Episode 2199 Scott Adams: How To Spot NPCs By Their Analogy-Thinking Ways & More Fun With The News
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Content:
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Politics, UBI, One-Party War Support, NPC Tests, Carbon-Capture, Low Self-Esteem Trolls, Greg Steube, Articles Of Impeachment, Governor DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Maui Fires, CBDC, Retail Theft Groups, Washington Post, Philip Bump, President Trump, Matt Gaetz, Whistleblower Status, AI Art, Scott Adams
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
I don't know what else you could have been doing on a Sunday morning, but it's clearly not as good as this.
And this is going to be good.
Today, you're going to find out if you're an NPC or the people in your family are or possibly your friends or co-workers.
And we've got a test for that.
And we'll see how you do.
Sound is looking good.
Technology, good lighting, good.
No, lighting's not good.
Oh yeah, lighting's good.
Lighting's good.
Everything's good.
What a day, what a day.
If you'd like to make it better, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, some Stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a good vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine.
At the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better is called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
That's correct.
Now.
Go.
Monkeys are good at imitation, and cats and dogs are too, I'm told in the comments.
Animals are good at imitation.
Well, not only are animals good at imitation, but how do people become successful in this world?
I know, it's a review quiz.
How do people become successful?
They imitate other successful people.
That's right.
Unless you have a glass ceiling for imitation.
If you have a glass ceiling, you can't imitate successful people.
So don't ever give yourself a glass ceiling, or you'll never be able to be successful.
All right, UBI, this universal basic income, was tested.
I think it was in Georgia.
And the Guardian writes that it was successful.
So a number of people, mostly black women, were given extra money.
I think it was $850 a month.
And then they tested to see how the experiment went.
And they reported it was a big success.
People took the UBI payments, and I know nobody saw this coming.
They used it to pay their bills.
Now, not all the time.
Probably sometimes it went to lesser good things.
But yeah, people use money to pay bills if they have money, and if they also have bills.
So you need both the bills and the money to get the money to pay the bills.
Because if you had money and no bills, well it's not gonna happen.
If you have bills and no money, again, nothing's gonna happen.
But they did this UBI test where they gave money to people who had bills, And much like the experts imagined, some of the money went to paying the bills.
So if they had not tested that, it would be chaos.
I mean, how would you know anything?
I would be thinking, all right, common sense says that people have bills to keep the phone on and eat, and they had money.
What are they going to do?
What are they going to do with that money?
I don't know.
So it's a good thing they tested it.
Big success.
I've got a question for you.
Have we reached a point where only one political party needs to be in favor of supporting a war?
Is that what's happening right now?
Is it true that, or are there still a bunch of neocons that are Republicans who are pro-Ukraine war?
Because the thing I'm worried about is this situation.
If the media Has caused us to be so split as a country that if one side says yes, the other side has to say no.
And it doesn't even matter what the topic is.
Democrats say yes.
What do you say, Republicans?
Well, what did the Democrats say?
They said yes.
Well, we say no.
We don't want them to get political advantage by doing whatever it is they want to do.
So as long as only one party can ever agree on anything, and the other party has to be against it, Doesn't that pretty much guarantee that you can't stop a war?
Because if a war starts, and let's say the president is the same party as at least, you know, half of the Congress, isn't that enough to keep a war going?
Because you're never going to have a situation where both parties say no to war.
Because if one party says no, the other one has to say yes.
That's just automatic now.
And the only way you could stop a war with, let's say, 60% of the public being against it, you know, roughly, would be if both sides were against it.
And that can never happen in our system.
You can only have one side against it.
So we've removed one of our obstacles to war.
One obstacle to war is you can't get enough of the public opinion on your side.
But now you're going to get half on your side no matter what you do.
You could do anything.
You could say, we'd like to take all of our money and dump it in the ocean.
And the other side would say no.
But as soon as they said no, then everybody on the other side would firm up and say, you know, when I first heard it, I didn't love the idea, but it's starting to sink in that the Republicans hate it.
So I really like it.
So I would worry that the so-called military-industrial complex is the biggest benefactor of a divided country.
Because there's not enough unity to stop a war.
And politicians don't stop wars.
That's sort of not what they do.
That's not even on the job description.
Stopping a war.
Alright.
Here's something that'll make your brain spin.
And this will be your first test for an NPC.
I will be watching the comments for the NPC comment that comes.
Now the NPC comment is the one that would be the most obvious thing to say in any situation.
The most obvious thing.
So look for the most obvious thing.
And I already have it in my mind.
Do you want me to write it down?
To prove that I know what it is?
Alright, I'm gonna write it down.
Alright, this is what the NPC will say.
Alright, so it's on here.
I'm gonna see if I can get one of the NPCs to out themselves, alright?
So I'm just gonna tell you the story like it's not really a test.
It's just a regular story.
Relax, it's just a regular story.
There's no test involved.
We're not testing to see anything.
It's just a story.
So here's my take on this.
You know that the AI that we have now is based on these so-called large language models.
And the large language models have proven to us that there's something like intelligence that can be created From nothing but words and the frequency that they appear together.
And apparently that's all it takes to create something that looks like intelligence.
But I would argue that it only looks like NPC intelligence.
It's not the kind of intelligence where people start with first principles, they reason things through with data.
It's not like an Elon Musk kind of thinking, because he's clearly not an NPC.
But rather, they would use analogies.
An analogy would be like, hey, that thing sounds like this other thing.
So I'm going to give you one of these situations where the fact that so many people will think in analogies is going to create an enormous, let's say, shift in thinking about something.
All right?
That's too much buildup.
Let me just give you the example.
Climate change now looks exactly like COVID.
Let me explain.
Climate change, the topic, looks exactly like COVID from an analogy perspective.
Not necessarily from a first principles reasoning perspective, but from an analogy perspective.
All right, we got my first first NPC spotted.
I'll tell you in a minute.
It didn't take long.
All right, so here's the analogy specifically.
CO2 is COVID, the virus.
CO2 is the COVID.
And the carbon removal technologies are the vaccinations.
Come on, say it.
There we go, first one.
Scott has finally figured it out.
That's what I was looking for.
It's about time.
It's about time.
So if you said, Scott, you finally figured it out.
It's about time.
You're an NPC.
I'm sorry.
But I could predict what you were going to do.
It's about time.
Sorry.
So here's the point.
What I'm telling you is that it's an analogy.
So that's all I told you.
I said that your brain will imagine these two things to be the same.
The NPCs said, it's about time you saw that these are the same.
No, that's exactly not what I said.
I said, your brain will think these are the same.
And then the NPCs said, finally, you see that they're the same.
No, they're not the same.
I'm telling you that the NPCs will see them as the same.
I'm not saying I see it that way.
I would reason from what's happening to, you know, what's the data showing us?
You know, I would kind of reason up.
And if I'd reasoned up from the bottom and found out they were the same, well, then I'd say they're the same.
But I'm not saying they're the same because they feel the same.
That it feels like an analogy.
You know, just because I could make an analogy between CO2 and COVID doesn't mean the same people are in charge.
Right?
They might be, but it doesn't mean that.
All right, so what it will mean is that climate change will be much harder to sell than it already was, because people will imagine it's just another pandemic thing, which the people on the right believe was fake all along.
The people on the left believe that the pandemic was exactly what the news said.
It was a deadly virus, and it's a good thing you had those vaccinations, because it would have been much, much worse without them.
So that's half of the country is looking at that analogy.
And they're using the same analogy to climate change.
Oh my God, you ignored the science on COVID and that's why so many Republicans died that didn't have to.
Now you're ignoring the science on climate and you're going to make the same mistake as you did during the pandemic.
Right?
So that story will be running for the political left that the pandemic is the same as the climate topic.
But their analogy will be completely different than the people on the right, who will also say they're the same, but their version is that they were both fake.
Now, I was having an online conversation about whether we're a simulation, and one of the points was that we couldn't be a simulation because there would be too many details that the simulation would have to keep track of to keep it consistent.
And I said, there's nothing consistent in our observation.
You and I are seeing completely different realities, and always have.
So there is no consistency requirement if we're a simulation.
It can be completely inconsistent, and that would look just the way it looks today.
Because we don't even agree what the news was.
You don't even agree with your siblings what happened when you were 12 that day, right?
We walk around with completely different realities in our heads.
So no, the simulation requires no programming to make us all think we're living in the same reality.
We already do.
We just don't notice it's all different.
My favorite example of that is tennis.
Now, I think this is scientifically valid, or at least I heard it was.
If you see a tennis ball hit at 100 miles an hour, And it hits the ground and bounces up.
And you're a professional tennis player.
You say, I just watched that ball hit the ground and it missed the line.
So I'm going to challenge it.
And then they play the replay and you see it actually sat right on the line before it bounced.
Does that mean that the person who saw it is lying?
Because they said, I saw it on the line.
Or were they hallucinating?
Well, the answer is they were hallucinating.
Because your eyes are not even capable of seeing a ball that's moving 100 miles an hour.
You see a blur.
And what you might see is the ball just before it hit, and then your eye might pick it up again after it's bounced up.
But the part where it hit the ground, and you remember it clearly hitting the ground, is not a memory.
It's manufactured.
Your brain fills in the stuff in between, because your eyes can't really track it going that fast.
So you have a very specific memory of that ball hitting the line exactly where you saw it, and then jumping up, but in fact you didn't see it, because you couldn't.
Your eyes are not capable of tracking a ball the entire path.
Now by luck, you might have maybe picked it up when it hit the ground.
But mostly you're seeing it every few feet.
And then your brain is filling in what's between.
Once you learn that, everything makes sense.
All right.
Here's another way.
To identify an NPC, we're going to do another test, in case you need confirmation.
If you think you're an NPC based on the first test, you can make sure you comment on this one.
So don't go quiet, just comment, but do what you were going to do anyway.
Say what you were naturally going to say, okay?
So the Biden administration is funding, they've got a lot of money, billions, to put into a $3.5 billion fund for developing Machines that suck carbon out of the air.
It's giant machines that suck carbon out of the air.
Go.
So, say it.
Say it.
We're gonna be sucking the carbon out of the air with giant machines.
Say it.
There we go.
First one.
First one.
You mean trees?
Yeah, trees, you did it, all right.
So everybody who mentioned trees as being the carbon capture that we need, we don't need this carbon capture, we only need trees.
What kind of thinking is that?
Something that captures CO2 is sort of a machine, but what would be like that, like a tree?
By analogy, a tree Would be like this.
So they're the same.
Because there's an analogy, they're the same thing.
That's an NPC.
Here's what a non-NPC would say.
Is it the existence of CO2 that's a problem?
No.
Is it the amount of CO2 in the air right now that's a problem?
No.
Is it the rate of change and the belief that if we reach a certain threshold, then things will go bad?
Yes.
So under that scenario, are the trees that we have and the trees that we could plant in the future, would that be sufficient?
Probably sufficient to keep it where it is-ish, but not enough to take care of what we imagine will happen.
What about if we build these machines?
Well, the first ones will be bad and inefficient, because they always are.
Everything, the original version of everything.
If we make it a market, we make it profitable, we would expect that the free market would boost their performance and that someday, although we're not sure, we have hope that we can invent our way to a point where we can remove enough from the air that there would be better than trees.
Now that's what you would say if you were not an NPC.
Now you would still argue whether it would work.
You would argue whether you could get there.
You would argue whether the numbers are right, but that would be the thinking process.
If you said to yourself, machine takes CO2 out of air, trees take CO2 out of air, don't need machines.
If that's what you just did, you're an NPC.
Now, let's see.
Third test.
Third test.
Let's see if we can find another one.
It's a good idea to take the CO2 out of the air.
Because it would be hard to stop people using fossil fuels.
Go!
There we go!
Ba-boom!
We got the first one.
Let's see if we can get another one.
Another NPC.
Keep going.
Keep going.
I know there's one here.
I know there's an NPC here.
There we go.
John.
Johnny.
NPC.
Because we need the CO2 to survive.
All right, that's... Let me do it again.
CO2 is necessary for the Earth.
It's necessary.
There's a machine that's going to remove CO2 from the Earth.
Uh-oh!
The Earth is doomed.
Because we need CO2.
But if we have machines that take it away, But we need it.
We need it.
It's required.
So if you take it away, I guess we'd all die.
That's not really thinking.
Does everybody see that?
That there's no thought involved in that.
That's some kind of, you know, comparison, analogy, weird thing.
But if you started from You know, sort of reasoning in a scientific way, you'd say, how much CO2 do we need?
Oh, somewhere between this range, probably.
Somewhere in this range.
How much are we going to get?
Well, if we're right, the scientists are right, it could be more than that range.
So let's hook up some machines to bring it, maybe if we can, to slow it down, slow the growth, or maybe to bring it back down in range.
At what point do you think we would suck so much CO2 out of the air that the planet would die and we wouldn't notice it before it happened?
You don't think that we would turn it off?
I think we've got enough now.
Or even better yet, we would use more fossil fuel maybe because we had plenty of cushion.
We're not going to destroy the plants because we suck too much CO2.
I mean, do you really think that could happen?
Do you think there's actually a chance we would just keep sucking CO2 out of the air until the plants died and we would never adjust?
I feel like we would.
I feel like we'd adjust.
So if you hear somebody say, CO2 is plant food, Scott.
Don't you know that they use it in greenhouses?
Yes, I do.
Yes, I do, NPC.
I do know that CO2 is used in greenhouses.
I also know that that's an analogy.
Huh.
Use it in a greenhouse.
That's good.
So it must be good.
No, that's not thinking.
All right.
By the way, I don't know if we have too much CO2.
Okay, let me say that.
I don't know if we have too much CO2.
Beats me.
I'm not saying we have too much or we'll have too much.
Don't know for sure.
But the way I would think about it would be that way.
All right.
I saw a study, a valuable study, that suggests that trolls, online trolls, have low self-esteem and may be doing it to get attention.
Wow, that's valuable.
I wonder if they talked to the people who did the UBI test.
Because, you know, we were kind of shocked to find out that if you give people money, they'll pay their bills with it.
But now I'm even more shocked to find out that trolls... It's almost like the trolls are not emotionally stable.
Did anybody see that coming?
Surprise!
Yeah.
But I think my new thing will be to say to the trolls, did that help your self-esteem?
When I get trolled.
Did that help your self-esteem?
Aww.
Aww.
I hope it helped.
Aww.
Little guy.
Alright.
Here's the zombie story that never dies.
See if you've ever heard this before.
There's a claim of some impropriety in the 2020 election.
Has anybody heard that before?
A specific claim of some impropriety in the election.
You might seem to think you've heard of this story before, but I guess there's an attorney general in Michigan who's a Democrat, which is important to the story, who is referring some 2020 information about election potentially fraud to the FBI.
Now the claim, which I expect to be debunked like every other claim, is that eight to ten thousand ballots were delivered by one person.
So one of two things is going to happen.
The claim will be debunked, or we'll determine that it wasn't enough to change the result.
Right?
So we're going to pretend that it only happened once in one place, because that's the one they caught.
But they'll say it wasn't enough to change the result, or they'll say it's too late.
Yeah, that was bad, but it's too late.
But nothing's going to happen from it, right?
We assume nothing will happen.
So even if they found this charge to be true, that some person left 8,000 to 10,000 ballots all by themselves in a drop box, or dropped them off somewhere, I don't feel like this is going to hold up.
And the only reason I say that is because nothing has so far.
It's sort of a 20 to 1 odds against it.
But maybe.
Maybe.
I'm still betting that Trump will Pull the rabbit out of the hat for his third act, and that magically, against all odds, we will actually find that there was election fraud.
Now the only reason I say it is not based on any evidence.
I have no evidence whatsoever, just to be really clear.
I'm using the fiction model of predicting, which says that reality matches movies.
Where there's a third act that seems impossible, you know, the hero can never get out of this box, he's gonna die, there's no doubt about it, and then magically finds a way out.
That's what makes it a movie.
If Trump got re-elected or didn't get re-elected and nothing ever changed about our opinion about the 2020 election, that would not be much of a movie.
But if he comes back And in the context of coming back, we find out that there was, in fact, fraud in 2020 that made a difference.
And maybe there's some official endorsement of it from a court, for example.
That would change everything, and that would be a proper movie.
So for no other reason, no other reason, than it would make a proper movie, and for reasons I don't understand, life follows movie patterns, I predict it.
Before the vote is cast in 2024.
Could be the last minute, but before the vote is cast.
Actually, that would be the best.
The best would be a day before the actual vote, Trump's still behind in the polls against whoever he's running against, like he's 10 points behind, and then suddenly the Supreme Court or somebody rules that the 2020 election was in fact a problem.
And with one day left, 40% of the public flips, and it's the biggest landslide of all time.
Now that would be a movie.
That would be a movie.
I'm not predicting 40% of the public will switch to Trump.
But it would be a great movie if it happened.
All right, well, this is kind of funny.
There's a congressman, Greb Stube, who's filed articles of impeachment against Biden for his alleged crimes in trying to shield Hunter Biden from prosecution or whatever.
He says it's long past due.
Now, I don't know enough about the details of impeachment to know, is this enough to make it happen?
One congressman filing articles, that's not enough to make it happen, right?
Isn't there more procedural stuff that probably will knock it down?
Feels like theater, right?
I'm just assuming it won't happen.
Alright, well, it's in the news, but wouldn't get too excited about it.
I saw a tweet.
Do you have this experience when you see a tweet from somebody who's in a different news bubble?
Which doesn't mean your bubble is the one that's right.
But when you see the other bubble, you say, really?
Really?
There's somebody in that bubble?
That's like a weird little bubble.
Here's one of the bubbles.
Somebody on X, which you call Twitter, David Weissman tweeted, why are Republicans refusing to show actual evidence of a Biden crime?
The only thing they've showed us is speculation.
Why is their phony investigation allowed to continue?
Doesn't that sound funny to you if you're in the other news bubble, that there's no evidence of Biden's wrongdoing?
Now, he did say specifically bribe.
I don't have any evidence of a bribe.
Do you?
Has anybody seen evidence of a bribe?
Not really, because a bribe would require money transfer for a specific favor.
Am I right?
It would be a specific favor.
There's no evidence of that.
There is certainly claim.
Well, let me modify that.
There's certainly a claim That Joe and the prosecutor that was looking into Brismo, that that was a quid pro quo.
But we don't have a specific payment that's attached to that specific request.
We don't.
We just know that it would be good for Brismo.
We know that they put Hunter on the board for that exact purpose.
For that exact purpose.
We do know that they tried to get him to leverage his power to get rid of the prosecutor that seems to be in writing.
But that doesn't quite get you there, does it?
It doesn't get you all the way to bribe.
It gets you to influence.
You know, I don't know how illegal it is to have general monetary influence on somebody.
It's not ideal.
Certainly should be disclosed where it exists, like a FARA type of thing.
But I don't know.
I honestly don't know that I've seen a crime.
I've seen lots of things that look close to a crime.
I've seen things that I think should be a crime.
But I don't know if I've seen one.
So I would agree that, you know, we're just short of putting handcuffs on them.
But you can't get any closer.
You could not get any closer to everything about this is wrong without it being technically violating something.
But it might.
You know, when things are complicated at this level, there's always some kind of technical violation there.
But I think it's funny that there's somebody who imagines that there's no wrongdoing because of the incompleteness of the evidence.
So there must be people who don't know that the money flows are well established at this point.
And that the money flows come from places that they should not be coming from for where they ended up, right?
So it's obvious that no tangible public services were given other than influence.
But suppose the influence is mostly just opinions and things that might have happened anyway.
It's hard to evaluate influence when there's an argument on both sides for doing anything.
Right?
If I bribed any politician to do anything, they could just take the other argument and say, you know what?
There were two arguments here and I've decided that the other one's a little stronger.
But there's always an argument on the other side.
So how are you going to know that the bribe is why somebody changed unless the paperwork says, I'm bribing you to do this.
So, I'm just amazed that the Democrat news, or the news that Democrats watch, doesn't convince them that no matter what this was, legal or illegal, it's still impeachable.
Would you agree?
It's the most impeachable thing I've ever seen in my life.
You can't possibly have a president who's got these connections, and at least the risk of blackmail.
You don't know there is any.
I haven't seen evidence there is any.
But the risk of blackmail is through the roof.
So that's not acceptable.
All right.
Meanwhile, in Iowa, the Republicans are there competing in the world's most boring state.
Sorry, Iowa.
Most boring state in the world.
Somehow DeSantis found a way to be more boring than the state itself.
Did you see the videos of him serving eggs on a stick?
He looked like he didn't want to be there.
He was completely uninterested in the public and he just wasn't interested.
And then there's one of him at a With his kids playing on a playground that was otherwise empty.
And the entire press is there.
And all they're doing is watching him with a nicely tucked in pressed button-up shirt in the park.
Because that's what you wear to go to the park.
A well-pressed button-up shirt.
Some khakis.
And he's just pushing his kid on the swing.
And I'm thinking, this is so weak.
Now, let's compare that to another person who's in Iowa.
Has anybody heard, how many of you heard that Vivek rapped an Eminem song in Iowa?
Just tell me if you've heard the story.
Did you hear the story?
You don't have to hear the rap, but did you hear the story that he rapped?
Yes.
Yes you did.
Does it matter that you heard him rap?
No.
Not really.
Once again, Just try to hold in your mind the level of skill that was employed here.
DeSantis went to Iowa and served eggs on a stick.
And then pushed his child on a playground.
So that's what his advisors got for him.
So he probably listened to his advisors and did two things that are lame or irrelevant.
Vivek almost certainly did not take advice from an advisor when he rapped Eminem.
Can we agree on that?
Nobody's advisor ever told them to rap Eminem at an Iowa State event.
Nobody.
There will never be an advisor who tells you to rap at an Iowa event.
But, if you're Vivek, you know it will work.
Because you know it will break the headlines.
There's nothing else happening.
You know that it's just so video friendly.
I mean, it's just irresistible.
If you hear that a presidential candidate tried to rap, especially Eminem, who is anti-Republican, or at least anti-Trump.
It's sort of, it's got everything.
It's like everything, but it's also harmless.
And it shows energy, shows he's not embarrassed by anything.
It also shows he has some skills beyond, you know, politics and business.
How many days in a row do I have to tell you?
He's killing it.
Yeah, it's Bill Clinton's saxophone play.
That's exactly right.
Now, I don't know if Bill Clinton had an advisor that said, yeah, go play the saxophone on the late night show.
Because that's not crazy.
It's not crazy to play the saxophone.
But if you're a Republican, rapping Eminem in Iowa, that's a whole new deal.
And it's just sort of brilliant and playful.
Yeah, it's playful.
That's exactly what it is.
Now remember, politics is not about making you think, it's about making you feel.
Did you feel anything?
When DeSantis handed out his eggs on a stick?
I'll tell you what I felt.
I felt sorry for him.
Honestly.
Literally.
Politics aside, I just felt kind of sorry for him.
Because it looks to me like a campaign that's given up.
It doesn't even look like professional level work at this point.
It looks like they've given up.
I think he's decided that, you know, he got some attention and after a few months of hating being on the... Do you think that DeSantis is enjoying running for president?
Do you think his wife and children are delighted?
I bet not.
I'm gonna say not.
He doesn't look like he's enjoying it.
And now he probably thinks he has no chance of winning unless Trump gets taken off the field.
And then I think Vivek is going to take those votes.
If Trump gets taken off the field, I don't think DeSantis is in first place.
I think he's in second.
Maybe third.
Well, let me ask the question.
If Trump disappeared or dropped out tomorrow, do you think DeSantis would go to first, second, or third place immediately?
You might go to third, because maybe somebody like Tim Scott will pick up some Trump votes.
Maybe second, maybe third, but I think Vivek laps him if that happens.
Because Vivek is the obvious, to me he's the obvious choice if the number one guy gets taken out.
Alright, now there's a story that might remind you of a play the Democrats do.
What is it that Democrats like to do that Tucker Carlson often reminds us?
That's right.
Blame the Republicans of whatever they're doing.
So, which doesn't mean the Republicans aren't doing it.
Because they might be doing it as well.
But the standard trick is to blame the Republicans for whatever Democrats are doing.
Now, I don't know if that's what's happening in this case.
But if you use that filter, it looks kind of sketchy.
Because the Democrats are now blaming former Trump officials for getting access to voting machines in Georgia.
After the election.
But apparently they were offered and somehow accepted, allegedly, allegedly, access to voting machines.
Now I need some fact checking on this because I believe this story is intentionally confusing.
I think we're supposed to be left with the impression, because the story seems to be told intentionally vaguely, I think they're trying to leave us with the impression that Trump hacked the election.
Because Trump people got into voting machines.
I think they're trying to make us forget that the context was after the election, and the point of it was to find out if there was any bad behavior that happened that could be detected.
Am I wrong about that?
Give me a fact check.
Am I describing this story correctly?
Because when I read this story, I kept thinking, why is it written so confusingly?
Why is it taking me so long to figure out what they're saying?
And it was as if they were trying to create a narrative without saying it, because it would be a lie if they said it directly.
It was as if they're trying to suggest The Republicans hacked voting machines ahead of the election by making the timing of it the least important part of the story.
That's what it feels like.
Now, I'm not going to say that's necessarily intentional.
It could be just if you have bias, that's the way you write a story.
But it's really sketchy.
This is looking a little too much on the nose, like Republicans finding a thing that they can blame the other side for doing.
To cover up the fact that they're doing it.
Now, I'm just saying it looks like that.
That would be sort of an NPC take.
Because there's no evidence of it.
It just sort of has that feel to it.
All right, we'll watch that story and see if anything... I imagine that's going to turn into a lot of nothing.
Let's talk about the Hawaii fires.
Official death counts up to 93.
And I heard that two of them have been identified.
Now, do you have a sense of the devastation?
93 dead and 2 identified.
And as somebody said, we're talking about a fire that melted steel.
You can barely tell that it's a body.
Much less identified.
Now, I'm going to tell you something that I've heard that is unconfirmed.
But it's from a resident.
There's something being covered up.
This is, I don't know this for sure, but this is a report from a resident.
Somebody who's close to it, actually in the scene.
The residents, some of them believe that the extent of the death is way beyond what you're hearing and that it's so bad and that the officials were so incompetent that if they ever told you how bad it is right now, There would be death.
That they would just be killed.
So that's the rumor.
The rumor is that the real death count is way beyond what you're hearing.
The officials know it, but if the officials tell you, and there's something else about the story I'm not telling you, but I'm doing that intentionally because it's too horrible.
There's something about this that some of the residents believe is too horrible to be told.
I don't know if it's true.
It has nothing to do with a directed energy weapon, right?
It has nothing to do with the cause.
I'm not talking about the cause.
I'm talking about the outcome, right?
So we'll talk about the cause next.
Put the cause separate.
Everybody's suspicious about the cause.
I'm talking about the outcome.
Some of the people believe that they're being lied to about the true nature of how bad it is, because if they told the truth, the officials would be killed.
That's how bad it is.
Allegedly.
That they would actually just be killed.
Now, imagine how bad would that have to be?
That's the rumor.
It is actually that bad.
Now, I don't know that that's true.
So put a big question mark by this, right?
Everything coming out of there is going to be sketchy.
And it might also be, if you want to further the conspiracy theory here, if you want to further it, that could be the reason there's no communication coming out of there.
In other words, it might be possible that they could have put the cell phones back online, and they may be choosing not to.
Because if you actually heard what was happening, People would be killed.
That's what I'm hearing.
Now, I hope to God none of that's true.
I hope to God none of that's true.
But you know, there's going to be a lot of rumors.
So let's talk about some of the other rumors.
If you believe there's a chance that a directed energy weapon from space started the fires, how do you rule out that it would be easier to just throw matches?
You know, you don't really need a space-based weapon to start a fire.
It's literally the easiest thing you could do.
Start a fire.
What would stop you from starting a fire anywhere?
And if you had a directed energy weapon, would you reveal its existence, potentially, by using it for something you could do with matches?
If you do it with matches, you don't reveal the existence of your directed energy weapon in space.
So I would say the odds that it was a directed energy weapon from space, and by the way, there's some hilariously obviously fake pictures of it, as if somebody had their camera and they got a good picture of the moment that the laser hit the earth or something.
No, I don't think it was a directed energy weapon.
That would be the least likely possibility.
Least likely.
So how many of you have ever been to Maui?
I want to get a fact check on this.
Have you ever been to Maui?
A number of you have, right?
For those of you who have been, and I've been there maybe 10 times, I don't know.
Have you ever noticed there are almost no police?
Has anybody noticed that?
You could be on Maui for a week and never see a police car, or a policeman, or a security guard.
No police.
I know they have fire facilities, but it's not like you see them much.
So here's my question.
Weren't they the least prepared in terms of emergency services?
I think they had less or fewer people who do that kind of work There at the time.
I think that part of the story might be that Maui is generally so safe, it's a really low crime place, that they just don't have many first responders.
It's just low on first responders.
It's the worst place to ever have a problem like this.
Now, separately, there's a problem that they should have sounded the tsunami alarms.
You've heard that one.
So they have a number of, you know, Alarms that they didn't sound.
And when the communications were cut, people didn't know to evacuate.
Because there was no alarm, and there was no phone, and there was no internet.
So people kind of stayed too long, and that's probably what got them.
So imagine if you were the authorities, and that's true.
Now we don't know it's true, but imagine it is.
Imagine you knew that you would have all lived, your family would have survived, if they had just pushed the button on the tsunami alarm, because everybody would know at that point, oh shit, let's get out of here and run away.
Now I don't know if they would have known what to do, if it's a tsunami alarm, but they would have known, shit's going down, right?
So I believe I've been on the island when they've done the alarm.
Has anybody been on the island when they heard the test?
I think I was there during a test once.
That might be a false memory, but I thought I was there during a test.
And so I'm pretty sure it works, but maybe it was the first thing that got burned.
I don't know.
So we probably have to find out why they didn't do it.
But imagine if that was the problem, that it was just incompetently handled and people lost their families.
I don't think you understand how violent that would get.
Yeah.
I think the native Hawaiians especially are going to say that's too far.
Right?
You're going to give us warning?
Too far.
All right.
So there's not much you can say except the, you know, there are a lot of people on the mainland, as they like to say in Hawaii.
A lot of people on the mainland who are insanely sad about this because to many of us it's like a second home.
All right.
CNN Jake Tapper is saying that the Republicans might have a point.
What?
Can you imagine anything on CNN that sounds like that?
He actually said that they might have a point.
Now, you might want to know what story is he talking about?
Well, he's saying that maybe the whistleblowers are right and that When the prosecutor, Weiss, first said he was allowed to charge people in any state, and then he went back and said, no, I can't charge people in any state.
So then he had to become a special counsel.
And so Jake Tapper is saying, wait a minute.
Why did he have to be given the powers that Garland said he already had?
So he's saying that the Republicans have a good point, that this story doesn't match.
He either had the power, or he didn't.
And if he had the power, why did you have to give him power that he already had?
So even Jake Tapper can't find a way to spin that to make that sound like it was a good idea.
So I feel like Biden is not anybody's first choice at CNN.
What do you think?
I feel like they know if they could nudge him out, they'd have a better chance of getting a Democrat elected.
Maybe.
I mean, I don't know who would replace him.
But I thought that was notable.
So I've got a book coming out about reframes.
I talk about reframes a lot.
And when you start seeing the world in terms of reframes, which is just rearranging the words and thoughts about something to make it more useful, I would say the most damaging reframe in America is that doing the things that successful people do is acting white.
The number one most damaging reframe in America.
Can you think of one more damaging?
Because I feel like, you know, everything from retail stores pulling out of cities, I mean, there's just so many of our problems right now are directly related to the reframe that doing all of the things that successful people do is unacceptable to some portion of our public.
And it shows.
So I think that's, I would rank that as the most damaging reframe, taking a normal situation and just conceiving of it differently.
That's the number one most damaging one in the country.
So that's the one I'm going to try to fix.
You know that I've been working on this for a while.
It got me cancelled.
So, word to the wise, if you're looking to reframe something, don't start like I did.
That shouldn't be your first move.
Maybe you want to ease into it.
Don't make everybody's hair on fire the first thing you say.
Save that for later, once you've got a little base of argument going.
So I guess I learned that the hard way.
There's mass looting reported in a mall in LA.
Nordstrom's got taken down by 30 robbers.
Mike Cernovich and others have pointed out that These are organized gangs.
Law enforcement told us it's organized.
So it's not just a bunch of friends who decided to get together.
It's organized.
If it's organized, it almost certainly crosses state borders.
And that would make it RICO if it's organized, and state borders would make it FBI.
And the thinking is that these could easily be stopped with the application of enough law enforcement.
And therefore, seeing no effort to stop it suggests that the people in charge, whoever they might be, want this kind of crime to happen.
When I say this kind of crime, I'm talking about a kind of crime that doesn't destroy the country, but it makes it so difficult to go through daily life that you will beg for an authoritarian to impose order and that the idea is that this crime waiver you're seeing is intentionally allowed to run so that authoritarian rule could be imposed.
Now if you want to go the extra level, digital IDs and digital money would be the end result of this.
Something like, well, the police are helpless to stop crime.
The police can't stop crime.
I don't see any way police can stop crime.
So we'll get rid of the police.
Oh, crime got worse.
What are you going to do?
Well, you know what would be good?
If you knew where everybody was, and you knew what they were up to, and you could turn off their money if they did bad things.
So we'll make sure we've got a picture of everybody, and we'll try to figure out who they are when they go in the store.
If they don't have masks, I guess.
And we'll use our authoritarian control to make sure that your stores are not robbed.
So citizens, don't worry.
We can stop this crime wave by removing all of your freedoms.
And if your privacy is given up totally, Then you can stop this crime wave.
Just vote for us.
How many of you think that that's the plan?
And that that's an intentional part of the plan is letting crime run so that we'll be softened up for a totalitarian move or moves.
I don't believe it because it would require too much human intelligence and control.
And there's no evidence that humans have that kind of intelligence or ability to coordinate across so many different domains.
To me, it looks like an emergent property.
So it might be that that's where it's heading.
If you ask me where it's heading, I would say, oh, it's definitely heading that way.
I think I've been telling you for 10 years that privacy will go away.
And that's not a preference.
There's just, there's no other way.
As soon as one person can destroy a whole city with AI or, you know, with a, with a microbe of some kind, then everybody's gonna have to be watched all the time or we'll all be dead.
Or at least that'll be the argument.
So there's no doubt that privacy will someday go away.
There's also no doubt that money will someday be digital.
20 years, 30 years, 6 months.
I don't know when.
But you cannot imagine 30 years from now paying for things with a piece of paper or a plastic card.
Although I would say a plastic card is digital money, but, you know, that's just me.
It goes through a bank, so I guess that's different.
But, yeah.
Anyway, so I would say everything is heading exactly where you think it's heading, but I don't believe in the puppet master.
I don't believe Klaus Schwab is in charge.
I don't believe Soros is in charge.
And I definitely don't believe that if Soros and Klaus Schwab got in a room, they would agree on what needs to be done.
Who do you think's in charge, Soros or Klaus Schwab?
Or do you think they're working together?
So that's the problem.
In the real world, billionaires don't work together.
In the real world, they're all just doing their own thing.
You don't hear too many billionaires colluding.
I think it's more like, well, I'm sure they are.
Onesies and twosies, I'm sure they do.
But people are looking out for themselves.
What I see is a whole bunch of people doing what's good for them.
And the end result will be a loss of privacy, digital money, facial recognition everywhere.
The free market gets you in the same place.
And I think the other thing that gets you in the same place is most Democrats being women.
Let me ask you this.
Tell me anything that's happening that you attribute to the Great Reset or to anything else that could not also be 100% explained by Democrats or dominated by women and single women in particular.
That would explain all of your observations, right?
Because how many Republican men wanted to cut funding for police?
How many Republican men Are looking at all the looting and saying, well, that's better than the alternatives of putting them in jail.
Better than the alternative.
How many men are saying that?
None?
Why are these 30?
Okay, let me ask you another question.
30 people robbed this store.
Why are they still alive?
Why are the 30 robbers still alive?
It's not because of men?
Do you think men said, you know, I think this is fine?
If all the women tomorrow went on vacation and turned off their phones, shoplifting would end in two days.
You just need the women to turn off their phones and stop interacting.
The men will take care of it.
Do you think there's any man anywhere who doesn't know how to stop crime in stores?
Anywhere.
There's not one man who doesn't know how to stop retail theft.
100% of us know.
You know why we can't?
Women.
It's women.
Women won't let us go violent.
Not as violent as we need to be.
At the moment, what's needed is tremendous violence.
Without it, you'll get more of this.
Now, I don't recommend violence.
Don't recommend it.
You should try everything first.
And you should certainly, if you do the violence, you don't want to do it with police and, you know, sanctioned, well-trained, legal violence.
But it would require violence.
And women are the ones stopping us from doing it, basically.
Now, I'd like to talk to the NPCs.
NPCs?
When I say a global statement like women or Republicans or Democrats, I never mean every one of them.
I never mean every one of them.
Not once.
I do believe that there are plenty of Republican women who would strap one on and end the shoplifting tomorrow.
Plenty of Republican women have guns and know how to use them in the right context.
Plenty.
I'm just making a big generalization.
Big generalization is that if women weren't, you know, maybe more than half of the political power in the country, there would be no retail theft.
It's sort of a man's problem that men are not allowed to solve.
We can solve it.
Yeah, and I know a lot of you are thinking it's like, oh, it's a racial thing.
You're thinking, you know, the problem is every time you see a video it's black people robbing stores.
Am I right?
Pretty much every time it's video of black people robbing stores.
So that makes everybody feel helpless because it would look racial if you did anything about it.
But I would argue that you could end retail theft tomorrow By just telling other black American citizens that they could do anything they want to end it.
Hey, black Americans, if you want stores in your town, we'll just walk away for an hour, and you do whatever you need to stop it.
I think black Americans would stop retail theft in one minute, because they would just take care of the people doing it, so to speak.
So if you think the racial component is like the main variable here, it's sort of the main visual variable, but I don't think men are on different sides.
Do you think black men want their stores to disappear?
I don't think so.
I don't think so at all.
And I think if you gave them some legal mechanism to stop it, they would do it right away.
That's what I think.
Anyway, cities are dead.
Paul Graham was tweeting that researchers at the University of Toronto use cell phone usage to measure how dead the cities are.
So measuring from the COVID rebound, apparently no big city is more than two-thirds the cell phone usage of what it was pre-COVID.
No big city is even above two-thirds of what it was in cell phone usage.
Before the pandemic.
None.
San Francisco is the worst at only one-third of the 2019 cell phone usage.
One-third.
Wow.
Yeah, cities are dead.
Anybody who goes, visits the city, or even drives through one, If you have any choice to not, just don't do it.
Once crime became legal in cities, you had to get out.
Now, one thing that could save us, and I think you'd agree, is if the media decided that this crime needed to end.
Now, our opinions come from the media, so especially if the left-leaning media said, it's too far, we've got to get police in there.
Now, to their credit, I would say that Probably most people in the media on the left do think that defund the police went too far.
Would you agree?
At least the serious people, you know, the people in the news business, they're pretty sure that the defund the police went too far.
But they can't really say that too hard because their audience, you know, doesn't want to hear it.
But let me just point out one imperfection with our system.
In a perfect world, your media is the watchdogs of the bad behavior, right?
So they're the ones making sure your government doesn't do bad stuff too much.
The media makes sure the corporations aren't abusing the citizens too much, right?
So, one of the biggest watchdogs would be the Washington Post.
Would you agree?
The Washington Post is not like other newspapers, not only by where it exists in Washington DC, but also because it's a major media driver of news.
The Washington Post is what's called a news maker.
Meaning that if they say something's important, the other media follow.
For example, when I got cancelled, it was primarily because the Washington Post went first.
So they're the ones the other newspapers look at, and then they say, all right, well, if you think that's a thing, everybody cares about it now, so we'll report on it the same way, or also.
So the Washington Post doesn't have just the power of a big entity.
It has the power of a big media entity That influences all the other media entities.
The New York Times will be another.
So when you talk about news making newspapers, it's the Wall Street Journal, it's the Washington Post, it's the New York Times.
So my only point, leading up to my bigger point, is that they create news by telling other people what to concentrate on.
Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, owns the Washington Post.
What do you think the Washington Post is saying about all the retail stores, the biggest competition to Amazon?
What do you think they're saying about their boss's competition being destroyed for reasons that aren't clear?
You know, we defunded the police, that's clear.
But why we keep doing it is unclear.
Yeah.
Now, so I tweeted to Phil Bump, who's an opinion guy at the Washington Post, and I wanted to see if they've even noticed that the destruction of retail goes directly to the benefit of their boss, because we'll just buy online.
How is that not important?
Or do you think that the Washington Post should recuse itself from any stories about retail theft?
You know what I'd like to see?
The Washington Post is going to recuse itself from stories about these online theft because it would be a conflict of interest.
It would be a gigantic conflict of interest.
In fact, the Washington Post should never report about anybody calling for defunding the police.
Because defunding the police is the same as give money to Amazon.com.
How many of you would want to go to a retail store in an urban center today?
I wouldn't.
You would never catch me in a Walgreens in San Francisco if they have any left.
Maybe they're all gone.
You think I would go to a Walgreens in San Francisco?
I mean, I don't know what I would have to have as an emergency before I would park a car.
Let's say I don't have a car.
But before I'd walk down the street in San Francisco and enter a Walgreens.
No fucking way I'm going to do that.
No, I'll buy it online.
So, how do we put up with this?
Now, by the way, I have no information that would suggest that Jeff Bezos has asked the Washington Post to do or not do anything.
He may actually be hands-off.
But that's not good enough, because the employees know what to do.
Do you think the employees are sitting there saying, let's launch an investigative report and find out what's wrong with Amazon?
Do you think they're running a big anti-Amazon series?
No.
They know not to.
Do you think that they understand that their boss is better off if there's more store closings and urban centers?
Of course they do.
They know where people shop.
And they know that if they can't shop in person, they shop online.
Everybody knows that.
So you don't have to have a conspiracy or an order from the top to know that the organization is designed To make retail stores disappear.
Let me say it again.
The design of the ownership and structure of the Washington Post is designed to largely destroy retail business in the United States.
Because the people all know what's good for their boss.
And they know it's not good for their boss, and everybody acts that way.
It's the universal truth of employees.
You anticipate what your boss wants, and you do more of that, and less of the thing your boss doesn't like.
So I would say if you're a retail store person, if you're Nordstrom, the Washington Post is your enemy.
And if the Washington Post suddenly changed their coverage and said, we've got to get more police, we're going to run opinions on this every day, more police, more police, we've got to stop this closure of retail stores, well then I would believe them.
Then I would say, oh, okay, that's just news.
And actually good opinion, too.
But when coincidentally their coverage, and I don't know if this is the case, so I've asked the question, but if their coverage is not every day saying we need to stop this retail theft, because everybody should be covering it, you have to wonder about conflict of interest.
Well, here's a story that I'm not sure I totally understand, but I love it.
If it's true.
So Matt Gaetz wants to have Congress call in Jack Smith to testify on record.
So you'd be the one prosecuting Trump in his newer troubles.
And so that's a very aggressive thing to bring in a prosecutor because if he refuses they can indict him.
Right.
So Gace is playing hardball.
So he's saying, you either come in and say some things that are going to make you look bad, because we're going to ask questions that will make you look bad.
If you refuse, we'll indict you.
And you could be like an indicted prosecutor who's trying to indict somebody that we think should not be indicted.
Now that would be awkward, right?
But there's a better wrinkle to this.
And I need a fact check on this, like I need a fact check on this really badly, because I don't think I fully understand the story.
But I'll tell you what I read.
That Matt Gaetz has a plan to bring in Trump to testify as a whistleblower.
A whistleblower.
Which would As part of the deal, it would make him not, he would not be able to be prosecuted because part of a whistleblower deal is if you tell us the truth about this situation, you can't be prosecuted for the situation you came in to talk to us about with permission.
So if they cleverly say, hey, Mr. Trump, why don't you come in and talk to us as a whistleblower about the thing you've been, the crimes you've been charged with?
In theory, He could not be charged with the crimes anymore.
Because the moment he becomes a whistleblower and Congress gives him immunity for the specific charges.
Now, it's either brilliant or stupid and I haven't decided yet.
It's, you know, brilliant if it could work and you like it.
It does have the problem that the left would just say justice was not served.
They're treating him like he's above the law.
Right?
Now, even though the Republicans would say, he's not above the law, we used the law.
We didn't make a law, we used an existing law, and it just happened to be for his benefit.
But that's not illegal.
It's not illegal to do things completely legally.
I don't know if you knew that.
Also, if you give money to people who have to pay bills, again, they'll pay bills.
Shocking.
I don't know, keep an eye on this one.
I have a feeling that he's not going to execute on this.
I don't think Trump will be a whistleblower coming in, but who knows?
Who knows?
He's definitely playing hardball.
This is an interesting thinking anyway, even if the possibility is low, it's interesting.
Fine line between stupid and clever.
Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about.
All right.
Whistleblower protections apply to government employees.
All right, so somebody's saying it applies to government employees, which would mean that Trump is not technically a government employee.
But I wonder if they could stretch it for somebody who is running for president who was president.
And it still has Secret Service and all that.
I feel like they could stretch it and then let the Supreme Court sort it out.
Let me ask you this, from a just common sense point of view, of what feels to you fair, even though fair is not a real thing, but what feels to you fair, Would it feel fair that Trump was treated like a government employee specifically for the whistleblower purposes, even though technically not on the payroll?
Would you feel that that was a reasonable extension of the law?
I think I would.
I think if that got to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, you know, the law said you have to be an employee.
He's definitely not an employee, but in kind.
Wouldn't you say Trump is working for the public right now?
I mean running for office is what we ask of people.
We ask them to do this.
So it's a pretty fine line between being a government employee and somebody who was recently president, has a really good chance of being president again, and every day is spending money running for the presidency because otherwise you can't have a president.
To say that that's not a government employee, I get it.
Technically not, but don't you think the law was intended to cover somebody like him?
I mean they didn't anticipate it or it would be in the law, but don't you think that reasonably that makes sense that he's the type of person the government wanted to protect?
Because the reason for whistleblowers is for the government's benefit, not the whistleblower.
Would you agree?
It's for the government's benefit, so they can get information.
So this is a perfect example of that.
It's a government-ish sort of guy.
He's got information, it's good for the government.
Wouldn't Congress want him to be covered, or anybody in that situation in the future?
Because the point is to get the information.
And he's as close to being a government employee as anybody could possibly be.
I would say that if somebody were a contract employee for the government... All right, Marcel, answer this question.
Let's say somebody is a contract employee, so they're not technically an employee.
Would a contract employer, who works every day in the government, would they be covered by the whistleblower?
Contract employee, yes or no?
Not technically an employee?
Yes or no?
I would say probably yes.
I would say that if it came to the Supreme Court, I would expect the Supreme Court to rule that they are their government employees in kind.
And that's close enough.
So I would say, so just reasoning this through without any political or without any legal background at all.
I would say that contractors would be covered, and then it's a very small, small leap to say that an active candidate who's at the top of the polling for one side should be covered the way a contractor would be covered.
You know, not quite an employee, but close enough.
What about a retired employee?
Yeah, a retired government employee, would they be covered by the whistleblower?
President is way different.
Yeah.
Retired would count, right?
So is he a retired government employee?
So I guess, yeah, it depends.
Depends if that's retired or he just lost his job.
I don't know.
Is that the same thing?
Suppose you got fired.
Are you retired?
I guess so.
All right.
Federal employees and applicants for employees.
Oh, so somebody's saying the Whistleblower Act protects employees and applicants for employment.
Well, there you go.
An applicant for employment.
That's Trump.
Right?
Is he not an applicant for employment?
I would say that's... Come on.
I hate it when the lawyers disagree with my totally uninformed opinions.
No, technically, Maybe not, but in kind, are you really agreeing with me or disagreeing?
Don't you think that somebody running for office is applying for a government job?
To me, that sounds like... Okay, give up.
To me, it sounds like something the Supreme Court would agree with.
You know, a conservative Supreme Court, at least.
All right, good.
That's all I want to hear, that I'm right.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, the video of UFOs taking flight.
I have not seen the video of UFOs taking flight into another dimension.
But I have seen the directed energy weapon setting fires in Hawaii.
No, neither of those are true.
If there's anything I would place a large bet on.
Scott, please change the reality of the WEF to back off on the no privacy thing.
You can't stop the inevitable.
Whether the WEF says your privacy is going away or not, it's going away.
Just the free market will do it.
Politicians.
There's really no way back.
We have to adapt.
It's sort of like, you know, maybe the planet's getting warmer, but the only thing you can do about it is adapt.
But we can adapt, so that's fine.
Privacy is probably going to be the same thing.
There's nothing you can do about losing it in the long run.
I'm not saying I want to.
I'm saying I can't see anything that would stop it.
I see nothing that would stop it in the long run.
Same with digital currency.
Nothing's going to stop that.
So I'm often being asked to get involved in fights that can't be won.
Because history is only going in one direction.
You know, you can maybe slow it down for a month, but it's going in one direction.
And I know when I say that, people think, well, are you OK with it?
I don't know.
Because I don't know what's going to happen.
I don't think we're good at predicting what happens when there are big changes like this.
We could end up happier.
But we don't know that.
So since we don't know that, I also, like you, I would default to preferring privacy.
If I can have it, I'm going to take it.
But I don't think it's an option in the long run.
And like I say, I lost all my privacy a long time ago.
So I wake up happy every day.
Remember how they say you'll lose your privacy, but you'll be happy?
I've lost all of my privacy.
Do I look unhappy about it?
Oh, somehow I survive with no privacy.
Because I just assume that all my digital stuff is, you know, people have access to it.
I had a situation recently where somebody who's not me lost a phone.
But the person who's not me had a number of messages from me, presumably on that phone.
There's no such thing as privacy.
So everything that you text to anybody, you should assume it will be discernible.
So when I heard that somebody lost a phone, which there was some indication that somebody got into it.
Don't know for sure, but there's some indication that the password got changed, etc.
So the first thing I thought was, uh-oh, I have a whole lot of private messages on that phone.
A lot.
And I wasn't worried a bit.
Do you know why I wasn't worried a bit?
Because I would never put something in a digital message that would be like some life-changing problem for me.
Now, I would definitely put things there that would be embarrassing.
But I don't have a risk of embarrassment because I just can't be embarrassed.
I just got over it.
I just lost my risk of embarrassment.
It's like a superpower that nothing embarrasses me.
But I'd be worried if something, you know, was problematic other than that.
But I'm not worried about it at all.
Nope.
There would be surprising things.
There might be things that you'd say, well, but it wouldn't, you know, wouldn't change your life or mine.
All right, so ladies and gentlemen, that's all I've got for you on this beautiful Sunday morning.
Looks like we went extra long, because I enjoyed being here.
There's a difference between totalitarian lack of privacy, though.
Yeah, that's different.
Biden's burner phone?
Yeah, I love the fact that the things we know for sure Or not enough to convince Democrats that there was something bad happened.
And he's got a burner phone.
Well, people have burner phones.
And a lot of money went to the big guy.
Well, a lot of people are called big guy.
You don't know for sure big guy.
And it was for from foreign countries that You know, maybe asking for favors.
But we don't have any direct ask for a favor.
Well, we have lots of impressions that he's doing things that they would like.
Yeah, but not any direct.
And they send millions of dollars for nothing in particular.
Well, but people do that sometimes for introductions.
My tears.
or Why do I have tears?
So there's a troll on here writing in all caps that I'm terribly sad about something.
Can you tell me what I'm sad about?
What are all my salty tears about?
Is there something I don't know about?
I'd like to talk to the troll directly.
I'm sorry about your low self-esteem.
But if your comment about my tears helped your self-esteem a little bit, gave you a little boost of attention, good for you.
Good boy.
Good boy.
Good for you.
All right.
And now, you need a burner phone.
Okay.
What about industrial secrets?
Those need protection.
From whom?
So a lack of privacy doesn't mean your neighbors know everything.
A lack of privacy could mean just the government.
So the government could know your, you know, your, let's say, the secret recipe for Coca-Cola.
But they wouldn't care.
So, unless there was somebody who wanted to, you know, get it and sell it or something, that would be a problem.
So yeah, I can see that.
You know, I also think that copyright and trademark and patents will all go away.
Has anybody said that in public yet?
I believe that all intellectual property protection will disappear.
So that people like me could not make money by making something that's copyrighted and trying to restrict it.
And I think that that will be a technology and free market kind of effect.
It won't be a government decision until it's just de facto.
I think once AI can make anything you want.
So today there was a new Beatles song starring John Lennon, who is long deceased, singing a new song that didn't exist with Paul McCartney doing backup vocals.
And it wasn't quite You know, identical with human music.
But it was pretty close.
Pretty close.
So, once AI can make you anything you want, you know, once you can say to the AI, hey, I like a song that's a mashup between The Rolling Stones and The Killers.
And then it can just play it.
How are you going to sell music into that environment?
So, So I have two sort of contrary predictions.
One is that people will not enjoy AI art, which I believe to be true.
Because the reason that you like art... By the way, did I blow anybody's mind the first time I said this?
If you haven't heard this before, this should blow your mind.
The only reason you like art of any kind, be it music or dancing, Or visual art.
Every kind of art.
The reason you like it is that you know a human made it.
And that what you're reacting to is their mating potential.
Or collectively their mating potential.
When you watch a Tom Cruise film, You say to yourself, oh, I like this action and it's a good plot and stuff.
But what you're responding to is the excellence from all elements that went into making it.
And in particular, Tom Cruise's own excellence at filmmaking, which at this point is almost unparalleled.
Would you agree?
I don't know if anybody ever.
Has been better at making a movie than Tom Cruise.
Ever.
Like, I don't think Spielberg's anywhere in his... I think Spielberg makes crap.
And has for a long time.
Yeah.
All the big-name directors, you know, they're making their three-hour movies.
Has Tom Cruise ever tortured you with a three-hour Tom Cruise movie?
I don't think he has.
Do you know why?
Because he's not an asshole.
That's why.
He's not an asshole.
He's building a movie that you want to see.
When you watch a Tom Cruise movie, every moment of it you say, oh, he made this for me.
Right?
You know he made it for you.
Because there's no bullshit in it.
The bullshit of like, oh, let me show you a scene of somebody who is dying from a real life terrible disease and make you feel real bad about it and then maybe you'll feel better when you get to the end of the movie.
Tom Cruise isn't going to make you like suffer through some tragedy so you'll feel better at the end.
Because he's making the movie for you.
It's not for himself.
I'm pretty sure that when Spielberg made Schindler's List.
Was that for you?
Did he say, people are gonna love sitting through this?
They'll feel good when they go home after this.
I still have PTSD from Schindler's List, and that's not a joke.
I still have recurring, frightening memories of it.
Now, are you telling me you made that for me?
To be entertained and feel good?
No, no.
I mean, it was a politically motivated, personal kind of project.
And I'm all in favor of people doing that.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing it for any reason he wants.
And it was commercially very successful, so all good.
But he didn't make that for you.
No, he wasn't thinking, as you sit in this audience watching this movie, you're going to feel really good.
No, nothing like that.
He made it to get Academy Awards and accolades and to maybe do something that was positive for the world, etc.
But it wasn't for you.
Tom Cruise makes a movie you want to watch.
There's no competition there.
He's way above Spielberg.
So, my larger point is that all art is people, collectively or individually, displaying that they have genetic qualities, skills, That if you were to mate with them, your offspring might pick up some of that skill.
So that's all art is.
As soon as AI is creating the art, and you know it's AI, which is the important part, you have to know it's AI, you're going to say, oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, that hits all the notes.
But for some reason, it doesn't move me.
Like, I recognize it as music, and I can't even tell you anything wrong with it.
But I wouldn't listen to it twice.
Because you're not being stimulated to want to mate with the AI.
You just know it's just a thing that's doing things.
So I think two things are going to happen.
You won't like AI, but yet there will be so much of it that copyright and intellectual property become impossible to manage.
You just would never be able to protect your property.
I mean, you could tell you're AI, Go read today's Dilbert Reborn comic and write me one that's not Dilbert, but it's the same joke.
Change the words.
And suddenly you got your own comic.
So, I mean, yeah, I feel like all copyright IP It's all going to go away.
Maybe trademark will stay, but certainly copyright and patents will disappear.
I think patents have to disappear because if you've ever tried to run... Has anybody tried to do a startup and tried to file a patent?
And you know what happens?
Somebody's always filed a patent that is so broad that it's covered.
The only way you can get anything done in the technology world is if your lawyers beat the other lawyers.
A startup is about your lawyers beating the other lawyers.
Because if you didn't have a lawyer and you didn't fight anything, you would launch and then let's say you got lucky and you had one of the startups that succeeded, it would take 10 minutes for three other startups to sue you on a business because they have the, you didn't know it, but they have some patent on something you did.
So patents just make everything impossible.
You know, you have to be a good patent fighter to be an entrepreneur, and how many people are that?
So, I'm pretty sure patents are just going to go away.
In the long run.
I mean, it might be 20 years, 30 years, but they're just going to go away.
