Episode 2326 CWSA 12/18/23 Vivek Gives. Advice To Van Jones, Hoaxes Trending, Lots More Fun
My new book Reframe Your Brain, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/3bwr9fm8
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Content:
Politics, Tucker Carlson UFOs, NPC Trap, Wheat Sensitivity, Inflammation Health Risk, Rolling Stone Fake News, President Trump, Hunter Biden, Jonathan Turley, Eric Swalwell, President Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Van Jones, Unchecked Immigration Colonizers, Organized Brainwashing, Biden Carter Comparisons, EU Investigates X, Open Border Risk, TikTok Mutiny, Career Success Priming, Scott Adams
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of Human Civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and I'm pretty sure there's never been a better time in your life.
If you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even understand, well, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tankard gel, cystic, empty, and jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I don't.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that dopamine at the end of the day thing makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
Go.
And do you notice I made your day better without using AI, quantum computing, or removing any CO2 from the air?
Yeah.
I did that.
Well, here's a question for you.
This is just a mental experiment.
You've probably seen old videos that have been restored of Americans walking around the streets of, let's say, New York City in the early 1900s.
You've all seen those videos?
And we laugh because the people have, there's like zero obesity.
There's no obesity.
Nobody.
Not male, not female, not any age, no obesity.
Now, men, I'm going to ask a very provocative question.
Men, of all those women that you saw walking around in those 1900s photos or videos, how many of them do you have sex with?
Okay, it's all of them.
Pretty much all of them.
All right.
Now, men, Men who just said you would have sex with all of the women in the 1900s.
Fast forward in your mind to 2023 Christmas.
Put yourself in the middle of the mall, whatever is your closest mall.
Now in your mind, walk through the mall and look at all the people, men and women.
Now ask yourself, what percentage of the women in the mall would you have sex with voluntarily?
2%, 10%, 5%.
2%?
I'm just going to put a hypothesis out there.
Thank you.
There might be a reason that the population isn't growing as fast as it used to be.
Maybe it's just really, really obvious.
Now, so that's just one problem.
I believe we are less attractive to each other.
I believe that's just a fact.
But on top of that, Haven't we also become, because we all have our own little social media bubbles we can get into, haven't we all become more different than we've ever been?
I feel like the average guy in 1900s, they're all about the same.
The average woman, they're all about the same.
But today, you know, you're into birdwatching and I'm into quantum computing and We just don't have enough in common.
Because we have a riches of experiences and we have different interests.
So there are pretty obvious reasons why things are going negative on population.
There's a viral story on X. Some young white kid who got a 1460 on his SATs but could not get accepted at Cornell despite He skipped a grade, and I guess he did some extracurricular stuff that was good.
But as other people have pointed out, 1460 isn't really good enough to get into Cornell.
It wouldn't matter what color you were.
Well, actually it does.
I suppose if you were a group they were recruiting, 1460 would be enough.
But it's worth pointing out that 1460 would be at the low end of anybody who even applied.
He would be in the lowest 25% of anybody who even applied.
So I don't know if that story is really about discrimination or just it's hard to get into Cornell.
Maybe it's a little bit of both.
Here's a question I asked on X. Because Tucker Carlson keeps saying that there's something real about these aliens and that there are parts he doesn't even tell his wife because they're too disturbing.
And there's a spiritual dimension to it.
Now, he's not very clear about what that spiritual dimension is, if he has any clarity on that.
But I would think there's an obvious skeptical problem here.
Which is, what if we find out that life on Earth, absolutely 100%, came from aliens from another planet, intentionally seeding us with life?
So I'm gonna give you just a mental experiment that I gave to people on X. If you knew with a hundred percent certainty... Now, I accept that there's no such thing as a hundred percent certainty, which is why this is a just a mental experiment.
Just a mental experiment.
But if you could have a hundred percent certainty that life on Earth came from an alien planet, and it was intentional, would you continue believing in your holy books?
Now keep in mind, that would still allow you to believe in God, because in that case God might have created the aliens.
So, the first thing you should know about my question on X is that it was a NPC trap.
You know what the NPC trap is?
An NPC trap is when you say something that you know, certain percentages of the population will have to respond in an exact boring way.
Do whatever is the most boring thing they can say.
So, because it was a trap, I put in my question, stipulated, God could have created the aliens.
You know why I put that in there?
Because 100% of the time, if you say that, you know, maybe the aliens seeded Earth, somebody will say, but Scott, there's something you haven't considered.
Obviously, Scott, I don't think you've considered that possibly the aliens could have been created by God.
Now yes, I know you will say that a hundred percent of the time that this topic comes up.
So I put right in the, very clearly, stipulated, God could have created the aliens.
And what did people say in the comments?
Well, Johnny 4K says, one would ask, where then did the aliens come from then?
Ultimately, one person is responsible.
And then, Amy is the bomb responded.
No someone had to create the aliens.
Why not a God?
They have my NPC tests.
I sucked in a bunch of NPCs who then revealed themselves What's a really good form of swimming or no good form of exercise is swimming so I look green the matrix Those are all the things the NPCs say.
But anyway, the point is that 63% of people said that if they found out for sure that their religious holy books were completely made up, it wouldn't change their faith.
Even if they knew their faith wasn't real, they said they wouldn't change their faith.
Two-thirds.
Two-thirds of people said they wouldn't change their religious beliefs if they found out with certainty And this is the key.
With 100% uncertainty, they found out they weren't true, they wouldn't change their beliefs.
Now, of course, what's really happening here is people are reinterpreting the question so that they can cheat.
Right?
Here's what they really did.
Hell, Scott, there's no such thing as 100% uncertainty in anything.
I know.
That's why it's a mental experiment.
You don't get to say there's no such thing as no certainty.
That wasn't one of the options.
But anyway, I believe the answers.
I believe that two-thirds of people would keep their religion regardless of what they found out about it.
And if they found out aliens seeded the Earth, they would just say, well, but God made the aliens, so it's just a new detail.
But it would kind of make the whole Genesis story a little less practical.
And then other people said, but Scott, it's obvious that something had to create the universe.
Does anybody think that makes sense?
I want to see if anybody will agree with that.
Is it obvious that something created the universe?
Something that was not the universe created it.
That's obvious?
That's ridiculous.
It's not obvious, it's literally ridiculous.
It's the opposite of obvious, it's impossible.
Now the obvious answer is that there was always something here.
The obvious answer is that time is not what you think, and there was no beginning, it was just an always.
That's far more likely than there was nothing and then something created it.
Because if there was something that created it, And what created the thing that created it.
So yeah, there had to be something here.
So there's no way nothing was here, and then it turns into something.
There's somebody who was not part of the nothing created it.
All right, well, enough about that.
According to Rasmussen Poll, let's see if you can guess the answer to this.
Can you guess the answer before I ask the question?
Let's see if you can do it.
Yep.
Yep, you have the right answer.
That's correct.
The right answer is 24%.
And a lot of people had the answer before they knew what the topic was.
That's how smart my audience is.
Yeah.
So 24% is how many people believe the news media have given too much coverage of the Hunter Biden legal problems.
24% said there's way too much of this Hunter Biden legal problem stuff in the news.
Way too much.
But 51% say the media hasn't given it enough.
And also 60% — this is also Rasmussen — 60% of likely U.S.
voters believe the problem of bias in the news is getting worse.
And that's even worse than it used to be.
So even more people believe the news is getting worse.
That's progress.
I call that progress.
Is that good for Trump?
If people think the news is less dependable, yes, because that's Trump's message from the beginning.
There's news that apparently people are developing new cases of chronic pain.
That's a big problem, chronic pain.
Just before I went live to the YouTube people, I asked the people on the Locals platform, privately, If they had tried my test, I had challenged the people who follow me on the locals community to stop eating wheat for two weeks.
And the idea was, I don't have any evidence that wheat is bad for you.
I'm not a scientist.
I'm not a doctor.
So don't take it from me.
I'm just speculating that maybe people have different sensitivities to different foods.
And wheat would be what I'd try first.
Now it doesn't mean it's the only thing that might be causing you some chronic pain, because I suspect our food sources are essentially compromised.
I don't think we have safe food, or even close.
Nothing even in that, you know, category.
Now you can eat safely, If you're to eat, you know, without preservatives and a lot of chemicals, you don't do the processed food.
But some people have questioned whether our American bodies are handling the wheat.
I don't know the answer to that question.
So I said, why don't we do a little experiment?
And so I asked the people, how many of you would be willing to just give up wheat for a few weeks to see how you feel?
If you lose weight, see if anything's different.
Just as an experiment.
And I asked just before I went live on YouTube, and it was just a stream of people who had lost weight and feel better and lost chronic pain.
Now, is that scientific?
No!
Could it all be in our heads?
Yes!
Totally!
Could all be in our heads.
But I recommend this is a general system for your life.
The system for your life is you should continually Experiment with adding foods to your diet.
And then don't add, you know, don't change much except maybe one food you added.
And then also subtract some things.
You know what to subtract.
Anything that looks like it might be a little suspicious.
Just see what happens.
If you feel better, keep doing it.
That's my advice.
However, in the same article that said that these chronic pains have now surpassed diabetes and high blood pressure.
As you know, three chronic problems.
What do those three things have in common?
Maybe.
Actually, depression, too.
What do diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, and chronic pain have in common?
Maybe.
I think inflammation.
I think inflammation is probably the thing behind everything.
And food.
So, inflammation is the half answer.
The bigger answer is, I think this is all food.
Would you have as much high blood pressure if people were a good weight?
Wouldn't even be close.
Weight is very highly correlated.
How about diabetes?
That's food.
Chronic pain?
Chronic pain that people didn't used to have?
Probably food.
Probably.
How about depression?
Well, if you've got diabetes, bad blood pressure, and chronic pain, and you're overweight, you might not feel 100%.
So it's entirely possible that even depression has high correlation with, you know, your general health, which has a high correlation with what you eat.
So I'd be looking at the food sources.
RFK Jr.
is right on about all that stuff.
Here's something.
Remember I tell you that you don't understand any story.
Until you know the players.
Like who's married to who, who's related to who, who used to work for whom, who used to be whose boss.
If you don't know that, no story makes sense.
So if you saw a story about, let's say the Rolling Stone publication, said there's some big lie about Tesla, and that more than 2 million Teslas are being recalled because of some problem with the self-driving system, Wouldn't you say to yourself, my God, I'm going to think twice before I buy a Tesla car based on this Rolling Stone report.
All right, here's something that left out of the report.
The so-called recall is just an automatic software update that you don't have to do anything about.
It's probably already done.
They called it a recall.
It was just a software update.
And the software update was something about Being more in the face of the driver in case they were using the automatic driving.
It was more of a reminder to pay attention to the automatic driving if you have it activated.
Now, well part of that is some national story.
That there was an automatic update like there always is and it made their user interface a little bit better.
That's what happened.
Yeah, Tesla improved their user interface.
Automatically without any action by the by the owner and that got turned into by Rolling Stone a big lie about Tesla and a giant recall and They made it sound dangerous All right, so here's the things you don't know about Rolling Stone And oh did I not write down who told me this damn it I'm stealing this from somebody on The X platform and I did not write down who it was.
All right.
Well, I apologize, but I'm going to still give you the content.
So this is not my original research.
If somebody knows who I stole this from, remind me in the comments because I tweeted it.
But here's what we know.
Do you know who owns Rolling Stone Publication?
It's owned by the Penske Media Group.
And their chairman is the son of Roger Penske.
Famous, you know, automotive Penske person.
And let's see, the father of the person who owns Rolling Stone, what kind of business is the father in?
Oh, owns over 200 car dealerships that compete with Tesla.
That's right.
So the guy whose company owns Rolling Stone, that guy's father, is a major competitor to Tesla.
Don't you think that should have been mentioned in the story?
It wasn't.
And then what about Rolling Stone itself?
So Rolling Stone is a traditional publication.
Who's it compete with?
It competes with X. Right.
X is the publication that says that things like the Rolling Stone are obsolete and ridiculous and fake news.
Because it's obsolete and ridiculous and clearly fake news.
Now, suppose you didn't know that.
Suppose you read this story like it was just a story in the news.
You would think there's something wrong with Tesla.
In fact, if you go just like one level down, Tesla's operating pretty well.
They gave you an automatic update and made something better without you doing any work.
The media landscape is so slimy that if you don't know these connections, you just don't know what's going on.
You wouldn't know what this story is really about.
All right, here's something I loved when I woke up this morning on X. A trending term was hoax.
Now, do you know why I'm happy about that?
That the word hoax was trending?
Here's why I'm happy.
So I go, I click on it to see what is, why that's trending.
And some people are talking about climate change being a hoax.
Some people talk about Russia collusion being a hoax.
Somebody said something about healthcare as a hoax.
Somebody said the Whitmer kidnapping things was a hoax.
And somebody else said the January 6th insurrection was a hoax.
Yeah, here we go.
Here we go.
There we go.
So I'm going to say that this is Mike Cernovich, you know, with his movie Hoaxed, and I think he's the first person who started using that word in the political context, or at least he's the most influential with it.
Now, I adopted his word, and I've tried to extend it, but it looks like it's entered the language pretty heavily.
Would you agree?
The fact that it's trending, and it's trending across topics, suggests that the frame, that the news is basically a bunch of political hoaxes, and each one is a hoax in which you can explain the hoax, and pretty easily.
It's pretty easy to say what the hoax is in each of these cases.
It feels like winning.
As soon as I saw that word there and I realized that it applied to a whole bunch of different topics, that looked like winning to me.
There's something in the zeitgeist now where when somebody sees a story that looks sketchy, the word hoax comes to mind.
Alina Hubba, who's Trump's attorney, Says that if Trump gets elected, they're going to go deep and hard against the Democrats.
Well, I mean, some could argue that that's already started in the Senate hearing room.
Anybody?
It already happened in the Senate hearing room.
Yep, somebody's going deep and hard against the Democrats.
OK.
Look, If somebody gets banged in the Senate hearing room, I'm not going to let that go for at least three weeks.
Three weeks is my minimum level of joke window.
After three weeks, I'm going to say, it's a little old, sort of a Jussie Smollett smell to it now.
We've talked about it too much.
But for now, oh, it's gold.
It's gold.
So, there's that.
Now, what do you think of the idea, though, that Trump is going to go hard against the Democrats if elected?
Should they be saying that?
Do you think it's good for Trump to say, or his proxies to say, that he's going to go hard against the Democrats?
Because here's my problem.
I really think somebody does need to go hard against all the hoaxes, and obviously the legal fuckers.
But, I don't know if you should say it.
I don't know.
Because saying it leads into their narrative that he's going to be Thanos, and everybody will die when he's elected.
So, I don't know.
It could go either way.
I like that, at least during the primary season, they're talking tough, because the base wants to hear it.
But maybe when it gets to the general, when the nominations are over, Maybe then you don't say that so much.
I'll do a little less of that once we get into it a little more.
Jonathan Turley is on the case talking about Hunter Biden and whether he'll be charged with criminal contempt for refusing to appear and by subpoena, I guess, to talk to Congress.
But the interesting side question, which Shirley talks about, is that Eric Swalwell apparently helped coordinate and organize Hunter's non-compliance.
In other words, he attended with him and they were sort of working as a team.
So the question is, is Eric Swalwell risking going to jail for just helping Hunter in what looks like Doing something that could create a criminal contempt situation, interfere with the, you know, wouldn't, wouldn't Swalwell be interfering with an official, an official, let's say, what would you call it, an official process within Congress?
Because once the House members are looking into something, isn't that an official process?
Is there any less official than what Pence was doing on January 6th?
Or is there, like, some subcategory of what makes something official?
To me, it looks like somebody was trying to thwart the Congress's official work.
So why wouldn't Swalwell go to jail?
You know, at least in the same risk as Bannon was, because it was a similar situation.
Some say.
Nothing's ever really similar in this legal stuff.
No two situations are really the same.
But there are situations that make you raise your eyebrow and say, ooh, it's a little bit the same.
Maybe we should figure out what's different.
I don't think this Walwell is in legal jeopardy.
And I don't think Hunter will be in legal jeopardy.
But I also don't think Bannon should have been in legal jeopardy.
So these are all edge cases.
People, you could argue that they broke the law.
I get it.
But you don't really want people to go to jail for this sort of stuff.
I don't.
Biden had a reaction to Trump's rally, and here's what Biden said.
After I read this, see if you can answer the question, is it working?
Here's the Democrats' obvious strategy for beating Trump.
See if it's working.
So Biden released a statement saying, tonight Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong-un, And quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.
May I quote Vivek Ramaswamy, presidential candidate, who said about Van Jones.
Well, you know what he said about Van Jones.
That's my next story.
Well, let me just point out that I don't think it's working.
I'm going to call this the Thanos strategy, because Thanos is just more ridiculously fictional.
You know, the whole Hitler, Kim Jong-un, Putin thing.
It's like creating this fictional world where Trump lives in it, and he's friends with all the dictators, and he's going to be one.
It's a completely fictional world.
So I think it's funnier.
If you embrace it and take it all the way to the full fiction of Thanos, the super villain in the Marvel movies, who's going to snap his bejeweled glove and half of the planet will die.
Let's just go full Thanos.
If you're going to put it in one sentence, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-un, and Vladimir Putin, don't be a pussy.
Just go full Thanos, huh?
Come on, Biden.
Come on!
Go full Thanos!
You can do it!
Now, do you agree that this attack doesn't feel like an attack anymore?
It feels sort of like a joke.
Doesn't it just sound funny to you when you hear it?
Like when I read this, I read it as humor.
Literally.
I'm not saying that just to influence you.
I'm saying I just laughed when I read it.
Looks like we lost the comments.
Oh no, comments are back.
All right.
In a related story, Vivek Ramaswamy was speaking and he said, and I quote, now you know me, I don't like to use foul language in public.
So I'm only going to say this because it's a presidential candidate who said it in public.
So ordinarily, I would never try to offend your ears with such language, but it's news.
It's news.
So I'm going to cover it, you know.
Hey, we talked about Monica Lewinsky's blowjob, right?
Couldn't say that until it was news.
As soon as you touch a president's cock, you know, you can talk about that because it's news.
It's news.
That's right.
I can say president's cock because that was actually the subject of an impeachment.
There's news.
You can't blame me if it's news.
Not my fault.
Here's the news.
Vivek Ramaswamy said, and I quote, You've got this character, Van Jones, on CNN, afterwards saying, quote, This is the rise of an American demagogue.
Talking about Vivek himself.
This is the rise of an American demagogue who is going to live 50 years longer than Trump.
This is dangerous.
And then Vivek says, just shut the fuck up.
At a certain point, just shut the fuck up.
Crowd goes wild.
The crowd goes wild.
Now, what strategy, what persuasion strategy is Vivek employing here successfully?
What strategy is he employing?
He's treating them like clowns because the things they're saying, You do sound clownish.
And if you were to respond to it as in, my goodness, I'm not going to be a dictator, that would be such a mistake.
Because then you're just talking about how you're a dictator, but not a dictator, and then just people think dictator.
But he goes the other way.
He just says, just shut the fuck up, which guarantees it becomes national news.
It trended, right?
Guarantees it's national news.
And guarantees that you will mock Van Jones.
I actually like Van Jones.
I think he's awesome.
But he's also a team player, on the other side.
You know, unabashedly, so I don't mind that.
I don't mind when people are overtly, unabashedly taking a team perspective.
That's okay.
If you don't lie to me, that's fine.
I don't mind that at all.
As long as you're not lying to me.
Van Jones does a good job of Not lying, in my opinion.
But he does use a little hyperbole now and then, and the hyperbole about the dictators and the Republican Party are ridiculous.
In my mind, they are actually just funny.
So if we can get to the point where we treat it as funny, we're not going to look so scary.
Would you agree?
Mockery is very powerful.
Nobody wants to be the mocked person in the conversation.
And all this dictator stuff is so over-the-top ridiculous that Vivek, I would say if you were going to grade this, it isn't just, it's not even an A. This is like extra credit.
You know, this is like an AP class A, you know, counts as a 4.5.
You can't do better than that.
Take your whole day, You know, take a whole day off today and try to come up with a better response to Van Jones than, just shut the fuck up.
At some point, just shut the fuck up.
You can't beat that.
That is literally an unbeatable response.
Because it dismisses the other side as ridiculous exactly with the tone that you need to.
You joke about it because it's so stupid.
Perfect.
All right.
I talked about this, my Dear Democrat post, where I told the Democrats how to get out of their brainwashing prison.
And it's up to 3.5 million views.
I told you yesterday it had that early indication it might go viral.
Three and a half million people viewed it.
I saw that Elon Musk responded to it with just one word.
True.
I like when Elon Musk gives the really fast responses to things.
Sometimes he just does one exclamation mark.
Like if there's something in the news that's just crazy, he'll just do the one exclamation mark.
But then other times he just does the one word, troop.
So I'm sure that has something to do with the traffic on it.
Given that it has 3.5 million views and that Elon Musk endorsed it, and I saw a lot of people say it was the best post of the year.
Imagine how many posts there were this year.
And a number of people just spontaneously and independently said, best post of the year, which I don't get.
And that's not something I hear.
Even if I have this many views, people don't say it's the best post of the year.
They just say they like it.
So this one must be special.
So I'm going to read it to you again in full.
Because there's something about this that's really resonating with people.
So if we can understand what is it about this that's resonating, then you'll be more powerful.
So I'll just read it again to you.
Dear Democrats, I'm sorry your media has done this to you.
I realize you have no mechanism for knowing how brainwashed you are, and as a trained hypnotist, I am genuinely empathetic about it.
I mean no disrespect, because brainwashing is more powerful than brains.
That's why it works.
One way out of your mental prisons is to ask yourself which countries are okay with changing the basic nature of their societies via unchecked immigration.
If such countries exist, and unchecked immigration is working out great for them, you might be right that the right-wingers in Trump are like Hitler.
If no such country exists, consider that you have been the victim of brainwashing, the real kind, and that this type of manipulation is the basic nature of American society and has been for decades.
Next, ask yourself if anyone has ever used a complex model to predict anything about the future, climate change or otherwise.
You will learn it isn't a thing, and never has been.
Models do not predict the future.
Nothing else does either.
Your real enemies are the brainwashers in charge, not the so-called right wing.
There is a common enemy.
The political right can be deluded and wrong too, but it never looks like the result of organized brainwashing, just an attraction to conspiracy theories, too many of which have proven true.
Now, do you feel the persuasion in that?
Do you actually feel it?
Is that sort of the dividing line between just talking and persuading?
You have to feel it, or else it's not persuasion.
Too long?
It's too long, but I did get three and a half million views.
Let me tell you which parts of this are active persuasion, so you can reproduce it, okay?
So I started out by saying, you know, dear Democrats, and that I apologized to them.
I said, I'm sorry, and I have empathy for their situation.
If you start with empathy, you're going to get a better outcome than if you start with, you're all idiots, right?
So the first persuasion is that you start with empathy.
And I say, I'm sorry that it happened to you.
By saying, I'm sorry that it happened to you, I make people think about whether or not I'm really sorry.
What have I done?
If they're thinking about whether I'm really sorry about it, I made them think past the sale.
The sale is that something happened to them.
I'm not talking about whether something happened to them.
I'm talking about how I feel about it.
So I made them think past the sale.
That's in the first part.
That's classic persuasion.
I said I mean no respect because brainwashing is more powerful than brains.
So now I've given them a graceful exit.
Is it Machiavelli who says you should always leave your enemy once you've defeated them?
Always leave them an escape route.
You don't want to humiliate them.
You want to give them a way out.
So I give them a way out, which is, hey, it's not your fault.
If somebody uses brainwashing on you, you're no, you're not magic.
You know, everybody's brain is susceptible.
So now I've shown empathy and I've also said, there's a reason that's not your fault.
So I'm showing compassion and I've already absolved them from blame before I even get into the details.
That's, that's good persuasion.
What else did I do?
Then I told them a way out of their mental prison, which is also making them think past the sale.
I'm not trying to sell them on the fact that they're in a mental prison.
I'm talking about how to get out.
You see the technique again?
I'm not gonna argue whether you're in a mental prison.
That's a given.
I'm talking about how to get out.
Now if I tell you how to get out, Wouldn't you be tempted to try it if it were so easy it didn't require any effort whatsoever?
You just have to read the rest of the sentence.
That's your entire effort.
So you're saying to yourself, really?
I've been brainwashed and you're going to get me out of it with one sentence?
How would you not be interested in that?
How do you bail out at that point?
You're going to finish, right?
You're going to finish because I'm going to tell you how to get out of a prison that you didn't know you were in.
And I'm going to do it in one sentence.
You're going to finish the sentence.
Find out what I'm up to.
So here's what I said.
Consider that if there's some place where unchecked immigration is working, then maybe you got a point.
Because as far as we know, there is no place that unchecked immigration is working, and logically it can't work.
Makes sense.
Now some people said to me, but Scott in the comments, Unchecked immigration is what made America great.
We're basically a nation that became the strongest nation on earth because of, specifically, unchecked immigration.
You know what my response to that is?
There's another word for that.
Let's see.
What's it called when somebody is already living in a place And then you come in with all your people and displace the people who are there and take all their land.
Is that called unchecked immigration or is that?
Oh, there's another word for it.
It's called colonizing.
Right?
Yes.
If you want to be a fucking colonizer, then how about your unchecked immigration is a good way to get there.
That's called colonizing.
Colonizing.
That was the best criticism to this tweet.
That colonizing is maybe better than you thought.
All right.
So then I challenged them to think about that so that they have actually some meat to think about.
And then I said, we have a common enemy.
What's the best way to make a friend?
Best way to make a friend is if you have a common enemy.
You're working toward defeating the common enemy.
So I say it directly.
I've got a common enemy.
Whoever is brainwashing you is not my friend.
And they're not your friend if they're brainwashing you.
So we have a common enemy.
Whoever is brainwashing you is not my friend.
But I'm your friend.
You're a Democrat.
You're a Democrat who I feel actual genuine empathy for.
I could be your friend.
But whoever is fucking with you, Whoever has destroyed your ability to see reality through this intense brainwashing, they're not my friend.
I'm not even sure who they are.
They're not Republicans.
They're not Republicans.
I don't know who they are.
They're not my friend, and they're definitely not your friend, so we're on the same team.
That's good persuasion, too.
All right, and then I finish it off by saying, because at this point, you know, you assume By the way, this is good writing technique as well as good persuasion.
If you know what people are thinking as their criticism, you should address it before they say it.
It's much stronger than waiting for them to say it.
Because once they say it, they're committed to it.
And then it's hard to back off something you said.
But if they haven't said it yet, and you can catch it and like kill it in the crib, then maybe it won't come out of the mouth, and then they're not committed to it.
So it's easier to You know, get it when they're young.
So I said the political right can be deluded and wrong too.
Because if I hadn't said that, that the right can be deluded and wrong, then it's just a political statement.
And then people have permission to ignore it.
Like, ah, you're just on a team.
As soon as you say, I'm on a team, you're kind of done with your persuasion.
Nobody's going to listen to the team play.
So you've got to say, yes, this is something that applies to me and you equally.
But there is one little twist, which is that the brainwashing that happens on the Republican side doesn't seem to be organized.
It's people who genuinely believe what they believe.
Sometimes they collect more people who believe the same thing, such as vaccinations, such as the election, etc.
But it doesn't seem organized.
Or to the extent that it's organized, you can tell that maybe Trump is the main voice to it.
But there's nothing hidden.
There's nothing sketchy or weird happening.
It's just people say, I don't trust this thing.
I think there might be a conspiracy theory here.
That's very different than being brainwashed into thinking it's a conspiracy theory.
Very different.
All right.
So that's the persuasion takedown on that.
Trump said at his speech, Jimmy Carter is very happy.
His administration looks brilliant compared to what we have right now.
Is that good persuasion?
Really good.
It's really good.
Here's the trick.
If he had said Biden is terrible, well, you'd argue with it.
He's not so terrible.
He did some things I like.
You might say if you're a Democrat.
But if you say Jimmy Carter is happy about it, you've created a second question.
You've made him think past his sail again.
From, is Biden terrible, to is he the worst ever, or the second worst ever?
So Trump makes you think about, is Biden the worst of all time, or just the second worst?
Perfect.
It's perfect.
I like to think of Biden as being a lot like Jimmy Carter.
The main difference being, would be, Biden is like Jimmy Carter if all of Jimmy Carter's peanuts had been stolen instead of grown on the farm.
Is that fair?
Biden is like Jimmy Carter if Jimmy Carter had stolen all of his peanuts instead of grown them on his farm.
I thought it was good.
I thought I liked it.
All right.
Also, Carter never weaponized the government, as far as I know.
So, in my opinion, there's no competition.
Biden is far worse than Carter.
Because Carter meant well.
Let me say that again.
Jimmy Carter meant well.
That is not the case with Biden.
Biden's in it for the money.
Let's be honest.
He's in it for the money.
At least partly.
All right, so now the EU Commission just opened a formal proceeding against X. Do you think that's because they have a genuine concern?
Or because X is a threat to everybody in power because free speech actually happens there?
It's because it's a threat.
Of course.
So the weaponization of the American government has now spread to the weaponization of the European governments.
And do you know what the European government doesn't seem to be complaining about?
TikTok.
TikTok.
TikTok is literally one of the biggest risks in the world.
It's fine.
Free speech.
Yeah, if you can't tell that the attacks against Elon Musk are purely political, you are not paying attention at all.
I mean, it's pretty obvious that these are purely political.
Pretty obvious.
But if you didn't spend a lot of time following the news, maybe it wouldn't be.
Well, I see two opposing reports about a potential border deal.
Joe Manchin says, might have a border deal this week.
Lindsey Graham says, not a chance in the world.
There will be a deal.
Nobody's even close.
But I do like this.
I do like that the Republicans are holding tight, and they're saying, unless we get something done that's really useful at the border, You're not getting any more Ukraine funding.
How many think that was a good play?
I don't, I don't like the omnibus things, where it's just a whole bunch of stuff thrown into one big pot.
Then, you know, everybody gets their pork and nothing good happens.
So I don't like an omnibus.
But if you take two issues that can't be solved, and you can solve them by marrying them, and when I say solved, I mean, at least we get some kind of action resolution.
That does make sense.
So from a systems perspective... Thank you.
You know, have I ever complimented Congress before?
I don't think so.
Maybe in my whole life.
This I'm going to compliment.
Oh, actually, I've complimented Matt Gaetz for causing trouble when a promise to him was not kept.
I'm completely on board with that.
If Matt Gaetz got rid of the Speaker for no other reason than because he broke a promise to him, I'm okay.
Blah, blah, blah.
Other things?
I don't care.
Blah, blah, blah.
It hurts the Republicans' chances of winning an election?
Don't care.
Nope.
If you lie to your colleague and he takes you down?
Good.
Good.
Nothing else to say?
I don't even care if it hurts me.
Because I'm in favor of a system where the system works like a good system, even if sometimes it's bad for me.
And that was a good system response.
If the system took out somebody who lied to them, good.
That's what I want to see.
More of that, please.
But if the Republicans give some kind of border thing, especially since it's an election year, that should make it easier to get something done there.
They're playing it right.
So Christopher Wray says that the risk at the border is greater than ever.
You know, ISIS and maybe Al-Qaeda and everybody else might be coming in.
I don't know.
I still have this big question mark about why there haven't been lots more domestic terrorist attacks in recent years.
Why is that?
The only thing I can think of is that our surveillance systems, that surveil basically all communications all the time, are really good.
And it can pick out keywords, and it can spot the bad guys before they get too organized.
We must be taking down potential terrorists, like, every day.
And successfully, I think.
I can't think of any other reason we wouldn't be seeing, you know, massive terrorist attacks on Homeland for years.
How can it be none?
How is that even possible?
So I'm going to make a prediction that there will not be a wave of major terrorist attacks.
There might be a spot here and there.
Like there might be a lone wolf or something.
I don't think you're going to see a 9-11.
Because I think that our spooks are so good at surveilling us that they would pick up anybody on the mainland or even outside it.
We haven't thought about doing something.
And I don't think that you can do anything without digital communication these days.
Cos Perone says, wrong in all capitals.
You should just say, I'm an NPC.
That would be more clear instead of wrong.
I'm an NPC.
I just wanted you all to know swimming is the best form of exercise.
And also, Soil and green.
All right, there's something called a TikTok mutiny.
At least that's what social media calls it.
So apparently there are a number of TikTokers who are in the U.S.
Army who are whining about being in the service is terrible.
They don't like the pay, the food, and they don't like taking fitness tests.
And they've been complaining on TikTok.
Now, so these are the people, the demographic, That the military needs to attract to join the military is that exact TikTok age group.
And now people in the TikTok age group, actual influencers, are telling people in the age group that's a terrible deal to join the military.
Should we assume that the net effect of that will be a degradation of our military capability?
I think it's obvious, right?
Somewhat obvious.
That if people in the military are directly telling other people don't do it, because I've never really seen that before.
Have you?
I've never seen any kind of organized, you know, digital negativity about joining the military.
So now here's the question.
If you didn't know it, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company and Chinese companies have to do what the government tells them.
Everybody understands that.
TikTok has told us they have a button that's literally titled heat.
If they push that button on a certain post on TikTok, it will get lots more attention.
It gets more heat.
It goes viral.
So what would happen, hypothetically, if China told TikTok to push the button on the people who are in the American military who say, don't join.
It's a bad deal.
I hate it here.
What would happen?
It would destroy the fighting ability of the U.S.
military, maybe for a decade.
That's completely legal.
Our Congress allows our biggest adversary, China, to have total infiltration of all of our young people, and then have a message that would destroy the military capability of the United States.
And what would China need to do?
To destroy the military of the United States.
This is not an exaggeration.
This is literally true.
One button.
One button.
One phone call.
And one button.
Hello, this is the government of China.
Am I talking to the CEO of ByteDance?
Yes.
Could you tell your TikTok managers to push the heat button On the soldiers who are saying don't join the U.S.
military?
Absolutely, sir.
Thank you.
Click.
Push.
And that's the end of the U.S.
military.
Is that an exaggeration?
Does anybody want to challenge my frame?
Does anybody want to say, Scott, that's a little hyperbolic.
You're not going to destroy the U.S.
military by pushing one button, unless it's a nuclear button.
No, that's not an exaggeration.
TikTok does have the power to destroy recruitment of the U.S.
military.
That's a real thing.
And your Congress is not really even too serious about stopping it.
Not really serious about it.
What does that tell you?
Tells me only one thing.
There is no possibility that our Congress is anything but bought off.
I don't think there's any other explanation for what we're seeing.
And if there is another explanation, wouldn't you like to hear it?
And if somebody went on TV tomorrow to answer these questions, the ones that I just brought up, how do you think that conversation would go?
Let me tell you.
Newsperson.
So, what do you think about TikTok?
You think it should be banned?
Congressperson.
Well, you know, this issue of data privacy is very important, but you know, I think We don't want to ban it because it's free speech.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you for coming.
Our next story.
Right?
Because the news is obviously corrupt.
So they're not going to even ask the right question.
It's not about data security.
It's not data security.
It's not privacy.
That is an issue.
But it's about pushing that heat button.
That's the one that destroys the military.
Do you think you can get a news person to ask the question correctly and turn that into like a TV hit?
Now I have seen it done, but 1 out of 10 maybe.
9 out of 10 will be data security, that's the diversion.
And 1 out of 10 will say, but there's a heat button, and there will be mention of it.
But do you think there will be anybody in the news who will do what I just did?
To describe to you how simple it would be, For China to destroy the entire US military with one button.
Do you think you'll see that on TV?
No.
Do you think the Washington Post will write an article about how China has one-button destruction powers now over the United States?
No.
New York Times?
No.
It will be completely ignored.
Yeah.
There's a story in the BBC that says white men are 30 times more likely to succeed in finance jobs.
And they say it's because they're coming from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
So I guess there's some effort to want to fix that.
And some research showed that there was that big difference.
What's missing from the survey?
So let's say the survey is correct.
And that white men are 30 times more likely to succeed in finance.
But what's missing?
Is there any data that's missing from the story that would maybe give you a better context on this?
Well, allow me to suggest.
Did they ask all the different groups who was interested?
So I have a degree in economics and MBA from Berkeley, but I don't like to mention it.
I'm embarrassed.
Embarrassed by my MBA.
But why do you think I pursued a finance-related career?
Economics and then business.
You know, what was it about me?
Was it because I was born in a rich family?
So I was always around money?
No!
No, I was born, I was raised in a Lower middle class, you know, income.
My father worked for the post office.
He was a clerk at, clerk beyond the counter of the post office.
The house I grew up in was made of cinder blocks that my mother and my father built with their own two hands.
That's right.
I grew up in a house that my parents built themselves and they'd never built anything before.
You could tell.
All right.
But no, let me tell you why I pursued an education in the finance area.
I was legitimately interested.
And when I looked at all my options, I said to myself, huh, I don't think I want one of those jobs where I'm outdoors all day in the sun and the cold and moving stuff.
I'd get tired.
And I said, which jobs make me a lot of money?
Well, finance sounds kind of promising.
You're taking a lot of different directions, right?
You don't just have to be a personal finance person.
You might just be managing your own money.
But, you know, useful skill no matter what you do with it.
So I said to myself, you know what, I'd like to make a lot of money.
I'm quite interested in understanding how money works.
And there's a word for it called economics.
And then I pursued my interests.
And then I did okay.
Cartooning is what mostly worked, but if you haven't heard my story, if not for the business education, cartooning wouldn't have worked for me.
Because I had to use those skills to make cartooning work.
It wasn't because the cartoon was so good.
So if you don't have in your survey, all right, you're, how old was I?
Let's say you're 15.
Survey 15 year old kids.
And find out what their interest is in a career in finance.
What are the women going to say?
The girls, the 15 year old girls.
What are the girls going to say?
What are the white boys going to say?
What are the black girls and black boys going to say?
What are the Asian boys and girls going to say?
Would it be the same?
If you found out they all had equal interest at age 15, but only white men succeeded, you got a real problem there.
Right?
I mean, that's clearly... there's something going on, and you would suspect discrimination would be at the top of your list.
But if you can't determine that there's a difference in interest at age 15, then the rest of the stuff is useless.
I don't care how many actually became finance people.
I care how many who wanted to be finance people succeeded.
Because that would tell me a lot.
If there were an equal, let's say ratio-wise, an equal pool of black women who wanted to be finance professionals and white men, and then there was a big difference in outcome, I'd say you've got to look at that.
That's something you've got to look at.
It's not the only explanation for why it might happen, but you've got to look at that.
But if you don't know what the interest level was at age 15, you don't know anything.
And I'm really tired of people looking for the problem at the end of the process.
If you're walking into an employer's office and you don't get the job, that wasn't a problem that happened this week.
That's probably your whole life.
Like everything you did from your preschool until the moment you walked into that interview is what will probably determine your success.
It's not the only thing.
But certainly I think we need to focus on very young people's strategies.
I will tell you that despite not growing up in a family where anybody had killed it and made a lot of money, so I wasn't looking at any role models in my town.
There was one lawyer who was sort of a role model because he made money.
But my mother told me every day, I think every day it felt like, I mean not literally, but She would say, uh, you're going to college.
And then you're going to be successful and make money.
And then you're going to take care of us in your old age.
So I went to school.
I took it seriously.
I made a bunch of money, just like she said.
I did exactly what she said.
And then once I made a bunch of money, I bought him a house to live in Florida.
And I took care of him.
So from literally from kindergarten, My mother put a program in my head and my siblings as well.
She put programs in all her heads.
You're going to school.
You're going to build some skills.
Make sure you're good at something.
That was her.
She always used to say that.
It doesn't matter what you do.
She would say, make sure you're the best one at it.
Now later in life, I came up with the talent stack idea, which is a I think an improvement on that.
Because rather than being the best at one really limiting skill, I tell you to combine skills until you're the best being you.
In other words, there's nobody has those skills.
It's a version of being the best, but it's a way to get there without having the best talent.
Well, you just combine things until you're special.
So, did I succeed?
Because I'm a white man.
Or did I succeed because I was given, almost at birth, a strategy that works for basically everybody?
Wouldn't you agree?
How many of you were told from the time you were in kindergarten, you're going to college?
Be good at something.
Stay in jail.
Did it work?
You tell me, did it work?
A number of people say yes.
If your parents told you to get educated and build a skill and stay out of jail, did it work?
Yes, of course it worked.
I think the focusing on what happens when you're an adult and you can't get that job is just missing the whole story.
The whole story is that kindergarten experience, basically.
Because I can tell you it never changed.
There was no point in my life where I thought to myself, oh, I guess I don't need education.
I guess I don't need to be good at something.
And then my other biggest part of my philosophy that's, I think, been useful, and Jordan Peterson says a version of this as well, so it's more credible when he says it, but if you're not thinking of your future in terms of being useful, you're not doing anything.
You only get rewarded for providing value.
So if you're thinking, how can I get stuff out of the system?
What's my mechanism for extracting things from the system?
You're a loser.
That is the loser way to think of the system.
If you're thinking, what value can I add?
You're a winner.
Now, do you always get fairly compensated for adding value?
No.
No, I wish.
But the world doesn't work that way.
If you keep adding value all your life, are you likely to be recognized as a person who adds value?
Are you likely to get job offers because of that?
Are you likely to attract a good mate?
Yes!
Yes!
You know, you could not get credit for a lot of good stuff you do, but if you're just doing useful stuff your whole life, everybody notices.
Everybody notices.
And that will make you stand out.
And the be useful part wasn't exactly something that my parents said in words.
But do you know that kids raised today often don't have jobs or even chores?
Have you noticed that?
Like a kid today would get an allowance for just going to school.
Oh, good for you.
You went to school.
Here's your allowance.
Do I have to work for it?
Oh, God, no, you've got so much homework.
You got your activities after school and you have to have time for your friends and stuff.
So no, no, there's no time for that.
No, you're not going to work.
It's crazy.
But, you know, I tell people I was I was making dinner for the family at age 14 or something.
And we were always You know, trained from the youngest age to work on my uncle's farm, to help around the house.
I was mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, you know, all that stuff.
So, nobody had to tell me to be useful.
By the time I got to college, I had had an entire saturation of, there's something that needs to be done.
You know what?
Like, that is so activating to me.
Scott, there's something that needs to be done.
Damn it.
Because I'm gonna have to do it.
You tell me something needs to be done, and it's important, and I can't even think about anything else.
Like, I'm so trained to do what's useful to other people.
So, be useful to other people.
That's your lesson for the day.
And is there any story that I should have mentioned that I forgot?
Anything going on that I I missed this one.
Your husband did food shopping for the family when he was eight years old in New York City.
Yeah.
Yep.
That's how it used to be.
Kids' first jobs are not paying enough.
Yeah, there's something to that.
Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about the motorcade crash.
So Biden's motorcade, I think it was in DC, right?
Uh, got, uh, crashed into by a car.
I was in Delaware.
Somebody says it was in Delaware.
So a car crashed into one of the SUVs in Biden's, uh, big, uh, what do you call it?
His motorcade.
And there's a picture of the, there's a picture of the driver of the car and police, you know, the law enforcement is standing, you know, around the car talking to him.
You should see his face.
Now, people are prompting me to say he's a black driver, but that's not part of the story.
Yeah, the driver's ethnicity is not part of the story.
But if you want to, you know, just picture it in your head a little bit better.
Imagine the driver of this driver.
He runs into something, so it's already a bad day, right?
If you crash your car, it's a bad day.
And then the law enforcement people surround your car, And he realized there were a whole bunch of people with suits and guns, because apparently they came after him with guns out, because they didn't know if it was a threat or not.
So imagine you look out, you see all these well-dressed Secret Service people, and they got guns drawn, and you're sitting in your car, and you're just a, you know, totally innocent motorist.
Somebody said it was a black SUV at night blocking an intersection, so maybe there was just a visibility problem, that's possible.
But imagine the look on his face when he found out what he just did.
Sir, do you know who you just ran into?
Some kind of SUV.
Do you know who's in the car behind it?
No.
The President of the United States.
What?
The President of the United States.
You just ran into his motorcade.
We think you might be a terrorist.
What?
What?
So to me the funny part of that story was I wish I could have a picture of the face of the driver when he found out what he had just done because he thought it was bad enough because he created an accident.
He's like, oh the accident's bad enough and you're going to be in the newspaper and you're going to be a little bit famous.
Woman in Texas shot a 14-year-old boy who broke into her home.
Well, good for her.
All right.
I think that's all for now.
Not much happening on AI, except just keeps moving forward.
And I'm going to say, is How to Fail ever coming back to Audible?
Probably.
You can't buy it now?
I thought the old Audible for How to Fail was still for sale, but I'd have to check on that.
If not, I'll get that done.
So the thing I can do now for audiobooks, and Amazon or, let's see, Audible wasn't accepting them, but I think they will.
I can use AI now to create a perfect version of me that will speak in every language.
So I can now do the audiobook without reading it, I'll just feed the text into the machine.
The machine will become me.
It will read it in English.
And then I'll just say, all right, give me the Spanish version.
And it will be my voice in perfect Spanish, in Chinese, et cetera.
So I can translate my book into any language now.
But not yet.
At the moment, it takes three separate AIs.
It takes three AI apps and you would have to really know what you're doing to get it to work.
I assume within the year that's going to be one app.
This seems like obvious direction.
It would be one app to create a deep fake that can do anything you want.