Episode 2193 Scott Adams: Watch Me Reframe The News And Everything Else. Bring Coffee
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
-----------
Politics, Political News Bubbles, Elon Musk Back Pain, Reframe Your Brain, Success Reframes, Single Women Voters, President Biden, Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, Vivek Ramaswamy Policies, Zoom TOS, Zoom Office Policy, President Trump, Mean Tweets, Megan Rapinoe, Criminalizing Political Lies, Weaponized Government, Steve Kirsch, COVID Vaccinations, Presidential Self-Pardoning, Scott Adams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
We call it Coffee with Scott Adams and you know it's the best thing that's ever happened to you, that's for sure.
If you'd like to take that experience up to all capital letters, you know, all capital letters, that's the peak experience.
Well, all you need is a cup of margarine glass, a tank of chalice of stein, a canteen of sugar, flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called a simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
Go, go!
Well, Nabilaron, It's better with the microphone on, isn't it?
Why did you let me go so far without telling me the microphone was off?
We're going to have to start all over.
No, we're not.
No, we're not.
Well, the good news is that we're all on track now.
We're all on track.
And I'd like to give you, again, an update.
On the technique I've been using against my online, used to be called Twitter but now Axe, situation.
And I find that these two comments work really well.
Comment number one, are you drunk?
It turns out that if you ask your critics if they're drunk, and they're acting drunk, You have about a 30% chance of getting that right.
I think the number of inebriated people using social media is way higher than anybody mentions.
It's got to be, you know, probably half of all users are drunk or stoned when they're tweeting.
Alright, the other one that I use besides, are you drunk, which does seem to shut things down pretty quickly.
I've been saying, I'm sorry your news sources did this to you.
You seem unaware of any of the context.
That's how they play you.
So instead of dealing with the content, I say, I'm really sorry that they did this to you.
I don't really have time to explain the whole situation, but this is how they get you.
Let me give you the best example of this.
Right now, the critics of mine are saying, how dare you say that these charges against President Trump are, you know, Trivial or small or no big deal or just free speech.
How many of those people do you think are aware of the compilation clip of Hillary Clinton and top Democrats complaining about the validity of the 2016 election?
Do you think any of them have seen it?
I doubt it.
Probably not one.
So a lot of these conversations that look like disagreements are nothing like that.
They're not disagreements at all.
It's just one people have seen both sides of a question and the other haven't.
That's the entire story.
Some people have seen the whole story, some people have seen half.
Of course they have a different opinion.
Some people have seen half the story.
Now what about the people who say that, Scott, it's not about free speech.
Trump actually tried to get, you know, a fake set of electors.
How many of those people know that that's something that's happened before in the past, and it's not even unusual, and the Supreme Court would sort it out if there was a problem?
How many of them know that?
That that's like a thing that's happened in the past?
None.
Probably none.
Let's see, what else is it?
Give me some more examples.
Let's just take the Trump situation, his charges.
What else does the political left not even know?
Do you think that they know that the judge has been anti-Trump for some time?
Probably not.
Probably don't know that.
Do they know that the best attorneys in the world, when they look at the DC situation, the best attorneys, Are completely aware that the case will not be determined on the facts.
It's only the jury.
The jury, if they like Trump, which they don't.
And why do we talk about that casually?
Do you think anybody on the left knows that the top lawyers, both left and right, already know what the result will be, independent of the facts?
Does that bother anybody that we know how the outcome will be before the facts are presented to the jury?
I don't think so, because I don't think that they're aware that in Washington, D.C., we don't have a functional court for the political stuff.
It probably is fine for crime, you know, the little stuff.
But for the political stuff, we don't have anything like a functional Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
So how many people know that?
So again, do not engage people who have not been informed.
You should show sympathy.
For their situation.
Oh.
It's sort of like, you know, if somebody who has a low mental capability did something to you, you wouldn't necessarily be mad.
You wouldn't like it.
But you'd say, oh, that was a person who's operating with diminished capabilities.
So you kind of treat it differently.
And joking aside, hyperbole aside, and even politics aside, It's really useful to treat people who have been abused as victims.
If you treat them as your opponent, you're in the wrong game.
So here's your first reframe.
Your first reframe is those people who are arguing with you on social media are not arguing with you.
They're acting out something that's the result of abuse.
They've been abused by propaganda.
There's no way it's good for the people who are talking to you and it's not good for you.
The only difference is you know that they are victims and they don't yet.
So just the fact that they don't know they're victims doesn't mean you can't treat them with empathy and sympathy.
But don't engage.
Don't engage.
If you engage, they're going to think that they're in some kind of a conversation with two informed citizens who have different opinions.
Nothing like that's happening.
There's nothing like that.
It's just one side who is aware of the news and the other side is aware of half of the news.
That's all it is.
It's not any kind of a disagreement.
So we talk about our, you know, the country is falling apart and we disagree on everything.
Not really.
Not really.
We don't.
We just have heard different stories.
That's very different than disagreeing.
Alright, in the big Musk vs. Zuck upcoming fight that might actually happen, Musk apparently has such a bad back that he's getting an MRI and might even need an operation before he can go ahead and do the fight with Zuckerberg, if it happens at all.
Now here's my philosophy question to you.
Apparently, Musk is in severe back pain pretty much all the time, based on some long-standing back problems.
If you could be the richest person in the world, but you had to have severe back pain all the time, would you do it?
That's your choice.
Severe back pain all the time, although maybe there's some way to solve it, right?
It might be solvable, but you don't know.
I wouldn't.
I wouldn't do that at all.
I mean, Yeah, maybe I'd choose it over being desperately poor, but you'd have to go all the way to desperately poor before I'd choose back pain.
Back pain is about the worst thing that could happen to you.
If anybody is suffering from back pain, can you confirm?
It's just about the worst thing that could happen to you, because it's there all the time, right?
Now, I have some legitimate empathy, because I have screaming back pain from the time I wake up, For about 40 minutes, right?
And by the time I sit in my office chair and I'm drinking my coffee, it's completely gone.
And it's gone for the rest of the day.
It doesn't bother me during the day.
But the first 40 minutes, I just want to be dead.
And then I imagine, what would that be like all day long?
Imagine working 80 hours a week, you know, Musk's schedule, and having all the conflict he has in his life.
And all the complexity, and then having a bad back.
Imagine going through the things that he's had to go through with a bad back.
I mean, that's the most impressive thing he's ever done, is to do what he did in the last three years with a severe back problem.
Talk about the highest level of challenge.
Highest level of challenge.
That's amazing.
But, you know, you don't get credit for that in history.
History is not going to say he did it despite, you know, an insane physical problem.
They're just going to say he did it.
You're really going to miss half the story if you don't know that there was a physical limitation there that should have stopped just about anybody.
And it didn't stop him.
So that's pretty impressive.
All right.
I'm now going to reframe the entire world, and you're going to see the beginning of it.
It's maybe the most important reframe of the United States in its history.
It goes like this.
At first, it's not going to seem like much, but you have to watch the whole play, right?
So this is just the beginning.
Don't judge it yet.
The beginning is the simple observation that comparing ethnic groups by their average performance on anything doesn't make sense.
That's a dumb comparison.
And I say that as a person who's trained in comparing things.
If you have a degree in economics, you're trained in comparing things.
Do we do this or that?
If we had done this versus that?
It's all about comparing things.
The dumbest thing you could ever compare is the average of a bunch of people who are all different.
Oh look, the average of this clump of people who are all different is getting worse results from this clump of people who all the individuals within it are different from each other.
It's nonsensical political ridiculousness.
Let me tell you what does make sense.
You should measure the difference in performance.
Now, performance would be everything from promotions to college to income, staying out of jail, whatever it is.
You should compare the performance of these two groups.
One group who's been exposed to these strategies of success, and another group that has not been taught at a young age what to do to succeed.
Because school doesn't do that.
School teaches you skills, and those are good, if you learn them.
But they don't teach you what is the concept of preparing for success.
What do you do?
If you showed me that there were two groups that both prepared for success, and they learned all the same tools, but one of them had a very different performance, then, and only then, would I say, maybe we should dig into this.
Might be something going on here.
Maybe discrimination.
Maybe something else.
But until you compare the groups that are taking the same strategy, you don't know anything.
So if one group is heavy on strategy, let's say Asian Americans.
Just to pick one.
Let's say the Asian Americans, I don't know if this is true, but anecdotally it looks true.
They have a big focus on education.
Is that fair?
Asian-Americans, big focus on education?
Probably.
Now that's just one element of success, right?
It's by far not the only thing, but it's really big.
So should you compare Asian-American success to, let's say, any other group, white Americans, and then conclude something?
Do you know what I conclude when white Americans are compared to Asian Americans and Asian Americans are just killing in income and college and grades and all that?
I say, what would happen if white people did the same stuff?
What would happen if we were all raised the same way Asian Americans raise their kids?
Would it be different?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But we've never done it, so how would I know?
The minimum you need to do is compare people who have learned the techniques of success.
Now, how in the world does anybody learn the techniques of success?
Well, here is where systemic racism really looms large.
In my opinion, outside of the school systems that are systemically racist, against black Americans especially, outside of the school system's own systemic racism, the biggest form is that people who are already successful know how to tell their kids to be successful.
Am I right?
If you're around successful people, you just sort of pick it up.
Through osmosis.
You don't even need to be taught.
You just watch it, and then it becomes you.
But if you don't have access to anybody who's got a legitimate, you know, legal job that's killing it, you just don't even know anybody.
You don't know anybody who's succeeded.
How are you going to learn it?
School isn't going to teach you.
Your parents might not know.
And your friends don't know.
And you become the average of your friends.
What are you going to do?
Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
I'm going to reframe everything, and it starts with getting cancelled.
Getting cancelled is the most, you know, most of you know.
I got cancelled worldwide.
Dilbert was taken out of all newspapers in the world.
All of my books have been removed from the racks, or at least except for the used books.
So I'm the most cancelled person maybe ever.
I don't know.
I might be the most thoroughly cancelled person in civilization.
But, like I always say, and here's another reframe, when everything goes to hell, and actually this is one of the reframes in my book I'm going to tell you about, when everything goes to hell, it always opens up other opportunities.
If you're focusing on the part that fell apart, you're going to be blinded or just not notice that something opened up, you know, another door opened.
So here's the door that I'm opening for myself.
You didn't have to help.
I could do this one myself.
In a few days, and I'll tell you exactly when, my new book, Reframe Your Brain, will be available.
Now it'll be independently published, working with Joshua Lysak to get it into Amazon and other places.
So I'll tell you when you can pre-buy it.
The pre-sale, it's not yet.
It'll be soon.
But this is a book of reframes that tell you how to be successful.
Some of them are, I took some of the best ones out of my book, which you're familiar with.
This is the book I wrote.
It's the most influential book in the field of personal success.
Now, when I say that, if you haven't read the book, you're going to say, really?
I'm not even sure I've ever heard of that book.
If you have read the book, you agree with me.
Because the number of people whose lives have changed because they read this book, it's really crazy.
I hear about it every day.
Somebody just today said they're almost a millionaire because of following the systems versus goals stuff here.
Ten years later, this is sort of the OG.
This is the book that has influenced most of the other successful books in the personal success category.
Now, this book got cancelled, so you can't buy it in stores.
Hold this in your mind for a moment.
The most useful and influential book in modern times on how to succeed, which has changed everything from people's health, weight, careers, social lives, marriage, kids, fundamentally improved, I don't know, tens of thousands of lives.
Unavailable, because of the one thing I said that one time.
But, here's the good news.
Second edition.
Which will be available also in days.
You can't buy this yet.
Not available in stores.
It will be available as soon as I look at it.
I basically just have to look at it and make sure there's no typos.
Same with this.
The only thing holding it up, I think at this point, is I just have to re-look at it and make sure all the pages are there.
So I will let you know when they're available.
But here's the payoff.
If you were an adult, and you consumed these two books, You have basically a superpower.
And I'm really, I'm uncomfortable with marketing.
So I'll let, I'll let those who have read at least this book, you know, those who read the first cop version of this, you can be the ones who tell other people what you got out of it.
All right.
And it's going to be a big story.
But if you were to be an adult who read these two books, you would, you would just have a dominant advantage.
Over other people.
I mean, it would be a pretty big advantage.
But suppose you wanted your children to see these books.
Well, good luck with that, because you're not going to get your kids to read these.
You know what I mean?
It's just not going to happen.
So one of the things that I did in this book is I boiled down the reframes to one sentence apiece.
So you'll be able to see in the back The one sentence version of the reframes.
There are 160 plus of them.
And those would be easy to describe to somebody and easy to transmit.
But there's more.
The best parts of these two books is being put into a student guide as we speak.
The student guide will be available to homeschoolers and anybody else who wants it.
And it is specifically designed to simplify down to student level.
The most important lessons that somebody at that age needs to get going.
All right.
Now, that should be available after these two books.
It's just going to take us a little editing and preparation time.
Also, we're working with Joshua Lysak on that, who, by the way, was homeschooled.
So I'm working with somebody who really understands the market.
This book, or the guide, the student guide, you should no longer look at the difference of performance after it becomes widely available.
The only thing you should measure from that time on is people who were taught this material versus the people who were not.
Would you want to make a bet which of those two groups just does better?
It's not even going to be close.
The group that was trained on how to succeed is almost certainly going to succeed, right?
Because success is like every other thing.
If you don't know the method, how are you going to do it?
Just luck?
Just luck?
Now the questions you ask are, what about audio?
Yes, there will be audio of both these books.
But that will follow a little bit.
So you'll see the Kindle and the hard copy right away.
And I'll tell you when it's available for pre-sale.
By the way, I don't think there will be pre-sale.
Because it's independently published.
The moment you can buy it, it's just for sale.
So I'll actually get my first copy.
Same time you do.
So this is one of those situations where the author won't see it until the same time you do.
I'll just buy a copy like you do.
So the first time I'll see a good proper copy might be when I buy it off of Amazon, same as you.
All right.
Yes, people will be stealing it, but people are people.
Can I convert it into comics for easy consumption?
That would actually not help at all.
The student guide is so simplified, because that's what makes it useful, that you're not going to need a comic.
Basically, it's going to be half a page of text.
This is going to change your life, you know, 30 different times.
So the 30 different lessons, the most, the top 30 things.
All right.
So in addition to being a shameless marketing for the book, um, I'm really shooting for something much bigger than selling a book.
I think you all know, I don't need to sell any books, right?
I've done okay.
I'm literally retirement age.
I don't need to write a book.
Writing a book is terrible.
The past year and a half of my life, if you said, say, what's the worst thing that happened to you in the last year and a half?
You would probably say my divorce.
Or you might say getting canceled worldwide.
That happened in the last year and a half.
Now, I would say that the worst thing that happened is I wrote a book.
To me, that was the worst thing that happened in a year and a half.
Writing a book is terrible work.
It takes you out of the real world.
It just puts you in, it's basically like solitary confinement for half of your life.
So you have to want to write a book, right?
The first ones were just for money.
The first books I ever wrote, just for money.
But now I have money.
So these are, they have to make a difference or I'm not interested.
This book was written for my teenage son.
He was the person I had in mind as the recipient.
Maybe when he was older, but he was the one I was thinking about when I wrote it.
So at this point, I have to have a real clear idea of who's benefiting from my work, or I'm just not interested.
So that's where we're at.
I believe this could change the world, and the main reframe is stop comparing Any group except the ones who have been trained on success.
Compare them and then you learn something.
Otherwise you don't learn anything.
All right, let's talk about politics and such.
You know what's interesting?
It turns out that the the biggest demographic group in the Democrat Party is single women.
I've talked about that before, but it occurred to me that if Democrats, the Democrat Party is dominated by single women, and the Democrats, would you say they're in charge?
At the moment?
It's kind of a split government a little bit, but at least in terms of the presidency and, you know, they've got some, at least, you know, a little bit of power going.
But if you were a single woman, do you still think this is a patriarchy?
So the Democrats are the dominant party, I would say, and the dominant part of the dominant party is single women, but their biggest complaint is that we live in a patriarchy.
Now, the abortion question, I'm just guessing that you might be a Democrat.
When I see somebody who doesn't understand the story, or the context of a story, I just assume Democrat.
I hate that that's my first assumption.
But Republicans know that the story about abortion is that it was taken from the wrong place to decide it, which was the federal government, and it was put in the right place to decide it, which is the states.
So the Democrats say they lost the right of abortion.
The Republicans say, we allowed you to make your own decision.
Why are you complaining to us?
We allowed you, meaning the state you live in, to make its own decision, and we're not even complaining about it.
Where are all the Democrats complaining about abortion being legal in California?
Have you ever seen it?
I haven't seen it.
I mean, they say what they say about abortion, but they don't say, oh, you California... No, because California made up its own mind, and the Republicans are like, oh, okay, that's how it's supposed to work.
You made up your own minds.
So anyway, so the patriarchy is now single women and we're just going to act like we haven't noticed.
The patriarchy is absolutely single women right now.
How weird is that?
All right, well, the Biden administration has this problem, which is one of Biden's greatest successes, he would say, would be the infrastructure bill and that it's getting people to work and it's boosting the economy.
And by the way, it might be.
I would have no way of knowing.
Does anybody have a sense of how much the bipartisan infrastructure bill boosted the economy?
And is Bidenomics?
We don't know, do we?
I mean, it wasn't long ago that people were saying that it takes a long time for the money to be implemented into actual projects.
So there wasn't much happening yet.
It was more of a longer term thing.
I don't know.
Sounds like bullshit that the infrastructure is making much of a difference, but it could.
I'm open to the argument that it's already making a difference.
I just don't know.
But here's the funny thing.
The signs that are being put up so that the consumers will know that Joe Biden was the architect of these great works.
The sign actually says, Joe Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
So the sign so that you know why this project is happening, let's say a road improvement or something, it says the Joe Biden bipartisan infrastructure bill.
You know what would be bipartisan?
Leave Joe Biden's off the top of it.
Either say it's not bipartisan, which is fine.
Not everything has to be bipartisan.
You know, we vote for Candidates hoping often that our own team will be in charge.
So bipartisan isn't such a big deal.
I mean, it's good.
It's not the end all.
But what would be more absurd than putting your name on the top of something you just called bipartisan?
That's as close as you could get to the opposite of what he was trying to accomplish.
Wait a minute.
If it's bipartisan, Why don't you put, uh, the Democrats and the Republicans brought you this success.
That's what bipartisan means.
Not Joe Biden's bipartisan.
Silly.
All right, I love that Viveka Ramaswamy is going hard at the notion.
He said, well, I'll just read his tweet.
He says, it's not crazy to think a Ukrainian company's multi-million dollar bribe to the Biden family is one reason why Biden is now showering Ukraine with billions of U.S.
taxpayer dollars.
It's crazier to think it's totally unrelated.
And craziest of all is the GOP is playing along as if they're in on the act.
So he's taking it to the next level?
So Vivek is saying not only, you know, are the Bidens dirty, but what the hell is wrong with the rest of the Republicans for not calling it out?
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
By the way, are you hearing other people say this?
Is anybody but Vivek saying the most obvious part of the story, which is it's hard to imagine that the Ukraine war and our support for it would look exactly the same if the Bidens had not been taking money from Ukraine?
It would be just the same?
No difference?
Why is he the only person pointing that out?
That's like a really, really important thing.
By the way, I think I pointed out first, but just saying.
So he's doing, you know, Vivek.
Once again, I'm sounding like a broken record.
Every single day I wake up and X Ex-Twitter.
He is trending Vivek's name, usually his first name, and he said something provocative that's productive.
It's not just provocative, you know, like Trump does.
Trump does provocative things.
We'll talk about him in a minute.
But he's just doing it to get attention.
When Vivek does something provocative, it's in the context of a policy preference.
That's really strong.
He can get attention for policy.
And the policies make sense, right?
It's not crazy shit.
So you can't do better than that.
You just can't do better than he's doing.
All right, this is another weird and funny story.
So there are two stories about Zoom, you know, the video conferencing product.
One is that You have to accept that if you use Zoom, Zoom might use, or will I guess, use AI to look at all of your presentation, from your physical presentation, everything from your posture to your facial expressions, to the words that you say even in your private conversations.
And if you use Zoom, you have to sign their terms of agreement, or agree to them, that you would unconditionally and irrevocably, with no opt-out, give away your personal experience as AI training material.
Now here's the problem.
The first thing I thought when I saw that was, well damn it, then I won't use Zoom.
How about that?
How about that, huh?
Well, I just won't use it.
And then I thought, it's too late.
It's too late.
It's everywhere.
Do you think you could not use it?
Do you think you could successfully do business in 2023 by saying you're the one who won't use it?
Yeah, try to use Teams.
Has anybody ever tried to use Teams?
Or try to FaceTime to 50 people?
I don't know.
I think Zoom wins this.
I think Zoom will just get probably no difference.
They'll probably just go on.
Yeah, I realize there are competitors, but Zoom just dominates at this point.
The other Zoom story is that Zoom itself as a company is requiring its people to go back to the office.
So even Zoom, the product you use instead of going to the office is making its own employees go back to the office at least part of the week.
It's not full-time.
All right.
The most important thing of the day is that mean tweets are back.
I thought Trump was being unusually non-provocative lately, and I thought it was working, because it seemed like his poll numbers were pretty solid.
But in the context of all these legal challenges, he's decided to fight back with mean tweets, and I could not be happier.
I could not be happier with the mean tweets.
Now, I would like to support American women's soccer for all the usual reasons.
I think the American women's soccer has been amazingly successful and fun to watch.
If they can get equal pay, that's great.
It's a free market.
If they can get it, they should.
So, like everything about women's soccer I like, except One particular, seemingly anti-American member, Megan Rapinoe.
Now, she missed a penalty kick kind of badly, and it was one of the reasons they lost, I guess.
And so, Megan Rapinoe was sort of insulting to Trump.
I guess the team got invited to the White House, and she said if they got invited, she wouldn't go, because Trump was president.
And so here's what Trump says about Meghan being part of the reason that the women lost.
He said, many of our players were openly hostile to America.
No other country behaved in such a manner or even close.
Woke equals failure.
Nice shot, Meghan.
God, the USA is going to hell.
Mega.
So that's Trump.
Nice shot, Meghan.
That is so outstandingly unpresidential that it's just perfect.
You're just not supposed to say that.
Don't say that!
And then he says it.
How do you not love him for that?
How do you not find that endearing?
I guess you'd really have to think he's Hitler or something.
But the fact that he's fighting back on this level, nice shot, he's getting in her head and ruining her whole, whatever's left of her career.
Then he also went after Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi said he was acting like a scared puppy, you know, with all the legal problems.
So Trump tweets, I have been leaving alone the story about Paul Pelosi.
But apparently you won't be leaving that alone for much longer.
I don't know.
None of this is important, but it's the most fun that's happening in politics.
Trump going back to full insults.
He's powering up.
All right.
What do you think about criminalizing political lies?
So this is Jonathan Turley, who's been great on all of this Trump legal stuff.
And do you think that the result of the Trump trial could be that the courts would actually make it illegal to have an opinion that's wrong?
To be incorrect?
Do you think that we could possibly end up there?
That the courts would decide that the freedom of speech isn't what you thought it was?
I don't think so.
Well, I think the DC court could, but I don't see any chance that the Supreme Court could.
I don't see any chance of that.
So I don't think that there's anything happening to Trump with the latest set of challenges that could survive a Supreme Court.
And here I'm just agreeing with Dershowitz, so I feel pretty safe about that.
But here's my advice for the Republicans in messaging.
So far they've been saying that the Democrats are weaponizing the government.
So they're weaponizing the Department of Justice and they're weaponizing the IRS.
And they're weaponizing the FBI, I guess.
Here's what's wrong with that.
And do you see it before I tell you?
What's wrong with that political attack?
The other side is weaponizing the government.
Here's what's wrong.
It sounds awesome.
Sounds awesome.
You weaponize the government?
Oh, good.
Aren't we supposed to do that?
I like my government very weaponized.
Most of the point of a government is to make sure that criminals and outside forces don't do bad things to you.
We weaponize them.
So we do have a weaponized government that we weaponize intelligently and intentionally.
To be weapons against outside forces and sometimes criminal forces.
So as an attack, you want to be consistent with your good message and your good point.
So when I hear the other side is weaponizing the government, I say to myself, that's a good point.
Right?
The logic of it.
There's facts to back it up.
You've got stories that fit that quite neatly.
It's a good narrative.
It's a good point.
It's solid.
But the word doesn't work.
The word doesn't work.
So I'm going to give you an alternative.
Weaponized is just too strong a word.
Strong meaning, if you told me I had weaponized something, I wouldn't even feel bad about it.
I'd be like, yeah, I weaponized that.
I'll weaponize it again, right in front of you.
So how about this?
How about calling it destroying the most valuable asset in the world?
The credibility of the US judicial system.
I like to say this a lot because if you forget it, You can lose everything.
The only thing that keeps America running is that our court system is generally credible.
Now it's flawed, everything's flawed, but more credible than most justice systems, right?
If you don't have a credible justice system, you can't do business without bribery, and you can't have a republic, you can't do anything, right?
It's basically the base upon which all of America is built.
So it's one thing to say, oh, it's a little weaponized.
That still suggests that America survives on that base.
It's weaponized.
We don't like that, but it's still strong.
It's just weaponized.
But what I see is if you're using it to take out a political foe over things that are clearly too trivial to prosecute in any normal world, Under that condition, I think you're destroying the credibility of the justice system.
That along with the no bail and the letting everybody out of prison to run wild in the streets.
So, the Biden administration is destroying the most valuable asset in the world.
The most valuable asset in the world.
Now you might say, Scott, that's not true.
Oil.
Oil is the most valuable asset.
Well, you could run out of a lot of oil and still survive.
You could have an oil shortage, still survive.
But if your core system breaks down, you're out of business.
And we're at risk of losing the credibility of our court system.
I don't know what happens when you lose credibility.
Maybe things just go on, I don't know.
But it's the most risky thing I can imagine.
So I would say it's the most valuable asset in the world.
There are other countries that probably have pretty good judicial systems, but since they're not superpowers, That's like a local situation.
But when the United States is at risk of the entire system collapsing, because the foundation upon which it's built, the justice system, is now being assailed for political reasons, that's the most dangerous thing you could ever imagine.
Now, I predict we'll be fine.
I predict we'll be fine.
So I'm talking about messaging.
The messaging should be more about destroying the most valuable asset in America.
When people come to America, what they talk about is, you know, maybe getting a job.
But that's all based on the legal system.
It's all based on the legal system.
They're really coming here because of our legal system.
You just don't talk about it that way.
They come here because our courts are generally fair.
And everything else can work because of that simple fact.
All right, don't lose that.
Let's talk about my least favorite thing.
So this is teaching you, the point of what I'm going to talk about is teaching you how to interpret the news.
The topic I'm going to talk about, I have no interest in.
And if you imagine I have interest in it, you're going to get mad at me.
So I'm on your side, not interested.
This is just to teach you how to read the news.
Steve Kirsch, who you might know as a successful tech guy who's been talking a lot about the dangers of COVID vaccinations.
And he states that there's a case of some triplets who got vaccinated and allegedly all turned seriously autistic within two hours of being vaccinated.
Now Steve says that it's just math and that it's proof that, well he said this, he basically said it's proof that the vaccinations are dangerous and he said this is stronger statistical proof than any causality study.
So he's basically saying the odds of all three children who were reportedly completely normal The three of them get vaccinated, and then boom, their parents say they're just different kids and they're autistic.
Now, Steve says, this is, he uses, actually uses the word proof, that from a statistical standpoint, you're really beyond doubt.
Do you agree with his statement, that if three identical twins get vaccinations, and in fact, turned autistic within two hours, Would you conclude, as Steve does, that this is strong statistical proof that the vaccinations are causing this?
Alright, here's the correct answer.
It is not proof.
It is a strong red flag.
I mean, the red flag is... So don't give me a hard time about not seeing the red flag, right?
Red flag.
Red flag everywhere.
Red flag.
We all see it.
There's nobody who doesn't see it.
Don't say Scott doesn't see it.
I know you're going to say it.
You're going to say it.
You're going to say that I can't see it.
I see it.
I see it.
OK, now that we've settled that, I think I can talk with you.
How do you rule out the possibility that there was a bad batch just in that hospital?
Or even just in those needles?
Where did Steve rule out the possibility that it was a very localized problem of a spoiled batch?
Did he?
Where did Steve rule out that a bad actor in the hospital had switched down a batch or contaminated it intentionally?
Because unfortunately, we know that happens.
There are people who are nurses who have put bad things in needles literally to make people sick and die.
That's a real thing.
Do you know what I've never heard of?
Triplets getting autism from a shot.
I've never heard of that.
I'm not saying it's not possible.
Red flags, red flags all over.
Hey, did you notice the part where I said I can see them too?
Okay, okay, okay.
Settle down, settle down.
I see them too.
But you really have to rule out the more possible options.
In the order of most likely to least likely, most likely, it didn't even happen.
Am I right?
The most likely interpretation of this story is it never happened.
There were not three kids who got shots and changed two hours later.
By far, it's the most likely.
This is not a claim that is false.
You hear that, right?
I'm not claiming it didn't happen.
I'm saying that if you were just going to look at it as a news story, and you're just a consumer, you're trying to figure out what's true and what's not, by far the most likely story is it didn't happen at all.
Just like UFO reports.
What's the most likely explanation of all the UFO reports?
People made them up.
People thought they saw stuff.
Those are by far the most likely.
Doesn't mean it's true.
Maybe there are some UFOs.
But if you see any one UFO story, any individual story, by far the most likely explanation is it didn't happen at all.
Somebody thought it did, or lied, or hoaxed, or something.
All right, how about the possibility that there would be a criminal Working at the medical center who actually was trying to injure the kids and did it somehow intentionally.
Unfortunately, we have seen stories like that probably every year of my life.
Give me a fact check on this.
I feel like at least once every year I see a story about a nurse hurting people with vaccinations intentionally.
Am I wrong?
About once a year?
It's not that uncommon, whereas I've heard of exactly zero other cases where kids got, obviously, autism.
Now, if this is the only time you saw it in the three twins, does this raise a question with you?
Here's an obvious question, and I don't know if Steve has dealt with this.
Why would it only apply to twins?
Or identical triplets.
Wouldn't they have seen exactly the same result, one child after another, who were just unrelated to each other?
Don't you think that the medical center would be hearing from people who said, um, my child is autistic two hours after this, and then the phone rings, and it's a different set of parents, and they're like, um, something happened to my kid, and then the phone rings again, and it's a different set of parents saying, what's wrong with my kid?
Just got a vaccination.
So you're telling me the three triplets all got autism within two hours of a vaccination, but this medical center had no warning that there were any other children who were unrelated who had the same problem with the same set of vaccinations?
No.
You haven't heard of anybody coming forward.
So now that the triplets have been publicized, what's the first thing that happens?
The other people come forward.
This should look exactly like a serial pedophile.
There's the first case, and then all the other victims say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that same person did the same thing to me, and then they come forward.
So you don't think the Triplett story would have surfaced 25 other parents who say, whoa, I wasn't really thinking about the connection, but you're right, my kid really changed drastically after the shot.
Where's that?
Where's that?
Context, please.
What else?
So you'd have to know that the parents are not hoaxing.
You'd have to know that they really did see a difference in the kids.
They do have photos.
I'm not sure if the photos are telling you what they say they're for.
And then here's the hardest one to rule out.
In a situation like this, the hardest thing to rule out Is the thing you didn't think of.
That's always the one that gets you in the ass.
Like if somebody is going to come up with, oh, you forgot to mention that the entire story was AI, and the children were AI, and the parents were AI, and you should have seen it coming.
You knew this was going to happen.
They were just AI.
This never happened.
Now, I don't think that's true.
But I'm giving you an example so that you can imagine.
And don't worry about it being AI.
It's probably not AI.
But I'm trying to give you just an example so that your mind can say, oh yeah, there could be things that would explain it that I just didn't think of.
And that's why you can't calculate the odds of stuff like this.
Steve believes he could calculate the odds because he has a good grasp of the alternative explanations.
That's not a thing.
That's not a thing.
How could you know that you know the odds of a thing happening when you had never even thought of the thing?
Right?
So in 2023, we can still say it wasn't AI.
If this happened in two years, Could you still say, yeah, I looked at it and I saw the video, it's definitely not AI?
In two years?
Do you think you'll be able to tell the difference between an AI story with lots of characters and detail versus like a real one?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Now, we're not there yet, as far as I know, but suppose, suppose, I'll just throw a suppose.
Suppose China was already there with AI.
Because I think America is probably there.
We don't see the good stuff.
There's probably a whole bunch of stuff that the public hasn't seen that's a whole level above, presumably.
Suppose China wanted to start a big rumor in the United States and make us fight about vaccinations.
Could they have created an AI?
That they know is AI, but when we see it, we've only seen our other AI that doesn't look convincing.
So we go, all right, we don't think we can make this with our AI, therefore it must be real.
But do you know what China has?
You don't think China could just go to their AI, I'm sure they're working on it, and just say, give us some American family triplets, tell a story about how they got autism with the shots, et cetera.
And make it look real and turn it into a meme.
I don't know.
Could they have done that?
I don't think that happened.
But if you hadn't considered all the possibilities, you might be surprised.
Now, can I close by saying that if it's true that three identical twins got autism from the shot, well, they got autism two hours after the shot, that is a big red flag.
Nothing I said should change the fact that I too, like you, see a big red flag.
I just don't think it's proof.
All right.
Might be.
Here is the best evidence yet that the war in Ukraine is not a war at all.
It is a negotiation.
It is specifically a negotiation that's waiting for Trump to take over the presidency.
Or maybe a Republican.
So I guess Ukraine allegedly took out some Big Russian ship.
And then Russia decided to, quote, retaliate, which they warned they would do, by massive shelling in Ukraine overnight that killed at least six people.
Clue number one that this is not a war.
What's the point of retaliation in a war?
Why would you need to retaliate in the context of a war?
I'm no general, but let me just put this out here and you fact check me.
If I'm a general and I'm going to run a war, I'm going to use all of my assets for winning the war.
I'm going to do the best thing I can do with my assets to win the war.
You know what I'm never going to do?
Send a message.
I think I'll send a message that I'm not happy about the fact that you also are in a war and you hurt one of our assets.
I'm not happy about that.
So I'll do some retaliation.
That's not a war activity.
Retaliation is when you're in a stable situation.
Do you know who retaliates?
Israel against the Palestinians and vice versa.
Are they at war?
Well, maybe somebody would call it that, but it's not like some force is running across the border of the other country, right?
It's a long-term, somewhat stable situation.
Unfortunately, it's stable with terrorism, but you wouldn't call it a war, would you?
Would you call it a war?
It's more like, you know, some terrorism, whatever.
Now, I'm not making the analogy Of the Middle East to Ukraine, because you'll just argue about the details.
The details are all different, right?
So I'm not saying one tells you about the other.
I'm just saying that when you see stuff like retaliation, you don't see it in the context of actual war.
Do you?
Because I don't think it has a function.
Was Kiev going to fight less because six people died in massive shelling?
Six people!
There were probably more people died mowing their lawns yesterday.
Six people.
I mean, tragic as it is, nobody wants anybody to die.
But in a war, if a major retaliation took six people, that feels like theater to me.
It doesn't even feel like war.
I'd feel like war if I were there.
I get it.
If I were there, it would feel like a war.
I understand.
But from the outside, It looks, to me, the intentions of both sides now seem obvious.
The intention is to wait until Trump's in power.
Because they know he's going to end it.
And they know Biden won't.
Right?
Do you think that Zelensky really wants to get back all the territory?
Or does he want to just go back to being the rich guy who runs Ukraine without worrying that Russia's going to kill him?
I think Zelensky would be pretty happy to not be in a war, to be in power, to be rich, to be the national celebrity, and make it appear at least like he stopped Russia, even though land was traded in the end probably.
But he would still look like a hero for having stopped the conquering of Ukraine.
So I think Zelensky wants a way out.
He knows he's not going to win back that territory by now.
And I think Putin wants a way out, and they both see there's only one way out.
Am I wrong?
There's literally one way this can go.
Trump gets elected, or somebody who's Trump-like, right?
Could be could be Vivek.
But somebody Trump-like gets elected, and then just forces both sides to stop fighting.
Which we could do tomorrow.
Biden can't do it, because there are questions about his, let's say, financial interests.
But Trump can.
He can do it tomorrow.
You know, Trump's boast that he could end the war in a day, that is the least exaggerated boast he's ever made.
Now, I'm not going to predict that he will, because, you know, nobody does anything in a day.
But he could.
He could literally force a ceasefire And say, look, every person who dies after today is a waste of time, and you're just idiots.
Because I've decided to end it.
Might take a few weeks, but you should stop shooting now, because every death from this point on has no purpose.
Just wasted, wasted life.
Stop now, and I'll tell you, it might take a few weeks to work it out.
That actually would stop the war in a day.
All he has to do is tell them, I guarantee it's over.
You don't know it yet, but I guarantee this war is over.
Just stop shooting today.
I'll work it out.
Might take us a few weeks.
Yeah, he'd be done in a day.
I think Vivek could do the same thing, actually.
They might not know enough about Vivek to be afraid, so Trump has an advantage there.
Well, let me ask you this question.
If Trump were to take office, do you think he should prosecute Joe Biden?
I'm really curious about your responses.
I'm seeing mostly no's.
Yeah, I think age alone and the effect it would have on the country would be bad.
There should be some kind of middle ground.
I would love to see it investigated and put into an official government report.
But if the official government decided, look, it's time to stop the precedent.
It's time to stop going after our political figures.
The country should know everything the Bidens did.
But because of his age, and because these are now settled problems, we do think that everybody should be treated the same under the law, but the country is better if we just do what's good for the country.
I don't know.
I could imagine letting Biden go.
Now, I do imagine that Biden would pardon himself, so it's not going to be an issue.
Don't you think?
Don't you think it was a mistake for Trump to not pardon himself of all past and future crimes before he left the White House?
Probably.
You know, I don't think he could have been necessarily re-elected under that umbrella.
Probably the only way he could get elected is actually, you know, fight this stuff out in a court of public opinion and the real courts.
And win.
That seems like the only way to get there.
But if the only reason that he were able to run for re-election is that he had pardoned himself for all past and future crimes, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that.
All right.
What did Henry say that's a brilliant point?
Somebody made a brilliant point here.
I guess I can't find him.
But trust me, somebody made a brilliant point according to somebody else.
All right.
What have I missed?
Is there anything I missed today?
Any stories?
Letting go would destroy.
You should prosecute.
No, pardoning yourself is a bad take.
Yeah, I think pardoning yourself is a bad idea.
What's that?
Drew Mao, please share my story.
I'm facing 25 years to life for defending myself against a mad black man with a gun who tried to end my life.
Well, I don't know much about your story, but I'll note that you said it.
All right.
You can see all the evidence at GiveSendGoDrewMao.
D-R-E-W-M-O-W.
Now, I'm not endorsing it.
I'm only saying it in the comments.
But if it's true that all the evidence is there, you can go see for yourself.
Equal pay deal earnings revealed women teams taking most of the men's earnings.
what?
Pardoning yourself of political charges feels fair.
Yeah, good point on that.
If you're pardoning yourself on things that even the country thinks are political, you probably get away with that pretty easily.
U.S.
women's soccer team is getting half of men's earnings?
How do you prove that?
I don't know.
You know, I'm not sure that's a problem.
So if you're saying to yourself that men collectively are earning all this money, and then the women collectively are taking some of the men's money, isn't that kind of similar to all of the other players on LeBron's teams?
I feel like LeBron is the reason you went to watch the game.
Or, you know, Michael Jordan in his day.
And all the other players were just good players who benefited from the fact they had a good player on the team.
There's no real fair way to allocate money for sports.
Every scheme you pick is unfair for a different reason.
Because people don't contribute the same.
Men's soccer can't exist without women's soccer.
Well, I mean, if you made it up to me, I'm sure that I would say the men's teams, if they earn the money, should keep the money.
I don't think you're on a different side.
I'm just saying that sometimes contracts are settled by precedent and not because there's a logical reason.
So it's one of the great things about what we do as humans and Americans, that we sort of agree that a deal is a deal.
Without being able to really argue the philosophy of it.
If I were to do a licensing deal, for example.
Let's say it was a licensing for t-shirts or something, putting Dilbert on a t-shirt.
Walking into the deal, I would know what the end deal was going to be, before I started negotiating.
Because there are so many people who have made deals for t-shirts that they're sort of a pretty standard, I don't know, it's 15% royalty or something like that.
Whatever the number is, it's kind of what everybody gets.
Maybe I asked for a little more because I think I got some market advantage or something.
But basically, everybody who's licensing an image for a t-shirt gets something like the same deal.
A lot of the times it's not about anything that's fair.
It's just market power.
If you have market power, you get more stuff.
The women built themselves up some market power by pushing their political view and making it popular or being part of something that's popular.
And they use that market power to get themselves more money.
I don't hate that.
I don't hate it.
It's not entirely unlike the rest of the world.
The rest of the world is people battling in a completely legal way to get more attention, get more money, get a better deal.
At the moment, the women just nailed it.
So the women, they pressed an advantage.
They had, let's say, a political, public opinion advantage.
They pressed it hard.
They got a good result.
The men kind of sat it out, and now they have to live with what they got.
But to me, this is the free market doing what it does.
I think you're looking at a free market situation and adding your opinion to it, and you don't need to.
Was it, quote, fair to the men?
Fair is just a concept.
It's not something that happens in the real world.
In the real world, people pursue power.
If you have the power to get a good deal that the other team doesn't like, but they have to sign it anyway, you're probably going to do it.
So the women's soccer story is not about what was right or fair.
It was about them cleverly using soft power to get themselves raises, and I would say good for them.
Good for them.
And if the men's teams, if they can figure out a free market legal way to argue that money back into their pockets, good for them.
Good for them.
They're all competitors.
And they're competitors by nature.
So if you put a bunch of competitors together and they compete, what are we complaining about?
They're competing.
They're competing on money.
They're competing on contracts.
They're competing on the field.
At the moment, the women gotta win.
Good for them.
All right.
What else is happening?
Anything else happening?
Political coercion is part of soft power, sure.
How much of a cut did you get from the Dilbert doll?
Well, I was also syndicated and so I had a deal that I shared my licensing revenue with the syndication company in addition to the doll company.
And then I share half of what I get from all that with the government.
So it ends up being pennies.
If I had to guess, it was something like a 15% royalty, probably in that neighborhood.
Of the 15, half of that would go to the syndicate, that gives me seven and a half.
Of that, half would go to taxes and lawyers and accountants and people who make that deal possible.
So, maybe 2%?
Maybe 2% per doll I would get.
Something like that.
It's not much.
Yeah, licensing works because you do a lot of it, not because per unit you're making a lot.
Elon's paying legal fees for people who were fired because they used Twitter.
I don't know if he's thought that through.
Because it's gonna be really hard to determine who got fired just because of Twitter.
It'll be tough.
Dilbert product placement in blockbuster movies.
I'm not going to do advertising in a blockbuster movie.
All right.
But-- Women have conspired to keep you single, Patrick says.
Well, thank you.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, if you added up it.
It comes to something.
You can do an R-rated Dilbert movie.
Well, I think movies are done.
I just... I can't even imagine watching a movie anymore.
It just doesn't feel like a thing that I do.
I can't remember the last time I watched a whole movie.
The only movies I'm watching Let's see, do any of you do this?
If you're watching a movie alone, there's nobody with you to complain about you fast-forwarding.
Do you fast-forward through the scenes that you already know where it's going?
So if I'm watching a movie, and it's early in the movie, and you see the protagonist, the person who's going to be the star of the movie, and they're getting really lovey with their wife, do you need to watch like 10 minutes of it?
I get it.
He really loves his wife.
And when she's in mortal danger, later in the movie...
It's gonna really tug at my heart strings because he loves her so much.
They love each other.
So I see that, it's like, oh, okay, this is 10 minutes of you making me feel bad, because I'll feel bad when something happens to her, because now that I know she's really in love with this guy.
And now it's a big fight and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna...
Spitball here.
I'm a professional writer, so you probably wouldn't be able to do this on your own.
But let's say there's a scene in the movie in which the bad guy, or one of them, has the drop on the good guy, or one of them, has the gun pointed right at him, and the good guy is disarmed.
How could you get out of that situation?
Oh, whoa, whoa!
Nobody's ever done this before.
One of the good guy character helpers suddenly appears, not as injured as you thought, and shoots the person who has... Has anybody done that yet?
Has anybody seen that movie yet?
Because I think it's innovative.
I don't know if anybody's thought of that.
The person you didn't know is there and shoots them in the last minute.
Now, you can repeat that as many times as necessary.
You can put your protagonist in danger, have a person who's been off screen for a while shoot the bad guy, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Now, do I need to watch that scene?
As soon as I see the bad character with a gun pointing at the good character and the good character is like, oh no, my head is going to be exploded, I'm like, Person shows up from around the corner, shoots the person, fast forward, fast forward, fast forward.
Yeah.
I don't know why people watch movies, honestly.
I understand why children do, because they haven't learned the pattern yet, but once you see the pattern, what are you gonna do?
Yeah.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen on YouTube, that's all I've got for you today, so I'm gonna say bye.
