Episode 2217 Scott Adams: Lots Of Dumb News To Mock Today. My Favorite Kind. 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, Riley Gaines, Ukraine War, Oliver Anthony, X Universal Phone, Jordan Peterson, President Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson, Black & White Stuff, John Cougar Mellencamp, Group Averages, COVID Mandates, Herd Mentality, White Male Discrimination, Cognitively Impaired Leaders, Kamala Harris, Government Help, Population Control, China's Influence, Apple Watch 3D Printing, Michael Yeadon, Black Swan Event, Scott Adams
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
---
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's never been a finer moment that you've ever, ever experienced.
And if you'd like to take it up a level, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tequila, chalice, or stye, and a canteen jug, 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 that makes everything better is called the simultaneous sip.
Go.
Oh, so good.
So good.
Do you know that my book, Reframe Your Brain, hit the top 20 yesterday on Amazon, the non-fiction list?
And apparently it's changing lives everywhere.
I dare you to pick any book.
All right, here's a challenge for you.
For those who have read my book, Reframe Your Brain, name any non-fiction book that has created more change in you, positive change, more quickly and more easily.
I believe there won't be anything close in the entire history of books.
That's my claim.
And it's because I use a different technique.
I mean, I'm using reframes and hypnosis and it's going to change your life.
Anyway, enough about that.
I wasn't planning to say that, but there's a terrible development in the mascot situation.
As you know, Keith Olbermann has been my mascot for years.
And by mascot I mean the troll that is so over the top he's just kind of funny, like a mascot.
But today there was an exchange on X between Keith Olbermann and Riley Gaines.
You know Riley Gaines?
A woman who was a swimming champion who thinks that men, biological men, should not compete against her, as she would say.
And so Keith Olbermann posted to her and said, Can you just address the reality and move past it?
You sucked at swimming.
That's why you lost.
Riley Gaines replied, Ah, makes sense now why you got fired from ESPN.
All right.
All right.
Not bad.
Not bad, Riley Gaines.
But, you know, to you, this is just I know.
To you, this is just a funny story of somebody who made a good comment on the X platform.
I mean, it means nothing to you.
But to me, this has a little bit more meaning.
Because once again, a biological woman is trying to steal my mascot.
And I don't think that's right.
That's all I had to say about that.
So the news says that Ukraine has finally broken through the Russian defensive line in one notable place and they're expanding that hole and they're going to drive their artillery through and destroy Russia!
Everybody believe that?
So they broke through that defensive line so everything's good now.
Should be smooth sailing from now on.
If I were Putin, I would already be trying to fly out of Moscow in an exploding plane.
Now, I don't think you can believe anything about this, do you?
But what are the odds that this story is accurate and fully in context?
None.
Zero.
None.
What was I just hearing?
General Flynn, I saw him on a podcast just yesterday, and he said that the first intelligence reports about everything are always wrong.
100% of the time.
The first report of anything like this is always wrong.
Fog of war.
So it might be that they broke through the line, but can you be sure that that wasn't intentional?
Can you be sure it's not a trap?
In which the Russians are going to let the Ukrainians go through and get into some kind of a kill box and take care of business.
I don't know.
We don't know.
But that's the point.
There's no news that you can believe about Ukraine.
How many of you noticed that because of the writer's strike, the five hosts of the late night shows, minus Greg Gutfeld, who actually still does his show, He's not a quitter like the rest of them.
So the five, I guess it's like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and Colbert and Oliver and somebody else, I can't remember.
And so the five of them have decided that they'll do, I guess, a nightly podcast because they don't have writers for their shows.
So now they're just going to do their own thing, you know, just on a podcast.
And what did we learn on their first attempt?
We found out why they use writers.
Not so good.
Do you know why late night hosts have guests?
Well, you found out.
Because when they're each other's guests, Not so good.
Not so good.
Yeah, that's too many comedians in one place.
Every time I watch a show where they put five comedians in one place to have a conversation, because you've seen this format before, I always think this is going to be the greatest thing.
It's five comedians.
I like all five of them.
Five comedians are not funny when you put them together.
Yeah, something happens.
I saw Ricky Gervais in one of these four or five comedian things.
I think it was with Seinfeld and Chris Rock, some other famous comedian.
And Ricky Gervais, the funniest person on the planet, he's not even funny when you put him with the other comedians because they get weird.
Sometimes they act differently.
But one comedian?
Gold.
Five comedians talking to each other?
Trying to impress each other maybe?
I don't know.
Something goes wrong when you put them together.
So how many saw that singer Oliver Anthony, that's his performance name I guess, was on Joe Rogan?
Anybody see that?
What could he possibly have to offer that this song doesn't say?
I'm trying to figure out why he's interesting.
I can't figure it out, because he doesn't interest me, so I'm trying to figure out why he's interesting you.
The song was amazing, so I think most of us would agree.
If we judge him as a musician, wow!
Right?
There's almost nothing else you can say but, wow!
That's some musician right there.
But as soon as you get into, yeah, he has a story of, you know, maybe addiction and poverty and stuff, but what part of that is surprising you?
And what is he offering?
Does he have some solutions for monetary policy?
Yeah.
I mean, we're interested in him because he's an amazing talent, but I wouldn't confuse that with socially relevant.
I don't think he's socially relevant in the sense of politics or how we're going to change anything.
I don't believe he's suggesting anything in particular, is he?
It's not like he said we should be doing X instead of Y.
So why are we even talking to him?
We should talk to people, have some ideas, some suggestions.
And by the way, I'm not, I have no objection to him.
This is nothing about him.
I'm just thinking, didn't he tell us himself that, you know, it's more about the song and he put his message out there and we heard it.
So maybe he's done what he platform is going to have a phone calls and video calls.
But you think that's no big deal, right?
And you say to yourself, eh, you know, you can do that on lots of different platforms.
I can Zoom and I can WhatsApp and I can signal and I can text.
So what if there's one more place that does that?
Well, I think it's bigger than that.
Because Elon Musk has already teased that X will be the global address book.
Can you imagine if he pulled that off?
Could you imagine if you could call anybody just by knowing their address on X?
Now, I suppose that would be a problem for people like me, because I guess my X would be ringing a lot.
Anybody who's got a big following, they'd probably get a lot of random phone calls.
But presumably, you can turn off the ringer and screen it or whatever.
But how much would you love To be able to contact anybody in the world even if you didn't know anything except their Twitter address.
That'd be pretty good.
And at what point does it replace your phone?
Or replace phone service?
Because what would I need to do on X that I couldn't do on my phone if I had universal access to other people?
So ideally I'd want to be able to send a message on X That would show up on just a regular text message or WhatsApp or something else.
Should be able to link them in some way.
That'd be cool.
But here's what I really want.
This is what I want more than a universal phone number, which is my Twitter address, I guess, or my X address.
I would love to be able to grant entities access to my private information on at least five different levels.
So here's what I'd love.
Now, I don't know if this has anything to do with X, but it's what I want.
How often do you put the same information when you're signing up for stuff?
It's like all day long, aren't you doing that?
Fill in a form, name and address.
And then on the same form, it'll ask you to name and address again.
How many times does that happen?
So here's what we should have.
We should have at least five levels of personal information.
And I should be able to say to you, take out my phone and say, I'm going to give you level D access.
Or E. So let's say level E is just your name and your email.
The lowest level of information.
It's not even your phone number.
It's just your email and your name.
So you'd say, I grant you level E. And it just automatically populates.
A little bit more would be your phone number.
So level D would be your... Shit.
Sorry.
I just heard the garbage truck outside.
Which means that, again, I forgot to take my garbage out.
Which means that all my garbage will be overflowing for a week.
And my gardener is going to be mad at me because the thing didn't get taken out.
Do you know what I do?
Every day I put on my calendar, I put a warning, I check it several times, and then I go to sleep.
It's not working for me at all.
Anyway, so I should be able to say I'll give you level C and it will give me, say, your social security number and your address.
Level B, towards the top, would be all of your personal information plus your banking.
If you want to get a loan, If I want to apply for a loan, I should say, level B access, and give somebody all of my tax information and banking.
And level A would be your health information.
Right?
Because that's the last thing you want to give somebody after your banking, is your health information.
So wouldn't it be great if you could just fill out forms, just say, I give you level B access.
Once again, reality is, ...is heading toward the most entertaining outcome.
If you've been following the saga of Dr. Jordan Peterson, who is being challenged by the Canadian Psycholo... Let's see, what is it?
The Toronto... College of Psychologists of Ontario.
The College of Psychologists of Ontario.
They want to take his license away.
His psychologist, whatever license that is, unless he goes to re-education camp and he challenged him in court and lost, and now apparently he has to go to re-education camp.
Now, what would be the most entertaining way that this story could go?
Would it be that Dr. Peterson won his court case and then did not have to go to re-education camp?
Would that be the most entertaining?
No.
It might be the best.
If you were going to choose, you'd probably choose that one.
But the most entertaining is he reports back everything that happens.
One way or another.
He doesn't know if he'd be able to film it or audio it or just take notes, he says.
But one way or another, he's going to make 100% of the process transparent.
What could be better than that?
I'm trying to think of anything I would more want to see than that, and I can't think of anything.
What would there be on Netflix that would be more interesting than the first day report from Jordan Peterson about his re-education camp?
It would be the number one thing I would want to watch.
So, let him monetize it.
He makes content, and he monetizes it.
So monetize the hell out of it.
I think he's going to find a way to make a huge profit off the College of Psychologists of Ontario.
So keep an eye on that.
And I'm not sure how much it really matters if he loses his clinical license at this point.
I'm sure he'd hate it.
On a personal level, it'd probably be terrible.
I don't know how much time he spends doing personal practice.
Certainly it would be an ultimate assault on freedom and principles and what is right.
It would be immoral.
It would be unethical.
It would be lots of bad things.
But I don't know if his actual life would have much difference.
Maybe 5%.
I don't want to speak for him, but I would hope that he would have a lot of happiness whether he had a license or not.
But obviously he wants a license.
And we want him to have it.
Trump was on Glenn Beck's show.
Had some good words to say about Vivek Ramaswamy.
It was kind of easy to predict.
What Trump would say about Vivek.
And here it is.
Because, you know, Vivek has said good things about Trump.
He says, I can't get upset with him.
He's a smart guy.
He's a young guy.
He's got a lot of talent.
He's a very intelligent person.
He's got good energy, which is basically the best compliment.
Do you know what the best compliment Trump ever gives?
How smart you are and what your energy is.
Those are his top, top compliments.
I've told you this.
He loves smart.
You know, everybody who thinks, oh, he's, you know, he's maybe not want to compete with Vivek because he's so smart or not want to have him on his team or something.
No, Trump loves smart.
He always has.
He always talks about it.
So of course they would get along.
So that's not a surprise.
Now, Vivek, of course, says he could never be a number two, but anything can happen in the world of politics.
So we'll see.
He's definitely not running to be vice president.
I'm sure of that.
That's my opinion, but I'm sure of it.
All right.
Dr. Carlson on a recent podcast He said that he believes that if you look at the sequence of events recently, that we are, quote, we are speeding towards assassination, obviously, of Trump.
They have decided that there's something about Trump that's so threatening to them, they just can't have it.
Too far?
Do you think that's hyperbole?
Or does that seem probable?
If we had never had a president assassinated, probably by our own people, within my lifetime, I would say that is absurd.
There's no way that our own people would kill a president, but probably has happened at least once.
Probably at least once.
Maybe more than once, but at least once.
And I wouldn't rule it out.
Would you say that the people who are in charge of the country would be, let's say, morally or ethically beyond doing such a terrible thing?
Not even a little bit.
No, no.
No, I would say that's right in their sweet spot.
We've watched them jail people and ruin their lives.
They're doing it right now.
So if they could jail people forever, you know, J6 people for example, yeah, no.
The extra level to go to assassination, it's like, it's not that much.
So the only thing that's going to protect Trump is his Secret Service and the fact that the country's watching.
It's a little bit different if you expect it to happen and then it does.
Right?
Now, I don't want to say expect, because I don't want to will it into existence.
We don't want to do that.
We want to will it out of existence.
But don't do it right in front of us.
You might have fooled us once, allegedly, with the Kennedy assassination.
Maybe that's what happened.
I don't know for sure.
But if we're all expecting that it's too serious of a possibility, I don't think you can do it.
I think this would be a touch point that would be crazy.
I don't know what would happen.
Things would get unpredictable.
I don't like to use reference to any kind of violence or revolution.
I think that's inappropriate.
But things would get real unpredictable real fast.
If you want to be in the unpredictable world.
I think I would agree with Tucker.
I think I have to agree.
Now, I would say that 98% of the public has not been watching the news closely enough for this to seem reasonable.
But the 2%, and I think you're all among it, who watch the news, and they've watched the entire sequence of events developing for several years, I do think it looks like that.
It absolutely looks like that's a possibility.
I'll go further.
I guarantee it's been discussed.
Would anybody take the other?
I mean, there's no way to prove it, but I guarantee somewhere in the government, maybe not, maybe not at the decision-making level, but somewhere somebody's having the conversation.
I'll bet they've actually tried to figure out how the best way to do it would be.
I wouldn't be surprised.
All right.
My ongoing segment that I call Black and White Stuff.
Where we make up news about black and white people so we have a reason to get more dopamine and fight with each other.
All right, here's the first one.
John Cougar Mellencamp was on Bill Maher's show Club Random.
And he thinks things are so bad for black people in America right now that he actually said this out loud while he knew cameras were filming him.
Right out loud he said this.
He said that he thinks that things are currently as bad for 99% of black people in America as they were for them during slavery.
I've got a new rule.
Wouldn't it be better if white people never talked about slavery again?
Or maybe anybody.
I guess Ye got in trouble for it too, right?
Wouldn't it be better if just nobody ever gives an opinion about how anybody felt during slavery?
Let me tell you what I don't know for sure.
I don't know what it would have felt like to be a slave.
I'm pretty sure I don't know what that felt like, and I can't read their minds.
So anytime I try to get inside the heads of People I couldn't possibly understand what that situation really felt like.
It's probably a bad idea.
Bad idea.
So what should we say about this topic?
We should say we don't care.
You don't care.
And I'll tell you more about why you shouldn't care.
All right.
Well, I'll tell you right now.
Every time you talk about the average of one group to the average of another, you end up looking stupid in 2023.
So here he is talking about the average of some group, and it looks stupid, doesn't it?
And I'm pretty sure that every time you do it in 2023, and it did make sense.
I mean, there were times in history talking about, you know, one group compared to the other group probably made perfect sense.
But in 2023, if you're measuring the differences in two groups, you look like an idiot.
You look like you're lost in time.
You want a reframe?
All right.
You know I have a best-selling book on reframing.
So here's a reframe for you.
How many of you like to watch cute animal reels on social media?
Sometimes it'll be like two animals hugging.
There's a reel about a bird that was using tools.
It was great.
Then you see other, sometimes you'll see an animal helping another animal, almost like a person would help another person.
And then you see sometimes an animal will, like, share some food like a person.
You'll see the dog, like, you know, let the other animal eat first, the pig or something.
Now, I'm kind of addicted to those.
I get a little charge every time I see them.
Now, you probably have watched these videos.
Have you noticed that they have one thing in common?
A lot of the ones you like best often have something in common.
Do you know what it is?
What do the animal videos that you like the best have in common?
The answer is, it's animals acting like people.
Those are the ones that get us the most.
When the little raccoons look like they have little hands like people, you go, it's like a furry little person.
Or when two animals hug each other and spoon like the dog and the cat, the reason it gets you is because you're like, that's just like me.
I'm like the cat.
I like that too.
Right?
So here's the reframe coming.
Here's the setup.
We all love animals, and one of the main things that we talk about with our love of animals is how much they're like us.
So when you talk about animals, you never talk about how different they are.
Have you ever seen one that says, look, this animal is pooping in the woods, and we use indoor plumbing?
No.
You only talk about these animals are doing a thing like a person would do.
And then you love them.
Now, if we talk about how alike we are with animals and it makes us love them, And those things work together.
We love them, so we talk about them.
They're like us, so we love them.
So it works together.
Now let's talk about race relations.
Do you remember this study that came out that showed how black Americans and white Americans are so similar on that thing?
You know, the thing?
I don't remember that either.
Because we don't talk about how similar we are.
Do we?
Have you seen the story that says, we just found out that young black men and young white men, they really like sports.
Wow, we got a lot in common.
They love sports, we love sports.
How about some foods we all like?
Pizza.
I'm not sure, but I'll bet you you can find some black people like pizza, and some white people too.
Let's talk about how much we have in common in our love of pizza.
Do you remember that study?
Nope.
Nope.
Let me tell you the study that did come out today.
A study that finds that black legislators who deploy rhetorical symbolism in discussions of race are more persuasive.
So we studied that.
We studied the difference between a white and a black politician using racial symbolism.
And miraculously, we found out that talking about race is effective if you're black.
Oh, I'm so glad we studied that.
So let's talk about our differences.
Let's do another study about the differences here, and the differences there, and the differences there.
If the only thing you focus on is your differences, What do you end up with every time?
Every time.
Not sometimes.
Not a tendency to.
Not a bias in the direction.
Not a nudge.
Complete different sides.
If all of your attention is on differences, you solidify the differences.
There's no exception to this rule.
Whatever you concentrate on and think about becomes your most important thing.
If the only thing I talked about were that the apples were dangerous, and I talked about nothing else, the only danger in the world is eating an apple.
It's not dangerous, by the way, as far as I know.
You'd be thinking apples.
No, look at those apple trees.
There's an orchard over there.
We better drive wide around it so we don't accidentally touch an apple.
I think those apples are hurting us not just when we eat them, but I think they're giving off a gas.
I think just being near an apple would be bad.
What?
What about people talking about apples?
I'm going to do a study of people talking about apples, and the people who talk about apples are unhappier and dumber than the people who don't talk about apples.
And pretty soon, Your view of apples would be poisoned and you'd want to rid the world of apples.
And is it because apples are bad?
No, it's because you focus on them.
Whatever you focus on becomes the most real.
There are no exceptions to that.
That's how your brain is designed.
So we have a system which rewards you for doing a study about our differences.
Here's my reframe.
I don't care what the differences are.
Anybody who's talking about the differences in an average is stupid and unproductive, and they're not helping you, and they're not helping anybody.
If you tell me how similar I am to my other Americans, I'd say, I'd like to hear that.
Tell me some more about things we have in common.
I love it.
Give me some of that.
Now, it's not exciting, right?
You probably get a little more of a dopamine hit fighting online about these little differences.
Oh, I've got a difference.
I've got a difference.
So give me a little dopamine hit for my difference.
Nope.
I'm not buying into it anymore.
I'm absolutely interested in individuals, real people, But the average of a group, there's no average person.
We are infinitely different.
And we are so infinitely different that if you think the real comparison is black to white, let me spend five seconds finding a million black people who have more in common with me than I have in common with a million white people that just have different characteristics, different interests, different everything.
I don't have a difference with black people.
I'm very much like people who have a similar experience, maybe they're engineers.
Tell me this, if I be a black engineer, am I going to get along?
Are we going to be okay?
Every time.
Every time.
Because the engineer part automatically, you know, is a constellation of thinking styles and experience that would be so close to what I like, you know, what is my preference of people to talk to, that we'd be best friends in about five seconds.
And it wouldn't even matter whether the race would be the least important part.
So if you let everybody talk about what you have different, you're going to get division.
So, you get what you ask for.
What I ask for is I'm not going to compare averages anymore, I'm going to call you stupid every time you do.
So I'm going to mock you every time you think the average of one group should be compared to the average.
Don't care.
Nope.
It's all about the individuals now.
It's 2023, time to move on.
And likewise, there's a story about a white banker who was discriminated against.
Just to be an asshole, I like to tweet that story.
And I like to throw this red bean into it, because I get a little dopamine by doing it.
So here I'm going to model what you shouldn't do.
Don't do this.
Don't be like me.
This is very much what I'm telling you not to do, and then I'm going to do it right in front of you.
I guess I can't help it.
So what I did was, I tweeted and I said that 100% of white men can confirm that they've been discriminated in corporate America.
100%.
So that's my claim.
That you couldn't find even one man in America An adult white man in the, let's say, Fortune 500 corporate world, that you wouldn't be able to find one who was not discriminated against actively.
And I mean actively, as in somebody said, you know, we're not hiring from your group right now.
100%.
Because the first time I said this, I got challenged by a number of black leader types and reporters.
Oh, yeah?
Can you give me one example where this has happened?
Can you prove that a white person has ever been discriminated against in corporate America?
And I used to make the mistake of saying, yeah, I probably could, but they're private people and maybe they don't want to be dragged into it.
But it's much more effective to say, it's 100%.
If you can find a white adult male who works at a corporation, you don't even need to ask me.
It's 100%.
Now, let me check in the comments.
I only want to hear from people who have corporate experience.
If you're a white male, do you agree that 100% of white men have experienced racial discrimination at work?
Yeah, look at the comments.
It's a yes.
It's just a wall of yes.
Everyone.
So, and then of course the obvious question you would ask if you were black, I imagine, is how am I just finding out about this now?
Imagine if you're, and I'm assuming I've got a reasonably diverse crowd here, if you're black and you're watching this right now, are you surprised?
Does it blow you away to know that everything you thought about discrimination was actually backwards in the corporate world?
Not in the world at large, but in the corporate world it's a very special situation.
Because they're trying hard to be diverse.
Now, this is interesting.
I've said the same thing like as recently as maybe a year or two ago.
And when I said it, I got all kinds of pushback.
Do you know how much pushback I got this time?
I got a million followers on Axe, and I tweeted this, and I looked at the comments before I came on.
Do you know how much pushback I got?
To the claim that 100% of white men are discriminated against.
100%!
None.
None.
Nobody said that's not true.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Now, of course, I'm doing right now what I said I shouldn't do.
Comparing groups.
But in this case, I don't have to compare anything.
Right?
I can do this without a comparison.
I can just say, here's the experience of white people.
In case you wanted to know.
Is that useful?
I think it's useful for both sides to have as much information.
I did it on both sides again.
See what I did?
God, it's so hard to get out of that frame.
How about there's no sides?
How about that?
There's no sides.
Except Americans.
All right.
So let's be smarter about that.
Sorry.
All right.
There's another black-white story out of Oakland.
I'm just going to skip it because it's just another black-white story.
All right.
Trump claimed in a video that the latest hints of COVID, maybe some kind of mandates coming back, the lockdowns and whatnot, he says that it seems like a big coincidence that whenever there's an election, you get COVID.
Trump is suggesting that maybe the election is the real reason that mandates are being considered, especially the lockdowns, and would that mean more drop boxes and Who knows?
So Trump says when he becomes president that he will defund any entity that supported mandates.
What do you think of that?
Now, it's pretty conditional, but wouldn't you like that?
Yeah, I don't think he would be the only one to do that, but if you want that, he's offering it.
All right.
How many of you think that the government's COVID, let's say the rumors that the government might bring back some restrictions, how many of you think those are really 100% political?
Because I don't think it's 100% political.
It might be also political, but I think that the experts believe what they've been saying.
So I believe that the experts actually think that it's necessary.
I'm not agreeing with the experts.
I'm just saying that probably a lot of them are legitimately think it would be good for the world.
But I would think at the political level they're looking at the politics more than the health.
That's my guess.
All right.
We now have five Leaders with no cognitive processing.
So we've got Fetterman, Feinstein, Biden, McConnell, and Kamala Harris.
So five leaders that very clearly are not cognitively capable.
Now a lot of people keep leaving Kamala Harris off the list of mental incompetence, but I feel like that's short-sighted.
Don't you?
Does it seem to you that she's obviously either drunk or maybe she hit her head?
But whatever's wrong with her, she doesn't function like a regular person.
And I don't know if she ever did.
I mean, I thought that she was functional before she was vice president or ran for vice president, but she's clearly not functional.
And to imagine that you've got... Let's get rid of the assholes.
Bye.
To imagine that she's functional and these others aren't?
I don't know.
I think you're slicing it a little bit finely there.
I think we should just acknowledge that Kamala Harris has a mental incapacitation of some nature.
I mean, to me it looks like, you know, some kind of addiction.
But it could be organic.
Maybe she bumped her head or something.
But to imagine that she's functioning is... it's kind of ridiculous at this point.
To imagine that any of the people I just read could possibly do their job in their current condition?
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
But here's what I think it proves.
That none of these people were in charge in the first place.
I feel like that's what it proves.
The fact that we're okay keeping them there suggests that whoever it is who has the real power would rather have a, you know, a scarecrow cadaver of a front person than they want to put in a qualified person.
Because a qualified person might push back on whatever it is they want.
Clearly they have some control over these people.
And want them to remain in office.
Now it could be as simple as they want to have control of Congress so they don't want their person to lose.
But it doesn't look like that.
Because I feel like you could figure out how to get somebody from your own party to backfill somebody.
You know, if you tried.
It looks more like they want the incapable people to be there.
So that people who are really in charge have a little extra power.
It doesn't look like there's any interest at all in getting rid of incapable people.
All right.
But the good news is it does serve diversity to have those people, because we don't have enough of the mentally incapable in government.
But now we've got a good percentage.
I don't know what the percentage of mentally handicapped people is in the general public, but we do now have a Congress that matches it.
So if that's what you wanted, you got it.
Alright, here's a question I have for you.
If you were to base your opinion on observation alone, pure observation, not on thinking, not on the history, not on your preferences, but just observation, which hypothesis fits the facts better?
That the government is trying to help you or kill you?
I'll just read some things that are happening.
So these are things that are happening.
Is the government trying to help you or kill you?
Mandatory vaccinations.
Zoom school.
It's at least being discussed.
Climate policy.
Climate policy.
Equity and the end of merit as the primary mover.
Inflation spending.
The Ukraine war.
Open, wide open immigration with no control.
In my opinion, no control.
TikTok is not being banned.
TikTok's remaining.
Way more people transitioning than ever before.
Transitioning gender.
Our incentive system seems to reward women for divorcing or being single.
And having children is too expensive, so college makes children too expensive.
The no-bail system, let the criminals out.
The weaponized Department of Justice.
And a weird inability to do forest management, so all of our states are burning up, because we forgot to do basic forest management stuff.
Food supply.
Thank you.
Food supply.
The level of testing that's required for pharmaceuticals to be approved.
Medicine, food.
Well, if you came from another planet and you just objectively looked at what the government is requiring of the citizens, then you see, you know, smartphones, Would you conclude that the government was trying to slowly kill the population or help them thrive?
Now of course it does some good things too.
It helps to feed people and give them health care if they can't afford it in many cases.
So there's lots of things the government's doing on the plus side.
But the things in the news are all these things.
I just read you basically all the headlines from last year.
The headlines all suggest that somebody's trying to kill us.
I mean, you could more easily... That's a dumb fucking question.
So, you can easily imagine that China is in charge of our government.
Because if China were in charge of our government, which one of these things wouldn't have happened?
All of the things that are happening suggest China's in charge.
Right?
Look at vaccinations.
Virus comes out of China.
They don't do the same vaccinations we do.
They don't do the same vaccinations we do.
Did they have Zoom school?
Well, they had lockdowns, but most of the country stayed open, so they probably didn't have a Zoom school.
Climate policy, they seem to be exempt from it, so that seems like a trick on us.
They're not doing equity, but we are.
I don't know what their inflation situation is, so I don't know about that.
But they'd certainly want us to overspend.
They would certainly want us to be caught up in a Ukraine war.
They would certainly want us to have open immigration so all their fentanyl could get in and their God knows who else.
They would certainly want us to have TikTok while they don't have it.
That's the current situation.
They would certainly want America to be doing lots of transitioning while they're not.
They would certainly want us to pay to decrease our population.
And our incentive system does that.
They would certainly want us to have no bails or criminals running free.
They would want us to weaponize our DOJ so we turn against each other.
And they'd want our fires to be raging out of control if they were enemies.
If China were our enemy.
Is China our enemy?
The government.
People are awesome.
I like the Chinese people.
But their government?
I don't know.
Is it a coincidence that 100% of things in the news are things that China would want to be happening here?
Is that a coincidence?
It might be.
I mean, it might be just a factor that, you know, they're doing a better job on some things, so, you know, they don't have as much fentanyl problems as we do.
So it could be they just do a better job on some stuff.
But it looks like we're being managed by our enemies.
We have a government that in every way looks like our enemies are determining the outcomes, not the citizens.
Because I can't think of which ones we would have chosen.
What on this list would the average American have chosen to be good for America?
Alright.
Apple is considering printing the Apple Watch with 3D printing.
Now I think they meant something like most of it or the important parts or something.
But do you think we could get to the point with some robots and some 3D printing that China is no longer necessary for manufacturing anything?
Because I think that's where we're heading.
To me it seems like China's economy is doomed because manufacturing will undoubtedly move to 3D printing.
Does everybody agree?
Assembling things will move to robots, because they can, and it'll be cheaper for the robots than the humans.
No matter where you are in the world, it'll still be cheaper for the robots.
And they'll 3D print the parts.
There'll be a few things that you can't do for a while, but eventually you can do metal, you can do plastic.
I guess the chips would be the hard part, and we're bringing the chips back to America.
So I would say China doesn't really have much of a chance in the long run.
Because China had basically one thing going for it.
They stole our manufacturing while we gave it to them.
Right?
Am I wrong that China had exactly one advantage in the world?
That it was the manufacturing leader because they could be rougher on their citizens than other places could.
So they could sort of get people to do terrible slave labor It would be harder to get it done anywhere else.
So if you take away the only thing they have, which is they took our manufacturing, what's left?
A military that they can't afford to fund?
I don't know.
Yeah, that's right.
They didn't steal it, we gave it to them.
That is a proper way to say it.
I would say China is the most doomed of the countries.
Depending on who you talk to, Russia's got some problems, but probably not the elites.
So I think Russia is stable.
All right.
Here's your spotting BS lesson for today.
Spotting BS.
So I'm going to give you two situations, and I want you to see if these are true or BS.
Now, I want to tell you in advance, I don't know the answers to the questions.
So they could be true, or they could both be BS, or it could be one of each.
I don't know, and I'm not going to make a claim, but I'm going to teach you something as we look at them, alright?
So the first one is, I saw Dr. Drew had a guest, Dr. Michael Yeadon.
Who is former Vice President and Worldwide Head of Respiratory Research at Pfizer.
So here's a guy, by credentials anyway, really knows his way around creating a new drug.
And one of the things he said is that all, was it all five or all four of the drug makers in the United States, they all picked the spike protein on the coronavirus as the attack point for the different kinds of
And he says that in all of his experience in creating new drugs, that the odds of four independent people, you know, entities, developing drugs and attacking the same part of the virus, he says that's a black swan event, meaning so rare that you would have to assume it was intentional.
And that if they intentionally all attacked that same point, his second point is that anybody who was in this business would understand that the nature of that thing they attacked would cause your body to melt down, basically.
Those are my words.
It would cause your immune system to have irregularities and you'd have problems in all of your systems through your body.
And that everybody would know that before they had developed the drug.
And yet, the four major ones made the same decision, which he would say, hugely unlikely, you know, in the normal course of things.
That couldn't be a coincidence.
And that nobody would have made the drug that did that without knowing that the ramifications were horrible for the rest of our lives.
Now, let's put the BS filter on that.
BS filter number one.
What other experts are saying this?
It's the first time I've heard it.
It's the first time I've heard that it was intentionally designed to do this.
So your first BS filter is, that feels like something that everybody else would know.
Like Bob Malone would know that, right?
All the top critics, they would all know the same stuff, right?
Because he's not giving us new information.
We all knew that the spike protein, blah, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah.
So if I don't hear other critics say it, because there are plenty of critics, right?
I'd like to see the other critics at least agree.
It would be one thing if the, you know, the normies who are doing the work still, if they all agree, you could say, well, that's for money.
But you look first to see if the critics who have gone public with their criticisms of the vaccination, I don't want to see what they said.
If they agreed with them, then I'm a little bit more likely to think is credible.
But his main claim here is that there's no way it could be an accident that they all targeted the same thing.
Give me your opinion if that sounds like an accident or if you could imagine there'd be another ordinary reason for it.
Do you think there could be another ordinary reason why they all took the same approach?
Let me throw out an ordinary reason.
Do you think that all the people involved in the different companies, do you think they attend the same seminars?
Do you think they go to the same trade show?
I don't know what you'd call it, but an event where the doctors tell you what's new?
Do you think they read the same publications?
Do you think it's possible, and I'm just going to put this out as a possibility, do you think that they were all aware That nobody had ever solved this coronavirus problem, but the closest anybody came might have something to do with that spike protein?
And could it be that everybody in the industry knew that if you're going to go fast, you better start with the stuff we already know?
And maybe the state of the art was the thing we knew the most about was that thing.
And so maybe that's not what they would have done outside of a pandemic.
Maybe if it had not been a pandemic, some of them would say, you know, we're going to keep looking because this approach has some problems, perhaps.
So let's, let's see if there's something even better than a spike protein.
But since they all had to rush and there was money on the line, do you think that they all said, okay, I'm pretty sure the other guys are going to pick that spike protein.
So we're going to be a lot safer.
Because we all will have picked it.
And then if things go wrong with the spike protein, well, at least everybody did the same thing.
It's not going to look like we were the dumb ones, right?
So all I'm suggesting is that for him to call this a black swan event seems absurd.
There's a very ordinary set of circumstances that would get you to all of them doing the same thing.
Just because they think the other ones are doing.
You don't think the people at the different companies talk to each other?
I'm sure they did.
Either directly or indirectly.
You don't think they had friends in the other companies that do the same kind of work?
You don't think there are people who used to work at one company, but now they've worked at the other and they still have best friends at the past company?
You don't think that they all know?
Yeah, but basically herd mentality plus money Plus having to do something really quick, plus wanting to avoid liability, probably would get them all to do the same thing.
Does anybody think that it's crazy to imagine there would be just the most ordinary reasons in the world that they approached it the same way?
Now I'm not saying it's the way I described, I'm just saying that in the real world, There's probably a hundred ways that they could all have made the same decision.
Just because you can't imagine it immediately doesn't make it unlikely.
It could be a problem with your imagination.
How many of you, until I just gave my little hypothetical explanation of how it could all have happened, how many of you when you first heard it said, I can't think of any way that could have happened.
I can't think of any way that could have happened.
Unless it was intentional.
I can think of lots of ways it could happen.
So I don't buy his assumption that there's only one way it could have happened, which is intentionally.
However, I also don't know that he's wrong.
So as clearly as I can, because later if it turns out he's right, you're going to say, you tried to debunk that guy.
No, I didn't.
There's no debunking going on here.
What we're doing is we're learning how to look at the news.
And what you do with that is going to be your own.
But I'm telling you, this claim that it couldn't have happened by accident is ridiculous.
It could have happened for a number of reasons that weren't an accident, but not necessarily because there's a plot to destroy or depopulate the world.
And then the fact that we would have known that there would be toxic stuff.
Again, there was so much money involved that I think everybody involved couldn't see the risks.
If you said to me, Scott, I'd like you to go mountain biking in this place you've never been.
My first thought would be, ooh, at my age and I'm not really a mountain biker, I feel like that'd be dangerous.
And then they say, I'll give you $1,000.
And I go, hmm, $1,000.
Well, it won't change my life, but it's free money.
No, no, I don't want to get hurt.
$1,000.
I'll give you $1 billion to go trail bike riding on this trail you've never been on.
Suddenly, I tell myself, well, you know, I could just go slowly.
People fall off bikes all the time.
I'll just follow off.
I'll get back on.
I'm wearing my helmet.
I mean, for God's sakes, I'm wearing my helmet.
I'll go with somebody else.
I mean, I'm not going to be alone.
So, obviously, if something happens, you know, I can get help.
So, yeah.
You tell me it's a billion dollars and I can't see the risks anymore.
It just erases the risks in my mind.
I just see billion dollars, billion dollars.
That's all I see.
It blinds me.
So it would be easy to imagine how the researchers were blinded by the profits they were about to make.
Or they're all evil.
Both possible.
All right, here's another one.
I want you to put on your skeptic hat.
Here's a little excerpt I heard from the book Atomic Habits.
And it was a story about the British cycling team, you know, the bicycle people.
And apparently they'd been bad forever.
So they were just bad at cycling.
But they got this new leader.
And the new leader of the British cycling teams implemented a wide series of small improvements.
So improvements in the seat.
They even improved the pillows.
That the competitors use so they'd get better sleep.
So he just went to every little thing you could get.
And maybe the improvement of each thing was just maybe 1%.
Just a little benefit here.
And then the sum of that was that although your common sense says that these little improvements probably should show just a little bit of gain, but when you sum them up, you're 1% better about everything.
Suddenly they became champions and they were winning competitions.
And very quickly, after this new coach came in, better performance.
So it was probably these tiny improvements that made the difference.
Because when I see that a cycling team gets suddenly better, The first thing I ask is, did they make a lot of micro-improvements?
That's the first thing you ask, right?
What?
Dope?
I'm not a dope.
Somebody's calling me a dope.
Oh, oh, oh, you... Oh.
Okay.
You're thinking that maybe they'd found some way to cheat that they didn't tell the reporters who asked about it?
Are you saying that some people... No, I'm not saying this is true.
But are you telling me that you think people would do this?
I think you're way too skeptical.
Oh, you people.
Why can't you trust the athletes?
Has any athlete taken an illegal drug and tried to... What?
Lance?
Who's this Lance Armstrong guy you're talking about?
Has anybody ever heard of him?
That doesn't even sound like a real name.
Lance.
Is that a real person?
Oh, he did what?
Oh, for years, for years.
My God.
It's like they never tested him.
What?
They did test him.
What?
They did test him?
They tested him for years?
And he always came out legit?
And then later we found out.
Wow.
Well, that's surprising, isn't it?
Didn't see that coming at all.
But let me tell you that this one British cycling team, they had nothing like that going on.
What they did was they got a sudden, pretty major improvement from all the tiny micro-improvements.
Now, I'm going to say the same thing I said for the last story.
I don't know it's true.
Is it possible that there are great improvements came, exactly like Atomic Habit says, from a number of improvements in everything they do?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I do think that there's power.
So the point of the book is valid.
That if you systematically looked at everything you do and tried to improve everything you do a little bit, I did that with tennis.
If you've played a sport, I would experiment with the grip, which grip gave me the best grip.
I'd experiment with the strings infinitely.
I'm always tweaking the strings.
I'd put little lead weights on the inside of the racket to change the weighting of the racket.
I would experiment with which tennis balls worked on what kind of court.
Right.
I would experiment with my diet.
I experimented with visualization.
I would do practice swings because I heard that was a good thing.
It is a good thing.
You do practice swings before you go on the court.
I did stretching.
So I do believe, from my own experience and everything I've ever experienced in life, that it could be exactly what it looks like.
They just improved everything and then they got really good.
I'm just saying that if somebody presented this story to you the first time you'd ever heard it, I would not assume it was the extra systems that they employed that made the difference.
I would assume cheating.
But I'm not going to make that claim.
I'm not making that claim.
I'm saying that if you were a smart consumer of news, don't assume that the reasons given by the reporters are the real reasons.
Because people don't tell the truth.
I don't know if you knew that.
If you interviewed all the people on the team, do you think any one of them would say, oh, you know, you got me.
Really, you've taken some illegal drugs.
No.
They would say what their leader said.
Well, we've made lots of different improvements, and they all summed up and made us great.
So anyway, so I'm not casting aspersions on any of the people in these stories.
Maybe the story is exactly the way they told it, but that is how you would examine these claims critically.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, is there any story I'm forgetting?
Because I feel like I am.
Anything big happening?
Yeah, you can always tell there's a new person.
Scott, are you vaccinated?
Do you want me to go off on him?
How many people would like me to go off on the person who just asked me if I'm vaccinated?
Just for entertainment?
Oh, some people are saying no, don't go off on him.
Should I let it slide?
How about if I say something polite but ominous sounding?
I'm gonna split the difference.
I'm going to sound angry and polite at the same time.
All right?
I'm going to split the difference.
Let's see if I can do this.
Angry and polite at the same time.
The question I'm responding to is, am I vaccinated?
I was not under the impression that my personal medical decisions were any of your business.
How was that?
Under any conditions.
Doesn't matter if you think it's newsworthy.
Doesn't matter if you made a different decision.
Doesn't matter if you were in my situation.
You would have chosen differently.
Doesn't matter if it works out for me.
Doesn't matter if it doesn't work out for me.
There's one important thing that's more important than all of those things.
That it's none of your fucking business.
All right.
But I was vaccinated.
It's a long story, but I certainly wouldn't recommend you do what I do.
And if I ever recommend anything but vitamin D and sunshine and exercise and eating right, sleeping right, if I get out of that domain, you know, maybe do some deep breathing, you can criticize me.
But if you're going to make a point about one individual's individual decision, do you know what that would make you?
That would make you like the people who talk about averages.
Oh, so you and your specific medical situation, you acted like the average of these people?
No.
I acted like I was one person with one decision that was unlike anybody else's decision at the time.
Nobody else had the same decision.
So your opinion of my decision is A, uninformed, of course.
B, does not compare to your decision.
So you could not say that if you decided differently, therefore anything about me.
Because you see, we're infinitely different.
And we have different situations.
So the average of people who got vaccinated, if you're comparing it to the average of people who didn't, That might tell you something that I don't give a shit about.
But it doesn't tell me anything about me.
which I do care about.
Am I just mad because I wish I didn't get it?
No.
How many people live like that?
How many of you live in regret of past decisions?
I've never had that feeling.
Regret is the dumbest thing you could ever feel.
In fact, one of my best reframes, I'll give you my best reframe from my book, Reframe Your Brain, available now.
The best reframe, and somebody told me yesterday that this really helped them, is if there was something that you're not happy about in your past, just imagine you just spawned into this environment today like a video game.
Just imagine you just woke up, and this is the stuff you had to play with.
Usually, you're fine.
You might have a terrible problem you have to deal with, but usually, you wake up and you're like, you know, I'm healthy.
I have ways I can get ahead.
I know what to do if I wanted to get ahead.
Yeah, I'll start here.
This would be a good starting place.
So think of today as your starting place, and then just see how it is.
And if you don't like your starting place, the next question is, how hard would it get from where you are to this better place?
Well, you apply for a better job, you learn some more skills, you talk to your cousin who's got a job opening, you do some stuff.
But probably you're fine.
So when you ask me, do I regret a past decision?
The answer is, never.
I've never, I don't have any regret about anything.
And if you're thinking in those terms, you're really hurting yourself.
So no, I don't regret anything.
That or anything else.
It's just what happened.
Now one of the reasons I can live without regret is that I don't believe in free will.
So that makes it easy.
If you don't believe in free will, You just say, what happened was the only thing that was going to happen.
You know, the nature of my brain at that moment, with all of the other inputs from the environment, didn't have an option of going a different direction.
There was only one way it could happen.
Given my brain at the time, and all of the other variables, it was one thing.
Now, Benefied says that's excuses.
No, that would be a scientific view of the world.
What you have is a magical view of the world.
Where people have this thing floating around called free will.
That would be the least scientific view.
So if you want to have an unscientific, sort of a horoscopy kind of a view of the world, then you've got it.
All right, so enough of that.
Enough of the magic beans.
Will Trump jail Biden?
Well, so Comer, Representative Comer, says they've got the goods.
And who was it recently who says that there's some audio tape that's going to sink Biden?
Greg Kelly.
Greg Kelly says there's some audio tape coming that's going to sink Joe Biden.
Do you think that that's likely?
All right, let's do some news analysis.
There's one person And nobody else, who says he knows for sure, but hasn't heard it himself, heard it from another person, that there's an audio that's going to take Joe Biden down.
That's probably the lowest level of credibility.
One person, anonymous source.
Are we done?
Anonymous source.
That happens to be right on the nose?
Oh, it's exactly what you thought might be.
And there's an anonymous source that says it's true.
It's going to happen any moment.
Now, if it does happen, and he's got the scoop, I want to pre-apologize, right?
So if Greg Kelly really had the scoop, well, then I'm the loser.
But if you were to look at this situation in its generic form without thinking of that one individual, because I don't have an opinion of that one individual's credibility, but if you were to look at this generically, you would never believe that story.
But who knows?
Anything's possible.
All right.
Yeah, if they had something, well, I'm not sure, because sometimes there are reasons why things are delayed.
So if they have anything, we'd know.
I think it's true if they have anything, we will know.
But I don't think it's true that at any given time, we should have seen it already.
Things do go slowly.
Fair elections?
You know, there are more and more people on, let's say, the political right, who don't believe there's any chance of a fair election.
How many of you are in that camp?
As in, it's already over?
There's not even any point in talking about politics?
Well.
Yeah, a lot of you think that the election's already over because it's rigged.
I think that's at least a 50% likelihood.
I'd give it a coin flip.
Now, by that I mean, I'm not saying that elections are 100% fair all the time.
In every place and in every way.
I'm saying that, in all likelihood, the only way they can get away with it is a close election.
So if you have an election in which one candidate just slaughtered the other, it would be pretty hard to cheat on that.
So there is some chance that, especially if Joe Biden is the candidate, if Biden actually limped into the race, being as dysfunctional as he is, it wouldn't be hard to imagine a Republican victory of epic proportions.
In which case, In which case, all bets are off.
It'd be hard to cheat if there's a landslide.
All right.
The only way to beat it that I can, if it's rigged, and I don't have that information, but the only way to beat it would be massive election victory.
I hear people saying they're getting shadow banned on Twitter.
I don't know.
What is the ideal?
You deserve to...
Oliver Anthony is smart.
He's saying that he'll do one more podcast.
And once he said who he is, which I think was worth doing, then he doesn't have more to say.
He's going to focus on music.
So that would be exactly the reasonable approach.
He was never trying to be political, so he's not going to turn himself into something political, which I respect a lot, actually.
What is Trump like in person?
Super personable and real easy to be comfortable with.
He does have a mastery of human connection.
He's very good at it.
All right.
Oh, the McConnell freeze.
We talked about it.
Yeah, I mean, McConnell froze again, but that's just part of the story of a number of politicians who are defective.
An update on Maui.
Not exactly.
They have successfully delayed the information about the deaths to the point where you're starting to forget the story.
I mean, not literally forget, but the emotion of the story naturally shrinks with time.
There's nothing you can do about that.
We're just built that way.
So when it's novel, your emotions are at their maximum.
But as the rest of life gets in the way, and as time goes by, every tragedy shrinks in your mind.
When they shrink it in your mind enough, you might hear some numbers that are real.
They say only 400 people are missing.
Are they people or are they young people?
So that's the part we don't know.
I'm not even sure that keeping the information from us was a bad thing.
I have mixed feelings about that.
I do think that the tragedy was so horrible, and the way it was handled was so bad, that maybe they were just better off delaying that information until we could calm down a little bit.
Because we're going to find out everything we need to find out.
So it's not like we won't know.
I believe we'll know everything.
But we probably, I don't think we're poorly served by letting our emotions come down a little bit before we hear the final bad news, because it's going to be bad.
Yeah.
So yeah, my first ex-wife has a property there that used to be our combined property.
So far it's not been damaged, but it's not usable.
So if you have undamaged Property you can't you can't visit it because nothing's open and you can't rent it out.
So as an economic asset, it's already zero because it can't be filled.
I don't know about the mold.
They do have electricity back.
So they should be able to run the AC.
So they do have water and electricity in Kaanapali.
All right.
I've got a suggestion for AI.
I wanted AI concierge for the other AIs.
Because all the AIs seem to have specific things, like there's one for images, and there's a movie one, and there's a script one, and there's a deepfake one, and there's a, you know.
But almost everything I want to do...
Oh, you lost the sound.
Let's see.
Let's see.
No sound still?
You can't hear?
Sorry.
Sorry.
All right.
So I have to end that stream.
And I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube.
We're done for now.
But I'd like a concierge AI that has an API to all the other AIs so that I can ask my one AI, hey, build me a movie of a deep fake doing this or that.
And it just connects to as many other AIs and gives them the right super prompts to do that work.
