Episode 2196 Scott Adams: I Figured Out Everything. The News Is Hilarious Lately Too. Bring Coffee
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Content:
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Politics, Maui Wildfires, Climate Change, Elon Musk, X.Com Online Bank, UFO Whistleblower, Politico Propaganda, Biden Crime Family, Vaccination Dating Preferences, President Biden, President Trump's Twitter DMs, President Trump, Sam Harris, Crime Rates, Money Influences Studies, Craig Robertson, Scott Adams
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization, sometimes with proper lighting.
Oh, there we go.
That's better.
Way better.
You know, if you'd like to take this experience up to a level where nobody's ever even seen it, it's unbelievable, it's hard to even imagine, well, you could do it.
All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, just die in a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now on the The unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and you're all here for it, aren't you?
You are.
All right, go.
So much to talk about today.
Remember I told you that the machinery of how things work was becoming obvious?
Boy, today is one of those days.
We're going to talk about the machinery of how everything got the way it is.
I think you're going to find it amazing.
Probably.
So stick around.
All right, let's start with the tragic Maui wildfires.
If you've never been to Hawaii, this probably doesn't mean as much to you.
But this one hits really close to home, literally, because I used to own a property there that my ex has now, but it's part of the risk of the Maui fires.
And the entire downtown area of Maui was destroyed.
There's only one area on the whole island that's sort of a little downtown place with restaurants.
It's gone.
Completely burned up.
People were jumping in the ocean to avoid the fires.
It's horrible.
The good news Is that it's probably the most valuable real estate in almost the entire world.
So it'll definitely build back.
It'll probably happen really quickly.
But the part that's bugging me is I could have been there.
This was actually one of the weeks that was on my short list, but I ended up not booking it.
Primarily because Primarily because, you know, I had some book publishing deadlines that didn't work out.
But I actually could have been there.
I could have been right there.
Like actually right there, in the middle of it.
That's where I was going to be.
So it's really kind of freaking me out a little bit, watching the devastation.
I remember a story, I think it's true, about Seth, who's the guy who did The Family?
Seth, what's his name?
Did the family guy?
Seth MacFarlane.
I heard he was late for a flight that ended up being one of the flights that hit the World Trade Centers on 9-11.
Is that a true story?
That he missed the flight and that's the only reason he's alive?
Yeah.
I'm feeling a little bit like that because it was only because other events in my life, you know, did what they did that this became a week that wasn't possible to travel.
So anyway, the news today, because we can see the machinery behind the news, it all starts to look like comedy.
And here's a perfect example.
Just the other day, I saw a long thread of all the hilarious claims made about climate.
You've probably seen it.
So they take the headlines from over the years, and when you see them all together, they become hilarious.
Individually, not so much, but only when you see them together.
For example, the news would say, climate change is causing more dandruff.
And then climate change is being caused by jumping up and down.
And there's like every weird thing that climate change is caused by or causes.
And so CNN says the Maui fires in part caused by dried out vegetation and probably that's the climate change.
That's the climate change.
Now, I'm no scientist.
But can somebody help me out on this?
If it gets hotter over a desert, then it's just hotter.
Would you agree?
If it's a desert, and the temperature goes up, the only thing that changes is it gets hotter.
Now suppose you're an island surrounded by an ocean, and it gets hotter.
Now help me with the science.
Does that make it rain the same amount or more?
Can somebody answer that question?
If it's warmer, does it rain more?
It does, doesn't it?
Or at the very least it would be humid.
And humidity is good for the plants as well.
So wouldn't climate change have made it wetter in Maui?
I'm seeing somebody disagreeing.
So actually, I'm not stating this as a fact.
It's actually a question.
Or could you say more accurately, could you say there's no way to know?
Now obviously the heat would be evaporating more from the island, but wouldn't it be creating more wetness around the island that would compensate for that?
Or no?
Okay, would you say that we can't tell?
Would you say that it would be fair to say we don't really know?
If you talk about an island.
If you talk about a desert, I feel like we'd know.
I don't know if the island thing works the same though.
Alright, so I'm not going to say it's right or wrong.
I'm going to say it's hilarious that CNN states it as some kind of observable fact.
I don't feel like it's an observable fact.
Do you?
Do you feel like you can just put that out there as the news?
Or would it be more appropriate to say, you know, you should look into it, because maybe there's some weather correlation here.
But I doubt it.
I kind of doubt it.
I don't know.
All right, Elon Musk tweeted, great product engineering and design session today with the X team.
Now, if this had been anyone else in the world, Who said they had a great meeting?
I don't think I'd be talking about it.
Because there are a lot of people who had a great meeting today.
Had a great meeting.
But when Musk tweets, he thinks it's important enough to tweet, that he had a great product engineering and design session today, I feel as if something big is coming.
Or probably multiple big things.
At one point, I believe, Musk said that X had the potential to be the most valuable company on the planet.
Do you remember him saying that?
It had the potential to be the most valuable... I think he can see the end state now.
I think he can see it now.
Now, the way that could happen is if X becomes your bank.
As I just saw in the comments.
If X became the bank that you preferred, and it should, it should, because do you know what's wrong with banking?
Like traditional banking?
Does anybody know what's wrong with traditional banking?
Everything.
Everything.
Traditional banking has never been, let's say, innovated into a good form because nobody was ever strong enough to innovate where there was so much regulation.
It's almost impossible to innovate in the banking environment because there's just too much payola and political pressure and all that stuff, right?
So a new entrant is going to get destroyed by the existing players because they don't want any competition to their They're a good deal.
So, how could anybody ever innovate in the banking industry when the banking industry is so strong and so rich that they can stop you from innovating?
They can just shut you down through politics and whatever.
Well, I only know of one way that could happen.
You would need somebody who is the richest person in the world, Who also has the largest balls in the world.
Who also has a long-term interest in this very thing.
You know, he's been trying to do something like this for decades.
And, on top of that, is one of the most clever and capable product makers of all time.
Especially complicated products.
You know, complicated products That's a sweet spot.
So could Musk do what nobody else could do, which is create an online bank of some sort that would do everything a bank would do but better?
And you know what the answer is?
Probably.
Probably.
I'll tell you, if I could invest directly in Twitter, I definitely would.
I definitely would.
It's not guaranteed.
It would still be more speculation than an investment, I guess.
But I feel like he's got a serious, at least a 40% chance of making this work.
Wouldn't you say?
40% chance that he can turn X into essentially your bank.
Yeah, I think he could.
He would be the highest level of difficulty, but he's exactly the person who can do the highest level of difficulty.
I also like the fact that the path is clear, meaning that there's obviously an opportunity if you can get to it.
Getting to it is the hard part, but it's there, and he has the tools.
Yeah, there's a cool new little 3D printed house.
Not the kind that they're 3D printing with concrete.
You've seen those.
But they're 3D printing the, you know, just parts that they snap together for the house.
So it's a $200,000 house you can buy for, it's 400 square feet, so it's small.
But they put it on a truck and deliver it.
But here's the cool thing.
It makes its own electricity.
And it makes its own water.
It makes its own water.
It makes its own water.
Which is the thing.
They can take it out of the air, absorb it.
Now, I'm sure it needs a little starting water.
I don't think you can take too many showers with the water it's creating out of the air overnight.
But it also recycles and cleans the water you have.
So your shower is actually repurposed and you're using most of the same water the next day.
Now, if that's not too creepy for you, this is very cool.
So this exists.
It's for sale.
It's a real thing.
It's prefab.
They just deliver it, set it on the ground.
I don't know what they do about sewage.
Maybe the article said I missed it.
So the only thing that's left is sewage.
But I know, for example, there are toilets that don't need Sewage connection.
Bill Gates was working on that.
I don't think they're quite where they need to be, but maybe they've got some innovation too.
But more important than that innovation is the AI.
There are now a number of apps that use AI to remove the clothing from people in photographs.
I don't know about you, but finally we've got a killer app.
You know, AI has been around for a little while and I keep saying, well, what am I going to use it for?
I think I'll use it for... Well, I don't know how to do that.
I think I'll use it in my business to... I don't know how to do that.
But you know, I could use AI.
I could use AI to organize all of my archive of Dilbert comics so you could... Well, I don't know how to do that.
But I could use AI to help me draw the... Okay, I don't know how to do that.
But I could tell you what I could do.
I could use AI to help me market I don't know how to do that.
But what I could do is use AI to help me write the jokes, but it can't really do that.
But I could use AI to organize all my finances and keep my... I don't really know how to do that.
But AI is very, very valuable.
And believe me, it's going to be the thing.
I just don't really know how to use it.
However, there is an app that will allow me to take a picture and push one button and remove the clothing from the person in the picture.
That's it.
I got my killer app.
Finally.
Finally.
All this wasted blah blah blah about AI and we finally found one thing we can use it for, which is beating off the people we know.
And I think You've probably noticed that that's sort of a big problem.
You'll be like, you know, I'd really like to have a little more fun with these Facebook posts than I have been.
And then you see somebody in your social circle and you think to yourself, you know, if only.
You take the AI app and like, there we go.
There we go.
All right, that's the most important story of the day.
Why is it, do you believe, that people think that UFOs exist?
Is it because the clear photographs we have of the UFOs?
Is that why they think they're existing?
No, we have no clear photographs.
Is it because very credible people Have gone under oath and said, oh my God, I've seen it.
I've talked to people.
I know it's true.
We got these UFOs and these captured down aliens and they're all in a big warehouse somewhere.
Why would you believe somebody like that?
What would cause you to believe?
Well, I think that what would cause you to believe is that you can't imagine.
This is a failure of imagination problem.
You can't imagine how anybody would tell such a Incredible lie.
Like, who in the world would go in public and tell a lie this ridiculous?
Because one thing we know, we know this for sure, no credible-seeming person, you know, somebody that you would imagine would be credible, somebody with credentials and maybe, you know, a serious career, nobody like that would go in public, in public, And tell you the biggest, weirdest lie in the world.
That would never happen.
So you just sort of normally assume that they might be telling the truth.
Right?
Now, suppose that these UFO whistleblowers, who are otherwise credible-seeming people, suppose that it happened in the context of, oh, let's say, soon after the Russia collusion hoax.
Yeah.
Or soon after the laptop hoax.
Or soon after the entire pandemic.
Or soon after the Biden crime family story was being ignored in the mass media like that's nothing.
Or, well, I could go on.
How long do you want me to go listing situations which we've confirmed, confirmed, seemingly credible people who you imagine couldn't possibly tell a lie that big, stood in front of you and not only told lies that big, but bigger.
Yeah.
So when you look at the UFO whistleblower, Instead of saying to yourself, my God, nobody would tell a lie like that.
I mean, that would be ruining their reputation.
Nobody would take a risk like that.
Nobody's that stupid.
And then you watched 40 hoaxes being played on the public in real time while you watched, and people did believe all of them.
Not everybody, in the same way that not everybody believes the UFO stories.
But you can get half of the country to believe absolutely anything that comes from the mouth of a seemingly credible person.
And it's always because of a lack of imagination.
If you can't imagine that person could look you in the eye and lie to you about something amazingly untrue, then you assume they might be telling you the truth.
Because you just can't imagine the alternative.
But isn't it a little bit easier to imagine that seemingly credible people, who look very honest, are telling you complete bullshit and they're fully aware of it?
That's actually the operating system of 2023.
In 2023, it's nothing but credible people lying to you.
Nothing but.
UFOs?
Credible people lying to you.
Biden crime family, credible people lying to you.
Oh, but now when I say lying, I don't mean lying always by facts that are not true.
There are lots of ways to lie.
Let me give you an example.
As Politico reported, not a single dollar has been traced going directly to Joe Biden.
Oh yes, foreign countries that we have some issues with.
They have paid massive amounts of money to all the family members.
And we do know that the family members, or at least one of them, Hunter, has been paying the bills for the big guy.
So those things are not in question.
But let me tell you, not a single dollar has been proven to go directly to Joe Biden.
Now, is that true?
Well, technically.
Is it meant to fool you?
Yes.
It's meant to fool you.
As in, if this is true, well, I guess Joe Biden never was influenced by any money.
Every story is seemingly credible people lying to you.
Now, when there are people on both sides, you know, it's harder to tell who's lying to you.
But there is no major story that doesn't have lots of seemingly credible people lying to you and knowing they're doing it.
So lying to you from the point of a seemingly credible position is the normal routine universal truth of every major story.
It's not the exception.
It's the universal truth.
And that's something that's obvious in 2023 that I don't think was obvious 10 years ago.
It wasn't obvious to me.
I mean, I assumed that, you know, there was lots of lying and corruption, but I didn't really think it was universal.
I kind of allowed myself to think, well, you know, the FBI is not crooked, right?
Or at least, you know, the FDA is looking out for us.
Ten years ago, I would have said that.
I would have actually said that ten years ago.
Yeah, it looks like these entities are doing a good job looking out for us.
I actually would have thought that was true ten years ago.
And now you know it's not.
You're not guessing.
If you paid attention at all for the last, I don't know, six years, you know that none of it's true.
You know that 100% of all of our systems are corrupt.
Maybe not corrupt enough to stop working, but certainly corrupt.
So don't wait for the aliens is what I'm saying.
I heard there's some news from a study that people who are dating prefer to date people who have the same vaccination status.
Does that surprise you?
I would say not surprised.
Because vaccination status is a proxy for a whole bunch of political thought, wouldn't you say?
The people who are unvaccinated generally have a lot in common with each other, right?
So isn't it perfectly normal that the unvaccinated would prefer unvaccinated people?
Because they think alike.
So independent of what one of their bodies may or may not be doing, They think alike.
They're both distrustful of authority, and took the most skeptical position, and would like to know that they're with people who could have done the same thing.
Makes sense.
And likewise, the vaccinated think they made the right choice, so they want to be with other people who, in their opinion, made the right choice.
Makes sense.
But here's the least surprising part of the study.
The people who were least likely to care if their partner was vaccinated or unvaccinated were the bisexual people in this study.
I don't know, did you see that coming?
That the bisexual people were not fussy about their partners?
Did anybody see that coming?
Alright, well you can make your own jokes about getting jabbed.
I'll let you do that on your own time.
I think it's just funny that we had to call out bisexual people who are by definition the most open-minded people about, I guess pansexual would be even more, but bisexual people, they're open-minded by nature.
If your gender isn't going to slow them down, I don't think your vaccination status is.
Alright, which is not making, I'm not making fun of bisexual people, in case you're wondering.
I would like to read some inspirational words from our leader.
You know, one of the things that leaders can do for us is inspire us.
And I don't think we appreciate enough when that happens.
So if I may, if you would indulge me, I'd like to read some inspirational words from one of our greatest leaders, Joe Biden, President Biden.
And he said, and I quote, imagine if a longtime Roosevelt and telephones came along and said, we're not going to help invest in telephones.
Come on, man.
Now, those are words to live by.
When I saw that this morning, I was feeling a little down, and I thought, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Imagine if Roosevelt and telephones.
Imagine if Roosevelt and telephones.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that got me going.
So I hope I had the same impact on you.
Looks like YouTube stopped comments.
So your comments have died temporarily on YouTube, but I think you see me.
I think it's live.
Over on the locals platform, you still see me, right?
By the way, the local tech team is monitoring you right now.
So if you have any comments about what device you're on, or if you're on the browser or the app, what's working, what doesn't, background stuff, you can say your comments in the comments and they will see them because they're watching right now.
So please give your feedback about your technical experience.
YouTube is back!
Okay, YouTube's back online.
It looks like some people had to refresh on YouTube.
All right, well, you're all back.
Yay.
Trump, I guess the Department of Justice tried to get a hold of Trump's old Twitter account so they could look at all his DMs and maybe Maybe draft messages he didn't send.
And the report is that Musk and Twitter refused to give it to him and got fined $350,000 by trying to fight to keep Trump's private information on Twitter from his old account private.
So, thank you.
So thank you to Twitter and to Elon Musk for spending $350,000 fighting the bad guys.
It looks like they lost.
The bad guys got what they wanted.
But thank you.
If you're wondering if that was money well spent, abso-fucking-lutely.
Because you know why?
That $350,000 told me that Musk would protect my private information Or at least try.
Now he failed, but how happy am I that he spent $350,000 trying to do something that was probably going to fail, but at least he was working on the benefit of the users, not the benefit of the government.
So yes, big yes for that.
If anybody thinks that's wasted money, nope.
That was some of the best money spent.
Because that told the rest of us what the deal is.
The deal is he's going to protect your information if he can, even if it's fucking expensive.
Great message.
Great marketing.
All right.
There's an Iowa poll that says Trump's lead is growing, at least for the Iowans.
DeSantis is dropping like a rock, according to Trump.
So the numbers are Trump 43.
That would make him 26 up on DeSantis in second place.
Coming in at 17%.
But interestingly, Tim Scott jumped to third place.
With 11% support in this poll, you're going to ask me, what is the percentage of the black population in Iowa, Scott?
It's about 4%.
So for Tim Scott to be in third place at 11%, more than double the ratio of black citizens of Iowa, that's pretty good performance.
I don't know what's behind it.
I don't know if this will stand up in other states.
But I'd like to call it out.
Good job, Tim Scott.
And Trump actually called out Tim Scott, and he calls him Rameshwami.
But Vivek Rameshwami?
I'm pretty sure it's Ramaswamy, not Ramashwamy.
But, you know, Purvi Vivek's gonna have to change his name if he wants to stay in politics.
And Pence and the rest are back at 3%, 2%.
But Vivek is double the lesser competitors.
But the Tim Scott thing is interesting.
Do you think the Tim Scott support is because people are trying to help Trump?
Do you think that's what that's about?
That's what it feels like.
I feel like Trump's entire base feel like they're all advisors.
Does Biden's base feel that way?
From day one, when Trump entered the race, as just a consumer of information and a citizen of the United States, I felt from day one that if I had a good suggestion, he would consider it.
Which is weird.
And then later on, I had some good suggestions and he considered it.
You know, one of the executive orders was to make telehealth legal across state lines.
That was literally something I suggested that worked its way up through the system until he signed an executive order.
And it was literally because I suggested it.
Now, I felt that from the start.
I felt from the start that Trump would see a good idea from anyone.
And say, well, that's a good idea.
Yeah, I'm going to do some of that.
That's a good thing right there.
And he does.
So when you see people voting up Tim Scott, I feel like that's his base, sort of collectively and either consciously or subconsciously saying, you know what would be great?
If you became President Trump again, except this time your supporters are not all called racists.
Wouldn't that be cool?
Wouldn't it be good, they would say, to not be called racist for four years of your presidency?
And one way you could get that done would be a Vice President Tim Scott.
So do you think that the base is sort of answering a poll, but also they feel like advisors?
Like, hey, hey, hey, you know what you need?
You need your Vice President to have a little flavor.
Right?
Mike Pence wasn't just white.
He was so white that he drains the color out of the neighboring scenery.
Like, he can walk into a forest, and if he stands there long enough, the trees start looking gray.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
He can absorb color from anything.
He's the whitest human being who's ever walked.
And by the way, I like Mike Pence.
I've always been a Mike Pence supporter.
Lots of character.
Don't agree with everything he said about January 6th.
Don't agree with some of that.
But as a solid citizen, a person you would like to have as your neighbor.
Solid guy.
I thought he was a solid vice president.
But he's the whitest guy who ever lived, you know?
So, I feel like even Vivek might be part of that equation.
But the difference is that Vivek matches up as a strong partner.
Typically, a vice president is a weak partner.
Like Kamala Harris, she's a weak partner.
But during the Clinton administration, Al Gore was a strong partner.
So Al Gore had some portfolios which actually were serious ones.
And he was taken seriously and, you know, dined with the president all the time, etc.
So I think Vivek would be the perfect answer to Trump.
So if it turns out that Vivek doesn't take it directly, which I still think he has a chance of doing that, I still endorse Vivek.
He's my first choice.
But he's the perfect complement to Trump.
Perfect complement.
Anyway.
Trump says he's not likely to debate, but the Republicans gave him just the perfect excuse to say no.
They signed a pledge that they would back whichever one of them was the president of the nation.
And Trump, smartly, He's the smartest one in the game when it comes to this stuff specifically.
Negotiating, basically.
Trump says, I wouldn't sign that.
Why would I sign something when in fact there are a few of the candidates that I wouldn't back?
Now, would he really not back a Republican?
I doubt it.
So it's not about whether he really would.
That's a completely separate question.
Why would he give up his right to not do it?
Why would he give up his right?
For nothing?
There just wouldn't be any reason.
There would be no reason whatsoever.
By the way, for the locals people, I'm not using a plug-in microphone.
I'm just using the iPad microphone.
There's a reason I told them that.
There's a backstory.
Anyway, so Trump won't debate, but more importantly, and he explained it very clearly, he has nothing to gain.
Trump's poll numbers are actually increasing.
You don't debate when you're at the top and increasing your lead.
That would literally be stupid.
I'm not sure I'd want to vote for the guy who did something that stupid.
Now, he does the good talk where he says, I really like to do it.
I'm a good debater.
I really like to.
But I just can't because I can't sign this pledge.
It's just perfect.
He has the perfect out, and they just handed it to him.
So he doesn't have to say he's scared of debating, but he should be.
As good as Trump is at debating, and he's great, he should be afraid of it.
Because it's all downside.
There's not a single good thing that could happen if he's on the stage.
So he's making the right choice.
I saw a comedian, Dave Smith, referred to Sam Harris doing some podcasts and stuff lately as the Sam Harris Humiliation Tour.
Now the background on this, if you don't know.
So Sam Harris, prior to Trump and prior to the pandemic, was a, I'd say, a famous American intellectual.
Who was well known as being the most rational, fact-based thinker in America.
You know, at least one of them.
One of the most rational people in America, who could not only be rational, but he could explain to you how to be rational, he could spot your rationality, like a real asset to the country.
But something happened, and here's what I think the something is.
So Sam Harris's entire identity, would you agree?
I'm trying to do this without mind reading, alright?
So wherever you see any mind reading, just discount it if I slip into it.
Imagine being the person who defined themselves as a person who could spot truth using a combination of reason, data, and science.
Reason, data, and science.
Then what would happen to you if you learned that reason, data, and science are ridiculous tools for finding out what's true and will lead you in the wrong direction because everybody was lying to you?
What would you do?
Could you say, you know I gotta admit, the entire purpose for my life's work has been a joke, and I was just fooled.
And that it turns out the science is not dependable even a little bit, because they're all liars.
And the data is not dependable, even a little bit, because it's all motivated data.
All data is motivated.
Even when somebody doesn't know they're motivated, they're motivated To collect the data that's within a certain range.
So all data is motivated.
All scientists are liars.
Whether they do it intentionally or not.
And reason is not a skill that humans have.
So how would you like to build your entire life on these three pillars?
You know, data, reason, and science.
And then learn beyond a shadow of a doubt that these are worthless things.
Just worthless.
Now, they might be better than the alternatives, but they don't work, even though they're better than the alternatives.
And what I mean by that is that for any one question, science is terrible.
But science is really good if you give it 50 years to crawl toward the truth and eliminate the certain untruths.
So science is the best we have.
But if you're trying to decide in the moment with all new data, and money is flying around like crazy in different directions, and you don't know if the data is real, you don't know if the scientists are lying, and you're not even sure that people are reasoning out the situation right, your tools are worthless.
But in the long run, I think we might actually understand what happened during the pandemic.
Maybe in 20 years.
But not now.
And so I think that it's a massive cognitive dissonance bomb.
In theory, it should hit the hardest with somebody who's most committed to data, reason, and science.
Those are the people who should be, according to science, and here's the fun part, science would predict that Sam Harris would go crazy under this scenario.
Science would.
Because science is what came up with cognitive dissonance.
That wasn't invented by me.
Science came up with that.
Cognitive science.
So science tells you, if you put somebody in the exact situation that Sam Harris is in, there's a very predictable outcome.
One, Major apology.
Oh my God, I can't believe I was even involved in any of this.
Which is nearly impossible for a public figure.
Nearly impossible.
It's done.
You've seen it done.
But when it happens, it's so rare that it's a national story.
By far the most common outcome would be imagining he was really right all along and the people who May have been right in reality.
We're a bunch of big old idiots and they should be, they should be maybe censored or something.
But trusting the experts would have made you wrong about everything and I think that's the problem.
Trusting the experts, the science and the data and even reason made him wrong about just about everything for a while.
But I would have optimism that once he got out of that situation he would be back to normal.
Now, to be fair, if I don't add this next part, you should ignore everything I've said.
So listen to this next part.
One of the possibilities about how I'm seeing this Sam Harris situation is that the person who's having cognitive dissonance is me.
That explains everything I observe.
There's nothing unexplained to me, right?
You're having your own experience.
But within my head and my experience, I have no way to tell if Sam Harris is experiencing a mental health issue with some cognitive dissonance, or it's all me.
No way to know.
No way to know.
Now, many of you might agree with me, but if I had a liberal audience, they'd be agreeing with him right now.
So I can't even use the audience to tell me what's real.
All right.
So here's your next story.
Now that Politico has informed us that Joe Biden is the president, there's no indication that he directly received any payments, as I said.
No information that he directly got payments from Ukraine or Russia or China or Kazakhstan or anywhere else.
Which makes me think he should change his campaign slogan.
So his first campaign slogan was no malarkey, but I think he should update that to no direct payments to my checking account.
No direct payments.
Do you like it?
New campaign slogan.
Because no malarkey, I'm not sure no malarkey is holding up.
No malarkey is sort of the cats on the roof.
No malarkey, hey, hey.
No problem, the cat's just on the roof.
There's no malarkey.
But once the cat falls off the roof and is taken to the animal hospital, That's when maybe your nomalarchy should evolve to no direct payments to my checking account.
Well, direct payments to my expenses, yes.
But we're not talking about that.
Yeah, the direct payments did go to the companies I owed money to.
But there were no direct payments to my checking account.
I don't see why you're all so angry.
No direct payments to my checking account.
Not direct.
Not direct, people!
Come on, man.
Come on, man.
Not direct.
That's a good slogan.
I think he saw that.
And I saw a statistic that the Atlanta, this was on Twitter, Atlanta police, I wish I'd written down who tweeted it.
Atlanta police estimate that 1,000 individuals are responsible for 40% of the crime.
In a four-week period, they charged 75 people with more than 1,800 combined arrests.
75 people, the same 75, were arrested 1,800 times in four weeks.
That's just one month, people.
Now this reminds me of the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Many years ago, long before I had any involvement in any political commentary, I lived in California and we had this three-strike law that got passed.
During the debate about the three-strike rule, which would take somebody who was a triple offender and put them basically in jail for life, so they couldn't offend.
And the people who said that that was, you know, let's say, not just unfair but, you know, cruel and unusual punishment, it probably was pretty cruel.
Definitely cruel.
But the argument was, from the left, That putting the people who do all of the crimes in jail forever would not reduce the crime rate.
Let me say that again.
Adults with actual jobs, people who could find their way to work every day, would say this with a straight face.
If you take the people who do all of the crimes, and you put them in a jail forever, the crime rate would stay the same.
If all the people who do the crimes are gone, the crime rate stays the same.
And they would say that on television, they would say it in the news, and they didn't even blink when they said it.
That was when I realized that everything was broken.
The fact that the news uncritically reported That smart people were saying the crime rate wouldn't change if there were no criminals.
They actually said that.
And with a straight face, they said it repeatedly.
And here's the worst part.
Nobody refuted it.
I mean, I did, but nobody was listening.
And I would say to friends who would tell me that, you know, cocktail parties or whatever, and I'd say, you know, there's a part of that I don't understand.
In order for the crime rate to stay the same when the criminals who do the crimes are gone, wouldn't that require non-criminals to step up and start doing crimes just to keep the rate the same?
So you're telling me that putting career criminals in jail causes honest people to become career criminals to fill in the gap.
Is that your argument?
Do you know what people said when I mentioned that?
Well, look at my drink.
Looks like it's evaporated.
I'll be right back.
No, there's no argument to it.
There's no argument.
There's no argument at all.
It's just, it's just math.
All right.
If you're not there, you're not there.
Well, take that and bring it forward.
So there's a story now in the New York Post.
John Stossel wrote about Judith Curry.
You've probably heard of her.
Famous climate scientist who's not an alarmist.
And she's answering the question, which you may have wondered, How could it be that 97 or 98% of scientists say climate change is true and it's a big problem?
I do need a haircut, you're right.
Maybe today.
I was noticing that.
But thanks for pointing that out in the middle of my presentation.
Because you know what you like to hear when you're trying to explain something complicated?
You know?
There's something about the way you look that's kind of weird.
Maybe you should do something about it.
That's exactly the sort of thing I like to hear right in the middle of my presentation.
Something about your hair that's wrong.
Maybe you could fix that.
Although you're right.
I mean, it's not like you're not right.
I'm just saying there's a time.
There's a time and a place.
That's all I'm saying.
Anyway, you probably didn't know that I'm watching the comments as I'm talking, but I do.
I actually watch the comments as I talk.
It's not easy, but I do.
All right.
Something about everyone's hair is wrong.
All right.
So my point was that Judith Currie explained this.
Now this is something that I'd say most of the people on the right already knew.
But my theme today, as you know, is that we can now see the machinery of how everything works.
And we saw the machinery of the Biden family corruption, right?
Now you can see all the parts, so there's no question about it.
We saw the machinery behind the Russia collusion hoax.
We saw the machinery behind how the laptop hoax was created.
So what's different about the current year is that the machinery of things, the hidden mechanisms that make things work, are now all obvious.
You can see them all.
So let me explain, in case you didn't know, why 97 to 98% of scientists could say something that many people think is overblown or too alarmist.
And the reason is that they get paid to do it.
That's it.
That's the whole thing.
They get paid.
And follow the money works every time.
Would you like to see me make 98% of scientists believe that the government has alien corpses?
Do you think I could do it?
Oh yeah, I could.
All I'd have to do is announce enormous government grants For people who could prove the aliens are real.
Do you think I could get a lot of studies proving aliens are real if that's where all the money was?
Yes, I could.
And then once there are a whole bunch of studies that say aliens are real, and a whole bunch of people make money from it, what would happen if somebody published a paper and said aliens aren't real?
Look at the data.
Well, first of all, the peer review would fail.
Because the peer reviewer would say, I just published a paper and made a lot of money saying that aliens are real, so your paper, I find some flaws in it.
Sorry, there's some flaws in your paper, so I'm going to ignore it.
Right?
It's just money.
If you think that money can't convince 98% of any group to do anything, have you met money?
I don't think I have anything laying around, but I'd like to introduce you to it, because it makes everything happen.
Follow the Money Works Every Time.
There are no exceptions.
Find me the exception, and I'll tell you why you're wrong about it, if you find one.
So, um, yeah.
And, you know, Judith explains the exact mechanism, how the grants are given, how if you complained you would lose your job at the university.
It's just money.
So if you thought that 98% of scientists agree is a sign of science, that's malarkey.
98% of scientists agree is almost certainly a sign of fraud.
Because you can't get 98% to agree on, let's say, a newish thing.
You can get them to agree on something that's settled science for 50 years.
They can do that.
But if you want somebody to get 98% to agree on something that's happening right now, oh, like, let's say, a pandemic?
Do you think 98% of experts and scientists largely agreed about the pandemic?
Sure they did.
They did.
I would say 98% of them were on the same side all the way through.
Is that because they all did their own independent research?
No.
It's because every one of them knew that they couldn't keep their job if they spoke out against the people who said it was true.
Now, did they believe what they were saying?
I don't know.
But I'll tell you what I can guarantee.
If I pay you enough money, I can get you to say anything.
If I threaten you with losing your job, and it's a credible enough threat, you'll say anything.
Will I know if you're telling the truth?
No.
Will some of you talk yourselves into believing you're telling the truth and it's only a coincidence that that truth is what's good for your finances?
Yes.
The way a normal human brain works is if you took a hundred scientists and you said, all right, you guys, we need you to say something that's totally not true.
Will you do it?
There's a lot of money in it.
Some of them will say, all right, I got to follow the money.
I got to feed my family.
So I'm going to tell this lie.
Some of them will actually convince themselves they're telling the truth.
And then take the money.
And there'll be a lot of them.
So I don't know that scientists are lying.
I wouldn't say that necessarily.
Although some are.
You can say for sure that some are.
Because some of every group are lying.
But so I have a very funny text coming in, but the person who's texting me doesn't know it's me.
So I can't tell you the context, but there's somebody texting me about me who doesn't know they're talking to me.
It's kind of funny.
Well, I can't tell you the details, but I'm having a conversation about me with somebody who doesn't know they're talking to me.
All right.
The Saudis are looking at reportedly making some kind of deal in the Middle East that would include recognizing Israel, which would be a big, big, big deal.
But in return, Saudi would get some help building domestic nuclear power.
Is that weird?
The United States, which absolutely sucks on domestic nuclear energy ramp-up, we're going to do it for Saudi Arabia what we won't do for ourselves.
And do you know why we're going to do it for Saudi Arabia?
Because it makes complete sense.
Do you know why we're not doing it in America?
Because we're dumb, I guess.
There's no other reason.
It's just dumb.
But the Saudis are not that dumb.
So apparently they would be quite aware that they should sell their oil and then use a cheaper source for their own energy.
Same with Iran.
Iran's best economic play.
Oh.
All right, let me answer this.
This is getting deeper.
You have... I'm going to talk to one of my subscribers here.
He's getting very mad.
He's not understanding what's going on because he doesn't know he's talking to me.
Let's see what happens.
I can't wait to see what he says to that.
All right.
Then what else is that deal going to do?
Yeah.
And then we'd want Saudi to distance itself from China and the Palestinians would want the Palestinian state To get some kind of a boost.
So I don't know how close any of that is.
It doesn't look like it's super close.
But could we say that the possibility of this deal, the possibility of it, is built on Trump's success?
Is that fair?
That if this deal gets made, which would be a really big deal, it will be built on top of Trump's success with Jared Kushner, etc.
Yeah.
All good news.
All good news.
All right, here's a frame for you that will get you thinking.
I have a theory, and I'm going to close out on this because it's provocative.
I have a theory that all success, well, maybe most success, let's say 99%, is based on imitation.
And by that I mean the successful people watch other successful people and they say, oh, if you do that, that works.
OK.
All right.
Oh, that works.
That works.
Now, they don't all follow the exact same plan, but as a general statement, people are imitating the people who got it right.
I will tell you that's my exact process.
At around age 12, I said to myself, I would like to be successful.
My goal was always to be more than average successful.
And I said to myself, how am I going to do that?
I was born to a family that did not have tremendous resources.
But adults told me how.
They said, look, all these successful people, you know, You side down.
All right, he's very mad now.
If you don't mind, I'm entertaining myself by... He's yelling all caps now.
He's really mad now.
Still doesn't know he's talking to me.
Let's see what he says.
He's hopping mad now.
So, generically, there's something that he did that he doesn't know.
now.
Let's see if he's figured it out yet.
All right.
So here's my point.
If success is mostly about studying successful people and doing what they do, at least in terms of the system or the pattern that they use, imagine being black in America and you want to be successful.
And you want to do it the way everybody has always done it.
Must be a scam since you won't tell me the info I'm requesting.
that we're going to do All right.
Do you have FaceTime?
Let's see if it'll go live on FaceTime.
You can have some fun with this.
All right.
I'm going to call him.
John Creighton.
Hello, this is Scott Adams.
We're just talking by text.
You're on live stream now.
You've got several thousand people watching or listening.
So you're signed up for a service which you did not sign up for, it sounds like.
If it has anything to do with FaceTime, that's correct.
No, no, no.
No, we're not talking, no, we're not talking about FaceTime.
We're talking about, we're talking about Coffee with Scott Adams on the Locals platform.
Did you ever sign up for that?
Nope, I don't even know what the Locals platform is.
Really?
So, that's weird.
So you should definitely cancel because what it is is a, it's a live stream that you're on right now.
Is this a monthly fee?
YouTube and the Locos platform are listening to.
The subscription fee that you see is an indication that somebody with your credit card and your personal information signed you up for the system.
Now, I can't do that.
Like, that's not something I can do.
I'm the only one who has control of the system.
So there's something...
Is this a monthly fee?
Yeah, that would be a monthly fee.
So you should definitely cancel it.
Well, how do I cancel? - If I didn't sign up, I don't know how to cancel.
Send me your email address that you likely would have used and I'll cancel it for you.
Or you can just tell your credit card company it's a fake charge.
Scott, are you associated with Texas Minute?
No.
Okay, alright.
Okay, that's the only thing I can possibly think of.
I usually don't sign up for anything I've got to pay for.
Yeah, it sounds like something mysterious happened, but it wasn't on my end because we don't sign people up that don't want to sign up.
But if you just send me your email address, if you can't cancel it from your credit card, I'll do it for you.
Alright, thank you very much.
Alright, bye.
That was weird.
It was his wife.
I didn't want to get into it, but yes.
Yes, he's married.
It was his wife.
And the funny thing is, she's probably watching this right now.
She's probably at work or she'll watch it later if he hasn't canceled it already.
And she'd be like, oh, fuck, that's my husband.
Anyway, what I was saying is if success is mostly imitation, imagine being black in America.
So you're taught the history of slavery, of course.
You're taught the history of racism in America, of course.
And in the modern world, you're learning ESG and CRT, and there's DEI.
And all of these have the same flavor, which is you're a victim, and there is an oppressor class, and the oppressor class is mostly white men.
Now, if you wanted to succeed, And you wanted to do it by imitation.
Would you not be being asked to imitate your oppressor?
Am I wrong?
How could that ever work?
Wouldn't you end up with exactly what we observe?
Would you not end up with an entire group of Americans who have what I'd call a Maybe a historic ceiling or a glass ceiling of some kind.
So my upside potential is unlimited because every time I see a new tip or a new technique, I can take it.
So I'll do that.
I'll do that.
I'll do that.
But now let me give you an analogy just so you can put your head in the situation, right?
Imagine you were Jewish.
You lived in Germany.
And you realize that the only way you could succeed was to, you know, let's say it was Hitler's Germany, and you realize the only way you could succeed is acting like a Nazi.
Would you do it?
Probably not, right?
Probably not.
It would be the one class of people that you would say, okay, I will imitate anybody but them.
Please, can I imitate anybody but the Nazis?
I'll imitate anybody else.
Anybody else.
Just not the Nazis.
Now take that to America.
Imagine that you're the descendants of slavery.
You've lived through all forms of discrimination, especially if you're a certain age, it was worse.
And now you're being taught in schools that don't forget there was an oppressor class.
And then they say, now, in order to be successful, act like the Nazis.
The oppressor class.
Would you do it?
I don't think I would.
I don't think I would.
And do you remember when women were having a tough time, you know, reaching equality in the employment market?
And people would say, well, if you act like men, Because the free market is, to some extent, designed for male characteristics, right?
Competitive, dog-eat-dog kind of thing.
So, if women wanted to succeed, they had to act more like men.
And then women succeeded.
How'd they do it?
How have women succeeded wonderfully, really well?
How have they succeeded?
Acting like men.
They acted like men.
Now, not in every masculine, female way, but they did the technique that men do.
They went to college.
They didn't have children that they had to be home all the time.
They got tougher.
Learned to negotiate, etc.
And basically, they copied the pattern of men.
Because the system was designed by men for men, basically.
So to succeed, they imitated.
Now, do you think that women lost anything of themselves or their ability to be happy or anything by imitating men?
Sorry, fell off my desk.
Probably yes.
But everybody's different.
So let's acknowledge the vast differences in people.
For many women, Best thing ever.
Best thing ever.
Because they didn't mind taking on those characteristics.
Maybe they didn't need to have babies soon, or at all.
So for some number of women, it was sort of perfect.
Oh, everything's equal now.
I just do these things like everybody else, and I get a good result.
But imagine being a black kid, and they say, well, if you want to succeed, act like Bill Gates.
And they go, who?
And you say, all right, here's Bill Gates.
Here's a picture of Bill Gates.
Act like that.
You're kidding me, right?
Nope.
Bill Gates.
Here's a picture.
Do what he does.
Seriously, you're kidding me.
There's not a single chance I'm going to do whatever he does.
In fact, if you could give me a list of everything he does, please give me that list so I can not even accidentally do anything he does.
Because that's my oppressor.
Or he represents my oppressor.
Now am I wrong that black Americans have, and I'm not sure it's like anybody's specific fault, it's just that it's the only group they can't imitate to succeed.
Am I right?
It's the only group who doesn't have the path that everybody else has, which is imitation.
Now let me further prove the point.
What group of black Americans do, in fact, imitate white Americans and then succeed because of it?
What subgroup of black people imitate white people?
There are two correct answers.
Immigrants.
Immigrants is one answer.
Probably because they don't have the history.
And the other group is exactly Republicans.
Republicans, or conservatives, let's just say conservatives, conservative black Americans, basically say, okay, that's what works, that's what doesn't work.
I got these two choices.
A thing that works for everybody, or the path that doesn't work for anybody.
Huh.
The path that works for everybody, or the path that never works.
I'm gonna take the path that works for everyone.
And then, surprise, it works.
But it's hard.
Imagine being a conservative black person in America.
Do you think they get any shit at family reunions?
Probably.
Probably.
Yeah.
So it's not easy.
But here's the thing you need to know.
I'm an adult white guy, if you haven't noticed.
And I hate imitating adult white guys.
Now, to be fair, I do play some air guitar.
I do.
And I enjoy it.
I'm actually kind of good at it.
Kind of good at it.
But... I don't recommend it.
Right?
It's not easy.
It's not easy being white.
Because you gotta eat a lot of cheese.
You gotta dress poorly.
There's a lot to it.
But the air guitar is...
It's kind of essential.
Nobody wants to be a white guy.
We'd all rather be cooler.
If you gave me a choice of being Jay-Z all day long, or Bill Gates all day long, which one do I pick?
I think I'll take Jay-Z.
Thank you very much.
Who, by the way, is an excellent example of how to succeed.
How did Ye and, well, really a lot of famous rappers and people, how did they succeed?
Doing it the way white people do it, but they were in an industry in which you could dress the way you want to dress and present yourself the way you want to present it.
But in terms of technique, the technique was standard, same way everybody does it.
Work hard, take some chances, build your talent stack, stay out of jail.
I mean, the formula is the same for everybody.
They just had some talent and they were in the right industry, so they can express themselves as well as follow a process.
And entertainment allows you to do that.
Entertainment is probably the only place you can actually be yourself, but also follow the same business process to success.
You don't have to dress a certain way.
All right, that, ladies and gentlemen, is my insight for today.
I don't know.
It just looks like there's some kind of a permanent glass ceiling on black success because they don't have the access to what everybody else does, which is imitation.
All right.
Opinion about the Utah man.
All right.
I wasn't going to talk about this, but I guess I will.
I didn't want to talk about it because you're not going to like my opinion.
So as I understand the story, there was a Utah man who made some social media death threats against Biden.
That's the story you're talking about?
And that the outcome was the FBI killed him, right?
Am I right?
Yeah, so that's the correct story.
I hate to tell you, but I'm going to be consistent on this, and you're not going to like my consistency.
If you resist arrest and your ass gets killed, I don't fucking care about you.
If you threaten the President, and it's a credible sounding threat, and the FBI shows up, and even if the FBI does something wrong, and your ass gets killed, I don't fucking care.
So I feel like you're asking me because I'm going to say free speech.
They're killing the Republicans.
No, no.
If you if you resist arrest and threaten my president, Joe Biden is my president, right?
I got some issues.
I got some issues with Joe Biden, but he's my president.
If you threaten his life and the FBI kills your fucking ass, Good for them.
That's one they got right.
Even if they violated procedure, well, they have to answer for any violation of procedure.
I'm not saying that they should do illegal things.
I'm not in favor of illegality.
But if he got his ass kicked or killed by doing the thing that should get your ass killed, don't make that my problem.
It's not going to be my issue.
Yeah.
Madonna said she thought about blowing up the White House.
The difference was nobody thought she was serious.
This is a guy with a lot of guns, and the way he talked did not sound like a joke.
Now, it might have been, and maybe he was mental and all that, but we just can't show the same amount of empathy for people who are acting that way.
And I have to be consistent about that.
Have to be consistent.
I know you want me to make it political, but I can't.
Just can't make that political.
Why is Kathy Griffin walking around?
Because she's not taken seriously.
If a comedian makes a joke, a singer, we don't take it seriously.
If a guy with a gun collection says repeatedly that he's got violence on his mind and a mechanism to do it, basically he said he had a motive and he had the means.
