Episode 2144 Scott Adams: Science Surrenders To RFK Jr. And Joe Rogan, Blink Fails In China, Trump
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Content:
Happy Juneteenth
Science surrenders to RFK Jr.
Blinken fails in China
Mushroom Zeitgeist
Trump's declassification powers
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams.
Today the special Juneteenth edition.
Happy Juneteenth!
If you'd like to take your Juneteenth up to all new levels of awesomeness, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or gel, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid I like.
Coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go!
Ah, yeah.
Well, I have to admit, it was only a few short years ago that I learned what Juneteenth was.
Never heard of it.
It was not anything I learned about.
But, given now my understanding, it's the last day of slavery in the last state.
I think it was Texas that had it.
I say that is very celebratable.
Freedom's always celebratable.
That seems to be like a good celebration.
So let's celebrate freedom.
It is, however, not a work holiday for cartoonists.
Do any of you get the day off?
Has anybody taken the day off?
Or does it not work that way?
It's not a national holiday, right?
Yet.
Probably will be.
I feel like June is a little light on holidays.
Are you with me?
Do you feel like June just, eh?
They could use just a little bit more holidaying.
Not enough holidaying going on in June.
I mean, it's my birthday and that does cover a lot of the month.
Alright, let's talk about Lincoln's trip to China.
A gigantic failure, of course.
Let's see, he asked them if they would stop fentanyl and they said nothing.
Asked China if they would agree not to give deadly weapons to Russia, which they've been saying all along, so that was nothing new.
And then he asked them if they'd like to have an emergency deconfliction phone call, sort of like the red phone or the hotline to the Kremlin.
And China said, nah.
No, seriously.
We should have like a special phone call for deconflicting so we don't have an accidental nuclear war.
President Xi.
Eh.
Eh.
You have my number.
Call me if you need anything.
So I'd say that was a big ol' nothing.
But Blinken's concept, and apparently Biden's concept, is that you need to You need to be continually dealing with the Chinese because there's a better chance of getting a good outcome if you're talking.
If you're talking.
I completely disagree with this and I'll tell you what I would do.
I would close all of our embassies and send every Chinese student home unless they fix fentanyl.
Because the problem here Let me explain how government works to the government.
Is that they've treated fentanyl like it's just one other problem.
It's not!
It's not like any other problem.
We're acting like fentanyl is on our list of negotiating topics.
You know, when we go to talk to them about trade, and our trade situation, let's throw fentanyl in there.
Because that's just another thing to negotiate.
Right?
Just throw it in there with the list.
We got this and that and that and a little fentanyl.
Let's talk about that too.
No.
No.
Fentanyl is not like anything else on the list.
It's not.
You don't go into a negotiation with somebody who's shooting your family members while you're negotiating.
Do you?
No.
You say, first you stop shooting my family members and then we'll have something to talk about.
But you don't act like everything's business as usual while they're killing your family.
But we are.
Now, I don't mind business as usual if we're worrying about, you know, a trade war.
Yeah, that's just business.
But if they're killing people, right now, No, you don't negotiate, nor do you keep your embassy open.
You close your fucking embassy, and you say, we'd love to talk to you, but you're going to stop this first.
Period.
Period.
And the fact that this is just put on the list with other stuff.
It's like, oh, we'd like you to do this and that, and we'll just throw that on the list too.
Maybe if we'd someday talk about all of it together in some comprehensive way.
No.
No.
No, you close the embassy.
You just walk away.
And say, you want nuclear war?
You're on the way.
You're on the way.
Because it is a war.
It's a hot war.
And acting like it's not is ridiculous.
All right, so, Blinken, total failure.
I'd like to also say this about his name.
When you're going to send somebody to negotiate with your biggest adversary, would you like the last name of the person who does your negotiating to be Trump, Trump, or Blinken?
He went into the negotiation and he was, well, he was Blinken.
But the other guy went into the negotiation and Trump, he trumped him.
He trumped him.
We should at least get the names right.
All right, the big news everybody's talking about on the internet today is that Joe Rogan challenged a noted vaccine, pro-vaccine scientist guy named Dr. Hotez, I think, if I'm saying it right.
H-O-T-E-Z?
I think Hotez, maybe?
And Dr. Hotez, who I'd never heard of before.
How many of you had ever heard of Dr. Hotez prior to this situation with Joe Rogan?
A lot of you had.
Alright, this is a real good example of the news bubble.
Because I saw some compilation clips of Dr. Hotez on CNN and MSNBC.
Where apparently he's been a number of times.
But I don't remember ever seeing him on Fox News.
So he's sort of a bubble situation, yeah.
So he's probably been one of the darling experts of the political left, but the political right probably just froze him out because he wasn't really on message for them.
So the big story is that RFK Jr.
has a number of criticisms of vaccinations in general, but also the COVID one specifically.
And would like to debate Dr. Hotez on Joe Rogan, or at least Joe Rogan would like them to debate.
And a number of people were putting up money for charity if they would debate.
And Dr. Hotez seemed to be hesitant, but now he's speaking out about it.
And he tells us that a debate would be bad, meaning it wouldn't be useful, might even make things worse.
What do you think of that?
Do you think of debate?
See, his issue, and let me give you more detail on his issue, his issue is, among other things, that debate doesn't work because that's not how science works.
Science doesn't work on the best debater wins.
Would you agree?
That's not how science works.
And as he points out, science works with, you know, peer-reviewed papers and experimentation and, you know, all the processes of science.
So he says, you know, you should do the scientific stuff, not the debate stuff, because the debate stuff is about persuasion.
And as he points out, well, what if the person who's wrong, this is, I'm not paraphrasing, I'm boosting his argument.
What if the person who's wrong is the most persuasive?
Does that serve you?
Would the public be served by the person who is the most wrong having the best argument?
It's an interesting point.
And he points out, and Mark Cuban did as well, that RFK Jr.
is very persuasive, and that he's an expert at persuading on this topic, and he's so good that he's in the conversation to be maybe leader of the whole country.
Like, that's about as highest level of persuasion as you could achieve.
And so, if you're a scientist who does work on TV, but you're not really the media expert like RFK Jr.
is, is it fair to put, in his words, the strong argument with the less persuasive person on the same venue?
Do you think that would serve the public?
I'm just going to go more with his argument, then we'll talk about the other side.
And I think he makes a good point that science is not about rhetoric and persuasion.
Right?
That's not what science does.
It's not a persuasion field.
But I would argue, as I have in the past, that if it doesn't also learn to persuade honestly, not persuade dishonestly, but if science doesn't learn to persuade honestly, it actually becomes useless.
What good is it if you can't persuade anybody to believe you?
It takes the entire value of science off the table.
Yeah, it's a good study.
I don't believe it.
Let's see.
Then the other complaint is that RFK Jr.
has a habit of moving the goalposts.
Meaning Dr. Hotez believes that once he nails them down and makes his good points, that instead of just winning the debate, Then RFK Jr.
would just change it to another thing, and he gave some examples of that.
He actually gave some specific examples of where, in his mind, RFK Jr.
used to make a claim of, you know, some element of the vaccinations being bad, but then he changed it to, well, they're still bad, but maybe it's something else, then still bad, but maybe it's a different thing, and then still bad, but maybe it's for a different reason.
Which is a good point.
Perfectly good point.
Now, did Dr. Hotez make good points which are true?
Good points which are true and logical?
Yes, he did.
Those are true and logical points.
Yeah, those are true and logical.
It's true that people like to move goalposts.
It's probably true that RFK Jr.
has modified his opinion over time.
Probably true.
It's probably true that the most persuasive person, if they had the worst argument, that would be a problem.
The most persuasive person with the worst argument definitely would not move the ball forward.
But, here's where I have my problem with Dr. Hotez's problem with the debate.
You don't think you could find a way to manage that stuff?
You don't think you could find any way To structure a conversation where you take that into account, because I can.
It took me five seconds to figure it out.
Here's how you do it.
You say, RFK Jr., you're making some claims that are, you know, contrary to the established science.
Make three claims.
No more than three.
Make three claims of fact, and we'll present them to Dr. Hotez with, you know, a week or two in advance.
We're going to have him collect all of his sources that debunk it, and we're going to show him all of your sources that make the claim.
After he's collected all of his sources that debunk yours, before the debate, he's going to show you his sources that debunk your sources.
So that when you both go into the debate, you've seen the sources, and you've also seen the other side's debunk of your sources, and maybe even the response to the debunk.
Before the debate.
You limit it to three claims and then you have a Joe Rogan or somebody who could actually handle an MMA, calling an MMA fight.
Which, by the way, could that be more perfect?
That Joe Rogan is literally, part of his talent stack includes calling of fights?
Who would be?
I mean, it's just such an interesting talent to have to go into moderating a debate that you're actually an MMA fight announcer type guy.
So the task would be this.
Every time either one of them tried to move the gold post, or either one of them sort of got off topic, or did sort of a B2, or brought up something else about something else, it would be Joe Rogan's job to just stop him.
Stop him.
Just, okay, stop.
Stop.
You're outside the rules now.
You're changing the topic.
Get back to the topic.
Three points.
Whatever RFK's best three points are, whatever they are.
Because remember how I told you to deal with laundry list persuasion?
Which is what RFK Jr.
does.
Really well, by the way.
It's a little bit... I want to say it's dishonest, but not exactly dishonest, because there's not necessarily a lie involved.
It's persuasion that's beyond what it should be.
I guess that's the way to say it.
A laundry list of, oh, all these reasons is why I'm right, like a long list of reasons, looks persuasive before you've looked at any of the reasons.
Oh my god, there are ten reasons.
Ten reasons is way more than one, so that must be a good argument.
There are ten reasons.
So that's why people use the laundry list.
It just automatically looks true before you look at it.
So, I do believe that RFK Jr.
has a laundry list approach, which is, let me tell you 15 things I know about 15 different vaccinations, therefore the 16th one is bad.
Now, he never said that, but you know, you understand that how the laundry list could be then sort of generalized beyond what it's supposed to do.
So, As long as you can say, RFK Jr., make your three best claims.
Because if you can't defend your three best, does anybody need to look at the others?
Right?
If he can't defend his three best claims, his three strongest claims, if he fails on those, you don't really need to listen to the others.
Do you?
Now there might be somebody else who has a good argument for the others, but if somebody fails on their top three, their best points, you don't need to listen to anything else.
So I would say that the easy way to go forward is to say three topics.
Make sure you've both shared all of your sources, both the source and the debunks.
Make sure you both have seen all of your URLs and all of your sources.
And then come on and talk to us with no end to the conversation, so you won't have a timed end.
You don't want somebody to run out.
And then, you might schedule a follow-up.
Make sure it's a two-event situation.
One is the event, and then maybe a faster follow-up.
It's like, okay, you know, people thought you won, or people thought you won, or the audience really was obsessed over this one point you made.
Can you go back to that?
Then I think we'd have something.
Now, I agree that debate is not how you solve science.
I get that.
I mean, Dr. Hotez's arguments are logical and true.
But they don't really handle the fact that you could manage those problems.
So that's what's left out.
It's true that he's identified the problems.
Quite accurately.
It's not true that there's no way to handle those problems, to minimize them until you've got something useful to do.
Now, suppose somebody took all of my excellent ideas that I just gave you, put them together, they do the event, and it just doesn't work.
What would be your conclusion from that?
It just didn't work.
No, my conclusion would be you keep trying.
So maybe one of the participants is weak, for whatever reason, and then you say, all right, well, one of you is strong, one of you kind of couldn't handle this debate concept, so we'll bring in another one.
We'll bring in your best champion that isn't the one who failed.
And that could be on either one, not just the scientist.
Could be the anti-vaccination person is a different person.
By the way, let me correct that.
It is unfair to call RFK Jr.
anti-vaccination.
You all get that, right?
Everybody agree?
That is not an accurate characterization of him.
But we use that as a shorthand to say that he's a critic of much of what we do with vaccinations.
But very important.
It's very important to make that distinction.
Because if you're just anti-vaccination, you're probably just an idiot.
Right, that's probably the whole story.
But if you're saying, well, it looks like some of this worked, but other stuff I have questions, then you're talking to a reasonable person that you could probably work with.
But if somebody's just like, everything you put in your arm is bad, his firm is bad, I don't know.
You can't really work with that.
RFK Jr.
is never going to be satisfied with vaccine safety?
Good.
That sounds like good news.
To have him never satisfied with... Don't you want some people out there who are never satisfied with the safety?
That feels like the best situation of all.
Yeah, so, RFK Jr.
is apparently a high-end, good, qualified He's a lawyer on these various topics.
So I think he's won some cases.
He knows how to dig into the science pretty well.
But he's not a scientist.
I'd like to see him talk.
Now, let me attest to you.
So you heard my suggestion.
Three claims and then let them share their sources before they even get into the debate.
And then make sure there's a follow-up already scheduled.
So that the follow-up, you know, cleans up any problems.
How many of you think that that would be worth trying?
Let's see your comments.
I see a lot of yeses on the Locals platform.
A lot of yeses.
And would you agree with me that if it failed, you should try again?
Just tweak it and try again.
Because this is the model we need.
The model we need is some version of this.
If the first version doesn't work, do not throw out the approach.
Because the public is so deeply underserved in the both sides situation.
If you could do anything, just anything that would move you a little bit toward showing two sides of a story for the first time ever, it would be civilization changing.
I mean it would be one of the biggest You know what would be interesting is that if Musk became the agent of why this happens, just because he's influential, he's in the conversation, if Musk is the one who made this happen, some kind of an understanding of a process to show both sides in a public way, it would be his greatest contribution to civilization.
And you'd never think of it that way.
You'd always think of going to Mars or building electric cars.
But if he did that one thing, just taught us a model for getting a little closer to understanding both sides, if that's all he did in his whole life, it would be the greatest contribution to civilization.
It'd be hard to top.
But Mark Cuban, another billionaire, has gotten into this conversation.
And I'm just going to read you Mark Cuban's statements, his actual words, because it's a little hard to paraphrase.
So I want you to see his actual words.
He said, trying to bully Dr. Hotez is ridiculous.
Cuban continued.
Quote, you have producers that will prepare you and you get to control the conversation, meaning Rogan.
He would be prepared by producers, as would RFK Jr.
Kennedy also has a staff ready to prepare him.
And those topics are what he talks about in every speech.
You both do this, meaning Joe Rogan and RFK, you both do this on a daily basis, while Dr. Hotez works every day to try to make things, find ways to help people.
And then he slammed Rogan and Musk for worsening the climate, you know, on social media.
And he says, Joe, meaning Rogan, Joe, you and Elon Musk's Twitter are the mainstream online media and your platforms have become everything supposedly wrong with MSM.
You are driven by self-interest, just like the MSM always has been accused of, Cuban wrote.
You both have earned that right.
You busted your asses to be great at what you do and earned all you've accomplished.
But don't lie to yourself and all of us and tell us you're different.
You aren't.
Whoa.
Wow.
Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Don't tell us you're different.
You're the same.
Now, do I agree with Mark Cuban or disagree?
What do you think?
Do you think I'm going to agree with Mark Cuban or disagree?
Which way am I going to go?
Well, I'll tell you in general, I hate to disagree with Mark Cuban.
It's just a bad play, right?
Disagreeing with people that are smart isn't a bad, it's not a good strategy in life, right?
So I like to find ways to agree with smart people, just generally speaking.
I would say the following.
I agree with what Mark Cuban says because I agree with follow the money.
Genetic... Oh, genetic disposition to vaccines.
It's an interesting story, but I don't want to get off track right now.
Except I did.
I got off track.
What was I saying?
See, that's the problem with the super prompt, where you pay money to make a comment.
It's so destructive to the flow.
I think YouTube should remove that.
I mean, I love it when people give me money.
That's cool.
But I'd rather I didn't get the money, and I'd rather that it just wasn't available as an option.
That would be better.
So I'd encourage you not to give me money for that.
All right, so I agree with Cuban that both Joe Rogan and Elon Musk Or at the very least, part of a process in which following the money is going to be the predictive DNA.
All right, I said that terribly.
Let me try it again.
It is true that Joe Rogan is in a job where he's trying to make money.
Although on any given topic, he may not be thinking of it that way.
In other words, on this topic, he probably is actually just thinking what would be good for the country.
But have I told you a million times?
That people do have lofty goals.
That's a real thing.
People often have lofty, help-the-world goals.
But what they actually do is coincidentally exactly what makes them money.
Which doesn't make the lofty goals not real.
I think that they're real, in the sense that the person really believes it.
It's the only thing they're thinking about.
They're not thinking about the money.
But coincidentally, people always seem to do what's good for their money, don't they?
And Joe Rogan, just supporting the Mark Cuban argument, Joe Rogan is doing a job where the more audience he gets, the better he does, the better Spotify does, and so having a debate would be good for views.
So, I like the criticism so far, that Rogan is a money-making entity, and that may not be fully compatible with trying to tell people the truth.
You agree, right?
That there's a little bit of conflict, doesn't have to be, not necessarily, like it's not guaranteed, but you could have a little conflict between what makes you money and what's exactly true.
And Musk, of course, owns Twitter.
So Musk also likes big topics with big, let's say, event-related stuff because it's a marketing strategy.
Now, do you think that Musk is thinking of it primarily as a marketing strategy for Twitter?
I would say probably not.
Probably not.
All indications are he'd actually like to see the debate.
He's probably looking at it just like you and I are, which is, wouldn't you like to see that?
Now I saw a criticism from somebody else online that it's all about creating a spectacle and, you know, the spectacle doesn't help us.
Everybody just wants the spectacle.
To which I say, we love the spectacle.
But if the spectacle is what draws you to the information...
Very good.
I mean, it's just what Trump does, right?
Creates a spectacle, and then he draws you to the information he'd like you to act on.
So I don't mind the spectacle part, if you do it right.
If the only thing you're doing is a spectacle, it's a waste of time.
But if you're a spectacle to get people and you do it right, well, two good things in a row.
So I would agree that there's a money motive and that imagining that Joe Rogan or Elon Musk are somehow outside the influence of, you know, the money motive that drives everything we do.
It's a good, I would say it's sort of a dickish thing to say, but philosophically I'd agree.
But what about, what about the bullying part?
Is it bullying to offer somebody a huge amount of money to the charity of their choice to come on television to talk about their own area of expertise on the most important question in America?
Probably.
You know, trusting our experts.
Does that seem like bullying?
Because it's not as if he's never been on TV.
This is somebody who goes on TV, looks like every time he's asked by the major networks.
So I'm not buying that he's incapable.
There's nothing to suggest that he wouldn't do a good job representing his side.
And I think it's sort of insulting.
It's a little bit insulting to imagine that he couldn't.
I mean, he has a PhD and an MD, and he's an expert in this field.
So, and he's been on TV lots of times doing a good job.
I mean, really?
Is it bullying to say that that guy, that that guy should talk to somebody who's got some questions?
That doesn't feel like bullying at all.
Like, I don't get it.
Does anybody else feel as bullied?
To me, that's exactly the right question.
I don't see it at all.
Alright, now of course the internet is bullying him.
So, just to be clear, I don't think Musk and... Musk is just having a good time with it, saying... He said on Twitter, I guess he doesn't like charity.
Is that bullying?
I mean, he's certainly persuading and cajoling.
But I don't see it as bullying at all.
All right, so I disagree on that characterization.
But you know, again, Cuban is talking with some hyperbole.
So calling it bullying is not really something you fact check.
He's using some hyperbole.
So we'll let him get away with the hyperbole.
I guess I will withdraw my objection to that.
Because you don't want to fact check hyperbole.
You know that, right?
Don't fact check the hyperbole.
There's no point in that.
But then Mark Cuban said that Joe Rogan and Kennedy both have staffs to prepare them.
Does that feel like a good point?
That Kennedy and Joe Rogan both have producers and staff to prepare them?
That doesn't feel like a good point.
Because first of all, do you think Joe Rogan would have his producers prepare him?
For that?
I think they would just make sure he knew when it was so he'd show up on time and the cameras are rolling.
I do not get the sense that Joe Rogan's producers are doing a lot of producing in terms of managing Joe Rogan.
Do you think that's happening?
I mean he does have some, one or more producers, I don't know.
I don't know what the number is.
But I think they're just there to make sure that the show happens.
I don't think they're there telling what to think or say.
And what about RFK Jr.?
Do you think RFK Jr.
has anyone on his staff who knows more than he does about the topic?
I kind of doubt it.
I doubt it.
The whole point is that he is the topic.
He's like a walking encyclopedia of this topic.
It's been his life's work.
So I don't think that the staff argument holds.
And it's so weak that it makes me wonder what's behind it.
I'll tell you what it makes it look like.
It makes it look like Mark Cuban doesn't want the truth to come out.
Now obviously he's not thinking that in a conscious way, right?
Because I would trust Mark Cuban enough that consciously he's not thinking that.
I guarantee you he's not consciously afraid that it will go not his way.
But the way he's acting suggests there might be a subconscious concern that he might be wrong and that would be very, very bad.
For anybody to be on the wrong end of this conversation.
Believe me, when the rumors started that I was on the wrong end of everything, when 4chan did their little prank on me, it really makes life difficult when everybody thinks you're a part of wrecking the world.
So, I can see why there's some prominent people who are pro-vaccination.
Again, that's not exactly a good characterization, but you know what I mean.
I think it's a dangerous conversation.
I think there are a lot of people who are worried that the skeptics have a better argument than has been presented to the public so far, the wider public.
Those on the right have seen so much skeptical content that you wouldn't be surprised if RFK Jr.
won the debate, if he could say win.
You wouldn't be surprised.
But there are people on the left who would be hearing things for the very first time and they would be saying, wait, what?
So RFK Jr.
could move the needle.
He's persuasive enough and he would come well armed enough that there would be people hearing stuff that they'd never heard before and it would be kind of a shock to their systems.
All right, so are Rogan and Musk contributing to the worsening climate?
I don't see that.
I do not see Rogan and Musk contributing to a worsening climate.
I see exactly the opposite.
I mean, Musk is saying, if you're running for president, doesn't matter what side you're on, I want you on spaces.
How's that wrong?
Yeah, inviting everybody and giving them a big platform.
Trying to get rid of the shadow banning.
I mean, to me it looks like everything he does is in a positive direction.
In a dad way.
Positive direction.
All right.
There's a little side street I'm going to take.
One of the claims about vaccinations by some critics is that they might be behind the increase in autism.
You've heard that argument, right?
There's some who believe that some childhood shots are behind autism.
Now, you've heard the other explanation for the rise in autism, right?
I wouldn't rule that out, by the way.
But there's another explanation.
Have you not heard it?
It's not environment.
No, it's not environment or pollution.
Have you heard?
It's not food.
Old dads is one, right.
The age of the parents is one.
There's another one that's related to that.
Not medications, not chemicals, not telomeres, not old sperm.
Well, the old sperm we just talked about.
Wow.
I feel like, no, there's another reason.
How do you not all know this?
So I guess, I'm going to give you something to fact check, okay?
Elon Musk says he has two kids on the spectrum, and of seven, seven children, something like that.
Two out of seven.
Elon Musk says it's inheritable, so that he's the reason two of his kids have it.
Do you think he's right that it's inheritable?
Do you believe it is inheritable?
Two of his kids?
I would say yes.
I'm not a scientist, but I feel that's probably true.
Now, what would happen if two Elon Musks got married?
So there's a female Elon Musk, let's say unrelated, but basically the same.
And he marries another Elon Musk.
Do the odds of having an autistic kid go up if there are two contributors instead of one?
Logically, yes.
Right?
Again, I don't have a study that proves it, but logically, you'd expect it.
Now, number two.
In our modern world, can the Elon Musk male and female find each other more easily?
Do we have a civilization in which if you're a smart Elon Musk type, you can easily find your matching female Elon Musk?
Yes.
It's called going to work.
Because if you go to work at Microsoft, you walk down the hallway and there's all these other Elon Musks.
You find a female one, you marry him, and now you've got two Elon Musks.
Do they have more autistic kids and kids on the spectrum?
I believe the answer is yes.
Now this is what I need a fact check on.
I thought that was well established.
Is it not?
So am I wrong that that's not so well established?
It's just true?
But I was surprised that most of you were not aware of that, at least claim.
Again, I'm not going to say it's true.
But I'll say that the claim has been out there for 20 years.
20 years, I think?
And I don't see anything wrong with it.
To me that seems so obvious, so obviously true, that it would take quite a bit of science to talk me out of it.
I could be talked out of it, if they found some way to test it and it was reliable.
But it seems to me that you don't need any vaccinations to explain it.
The rise of technology companies brought male and female Elon Musks together.
They married and had kids.
And that's the end of the story.
And then there is also the other part that people are having children older.
So if they're a little bit older, they're more likely, I guess.
I saw a paid comment go by that Mark Cuban is also investor in or owner of, I don't know which it is, of this mail, what would you call it, drugs by mail company, I forget what it's called.
So he's got cheap drugs Generics, I guess, that you can get through him that's competing with the rest of the industry.
So you should understand that he's in the business of selling pharmaceutical products.
And that might have an impact on his public opinion on this stuff.
It's not directly related, but you should assume that he's in that world.
That's part of the story.
Alright, I always like it when I see my billionaires arguing.
It's always productive to me to see that.
Jordan Peterson is warning Lex Fridman that he could get kicked off of YouTube for doing certain kinds of things such as Talking to skeptics.
And these are the things that Jordan Peterson and I guess the Daily Wire Plus have gotten in trouble for recently.
They've removed Jordan Peterson's interview with RFK Jr.
They took it off of YouTube.
As a citizen of the United States, It has been judged that you cannot see Jordan Peterson talking to a major presidential candidate.
I think my mind is going to explode.
How is that possible?
What could RFK Jr.
have said that isn't the public's not just right to know, But we should have a pretty big interest in knowing what did he say that's so horrible that he had to remove it?
Was it vaccination skepticism?
That's it?
And who decided he was wrong?
Like, who at YouTube was the person who could look at RFK's argument and Junior's argument and know it's wrong?
Which major scientist did that?
I mean, everything about this seems just so...
So wrong.
Now, I'm not saying that everything RFK Jr.
said is accurate.
I'm not qualified to judge.
But I'm pretty sure YouTube doesn't know.
And I'm pretty sure he's a major candidate for president who has an actual path to the office.
Unlike, you know, some who don't have a path.
Yeah.
So, anyway.
Also got kicked off When Jordan Peterson interviewed Matt Walsh and Helen Joyce.
I don't know who Helen Joyce was.
Was she in the trans... Which field is she in?
Helen Joyce?
I didn't see that interview.
Whatever it was, it was too controversial for YouTube.
And the weird thing about this is, it's like they don't have any idea who Jordan Peterson is.
Somehow.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but if Jordan Peterson saw some unscientific bullshit, he'd be the one to call it out.
Am I wrong?
Like, who would be more qualified to stop somebody from saying some just total bullshit than him?
I can't imagine who I would be happier with, you know, monitoring what information is considered credible for me.
I mean, I would trust him completely.
Which doesn't mean he's right.
Doesn't mean he's right.
But he's qualified to understand what looks like bullshit in the scientific realm.
And if he calls it out, I'd say, oh, OK.
There's somebody who knows some bullshit when he sees it, and he just called it out.
But if he doesn't call it out, I would like to know that, too.
If somebody as smart as Jordan Peterson listens to an argument that's counter to the mainstream argument, and he says, you know, That's good enough to be on my podcast.
I don't know if it's right, but it's a good enough point to be on my podcast.
I'd like to know that.
So, YouTube, I get that you're trying to keep the world safe.
I get that.
And if they had demonetized these things, I understand that as well.
Because the advertisers do have a preference of not being associated with certain kinds of content.
That's just business.
So if they demonetized it, that's a whole different argument.
But removing it?
Removing it?
That seems so far over the line of what society would expect of you, YouTube.
Now maybe there's a... I'm only hearing one side of the argument.
Maybe there's something I don't know about in this, but I doubt it.
All right.
CNN got fact-checked on Twitter, which I love, the community notes thing.
CNN tweeted, Black fathers are often portrayed as absent or distant, but that isn't what most people experience, according to both data and black dads themselves.
Blah, blah, blah.
Bias portrayals.
And then Community Notes fact-checked them with the following facts.
That 64% of black kids have single parents, single-parent homes.
42% of Hispanic, 24% of white, and 16% of Asian have a single-parent home.
Does the order of those things remind you of the order of any other thing?
What else has this exact order?
Black kids, Hispanic kids, white kids, Asian.
What has exactly that order?
Crime and academics.
Crime and academics and success, right?
They're all perfectly correlated.
Now, since this is a conservative audience, Can we conclude that having the single parent, some of this might be a single male parent, but can we conclude that the single parent is causing all these problems?
That a single parent environment is causing crime, low academics, maybe affecting IQ, all that stuff.
Somebody's clarifying that these single mothers have been identified as more correlated.
I think that's true, by the way.
I did see a study that said the single fathers were doing a better job.
I don't know, but I saw a study.
So most of you would say this is pretty strong evidence.
Given that the rate of single parenthood in these groups seems to almost identically match their performance and output in a variety of ways.
So it's the cause.
Does your logic say that this is the cause?
No, they're definitely correlated.
They're correlated.
But is it a causation?
I don't see it.
I don't see it.
I think there's a cause that causes the single pairhood that causes everything else.
Isn't it more likely that whatever is causing this is causing everything?
That they all have the same cause, it's not that the one thing caused the others.
So I've never quite agreed with the single-parent simplicity right-leaning opinion.
So the right just says, look, the correlation is really clear.
Single-parent house, you're going to do poorly.
Period.
So stop having those single-parent houses.
If you just stop having the fatherlessness, you'll do fine because the facts just show that.
High correlation.
I don't buy it.
I don't buy it.
I think that whatever causes the single parent situation is probably causing all the other problems.
It's just one thing, whatever it is, is just causing everything.
Now, it may not be one thing.
It might be like a basket of things, you know, not just one item.
But whatever it is, it's probably causing everything.
All right.
Let me ask you something.
Is this the first time anybody ever said in front of you that the single pair of thing might be just another thing that's caused by some other thing?
Is it the first time you've heard that?
Because that would be very sad.
Now, and let me be clear.
I'm not ruling out that the single pair of thing is actually the cause of the other things.
I'm not ruling it out.
I'm saying it's just not demonstrated.
It's just correlation.
It's just not causation.
It might be.
Might be.
Let me give you a different way to look at it.
Now, I'm not saying this is true.
This is not a claim of truth.
This is just so you could think of it like a mental experiment.
Suppose the way mothers act is completely different among the three entities.
If you married an Asian woman, do you think she would treat her man better than if you married a black or Hispanic woman?
Now again, Again, in each of these cases, I'm not making a claim there's something different about the people.
So I'm not making that claim.
I'm just walking you through a mental experiment where you could imagine that there's something causing all of it to happen.
So, anecdotally, most men would say the Asian woman treats the man better.
So is a man more likely to stay married if he's treated well?
What do you think?
Yes.
So the problem is not the single stuff.
Maybe the problem is whatever caused you to be single in the first place.
Maybe, maybe the mom is defective.
Maybe.
So, and when I say defective, I don't mean DNA.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that maybe there's a difference in how people act.
For whatever reason.
You could have your own reason for why they act that way.
But they do act different.
Do you think an Asian-American kid stopped by the police acts exactly the same as the black 19-year-old stopped by the police?
Does anybody believe that?
Does anybody believe that?
No.
No, you're not allowed to say it.
I mean, I can say it because I got disgraced and cancelled.
So I can just say it out loud.
There's nobody in the world who believes that a 19-year-old black kid, on average, right?
Individuals, yes.
Anything you say about a group doesn't apply to the individuals.
But as a group, there's nobody in the world, nobody black, nobody Asian, who thinks the average Asian kid acts just the same in a police stop as the average black kid.
Nobody believes that.
Now, I don't know why.
I actually don't know why.
If I did, I'd give you some speculation.
I don't know why.
But it's just obvious.
So why would they get the same outcome?
If you act differently, how can you possibly get the same outcome?
As somebody said the other day, why do we talk about culture, you know, this is my culture and I want to protect my culture, if you don't act different?
Isn't the whole point of a culture is that you act different?
So if you're acting different and getting different outcomes, it's supposed to work that way.
That's exactly how it's supposed to work.
You act different, you get different outcomes.
So to me, none of this is too surprising.
Culture would explain it.
I don't know if that is the explanation, but it would explain it.
I mean, it fits the facts.
But then you have to go back another level.
What causes the culture?
What causes the culture?
I would say density, as much as anything.
If you looked at the culture of Low-income black people living in high-density areas.
Does it look just like the low-income black people who are living in less dense areas in the countryside, for example?
Probably not.
I mean, they might like the same music.
That's about it.
So I think density might be the under-looked, the under-appreciated variable.
Nobody ever talks about that.
Density.
Population density.
Mushrooms are all the zeitgeist now.
Everybody seems to be talking about it at the same time.
So Australia is the first nation to approve psychedelics as treatment for conditions such as PTSD, so various mental conditions.
But apparently, according to the story, a patient will still have to jump through hoops to get it, which is not a You would expect that, right?
You'd have to do a lot of process to be eligible to get it, but that's the beginning.
Now, at the same time that Australia is legalizing it in a limited way, there's a story on CNN where the CNN correspondent went to, I think it was Jamaica, where it's legal, and did a story in which he was observed doing mushrooms.
Can you imagine Any world in which CNN would have their own host go to another country, so that it's legal, and take an illegal drug, illegal in this country, and then just do a story about how it felt and what he learned and stuff.
Doesn't that seem amazing to you?
And it was a positive story.
So the bottom line was nothing bad about mushrooms.
But the fact that CNN is really the representative of the mainstream in many ways, they're basically saying mushrooms, yes.
Did you see that coming?
That's the most unusual outcome, that the mainstream is seeing mushrooms as it's time to go, time to legalize them.
It's quite a surprise.
Because I think a lot of people on the right have been there for a long time.
Just in terms of freedom.
Why don't I have the freedom to put in my body what I want?
Not all the people on the right, but the freedom-loving ones.
I saw an argument on CNN that Trump's declassification argument is bunk.
And the idea is that Trump is claiming that he can declassify anything just by removing it.
I agree with that.
So I agree with Trump's take that if there's no written law and it's up to the president, then he can do what he wants.
But apparently during the Obama administration, there was an executive order that was created that did give some guidelines about how to handle classified stuff.
And apparently Trump did not follow those guidelines.
But here's my question.
Not being a lawyer, Does a president have to follow an executive order?
How does that work?
It's an executive order.
It's like the president's order.
Now if it comes from a prior president, like I get it, that stays in place until it gets changed.
But if you're talking about the president, does the president have to do what another president ordered?
Which the new president could reverse just by writing a piece of paper.
Because if Trump didn't follow those executive orders, it's just a paperwork problem.
Because he could have simply written on a piece of paper, I rescind this executive order.
He had the full power to rescind it.
I think.
It's an executive order.
Yeah, they're not laws.
And so if Trump ignored it, Would that be breaking a law?
Or is it ignoring an executive order that he could have made go away with a stroke of a pen?
It looks like he just cut a corner.
It doesn't look like the worst problem in the world.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I just wanted you to hear that argument, unless it comes up, because you're never going to hear it in the right-leaning press.
But it doesn't look convincing to me.
So here's my bottom line.
You can't put my president, whether it's Biden or Trump or anybody else, you can't put my president in jail when lawyers can't agree what the law is.
You can't.
Will not happen.
Will not happen.
And furthermore, if the public isn't allowed to see these documents, I get why we're not allowed to see them.
But you can't put them in jail if we can't see them.
Now, I would be willing to allow that if Republicans had access to it, people who had security clearance, and it was a set of Republicans you could trust, you know, if you let your, you know, Let your Thomas Massie's in there or your Tom Cotton's or people basically you would trust if they said yeah this is bad.
You know I hate to say it but you know we've looked at these documents and it's way worse than we thought they would be.
Gotta admit they're bad.
I believe that the Republicans would do that.
I would trust them.
Not everyone.
Not everyone, but there is a handful of Republicans that could have the right clearance that I would say, all right, I don't need to know, but you know, and I'm going to take your word for it.
I would go with that.
But I'm definitely not going to listen to Democrats who say it's bad and they can't show it to me.
So you can't put my president in jail over documents that at least people I believe haven't seen, and lawyers can't even decide if a law was broken.
Andrew, you're very dumb, but I'd like to mock you for a minute.
Andrew says, Scott Adams says, never voted!
Sucks!
All right, first of all, that's not true.
I have voted.
Yet last week he said, we all need to vote.
LOL.
Did I say you all need to vote?
I don't remember saying that.
I think you got two or three hallucinations going there at once.
But yeah, I voted.
The reason I don't vote is that I have voted.
Did I tell you who I voted for when I voted for president?
Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter.
And do you know what I learned after I voted for Jimmy Carter?
What did I learn?
Tell me.
Tell me, what did I learn when I voted for Jimmy Carter?
That I don't know enough to vote.
Yeah.
I learned that I'm bad at voting.
Didn't help.
Did I make anything better by my vote?
No, I made the world worse, if anything.
And Dapper Dale believes the 4chan hoax about my pandemic opinions.
Dapper Dale, you're very gullible.
He just wants to say the same thing over and over again.
We'll hide you.
You're now hidden, Dapper.
Goodbye.
Good, he's gone.
Poor Dapper.
All right.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is all I wanted to tell you today.
And thanks for joining.
And just remember, debates are good.
And if science won't go to your debate, science gets to lose.
Science loses.
I think the last credibility of science was removed today.
Now, if the debate or something like it happens, then I'll change my mind.
But Dr. Hotez destroyed science completely today.
I feel like one person destroyed science.
Because when I see that he's unwilling to debate, I get his, you know, like I said, I understand his objections to it.
But they're not good enough.
They're not good enough.
If science can't defend itself, then we can ignore it.
If it's so weak that it can't defend itself, you can ignore it.
Which would be terrible, of course.
So, alright.
Is there a video or transcript of my meltdown at Starbucks?
