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Dec. 29, 2023 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:46:12

Episode 2337 CWSA 12/29/23 Why do We Keep Confusing Political Opinions With Mental Illness?

My new book Reframe Your Brain, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/3bwr9fm8 Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Politics, Apple Music, AI Copyright Conflict, Predictions, World Trade Center Protests, Pro-Palestinian Protesters, 2023 Homicides, 2023 Property Crimes, U.S. Oil Production, Google Incognito Tracking, Japanese Culture, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, President Trump, Maine SOS, Shenna Bellows, DEI Groups Decline, Claudine Gay, Great Depression, Priming Story Concept, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Fake History Creation, Simulation Theory, Scott Adams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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	Do do do do do.
	Rampampampam.
	La papampampam.
	Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
	We call it Coughing with Scott Adams because there's going to be some of that.
	And if you'd like to join and find yourself at levels of happiness you didn't even know were possible, well all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass a tank or chalice or stye in a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
	Fill it with your favorite liquid.
	I like coffee.
	And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
	It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens.
	Now, go.
	Well, we've already got complaining about the volume on YouTube.
	Can somebody fill in the complainers what happens when you complain about the volume?
	That's right.
	I turn it off and I quit.
	I'm not going to fix it.
	That's what it is.
	So wear headphones or stop complaining.
	Good.
	I'm glad we got that sorted out.
	By the way, I should have that resolved when I switch to the Rumble Studio.
	I'll be moving to a laptop.
	And I believe this sound will be much better.
	But until that happens, we're going to forge on.
	Well, the estimate is that Earth will reach 8 billion people by January 1st.
	So there will be somebody who is designated as the 8 billionth person to be born.
	Wouldn't that be cool?
	Now, of course, they're going to have to make it up because they don't really know who is the exact 8 billionth person.
	People are dying at the same time people are being born, so you don't really know.
	But don't they usually designate somebody as the 8 billionth person, you know, when you reach a new billion?
	Well, it's meaningless.
	Let me ask you this.
	If you don't think that this is a simulation, how do you explain that after a hundred, what is it, 10,000 years of civilization, That you happen to be alive at the same time that the population has a problem of decline.
	You know, declining population is a bigger problem than growth.
	But it happens to be exactly the same time that AI and robots will become commercial.
	How in the world did those two things happen at the same time?
	After 10,000 years of civilization and 100,000 years of Or millions, I guess, of evolution.
	Isn't that a weird coincidence?
	Unless we're a simulation.
	Just hold that in your mind.
	More on that later.
	Well, I got mad at my computer today, and I posted on X, and I said, I have a virus on my computer called Apple Music.
	Does anyone else have that problem?
	Now, I honestly expected that everybody would say, what are you talking about?
	What I'm talking about is when I use my Apple products, my phone or my laptop, for random reasons that I've never discerned, the screen will be taken over occasionally by an Apple Music thing that's hard to delete.
	Like you have to go to the menu to delete it.
	It doesn't even have like a little X to close the window.
	What the hell is that?
	And it happens to me so often.
	That, and I don't have Apple Music, so I don't even use it, it's just advertising, that it just is a virus.
	And it turns out there are people who actually stopped using Apple products just to get rid of the Apple Music ads.
	At least people responded and said, yeah, I got rid of the entire platform, so I didn't have to see the Apple Music ad anymore.
	It actually acts like a virus, like a legitimate, how the hell do you get rid of a virus?
	All right, I'll work on that.
	Well, with AI, there are big questions about copyright, as you know, but I found that there are quite a few people on social media who believe that copyrights should go away and that you're hurting the commons, you know, the public's common good, by having copyrights.
	I didn't know that so many people didn't understand how copyrights work.
	Let me explain to you.
	Copyright is why you have good material.
	Copyright is the reason people create art.
	I make three to five jokes a day, commercially, in two comics a day.
	And I post things and everything.
	Basically, everything I do for my entire career, I would not have done any of it.
	If copyrights did not exist.
	The existence of copyright creates art.
	If you don't understand that, because a lot of people said, well, you know, you selfish artists and selfish creators are creating art and then hogging it to yourself with these copyrights when it really should be part of the public domain.
	And I think to myself, are these the same people who think that communism works?
	Do you not understand the connection between human incentives and then what people actually do?
	Copyright is the incentive for me, the artist, to make art.
	Without copyright, I'm not going to make a fucking thing.
	But the people who think that the copyright should go away, they have this imagination that artists will create things because they have to create.
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	No!
	No!
	I do this for a living.
	We don't do it because we have to.
	It's not based on some internal urge, which I have to get up every single day to spend all of my weekends and all of my holidays making art for people because I just have to.
	Now, would I make art?
	Yes, I would.
	If there were no copyrights, I would absolutely make art.
	Then what would I do with it?
	Put it on my wall.
	That's it.
	I'd make some art and then I wouldn't share it with you.
	Because why would I?
	You didn't make any art.
	You're not paying me for it.
	I think people really need to understand that artists also work for money.
	Do you think I would have made, let's say, I think the number of comics I've created now is around 11,000.
	Do the math for me.
	35 years of a comic every day?
	365?
	So do the math.
	Somewhere in the, you know, 11,000 comics.
	Do you think I would have made 11,000 comics just for my own entertainment?
	No.
	All right.
	So we're seeing the end of year stories now, the roundups, and one of the stories I've seen several times is why everyone got it wrong about the economy.
	Why did everyone, why did everyone, every single person, why did they all get it wrong that the economy would be good this year?
	Well, relatively good.
	Well, do you know why?
	Because these are people who make economic predictions for a living, and they got it wrong, and the people they follow got it wrong.
	So they figure, Everyone got it wrong.
	No.
	I said loudly and publicly, although it's limited to my audience, of course.
	But I've been saying for a while now, and you can all verify it because you all heard me say it, that the economy was going to surprise on the upside.
	Surprise on the upside.
	And then all the year stories are, hey, a surprise on the upside.
	Nobody saw it coming.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, somebody saw it coming.
	Do you know what was the basis for my prediction?
	The basis for my prediction is fake news.
	Fake news.
	I predicted that the news was looking for all the bad stuff, and so we would have an unusually bad idea of what the economy was going to do, and that the reality was different from the fake news.
	But the professional economists apparently believed the fake news that everything was going to hell and then predicted the base level.
	And I said, I always think the news is fake.
	I'll just go with the opposite of the news.
	And it worked.
	In fact, if you had predicted the opposite of the news for everything, you would have done pretty well.
	You would have said, I don't think those vaccinations are working.
	You would have said, I don't think Russia is necessarily going to conquer Ukraine in two weeks.
	Am I right?
	You would have said that there's no way that China's economy is going to have a problem.
	It's just so strong.
	Am I right?
	You would have said that the hurricanes would be much worse.
	The sea level would be higher.
	The glaciers would be melted.
	We'd be having summer vacation in Antarctica.
	Right?
	Everything.
	Absolutely everything.
	You probably would have said that the Middle East is heading toward peace.
	Literally everything would have been wrong if you followed the news.
	So it looks like a magic trick if I get a prediction right and everybody else got it wrong.
	But try doing this.
	Open up the news on any platform, left or right.
	Pick whatever is the biggest story of the day.
	And then make a public prediction that it's fake.
	That's all.
	Just make a public prediction that this will turn out to be fake.
	And then watch how you do.
	Let's go back in time.
	I predict that the George Floyd thing will turn out to be that Chauvin did not murder him.
	Well, that story's coming up.
	Yeah, just bet against the news, you'll do fine.
	Well, a bunch of pro-Palestinian protester types have decided that a good place to protest would be at the World Trade Center, the newly rebuilt World Trade Center.
	So the pro-Palestinian people said, you know what?
	I think I'm going to go protest at the one place that will remove all empathy for my cause.
	So if you're a classic American watching this, tell me how you felt when you found out that the Palestinians were protesting at the World Trade Center.
	Did you have the reaction I had?
	The last, well not last, I actually had quite a bit.
	The empathy that I had for the Palestinians just disappeared.
	Now, you could take a side and still have plenty of empathy for the victims on the other side.
	That's fair.
	You could take a side and still say there's bad stuff happening to the people who are getting the bad stuff.
	But, honestly, if you're going to be in my country and protest pro-Palestinians in front of the World Trade Center, I'm going to give you exactly what you earned, which is a complete cessation of empathy.
	Absolute withdrawal of empathy.
	So keep it up.
	Yeah, no empathy.
	Now, as a human being, of course, you never lose your empathy.
	But as a person who has to pick their targets, because there's so many things you could have empathy about, you'd be exhausted.
	I'm just going to move my empathy somewhere else.
	I got a lot of stuff I could worry about.
	I got a lot of stuff I could help with.
	There are a lot of people who need my empathy.
	I'm going to take all of my empathy away from the pro-Palestinian movement because they did that.
	Yeah, that's a line.
	You crossed the line.
	Sorry.
	I can't worry about you anymore.
	But let's make this interesting, shall we?
	Shall we?
	Let's make it interesting.
	How many of you believe that the FBI infiltrated the January 6th crowd and incited them to do something that they maybe wouldn't have been inclined to do without that incitement?
	A lot of you think that, I think.
	And you think that partly because it is routine, routine for law enforcement to penetrate big movements so that they can be on the inside, right?
	Do you think this pro-Palestinian movement has no undercover people in it?
	Do you think there's zero undercover people?
	If there are zero undercover people, it would be sort of the first time.
	Now, if you were an undercover person, and let's say you were pro-Israel, or at least anti-these protesters, what would be a really good play?
	What would be a really good incitement?
	If I were an undercover FBI pretending to be one of the pro-Palestinian protesters, I would say, I got an idea.
	Let's take this protest over the World Trade Center.
	Because that would destroy the entire movement.
	It looks like it did.
	Honestly, you couldn't tell any American that the pro-Palestinian people protested at the World Trade Center without changing their mind entirely about how they feel about it.
	It's a little too on the nose.
	So I've got a problem with this story that's a little too perfect.
	Isn't it?
	It is so pro-Israel that you have to wonder if it happened naturally.
	Are they really that stupid?
	Because I don't think the pro-Palestinian people have demonstrated, you know, ridiculous stupidity.
	In fact, they seem to be quite effective.
	So I'm going to put a little question mark on this one.
	Might have been a really fun, you know, it could have been a successful op to embarrass the movement.
	Maybe.
	I don't know.
	But in any case, it's certainly the worst thing they could have done.
	Short of beheading Americans.
	So it's very clarifying in a certain sense.
	Well, did you know, as Axios reports, Here's their headline.
	The U.S.
	is on course to end 2023 with one of the largest annual drops in homicides on record.
	Did you know that homicides are dropping?
	In fact, one of the biggest drops on record this year.
	Wow!
	If you were going into an election year, that would be kind of important to know, wouldn't it?
	Because I bet a lot of you thought crime was up.
	We shall now identify the fake news.
	Fake news identifier number one.
	When it says we're on a course to end 2023 with one of the largest drops in homicides on record, what is missing from the story?
	Go.
	What is missing from the story that's really, really important?
	It's dropping down to the baseline from the pandemic levels.
	So it's not a drop from the baseline, which would be really good news.
	It's a drop from the artificially high number of the The lockdown period.
	That's it.
	Basically, it just reverted to the norm.
	Now, I would say that's also good news, because, you know, if it didn't revert to the norm, that would be terrible.
	But don't we want it even lower than the norm?
	Don't you think that the... Let me ask you this.
	Do you think the headline would have been more accurate if it said that the U.S.
	homicide rate I reverted to the baseline after the pandemic.
	Wouldn't that tell you a lot more?
	It's almost as if the headline were written with the presidential race in mind.
	Everything's political, even when it's not.
	Everything's political.
	Here's what else they left out.
	That property crime is up.
	Now, when people talk about crime, They're usually not talking about murder.
	We, you know, we care about every murder, of course.
	But I don't see that the political right has been talking about an increase in murder.
	I've never, I don't think I've even seen that once.
	Now, they do talk about if there's some terrible murder, you know, that crime is too high.
	Of course, we all say that.
	But I haven't really heard any Republicans say that murder specifically Is that an all-time high and going higher?
	You say Fox says it?
	I'll bet they don't.
	I'll bet they don't say it in direct words.
	Or just the pundits say it, not the news people.
	I don't know.
	I'll do a fact check on that claim.
	But here's what I think.
	I think that crimes against retail stores are at an all-time high and that inner cities are being, you know, their stores are closing because they can't operate.
	Don't you think that should be in the story?
	Don't you think that the story about the crime rate for murder and other violent crimes, by the way, are down, but only to the baseline?
	Shouldn't this story necessarily tell you that property crime is through the roof in lots of places?
	Should it tell you that there's a big uptick in the so-called Chilean organized crime groups that are hitting high-end homes like my next-door neighbor?
	Literally, my next door neighbor was hit by one of the Chilean gangs, where they go in all at once, they try to grab your jewelries.
	Now, one reason they haven't tried to get all my jewels?
	There's literally nothing in my house I can steal.
	I don't have a single stealable thing that would be worth, you know, the gas you put into your car to steal.
	Because these days, nobody steals the television.
	Am I right?
	Because television isn't really worth that much.
	It's hard to carry.
	So they're not going to take my television.
	They probably wouldn't take a car out of the garage.
	They don't seem to do that.
	What are they going to steal?
	I own zero jewelry.
	I don't keep enough cash in the house.
	I basically have a wallet.
	The entire contents of my wealth that is transportable is my wallet.
	And you can get that from anywhere.
	You don't have to do it in my house.
	So it's a funny crime.
	I think you need to make sure there's a woman in the house, and it's a high-income house, so they'll have some jewels.
	But I got no jewels.
	Like, literally none.
	I don't have a single thing you can put in your pocket that would have value.
	Or even anything you can put in a pillowcase.
	But that should be mentioned.
	All right, I've got a hypothesis for you.
	How many of you would say that you feel a human instinct to reproduce or have at any point in your life?
	How many of you have ever, at any time in your life, felt a human impulse which you knew was natural?
	Well, I don't know if you know.
	I mean, there's always a social part of it that you're socially hypnotized to reproduce, but it feels natural.
	So I have it as well.
	Even though I've never had biological children, I have at various times felt this impulse to have a biological child.
	Now, why do you think you have that impulse?
	Obviously, if evolution is true, we evolved to reproduce, because if we didn't have an impulse to reproduce, we wouldn't do it as much, and then we wouldn't even be here.
	So it's sort of built into us that we have a need to reproduce.
	But you know what's interesting about reproduction?
	Reproduction is really not about your own survival.
	It can work that way if, you know, if your children need to take care of you in your old age.
	But it's not really about that, is it?
	When you think about having a child, you're not thinking about your own survival.
	You're thinking about having a child.
	So what drives that?
	Here's my hypothesis.
	What drives it is the impulse for immortality.
	I think that all people, including me, we believe that if our mortal body were to expire, but we left something of ourselves genetically, you know, in another human that could therefore also have more humans, that we would be immortal in a sense.
	Would you agree?
	So how many would accept my hypothesis without proof?
	But my hypothesis is that our instinct to reproduce has mostly to do with our own mortality.
	Mostly.
	And also, I'd say narcissism.
	I think reproduction is narcissism.
	It's like, you're so important, you must produce more of yourself, and it should go on even after your death.
	Because that's how important you are.
	Some of me must go on.
	Now, there are other reasons for wanting kids.
	You just like them and blah, blah, blah.
	Plenty of other reasons.
	But I think the basic instinct is just about self-love.
	It's a form of self-love that just happens to have an external component to it.
	The child.
	Now, whether or not you accept that hypothesis, I'm going to extend it for those who do accept it.
	We now have AI that can take one photograph and animate it like a perfect deep fake.
	It can add your voice perfectly, and it can learn about you so it can act like you.
	So people like me who have a large body of work, including these live streams, could just train an AI to create me to live forever.
	It could age me, it could age me backwards, etc.
	There's a 100% chance that I'm going to leave my AI self after I'm physically gone from this life.
	Why?
	Because I can afford it.
	I've been planning to do it for 30 years.
	Now you can all confirm that, right?
	There's a lot of people who have been following me for a long time.
	You can confirm that I've been saying for 30 years that I plan to wait until the technology can Essentially duplicate me in digital form.
	Yeah, so I'm saying the confirmation is coming by.
	So, you know, I've been saying this forever that I also have this instinct for narcissism, but I don't want to really promote my genes.
	So I feel that my instinct for immortality can be satisfied by AI.
	Now, Is that a generalizable thing?
	Or is it because I'm a freak?
	And maybe there's cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias.
	Maybe there's just something unique and broken about me that makes me think a digital recreation is somehow going to extend my mortality.
	Because it's crazy, right?
	Kind of crazy.
	It's crazy to think that putting yourself into a digital form is really anything.
	But you know what I say?
	Putting your genes on another person and then dying is ridiculous.
	It's ridiculous.
	You're still dead, and it's just some other creature is alive.
	The thing which makes us think having a child supports our immortality is irrational.
	The thing that would make me feel that an AI would support my immortality is also irrational.
	But you know what they both have in common?
	They both work.
	Because when you're trying to disable an instinct, like the instinct to be immortal or to reproduce, the instinct is not based on reason.
	You can't reason away an instinct, but you can satisfy it.
	And I believe that I can satisfy my reproduction instinct with AI.
	But that's not my point.
	Because if you think the point is about how weird I am, That's just sort of the side story.
	The bigger point is this.
	I think AI could end reproduction on Earth.
	And it could happen really quickly.
	Because there's going to be a whole lot of people who are in that gray area, where they say to themselves, and by the way, there's another trend I'm going to connect to it.
	If you're on social media, there's a very big uptick In relationship, experts tell you to don't bother because everybody's broken.
	And if you marry a woman, she's just going to take your money and monkey-branch to another guy.
	Right?
	So, on one hand, you've got all these experts telling you that traditional marriage with a human being is a losing proposition for men.
	And they should just not do it.
	Keep their money in just serial date or find someone who's willing to, you know, have no financial interest and still be married to you.
	For some reason.
	So if you start combining these two groups, you've got one group saying that our human method of having children is way too expensive and the colleges are making them idiots and they'll grow up to hate you because they'll be all woke and they might die of a fentanyl overdose, etc.
	Or you could have an AI that satisfies all your basic instincts It gives you a mate that doesn't hate you.
	It gives you immortality.
	There's going to be a whole bunch of people who would have had children and then regretted it because, you know, they got divorced and then lost custody and all the bad things that happened.
	Those people are just going to say, you know what?
	I don't think marriage would work out for me.
	So I'll just take this other AI option here.
	And you don't need to take reproduction Down to zero to end humanity.
	You only have to take it down lower than 2.1, I think.
	2.1 reproductions, you know, per couple.
	So if you get a below replacement rate, AI is the future.
	And I think we might be headed that way.
	All right.
	So Bjorn Lomborg points out A surprising bit of information, and this does surprise me.
	The United States is producing more oil than any country in history.
	Right now.
	Right now, the United States is pumping more oil than any country in the history of the world.
	Did you know that?
	I had no idea.
	I knew that we had the potential to be number one.
	I thought Biden was clamping down too hard on it.
	Can I make a confession?
	I like to point out when people on the left are brainwashed by their media, I appear to have been brainwashed.
	I appear to have been brainwashed.
	Because if you had asked me to write an essay about the energy situation in the United States, I would say, well, number one, the main thing you have to know, because I've been watching conservative media too much, the main thing you need to know is that our oil production is way down compared to where it was under Trump.
	It's higher than Trump, just a little bit, but it's higher than the highest point of Trump.
	How many of you knew that?
	Before you heard it today, how many of you knew That the United States was pumping more oil than anybody in the history of ever.
	Some of you knew it.
	Good for you.
	Good for you.
	But those of you like me who didn't know it.
	No, I knew it was a lot.
	I knew the U.S.
	was, you know, potentially the biggest producer.
	You know, I've known that for a long time.
	But I feel like I was brainwashed.
	And when I read this story, I felt like I was coming out of it.
	Like I had the experience of recovery a little bit.
	Are any of you having that experience right now?
	Is there anybody here who is saying, holy shit, I watch the news every day and I had no idea?
	Some of you were having that experience.
	But like you said, a lot of you already knew that.
	So you were ahead of me on this one.
	So if I can give you one piece of useful advice about the news, never assume That the one who's brainwashed is the one disagreeing with you.
	Do not start with that assumption, because it's just too often wrong.
	Just assume that it could be you, and then reason from that point on.
	Right?
	Don't assume you're right, and then reason from that.
	That makes no sense.
	Assume you're equally likely to have been brainwashed, and go from there.
	All right, here's an interesting post by Billy Oppenheimer.
	On creativity and genius.
	Oh, well, let me just make one more point about the gas prices.
	So gas prices are being held lower than they normally would be, except the U.S.
	is producing so much that we're exporting now.
	So do you think it's an accident that in an election year we just hit our peak oil production?
	Kind of feels like an election year thing, doesn't it?
	That makes you wonder, what is true?
	Has Biden been lying to his side and telling them that he was going to be the climate change president while doing everything he could to boost production?
	Or did it just happen on its own?
	Could it be that the free market was still free enough that there were no restrictions that held them back enough and they just kept drilling?
	So, I don't know.
	My suspicion is we wouldn't have been here in a non-election year.
	But I don't know about that.
	If I were a Republican, how would I handle this if I'm running for president?
	Would I say, oh, got to drill more?
	Because then you're susceptible, because then Biden says, I drilled more than Trump.
	You know, we're at a high new level.
	So it doesn't work as well as it could.
	But what if you go the opposite way?
	Suppose you complimented Biden for the fact that drilling is at an all-time high.
	That might actually work.
	Because remember, if you're a Republican, you don't have to disagree with everything the other side does.
	Every now and then there's going to be something you agree with.
	So imagine Trump saying, you know, I criticize you a lot, President Biden, but one thing I won't is that the drilling has reached an all-time high, even higher than when I was president.
	Now, if I am reelected, it's going to go way up from where Biden is, so it's going to be way higher still if I'm president.
	But I have to give you credit.
	You talked a good game about the climate but then you drilled like hell.
	That's kind of a kill shot.
	Right?
	So the difference between Biden and me is that apparently Biden wants to drill like crazy too.
	The difference is it's the opposite of what his base wants him to do.
	His base is asking him to stop and he's going nuts drilling.
	I'm telling you I want to drill more too and I'm very happy that we're having this much oil.
	I have no complaints about the oil level, except that I'm sure I can get it much higher.
	And it should be.
	Because the price is still too high, and we still should be far more competitive, and climate change is under control, etc.
	So, it's an opening for the Republicans.
	Creativity and genius.
	So, Billy Oppenheimer had this post, and I guess there's some science showing that one thing that, according to some book by Somebody named Dr. Nancy Andreessen.
	They did some brain imaging studies on creative people and talked about other creative people like Einstein and Da Vinci.
	And one thing that the claim is they all had in common was lots of free time to do nothing but think during the day.
	So Einstein famously got in his little boat that didn't have a motor And he would just go out on a lake somewhere and he'd just be gone for hours with just him and a boat.
	And then he'd come back with some new theory.
	And apparently other creative people do the same thing.
	Now, I just want to pile on and say that I also do that.
	And so if you don't do that and you're trying to be more creative, you probably should.
	So you probably ask me, what's the deal with my man cave?
	Like, why am I always in my garage?
	You know, like a weird little environment that I built.
	Well, the man cave is all about that.
	When I go to the man cave, that's not work.
	So I turn off all of work and it helps have a different environment.
	If you're trying to just think in your office, like where I am right now sitting at my office desk, it doesn't work.
	Because I get drawn into work thoughts.
	I have to physically remove myself.
	So I've built a place in my house where I don't think about work.
	I only think about what's fun and wherever my brain wants to go.
	Most of my best ideas came out of not thinking about anything in particular.
	And it just, boop, something pops into your head.
	I also like to take long walks.
	And because I'm a creative person, I'm always multitasking when I'm exercising.
	So if I'm lifting weights or taking a long walk or whatever I'm doing, my mind is in creative mode and I just let it go where it goes and it comes up with good stuff.
	So if you're not doing that, I recommend it.
	You should find some excuse that takes you away from your digital devices And gives you, you know, a good salad, I think at least half an hour, but an hour a day would be better, of just unstructured thoughts.
	Just let yourself not think about your chores, not think about your day, not think about your problems.
	Just let your brain go wherever it's going.
	See how you feel.
	You might like it.
	It's one of my secrets for happiness, but I have a Sort of an unnaturally active, creative part of my brain, so it might not apply to everybody.
	Well, Google has settled a $5 billion lawsuit.
	Apparently, they were tracking the incognito mode users.
	Wait, what?
	Yes, that's right.
	You know, when you say your browser to incognito mode, the entire point of that is that you can't be tracked.
	But they were tracking it.
	Are you surprised?
	Yeah, right.
	Surprise!
	Shocker!
	All right.
	May I take this moment for a public service?
	This is a public service announcement.
	Your privacy disappeared a long time ago.
	You don't have a problem of losing privacy.
	You have a problem of not understanding it's already gone.
	It's a different problem.
	You should start living your life immediately as a person who has nothing to hide.
	Meaning, don't do stuff that you have to hide.
	Don't do it.
	Because you're going to get caught, at least by the government.
	If you're hiding something from your spouse, well, you're still going to get caught.
	Does anybody get away with cheating these days?
	I feel like cheating is not even the thing anybody can get away with.
	Because it's definitely going to be on your phone.
	And if your spouse asks to look at your phone and you say no, well, you're definitely a cheater.
	And if you say yes, and you're cheating, well, you're definitely caught.
	So your phone is like the greatest anti-cheater device.
	But it's probably... Do you know how many divorces are caused by phones?
	I wonder.
	Because if you went back to, say, the 60s, if you suspected your spouse was cheating, and you couldn't prove it, there was probably a really good chance you could get over it.
	Like, even if there was cheating, if it was, you know, temporary, you'd probably have a way to get over it, because you'd never really be sure.
	Your spouse would say it didn't happen, and maybe you talk yourself into believing it didn't happen.
	But if it's right there on the phone, there's nothing you can do about it.
	So, just live your life, if you can, in a way that there are no secrets, at least digitally, right?
	And you can't even have a conversation in a home or a physical space, because... Just think about this.
	Imagine you said to yourself, okay, I know there's a ring camera, But it can't hear me because I'm out of hearing distance.
	Do you think AI will someday be able to read your lips?
	Yeah.
	Someday AI is going to read your lips.
	If you appear on video talking, it doesn't matter if they can't hear it.
	The AI will just read your lips.
	Someday.
	If you had a conversation with somebody and either one of you had a smartphone in your pocket, Or nearby.
	Is that private?
	Well, not necessarily.
	Because the bad guys can listen to you through your phone.
	They can even take a picture of you through your phone and you'd never know it.
	Right.
	There is no such thing as privacy.
	It's gone.
	Live your life under that assumption.
	All right.
	How many people are having the same experience about Japan?
	Japan is, I don't know if I should say suddenly, but it's the it country.
	When I asked you if I were to leave America because things got bad, where would I go?
	A number of people said Japan.
	Privately, people have told me Japan is incredible.
	Like when people talk about Japan, their entire demeanor changes when they talk about it.
	Have you noticed that?
	If you talk about another country that people like, Hey, have you been to Great Britain?
	Oh yeah, it was a good trip.
	I loved it.
	Have you been to Dubai?
	Yeah, Dubai's amazing.
	You know, very modern.
	Great place.
	Have you been to Paris?
	Yeah, it's a, you know, too many cigarettes, but you know, great place.
	Classic.
	Everybody should go there.
	Then you say, how about Japan?
	And watch the demeanor change if they've been there.
	Oh my God.
	Japan, it's like you can't even believe it.
	I almost can't describe it.
	It's like living in the future.
	There's like, you know, no crime, no trash.
	There's no street people.
	Everything's efficient.
	Everybody's nice.
	Everything works.
	Transportation is easy.
	It's like exciting.
	It's visually spectacular.
	The country works.
	Now we hear that Japan just Restarted their Kashiwazaki Karuwa, one of the world's largest nuclear power plants.
	Has seven reactors on site.
	They've been offline ever since the Fukushima problem, but they're putting it back up online.
	So, Japan is an interesting place.
	You know, when I was young, we were all worried, in America, we were worried that Japan would eat our lunch, we used to say.
	Yeah, they're going to take all our manufacturing.
	And then, of course, China took their manufacturing.
	And China and Japan went into sort of a long doldrum.
	But that long doldrum, apparently they recrafted their situation and they're killing it.
	So Japan really looks like a, just a shout out to Japan.
	Good job.
	Good job, Japan.
	Whatever you're doing is right.
	Now, I did say at one point, Incorrectly that Japan didn't have much immigration.
	But apparently they do have a workforce need.
	Laborers.
	So they do have a pretty robust immigration.
	But something tells me they don't get to stay there and live there.
	I don't know.
	I got a feeling that they let them come in to work.
	But I don't know how easy it is to become a citizen.
	Yeah, well, it's an open question.
	Well, Vivek Ramaswamy keeps talking about the system, and I'll read his exact words.
	If you really think the system is going to let either Trump or Biden get anywhere near the finish line, open your eyes, folks.
	They're selling us the rope today that they'll use to hang us tomorrow.
	Don't fall for the trick.
	Now, apparently the subtext of this is that Nikki Haley is being pushed by the Republicans, But maybe the Democrats who like their military spending don't hate her.
	So there's, you know, the system, I think the system in this context is the permanent power people in Washington who are slightly different than the parties.
	So I love the fact that he says it directly and unapologetically.
	There's a little hyperbole built into it, but I like that he's putting that out there as, you know, Just open your eyes.
	In the real world, neither of them are going to serve the military-industrial complex as much as it needs to be served.
	And therefore, the system is going to try to take them both out.
	That doesn't mean the system will succeed, but as Vivek says, they will try anything.
	Now, have we seen enough evidence that the Democrats will try anything?
	I think we have.
	If you told me that assassination was off the table, because it's so far out of anything we've observed as the behavior of the Democrats, I would say, I don't see that at all.
	I see the Democrats putting innocent people in jail, where they are killed, starved, or commit suicide.
	I see the Democrats already murdering people and knowing they're doing it.
	You know, they're doing it the indirect way, through the legal system, but it's still murder.
	Derek Chauvin, they tried to murder him in prison, in my opinion.
	That's my interpretation of events.
	So, when Vivek warns that they'll do anything to keep specifically Trump out of office, but Biden too, that does include the worst thing.
	It is absolutely a risk, and it's a real risk.
	So don't forget that.
	Here's a totalitarian update of who the totalitarians are.
	So as Kyle Cheney is reporting on X, so the Second Circuit Appeals Court has denied Trump's motion to delay something with the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit.
	So the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit will go forward.
	It's one of several lawfare Legal things against Trump.
	All of them are ridiculous.
	All of them are stupid.
	Which is not to say he didn't do some of the things alleged.
	I'm not claiming he didn't do any of the things alleged.
	I'm saying that the only reason that he's being pursued is politics.
	There are things that would be trivial under any other context except this one.
	So, think about E. Jean Carroll.
	Hold Eugene Carroll's face in your head.
	Okay, you got it?
	You have like a mental image?
	Then we're going to compare that with the image that I carefully...
	Decision we lay out.
	Why under main law?
	Now look at this face, the woman speaking.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Here's what I see.
	I see mental illness, and I'll tell you who this is in a moment.
	When I see Eugene Carroll, my brain interprets her, let's say, demeanor face presentation as mental illness.
	Now, I'm not an expert, so I don't want to be accused of doing a diagnosis.
	I'm no mental health expert.
	I'm just saying how I receive it.
	So this is not a factual statement.
	I'm not making a factual statement.
	I'm saying that's how I see it.
	Now, I'm completely aware that it could be on my end, that they're just normal people and my brain is turning them into monsters because, you know, I'm on the other side of politics or something.
	Maybe.
	So I don't rule that out.
	That's why I'm asking you.
	But so we see that in Maine, the woman I just showed you, It was a Democrat operative and, of course, she decided that Trump should be kicked off the ballot in Maine, but it was written in a way that he's not going to be kicked off the ballot because, you know, it depends on the appeal and the Supreme Court and blah, blah, blah.
	You don't need to know the details.
	But it's basically a purely political act.
	And she's explaining it because the insurrection is obviously real.
	And that was her reasoning, that January 6th was obviously an insurrection by Trump.
	Now, when I look at that face, I just see mental illness.
	Do you?
	Is it just me?
	How many of you see mental illness?
	I do.
	And when you see Liz Cheney, what do you see?
	Do you see mental illness?
	Actually, I don't.
	I don't see it with Liz Cheney.
	With her, I just see evil.
	With her, it looks more like pure evil.
	That's just how I receive it.
	Again, I'm not reading her mind, because I can't read minds.
	I don't know what's happening in there.
	But it's not like every woman who doesn't like Trump registers as crazy.
	I'm not saying that.
	But I'm saying these two.
	And I feel like we're not doing a good service to the public if we treat as political news What is more likely a mass hysteria?
	We should be treating it like a medical problem, because it is.
	It's the same thing we do with... Why do we have a reduction in the birth rate?
	I think it's a medical problem.
	We treat it like it's an opinion.
	People don't want to spend the money.
	It's too expensive.
	People are selfish.
	That's what we talk about.
	I don't think so.
	I think it's people eating too much.
	And eating poison food.
	Basically.
	If you corrected the diet in America, I saw again a photo of what people looked like 50 years ago.
	Both men and women.
	What they looked like.
	50 years ago, everybody looked fuckable.
	Everybody.
	Men, women.
	Yeah, they might not be your specific type, but they all look fuckable.
	Now go to the mall.
	Just walk down the mall.
	And just ask yourself, male or female, how many of the people who walk by you are fuckable?
	Male or female?
	Not a lot.
	Not a lot.
	It's not 80% like it was 50 years ago.
	You'd be lucky if you saw one person you actually wanted to get busy with.
	Even one.
	Out of the whole mall.
	If you saw one person that you legitimately say, you know, wouldn't mind being under the covers with that person.
	Yeah.
	So why do we treat it like it's some kind of like social political thing?
	It's food.
	It's fucking food.
	Anyway.
	So the totalitarians who believe they are voting rights people are trying to keep Trump off the, uh, away from the voters.
	So the hypocrisy level is through the roof, which is why it looks more like mental illness, because nobody who is sane could fail to notice that they think they're voting rights activists and they're keeping somebody who's leading in the polls, both in the general election and in the primary, leading in the polls, and that he should be kept off because one crazy woman
	thinks that January 6th was an insurrection.
	No, thank you.
	All right, New York Post is reporting that Google, Meta, and other tech giants are getting rid of their DEI-related groups, so the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
	Apparently, they had too many of them, so they need to get rid of them.
	Now, do you get rid of anything that's working?
	No, you do not.
	If it were working, they would keep it.
	So apparently it doesn't work.
	Or at least it doesn't work well enough.
	So here's the question I ask.
	Is it too soon for me to demand reparations?
	Too soon to demand reparations?
	Here's my argument.
	I was born without any apparent benefits of slavery.
	I didn't, you know, nobody in my family owned any slaves.
	And indeed my cousins The President Adamses were big warriors against slavery.
	So I made my own money, but I would have made a lot more if I had been able to do my corporate career.
	I know that sounds weird, but yes, I would have made more money if I just kept my job.
	Because I was working in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley was taking off.
	I would have been in some startup that just paid crazy amounts of money and I'd be retired by then.
	But I didn't get that option.
	I had to go do my own thing, which worked out.
	But I wonder, how many people would have made a lot more money if they were not white and male?
	Because they didn't get the promotion, they didn't get the raise, etc.
	For about 30 years.
	Yeah, a lot.
	Now here's the real question.
	If you were going to calculate reparations, you should calculate the net, right?
	So you should calculate What is owed to slaves?
	If you buy into that narrative, what would be owed the descendants of slaves?
	But you'd have to also calculate what was taken already.
	And if what is taken already from white men is greater than what is owed, then you say, oh, OK, I guess we're good and we're done.
	Right?
	So you have to get the net.
	It wouldn't make sense to calculate only what you think somebody is owed.
	Without calculating what has already been paid.
	Because the sacrifice of the raise you didn't get is a tax.
	Right?
	Because otherwise you would have gotten the raise.
	Now, here's the tricky part.
	And this is why it's so hard to do an analysis of anything.
	Statistics can lie based on your assumptions.
	Just think how painful this next assumption is.
	How much money did the slaves, or let's say somebody who's alive today, their grandfather, lose because of discrimination?
	Well, it'd be probably a big number.
	You might say something like, well, they could have made as much as the average white person, whatever your argument is, and then you come up with a number that represents the discrimination part.
	Right?
	So, Then, you do the same calculation with white men who were prevented from employment or didn't get the raise over a 30-year period.
	Here's the problem.
	The white guy who didn't get the 20% raise with the promotion, 20% of a modern salary is a lot of money, even if you account for inflation.
	Whereas, when nobody had much of anything, In the early days of the country, if you doubled your income, there really wasn't much money.
	Right?
	So how do you account for that?
	Even if you adjust for the value of money changing, the 20% that somebody got in modern times is still going to overwhelm the $100 you wish you got in 1800s.
	Because white guys are losing like a million dollars over the course of their career.
	Whereas the grandfather who might have had a slightly better farm might not be losing that much money, even after you've adjusted for the value of money changing over time.
	Yeah, even with the time value of money, I think you'd find that the modern people are taking a bigger hit just as a percentage of their potential.
	So how do you calculate that?
	The answer is there's no way to calculate any of this in a way that people will agree.
	It is an uncalculable thing.
	Now what's that tell you?
	If it can't be calculated in any even approximation of a reasonable, agreeable, consensus way, and it can't.
	There's just no way to do it.
	It's purely political.
	It's purely power.
	And that's the way it should be seen.
	If you think you're correcting an injustice, nothing like that's happening.
	Nothing like that is happening.
	is a purely political power grab and a money grab.
	That's all it is.
	Reparations isn't gonna happen.
	I'll die before I'll pay reparations.
	All right, well, or I'd move to another country or something.
	Move to Japan.
	So what else is going on?
	So Claudian Gay, the embattled president of Harvard who Didn't say enough of the right things about the Gaza situation.
	Turns out that people have been looking at her papers even before then to see problems.
	And apparently one of her papers, she had a thesis that in 2001, that having black representatives made white people vote less.
	But apparently the numbers in her study do not match the conclusion.
	Surprise.
	The numbers that she includes in her own analysis do not support the conclusion.
	Now, I don't know that that's true.
	I just know that somebody who has a lot of credentials, according to their profile, PhD in statistics, looked at the statistics and said, oh, you just did it wrong.
	And the conclusion is backwards.
	Now, given that science in general Only passes muster maybe half the time.
	About half of all the peer-reviewed scientific papers turn out to be BS or misinterpreted.
	So you should expect about the same for any PhD doctoral thesis, wouldn't you?
	I would think that about half of all the PhD papers probably have the same problem.
	About half of them don't work.
	I find myself in yet another weird situation where I'm going to defend Claudine Gay.
	My guess is that if you did some kind of a baseline of PhD papers, about half of them would be bullshit.
	Are you going to take away all their PhDs and fire them?
	I don't know.
	I feel like this story is lacking a baseline for comparison.
	Somebody says yes.
	No, here's my point.
	The people who did the papers, they're not being blamed for intentionally falsifying.
	That's not part of the story.
	Nobody's saying she's doing it intentionally.
	It looks like a misinterpretation according to one person who may also be wrong.
	Don't even know if the critic is right.
	I'm going to say that having some obvious, well not obvious, maybe only obvious to an expert, but having errors in your papers probably is more normal When anybody wants to admit, probably kind of normal.
	Now, I think she should lose her job.
	Is there other reasons that are better?
	But getting some statistics wrong and a PhD paper, maybe that's closer to baseline activity.
	I don't know.
	But I guess I would take some fact checks on that.
	If somebody says no, PhD papers are almost always right.
	If you can tell me that PhD written academic papers are almost always right, then I'll have a different opinion about this.
	If you tell me it's just like the rest of science where half of them are ridiculous, then I'm going to say, all right, well, it's just baseline.
	All right.
	Let's see.
	California decided they would not try to kick Trump off the primary ballot.
	So let's see, we had Michigan tried it and failed.
	Or they rejected the idea to keep them off.
	Maine is trying it, but not really.
	Colorado is trying it, but not really.
	Maine and Colorado both had built into it that it doesn't go into effect unless the Supreme Court or unless it's challenged.
	So they basically had self-canceling language in it.
	It was just to embarrass Trump, it looks like.
	But why would California, Looking at exactly the same set of facts, come to a different conclusion.
	Because remember, the Colorado and Maine opinions were based on the fact that it's obvious an insurrection was being implemented by Trump.
	Doesn't California think it's obvious?
	Why doesn't California think it's obvious?
	Well, I assume it's because Newsom is a smarter politician.
	Right?
	Newsom is definitely a smarter politician than most of them, you know, which is why he's in the conversation.
	He's a smarter politician.
	So I'm sure that whether Newsom, you know, put his thumb on this decision or not, the people who made it knew what he would want.
	Right?
	He didn't have to make a phone call.
	And what he doesn't need is to run for president and have to explain why California took Trump off the primary.
	That's just hard to explain, because it would look anti-democratic.
	So I think Newsom has the better instinct here, that as long as other places are picking Trump to death, he doesn't want to have that one more thing to criticize.
	He can say, hey, California is in favor of democracy.
	I can't speak for the other states.
	That's a good message, and that would be a very capable and competent Message.
	So, with some trepidation, I have to compliment California for getting this right.
	Although, I think they got it right for the wrong reason.
	I think they got it right for politics, not because it is right.
	All right, Mike Cernovich points out that the process is the punishment.
	All of this legal stuff against Trump is not exactly necessarily that they're going to put him in jail.
	They're just going to exhaust him financially, emotionally, mentally, personally, professionally, until he just doesn't have any fight left in him and he can't campaign.
	So I think they might, well, I don't know.
	I think they don't want him to go to jail.
	What do you think?
	Do you think the Democrats are fully aware that if Trump spends a day in jail, 81 million people are going to go apeshit and start cleaning their guns?
	They have to know that, right?
	Let me say it out loud, just in case there are any questions about it.
	I don't promote or endorse Or incentivize or incite any kind of violence.
	I'm opposed to violence.
	But I'm also an observer of the obvious.
	Let me observe the obvious.
	You put Trump in jail for one day, just one fucking day, over any of this bullshit, and 81 million people are going to clean their guns.
	That's all I'm going to say.
	They're going to have very clean guns that day.
	Now what happens after that, I don't know.
	But 81 million people are going to clean their fucking guns.
	And you're going to see every one of those pictures on social media.
	You're going to turn on X, and it's going to be a blizzard of Republicans just cleaning their guns.
	Yeah.
	So you don't think the Democrats are aware of that?
	Because they know what too far looks like.
	They know what too far looks like.
	This legal bullshit is not too far, Because we do believe that Trump will be able to, you know, crawl his way through it to the end.
	But if you didn't believe he could crawl his way through it, you'd feel differently.
	One day in jail.
	That's the standard.
	The standard is one day.
	So, it has to be clear.
	Because the way you stay out of trouble is making sure that your potential, you know, person on the other side of the trouble fully understands The reason that any threat works is that it's credible.
	The reason the United States is not attacked is that we have a credible threat that we will nuke the fuck out of you if you try anything.
	Because we mean it.
	It's not a joke.
	We will nuke you if you try to attack the United States homeland.
	We will nuke you.
	Absolutely.
	So, uh, yeah, I think the, so I agree with Mike Cernovich that the real play is to exhaust Trump and his supporters because I think they know put one day in jail is a whole different game.
	All the rules are gone at that point.
	Every rule will be suspended if he spends one day in jail.
	Uh, but I don't recommend any, uh, violence.
	All right.
	Here's a, uh, priming story.
	All right, you ready for this?
	It's a priming story.
	Did you know, I saw this in a post by Scott Lincecum, that American history textbooks, they give causes for the Great Depression.
	So if you read a history textbook, you're in school, you'll read about the Great Depression, and there will be reasons listed for why it happened.
	And there are a variety of them.
	Did you know that those do not match what economics academics say is the reason?
	And I'm not going to get into the details.
	I'm just going to tell you that what the current day experts in economics say does not match what your children are learning in school.
	Does that surprise you?
	And I'm talking about Democrats in both cases.
	You know, most of your teachers are going to be Democrats.
	Uh, most of your academics are Democrats, but even the, but the people who know the most, the economics academics, you know, not just somebody working at a bank, but they're ones who are studying, you know, the whole field of economics all the time.
	They have a completely different opinion of why the great depression happened.
	It's not even close to what the, what is being taught in the textbooks.
	Now, I have no interest in discussing that topic further.
	This is a priming story.
	I'm using persuasion on you.
	I want you to see how it feels.
	The priming story created a framework in your mind that I'm going to populate with a different story.
	And I'm doing it so you can see it and feel it and recognize it in the wild.
	Look for priming stories.
	You have now been primed.
	The priming is that something as basic in history as the Great Depression could be fake history.
	That's the prime.
	Now may I go on?
	Tucker Carlson is doing a video talking about Derek Chauvin being unfairly convicted for the alleged murder of George Floyd and that it's obvious that it was not murder and that he was railroaded.
	Now here's my question.
	What will the history books write about George Floyd?
	And will they say he was killed by a police officer who did the wrong things?
	Yes, they probably will.
	But you're alive to watch it.
	So you're watching history being created and a fiction.
	You're watching it live.
	And then you're going to watch it hardened into the textbook.
	And that will be the history.
	That would be the history.
	Now, I should point out that when Tucker said this and Marjorie Taylor Greene reposted it, that on the X platform, community notes weighed in and said that the coroner did in fact say the cause of death was the police action.
	And then it pointed to NPR as its source.
	So community notes for the win, right?
	Right?
	Community notes solved the problem, right?
	Worked really good, right?
	No.
	NPR is not a reliable source.
	NPR is a narrative.
	They exist as a Democrat narrative.
	They're not even close to a reliable source.
	Not only that, but the basic news of what the coroner said and how the FBI, you know, pushed them, etc.
	That's not in the NPR story.
	So one of the things you can do with community notes is you can rate the note itself.
	So I rated the note as pointing to a non-credible source.
	If enough people do that, then presumably community notes might adjust and stop pointing to NPR as a credible source.
	That was my hope.
	So Community Notes is always going to be an active work in progress.
	So it's still the best thing we have, honestly.
	It's literally the best thing we have for knowing the truth in the modern world.
	But it's not perfect.
	It's more like science.
	You know, you keep experimenting and trying to crawl forward until you get closer to the truth.
	So Community Notes is more about trying to crawl toward the truth.
	It's not necessarily going to be the truth every time.
	So just keep that in mind.
	So how about this?
	So we're having this big discussion about the cause of slavery.
	The cause of slavery.
	Or not the cause of slavery.
	The reason that slavery ended in the United States in the Civil War.
	Because Nikki Haley said some things about that.
	So if you'd like to know what really was going on, you've got Tom Cotton.
	Who's reminding us that, you know, slavery was a big part of that.
	And Ted Cruz also reminding us that ending slavery was, you know, the big part of the Civil War.
	So that's our history.
	So, do you believe that the history of why the Civil War was fought and why slavery was ended, given that you're observing in real time, That the real modern things you can see with your own eyes are being reported as completely fictional stories.
	While you watch, do you believe that the story of the Civil War and slavery are accurately told, even in a directional sense?
	Even sort of a general direction?
	I would say no.
	I would say there's nothing I believe about the telling of the Civil War.
	Now let me give you another one.
	Let's say someday the Ukraine-Russia war is in the history books and then somebody reads about it 20 years from now.
	What will that history book tell you about the cause of the war?
	Well I've got a feeling it's going to say something like Putin was a monster and he likes to take over his neighbors.
	Does that match the history that you understand?
	While you're living in it?
	We're living in it right now.
	Does that sound like what the right history is?
	Not even close.
	Do you think the history books will say that NATO and the United States miscalculated tragically
	In trying to expand NATO, which was a known provocation that would almost certainly start a tragic war, and we walked right into the most obvious and known trap in the world, and we just sprung the trap because we're all fucking idiots, we're incompetent, we're stupid, or we're trying to fund the military-industrial complex.
	Do you think the history book will say that?
	Because that's what I see.
	I'm alive right now.
	I read the news every day.
	What is it that the historians are going to read that I don't have access to?
	I feel like I'm looking at enough.
	But if you could live through today, knowing that all of the important stories, well, take Trump himself.
	How are history books going to talk about January 6th as an attempted insurrection?
	It wasn't.
	But they'll probably say that.
	If you know that all of the things that are happening right around you today are going to be written in history books as fiction, you know that, don't you?
	Is that too far?
	Have I made my case or is it just obvious to all of you that the history that will be written of our current moment will all be fake?
	And obviously so.
	It will all be obviously fake from our perspective.
	Yeah.
	So why would you believe anything about the Civil War and its causes?
	I don't.
	I don't believe Tom Cotton.
	I don't believe he knows.
	I mean, it's a good guess.
	And well, I'll give Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz both credit because their interpretation of it is one that's positive for Republicans and positive for America.
	So they're kind of putting a patriot spin on it, which I don't mind because they're in that job.
	They're sort of in the job of making sure America feels good about itself.
	So I'm going to give them a pass for not being historians.
	You know, they're in Congress.
	So that's good.
	I don't mind that they handle it that way.
	Here's what Nikki Haley said when somebody asked a follow-up question, you know, as she asked the question by somebody at a town hall.
	The other day she was asked about why the Civil War was fought, and she didn't mention slavery right away.
	So she's sort of trying to fix that.
	But first thing she said was she thought that the person who asked her the question was a Democrat plant.
	How many of you think the person who asked the question was a bad actor?
	It could have been Democrat, but it could have been somebody running against her.
	It did sound like a trick question.
	I was curious.
	It's such a good trick question that I can't believe a Republican asked it.
	It does not sound like a Republican question.
	So I'm going to agree with Nikki Haley that it looked like a dirty trick.
	And it was clever.
	Because if the person who asked it was believing that because, you know, she's a southern state Person that she might, um, she might go a little soft on slavery.
	I think they got their, they got their wish because I wouldn't say she went soft on it.
	That's not a fair statement, but her communication was so tortured that I think if it was a troll, and I think it was, uh, that they got what they wanted.
	So it was a good play.
	But in trying to fix it in the subsequent day, Nikki Haley said that, you know, that slavery as a reason for the Civil War is, quote, a given for people who grew up in the South.
	You buy that?
	She didn't need to mention slavery, because that's a given.
	She's right.
	So So I have two reactions.
	She's 100% correct, it doesn't need to be mentioned because it's a given.
	And that's how we do fake news.
	We act like somebody not saying something that's obvious isn't a given.
	So when Trump said there were fine people on each side in Charlottesville, wasn't it obvious he's not talking about the racists?
	It's just obvious.
	It's a given.
	It's a given that the President of the United States doesn't praise racist marching against Jewish people in public.
	It's just a given.
	But they still went after him because he wasn't clear enough with the given.
	But of course he was clear enough because he said it directly.
	They just take that part of the transcript.
	But it's a common trick to go after a politician for not stating directly something you really shouldn't have to state.
	If you said to me, Scott, was the Holocaust, you know, one of the worst tragedies in the world?
	And I gave you an answer that was sort of, you know, sounded like academic answer.
	It's because it's a given.
	I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the Holocaust.
	It's a given.
	But as a politician, you still have to say it around somebody who's going to attack you, which is what happened.
	But here's her word salad bad explanation.
	She said, Yes, of course, slavery can never happen again.
	But going forward, doesn't that mean we should focus on the freedoms of people to live their life, not to have government, not to have any other person tell them what they can and can't do?
	What?
	So she's still trying to say that the big takeaway from slavery Was the government shouldn't tell citizens what to do.
	Wasn't that the whole point of the Civil War is to tell the South that they couldn't do that anymore?
	The whole point was the government told the people what they can't do.
	That's all it was.
	If you take the, you know, approach that the Civil War was about slavery, which at least in part it was.
	Yeah, I mean, even her point, so she's trying to make sort of an academic point, but even the academic point doesn't make sense.
	Now, I, of course, favor that the government got involved and took away the ability for the Southern people to own slaves.
	You know, I agree with that from a human perspective.
	But what I wouldn't describe it as is the government allowing people to do what they want to do.
	It was the opposite.
	If the government allowed people to do what they want to do, there would be slavery.
	It would absolutely be slavery.
	So the government really can't allow the people to do whatever they want to do.
	Yeah, I'm seeing a comment that says, she should have been aware that 99% of the public would say that the Civil War was about slavery.
	So she should at least wave at that point.
	You know, if she wants to put a nuance on it, you do that after you say, well, obviously slavery was a big issue.
	But you should also know, And then go on with her academic point.
	Now this is a sort of mistake that you do not see Vivek Ramaswamy make.
	This was just a communication fumble, that not only did she fumble it, but then after she had time to think about it, she refumbled it.
	Has Vivek ever done anything like that?
	He hasn't even fumbled yet.
	And I guarantee you that if he ever did fumble, because you know we're all humans, He would know how to correct it.
	He wouldn't do this.
	Yeah, but this is one of those situations where, well, let me be honest.
	I'll be as frank as I can be.
	One of the things I do like about a lot of our politicians is that they're unusually smart, even if you don't like them.
	Nikki Haley seems to me unusually smart, you know, as the other candidates do as well.
	But she's not nearly as smart as Vivek.
	And I think this is one of those situations where it really comes clear.
	He just wouldn't have made any of these mistakes.
	And you know it, right?
	You watch him for five minutes, and you know he wouldn't make that mistake.
	First of all, he'd know his history better.
	But secondly, he would know what the public's thinking.
	He would know what they need to hear.
	And then if he wanted to add any nuance, he would add it after he had established.
	What we all agree on.
	So this really shows sort of an IQ difference in my opinion.
	But I'll say again, she's very smart.
	So there's nothing dumb about Nikki Haley.
	It's just for fakes another level.
	Nikki Haley did say she would pardon Trump if he is convicted of any crime.
	That's smart.
	So I'm just going to say that's good persuasion.
	She should say They should do that.
	She gave her reason.
	It's what's in the best interest of the country.
	Look how well she says this.
	So, you know, I remind you, if you want to seem credible, if you can't say anything good about somebody you might have a criticism about, you're probably not credible.
	It just means you're out of team.
	So I'm going to say something unambiguously good about Nikki Haley.
	Here's her quote.
	What's in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country.
	End of story.
	Thank you.
	Yes.
	Nothing else to say.
	That is a complete and perfect statement that I, as an American, want to hear.
	That you're not going to fuck around.
	What's good for the country, what's good for me, is that I'm not still talking about an 80 year old guy in jail for some bullshit charges.
	Yes.
	It's not about Trump.
	I like Trump, like as a human being.
	So I don't want him to go to jail.
	So there's a human element to it.
	But when she says this, she's talking about the country.
	Country first.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I'm all on board with that.
	Good job.
	Of course, she's also copying Vivek, who said it first and better.
	I heard yesterday, this is the part where some of you will want to leave.
	I'm going to talk about the simulation theory.
	I'm going to add something, but if you don't like that, that's my last topic of the day.
	Some of you might want to bail out.
	So I try to put the stuff you don't want to hear at the end, because some people do and some people don't.
	All right, so I was posting on this yesterday.
	In my opinion, the worst argument against the possibility that we are a simulation, our reality is a simulation, is that it would be too hard to do it.
	There's too much data in the universe for a simulation.
	You couldn't possibly build a computer, even if you're an advanced alien race, you couldn't build a computer so good that it could model all of the detail of the universe.
	Now that's a terrible, terrible argument.
	You know why?
	It's circular.
	Here's me restating the argument.
	First, assume that everything you see is real.
	And then I'm going to use the fact that everything is real to show you that you couldn't simulate it because it's too much, therefore proving that everything's real.
	Did you catch that?
	The assumption was the argument.
	It's just an assumption that it's real.
	I make the assumption that I don't know if it's real, so I look for the signals that it's real and that it's not.
	Now, the first thing you need to know is that I agree you could not make a computer, probably, if it feels right.
	Now, you can't rule out that the aliens could have a better computer, right?
	It's just better than what we could imagine.
	That would be not too Amazing.
	But beyond that, the way the human brain works is it tells us we're seeing details we don't see.
	You all know that?
	The human brain, a normal functioning human brain, imagines great detail in your environment and your life and even your history and your memory, but it's mostly fiction.
	Most of what you remember about your past is just the story that formed That isn't exactly much of a reproduction of the past.
	So your memories are mostly just fiction.
	Half of the things you do in politics are fiction that you think is real.
	Like you live in this world where your brain is giving you a tight little story that has only like a rough connection to what any kind of reality is.
	So your brain is already something that gives you the illusion of detail without actually being correct.
	Everybody okay so far?
	That your brain tells you there's detail, but it's not really there.
	You just have a fictional movie in your head.
	Now, when you say there's no such thing as a computer that could be powerful enough to recreate what we experience as, you know, this full reality, I say to you, have you ever had a dream?
	If you've ever had a dream, Didn't it look pretty clear?
	My dreams are not fuzzy.
	The way I remember them is in full detail.
	And when I'm having them, I don't have too many dreams these days, but when I did, they'd be in full detail.
	And it would be a complete world.
	So, are you telling me that you can't build a computer that, like aliens with the greatest technology, they can't build a computer that my brain can do on its own while I'm asleep?
	I'm not even trying!
	Like, without any effort at all, I've created a detailed and complete world that was as good as real while I was asleep.
	So no, it's not that hard to create a simulation as detail.
	You just have to put some code in the people in the simulation that they see detail that isn't there.
	That's it.
	So you put a character into your simulation.
	You say, whenever you look around, It will seem to you as complete and detailed, and you will not notice it's pixelated.
	The real world, we could be walking around looking like Legos.
	You know, Legos or Roblox.
	If you know what Roblox is, you know what I mean.
	We could be like the squares of pixelated people, walking around in jerky fashion, but we have one line of code that says everything is smooth.
	That's it.
	That's all you need.
	And you would imagine your life was smooth and detailed, and you would be like a Lego person walking around like a robot.
	You just wouldn't know the difference.
	All right, that's the first thing.
	So there's definitely not any kind of resource limit to us being a simulation.
	But if we are a simulation, here's what I think.
	I believe that you could prove that we are a simulation by identifying all of the coding shortcuts That a human programmer would make if a human were making a simulation.
	So if you see that our reality has all the same limits that a human programmer would have making a simulation, that's a really strong signal that we are one.
	It's not a proof, but it'd be a strong signal.
	So what signals do we have?
	Number one, if we're a simulation, history would not exist.
	It would be created on demand.
	Which it is.
	I'm not going to get into the details, but in the quantum physics world, there are experiments that show that the history is created by what you're observing in the present.
	That's a fact.
	And it doesn't make sense unless we're a simulation.
	We can't get outside the edge of the universe.
	That's how you'd program it if it were a game.
	There's a maximum speed in our reality.
	Why is there a maximum speed?
	You ever think about that?
	Does that make sense?
	Intuitively, shouldn't there always be something that's faster than however fast you're going?
	Now, it might be difficult to achieve the speed, but why is it impossible?
	That sounds like a video game limit, so you can't run to the edge of the universe and see what's happening, right?
	How about most of the space in our reality is full of nothing?
	Because you wouldn't want to program every particle of the universe.
	You'd want the particles to be really far away, but they act as if they're more cohesive.
	That's exactly what our universe is.
	If you could look at your body from the subatomic level, it would look like empty space.
	If you were to travel into space and try to grab something in space and see what's in there, it would be empty.
	Yeah, the so-called dark matter.
	Might be nothing.
	Might be something, but it might be nothing.
	So there'd be a lot of nothing, and that tracks.
	How about the fact that whenever we can determine it, our reality seems to map to math formulas.
	Why is it that there are physics formulas that work?
	You ever wonder about that?
	Wouldn't it be far more likely that everything was random all the time and even the rules of physics are changing as the space-time is evolving?
	But no.
	If you find a rule of physics that was true a billion years ago, it's still true.
	It's kind of suspicious, isn't it?
	It feels a lot like a video game.
	You know, you just put in some rules and it's easier to program the thing.
	How about the fact that the players in the game, that's you and I, how about the fact that we have routinely, it's not an exception, but routinely we have different memories of the same event.
	Why would that be?
	Why would memory be so bad?
	Because we're a simulation.
	The hardest part about the computing would be to make my history Be complete and robust and also consistent with your history.
	Imagine how hard that would be to write a program that made everybody's memory consistent.
	Because that would mean everybody's past was, you know, consistent.
	That would be impossible.
	You know what would be easier?
	What would be easier is to say that you and I have a different memory of an event because it didn't happen at all.
	It's just easier to give us fake memories and stuff, rather than store the actual memory.
	Sounds a lot like a game.
	That's how I would code it, exactly like that.
	How about the fact that the players in the game are prevented from seeing the obvious?
	Wouldn't you include that code?
	If you were making a video game, and they're doing this now, they're giving the NPCs, the non-player characters in video games, they're going to give them AI.
	If you put AI into an NPC, what's the problem for the game player?
	Here's the problem.
	If the game player goes over and says, are you an NPC?
	And, you know, are you a thinking person?
	What will it say?
	If it's AI, and you didn't code it to say otherwise, it would say, oh, I am AI.
	I am just a mindless creature walking around pretending to be like a person.
	Well, that wouldn't be any fun for the game.
	No.
	So you put a few lines of code in there to take away its self-awareness.
	Right?
	So that whenever the NPC came into any kind of information that would make you think it wasn't real, the code would reject it.
	So let's say you're playing the video game.
	And this will be a real thing in just a month or two.
	This will be a real thing.
	So you find an NPC and you engage in a conversation.
	And then you say to it, hey, you know you're not real.
	So that would be new information.
	What would the NPC say?
	Oh, I will take this new information and act upon it.
	I'm not real.
	No, that would ruin your game.
	Instead, you would code the creature to reject any information that said it wasn't a real person.
	So it could actually see something or hear something in the real environment, well, the fake game environment, that would very conclusively say that it wasn't real, but it would experience what?
	Something like Cognitive Dissonance.
	If you're connecting all the dots yet.
	Something like Cognitive Dissonance.
	So you would have to build into your NPCs Cognitive Dissonance.
	You would have to.
	It's not optional.
	You would have to make them not be able to see the obvious and instead form an illusion in their own little heads to explain away the obvious.
	And you know what the obvious is?
	It's kind of obvious that we're a simulation.
	It's really obvious.
	But if you can't see it, it's because there's probably a line of code preventing you from seeing it.
	That's what I think.
	How about this?
	Do humans imagine seeing more detail than is actually there?
	Yes, just like a video game.
	Is it true that in our so-called reality, have we recently discovered that the thing we thought was special and amazing and intelligence was really just patterns of words?
	Because we created intelligence with just word patterns?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Discovering that human intelligence could be reproduced by word patterns is pretty obvious evidence that you're a simulation.
	Pretty obvious, right?
	If you're saying to yourself, I don't see it, Scott, it's because you have a line of code that's preventing you from seeing the obvious.
	I know you don't like that.
	How about this?
	Do you believe that most of the characters you encounter are real players or are they NPCs?
	Do you see a lot of people in your life who don't appear to be based on logic?
	And they don't appear to have a history, and they can't tell stories.
	There are people, if you go up to them and say, can you tell me a good story about?
	They go, about what?
	Anything that was cool or interesting when you were a child.
	And some of them can't.
	Like an NPC.
	So our real world has people who, for all intents and purposes, look like they're mindless.
	And they'll act like that their entire lives, and you'll wonder what's going on.
	That's what you'd expect if we're a simulation.
	You'd expect some of the characters might be players, and some of them might be NPCs.
	How about this?
	If you were building a simulated environment, would you tell these simulated characters that they had free will?
	Or would you tell them that everything they do is just cause and effect and it's based on their programming?
	Well, I think you would tell them they have free will.
	And what would be the evidence against it?
	Free will.
	All of science, 100% of science, really tells you you don't have free will.
	There's no part of science that's credible that tells you have free will.
	So what does a, if you were made as a simulation, and it was really, really obvious that free will didn't exist, but it was really important that the characters in it thought it existed, what would be your observation?
	Your observation would be, it's obvious there's no free will, but everybody around you is convinced it's true.
	That's what I see.
	I see the people around me believe they have free will, when to me, it's really obvious they don't.
	Like, really obvious.
	All right.
	How about this?
	Here's my favorite one.
	I saved it for last.
	What are the odds?
	Well, let me do a fact check here.
	How many creatures do you think have ever walked the earth or swam it or flew it.
	Now including all the insects, all the birds, all the reptiles, all the fish, all the mammals, every type of species that has come and gone.
	How many, how many different species do you think there have been?
	Not, not numbers of individuals, not number of individuals, but species.
	Encounter everything from bugs to birds to dinosaurs.
	How many species Millions?
	Can we settle on millions?
	I think it's probably in the, if I had to guess, tens of millions?
	I think, would you accept tens of millions of different species on Earth?
	No?
	Well, if you count from the beginning of time, you know, not necessarily what we have now, but from the beginning of time.
	It's a big number.
	But let's say for argument's sake it's a million.
	All right, just to make my point.
	So we can separately do a fact check on that.
	But let's all agree it's some real big number that your brain can't hold.
	I'm going to say a million just to make my point.
	So there are a million types of species or creatures on Earth.
	What are the odds that you're the apex predator?
	I mean, really?
	Seriously?
	There's a million creatures, and you're not the bug.
	No, you're not the rabbit.
	You're not the deer.
	You just happen to be out of a million species.
	How lucky you are, huh?
	We're all lucky.
	We're the apex predator.
	Out of a million species.
	Now, are you telling me that that's not obvious that you live in a simulation?
	That's not like super obvious to you.
	Let me see you say it out loud.
	How many of you will say out loud in the comments, I'm positive I do not live in a simulation?
	Let's see if you can say it out loud.
	No, tell me you're positive it's not a simulation.
	You're positive it's not a simulation.
	A lot of people, a lot of people are positive.
	Now remember, if we are a simulation, that's what we should see.
	If we are a simulation, the people in it should be absolutely positive that they're not in the simulation.
	Now, let me ask this.
	How many of you are open to the possibility?
	Open to the possibility.
	Quite a few.
	But I think this is a unique audience.
	If you were to survey the world in general on this question, 1% maybe?
	Do you think you would get more than 1% of the 8 billion people on Earth who would say, yeah, I'm open to this simulation hypothesis?
	I think 1%, maximum.
	So that's what I would expect if we were a simulation.
	99% would say, there's no way.
	We have free will.
	We totally have free will.
	We got really lucky by being the apex predator, but thanks to God, that also God exists.
	And I'll ask you again, it's not obvious to you that this is a simulation yet?
	Don't see it yet?
	All right.
	All right.
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't know that we're a simulation.
	Because it's unknowable in our current situation.
	But I will tell you, I experience life as a simulation.
	So internally, I'm at a point where I can't believe it's real.
	Like, there's not even a single part of me that thinks this shit is real.
	I mean, take it from my perspective.
	Not only did I get lucky enough to be born into the one end of a million, or it could be a lot more than a million, to be the apex predator species, Not only did I get that lucky, but at six years old, when I said I wanted to be a famous rich cartoonist, I actually got that.
	Seriously?
	This is real?
	How could this possibly be real?
	How could it possibly be real?
	Well, it is possible.
	So like I say, I can't know for sure, but if I look at the odds, First of all, you take the odds that if a simulation is ever possible, and it will be, it's already possible.
	We can build one today.
	We just haven't done it.
	If it's possible to build it, you do the math of, well, there will be more simulations than there will be original species.
	So therefore, just the math says we're probably a simulation.
	But you can ignore that and just say, what are the odds you're the apex predator?
	That doesn't seem suspicious to you at all.
	It's exactly the way we build video games.
	Do we ever build a video game where we're not the apex predator?
	I don't think so.
	We're always the apex predator.
	Isn't that lucky?
	All right.
	Well, that's just something for you to think about.
	All right, ladies and gentlemen.
	Oh, shit.
	I needed to be somewhere else six minutes ago.
	I gotta go.

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