Episode 2206 Scott Adams: All The News That's Fit To Sip. Bring Coffee
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Politics, National Incompetence Problem, Hunter's Plea Deal, Immigration Policy, Vivek Ramaswamy, AOC, The Squad, Montana TikTok Ban, AG Austin Knudsen, RFK Jr., Anthony Fauci, Larry Elder, Marriage Challenges, X Block Feature, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Governor DeSantis, Ukraine War Obtainable Objectives, Catturd, Scott Adams
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
Let's take it up a notch, shall we?
You ready?
Buckle up.
All you need is a cupper, a mug, or a glass, a tank of chalicestine, a canteen jug, or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine.
At the end of the day, the thing makes everything better.
It's called...
A simultaneous sip would go.
Oh, I hope you were prepared.
If you were still brewing, shame on you.
It was time to sip.
Next time, a little more punctuality.
Okay?
Well, there's a big ol' storm coming to California.
It's Category 1.
Category 1.
Can you wake me up when it's a three?
But apparently it's moving the other direction, so.
There might actually be some damage.
I believe some people are evacuating because of rain.
But it doesn't look like it could be the worst it could be.
So we'll probably just get some water.
That's what I think.
How many of you would like to see me give a radio interview at 4.20 p.m.
Pacific Time tonight?
Say yes.
Say yes.
Yes.
Well, many of you are just begging for it.
Yes.
OK.
OK.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
All right.
I said I'd do it.
I said I'd do it.
I'll do it.
I promise I will.
So tonight, 4.20 Pacific Time.
That would be 7.20 Eastern Time.
I'll be with Joel Pollack on Breitbart Radio.
If you're saying to yourself, how do I listen to that?
Just Google it.
Breitbart Radio.
Joel Pollack.
Or you can look at my tweet.
I retweeted it this morning.
You'll find us.
Anyway, you might know that I have not been doing too many interviews.
But in conjunction with my book, Reframe Your Brain, which is available so far only on Kindle because Amazon has unspecified, possibly technical problems.
They're preventing the publication of my physical book.
The book's done.
It's ready to go.
But in the independent publishing, let's say, pipeline, there seems to be some kind of a delay for my property.
It's an unspecific, technical, hard to explain.
We just don't know what's going on.
It's going to take us a little while to look into it kind of a problem.
That's the kind of problem.
Now, if you're saying to yourself, Scott, This is clearly some kind of messing around with you.
Probably not.
Probably not.
It's probably just the way everything works.
Let me put this in context.
Pretty much every step of the independent publishing hits some kind of a problem.
Like there's a password that doesn't work.
There's, you know, there's just something you can't do.
And every one of the processes you have to Kind of crawl through it and correct and adjust.
You know, you basically, you're just adjusting as you go.
It's all about adjusting as you go.
So, in the context of nothing working, just sort of in general, the most likely explanation is they're busy or there's some technical problem.
Because I've heard a lot of other people have had issues that don't sound like they're political.
Now let me give you an example of how bad, I'm going to call this the National Incompetence Problem.
How many of you would agree that there appears to be a National Incompetence Problem?
To do anything?
Just most basic services?
Let me give you an idea of how bad it is.
Alright?
This is how bad it is.
I did something really stupid this week.
I want you to, could you do me a favor and mock me for my stupidity over this?
Just listen to how bad this is.
I had to take my car in for service.
And I knew that, you know, there might be some real issues.
You know, it's driving kind of funny.
So I don't know exactly what the problem is.
But, you know, it could be one of those expensive ones.
Here's how stupid I am.
And please mock me.
Get ready.
Get ready.
I took my car into the dealer for service.
I'm so ashamed.
On a Thursday.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
I know.
I know.
No, I deserve it.
I deserve it.
I took my car in for service on Thursday.
It's the dumbest thing anybody ever did.
Do you think I got my car back before the weekend?
Of course not.
Of course not.
So there's an extra two days.
But that's not even my point.
The dealer, I don't have a problem with the dealer.
So in this story, the dealer is, you know, it's just stuff that takes more than a day.
So there's nothing wrong with the dealer.
I brought it in on a Thursday when I knew I wouldn't have it for the weekend unless I rented a car.
Now you're probably going to ask yourself, let's see if you know the answer to this.
Why did I not rent a car?
And why will I instead spend four to five days trapped in my house?
I mean, I can Uber if I want to.
But why did I not rent a car?
Go ahead.
You tell me.
It's not because of money.
No.
Why did I not get one?
Not insurance?
No.
Yep, somebody got it.
Under today's current situation, I could not imagine, literally I can't imagine it, Renting a car without trouble.
I couldn't even imagine it.
I imagined that I would go in there and they'd say, we don't have the car that you reserved.
I thought at the very least it would turn into a Seinfeld episode.
I know what Uber is, you don't have to say Uber every comment.
Can we stipulate I've heard of Uber?
Everybody?
You can stop yelling Uber at me.
I've heard of it.
It's like a car service where you can go places, right?
Okay, I got it.
Okay, you don't have to yell Turo at me.
I got it.
I don't think I'm getting through.
I don't seem to be getting through.
Lift.
Now you're just being funny.
Apparently I'm not getting through at this point.
No, the simple act of renting a car, if this were five years ago, you know what I would have done?
I would have just rented a car.
I would have rented a car, and I wouldn't have worried that it wouldn't work.
I actually worry that if I allocate my half a day or whatever to, you know, going in and picking up a car, that it just won't work.
You know, like, I won't be able to rent it, my credit card will be declined, you know, I'll be on some do-not-rent list.
Some damn thing.
I just don't think there's enough competence left in the system that it ever makes sense to take on a new thing, if you can avoid it.
Like, if your other possibility is just to stay home and be unhappy, Just stay home and be unhappy.
Sometimes.
All right.
Don't follow my advice about anything.
All right.
Let's talk about my other favorite topic.
You know, I've been saying for years that the future is building cities from scratch.
NPCs, you may yell 15-minute cities now.
Go.
Yell 15-minute cities.
No!
No!
15-minute cities!
No!
Okay, this has nothing to do with 15-minute cities.
But you need to yell it, so please do.
Go ahead.
W-E-F.
Go ahead.
And also, you need to yell, uh, tiny homes.
Tiny homes.
So this has nothing to do with tiny homes, but you need to yell it.
I know you do.
Tiny homes!
Tiny homes!
Go ahead, in the comments.
I've been here before.
Anyway, there's a city built from scratch in Cayaya.
That's the pronunciation that's probably exactly right on.
In fact, Cayaya in Guatemala.
Now what's interesting about it is they actually set out to build the city from scratch, but what's interesting is they built it like Sort of in the architecture of more traditional, older-looking stuff, but, you know, with the modern twist.
And I saw some video of it.
It looks amazing.
Looks amazing.
And it is.
The streets are pedestrians, not cars.
I don't know that that makes it a 15-minute city, but if you need to yell about how you're unhappy that the cities could be convenient, go ahead and do it.
So this is one example that apparently people are happy with, and it came out really well.
But that's the future.
The future is cities from scratch, and there's almost no way around it.
Because it'll be the biggest industry that everybody agrees we need, and people will want to live there.
And there will be lots of different ones.
Will some of these cities be 15-minute cities that Klaus Schwab will take all your freedom and your security and your privacy?
Maybe.
But others will be something else.
All right, this Hunter Biden plea deal, we're finding out more about it.
Politico is trying to spin it as late payments that nobody goes to jail for being late on their taxes.
You just work out a payment plan and it would be very unusual to go to jail just because you were late on your taxes.
So that's what it was, right?
That was the problem.
Was the problem that Hunter was just late on his taxes, but now he's paid.
Now he's paid it.
Yeah.
You know, I was once laid on my taxes too.
So, I mean, same kind of crime.
Now, in my case, I did not set up a series of international shell companies to hide the fact that I was laid.
I didn't do that.
I just, I think I forgot or something.
I may have forgotten to pay an estimated payment once.
And I just paid my penalty and paid my money and I didn't go to jail.
But, you know, I also didn't have a series of shell companies to run it through so it would be hidden from everybody.
So there's that.
There, of course, is some pushback.
So lawyers never agree on anything.
Some people saying, oh, it's not that big a deal.
Nobody would have gone to jail for the specific things Hunter did.
Others say, this is not late.
This is hiding money from the IRS about the most illegal thing you could possibly do.
Well, you know, potato, potato.
But there is evidence that the investigation only went forward because of the whistleblowers.
So pretty much everything you thought about everything is true.
On the Hunter Biden story, everything you suspected seems to be true.
It's a pretty interesting model, because sometimes you see stories like Ukraine.
If you watch the Ukraine story, you're like, eh, I don't know, that might be true, but no way to know.
You know, maybe, probably not.
But you see the Hunter story, and now there's a pattern that's developed that no matter how much doubt there is about the story, it turns out it's true.
There's nothing you can say about them because they just all turn out to be true.
I would like to challenge that.
See if I'm wrong.
Do a fact check on me.
Name something that Hunter Biden has been accused of or Joe Biden in relation to Hunter Biden.
Name something that has not been demonstrated to be true beyond any real doubt.
Can you name anything he was accused of that has not Now, the paintings as a way to launder influence, I wouldn't say it's proven.
It's not proven proven.
It's just obvious.
You don't need to prove anything about the paintings.
That's exactly what it looks like on the surface.
Yeah, it's pretty consistent.
If Hunter is accused of it, apparently that's usually going to turn out to be true.
Although he's innocent until proven guilty in terms of the law.
Like everybody else.
Well Wall Street Journal again is hammering on how China's economy is going to the toilet.
Their 40 year boom is over.
They have plenty of empty buildings.
So China's big problem is empty buildings.
And over here, we've got a lot of homeless, but they're not homeless because they don't have homes.
They're homeless by choice, for the most part, probably 90%.
What do you think about China's, let's say, their chances for the future?
There are at least two things, three things, that the United States has going for it that our adversaries, or let's say competitors, can't match.
Number one, we have the option, which we have not used, of filtering our immigration better.
In other words, we can avoid the demographic crash by becoming the only country that people are fighting to get into and we're taking the ones with the best potential to be good citizens.
Usually education would be the top thing.
Do they have a skill?
Now, do you think China could ever match us in immigration of sucking up the best people from every country?
No.
Do you think Russia could ever match us in what we could do with immigration?
No.
Now, here's the weirdest take you're ever going to hear on immigration.
Our complete failure to guard our border is, in the short term, which might be several years, terrible.
Would you agree?
That on net, there are benefits of immigration.
Even illegal immigration has benefits.
You know, people get jobs, etc.
But would you agree that so far, like the last few years, it's more of a net negative because it's just out of control?
But watch this.
If you were in another country, and you knew that all of the other countries seem to be badasses about immigration, And you knew that the United States was willing to hurt itself to accept you.
The United States was willing to hurt itself fairly massively to accept immigration.
Now, you can say, oh, it's politics, it's incompetence, it's this, it's Kamala's not doing the job, that's all it is.
But I'm just saying, how would it be received by the rest of the world?
So imagine you're in India, you grew up in India, you just went through the ITT system, you're one of the top technical young people in the world, because you just went through a system that produces them, and you're saying to yourself, where do I go?
Do you go to China?
Let's say China said you're welcome.
And let's say they put together an immigration attraction thing to get technical people.
Would you say that I will be welcomed with open arms in China?
No, you wouldn't feel that way.
How about Russia?
Even if they said they would welcome you, would you feel like that's the place you want to go?
Maybe not so much.
Now imagine that you had been listening to the news about America, and you found that we had these sanctuary cities, and that even though we fought about, you know, what is the right level of immigration, the net effect was that we were the most accidentally, accidentally, one of the most welcoming countries for immigration.
And we remain, I would say, the melting pot example for the world, even with all of our problems.
We have somewhat accidentally created a situation from the Statue of Liberty all the way through sanctuary cities that America is a place that has built into its DNA a belief that immigration is central to our existence and our, let's say, our experience.
Which is not to say let everybody in all the time, right?
We're not talking about the way we're doing it.
I'm talking about what would somebody in another country feel about the United States when deciding where to bring their high levels of skills to employ it for the rest of their lives.
I don't think anybody can match us.
I think we'll be maybe in better shape than Europe.
They got a little bit overrun.
So Europe's got their own problems.
But in the United States, we still have a recoverable situation.
I don't know that they do in France or Great Britain.
Might not be recoverable.
But in the United States it is.
And I think that if we got, let's say, a Republican president Save a vape, just to pick one.
And he said, immigration is good, you just got to make sure you're getting the right people, clamp down the border, put in some real processes to bring in the best of the best.
Who competes with that?
So under that scenario, China and Russia are not going to have access to high tech, at least not directly.
So we'll have the better tech, better microchips, which means that we'll have AI in a functional form much better than any other country.
Which means that we'll be able to attract the best immigrants that are really additive.
There's no way you can compete with that.
And the most important thing is that we won't have a demographic collapse.
Because we'd be bringing in people as replacements.
We would probably have to eliminate the cartels as just part of the plan, but Vivek will do that.
Yeah, Vivek is talking about slamming the cartels, having real immigration to attract the right people, all the right stuff.
So there's something shaping up here that would make America the only superpower and would be really the jewel in the world, more so than it ever has been, if it ever has been.
But, well, there's a story in the New York Post about the so-called S.Q.U.A.D., you know, AOC's group of politicians, that they're big ol' hypocrites because AOC and the S.Q.U.A.D.
spent $1.2 million in campaign cash on private security despite calls to defund the police.
Now, you're expecting that I'm going to agree with the New York Post and say, hypocrisy!
Hypocrisy!
Right?
Or, if you know me better, you know that I'm going to say this is an analogy.
The New York Post is making an analogy between police and private security.
Is that fair?
No.
Did AOC call for ending private security for public figures?
No.
She did not call for ending private security for public figures.
Now, she did call for something that's as dumb as that.
But not, at least it's not inconsistent.
So yes, she certainly wanted her own safety, but don't pretend that public figures have the same security concerns as average citizens.
Average citizens could have worse problems, depending where they live, or no problems at all, if they live where I live.
But AOC has real security problems.
And she has a right to have security.
And I don't want anything to happen to her.
So yes, I'm 100% in favor of her doing what she needs to do to protect herself.
I don't think that's up for debate.
Now, separately, do you want your police to be defunded?
Well, nobody has a better alternative to that.
But you don't really need to bring the private security in there.
I realize it's like a political, oh, gotcha.
But don't we have plenty of things to do gotcha with the squad?
Do you need this one?
I mean, this one just seems like just so small ball politics.
But I get it.
It works.
So I try to avoid the hypocrisy lines.
It's the easiest thing to do.
Oh, they said this, but they did this.
That's never an interesting story.
It's just a political spin, and you've seen it once, and you're like, ah.
All right.
I forgot about this, but the Attorney General for Montana, I think it was, Austin Knudsen, actually pushed through and made into law a ban on TikTok in the state.
And I'm not talking about a ban for state workers, which you've seen in other places, government workers, but a ban.
You just couldn't have it in the state.
I don't know how it's, I suppose, The app stores could adjust for the state somehow.
So maybe that's practical to do.
But I love the fact that he did it and he got away with it.
So I just want to say his name so you've heard it.
People say he's angling for higher office somewhere.
If he is, good for him.
Because you did something useful.
All right, I'll say his name again.
Attorney General Austin Knudsen.
So if you hear that name in the future, Just remember he did one good thing.
I don't know what else he did, but he did this one good thing.
And do you think that the news is covering this correctly?
No.
No.
The news will still say stuff like, but TikTok said they would put their private data in some American managed company.
That's not really the problem.
It's the brainwashing.
It's not just the privacy.
And every time you see the news focus on the privacy part, you know that that's propaganda.
Or they just don't know the news themselves.
But it could mean that the people that are telling the news know the news better than the people who are telling it.
That's sometimes the case.
All right.
I saw one report, I don't know if this is true, but that Newsom is dispatching the National Guard to tackle the drug situation in San Francisco.
Can anybody confirm that?
That Newsom is sending or will send the National Guard for San Francisco?
Because I don't think so, but maybe.
Maybe.
But let's say if it is true, and I would put a big question mark on that, it feels a little, I don't know, I feel like it would be bigger news or something, but I only saw it in one outlet.
So, if it's true, and that's a real big F in this story, I would say that it's another example that you have to become Trump to run against him.
You have to become Trump to run against him.
That's a problem.
You basically have to adopt his policies after saying they were bad policies forever.
Because once you're in the national stage, you just look ridiculous.
It's just more obvious that Trump was right about some stuff.
Immigration, for example.
All right.
Alex Jones says he has some source from the TSA that says masks are coming back.
As a requirement.
No.
Next story.
If you argue about this, you're in the wrong fight.
It's just no.
Now we're done.
We're moving to the next story.
It's just no.
No.
Not no maybe, not no for a little while, Not a little bit, yes.
Just no.
No.
Alright.
Did I mention that my book, Reframe Your Brain, is number one in the happiness category on Amazon?
So number one book to give you happiness, and it probably is.
Number one book in hypnosis, even though it's reframes, I present them in the context of as a professional hypnotist, you know, telling you what works about them.
So it's not, it isn't teaching you hypnosis per se, except in the specific form of putting reframes into your own, your own brain and other people's.
And it's number one in personal transformation.
In other words, personal growth or success.
So it's number one in all three categories that are the ones that matter.
Now, don't get too excited.
Being number one in your category doesn't mean you're number one in the world.
But it's also not even available except in Kindle.
So this is the kind of book where I would expect a lot of people are going to wait for the soft cover, which could drop any minute.
But it's because you're going to want it as a reference.
It's sort of a book that you're going to read it and then go back to it a bunch of times, like, oh, what was that reframe I remember?
So lives are already being changed.
The reviews are crazy, which is so good.
People are finding their entire lives just reprogrammed just with a few reframes.
So I know that these claims seem wildly unlikely, but you have to read the reviews yourself.
It was written to have that impact, and people are saying it has that impact.
All right, RFK Jr.
had some pretty provocative things to say about Remdesivir and about Tony Fauci.
RFK Jr.
says, Tony Fauci knew that Remdesivir would kill you.
Now, what do I say about People knew.
There's a little bit of mind reading, right?
A little bit of mind reading, but if he can back it up with, say, a document or some other evidence, then I'm going to listen to it.
So I don't know if he has other evidence, but I'm always uncomfortable, and you should be too, whenever you hear somebody say somebody else knew something.
Often it's true.
But it gets into that mind-reading category that you need to ask more questions when somebody says that.
So I'm not comfortable just knowing that RFK Jr.
says Tony Fauci knew something.
Now he may be right, and I would say he has a high likelihood of being right.
But I need a little more than that.
I'm not going to go just with somebody thinks somebody knew something.
That's a little weak.
But RFK Jr., I find quite credible in doing his homework and research.
And he certainly knows this topic inside out.
So maybe he does know.
Maybe RFK Jr.
does know what Tony Fauci knows about this specific thing.
I wouldn't rule it out, but it just makes me uncomfortable when I see the mind-reading-ish stuff.
And the idea is that remdesivir has some side effects that would affect things like kidneys and heart, etc.
And that people having kidney problems, it would be a weird virus that killed you with your kidneys.
But remdesivir, according to RFK Jr., might have a side effect that would be, you know, sort of right on the nose for that side effect.
So, how bad is it?
Now, isn't there also a rumor, maybe it's confirmed, you'll have to fact check me on this, was Anthony Fauci, did he have a financial interest in Remdesivir at the time of the pandemic?
Financial interest?
Because I've read that he did, but I don't know that you can depend on any reporting on this domain.
Yeah, I'm going to say I've seen reports of it, but I don't know that I would not, personally, I would not assert that as fact.
But maybe.
Well, I'll just say it's reported that way.
I'm going to stop short of saying fact, because it's the sort of thing I'm not sure anybody knows.
For example, would anybody know if he had sold his stock before the pandemic?
Would we know that?
I just worry that we don't know, because it's not exactly public information.
All right.
So again, I'm going to call out the incredible benefit we're seeing from the campaign.
Imagine if people had just said, well, it looks like it's going to be Biden versus Trump.
We'll just live with it.
But that's not what happened.
Several candidates decided that they not only had a chance, Vivek has a real chance, but that they had something to say.
Vivek is as much about what he's saying as the fact that he's running.
He's saying stuff that is reorienting how you feel about stuff, how you think about it.
He's reframing the hell out of us.
He's really modifying and improving, I would say.
I'd say he's improving the philosophical opinions on the right, because have I ever told you that good writing, I refer to it as saying what you were thinking, but saying it better than you were thinking it?
That's what Vivek does all day long.
He says what you're already thinking, sort of, but you had not thought of it that well.
And then when he puts it in a sentence, you say, that's it.
That's the sentence.
I wish that sentence had been in my head.
Now, I've taught you in my book, Reframe Your Brain.
It's just out in Kindle.
I taught you that putting words in somebody's head is how you reprogram people.
We think in terms of words.
That's why the LLMs produce something that looks like intelligence.
Because our internal thought process depends on words and how they fit together.
And we imagine that that's our thinking.
But really it's just word patterns that we've seen before and what we've been exposed to.
So when Vivek puts a different word pattern into your head and he reframes a topic, you're being reprogrammed.
He's actually upgrading your software.
Because if you used to say whatever, let's say, DeSantis said about a topic, then maybe you had sort of a corporate-y, you know, his version of saying it.
But if you replace that with a vague sentence, and especially if you remember the actual sentence, you're reprogramming yourself to a higher level of argument.
You know, you could debate better Using Vivek's words than someone else's words.
True story.
So, Larry Elder is doing great things promoting his belief that the family unit has to be strengthened to fix just about everything.
And you see RFK Jr.
just ripping the lid off of the lying from every part of society.
Love that.
Those are three candidates who are really making a difference no matter what happens.
I don't think I could have more respect for those three candidates than I do.
I mean, I have maximum respect.
Because they're doing, I hate to say doing the work, they're doing productive things even if they don't win.
And certainly a few of them don't expect to win.
So, and I just want to say something about Larry Elder's take, you know, that the family unit and keeping the father there is important.
I would agree with everything he says about that, but I would argue that maybe things have changed and not just in how we financially reward people for not having a father.
But I think we're in a situation where I don't think we can go back.
So it's not that having a family unit doesn't produce better results, it seems to very clearly.
But if you can't go back to it, in other words, if we're on a one-way journey, and you just can't go back, because for whatever reason, and I don't think it's just financial.
Well, I'm just going to say it.
I didn't want to say it, but I'm just going to say it.
The reason people don't stay married is that we suck.
That's it.
That's it.
People suck.
We're not people that you should marry and stay married to.
We're just not.
Not the men, not the women.
The men are not worth staying with, and the women are not worth staying with.
They're just not worth it.
Now, I'm not talking about any individual, and I'm not talking about my life, because I'm a rich guy.
Nothing applies.
My rich guy getting married and divorced is not like yours.
Right?
You all know that.
I can afford to get married.
I can afford to get divorced.
So it's different.
It's different.
But if a divorce is the difference between poverty and making it, you know, that's a whole different world.
And in that world, the benefit of getting married just isn't there.
Because people suck.
I do believe that people are worse people than they've ever been.
Just in general.
People are worse than they've ever been to each other in terms of what it would take to be a partner for marriage.
And I feel like we can't say that out loud.
Because somebody's going to turn it racist, of course.
Somebody's going to turn it into sexism, of course.
But you didn't hear me say that, right?
I didn't say it's limited to just one group, because it's not.
I didn't say one gender is the bad one, because they're not.
We've just become terrible people.
So how do you fix that?
So I think the Larry Elder solution of strengthening the families is good as a concept, it's great as maybe an end point or something, but I don't know how to get there.
You can't tell me that marrying somebody who is not going to find me a good marriage partner works for me.
And keep in mind, I'm talking about myself, right?
I'm not saying you're bad and I'm awesome.
I've been divorced twice.
Do you think I would be divorced twice if somebody really, really liked being married to me?
I don't think so.
Honestly, if I were a better deal, somebody would be married to me by now.
Probably.
And we'd be happy.
But apparently I'm not a good deal.
And I'm at least transparent about it.
All right.
I snore, so it's hard to be in a relationship when you snore.
That's one of the things people don't talk about.
They don't talk about how much snoring makes it impossible to be in a relationship.
You could act like it's not, like, oh, that's just a detail, but it's not.
Not just a detail.
I would bet that snoring is 20% of divorces.
That's my estimate.
Snoring is 20% of divorces.
Now, that doesn't mean they'll say that.
It just means you end up in separate bedrooms, and then it all goes to hell.
So nobody plans it that way.
All right.
Yeah, I've had my sinuses operated on.
It doesn't make a difference.
I've had my septum, deviated septum, Also, so I've had two surgeries to fix my general sinus situation.
No difference.
But very painful surgeries, but no difference.
I do breathe better though.
What was I talking about?
Oh, so I love the Larry Elder thing, but I think he needs to go back a level and find out what's wrong at the base.
He's definitely on point about some of it being economic.
But there's a much bigger thing.
We've all become people who are not worth marrying.
That's a big problem.
Now, here's part of the reason that we've become people we don't want to marry.
It's because we don't have roles.
When people had roles, you could respect anybody who did their role, right?
Now, you could say it was sexist.
That's not the argument.
I'm saying that when the male-female roles were clear, you could respect the other person for doing their role.
And even if maybe the lust dissipated, you'd say to yourself, my God, I can't live without that.
Like, that's a partner.
That's somebody who values the promise.
As much as the day-to-day lust and happiness.
So, yeah, I think the loss of defined role models was simultaneously amazing for some number of women, amazing for some number of men, amazing for some number of LGBTQ that maybe got more freedom in that deal, but it destroyed the system.
Very good for a lot of people, individually, but it destroyed the system.
So I think we have to figure out how to restore the system in the context of we're not so good to each other that we want to marry each other these days.
We don't add enough value.
Somebody asked me recently, you know, if I'd want to get married again.
Do you know what my answer is?
Why?
What would that give me?
What possible benefit would that be?
I couldn't even think of one.
It has nothing to do with any individual I may or may not fall in love with.
I just don't see any benefit to it.
What's the benefit?
Loyalty?
Do you think I could get some loyalty?
No!
No.
Because we don't really live in that world anymore.
And that's not a statement of women.
This is not a statement about women.
You can't buy loyalty.
You can't find it.
We just sort of live in a cheater society.
And if people don't cheat, they might want to change partners.
Yeah.
Marriage would be ridiculous in my specific situation.
Somebody said it more generally, why would a rich person ever get married?
There's not much reason.
There really isn't.
All right.
I can tell you why I did it.
I got married for the benefit of the person I was marrying.
I mean, I was in love in both cases.
Totally in love.
But to me, the marriage was only for the benefit of children, you know, stepkids.
And it just made somebody else happier.
But that's why I did it.
Because that felt like my role, right?
My role was to keep people, you know, safe.
Alright, Mark Cuban was tweeting at Elon Musk over this big issue of whether blocking will be allowed on Twitter in the future.
Let's call it X.
And Elon Musk has said that blocking is going to go away.
Mark Cuban had some things to say about the algorithm.
So there are two things going on.
One is about blocking.
And then Mark Cuban's conversation about whether Elon Musk has too much influence over the content.
Now when I saw it, let's talk about them individually.
So let's talk about the algorithm first.
So Mark Cuban's take was that Twitter or X is now a reflection of one person's sensibilities.
I hope I'm summarizing that correctly.
And I commented back to Mark Cuban and said, I'm not seeing the effect of that.
What exactly makes you think that it's become an Elon Musk sort of thing?
And then he responded by showing the Twitter guy, I guess there's a Twitter document, let's call it X, that explains how their algorithm works.
It is hilarious to read.
If you want a good laugh, you should read the X document that explains how their algorithm works.
Let's just say it's complicated.
There are so many jargony buzzwords in it, you really can't tell what it is.
It's as close to being 100% non-transparent as anything could be, while it's trying to be transparent.
So the point of it is to show you what they're doing, but because they have to use such generic, jargony words, it's just so dense with jargon, you really can't tell what it is.
No human could read that.
And it's not because I'm not an engineer.
It's not because I'm not an expert in the field.
It's just written that nobody could understand in detail what it's doing or not doing.
But I saw one phrase there that said that, let's see, what was the phrase on the X document?
It said they would seek a fair balance of contents from different sources.
That's actually the, that was the term used in the X documents, that they would seek a fair balance.
What's that tell you?
Do computers and AI, do they know how to figure out what's fair?
How do you determine what's fair?
No, there's no objective standard for fair.
Because it doesn't just mean, you know, the numbers.
Right?
It's not about just the numbers.
It's about a judgment.
Fair is only subjective.
So if the Twitter algorithm has an important component in which somebody or something is determining what a fair balance is of content from different sources, that can only be humans.
Now, it might be the humans who set it up and then they walk away, but it's set up by the humans.
Some human had to say, I'm going to tweak this or put this filter in because in my opinion, or maybe some few people's opinions, this is what fair looks like.
Would it be fair to have just as much content from something that's obviously conspiracy trash Versus something that might have some credibility.
Would it be fair that you get the same amount of it?
Dependence, right?
If you're Alex Jones, you'd say that is fair.
Because you can't tell what's real and what's not.
Maybe he'd say that.
If you're somebody else, you'd say, that's crazy.
Why would you let some 4chan conspiracy theory get the equal weight with a respectable publication?
So, fair is so completely subjective that I had to immediately fold my argument and agree with Mark Cuban that we can never know what's happening with the algorithm, but we can know for sure that if Elon Musk doesn't like it, he'll change it.
Now, that doesn't mean that we're already seeing sort of the Elon Musk version of reality.
It just means it has to happen over time.
And as Cuban said, Elon Musk won't always be alive and always running it.
Somebody else might have to be the, let's say, the benevolent dictator.
I've often said the best form of government, by far, the best form of government would be a brilliant, benevolent dictator.
Because the dictator part gets you past all the nonsense of arguing about stuff.
The brilliant part gets you good solutions, or at least somebody who knows to test things before they implement them.
That's pretty good.
And the benevolent means that that person is brilliant and working for your interests.
Now, we actually have something that feels like that to me.
You've got the brilliant part, Elon Musk.
You've got the benevolent part, which I actually believe.
I believe he really wants free speech in his bones.
I think that's completely real.
But that's my opinion.
I don't know.
If he had some secret evil agenda, would I know it?
No.
Can't read minds.
But it feels to me like an ideal situation that's also temporary.
So I'm going to agree with Mark Cuban, no matter what you think of Elon, and I have a high opinion, he's not going to be there forever.
But Twitter won't always be the same forever either.
So by the time somebody else runs it, maybe everything else has changed.
Maybe there's a whole different AI platform or something.
So, I don't know.
I'd keep an eye on that, but be aware, in my opinion, there's no such thing as an algorithm that is not biased.
And if you had one, you couldn't make a business model out of it.
In other words, bias in the design of the algorithm is unavoidable.
My response to Mark Cuban, he certainly made his point.
The way the algorithm is, you can't avoid the fact that the owner of the company is going to get what he or she wants.
That's a good, solid point.
But, we don't know if we're seeing it yet, and I can't think of any model that would be better.
Can you?
You know, the obvious thing you think is like, oh, let's get rid of all moderation.
Do you think that would work?
Do you think you could build a platform with no moderation?
No.
Do you think you could have a platform in which you're not doing a lot of fact-checking and that works out okay?
No.
No, that's not going to work out okay.
There are no solutions.
So before you criticize the way it is, just remember, you're not comparing it to anything.
You're comparing it to some imaginary thing in your mind in which there's both no censorship and it works out fine.
That's not a possibility.
That is not even slightly a possibility.
Human beings will exploit every opportunity to be terrible.
So what's happening now, sort of dovetailing with this, is that, so Elon Musk wants to take away the block feature.
And people are asking me, Scott, what do you think about this?
And here's my opinion.
I'm one of Many millions of Twitter users.
Personally, removing the block feature for me in my very specific situation of a million followers, and I talk about politics, and people hate me, and people love me, and they're all going to be fighting it out in the comments.
In my very specific situation, removing the blocking is all bad.
But that's not my opinion of whether you should do it.
Because I'm just one person.
And I'm an elite, at least in terms of Twitter users.
I'm an elite Twitter user because I have a million followers.
Should Elon Musk modify his rules and his features to satisfy people like me?
If it's at the expense of everybody else.
And the answer is, I don't think so.
I'd love to tell you he should satisfy me and let the rest of you who have small accounts fend for yourself.
But I don't think that's the way you run anything.
I think not.
Now I'll go further and say, if I had as many followers as Elon Musk, I wouldn't care about blocking.
Do you understand that?
If I had 20 million followers, I wouldn't care about blocking.
Do you know why?
If you've got 20 million followers, you're not looking at comments.
You wouldn't spend a minute looking at comments.
Because there would be a million of them.
What are you going to do?
Block three of them?
Oh, I've got 300,000 people saying I'm a Nazi.
I'll block three of them.
But I can actually block 100% of my trolls without much effort.
On any given day, there might be fewer than five.
I click things five times a day, and I feel good when I click it.
So my experience is unique.
There's this little zone of influencers.
Somewhat in the size of my accounts, let's say quarter million to million and a half.
And there's lots of them.
For that group of people, it's all bad.
Removing blocking for us, tiny little sliver of users, is all bad.
And there's no way to argue that.
Does everybody agree?
That just for our personal enjoyment, it's just all bad.
Now whether that, and I've said before that I use blocking for mental health.
That's literally true.
I'm not making like a weird analogy or anything.
No, my actual physical state of mind is improved by blocking, and I can feel it immediately.
And the inability to block would bother me all day long, if something just sat there, and I couldn't do anything about it.
So even though blocking doesn't make other people not see it so much, it makes me feel good.
So I would say that my mental health would absolutely, no doubt about it, suffer, and that muting would not be nearly as satisfying.
That's my first take.
However, you know what I say about things that can be tested.
I should not have an opinion because it could be tested.
It can be reversed.
So if you can test it and you just find out, did it work for me?
Did it work for most people but not me?
I'd like to know.
So I would love Elon Musk to show the rest of the country how decisions are made.
First he said, I'm going to do this thing, but you have to know in the back of your head, and I'd like to hear him say it directly, but you know he's thinking it.
This is one where mind reading is easy, because everybody smart thinks the same way.
If you can test it, and if it's reversible, which software is, Test it.
So I'm not going to say yes or no.
Just give it a test.
If it works for everybody but me, I'll say go do it.
I'm not your boss.
If it works for you, I would be happy for you.
Honestly, I worry that I would quit using X. Because if I have to deal with Ben Garrison comics on my timeline again, I don't know if I'd stay.
I honestly don't.
Because that would be, it would make me feel bad every time I logged on.
But by, you know, blocking the people who send that, I don't see it.
Would muting do as well?
I doubt it.
But I'd be willing to see.
All right.
Let's see what else has happened.
So the news is that DeSantis is barely trying these days.
There's a clip in which he's taken a little bit out of context, I would say.
He said, quote, unless you're kissing, he was talking about Trump, he says, unless you're kissing his rear end, they'll call you a rhino.
And then he referred to, quote, listless vessels who follow whatever comes down the pike on truth social every morning.
And people said, um, are you running to get those votes or to alienate Republicans?
That feels like exactly the wrong approach compared to the smartest guy in the race, Vivek.
He just says good things about Republicans and people in general and And even Trump.
Does anybody hate Vivek because you think he doesn't like you?
No.
No.
He seems to like people.
He even seemed to like the LGBTQ reporter who there was a famous viral thing of them having a discussion.
He seemed to like her.
He seems to like people.
That's a real good quality in a president.
But DeSantis did a little bit of the deplorables mistake.
I would say he's taken a little bit out of context.
If you heard it in context, it wouldn't hit you the same.
Out of context, it's more grating.
In context, he's making a point.
You could argue about it, but I think it was a mistake.
I would say it was a mistake to word it that way.
Certainly mocking people who use truth social is just a big mistake.
So...
Yeah, it doesn't look like he's serious about any of this.
I don't know what it... I feel like he already knows that he's wasting his time.
He acts like a person who's smart enough to know none of this will help him.
All right.
Was it the Wall Street Journal, I think?
Who's reporting that the war in Ukraine could go on for years because Neither side has a clear goal that's attainable.
So they both have goals, but they're not attainable.
Russia is not going to own all of Ukraine.
Ukraine is not going to get its land back.
So how do you ever have peace?
And so the Wall Street Journal is saying, could be years of war.
Do you think we're that dumb?
Are we going to do this again?
If we know we can end it in a day, and honestly we can.
When I say we, I think Vivek could.
I think maybe DeSantis could.
I think Trump could.
I don't know how many of the others could, but maybe Mike Pence could.
I don't know.
But it seems pretty doable to me.
I'm pretty sure I could do it myself if I were president.
It looks so doable that I don't believe any of this.
And you know what's wrong with the framing?
Did you see what's wrong with the framing?
I'll say the framing again, you tell me what's wrong with it.
That neither Russian nor Ukraine have objectives that are both, you know, clearly stated, I want this, but also reasonably attainable.
So they're saying that, you know, their conflicting objectives are the problem.
Do you see what's wrong with that framing?
I want to see if it just jumps out at anybody.
What's wrong with that framing?
It's pure propaganda.
First of all.
Oh my God, it worked.
Oh my God, it worked.
They're diverting you from the obvious and it worked.
Oh my God.
I'm having a moment here where I'm actually horrified.
I am fucking horrified.
You're going to be real mad when I tell you.
When they frame it as Ukraine and Russia want things but they're having trouble getting them, here's the part you're missing.
Who the fuck cares what either of them want?
Who the fuck cares?
No.
If the United States wants them to stop fighting, we're going to make them stop.
That's it.
I don't care if Ukraine wants it.
I don't care what they want.
I don't care what Putin wants.
How did you all miss that?
Did they do such a good job of propaganda that every one of you missed that?
They made you think that it matters what they think.
It doesn't matter what they think.
They did the same thing with Mexico.
Do you remember when everybody said, well, the Mexican government's never going to agree to our military going in and operating against the cartels?
The Mexican government's never going to agree.
What's wrong with that framing?
Who the fuck cares what the Mexican government wants?
It's not up to them.
They don't have a fucking vote.
We have the military of the United States and we're under attack.
The Mexican government, zero vote.
We're wasting our time and treasure in Ukraine and it's costing us big time.
Does Ukraine have a vote in that?
No.
No.
They don't vote in the United States.
Does Putin have a vote?
Nope.
Nope.
Not a vote.
Now, if we get a president who can actually see past narratives, Vivek can, Trump can, probably several others can, but I'll just mention two.
You need somebody who can see past that framing.
And we do have two.
I don't know if we have more than that.
Actually, RFK Jr.
We have three candidates who can see past the propaganda framing, but I am horrified that none of you did.
Or at least in the comments you didn't mention it.
Now that I've mentioned it, do you see it?
Am I right?
You see it, right?
You see that the framing of what they care about is just absolutely It should be a crime.
The fact that they could even guide your mind in that direction is just crazy.
Now this is a subset of a reframe in my book.
One of the reframes in Reframe Your Brain, available now on Kindle, is that you don't know who has the power.
And we often get lost in an assumption of who has the power.
Ukraine doesn't have any power.
Russia doesn't have any power.
And our government doesn't have any power.
You do.
You and I do, collectively.
We can decide what our government does just by answering polls that say, don't do that.
If it gets to 80%, the government can't do it.
There are very few things your government can do if 80% of the public is against it, because they need to get reelected and stuff.
So the American public has the power But the media has cut you off from it by this kind of narrative.
This kind of narrative just takes all your power away because you don't know you have the power.
And you're like arguing about stuff.
Oh, Ukraine, this, Putin, that.
They're not relevant.
They are not relevant.
Oh, Europe, not relevant.
The Great Britain, not relevant.
Not relevant.
Military-industrial complex, they want... well, they're relevant, unfortunately.
Shouldn't be, but they are.
You can't be serious.
Yeah.
Anyway, the citizens do not have the power because they believe they do not.
So that doesn't seem to be changing.
So at the moment they don't, but it would require only a reframe of how they think before they would.
And all you would have to do is tell the people, you know, if the United States wants to end this, we could do it tomorrow.
What do you think?
Do you want to end it?
You don't think you would get 80% saying, well, I didn't realize that was an option.
No, it is.
It's actually an option.
You just ignore the interests of the other people because you can, and they're not relevant to you.
And then just end it.
You just tell both sides you'll crush them, you'll crush them.
If they don't stop right now.
I think Trump's the only one who could sell it, but Vivek could say it.
I mean, maybe he could sell it, but Trump could sell it.
All right.
What else is going on?
That's about it.
I don't think you need much more.
That's a good solid hour of Content that you won't see anywhere else.
And not too many commercials.
All right.
I saw that the famous Twitter account, Cat Turd, was complaining about the blocking feature.
And Elon Musk blocked him.
And then Elon tweeted that he's blocking people who are complaining about blocking.
He said, let's see how you like it.
And I thought, you know, yeah, I love it.
I love it.
I don't, even though I don't love the blocking, I just love the fact that he blocked people for complaining about blocking so they could see how they feel about being blocked.
He's helping.
He's helping.
The second funny thing about that is I blocked Cat Turd a long time ago because he's a fucking idiot.
I don't know.
Maybe you like him, maybe you follow him.
Personally, he's an idiot.
That's my take.
And I wouldn't want to see any of his tweets again, except that one was funny.
James Wood is making some news.
I saw a video from him.
They had a video of some, you know, youths attacking cars in Philadelphia.
And he tweeted the other day, this isn't fixable.
Does that sound familiar?
This isn't fixable.
Now, I don't think he follows me.
Well, he probably caught the headlines.
Don't you think James Woods caught the headlines about my cancellation?
Probably.
Most people did.
But it's not fixable.
Where have you heard that before besides me?
Who is another person who said it's not fixable?
You have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, right?
Alex Jones, Chris Rock?
Really?
Chris Rock?
I don't know about that.
Alex Jones, Bill Mitchell?
No.
Tim Poole said it?
Yeah.
And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with that opinion.
It's not cruel.
It's just a statement of what you think is happening.
So I would like cities not to fall into decay.
I would like everybody to have jobs and not walk on bums in the street.
But it doesn't look like it's going to happen.
And I would guess that the future is building new cities, as I said in the beginning.
And I think the old ones just have to go.
Because I think they need to bottom and then probably they'll just turn into something else.
But I think cities are probably on a long-term decline.
And I don't think we should necessarily try to fix them if they're not interested in fixing themselves.
So I would say get away from cities, if you can.
I should do a podcast with Peter Zayin.
I don't think he does guests, does he?
I think he just does his own thing.
He's very interesting, but I noted, and I'm glad you mentioned him, so I mentioned the other day that Peter Zan said that Russia's real goal with, you know, all of its aggressive moves were to make sure they controlled the attack points to defend Russia.
And if you look at them, they line up very well with the most strategic attack points.
Now his take is if you could, you know, make, well, I think I'm saying too much about his take.
I'll say it's my take.
If that's true, then that would suggest there's a way to deal with Russia.
Where you say, all right, your problem is these choke points.
Maybe there's some way, short of a war, that you can get some security, and we can get some security, and nobody's giving up too much.
So that would suggest if the Peter Zahn view of the world is right, it's about those choke points, that gives you something to negotiate.
If the Wall Street Journal is right, which is a totally different take, and by the way, never mentioned the choke point issue.
I've never seen it anywhere else, actually.
If it's true that the goals are amorphous and impossible to get, then you can't have peace.
So the Wall Street Journal article looks like an article that was written by the military-industrial complex.
I'm not saying it was, but it reads like it.
Would you agree?
It shows no hope and warns you that the war will take years.
Who benefits from that?
Military industrial complex.
Maybe the neocons.
But as much as I think the Wall Street Journal is, you know, one of the best independent vehicles for news, and I'm not going to make an accusation about that specific article, but use your own judgment.
There's another view that would say it's negotiable, at least two views, and they acted like because it's amorphous that it can't be negotiated.
The amorphous part is really not the problem.
And I don't know if they're just bad at telling you all the context, or if they were influenced by the military-industrial complex, right?
So those are the questions you would ask about a story like that.
All right.
Anybody else got a topic I haven't talked about?
You know, one of the things about being a public figure, is there any way to be a public figure and to not be accused of being anti-Semitic at some point in your career?
It's like literally unavoidable.
All right.
Yeah, China's in trouble.
15 minute cities, easy to pacify.
So is everybody, everything else.
At this point, as long as the government can turn off your money, which they can do anytime they want, they have full control already.
If the government can turn off your money, they already have full control.
Will the next hurricane be named Gavin?
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H... No.
It's gonna have to start with the letter I, right?
Because they go in order?
Yeah, it'd have to be Lavin.
Yeah, Alex Jones, I don't know if his... I can't imagine lockdowns.
Can't imagine lockdowns.
I can't imagine another school closing.
I just can't imagine it.
Alright.
F-D-E-I.
All right.
I think we've talked about it all.
And ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to go talk to the locals, people.
Thanks for joining YouTube.
Scott believes these people have reasons.
I don't know which people.
But if you believe that I think that people operate on reason, you have not followed me for very long.
