Episode 2228 Scott Adams: Bad Behavior By Everyone - I Call It "The News." 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, AI Crime Prediction, Biden Vietnam, California COVID Law, Shrinking Human Brains, CNN Stephen Collinson, Political Propaganda, President Trump, AI Political Deep Fakes, ChatGPT Fact Checking, Jake Tapper, Antony Blinken, StarLink, Elon Musk, Nikki Haley Ukraine War, ADHD Memantine Memory Drug, Search Engine Bias, Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk Bill Gates, Frank Sinatra, Forbes Credibility, UFO Brainwashing Op, Intention Affirmations, Reticular Activation, Steering The Simulation, Scott Adams
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization, possibly Mars civilization, not too distant future.
YouTube doesn't have sound.
Probably YouTube would be better if I put my microphone on.
Probably this would be better if I had my microphone on too.
I'll bet everything would be better with sound.
That's what I think.
If you'd like to take your... Uh-oh.
Oh, shit.
Apparently, I have to turn off the comments for every episode.
I thought I had them off.
But the YouTube comments, I will be ignoring, because there are too many antisemites.
If you'd like to make comments, you could always be on the Subscription Locals platform.
Or you could be on the X platform that's streaming live right now at the same time.
But too many anti-Semites on YouTube, and I think they're not organic.
I think somebody's sending them here, so we're gonna ignore them.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine in the day that makes everything better.
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Go.
Ah.
So good.
So good.
Well, I hear that people are ordering my hardcover version of Reframe Your Brain.
The notice is that it's taking until October 19th.
Which means You probably don't want to wait beyond November to order it if you're going to get it for gifts.
Now a lot of people are buying, you know, five to ten copies of the book because it turns out it's sort of the perfect gift for literally everyone.
Anybody who could read.
Because it will change lives.
It's guaranteed.
And some people told me that the best thing about giving this book as a gift is it's the first time they can explain who I am.
Because a lot of people are getting heat for listening to me.
If you've been getting heat for listening to me, this book will explain me in a way that other people will understand for the first time.
So that's one benefit from it.
If you're having a hard time explaining why you would listen to somebody like me, that'll do it for you.
It's already changing lives in a very big way.
So don't wait too long or you won't have yours by Christmas.
All right.
Because, as you know, reality likes to follow the path of most entertainment.
The winner of the U.S.
Open tennis was Djokovic.
And Djokovic is famous for what besides tennis?
Famous for rejecting vaccinations to the point where, was it last year, he was not even allowed to play in the U.S.
Open.
Because he was unvaccinated.
Well, he came back, he won the damn tournament, and he was not only the winner, but the sponsor.
Sponsor of the tournament, let's see, one of them was Moderna.
Moderna.
And so he was featured in the Moderna shot of the day.
That's right.
They showed a highlight of Djokovic, the most famous denier of vaccinations, and it was labeled the shot of the day.
Moderna.
Yep.
Yep.
That's almost as bad as TikTok advertising on Fox News.
As soon as you hear the advertiser, you go, oh, man, what's going on here?
So that's happened.
There's a company called Voyager Labs who theoretically, hypothetically, can predict a crime before it happens.
Now, New York City is using the software, but not in that way.
So that's not the only thing it does.
So they say New York City is not using it to predict crime, but it could do it.
There's the thought that it could do it.
But here's my question.
As much as I'm not sure I want the government to be able to predict crime, because you know that that's going to go terribly wrong, right?
If the government can predict crime.
It's just not a good, not a good predictive sort of thing.
But here's the question I ask you.
What if citizens could use it to protect themselves?
Would that be wrong?
Suppose you could run it against everybody that, I don't know, AI knows is living in your neighborhood, and even could check the police that are your local police that are on your streets.
Suppose you got stopped by a police for speeding or something.
Suppose you could tell immediately if your police officer was going to be dangerous to people like you.
Wouldn't that be useful?
If as soon as you saw the police officer come up and you saw the name, if somehow you had some way to know, uh-oh, this one's a bad one.
This one's been accused of five different abuses already.
So you better keep it under wraps.
Or suppose they would tell you to move.
Suppose you ran this offer and said, you're a single woman living in this neighborhood, your odds of being abused are 80%.
You better get the hell out of here.
I don't know.
I feel like something that was predictive of crime would be useful to citizens.
Because you could even know if your own friends are likely to steal from you.
Wouldn't that be handy?
To know if the people you're working with or the people you want to do a deal with are likely to rob you?
Well, it's an interesting question.
I don't know if the software could actually identify that kind of risk, but if it could, if it could, would you use it?
It's kind of creepy.
It would definitely discriminate, but it would also keep you safe.
Well Joe Biden, can anybody confirm that this really happened?
I saw it on a tweet, but I did not see a source.
Is it true that Joe Biden said, I guess yesterday maybe, that China has become too weak to invade Taiwan because their economy is so bad?
He actually said that, huh?
What do you think of that?
Do you think that's true?
You know what's interesting is it might be a little bit true.
It's certainly not true enough, right?
It's not 100% true.
And it's probably not 50% true.
But it's an interesting point that their economy is a little bit sketchy.
But I would be surprised if they couldn't mount a war with their existing assets.
So I think that's an overstatement, but it's a variable.
It might be a variable that's making China have second thoughts.
Imagine if you are President Xi.
And sure, you're a dictator, so you've got a lot of control, but you still need to keep other people happy.
Right?
Because the other elites could gang up on you if you were just totally out of control.
So even the head of China needs to make other people happy.
Imagine if you're the head of China, President Xi, and you see that you've got all these other economic woes, and they're really big ones, like demographic problems, things you can't really easily fix.
So let's say you see manufacturing is leaving, you're maybe losing some of your access to some high-tech stuff, you're A little bit pressured by everybody.
You've got to spend a lot on social services.
You've got 50 percent unemployment among the youth.
Suppose you've got all those problems and at the moment they're sort of a little bit under wraps.
Meaning that the average Chinese citizen is probably not thinking about them every moment of the day.
So you're kind of stable, but there's a lot of stuff, a lot of big stuff, that could be a problem fairly soon.
Under those conditions, would you want to take the chance of your economy imploding, coincidentally at the same time that you started a war?
Because the problem is, if it looked like you made a mistake starting a war, at the same time it looked like you made a mistake managing the economy, that might be too many mistakes.
So if you were a Chinese leader, could you stand the internal national pressure of having a failed economy and a war that's not maybe going too smoothly?
Because who knows what would happen?
I feel like Biden is onto something.
I feel like if China's economy were 100% solid, that President Xi could take a chance of screwing up a war and still stay in power.
But if the economy is bad and there's a war, the Chinese public are going to say, why are we spending money on a war when we've got these other problems?
You know, just like the American economy is.
So it could be that the best thing to reduce the chance of war in the world is bad economies.
Because wars make economies worse.
Especially if you lose.
All right.
So maybe Biden's on to something a little bit there.
So Biden was in Vietnam embarrassing the country, but he picked the right country to do it.
You know, if you're going to send Biden onto the international stage, wouldn't you want to send him to a country that values the elderly?
Yeah.
I don't think we should send Biden anywhere where they don't have a real strong cultural preference for showing respect to the elderly.
Because can you imagine the face Of the Vietnamese leaders who were greeting him?
Yeah, you're totally all right.
Uh-huh.
The things coming out of your mouth totally make sense.
Oh, we respect you, you elder.
I've got a feeling that they can fake it better than other countries.
Can you imagine the Russians?
Imagine Biden taking this performance to Russia, as if he would travel to Russia.
But imagine the Russians watching Biden flustered and mumbling around and wandering off.
They would literally be drinking and laughing.
But you take him to Vietnam and everybody's like, we respect the elderly.
Let's just let them be.
So, I don't know.
The fact that there's sort of a cat's on the roof quality to the old Biden experience, you know what I mean?
Biden is failing right in front of us, but because every day is sort of similar to the day before, but, you know, half a percent worse.
Every day you say, ah, today, well, it's not that much worse than it was yesterday.
And then the next day, it's just not that much worse than yesterday.
But if you start adding it up, at least half of 1% worse every day, things are looking pretty bad in six months, if you know what I mean.
Compounding.
Compounding interest.
So that's how we got here to this absurd, ridiculous situation.
I guess Kamala Harris was sent to the 9-11 event today.
And Biden said he was going back to bed after he talked to the people in Vietnam.
Now, to be fair, the time change must be brutal.
You know, beyond a certain age, traveling and time changes and tough schedules, it's got to be brutal, I have to admit.
But maybe you shouldn't say it out loud.
I'm going back to bed.
All right.
California is kind of quietly looking to reverse a California law that would punish doctors for spreading COVID misinformation.
Now, in all of the, can we call it fuckery, of the pandemic, somehow I'd forgotten that California had a law
That doctors who are doing their best to help their customers, but if they happen to say something that was not the approved orthodoxy of what you can say, they could be punished for being wrong according to other people.
Not for being wrong.
We're not talking about punishing the doctors for being wrong.
No, that's not even the topic.
It's not about being wrong.
It's that they can't even say it if it's against the standard interpretation.
So the fact that it's not about being right or wrong should be the scariest thing in the world.
It's really just about not being with the government's allowed interpretation.
It looks like they're sticking it in some other legislation.
Kind of slowly walk it back.
But at least it's being walked back.
However, you can't be too happy about it, because it existed in the first place.
In modern times.
In our lifetime, that existed.
That was a real thing, that was a real law.
And still is, by the way.
They just haven't reversed it yet.
I mean, the level of wrongness that we've experienced in the last five years or so, I think it's unprecedented.
Now, I saw a scientific study that is being questioned, so we don't know if it's true, that the human brain has shrunk in the past, I don't know, however many thousands of years, and that we used to have bigger brains, you know, like before the Ice Age or something.
So our brains used to be bigger, now they're smaller.
Do you know what that would explain?
What would that explain?
If our brains had, in fact, gotten smaller, No, the answer is everything.
It would explain everything.
Yeah, you know how we couldn't understand how the ancients could build pyramids, but we wouldn't know how to do it today using their technology?
What if they were just smarter?
That's the whole story.
It's like, well, if you were smart as we used to be, you could have built a pyramid too.
Maybe that's the whole answer.
Maybe the answer to what's wrong with everything Is that we're dumber.
And maybe there's nothing else to it.
I don't think so.
And the other scientists who are not part of this study are not so sure that we're getting dumber.
Some of them are saying, oh yes, generally speaking, the bigger the brain, the smarter you are.
But there could be an exception, where if you have more folds, it could be tighter and more compact, like a microchip.
So it might actually be better.
But there's one theory that says that brains shrunk because we didn't need to think individually.
That once you can depend on other people to remember things and do some of your thinking for you, sort of group thinking, that you didn't need as much individual intelligence to stay alive.
Therefore, it atrophied.
Because you didn't need it so much.
Not buying that.
So, what should you believe about this new study about brain shrinking?
Nothing.
Including the fact that they shrunk.
Because even that's questioned.
Other people say, you can't really measure the size of a brain back then because, you know, it's not preserved and blah blah blah.
Can't really tell.
So ignore all that.
So here's the CNN narrative on Trump, courtesy of Stephen Collinson.
And by the way, I tried to predict who the opinion piece will be based on the title.
So I look at the title of the opinion piece before you see the name associated, and try to guess which person it is.
And this one, as soon as I saw it, I was like, that looks like Stephen Collinson to me.
Sure enough.
Here are some things it says.
The Republican frontrunner, meaning Trump, his stark speech, they're saying stark instead of dark.
I think we embarrassed him off dark, and so now it's turned stark.
So it's very stark.
The frontrunner's stark speech raised the prospect of a second presidency that would be even more extreme and challenging to the rule of law than his first.
Now, do you believe that you could objectively make the case that the Trump administration was, just purely objectively, had more or less a disregard for law than the Biden administration.
Does anybody think that's the case?
I can only think of one instance where this is even a question...
And the one instance is January 6th.
And January 6th is an op.
It's a misinformation op by the left.
It's not even real.
It's not even real in the sense that obviously it wasn't an insurrection.
But half of the country thinks you can overturn a country with some paperwork and some trespassing.
So...
So, the thing with the Democrats is that they're so brainwashed to believe that they're the good guys that you can just put this out there like it's true and you don't have to support it.
Well, you know, there was this one administration that was ignoring the law and the Democrats go, oh yeah, oh yeah, thank goodness we've got an administration that just follows the law now.
Isn't it amazing?
To me it's just like mind-boggling that there's even a possibility that somebody thinks that they could measure one administration's flouting of the law compared to the other.
How in the world would you even compare?
So that's brainwashing propaganda point number one, is to make you accept uncritically that one of them is the honest one.
And we just start from there.
Well, start from the assumption that one is the honest side.
Now look at all these crimes!
Whoa!
Yeah.
How about we check that assumption of which one flouts the law?
Ann Collinson goes on to talk about Trump.
His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers.
Wait.
So Stephen Collinson on CNN wrote this sentence about Trump.
His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers.
What evidence is there of that?
Exactly what evidence is there of his internal unspoken thoughts?
It's just put here like it's a fact.
It's mind reading.
It's mind reading.
By the way, I'll say this again.
Once I introduce the idea that a lot of what you see in politics is people pretending they can read minds, when obviously they can't.
Once you see it, you see it everywhere, right?
The mind reading frame.
It's like pervasive.
And then once you realize that it's completely illegitimate speech, meaning that it's just somebody trying to brainwash you, it's not somebody who has a real opinion.
So, let me finish this, it's mind-blowing.
His view, as if he could know this, his view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers suggests Trump would indulge in similar conduct as that for which he is awaiting trial.
All right, so see if I can put this all together, because he's talking about the January 6th.
So the fake accusations about January 6th form a base, completely fake accusations, that we see that if we read his mind, and we read his mind, we see that he's likely to do more of the thing that never happened.
Because we read his mind.
Did I state that right?
They read his mind, Trump's mind, and in it they can see that he's likely to do more of the things he's falsely accused of.
That's called the news on the left.
That's the news.
It's an opinion piece, but it's on a news site.
Well, There's a lot of concern by the people who care about AI that there will be an October surprise.
You know, that's the big news story that you don't expect, but of course you always expect it, before an election.
The October before the election.
So that not this year, but one year from this October, that we'll have an AI-inspired deepfake that will be convincing enough that will change the election.
Now, here's my question.
I feel as if this could go either way.
We might have reached the point where people will stop looking at photos and videos.
Suppose you had a site that wouldn't show you any of it.
They wouldn't show you a video and they would never show you a picture.
They would only describe it.
That would be as close as you could get to real news because videos and pictures lie.
They're the biggest liars.
So I feel like if I knew a human wrote the story, and there were no pictures or videos to distract me and lie to me, that might be closer to real.
But also, if there's no picture or video, it's easier to lie.
So there's no real good solution here.
But what do you think?
Do you think that there will be a deepfake October surprise?
I say no.
And the reasons I say no, there'll be lots of attempts.
So there'll be plenty of deepfake attempts.
But I think we'll be so onto the fakes that we will be primed to see everything is fake even when it's not.
I think it's more likely we'll think a real thing is fake.
Oh, okay.
Here's my prediction.
Here's my prediction.
It's more likely we'll think a real thing was faked than we'll think a fake thing was real.
Anybody want to take the other side of that bet?
It'd be hard to prove.
But look for a situation where there's a real thing that one side or the other believes is fake.
I think that's slightly more likely than actually believing a deepfake.
Now, we might believe a deepfake for a day, but we wouldn't believe a deepfake for two days if we're watching the news, because it would get debunked pretty quickly.
And then I think that AI will be able to detect AI.
So we should have pretty quickly an AI that's a watchdog of other AI.
Hey, do you know why there's no such thing as an AI fact check?
Isn't that the obvious thing?
If ChatGPT can do search, shouldn't it also be able to watch your posts on social media and automatically add a fact check?
We have that ability right now, right?
How hard would it be?
It would be somewhat easy.
Do you know why you don't see it?
Why is there no ChatGPT fact check?
Because the Democrats can't control it.
They do know that ChatGPT is biased toward the left, but not in every way.
Not in every way.
It still will give you facts sometimes.
So if you let ChatGPT do an automatic fact checking, it would destroy the Democratic Party.
Because their entire operation involves gaslighting their own team.
It just doesn't work on the other side, because the other side is, you know, they're sort of primed to reject everything that comes from that side just automatically.
So it doesn't work, except for their own team.
But what would happen if they thought ChatGPT was real?
It's real enough.
And then it kept disagreeing with their own team.
There's no way that Democrats can allow chat GPT to become, or AI in general, to be part of the public conversation unless they've biased it so badly that it can't possibly be useful.
Just think about that.
So that's my prediction.
My prediction is Democrats will never allow AI to be part of fact-checking unless they've corrupted it so badly that it can't really do the fact-checking.
Anybody want to take the other side of that prediction?
You don't want to take the other side of that one.
There will never be an AI fact-checker approved by Democrats.
It can't happen.
Just think about that fact for a fact.
So this is going to be the biggest dog not barking.
Once it becomes, like, incredibly clear to every citizen that ChatGPT could identify the bullshit, You're going to ask why it's not doing it.
If it can identify fakes and bullshit and facts that are just a spin, and of course it could do that, why aren't we massively using it?
Now, it doesn't mean it will get everything right.
It could just flag things you should look into more deeply.
But wouldn't that be useful?
Look how useful the community notes are on the X platform.
The best thing ever.
The community notes where they add the context.
Because the community notes do not seem to be targeting one side.
Would you agree?
If you've watched any.
The community notes have taken down people on the left and the right.
It's just the fact is the fact.
So, Yeah, I think that's the most.
I think the community notes are the most successful fact checking process so far.
All right.
Jake Tapper looks like he's trying to get Elon Musk assassinated or jailed because he's pushing a narrative via his questioning.
He's pushing the narrative.
He was talking to Tony Blinken.
And he says, I'll paraphrase, but Jake Tapper said that Musk effectively sabotaged a military attack against a US ally.
Now his version of it is that Musk deactivated the Skylink satellites, his own satellites, that Ukraine was using and they were planned to use it for a maritime attack, which would have been essentially a Pearl Harbor attack on the Russian fleet.
Before the Russian fleet, I don't think they're all in one place now.
So there was that one point during the early part of the war when the fleet was in one place, or a lot of it.
And an attack of that size would have made Musk uncomfortable because he says he talked to some high-ranking Russians who threatened nuclear response if things got too bad.
And that that looked like it was possibly a nuclear trigger.
And that Musk himself, apparently, decided that he would not turn on those satellites, and there's some difference in the reporting.
The way Tapper describes it, it sounds like he turned them off.
But indeed, they were never on in the first place.
So they were actually asking him to participate in something that could have started World War III.
And he said, no.
He just said no.
He never promised coverage over Crimea, because he thought Crimea was a red thing.
Now, Blinken, quite wisely, I thought he handled it well, instead of saying anything good or bad about Musk, or what he did or did not do, Blinken just said, and this is the right answer, I'm not a big Blinken fan, But he gave the exact right answer.
He said, we think Skylink is important, has been important, and will be important to the future in our war.
And then Tapper tried to humiliate him for avoiding the question, to which I say, thank you for avoiding that question.
I wanted you to avoid that question.
I wanted you to say Skylink is important, and we're going to keep using it where we can.
That's all I want to hear.
I don't want to hear you say anything about an American citizen who's trying to help every way he can.
I don't want to hear any criticisms about him in that context.
I mean, criticism's fine, but not in that context.
So Blinken played that exactly right, because you don't want to piss off Musk if he controls the biggest asset in the sky.
But to watch Jake Tapper frame this in a way that would get Musk killed or jailed, Is probably one of the least ethical things I've ever seen in my life.
Would you agree?
If anybody saw the clip, did it look like the least moral and ethically responsible thing you've ever seen?
And the idea here is that Musk was doing his own foreign policy, which would be illegal.
Now, at what point is talking to somebody else foreign policy?
Or is it the fact that he didn't turn on the satellites as a foreign policy?
If I don't give you assets for your military stuff, is that interfering?
Am I doing my own foreign policy if I decide not to go kill people you want me to kill?
That's my own foreign policy?
Refusing to help in a war that doesn't look legitimate to some people, that would be foreign policy.
Well, let me say this.
We would have a big conversation about what foreign policy means, because do you think I've never talked to anybody in another country?
That's what the X platform does.
It allows people in other countries to DM me.
Are there not plenty of public figures, and I would be one of them, who have had conversations with people in other countries, in which they tell me things that inform my opinion, You know, in many cases I don't believe them because it looks like propaganda.
But we're not allowed to talk to people in other countries?
Under what conditions are we not allowed to talk to other people?
Because I'm not aware of any law that would prevent me from talking to anybody under any conditions.
Who can tell me who I can talk to in another country?
Is there a law about that?
You know, if it's my job to go over there and influence them, that's something.
But I can't have a conversation where I learn things and they learn things that are, you know, not secrets.
Yeah.
You know, there's, it's one thing to be, I guess Kerry was kind of negotiating with Iran, somebody said.
So, I mean, that's the real kind that might be a problem.
But if all Musk did is talk to a bunch of high-ranking Russians, and they told him something that is a little bit obvious, you know, that they would consider nukes under some situations, and that he acted on that, how is that wrong?
Like, what kind of law did that violate?
Not wanting to be involved in starting World War III is doing your own foreign policy?
That's quite a stretch.
So to me it looks like powers on the left are ganging up to take Trump, or to take Musk out.
I think that they need him gone in order for their propaganda gaslighting machine to work.
Because if you can't get the X platform to go along, it's a little more obvious what you're up to.
Well, let's talk about Nikki Haley, whose prospects seem to be rising.
A lot of people are liking her.
But she is pro-war in Ukraine and funding it, whereas Trump and Vivek, to name two, would be a little more aggressive in trying to wind down that war and get us out of there.
But she said a win for Russia in that war is a win for China.
Do you see that?
A win for Russia is a win for China?
That feels like a weak bullshit reason, doesn't it?
There's something about that reason that makes me think she doesn't have a reason.
Yeah, it's like, why do you have to stretch?
You're giving billions of dollars for a war, and you've got to come up with some third-party effect for why it's important.
There's not a first-party effect, as in people dying right now, and it either does make us safer or not, in terms of Russia.
But the real concern is China.
Is she just bad at explaining things, or is that her actual reason?
I don't know.
I feel like her explanations of the Ukraine situation, I'm not saying that they're wrong, but they're at the very least poorly explained.
And I don't think you could have a war that's poorly explained.
Like that feels like really important to explain it accurately.
So yeah, this whole win for Russia is a win for China, that's a little too thin.
That's some weak soup right there.
Which is different from saying we should or should not fund them.
I have my opinions on that, but what we're talking about now is just, this explanation just doesn't even feel real.
It sounds like somebody had to sit down and think it up.
Alright, can you come up with a reason why we're funding this war?
Russia, well, we'll see.
We'll be safer from Russia.
No, we're not going to be safer from Russia.
We'll actually be in more danger from Russia.
So the reason would be to save Ukraine.
Well, no, Ukraine's totally destroyed, so it's not.
It's not about saving Ukraine.
It's about making sure that NATO is... not really.
I mean, it's not really about NATO.
So I feel like it was somebody who had to come up with an essay for a college class.
And he had to say something that somebody hadn't said already.
Oh, I think I'll write an essay.
Well...
Let's say I'll talk about the third effect, you know, downstream.
I mean, it doesn't even, it just doesn't seem real.
It sounds like CIA.
Let's just say what it sounds like.
It sounds like somebody in a propaganda job came up with this ridiculous, you know, China is really about, that Russia is really about China, and Ukraine is really about China.
I'm sorry.
Nope.
Nope.
Do you know what you'll never see?
No, you'll definitely see somebody like Vivek say that, you know, we should be focusing on China and it's not helping us to be focused over here.
That's a lot different than saying a win for Russia is a win for China.
Those don't sound the same to me.
But I get the fact that our focus is in the wrong place.
But wait a minute.
I've got this backwards.
So Vivek is saying we should get out because being there is good for China.
And Nikki Haley is saying we should stay there and fund it because getting out would be good for China.
So there are two major Republicans who can't even tell you for sure.
Well, one of them's right, but we don't know which one's right.
I'm not smart enough.
So we can't even tell if a war is good or bad for our main, let's say, competition, China.
That's a pretty fundamental problem.
Do you know what I say when you can't decide if a war is good or bad for you?
How do you handle it when you can't decide if it's good or bad for you?
You don't do it.
You don't do a war if you're not sure.
Unless it's a defensive war and then you're sure.
But that's pretty scary.
Even the Republicans don't know why we're there.
Here's a little interesting tidbit.
There's a drug called Memantine that's given to adults with It's a memory drug.
So it's an already approved existing memory drug.
And there's some newer studies that say it might be useful for reducing ADHD.
But, hold on, but you won't be able to find this in the news.
Do you know why?
Why would you not be able to find that there's an existing drug that may be?
And by the way, you should not take any medical advice from me.
I'm not making the claim that it works.
I'm not making the claim that it works.
How would I know?
I'm not a doctor.
Do not take any drugs because you heard it on this show.
Let's be clear.
I'm just spitballing here.
There's no medical advice.
However, there are There are at least some doctors who work in the field who are pretty sure that it's having some effect.
Why is it that if you did a search for it would be hard to find that?
Could it be that there's some other drug that makes a lot of money that is the current thing that works for ADHD?
Could it be there's some other drug?
So here's how you understand drug news.
If you do a search and it says, hey, there's this one drug that everybody should use for this situation, it probably means that whoever sells that drug did a good job of managing the search engine optimization, so that their thing comes up and anything else doesn't come up.
Now, as you know, I gave you a direct example of this the other day, where there's something I have personal knowledge of, because I am in fact cured.
By surgery on my throat.
But if you searched for my condition, good luck going way down the search to find the known cure.
Instead, you'll find out that Botox is the gold standard of treatment, which in fact is by far a less good cure than the surgery.
Now the surgery doesn't work for every person, so there's some risk to it.
But the Botox doesn't work for every person either.
So we do know with some certainty, I can tell you with personal experience, that the search engine optimization for drugs that work doesn't work.
So that the search engines are all owned.
They're essentially been neutered by the drug companies.
So if there were a drug, and I'm not saying there were, there is, this is just one story, you wouldn't know about it.
So your social media would prevent you from knowing about cures that would totally change your life, like really change your life.
Imagine having ADHD that wasn't properly treated.
And that you wouldn't know that there was something out there that could help you?
Maybe.
Again, don't take my word for it.
I'm not a doctor.
But the level of evil that we're seeing, because when it comes to medical stuff, regular marketing shouldn't even be legal.
Because the way you market a normal consumer product is you say, ours is the best and the other person sucks.
And that doesn't even necessarily need to be true.
You might not have the best one.
It might be overpriced.
Your competition might have a better one.
But we're kind of used to that when it's just some consumer good.
But when it comes to life and death, like your quality of life is below the worth living point, but it could be above it.
If you simply have this little information about what would make you better, and the search engines will just bury that.
Not intentionally, perhaps.
It's just maybe gaming from the people who are trying to game it.
But it's just so unethical, it's almost hard to keep it in your head.
Anyway.
There's this new book on Musk.
It's a biography by Walter Isaacson.
And Musk himself must be happy about it, because I saw him sending a post in which he was recommending an interview with Walter Isaacson without even seeing it, because he said everything that guy says is kind of interesting.
So they like each other, apparently.
So that's good to know.
Just when you're trying to evaluate how true the biography is, it's good to know that the biographer and the subject got along.
And yeah, I guess Walter Isaacson was talking to Lex Friedman on a podcast, which would probably be quite interesting, I would imagine.
But there's a few anecdotes coming out, and one of them is about the relationship between Elon Musk and Bill Gates, which you might know is not ideal.
Now, the funniest thing about this was that they didn't always know each other.
Isn't that weird?
That only a few years ago they seemed to have met for the first time.
How is that even possible?
How did Elon Musk and Bill Gates not end up in the same room just naturally a bunch of times without even trying?
Yeah.
So by the way, my trigonometry podcast is up today, apparently.
Trigonometry.
Look for that.
If you know that, it's one of the best podcasts.
So here's some things we learned from the biography that Musk was really mad at Gates for shorting Tesla stock.
Now, if you're not an investor, a short is a bet that the stock will plunge and go down.
And then you can make money by betting against the stock.
So you can either buy a stock and make money when it goes up, or you can do what's called selling a short Where you make money when it goes down, but that's considered putting pressure on a stock.
Like if somebody buys a big short, it makes other people say, well what do you know that I don't know?
So it's a big pressure on the stock price.
So it's kind of a messed up thing to do if you're the person who owns a lot of stock in that company.
And so Musk apparently challenged him when Gates wanted to bring one of his children to watch a launch.
Here's a subcategory, or part of the story that's also interesting.
When Gates wanted to schedule with Musk to bring Gates' kid to see a launch, or see a rocket or something, Musk told him that he fired his schedulers Because he didn't like them having too much control over his schedule.
So that to schedule with him, you'd have to call him directly.
To like, call his phone number.
So Bill Gates wanted to schedule it and have his secretary set it up.
But he couldn't send his secretary to call Musk directly.
Because that would just sort of be inappropriate.
So he had to schedule it himself.
So Bill Gates called Musk and scheduled it.
So apparently when they got together, there was some disagreement about whether there could ever be a Tesla semi-truck.
I just saw one.
So Musk said it would be impossible to use battery power to make the big semi-trucks.
And I think Musk was saying that they were already running at the time that he said that they were impossible.
They were like already up and running.
And you know and now they're in lots of places.
I saw one yesterday or the other day.
So I guess Gates was completely wrong about the capability of the batteries.
And it turns out that Musk knew a lot more about batteries than Gates does.
Surprise.
And that Gates was just totally wrong about everything about Tesla and its potential.
Now, Musk's problem is that Gates is not just a guy who's investing to make money.
And so he asked him, reportedly, Musk asked Gates why he would have a short on the one company that is doing the most to get us away from fossil fuels.
And Gates basically said he did it to make money.
He bet against the most important anti-fossil fuel company, the one that would be doing the most to make fossil fuels unnecessary.
He bet against it in a way that could damage it severely to make money.
And he said it directly.
He just did it to make money.
And then I guess the quote from Musk after learning this was, Musk said in a note to somebody, "At this point I am convinced that he is categorically insane," then parenthetically, "and an asshole to the core." "and an asshole to the core." And Musk said, I did actually want to like him, sigh.
So in person, Elon Musk says he's either crazy, or just an asshole who doesn't care about anything.
So now I know you're going to extend this, and you're going to say, "But Scott, you said he doesn't invest just to make money.
You said he's using his fortune to make the world a better place, and haven't I been telling you that he's evil and he's trying to destroy the world?
I don't think you can use this example to make that case.
Here's why.
You don't think that the previous richest person in the world has any bad feelings about the current richest person in the world?
You don't think that Gates and Musk have a personal situation that is primarily what's driving them?
And that has nothing to do with anything else that Gates does anywhere else.
To me, it just looked personal.
It just looked like Gates lost his mojo to Musk.
Musk is now the better Gates, basically.
Because when I grew up, Bill Gates was the standard of high-tech entrepreneurial success.
But he's not at the moment.
At the moment, that's Musk.
So imagine going most of your life being the guy, like you're the guy for technology, and now there's another the guy.
And you're getting all this trouble for your personal behavior, etc.
I don't know, to me it just looked personal.
I think that Gates would have been happy to see Tesla go down, because it would have made Gates look smarter.
But I don't think you could take that, which is pretty ugly, And extended to the reason he's making toilets in Africa is to make money.
That's a pretty big stretch.
But people are complex, so they're neither all good nor all bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, it just seems personal to me.
So I'd say I doubt he's insane, but asshole to the core appears to be consistent with what people have said about Gates from the first days.
I would never argue that he's not an asshole.
You didn't hear that, did you?
I've never made that case.
I'm not saying that if you were there in person, he'd be a good guy.
I doubt it.
I was watching, last night I was watching a special on Frank Sinatra.
And here's something I didn't know about Frank Sinatra.
In my opinion, his greatest accomplishments we never talk about.
Like if you think of Frank Sinatra, you think, oh, you know, great singer and he was in movies and successful and stuff.
But it turns out that his Maybe most awesome accomplishments had nothing to do with those things.
Those things allowed him to be Frank Sinatra so he could do the other things.
For example, he had in his little rack pack, his group of guys, included Sammy Davis Jr.
Now, in the days, in the 50s, Sammy Davis Jr.
couldn't even stay at the hotels where they performed.
He wasn't allowed to stay there.
Or to eat there or something.
Because the racism was so bad.
But because Sinatra was so powerful, he would just go in and say, yes you are.
You absolutely are going to change that.
No discrimination when I'm here.
Sammy is going to be treated like everybody else.
And then he would just force people to do it.
So he was one of the biggest forces.
For, you know, realistic diversity in entertainment at least, and also the world.
So he basically went to the mat.
against discrimination.
But there was another story that I hadn't heard until I watched this.
So apparently at the time that Sinatra had moved to Palm Springs, I think it was, Palm Springs, and other rich people wanted to spend some time there too.
It was just a good place for rich people.
But a lot of the rich Jewish actors and Hollywood people couldn't even join.
The big golf club in Palm Springs.
I don't know how many there were, but there was one big one that they would want to be a member of, but they were not allowed.
So they were rich enough, they decided to start their own golf club so that all the Jewish members could play, but it wouldn't be restricted.
So you didn't have to be Jewish, it's just that they wouldn't restrict anybody.
So it ended up being, you know, lots of Jewish members.
Well, Frank Sinatra, who was not Jewish, He actually moved his home onto the golf course.
So that Frank Sinatra was basically endorsing, you know, this new arrangement that was not discriminating against his friends.
So if you, and it was a big, very, apparently especially for the area, it was a big statement.
Like his statement was, if this club isn't going to let my friends in, you're not going to see me there.
And seeing Frank Sinatra was sort of a big deal.
So he put the hammer down on two very notable situations in which he would not tolerate discrimination.
And to me that was his greater accomplishments.
But this is not even why I was going to talk about him.
I was going to talk about him because he was also a miserable drunk.
And apparently he was just terrible to people when he was drunk.
And he really liked to drink.
So it wasn't that uncommon.
But when you watch the people talk about him, they talked like they were seeing a God.
It's like, oh my God, he was so nice.
And apparently he did just incredible amount of charity work, like for individuals, but also for organizations.
He did like just all kinds of charity singing.
He said yes to everything.
So he was, in fact, A genuine charitable guy who did things which I think could have changed history.
I mean, it might be that important.
But he could also be a pretty mean guy.
So how do you handle the fact that somebody is sometimes terrible and sometimes an angel?
And he could be both guys.
He could be both people.
And I think you have to keep that in mind when you're looking at any You know, anybody like Bill Gates.
So if you want to say that he's like pure evil, that doesn't feel likely to me.
That feels really unlikely.
But if you told me that everything he does is noble and for the good of humanity, I would say, clearly not.
Clearly not.
But he could be both.
He could be one of the most useful people to society and also an asshole.
There's no competition there.
He could be both.
I speak from personal experience.
I like to do things that help the world.
But am I flawless?
No.
Obviously.
All right.
People are complex.
That's my only point.
Do you remember when Forbes, the publication, was a respectable publication?
Oh, my God.
I don't know what happened.
Oh my God!
So there's an article here about how the rich are more unethical than the poor.
The rich are more unethical and immoral than the poor.
It's in Forbes.
It's in Forbes.
And here are the examples.
Without any, no believable data to back it, Yeah, because when I'm afraid of a crime, for example, I don't want to be around rich people.
Yeah.
No, if you want to be free from crime, go to the poorest part of the country.
had a belief that certain rules might not apply to them.
Yeah, because when I'm afraid of a crime, for example, I don't want to be around rich people.
Yeah.
No, if you want to be free from crime, go to the poorest part of the country, because that's where people are morally strong.
You can leave your Just go to any inner city, just leave your door unlocked.
Because there are no rich people there to take your stuff.
Because they're all immoral, those rich people.
They're rich also, according to the Forbes article.
It's an opinion piece, I guess.
Skewed ethical compasses, yeah?
Because that's something that the rich have, but not the poor.
They're inconsiderate, yeah?
The rich are inconsiderate.
Unlike the poor, who just, they're so considerate.
And the rich have something called an overemphasis on winning.
Whether in games or work.
Yeah, those stupid rich people, they have an overemphasis on winning.
So you wouldn't want any of that around you, would you?
Let me get away from those winners.
My God.
Now, do I even need to add commentary to this?
This is Forbes.
And they're basically saying kill rich people.
Indirectly.
I mean, the rich people are the bad people.
So if you did something bad to a rich person, well, that would not even be immoral, would it?
Because they have it coming.
They're all bad people.
My God.
Do you think that the left is trying to kill Trump and Musk, like actually kill them?
I don't know if anybody's had a meeting where they said those words.
But if you were to judge by actions, it looks like it.
It looks exactly like it.
You know, you want to hear it?
Here's my conspiracy theory.
I'm going to give you the conspiracy theory of all conspiracy theories.
I will not say that I believe my own conspiracy theory, and therefore you shouldn't.
But when a situation is created, we're led to a certain set of conclusions whether you like it or not.
And the thing that's been bugging me for a long time is the UFO stories.
And I've told you before that if I were in charge of the, let's say, some massive brainwashing operation, I would want to know if I could test when the public is ready for the big one.
And the UFOs would be this nice little silly story that no matter which way it went, it would just be kind of funny.
So it wouldn't hurt you.
So you put this UFO story out, and then you wait a few weeks, and you see how many people believed it.
Now, I don't know the answer to that.
Can you tell me what percentage of the public believed the UFO story?
Less than half?
Not 25%.
But it was fewer than half, was it not?
Fewer than half believed it was true?
I need a fact check on that.
You're just guessing.
All right.
So, here's my conspiracy theory.
That if 75% of the country had believed the UFO story, Then the brainwashers in charge would know that we're ready for the big one.
And the big one would be assassination.
The big one would be assassination.
And that because the UFO story was not bought hook, line, and sinker, that they pulled back on the plan to kill Trump.
And they may have the same plan for Musk, for all I know.
But no, I'm not saying this is true.
Not saying this is true.
I'm just saying that if you remove any trust in media, we're all left with our own devices.
So we're all going to look for patterns, and then we're going to think those patterns mean something.
They don't.
A lot of times the patterns are just, you know, accidental patterns.
But I'll tell you the pattern I see with the Forbes thing.
This basically is trying to change the public's opinion of how much they think about the rich people.
Now, who do you think of when you think of rich people?
Trump and Musk.
Like, they're defined by being rich people.
So if you can make rich people look like they're the bad ones, and you can make the public believe anything, including UFOs, you can just kill the rich people if they're in your way.
And then you can tell the public that it was an accident, and 75% will believe.
25% won't believe, but it's not enough to change it.
The 25% was probably how many believed that Kennedy was killed by the CIA.
For most of my life, probably 25% of the public thought the CIA killed Kennedy.
Right?
So that was enough that society did not rise up because 25% just isn't enough.
75% said, let's just move on.
Probably one gunman.
So that's what scares me about the UFO story.
It looks like it's planted.
It didn't look organic to me.
And it looked like there would be some point to it.
And the only other point I could think would be to scare China or Russia into thinking we have some technology that they don't know about.
Maybe.
I mean, that's another plausible explanation.
But it feels like a test to see if we're ready to believe literally anything.
You would have to get us to Kennedy levels of trust in the system before you can listen to the system say, oh, no problem.
It was one bullet.
It was a magic bullet, but it was just one.
Yeah.
Remember, the public believed the magic bullet for most of my life.
They believed there was a magic bullet that just went through them.
And still do.
Yeah, I don't know how many bullets there were, but maybe we'll never know.
So that's what scares me.
And that's the reason the study says all these unethical tendencies, according to the psychologist, is why the rich can succeed in life but fail in love.
So the rich fail in love because they're not trusted.
That's not why the rich fail in love.
Would anybody like me to explain to them why the rich fail in love?
Is there anybody who doesn't know the obvious answer to that?
Because we can afford it.
We can afford it.
Why is this a mystery?
Rich people have the most options.
So you have the most temptation.
And the, let's say the wife, if you take a classic situation with a richer guy and marries somebody, a woman who marries a rich guy doesn't have to put up with any shit.
Because they're going to get enough money even with a prenup.
Even with a prenup, there's going to be some bag of money involved.
So, all you do is change the financial incentives and you would get this result.
And this psychologist thinks it has something to do with trust.
It has nothing to do with trust.
It has to do with follow the money.
Follow the money works 100% of the time.
And the money suggests that getting married to a rich guy and then divorcing the rich guy is a really good deal, because then you could have money plus a guy you like better.
Why wouldn't everybody do it?
I don't know how any rich people stay married.
To me, it would be a miracle if anybody ever stayed married to a rich person.
Yeah, because the money suggests that you shouldn't.
So they don't.
It's as simple as that.
Alright, the Ukrainians have, I didn't know this, but they've developed a substantial weapons manufacturing capacity.
Didn't see that coming.
But apparently the Ukrainians can make a lot of weapons now, locally.
Big ones, we're talking about artillery.
Now they're made out of plastic and wood and they don't fire any shells.
They're used for decoys.
So Ukraine has this massive decoy military and industrial process where they're making decoys to use up the Russian artillery.
So they're all happy about their fake radars and stuff.
So they just make it out of wood and they spray paint it and they wait for the Russians to destroy it.
Now, on one hand, I think this is awesome.
Pretty good strategy.
I'm sure it works.
It's using up their weapons on the other side.
On the other hand, I don't know if I would bet on the group that needed to make wooden weapons.
I'm just going to say, if there's any way to determine who's winning and who's losing a war, I would look to the one that had to make weapons out of cardboard.
If one side is making weapons out of cardboard and plastic bottles, they are not going to be the winner.
Right?
Again, I remind you, I'm no military analyst.
But if I were a military analyst, I would not place a large bet on the people who are making weapons out of wood.
That's just me.
Yeah.
They did the same thing during World War I and II.
They did.
They did.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad strategy.
I'm just saying it doesn't sound like the winner's strategy.
It sounds like an admission that the other side has better weapons.
Because I don't think Russia is doing that.
Do you think Russia is making a bunch of wooden artillery?
They don't need to because they have so much of the real stuff.
I mean, it's just an indicator of what's happened in there.
All right, I was asked on the Locals platform, someone asked me, what's the difference between affirmations and wishful thinking?
So an affirmation is when you're imagining the thing you want to be true as an aid to making it true.
And wishful thinking is just when you wish you had something.
And my answer is this.
Wishful thinking is just wanting.
Affirmations is closer to deciding.
Because if you can chant or write down or visualize this goal every single day, you probably decided.
Because you just wouldn't do that unless you'd really committed yourself to it.
Because the affirmations are sort of the last thing you do.
Sometimes at first.
But typically, you know, you're already trying to do something in that regard.
You're trying to make something happen.
And then you say, all right, how about affirmations?
So affirmations are a pretty good sign, because you're going to do it every day, that you're committed to this thing.
Wishful thinking is like me thinking, well, you know, if I were Elon Musk, what would I do today?
Right.
But I'm not trying to make myself Elon Musk.
It's just, oh, wouldn't that be fun?
And then you watch a movie and you see somebody's having a good life and you say, oh, wouldn't that be fun?
But that's just wanting.
And there's no faith involved in either case.
Let me be clear.
Believing and having some faith has nothing to do with any wishful thinking.
There's no faith required for wishful thinking.
But there's no faith required, or belief, for affirmations.
The idea behind affirmations, which may be not even true, is that the simple process of concentrating on a goal makes it more likely to happen.
There are several ways that could be true.
Way number one is that there's some backwards causation happening.
And the way that works is if you can spend 15 minutes a day focusing on your objective, It probably means you already decided to do whatever it takes to get there.
So it's the deciding whatever it takes to get there that was probably the operational part.
But by coincidence, there's a correlation between people who are going to do whatever it takes and people who would also do an affirmation.
So it could be the affirmations are just attached to people who are going to do whatever it takes, so that you would see a correlation between affirmations and success.
That would be the least magical explanation, right?
That would just be pretty straightforward.
People who do one thing are likely to do the other thing as well, so it's not the other thing that's predictive, it's just associated.
So that could explain it all.
I would be one of those personalities.
So my personality is, once I've decided to do something, I'm going to do all of the things.
You know, I'm going to do all of the things.
And one of them might be affirmations.
Whether I think it works or not.
Because once I've decided, I'm going to do all the things.
I'm not going to leave out any of the things.
Like, if they might work, alright, try it.
So that could be one reason they appear to work.
Another would be that you, there's something called a reticular activation.
I didn't make this up.
And it has to do with the fact that you notice things that are relevant to you.
And repeating a goal makes something more relevant to you because it's at the front of your mind.
So whatever's at the front of your mind tends to be the filter where you notice things in your environment.
For example, If your best friend bought a certain color and model of car, from that moment on, the moment after you saw your friend bought this car, a certain color model, you'll see that car everywhere.
You get on the highway, there's one, there's one, and you never noticed before.
It's because your friend's car moved to the front of your mind and it became your filter, and now you're seeing things that you just wouldn't have noticed before because you changed your filter.
That's how it works.
Now suppose that you did an affirmation about becoming a famous cartoonist, and you didn't know how to do it.
Would you notice some opportunities that you wouldn't have noticed before?
Because you've set that in the front of your mind.
Well, that's what made me a cartoonist.
I literally was doing the affirmations, but didn't know how to become one.
And I turned on the TV and I noticed.
Would I have noticed before?
Don't know.
I noticed there was a TV show telling people how to be a cartoonist.
Now I missed the show and I wrote a letter and asked some questions and that got me started.
But would I have even noticed if I hadn't put that filter in the front of my mind to become a cartoonist?
No, no.
So it could be just filtering for opportunity.
There's a study by Dr. Wiseman.
Who studied luck.
He wanted to see if there was such a thing as luck.
There isn't.
So it turns out nobody can guess things better than other people.
But he did this study I talk about all the time, where he asked people to sort themselves by optimists and pessimists.
And then he gave them all the same task, which was to count the number of photographs in a newspaper.
So the pessimists counted the number of photographs, and on average they got the right number.
Let's say that was 42, just to make up a number.
But it would take them several minutes to go through the newspaper and count them all up, but they'd get the right answer.
The optimists would also get the right answer, but it would take them seconds.
They were done in seconds, but it took the others minutes.
And the reason that the optimists were done in seconds On average, again, this is just on average, is that the optimists noticed that on page two of every newspaper, in big writing, it said, stop counting the photographs that are 42.
It was right there in big writing.
Stop counting them, there are 42.
Now, the pessimists were not expecting any luck.
That's what pessimists are.
So they just said, 1, 2, count the photographs, 3, droopy dog, 4, 5, 42.
The optimists are always looking for luck.
All the time.
Something good's gonna happen to me.
Something good's gonna happen.
And they're like, alright, let's start this task.
Hey, I guess I can stop.
I got some luck.
I thought this was going to be boring.
But look, I got lucky.
Page two, it says stop counting.
Boom, done.
So Dr. Wiseman hypothesized that what's happening here is that people who expect luck are actually adjusting their filter to see more of it.
So is it possible that when I was expecting good things to happen, you know, to become a cartoonist, that I just set my filter for good luck?
And then I saw it.
And then I saw some good luck.
Maybe.
The other possibility for why affirmations could work is it just makes you more serious about your goal.
You basically talk yourself into being more serious about it by thinking about it and repeating it every day.
So it could be just that.
Maybe it makes you focus better.
But the experience that people have is almost magical.
Like there was some luck that popped up.
Maybe they're just noticing the luck.
But here's the weirdest explanation.
That we live in a simulation.
That this reality of ours is a simulation.
And that the way you navigate the simulation is by your intentions.
Your intentions.
That's what an affirmation is.
An affirmation is your intention put into words.
When you put an intention into words, what happens?
Words are the operating system of your brain.
They're words.
Just words.
So as soon as your intention turns into a set of words, then you can reprogram your brain.
The intention isn't good enough.
You need to word it.
Reinsert it and repeat it, and then it becomes the code in your brain.
That's what a reframe is.
All right?
So my book teaches you how to use words in a short sentence to reprogram your brain.
There's no effort involved.
You just read the words.
You're done.
Read it once, and that's all you have to do.
That's the entire change.
Read one sentence once.
And there are 160 of those sentences.
So one possibility in the simulation Is that you're not just programming your brain with words, which would be good, but there might be something even weirder.
If we're a simulation, it could be that's the way we steer within the simulation.
In other words, maybe we have lots of possibilities, but when you focus on one, it actually veers you into a reality in which it's true.
So it's not that there's one reality and there's one set of things that could happen.
There are infinite dimensions, and you can, through your affirmations, move your path off of a dimension that you're heading toward, and toward a different one.
So you're not making something happening.
That's the way it feels like.
Affirmations feels like you made your environment change.
But what if the environment's never changed, and all that happened was you moved to a new one?
That would be perfectly possible if we're a simulation, but not possible under more normal understanding of reality.
Now given that I'm pretty sure we are a simulation because the odds are a trillion to one that we're anything but that, that's a longer discussion.
My understanding, my operating understanding of affirmations is that it's a steering mechanism to steer toward a reality that's more in my liking.
So, wishful thinking is just some thinking about some good things.
There's no operational part to that.
It's just thinking.
Once you have an intention, and that intention turns into words, and you either read it as a reframe, such as my book, or you turn it into an affirmation where you say, I, Scott Adams, will have a best-selling book.
I actually use that one on my best-selling books.
So that would give you all the tools you need to change dimensions.
All right, how many just had your minds blown?
Anybody's mind just blow up?
I love watching the comments when I know something's happening.
Yeah, this is one of those moments when you're saying to yourself, holy cow!
Yeah, this is sort of a holy cow moment, isn't it?
Now you understand my entire life.
The filter that I just explained to you with affirmations and the simulation and all that, that's what I live every day.
That's my everyday understanding of my environment, is what I explained.
It's really nice.
It's nice to live in that frame.
I don't know what's true.
Maybe truth is beyond us, but I can live in that frame and it's really pleasant.
Because I feel like I'm changing my environment, but really I'm just changing which environment I choose to experience.
And I would argue that there are other forms of affirmations.
Somebody mentioned prayer.
If your frame is that there's a a supreme being, and that praying to that supreme being is the mechanism that causes the thing to happen in your real life, that could be nothing but another way to steer toward another dimension.
You know, one where the things are happening that you want.
So it could be that the God model works perfectly well, or as well as affirmations, because it would be just a steering mechanism in both cases.
Yeah, but in my telling of things, the faith would be unrelated to the effectiveness.
You wouldn't need any faith.
It's just a mechanical process.
You could add faith, but it would neither add to or detract from the outcome.
Somebody says God works best.
I'm going to agree with you, because we're all different.
So I very much think that for some types of people, the God-prayer model is exactly the right one.
And for other types of people, maybe some other model is the one that works best.
But I don't think it's universally true.
All right.
Faith is not even close to being mechanical.
That's what I said.
You think you're disagreeing with me?
No, that's what I said.
Faith is not mechanical.
But you would only need the mechanical part to observe benefits.
The faith might be additional, but like you said, they're not the same.
Don't think that the mechanical process and faith are related.
The faith is extra.
All right.
Well, that got everybody thinking, didn't it?
I think I'll leave you on this.
Don't believe anything in the news.
And I will talk to you tomorrow.
So I'm going to say goodbye to the folks on the X platform first.
