beginning.
In the beginning, it looked like Putin all bad.
Putin bad, Putin bad.
Putin crazy.
He'll use his nukes.
Yeah.
None of that was true.
Basically, the Democrats did to Putin what they did to Trump.
Which is they accuse Putin of their own crimes, of being the aggressors.
It's exactly what they do to Trump.
Exactly the same thing.
You were told.
Can we do the thing where you pretend that I was wrong and you told me the right thing all along, which never happened?
We're going to pretend that, right?
Would it help you if I give you a husband apology and pretend that I didn't know that and that you told me and that now I'm just figuring it out?
Can we do that?
Let's do a husband apology.
Because the people on YouTube are in sort of a different headspace.
I'd like to apologize for ever having thought that Putin was insane and that it was all his fault.
So you have my apology.
I'm sorry, honey, if it made you feel bad.
I didn't mean that.
And I will buy you a nice diamond.
Are we good now?
Husband apology given and accepted.
All right.
I'll tell you, if you don't think husband apologies should be used in politics, you're wrong.
