Episode 2215 Scott Adams: Persuasion Grades For DeSantis & Vivek. Lots Of Fake News. Bring Coffee
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Content:
Politics, Journalist Strategic Partnerships, Judge Chutkan, President Trump, Newt Gingrich, Working Class Voters, Science Coin-Flip, Border Security, Political Position Addicts, Failing Cities, Terrorist Threat, President Biden, Biden Dementia, Vivek Ramaswamy Smears, RFK Jr. Smears, Context Reframing, Steve Jobs, Reality Distortion Field, Speaking In Reframes, Ron DeSantis Body Language, Liar Eyes, Black & White News, Reframe Your Brain, Scott Adams
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and I'm pretty sure you've never had a better time.
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And if you'd like to take this experience up to a level where the dopamine and the oxytocin flow freely, well, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tankard chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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The dopamine at the end of the day thing makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
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Yeah, that's good.
That's good.
Well, today is going to be an extra good, amazing show.
How would you like me to completely solve The problem of you not trusting ballot boxes in this coming election.
Would you like to see me solve it?
Alright, here we go.
All you have to do is monetize The process.
So if I were to say to you, you know what?
I'm a big news organization and I'll offer $10,000.
I'm not offering this.
I'm just suggesting this could be an idea.
Let's say somebody offers $10,000 for a video of something that is confirmed to be illegal and makes a difference, you know, big enough to make a difference for a Dropbox.
So you can say to people, you know, if you get lucky and you get a video of the same person coming back several times, let's say you're a store owner and you've got a store window that's across from a ballot box.
Maybe you put up a trail cam, put up some video security, stick it over there and just see if you get anything.
So it'd be a little like mining for Bitcoin.
You know, you don't know if you're going to find a Bitcoin, but it's kind of fun to mine for it, just in case you get a hit.
So could you, could you monetize the capture of, let's say, any voting irregularities?
And then, if you did a good job, and no irregularities were found, wouldn't you feel more comfortable?
Wouldn't you feel better if you'd monetized it to the point where you're pretty sure people are watching?
Now, one important point.
Very important.
You can't have humans hanging around the Dropbox.
Because that would be intimidation.
So no intimidation.
Not even accidental intimidation.
Don't be hanging around the Dropboxes.
The ballot Dropboxes.
But if you could put a camera up, in a legal, public way, you might be able to monetize that stuff.
Think about it.
All right.
Fake news update.
I like to keep you up to date on all the fakeness in the fake news.
Well, here's one that should bother you.
Did you know that the Associated Press, the AP, which is a source of much of the news that other entities report, or they report about what the AP reports, But apparently last year they announced that they were, in order to help fund the organization, they were going to find these strategic partners and they'd have these partnerships to subsidize reporters.
So the reporters would get some extra money from these partnerships.
I wonder what kind of partnerships?
What kind of What kind of political organizations fund AP?
Well, let's see.
We've got the Ida B. Wells Society, and that was founded by the 1619 Project writer Hannah Jones.
What's her name?
Hannah Jones.
And she teamed up with filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Heartland Foundation.
So that they could foster, quote, more inclusive storytelling.
So there you go.
So that would be an example.
Let me list, you know, that obviously you're going to say, oh, that's a left-leaning organization funding them, so it's going to have influence.
That's not a complete story, right?
If I only told you about the left-leaning people funding the AP, you'd probably say to yourself, well, you're leaving something out, right?
Like, how many right-leaning organizations fund the AP, for example?
I completely left that out of the story.
So let me read the complete list of right-leaning organizations funding the AP.
Well, that's the complete list.
There was nothing on that list.
But at least I'm now complete.
I've told both sides.
Because sometimes you tell a story like this and it's all biased.
You're like only telling one side.
But I want to be complete.
That is the complete list of right-leaning funders for the AP.
So when you see news from the AP, what do you think you're seeing?
Do you think you're seeing news?
Or do you think you're seeing some writing by people who knows who's paying them?
You decide.
Well, I like that the Trump trial date has been set by Judge Chutkan, I think that's the pronunciation, to be right about the time of Super Tuesday.
One day before Super Tuesday.
And that's totally legitimate, and there were no political considerations whatsoever.
No, that's not true.
Let me tell you what's true.
We live in a zero-trust environment, but we still should treat individuals, people like you, people like me, as innocent until proven guilty.
That's a good standard.
But when you see any part of the government or the judiciary do something that looks sketchy, What should be your working assumption?
Innocent until proven guilty?
No.
That would be insane.
No, your working assumption should be that they're guilty.
That should be your starting assumption.
That doesn't mean it's true.
It also doesn't mean true that an individual is actually literally innocent until proven guilty.
It's just that we have to treat it that way because that's a better system.
But when it comes to the official people, the people that we know are corrupt in a sort of a general, usual way, to assume that anything they do is credible and real and for the right reasons is not really a good working assumption.
In 2023, you have to assume that these things are political.
You have to assume it's exactly what it looks like.
Somebody chose the least good date for Trump.
Now, that doesn't mean it's true.
If you asked me to prove it, I'd say, well, how do I prove what somebody's thinking?
Can't prove that.
I'm just saying that if you can't prove it, and they all know, let's say, mysterious intentions, if they can't prove it with transparency, then your best operating assumption is that it's exactly as crooked as it looks.
Even if it's not, it's the right assumption.
All right, but I like the fact that they're now so obvious about it.
If you had any doubts about this being a political process to take Trump off the board, there's no more doubt about it, right?
Once you get this obvious.
But how would you like a little wake-up call?
Anybody want a little wake-up call?
I would like to recount conversations I've had in the past week With other citizens of the United States.
Goes like this.
So did you hear the story about Vivek Ramaswamy at that time?
And whoever I'm talking to will say, who?
Vivek?
Vivek Ramaswamy?
Running for president?
Who?
Seriously.
You've never heard of Vivek Ramaswamy?
Vivek?
No.
Nope.
And then I'll say, how about Purgosian?
Have you heard of this guy Purgosian?
What?
Purgosian?
Who's he?
Died in a plane crash?
Had a Wagner?
Not ringing a bell.
Wagner?
What's Wagner?
Do you think, how much of the country do you think even knows that the Trump trial date is on Super Tuesday?
What percentage of the country knows that?
Less than 1%.
Yeah, we're all weirdos.
If you're watching this, you're in the weirdo of the weirdo of the weirdo situation.
You're like a double weirdo.
It's like a weirdo if you're watching the news at all, apparently.
Yeah, I think fewer than 10% of the country are watching the news.
But of the ones who watch the news, how many are watching at a level that they would understand about the Trump trial date or even know which of the four indictments it refers to?
Nobody knows that.
I'm barely hanging on, and I do this every day.
Every day I'm checking the news, like it's basically, I guess you could call it my job, if that's what this is.
And I'm just hanging on.
I can't keep the four indictments straight.
Can you?
If I said quickly, quick, name all four indictments, could you get them?
All right, if you could name all, a lot of people said yes, and I believe you.
The people saying yes, just remember how unusual you are.
Very, very unusual.
No more than 1% of the country, no more than 1% could name all four indictments.
So how much are the voters going to take that into account?
So don't fall into your little bubble where you think anybody knows anything about politics.
They just don't.
The country has no idea what's going on.
But it's also, at least it's obvious to the ones paying attention.
The one thing I like about it is that we don't have to wonder if this system is rigged.
It's about as rigged as it could possibly be.
Newt Gingrich thinks that Biden is cognitively impaired and that who's really running the country is some combination of Obama and Clinton.
Still, you know, usually they're people, but, you know, on behalf of the big powers.
True or false?
I don't know.
I forget who said this, but somebody said that if you could dig into the Clinton, you know, the Clinton Global Initiative thing, it would be so dirty.
Was this Newt?
Maybe it was Newt.
Somebody said it.
That if you could actually dig in and see what they did, it would make the Biden crime family look like, you know, littering.
It would be so obvious and so big.
I believe that.
I believe it because it's a big entity with not enough transparency and they are guilty until proven innocent.
All right.
Are you following the account on X called Trump History?
And once a day, or maybe more than once a day, they publish a fake parody picture created by AI that looks real, but is Trump in a variety of historical situations, like he's inventing the light bulb and he's doing insanely funny things.
But the one that I just I wish I could show it to you.
I don't have an extra screen.
But you have to go to my ex...
Thread, or what do you call it, the feed?
And you have to see the one that is titled, Donald Trump tells a young Vivek Ramaswamy that he will choose him to be his VP in the 2024 election.
And you see this little Indian kid who's like six years old, and you see Trump like leaning in, talking to him intently.
It's the funniest thing.
I've been just thinking about it all morning.
It is just so funny.
That these AI pictures are great, these fake historical things.
But it's not just that they're fake and the pictures are good.
It's that this one was really chosen with comedic, it's just comedic perfection.
I don't know who's behind it.
Alright, let's call this the Spunky 25.
Do you know what I'm referring to?
The Spunky 25?
The 25% of the country that gets every poll wrong, meaning if there's one really stupid answer for a poll, 25% of the country is going to be right on that point.
Here's an example.
Rasmussen Poll.
65% of voters think the current situation at the border with the migrants is a crisis.
So 65% of the country says the border situation is a crisis.
But interestingly, how many could watch that situation and say it's not?
24%.
24%.
Yeah.
24% of the country says, that doesn't look like a problem to me.
And the findings haven't changed since May.
60% of the likely voters in the US think that the migrant crisis Is more important to national security than supporting Ukraine.
30% say supporting Ukraine.
30?
Well, it's not too far from 25.
Say supporting Ukraine is more important than the border.
Now, I don't know if anybody's done this before, or if it worked.
I'll just run this by you as an idea.
If Trump were to reorient his campaign, toward giving Americans what the polls say they want, and just tell you that, would you have a problem with it?
Suppose you said, look, 60% of you want the border to be taken care of.
So I'm going to do that.
And then hold up another thing that says, all right, 70% of you say you want this.
So I'm going to do that.
Now, it wouldn't be leadership.
It wouldn't be leadership.
It would be following the public.
But are there sometimes you should follow and sometimes you should lead?
Well, national defense is one of those things you should probably lead.
Would you agree?
Let me give you a reframe.
Your leader should lead during the fog of war.
Your leader should lead during the fog of war, when you don't know what's what.
Somebody's got to make a decision.
Somebody's got to act fast.
Somebody's got to take the responsibility.
They're going to take the pain.
They're going to take the credit.
You've got to have a leader.
And that leader, if that leader is doing something you don't agree with, or even the majority of the country, well, it's because you hired him.
You hired him to do this.
To make the fast decision before the public even knows what the situation is.
But, here's my reframe.
Does that stay that way?
Once the public becomes informed, and once the truth or the facts become hardened, so we're kind of looking at the same situation, and then the public decides, well, you know what?
I'm glad we had a leader to act fast, but now that we have better information, maybe we should pull back from that position.
At that point, once the public is reasonably informed, if they say, no bueno, we're not going to do this anymore, do you think a good leader says, no, I still disagree with the majority?
Or does a good leader say, thanks for trusting me when it was ambiguous, because somebody had to lead, and now that we all see this situation, you know what?
I think I'd rather give the public what they want.
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with being a leader when you need a leader and being a, let's say, a populist when we have a better understanding of the situation?
There's nothing wrong with that.
Is that flip-flopping?
Sound like flip-flopping to you?
We'll talk about flip-flopping.
No, that would just be a reasonable person doing reasonable things.
So, as much as I think that you need your leadership when things are ambiguous, I'm not sure things are as ambiguous as they were.
So even Bernie Sanders is not giving his, let's say, unambiguous support to Biden.
He obviously prefers him over Trump or somebody.
But he's choosing his words carefully about Biden's age, trying to tiptoe around it without actually lying about it.
But he is kind of signaling that he is concerned without ever saying anything of that nature.
It's just the way he words it, you say, hmm, sounds like you're wording it in a way to protect him.
We get it.
And I guess Bernie expressed some bewilderment, that's the word being used, bewilderment, that the Republicans have more support from working-class voters than Democrats do.
Thank you.
Are you like shocked?
That working-class people think the Republicans might have a better idea.
By a little bit.
It's not a gigantic difference.
But that they're more than competitive with the Democrats.
Now, I think Bernie's point would be, look at all these things Biden did for you.
And he would say, infrastructure plan and, you know, I don't know.
What else?
I can't think of anything else.
What else did he do?
I'm not sure what, the infrastructure plan?
I haven't really seen anything happen from that.
Yeah, the other things he's doing are, you know, inflation, your gas prices are going up, there's an unnecessary war, the border is completely uncontrolled, people coming for your jobs, AI is going to destroy you, there's no plan for that.
I don't think it will actually.
Why is that a mystery?
Are you bewildered?
Is anybody like, I don't know what's going on here?
I can't figure it out.
I saw Tucker Carlson in some interview say that he thought Trump would be the most consequential president of our lifetime, and I completely agree with that.
But he pointed out that there were three, I hope I remember them, three Trump Truths that now we just accept as true when they seemed a little crazy.
So he started with gotta lock up that border.
And I think even reasonable people said, you know, I get it that there are people coming across illegally, but there always have been.
And you know, we're doing okay.
Right?
That wasn't crazy.
That was not my view, but it wasn't crazy to say, yeah, the border's not secure, but we're also doing fine.
You know, let's just leave them alone.
Maybe they get a better life out of it, right?
You can see that.
But at the moment, is anybody saying that?
I don't think anybody is.
Nobody who knows the actual situation, that they're not even Central and South Americans coming over.
At this point, it's all Europeans and Asians and Africans coming in.
So, and they're coming in with the cartels, you know, huge business model, they're making billions of dollars or whatever.
So, Trump was clearly right about the border.
We should have secured it.
He was clearly right about China, you know, hollowing out the middle class and we had to, you know, get tougher with China.
And I would argue he was definitely right about energy.
But I think Tucker had a third, he had a third example.
Forget what it was.
But there were three things that when you heard him, you're like, you know, he was really right about the biggest, the biggest things.
It wasn't about the fake news, although he was right about that.
I mean, Trump is the one that taught us that the news was fake.
Think about that.
Think about the fact that Trump is the one who taught us the news was fake, in a way that you didn't really understand before.
I mean, you always thought some of the news was fake, but did you know it was all fake?
Basically.
It's basically all fake.
Now, they might sometimes get one right, But I think it's a coincidence.
I don't think it's because they tried.
I think if it's anything about politics or, you know, and that would include anything with science.
So science is all political now, right?
Because if science shows something, then you've got to do something different politically.
So science is just politics at this point.
Am I wrong?
The science and politics merged?
I'm not wrong.
By the way, has anybody said that before?
I like that reframe.
Science is great, but what we now have is a hybrid of science plus politics.
If you add politics to science, you get shit.
Science by itself, pretty terrific in the long run.
In the short run, science is just a coin flip.
It's just a coin flip in the beginning.
And I mean even after you've done a study.
Because the number of studies that are peer-reviewed that end up later being not as supportable is about half.
That's actually a coin flip.
So science starts as no more dependable than a coin flip, you know, in the early hypothesis stage.
Well, hypothesis is lower than a coin flip.
You know, by the time you've done one published study, you're up to a coin flip, right?
So you start in, well, 10% chance maybe.
Worth a shot, let's study it.
Up to 50% if your study says yes, but you're only 50%.
That's just a coin flip.
And then maybe after 30 years, lots of studies and lots of arguments, then we kind of solidify on something.
We say, yes, the Big Bang definitely happened just the way we said.
And then you wait 30 years and find some evidence that says the Big Bang couldn't have been what you said, but you were happy for 30 years.
That's science.
Turns out it wasn't right after all, in some substantial ways.
All right.
As I tweeted the other day, and actually saw a number of agreements, which I wasn't expecting, the trajectory of at least cities, and certainly some other things in politics, certainly the border, is that it looks like it couldn't get any worse, doesn't it?
It's like, you know, things are just going to hell.
So the border security could not possibly be worse than it is right now.
The cities are just lost at this point.
But here's the optimism.
You ready?
Here's the optimism.
It has to hit bottom because you're dealing with addicts.
The people who are supporting the current failed system are addicts.
I don't know what they're addicted to.
They're either addicted to maybe the public approval of doing woke, you know, liberal things.
It might be they're addicted to the feeling of being the person who's fighting the big power, maybe.
Maybe they're addicted to the power.
Maybe they're addicted to the money, the prestige.
Maybe they're addicted to supporting their team.
But whatever it is, it's not based on a reason.
You can't look at any of our cities and say, well, that's what we planned.
And it's working fine, so let's keep doing more of it.
You can't do that.
But here's the problem.
As long as the cities limp along, and they still have traffic and some business and stuff, maybe it just keeps going slightly worse every year.
Our best case scenario is that we hit bottom.
Do you know what hitting bottom would look like?
A Democrat saying, fuck it, I'm a Republican now.
That's what it looks like.
As long as there's still Democrats all the way down, you're not at the bottom.
You hit the bottom when somebody says, whoa, everything I thought was wrong.
Like an addict, right?
The drinker is thinking, well, I could quit, but I like it.
And then when you hit the bottom, they're like, okay, I quit.
Because no choice now.
So we're not at the bottom.
But don't look at our rapid decline as necessarily a one-way street.
We have to hit bottom before it gets fixed.
So once the cities are a little bit more unlivable, maybe a lot more, then something will happen.
I don't know what will happen, but it'll be some correcting force.
But don't worry that the cities are getting worse unless you live in them.
And if you do live in a city, Why?
Why?
Unless it's a Republican city that's running well.
Why would you do that?
Get out of those places.
Get the hell out.
Let it fail.
Let it fail as quickly as possible.
Then you got a chance.
All right, here's my section I call Biden Dementia Takes.
Biden Dementia Takes.
He said that the U.S.
intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland.
So he got that from the U.S.
intelligence community.
The U.S.
intelligence community.
The U.S.
intelligence community.
Have they ever been wrong?
Let's see.
So the people who were sure that the Hunter laptop Well, it's almost like you're saying that the organization that we trust the least is saying something that on its surface sounds ridiculous.
Well, it's almost like you're saying that the organization that we trust the least is saying something that on its surface sounds ridiculous.
How often has that been true?
intelligence people saying something that the rest of us think is sort of ridiculous on the surface.
It might be the least credible thing anybody ever said.
Now, of course, he's parsing his words carefully.
So he's saying it might be the greatest terrorist threat.
What are the other terrorist threats and how do you measure them?
How do you measure the terrorist threat that hasn't happened?
Isn't the whole point of terrorism, you don't know when it's going to happen, and when it does, it could be a big deal?
How does he know that the biggest Islamic terrorist threat of all time, your radical Islamic terrorists, let's say, isn't tomorrow?
If you want the ultimate, I'm going to give you the ultimate conspiracy theory.
You ready?
The ultimate conspiracy theory I can see no reason that we haven't had ongoing terrorism in the United States from foreign sources.
I don't see any way that could be possible.
Unless they were never real in the first place.
Meaning that things probably blew up and people really died.
But I mean that, who is backing them exactly?
Exactly who is backing them that they can't do the simplest thing in the world, which is blow up something or destroy something in the United States.
I don't like to brag, but if I ever decided to become a terrorist in the United States, I think I could take down the whole country in about a week.
I don't even feel like it's that difficult.
So, I mean, if you called your shots correctly and planned right, it wouldn't be that hard.
And yet the total terrorist threat at the moment from foreign sources appears to be basically zero.
Like, I don't even think about it.
Do you?
And can you point to anything that would have caused that to happen?
I can't.
Is it because we were so nice to people in the Middle East You know, while fighting ISIS, we did it so professionally and politely that ISIS, when we were done, said, you know what?
Good fight, guys.
Yeah, you win.
We're going to take our beating and go home.
Yeah, you win this one.
What can we do?
No, there's something that terribly doesn't make sense.
It terribly, terribly doesn't make sense that we're not safe.
And I was also suspicious about why they have to do grandiose exploding Operations.
Really, that's the only thing you could do to hurt a country, is grandiose, exploding things.
That's it.
Now, that was always such a tell for something not being what it looks like.
If we wanted to destroy a country, we wouldn't limit it to one kind of specific attack that's easy to stop, or easier to stop than some other things.
So I don't know who to blame or what's going on.
I'm just saying that the whole terrorism, let's say, narrative couldn't possibly be the one we have.
In other words, what's explained to us as Americans couldn't possibly be true.
Not even a little bit.
Would you agree?
Now we're watching refinery fires, food processing fires, and the question is how many of those people that came across the border From other countries are actually just terrorists.
And they're doing the smart way to destroy a country, which is a little bit at a time.
Just keep biting little edges off.
I don't know.
I don't know what to believe because there's no way to know what's true anymore.
All right, so Biden dementia take number two.
He actually said this.
And he's still in office.
All right, I want you to hold into your head how insane this is, this next story, and that Biden's still in office.
Just that he's still in office, and here's something he said out loud, clearly and intentionally in public.
He said, quote, I was able to literally, not figuratively, talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the Civil Rights Act.
Problem number one, Biden was 22 years old when the Civil Rights Act was voted on.
Do you think that when he was 22 that he personally talked Strom Thurmond into voting for it?
The answer is no, because Strom Thurmond famously voted against it.
Famously.
Against it.
Not only did he not talk to him, not only was it not literally, but he didn't change anybody's mind because Trump voted against it.
Now, he said this in public.
Right?
The news reported it, so it's not like anybody missed it.
Nobody's claiming he was joking.
Right?
Nobody's claiming he was joking.
Nobody's claiming he misspoke.
Nobody's claiming he was taken out of context.
Nobody's even claiming he lied.
Just hold this in your head for a moment.
He's the Commander-in-Chief.
Now, how much more broken could at least the Democrats, I mean, you could argue, all right, let me broaden this.
And you're telling me that the Republicans have not started an impeachment process?
The impeachment should be driving him toward the 25th, you know, replacement.
Is it only because Kamala's worse?
Are even the Republicans afraid of Kamala?
Maybe so, huh?
They don't want to give her a little boost because then she might run for president from that boost?
Somebody says he wasn't lying, he was talking about the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
There were two Civil Rights Acts?
Alright, we're getting a fact check here.
Fact check?
Give me a fact check.
There were two things with the same name.
So they're saying he was referring to a different bill.
All Oh, this is interesting.
Because if you watch right-leaning X, I didn't see anybody fact-check that.
But I'm seeing people, all right, let me pivot.
Allow me to pivot.
I'm only gonna mock Snoopy Boobs here, who says I'm getting burned.
Here's a little lesson for you.
If your brand is that you're always right, in these situations you would be triggered into cognitive dissonance, and you would argue that it couldn't possibly be true that the story is wrong, because that would embarrass me in public.
If you can't be embarrassed, you won't get cognitive dissonance.
So my brand is, I will change instantly when the information does.
And that probably happens a lot.
So it looks like it's happening right now.
It appears that in public, I'm being humiliated by my critics for having a wrong fact.
Which looks like they might be right, by the way.
I'm not going to doubt them.
I think I'll look into that.
So, watch me not experience cognitive dissonance.
I just said, oh, that looks like you might have a good point there, because that's exactly what the news does.
In fact, the next things I'm going to be talking about are that the news does exactly that.
So if it's true that I got got, and it looks like it is, that's a good story.
And I'll just tell you that I fell for it.
Everybody good?
All right.
So, all right, let's look into that.
It doesn't make him any less dementia, but maybe that wasn't true.
Did you hear the story about Tucker Carlson explaining how he was called by some spook type person who knew that he was negotiating to do an interview with Putin?
So I think this is back when he worked at Fox News.
And he was actually told that His Signal account, his encrypted app, wasn't secure and the NSA was just reading his messages.
Now, can I remind you again?
Everything you put in a digital form is discoverable.
No matter what they tell you, it's discoverable.
One way or the other.
One way to discover it is they just have access to the recipient's phone.
So maybe the message got sent all encrypted, just like you should.
But once it reaches the other person's phone, it's being sent to a screen.
So presumably, you could pick it up between the encrypted app and what it presents on the screen.
Because at that point, it's unencrypted.
So if you own the phone of the recipient, it doesn't matter if you're encrypted or not.
And that's just one way to do it.
The other way to do it would be if they had a back door and we don't know about it.
Could have a back door.
No, no.
So you should assume that all your digital communications are public.
Just public.
Never say anything that you wouldn't say in public.
All right.
That's the best advice I'll ever give you.
So there's this weird thing going on with the coverage of Vivek.
And it goes like this.
He'll be on an interview, podcast or the news.
Somebody will take something he said out of context and they'll ask him to defend it.
Why did you say X?
And then he'll say, well, I didn't.
I didn't say that.
Here's what I did say.
And then they'll say, well, oh, you say you didn't say that.
Well, here's the source.
And then the source will support Vivek.
And yet the person pointing to the source won't be able to see it or know it or acknowledge it.
As if they're looking at a different movie and saying, oh, I'm looking at The Sound of Music, but it's really Schindler's List.
I mean, and I've seen it several times now.
And then what do they do after it looks like he's been taken out of context, but they won't admit it?
Then they say, what's the next thing they say?
Then they say he's a flip-flopper.
They say he's a flip-flopper because they say the new thing you're saying, that's different than the thing you said before, but it isn't.
And it never was.
It's the same.
And so now they call him a flip-flopper.
And then there's a step after the flip-flopper accusation.
They take all the times that they've done this to him, and they put it in a list, and then they post it on X, and they say, look at all these times he's flip-flopped.
And in fact, every one of those is him being taken out of context.
He tells you what he really thinks and how it was taken out of context.
They refuse to acknowledge that he ever said that, that he ever gave them the accurate story.
And then they call him a flip-flopper, and then they put it in a list.
So here's another one.
And here's the test to know when they're doing it, okay?
Remember the really test?
Where there'll be a claim in the news, and here's a way you can tell it's fake.
Just say, really?
Really?
Seriously?
If you can't get past the really test, probably not true.
All right, let me give you one.
The claim is that Vivek says if he were president, he would end funding to Israel in 2028.
Now that would be just, you know, four years after taking office.
And Israel, one of our most important allies, certainly politically you could argue most important.
So do you think that a Republican running for a major office, let me ask this, do you think a Republican running for a major office suggested something that Israel and all supporters of Israel would immediately go, and never be able to recover from it?
Really?
Really?
Do you really think that someone as smart and as good with his messaging as Vivek would have really said that?
You think he really would have thought, oh, here's a good idea.
Does anybody want to say they believe it?
Does anybody want to say they believe it right now?
Before I give you any more information.
Oh, somebody says they believe it.
Really?
You really believe that a major candidate said he was going to screw Israel, which is what it would sound like.
A major candidate says he's going to screw Israel while running for president.
That actually sounds believable to you.
Somebody who went to Harvard is so capable that he's rising up the rankings, that's all we're talking about, and that that guy was so smart in every way, but somehow didn't realize that a clear message of non-support for Israel would somehow hurt him and make him unelectable.
He wouldn't realize that, right?
Really?
All right, you want to hear what the real story is?
Of course it was conditional.
Of course.
Do you think he said that if everything's the same as it is now, I'm just going to take their funding away?
Really?
You don't think it was a conditional statement?
It was a conditional statement.
And here's the condition.
That he would expand the Abraham Accords so that the entire region would be in a safer, more stable situation.
And then, Once it's stable, they wouldn't need our help.
So once the situation changes from the current situation where they probably do need our help, to a situation where you and I would all agree, oh, it looks like they're much safer now, you know, not totally safe, but much safer, and they could maybe handle it on their own.
Does that sound crazy?
It might be too optimistic.
If you say, oh, that's way optimistic.
Yes.
Yes, that's way optimistic.
But shouldn't he be aiming for it?
Is it wrong to aim for that?
Because in four years, you know, four years after 2024, he could say, you know, we didn't get there.
But if we had gotten here, we'd be talking about cutting funding.
But we didn't get there.
Now, would that be crazy?
Now, when I explain what he really said, Do you really believe that he just said, if everything stays the same, I'll just cut funding in four years to Israel?
Does anybody believe that now?
It would be crazy.
I should not have had to explain that it was a conditional statement.
You should have seen that from the start.
And the start is, nobody would have said that out loud.
All right, here's another one.
Do you believe that a president, an actually sitting president, went on TV, Thought about what he was going to say and then said that neo-Nazis are fine people.
Really?
Do you really believe that somebody actually did that?
And of course the answer is they didn't.
Of course they didn't.
It was, you know, it was a Ruppar edit.
He never said that.
He said the opposite of it literally and directly.
Here's another one.
Do you think that a sitting president of the United States Once stood in public with a bunch of science doctor people and suggested that you should, or at least that it was worth looking into, drinking disinfectant.
Really?
Really?
That's possible?
That maybe that actually happened?
No.
No, you didn't need to know the whole background story that there was in fact a test about putting light into at least the trachea, and they were maybe thinking about the lungs later, and that the light was a disinfectant, and that the news took light as disinfectant and misinterpreted it as chemical disinfectant.
Now, I shouldn't have had to give you the explanation, because the moment you heard it, okay, that didn't happen.
Now, here's where it's tricky with Biden.
So I looked at this news, which I think I probably got wrong, based on your fact checks, and he said something that would have been, like, so crazy that they would have, you know, 25th Amendment him that day.
So probably I should have said, do you really think that he said that he That he helped Strom Thurmond vote for something he didn't vote for.
Except that Biden has a history of saying wildly ridiculous things that you can't tell if it's dementia or not.
So under that specific situation, Biden doesn't fit into the really.
Because Biden actually does say things that seem disconnected from reality.
So he is a special case where the really test doesn't work.
But if you've got somebody who's a functioning person, like all of the candidates, all of the candidates except Biden are functioning.
If you heard that, and RFK Jr.
is the same thing, by the way.
If you look at the RFK Jr.
attacks, just try this.
Really?
Really, a guy as smart as RFK Jr., you're telling me that he said whatever it is that he said, that like all vaccinations are bad or something.
I think that's one.
One of them is, do you really think he said all vaccinations are bad despite being vaccinated and his kids are vaccinated?
Probably not.
More likely he had a problem with how well they're tested, maybe something about the liability.
You know, that would be reasonable, but no.
If it sounds ridiculous, it probably is.
All right, here's a little... I'm going to give you some persuasion takes on DeSantis and Vivek.
Vivek has, in my opinion, the best persuasion game on top of communication.
Communication is just, you know, saying what you want to say.
Persuasion is what Trump does.
Now, I told you that Trump was the best visual persuader, but he'd also make you think past the sale.
So you weren't just thinking, does he want to build a wall, yes or no?
You were thinking the actual structure of the wall.
You're thinking, well, what do you make it of?
Right?
That's what Trump does.
He makes you think past the decision, wall or no wall, all the way to, well, what's that wall going to be made of?
Basic, good persuasion.
So when Vivek says the FBI is corrupt, which other people have said, he doesn't leave it there.
He doesn't just tell you that he wants to change the FBI.
He says, I've published a detailed plan of where those employees would take their functions.
So you don't lose the function.
You just lose the nature of the group.
Same with the Department of Education.
He doesn't just say he wants to get rid of it, which I never found convincing.
He says, I want to get rid of it and take that funding and do block grants to the state.
So now I'm wondering about block grants to the state.
So I'm already thinking past he got elected and I'm thinking past, you know, basically he's making me think.
Now when he talks about Taiwan, he talks about the short term protecting them.
And he talks about the long-term, you know, it might be a different ballgame if we don't have a strategic interest.
Let's say we're doing our microchips over here.
Again, every time that Vivek talks, he makes you imagine him president and that he's already doing the job.
And you're actually evaluating the details of how he's doing the job, not the question of whether he got elected.
That is pure Trump A technique, and it's A+.
So if you're judging Vivek only on his communication ability, which is A+++, you would miss that embedded in it is a layer of persuasion skill that nobody else is demonstrating.
You know, Trump does.
Nobody but Trump.
So if you catch it, then you understand why people like Mike Cernovich are giving him a strong look.
Because Sturtevich can see the layers, right?
You would have to have some experience to see the persuasion layer.
But wow, it's there!
The one thing I would say to Vivek is he needs to do a better job of saying his answer first, and then his explanation for the answer.
So he waits to give the definitive answer sometimes, gives a little too much context first, and that makes it look evasive.
When in fact he doesn't need to evade anything, because he's never run from any of his opinions.
So he's not trying to evade anything.
He's just giving, you know, a good complete answer.
But if the complete answer doesn't start with the conclusion, it's a persuasion mistake.
And I don't know that Trump ever does that, by the way.
This would be interesting.
I've never noticed him do it.
But if Trump is asked a question, he'll give you the answer first, and then he'll tell you why.
Am I wrong?
Watch for that.
I think you're going to see that, that he answers first.
That's a very strong technique.
The other thing I'd love to see Vivek do that I've been doing, and it works, is that before you give your direct answer, you give just a little bit of context reframing.
So when I'm asked about my controversial comments, the way that I do that is say, well, you know, I'm not sure that most of your viewers understand that news about public figures is never real.
Now, do you know who did that reframe first?
That's the Steve Jobs reframe.
I borrowed that from him.
When he had the problem with AntennaGate, instead of saying, well, our phones have this problem.
We'll do what we can.
That would be weak.
He started by saying, all cell phones have problems.
All smartphones have problems.
And then everybody said, oh, well, that's actually true.
So the context is, now I understand the context.
They all have problems.
So when we talk about yours, it won't seem special to me.
It'll just be in the context of, yeah, they all have problems.
And then the news reported the next day after Steve Jobs said that, yeah, all smartphones have problems.
And they even mentioned them.
They mentioned the other company's problems.
You can't get a better persuasion than that.
By the way, do you know why Steve Jobs was known for having a distortion, a reality distortion field around him?
And yet you never heard that about Bill Gates, did you?
Did you ever hear, oh Bill Gates, he's got that reality distortion field around him?
Do you know why it seemed that jobs unique among people had a reality distortion field around them?
I will answer that question with one word.
Reframes.
If you listen to Steve Jobs' talk, he reframes first, like he did with AntennaGate, and then he gives his argument.
Let me give you the most famous example.
It was when he was trying to get Scully to leave Pepsi.
He was president of Pepsi.
He wanted to leave that job and be the head of Apple.
And he famously said to him, after Scully had said, no, no, no, no, no.
Toward the end of the meeting, he said, well, the question is this.
It comes down to this question.
Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or change the world?
Now, what's that?
That's a reframe.
That's a reframe.
Jobs spoke in reframes.
And when you speak in reframes, reframes are basically a form of hypnosis that probably nobody but me would call it that.
But it's a form of persuasion that's so strong and can happen so quickly, like the reframes I just mentioned, they happen so quickly that your brain goes from, I'm over here to what?
And that's the reality distortion field.
It's the feeling that you were sure of this, until he said that, and he reframed it, and the reframe was so good, your brain just said, I give up, I'm taking your reframe.
And then you have this feeling, like reality is loose, like he can move it around.
It's not an illusion.
He's actually moving reality around.
That's what a reframe does.
He's literally changing reality.
Because your reality is subjective.
You could argue that there's a base reality, I don't know.
But your reality is subjective.
And when he reframes you, as quickly as he does, and he did it almost everything he talked about was a reframe.
Do you remember the slogan for the early Macintosh?
Think different?
That's a reframe.
It assumes that everybody using these old boring IBMs were like drones.
I am a drone.
I'm just typing.
I'm using Word and maybe a little bit of Excel, but I do not have any creativity.
No, I'm like everybody else.
Who in the world likes to admit they're like everybody else?
Nobody.
Internally, everybody thinks they're different.
Right?
Everybody thinks they're different internally.
Externally, we look at people and go, you're just like that other person.
But internally, we all think we're special snowflakes, right?
So that was a reframe.
You reframed it from, is this computer better than this one?
To, do you think differently?
Or are you one of these drones?
That was a hell of a reframe.
Hell of a reframe.
Alright, so I would like to see Vivek do a reframe.
for some of these challenging questions.
So he could say, you know, I'm going to answer this question directly, but just some context.
You know that there's this weird thing happening where people are taking everything I say out of context and then challenging me and then saying that I'm flip-flopping if I simply explain what the original context was.
So we won't do that today.
But to answer your question, the answer is no, and here's why.
So that's the form that just wins every game.
If you say, the playing field is this, and you describe a reasonable playing field.
So my playing field is that this fits into a pattern of stories.
Here's my playing field.
Playing field is the pattern.
And now you're going to have to explain why this isn't another one of those.
Why isn't this a Rupar?
When I explain what a Rupar is, before I explain that something is a case of it, it goes over way better.
If you start by saying, okay, this one thing is a Rupar, and what they did was they changed the edit, you might convince some people.
You might.
But if you do it this way, Okay, you know that this is a widespread, most normal technique.
And they've done it in this case, in this case, in this case.
And you can see each of the cases where they took something out of the quote, which has the weird effect of actually reversing its meaning.
It doesn't seem like it's possible.
But, you know, you can see it a number of times.
And then, when you talk about your next situation, people are all primed.
It's like, oh, that's a rupar.
I get it.
I get it.
It's one of those.
So that's the technique.
Let's talk about DeSantis.
DeSantis is a very capable person, but his body language doesn't match what I think is happening on the inside of his head.
Now, I can't read his mind, but I have the following, let's say, beliefs about him.
I believe that all observation and his personal history suggests that he's confident and capable, Would you say he's confident and capable, based on observation?
I think so.
I think he's both confident and capable.
However, his body language screams the opposite.
Screams it.
Right?
Problem number one, he has a head-shaking problem.
Look at me talking.
I'm talking about Ron DeSantis, and I'm telling you that he has a head-shaking problem.
Notice my head isn't moving too much?
Now I'm going to talk about, let's say, inflation, and I'm going to do a Ron Santos.
We've had inflation here since the beginning.
The inflation rate has been higher, but now it's a little bit lower, but they're not counting it right.
The shaking of the head is refuting his own voice.
That's number one.
Number two, he has liar eyes.
Liar eyes.
Liar eyes are the ones that are too wide, because when you open your eyes wide, you're trying to get somebody to believe something that you don't believe.
All right?
Let me give you the difference.
This is not liar eyes.
So I'll say something that's true.
Yesterday was a really nice day.
Now I'm going to give you liar eyes.
I'll say the same thing, but I don't believe it was a really good day.
I just want you to believe it.
Yesterday was a really good day.
Liar eyes.
They're way wide.
He has liar eyes.
Now, I only see him in public, but I can't believe... Yeah, Schiff.
He has Adam Schiff liar eyes.
You're right.
But I can't believe that his eyes look like that when he's talking to his family.
Do you think his eyes are all the way open when he talks to his family?
No.
The all the way open is that you don't believe what you're saying, but you think if you change your face you might be able to sell it a little better.
It's a recognition that there's a weakness with his argument.
Now he also has what I call pleading voice.
Pleading voice.
If you want to see contrast, here are some people who don't have pleading voice.
Pence.
When Pence talks, whether he's right or wrong, his voice says he believes it, and this is a fact.
He'll say, we've got to do this because of this.
We have to do that because of that.
If we do this, we'll get this effect.
If we do this, we'll get that effect.
That's Pence.
Trump talks that way.
Vivek talks that way.
You know, most politicians have command voice.
That's command voice.
Pleading voice sounds like, we've got to do something at the border because there's lots of people coming over.
I'll kill people dead if they come over the border.
It's not quite up talk.
But there's something that speaks to a lack of relaxation in the chest.
Maybe that's what's happening.
But the raised voice is the, I don't believe what I'm saying, but I hope you will.
Now, I started by saying that I think he's a confident, like internally, I think he's actually a confident, capable guy.
But his body language is screaming the opposite.
And I feel like people are picking up on it.
And then on top of that, he has sort of a corporate choice of words.
He's not quite as friendly-talking and familiar as somebody like a Trump or even a Christie.
Christie has the common touch, but also a big vocabulary.
Anyway, so I think that that's the big problem with DeSantis.
Policies aside, you can find policy problems if you want.
But I think his body language is an absolute train wreck.
And I also think that that doesn't matter as much for a governor.
It's just that when you go from governor to president, it's everything.
At the governor level, you're looking at his track record, his capability, his stated policies, maybe his history.
And if he has a funny voice, or he blinks too much, or whatever it is, you're going to say, well, he's not my commander-in-chief.
Right?
He's not the Commander-in-Chief.
He's sort of a law-making, legislation, you know, fix-the-potholes kind of guy.
I don't care how he talks.
I don't care that his eyes are buggy.
Just fix the potholes.
Now you talk about somebody who's got to save the world in case there's a nuclear confrontation.
Do you want the guy with the bug eyes and the shaky head and the voice that sounds like he's pleading?
Nope.
Hard no.
Can't put him in that position.
Or do you want someone like Trump, who's just Trump?
Which is sort of perfect.
If you're in a nuclear confrontation, I'm going to pick Trump every time.
Every time.
You give me a nuclear confrontation, Trump.
Now, could Vivek do it?
Probably.
I would have a lot of confidence in Vivek.
I would also have a lot of confidence in Ron DeSantis.
Because I think the internal Ron DeSantis doesn't have the problems that his body language is projecting.
I think on the inside he's a solid guy.
Alright.
Here's the latest from what I call Black and White News.
Black and White News is where the news tries to divide us by race.
Chris Cuomo says to Vivek, he shouldn't compare any black person to the KKK.
My take on this is, I don't give a fuck.
I don't care.
I don't care who he compared to anything.
Because the person that was the subject of this was a person.
It was a human one person.
It wasn't somebody representing a whole race.
It was one asshole who he said sounded like the KKK, and then gave a specific example to which I said, it's hyperbole.
I mean, it's obviously hyperbole.
It's not a literal thing.
He's saying that, you know, if you talk like this, you know, you're more associated with moving in that direction than the direction of good and rightness, I guess.
So everybody understood what he said, right?
When he compared somebody to the KKK, that's literally the entire business model of the Democrat Party.
Just comparing people to Hitler, Comparing him to Gobbles.
Gobbles, whoever the hell he is.
Comparing him to the KKK.
That's all it is.
The business model, literally the business model of the Democrats, is to do this.
So do I care that Vivek, this one time, did the same thing to shove it back in their fucking faces?
No.
Thank you, Vivek, and thank you for not apologizing.
The best part was he didn't apologize.
He said, no, this is why I said it.
She said this.
Nobody agreed with what she said.
I mean, basically, who is it?
Presley?
Who said that they didn't need brown people who weren't supporting the brown point of view or something about Vivek.
So yeah, she had it coming.
You say shit like that and somebody's going to compare you to the KKK.
That's the way it works.
He didn't make the rules.
So, but do I care that this is a black-white issue?
Nope.
Nope.
This is about Vivek and one person he talked about.
That's it.
I am no longer buying into the idiot the average of one race should be compared to the average of the other race.
That's just stupid and I refuse.
I refuse to buy into the model.
It's about a person.
It's about a crime.
And that's it.
All right.
Let's see what else is going on here.
So I don't know how to say this without Sounding egotistical or being too much about me, so I'm not going to worry about it.
I'll just do it.
You know that when an author writes a book, then it's part of the job to promote it and do the marketing for it.
And I'm not super comfortable with anything that sounds like marketing or selling, because I think the product has to do that, right?
If the product isn't selling itself, then you should have tried harder, right?
You missed it when you made the product.
That's where everything went wrong.
But I've taught you before that there's a tell for knowing when something is going to be big.
Now, Here's a rare situation where the tell has formed.
You can really see it strongly.
But the success has not happened yet.
It's happened at a small level.
And that's what's happening with this book.
So I have over somewhere in the 40 to 50 book range, if you count the Dilbert reprint books.
I think I forget how many regular books I've written, a dozen or so.
So I've seen what happens when a book is launched and what it looks like.
Usually it's me talking about it and some people who like things I do buy the book.
And then sometimes they write good reviews, most of the time, I'm lucky to say.
And then maybe some other people look at it and they buy the book.
So that would be a normal, you get a big Again, a big sales bump when you're doing the marketing.
And then, you know, if people like it, maybe it lasts a little while.
That's normal.
That does not necessarily predict a big hit.
Because that's just the normal cycle that every book goes through if there's any promotional push.
However, there is a tell that you don't see often that is just screaming about This book.
And the tell is people extending the model.
So today there is yet another pirated book on Amazon.
I call it a pirated book.
It's listed as a workbook.
So there are now three people who have ripped off my book the same week it was published to have a ripoff.
Have you ever seen that before?
Has anybody ever seen that before?
Even once?
It's happened three times in a week.
I've never seen it.
I've got already two offers from other countries.
I won't mention the countries, but they're notable countries.
Notable countries for translation rights.
Now the way those offers work is that those publishers in other countries, if you do a deal with them, they do all the work.
They literally just take the book and they put their own cover on it, do the translation, market it and sell it in their own country.
And the book's only been out a few days, you know, a week or so, and already other countries are asking for it.
That's unusual.
That's unusual.
But I don't know if you're following my Twitter feed, but have you seen how many people are taking a picture of family members reading the book and reporting that they're going to have to buy more than one of them for just their family that lives in one house?
How often do you see people buy more than one copy of a book for a family of four?
It's happening massively.
All day long, people are telling me, I got two, I got three.
My wife wanted to read it.
I have to buy another one.
I just got my 12-year-old son's reading it, so we had to get another one.
I've also gotten massively.
I read the Kindle, but I wanted the hard book, the hard cover.
I bought 10 for a gift.
I've never seen anything like it.
And then the people who are reporting that it's already changed their lives.
It's crazy.
If you look at the book, there's still a few books above it in some of the categories.
If you look at the books above it, read the reviews of the books that are still above it, which I don't think that's gonna last.
But the books that are above it have, like, people love them.
Like, oh, this is the greatest book, I enjoyed it a lot.
But look at the language they use as to whether it changed anything about their life.
And then look at the reviews for this book.
And this book is like off the hook.
And then also look for a real review about this book that's also negative.
There are a couple of one-star reviews where it's really obvious they didn't read the book.
It's just some critic of mine.
So if you're famous from some other domain, you always get the critic who comes over and gives you the one-star review.
And then in the review, they make sure that, well, you judge for yourself.
So one of the reviews for one-stars was, there's nothing new in the book.
Does that sound like somebody who read it?
There's nothing new in there.
For those of you who read it, right, there's no way.
There's no way you would say that.
Even if you did have a complaint, it wouldn't be that.
It definitely wouldn't be that.
So you know that's not a real review.
So I've never had a book that didn't have a bad review that wasn't obviously just a troll.
So there's something happening.
And I think it has to do with just being in the right place at the right time.
That at the same time that AI showed us that words are how intelligence is formed, and the word combinations, and that's what a reframe is.
A reframe is putting words into your head that replace the words that were there that weren't helping you.
So maybe it's just a time when people's own minds connected all the things that were happening in other places.
And they said, yes, I get that.
That connects all the dots for me.
That might be what's happening.
I don't know.
All right, so here's a little test for you on... Well, here's a perfect example.
Bowtied Kong on X asked ChatGPT to write 200 words on me, my new book, Reframe Your Brain, and it showed the samples.
Now, here's that tell for success.
Why did somebody think That creating content for X, in which they used AI to write reviews for my book, why do they even think of that?
This is the tell for something that's going to be huge.
When people want to extend your product, and I would call this one of those, something around it.
Like, I want to make some content that's around your book.
That does not happen for something that's not going to be enormous.
So, I mean, every single is just glaring.
I've never seen this, it's really weird.
So let me give you this test.
I'm going to read two paragraphs, short ones, and you're going to tell me which one I took from an actual review of my book, from a human being, and which one was AI.
Okay?
So I'll read one and then the other, but let's see if you can guess.
All right, here's the first one.
AI or human?
The reframes shared in this book are like a toolbox for the mind.
Shifting from managing time to managing energy, or seeing critics as mascots instead of monsters, has had an immediate impact on my outlook.
It's incredible how these simple changes can rewire our thoughts and emotions in such a profound way.
Alright, so that's number one.
Here's number two.
Is it AI or human?
Imagine converting roadblocks into opportunities and setbacks into launch pads.
This book arms you with a treasure trove of strategies to revolutionize your outlook.
Adam's witty and engaging style makes complex concepts accessible, leaving you empowered to seize control of your mind.
So, let's talk about the second one.
So the second one, human or AI?
It's funny, you're all over the map on this.
Alright, the answer is that the second one was AI.
And to me it's obvious, because real people don't say things like, makes complex concepts accessible.
Well, sometimes they do.
But, um, leaving you in power to seize control of your mind.
Is that how your friends talk?
How'd you like the book?
Well, I'll tell you.
It, uh, it left me in power to seize control of my mind.
So that was good.
Yeah.
So that's AI.
Now look at the telos for the human.
It's incredible how these simple changes can rewire your thoughts.
Would AI say it's incredible?
No.
Do you know why?
Why would AI not say this is incredible?
How do you know it's not AI by that one word, incredible?
It's an opinion.
It's an internal feeling.
So the author who said it's incredible, is saying I have a feeling.
Because incredible is not an objective standard.
You can't say there's six of them, so it's incredible.
It's just a feeling.
That's your tell.
AI never writes about its feelings.
It would if you gave it a super prompt, but it doesn't do it automatically.
All right.
But, let's say, toolbox for the mind.
Toolbox for the mind.
AI or human?
That's somebody who is a good writer.
So you can tell they're a good writer by human.
Yeah, human.
Because toolbox is simple.
As opposed to engaging styles making complex concepts accessible.
Right?
A good writer would not write this sentence.
Engaging style makes complex concepts accessible.
No good writer would write that sentence.
All right.
Let's see.
Yeah.
Seeing critics as mascots instead of monsters.
That's another tell for a human.
Because out of the whole book, the AI would sort of randomly pick something.
But a human would very much have gone to that example.
So that was, you know, I won't talk about what it's about.
But in the book, it was a human-ish story.
So a human would go to that.
Whereas an AI might say, well, they all look the same to me.
I'll pick one.
All right, so here's my take on AI.
AI learns how to write by looking at all the writing that people have written that's available for it to study on.
How in the world can AI learn to write well?
If it looks at 99.9% bad writing, which is what I would estimate most writing is, how does it become good?
How would it know what the good writing was?
Now suppose it went to a list of great works, because it doesn't do that.
So AI doesn't use reason and say, oh, let me see what the smart people say about this book.
It doesn't do that.
It's just looking at the words and looking at patterns.
So how in the world would it know what good writing was?
Because all of the examples, 99%, would be bad writing.
Now, somebody said, well, it would be easy to fix that.
You know, you could point it at some good writing, and then it would know what the good stuff is.
So I said, well, what would be an example of good writing that you'd point it to?
And somebody said, Tolkien would be an example.
Tolkien, Lord of the Rings.
Another would be Shakespeare.
Shakespeare.
And then I said, Because my ego knows no limits.
Those are two of the shittiest writers I've ever experienced.
Shakespeare's the worst.
That's a total disaster of writing.
And Tolkien?
My God.
He was criminally bad at writing.
Now, Tolkien was great at stories and characters.
But his writing was just exhausting.
Nobody would teach anybody to write like Tolkien.
Do you think there's a class, write like Tolkien?
No, because he was a terrible writer.
He was just great at storytelling.
How about Shakespeare?
Well, that's not even writing.
I don't even know what that is.
It's more like, it's more like feeling the words or, you know, acting like, well, I'll be, I'll be more brutal.
I believe that Shakespeare is a mass hallucination where smart people said it was good.
And then all the other smart people had to say it was good.
There's no fucking way that Shakespeare would be good if it dropped today, right?
If somebody published the first ever works of Shakespeare and you'd never heard of them, you would not be picking that book up and say, whoa, whoa, this is the greatest writing I've ever seen.
No, it is a complete hallucination based on the fact that smart people seem to have liked it before.
So you're going to say it was smart too.
Now, Does it have no redeeming features?
No, I'm not saying that.
No, Shakespeare has an entertainment quality to it, but it's not the writing.
The writing is just too hard to read.
It's the feeling of the words, perhaps.
So it's the, you know, maybe the emotion that they portray without being in the same form that would be easy to understand if it were common English.
So it has value.
More like poetry.
More like poetry.
That would be a better way to say it.
So it's not good writing, but it might be good poetry.
I'd be willing to accept that reframe.
Yeah.
So suppose you teach AI, look at some Shakespeare, look at some Tolkien.
Now you know what good writers are.
But you say, Scott, those are, you know, those are first of all, they're a little older, right?
Tolkien's a little bit older.
So we don't write like that.
So give us a more modern example of a good writer.
All right.
Stephen King.
Okay.
Stephen King, great writer, right?
Well, it's debatable.
Debatable.
I would say he spends a lot of time describing things I don't want to hear about.
But on the other hand, he also wrote one of the best books on how to be a writer.
It's called On Writing.
So while I can disagree with Stephen King on politics, his one book that wasn't fiction, it was about how to be a writer, highly recommend it.
If you want to be a writer, start there.
I would recommend it, absolutely.
Is it fiction?
I can't even read it.
I wouldn't say he's a good writer as a writer, but he might be a good story thinker.
He might be good at organizing stories and characters or something.
I don't know.
I would say Trump is an amazing writer.
Even with his occasional typos, he's an amazing writer.
And he will never get credit for that.
Nobody will ever understand that Trump is one of the best writers in the modern world.
It's insane, but he is.
All right.
He's an average speller, yeah.
All right.
So I don't think AI will ever become a good writer unless they train it to write like one particular good writer.
That could work.
So if you said, write in the style of, you know, but it still can't do that.
So far it really can't write in the style of.
It's sort of like somebody doing an impression of a famous person.
You can tell it's not the famous person.
It's obvious.
But you still laugh at the impression.
Because it reminds you of it.
So I think AI is more like an impression, doing an impression of a human.
It doesn't really remind you of what they could do.
Or remind you, but it's not what they could do.
Is Vivek America Great Again a clever slogan?
Oh, Vivek America Great Again.
I get it.
Vivek America Great Again.
No, I wouldn't put the America great in there again.
Do you know what I think Trump's slogan should be?
I'm going to make this a dramatic reveal, alright?
Because I want you to wait, have a little pause, and then when I say it, I'm going to be quiet for a moment, so you just soak it in, alright?
So here's what Trump's slogan should be.
Find out.
And then just stop talking.
Stop talking.
Just take a vow of silence until the election.
My new slogan?
Find out.
Because that's where we're at, right?
When I said it, let me do a test.
When I said it, could you feel it?
Can you see the goosebumps?
That's feeling, feeling it.
I'm literally feeling it.
I can feel it in my body.
Right?
Am I the only one?
Tell me, tell me that you can feel that in your body.
Some yes, some no.
Yeah, some feel it.
So obviously, you know, slogan isn't going to work the same on everybody.
But, yeah, everybody's going to have a different reaction.
No, I think it'd be funny.
He's not going to do that, obviously, but it would be funny.
You know, we've been saying it's the find out phase, but it'd be funny if he said it.
Because what I think about when I hear that, find out, I think about one day in jail.
You know, don't you think the Democrats are wondering, I wonder what would happen if we actually put him in jail?
To which I say, go ahead, find out.
You really want to know?
You're not going to like it, but find out.
I think if you reveal too much, you're giving away too much.
I think we're in the find out phase.
And the find out phase does not require me to signal what it will be before it is.
Because that's what makes the finding out so much fun.
You find out when it's too late to turn back.
So wait until it's too late to turn back and we'll be happy to let you find out.
Now I of course do not promote violence in any way.
So in non-violent ways, I say, Let's find out.
If that's where they want to take it, they will find out.
So, that's all I have for you today.
The greatest live stream ever.
Ran late because I think it was worth every moment.
And I think you'd agree.
And I hope those watching on X, for the first, this is the second day we've done this, I hope you're enjoying the show.
