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At the end of the day, the thing makes everything better.
It's called, and watch me do the Biden whisper, the simultaneous sip.
Go.
Mmm.
Delicious.
Well.
If you're subscribing to the Dilbert Reborn comic, which you can only see if you're subscribing to it on X under my profile, you can see the button, or on the locals platform where you get that plus a lot more, you would know that Ratbert, who's working for a newspaper called the Washington Poop, has been asked by his boss to be the liaison to the CIA.
So Ratbert's job will be to write what the CIA tells him to write.
So if you want to see how that works out, it's in the Dilbert Reboard.
And I was thinking, what would it be like to live in a world in which you thought the news was real?
Because I haven't lived in that world in a long time.
I kind of remember it.
But how disorienting would it be to read, you know, publications that are clearly not even intending to be the news?
And imagine that they intended to be the news and that they told you the actual news.
And that there was, there were only a few places that there were bad news.
And if you, uh, if you, uh, is there only place I'm looking at some messages going by, I'm sorry, just took me off my game for a moment.
Um, anyway, so it'd be hard to live in a world where you thought the news was real and We'll get to more about that in a minute.
How many of you have experienced something that I'm starting to call screen sickness?
Screen sickness, meaning that you get stuck looking at screens, your phone, your TV, your computer screen on your desk, and you can't stop doing it.
And it might be different things you're looking at, but they're all on screens.
You just go from one screen to another.
And you start feeling a feeling of general malaise.
Has anybody had that?
Where you can't stop doing it, but you don't feel good anymore while you're doing it.
But at the same time, you feel like doing something else wouldn't feel as good.
What it feels like to me is that I'm having some kind of dopamine crisis and my dopamine maker is like operating at 10% and the only thing that gives me a hit You know, once my dopamine is depressed, is just looking through reels.
So I'm currently completely addicted to the fast form, algorithmically perfect stuff that is exactly what I want to look at.
I can't tell you how much I enjoy looking at cats and dogs hugging each other.
I can watch it all day.
And there are days when I probably spend an hour, you know, collectively all through the day looking at Animals hugging each other.
I'll never get tired of it.
But I do get sick.
I can actually feel this general malaise coming over me that I'm just stuck on these screens and not seeing the outdoors.
So I'm actually struggling with it.
I was not at all addicted to anything like TikTok.
But when the TikTok model moved over to the other platforms, so now even X, if you look at one video, you can scroll up and it'll just take you to the next interesting video.
And it's all stuff I want to see.
There's so, so, so good at knowing what I personally want to see that I just can't even walk away from it.
It's actually really dangerous addiction.
And I'm trying to think, what would this have been like if I were a teenager?
Oh my God.
So I'm a big old adult who didn't grow up, you know, with a brain that was compromised by smartphones and I'm addicted.
Like, let me just say today, I'm actually going to work on it.
Like, like I had an alcohol addiction.
It, the, the feeling is making me sick and I can't stop that.
I mean, that's an addiction.
There's no other way around that.
And I don't know how to stop it.
And here's my current problem, and I want to get your advice.
What is the appropriate time of response when you get a text message?
In the modern world, let's say it's the middle of the day.
It's a work day.
You get a text message from somebody, and it's always urgent.
How long can you wait before you respond, before it becomes a problem?
And then I want to ask you a follow-up question.
How often do you send somebody a message and then within five to ten minutes you send a follow-up message to ask if they got the first message?
And if you do that, are you a man or a woman?
Because I find that Uh, it's sort of like, uh, there's some things that men won't do in traffic that women will, because men don't want to get killed.
Right?
So men don't cut off other men in traffic intentionally because they'll, it'll be a fight.
But if a woman cuts you off, you're like, Oh, well, okay.
Cause you're not going to have a fight.
So you just go, ah, all right, whatever.
So here's my experience that, Women don't understand why you don't respond right away.
But men, I don't know if a man has ever texted me twice.
Is that your experience?
So if a man texts me and asks for something, I can't think of one time in my entire life that I ever got a follow-up text, did you see my first text?
Have you?
Is that completely a gender-specific thing?
But with women, it's very common that a response not within the first, say, 30 minutes will get you the follow-up text.
Hey, where are you?
I don't know if you saw my message.
Now, the reason I would not send a follow-up text to a text is I don't want to get beat up.
Not really.
I mean, you're not really going to get beat up.
But it would feel like an insult to another man.
If I texted a man and then texted again in 10 minutes, I would feel like I was insulting him.
Do you have the same feeling or is this unique to me?
So I'm saying one hour?
Because I'm thinking of instituting a two-hour rule.
The two-hour rule is that no matter how important it is, you should assume it's going to be two hours.
So if you have a problem that just has to be solved in less than two hours, you better start right away with somebody else or some other solution.
But I don't know how to sell it.
I'm not sure I could ever sell that.
Everything seems like an emergency.
Anyway, some of you may know that I had the extended conversation almost a few hours with Michael Ian Black.
You know him from TV.
He's written books.
He's got a substack you might want to subscribe to.
And he's a podcaster and a stand-up comedian.
Does lots of things.
So he's multi-talented across many domains.
And we talked after he had a comment about my observation that it was impossible to have a conversation with someone who thinks the news is real.
And he wanted to know, what do you mean by the news isn't real?
And I said to myself, or how do you know the news isn't real?
Or, you know, what do you mean by that?
And I thought, that's actually a really interesting question.
Because you've, those of you who've been watching for a long time, you know that we've developed collectively a set of tools for determining what's real.
For example, the Gell-Mann amnesia, the Scott Alexander You know, I'll call it the man bites dog idea.
The idea that one anonymous source is usually BS.
So there's a whole bunch of tools.
And some of them, you know, are harder to explain.
But I thought, oh, this could be really interesting.
Because the way that I determine truth,
By these tools, you know, it's a set of tools for knowing what's true Another one would be that I've studied mass hysteria's So I I propose that anybody who understands, you know, they've been McMartin school preschool case anybody who studied Mass hysteria's is in a better position to recognize a new one when it pops up just basic tools of understanding your reality, so I thought that
That it would be useful to have him on and explain, uh, not politics, you know, not a, not an argument about politics because we know how that would go.
Well, by the way, he's a, he would be a big supporter of Biden over Trump.
Uh, you might say he has TDS, but I'm not gonna, I'm not concluding that.
I'm just saying you would probably say that, uh, as you do about everybody who's got a strong opinion about Trump.
So here's what happened.
We agreed that it wouldn't be a political debate That rather I would answer the question and I told him to when we started I invited him to interrupt as much as he wanted Otherwise, it would be me just explaining things and I wanted to be more more interactive Is so if you watched it and I saw a lot of people say hey, he kept interrupting you.
I Invited that I said, please interrupt because I don't want to be just talking the whole time Now, what did you think you saw if you watched it?
Here's where it gets fun.
I don't know what happened.
I spent, you know, 90 minutes or more in a conversation, and when I was done, I legitimately didn't know what happened.
Let me explain that.
I've been hearing for maybe a few years, almost every day, Somebody would say something like this on my comments online.
Maybe you've heard it too.
I had the experience of spending the weekend talking to a relative or a friend who's a big Democrat.
And oh my God, my head exploded.
They live in a different world.
And I would listen to this and I'd think, so basically you just met somebody who disagrees on politics, right?
But it didn't really sound like that.
When people talked about it, they would say, there's something going on.
It's like a different world.
There's no overlap in what we know.
It's like a whole different world.
And I don't know that it's always been that way.
In my opinion, it's never been that way.
It's more of a modern development.
So, people signed on and they didn't know what they saw.
I'll give you an idea of some of the things they saw.
First of all, I'd like to thank Michael Ian Black for Crossing out of his silo of news and into my silo and taking a chance.
Because it's really brave to put yourself in front of what he would know would be a, you know, an adversarial audience when they watched it.
So, very brave.
And whatever you thought about it, let's just say, let's give him that, right?
All right.
Do me a favor in the comments and don't give me stock updates.
I know I asked for them earlier.
There's a specific stock I was looking at, but don't give me updates.
It'll take me off my game while I'm doing this.
So here's what happened.
There were definitely two movies on one screen.
In a way that I've never experienced before.
And, um, what I thought I was doing is explaining in detail the tools and techniques I use to determine what's true and what's not true.
What he said was, no, you haven't answered the question and you're not on the topic.
And I would say, well, let's agree on the topic.
And we would, and then I'd say, that's what I talked about.
And in fact, it's the only thing I talked about was that topic.
And he would say, no, you haven't.
And I would say, it's the only thing I've talked about.
And I would say why I thought I was talking about the topic.
And he would say, no, you haven't even addressed the topic.
So we couldn't even, we couldn't even find the same movie of a one sentence agreement of what we were there to talk about.
And by the way, we never solved it because even after we talked about it, and I don't think we are on the same page about what we agreed on or even what happened.
It was a complete out-of-body mind-eff that I've never experienced before.
Well, once before.
I've had one experience like it, and I'll tell you about that in a minute.
All right.
So remember, my claim was that it's impossible to have a conversation with someone who thinks the news is real.
And I proved it.
So here was someone who was completely game to give us his time, at personal risk.
He was willing to give his time.
And it was a nothing in terms of, you know, any kind of useful conversation, but boy, was it an experience.
So, um, you know, on some level it was a train wreck, but that's why you should watch it.
It's pinned to my, uh, my ex post.
It's on YouTube.
It's everywhere.
Anyway.
So here's what I, here's what I discovered.
First of all, we did not have an agreement about base reality.
So there are things, of course, that you would disagree politically.
But then there are other things that you would say, well, everybody agrees on this, right?
The things that I thought were not even a political question were simply things that both networks reported exactly the same.
And as far as I knew, nobody even had a question about.
But he did.
So my basic assumptions about reality, the most observable parts of reality, I'll give you specifics, he did not agree we're part of reality.
And if you've ever experienced gaslighting, it's when, I'll give you the simplified example, if somebody has a rock in their hand and they say, hey, look at this rock that's in my hand.
And the other person looks at it and says, there's no rock in your hand.
That's not lying.
I don't know what that is.
But, you know, we call it gaslighting.
Because if it's just you and the other person in the room, and the other person swears, look, you are, I don't know what's wrong with you, but there is no rock in your hand.
But you have it in your hand, you can feel its weight, you can touch it, you can drop it, it makes a sound, and you're like, I don't know, I see the rock, I'm sure I have a rock in my hand.
And then the other person will say, there is no rock in your hand.
Now, you'll go crazy, and that's what happened to me.
I had a complete break with reality during the conversation.
Now, that complete break in reality you'll see on the video, and most people noticed, and he asked me for proof of what I considered the most completely universally true thing that I understood.
Now, here's what he asked me to prove.
He did not believe that President Biden had ever, not even once, suggested that President Trump had ever called the neo-Nazis and racists in Charlottesville, fine people.
Now just hold that in your head.
He did not believe that that had ever happened.
And he's a big political person.
He does politics and he talks about it and he tweets about it.
So I said, if you watch it, you'll see a complete break with reality.
You'll see my face go, what?
Because I didn't know what to do.
And then he challenged me to find a source, any source, even one, that suggested that Biden had ever said that Trump called the racist in Charlottesville fine people.
And I said, I've been watching compilation clips of it all morning, which I had.
I'd probably seen 16 of the clips, you know, within an hour before that we talked.
But I'm a boomer who can't find things on phones, especially when you search for them, you get too many hits.
So I'm trying real time to find, you know, a source.
So it made me look like I couldn't prove.
So he was sort of resting his case that there was no evidence in the world that President Biden had run on the main theme that Trump had called these racist, fine people.
That never happened.
Now that's the, I have a rock in my hand.
No, you don't.
No, I swear it's right here.
Except I couldn't say it's right here because I couldn't Google it in, you know, on a live stream because I'm a boomer who can't Google things that are hard to Google on my phone.
And I've got these weird thumbs where I mistype everything because my thumb isn't round.
It's distorted from holding the phone.
So eventually somebody sends me the link.
So then I got to play the link that very clearly had President Biden himself say that he did believe that You know, that Trump had called them fine people.
So I played it, and now in my mind, here it is, here's the proof.
And then there was a compilation of the news people saying it as well, because he had also suggested that the news had never said that.
So not only had Biden never said it, but nobody in the news had ever suggested.
Just think about that, that nobody in the news had ever suggested That Trump had said the racists were fine people.
Now, he listened to it, and then he said, well, that's what I said.
And I said, no, that's the opposite of what you said.
Listen to it.
Maybe you didn't hear it.
And we played it multiple times.
And what I was clearly hearing that could not have been more clear, he was hearing the opposite.
Now you're going to say to me, wow, what's wrong with him?
Too fast, too fast.
What's wrong with me?
Why wouldn't you say what's wrong with me?
Why is your reality the right one?
We had two complete realities, but if you think you know which one is right, hold on.
Just hold on.
Because it won't be my claim that you had the wrong reality.
I'm going to surprise you at the end.
So, he also didn't seem to understand What I would call normal communication patterns.
And I didn't see that coming.
Which is that if I used an analogy, he seemed to not understand how analogies work.
And when I used a generality, he seemed to not understand how generalities work in normal conversation.
So almost all of his questions were about what my sentence meant.
Instead of, you know, a productive conversation about content.
And he had disagreements such as, that's not the news, that's a topic in the news.
And I would think, I don't make a distinction between a topic, let's say climate change, and the news.
Because that topic is in the news.
So, I didn't even understand that, and still don't.
That there's a difference between a topic that's in the news, and the news.
So, it turned into this Two movies on one screen, which I always describe, in which his reality and mine never really overlapped, even though on the surface we were having something like a conversation.
But then also there were other movies that were the audience's movies.
So one of the comments I got is that I lost the debate.
Do you know what I said to that?
What debate?
We didn't agree to a debate and we didn't have a debate.
There was no debate.
It was a conversation where something happened that I don't understand.
And I was definitely, I definitely was shocked into a, uh, let's say a cognitive condition that was very akin to a mushroom trip.
Now I've had, you know, one productive mushroom trip.
And one time I took mushrooms and just got sick.
So that didn't count.
But the one time I did, what you experience is that you're living in a world where the stuff is familiar, but it doesn't work the same.
So in other words, you know, people are still people, and a chair is still a chair, and you still know how to sit in it, but everything's different.
So that's what I experienced.
Because once my base reality was in question, which the most observable things are not true, and even when I'm playing an audio, That is not clear if the audio is what I'm hearing, or if it's the opposite of what I'm hearing, because that's what Michael was hearing.
And then you were watching it, and some of you thought you watched a debate, and there wasn't any debate.
It was a conversation on one question that kind of went a weird direction.
So here are some of the Some of the observations from people watched.
Now, these are not ones I agree with.
I want to show you how many different interpretations there were of this same weird event.
Some people wondered if I was high.
I wasn't.
Let's see.
Oh, Mike was also not convinced that money has a substantial distortion effect on experts.
So one of the base realities that I think is not really questionable is that if somebody's getting paid to have a specific opinion, and there would be a penalty if they didn't, and their bosses would be mad, and they would lose their reputation, that that wouldn't really be something that would stop the truth from coming out.
That's a base reality difference where I think It's not just a thing that can happen.
It's the thing that happens everywhere all the time universally with no exceptions And he would say hmm.
I don't know.
I'm not even sure if you're gonna see that signal So, I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but effectively we had a different opinion on how much money distorts things So some of you said he's just bad at arguing and But that's hard to explain when you look at how accomplished he is as a communicator.
So here's somebody successful on multiple books published.
He's been, you know, an actor, he's a writer, stand-up.
So someone who communicates that well is not going to be just bad at understanding words.
So I don't buy that.
I don't buy that he's a bad debater.
Some of you thought he was playing a prank.
He was just trolling me the entire time.
But I didn't get that vibe, because I talked to him both before and after.
And the before and after that you didn't get to see, didn't really suggest any kind of prank or trolling.
There was actually confusion on his side as well, about what happened.
If he had known exactly what happened, then that would support the idea that
He thought he was in just a normal debate and didn't do well or he was trolling or as a prank But he was as confused as I was So it's not it's not whatever obvious thing you think it is And I don't even think it's TDS You know, you want to say Oh Trump derangement syndrome, you know, maybe there's a touch of it somewhere in the story, but TDS doesn't get you the point Where you disagree on basic facts of reality?
Usually it's more like an interpretation of something, but not the basic fact that CNN and Fox News are both reporting every day.
Not that.
That's not TDS.
That's something else.
So, and other people thought he was arguing in bad faith.
I can't read his mind, but I didn't see that.
Again, Because we had a conversation before and after, I just have a little more insight than you would have if you just watched it.
So I didn't think it was bad faith.
And I thought that it was brave and, you know, he put himself out there to even have the conversation.
Some say he was pretending to not understand what I said, because it was so pervasive.
It was like he didn't understand normal sentences.
And I don't know what that was.
So I actually got in trouble.
Because I asked him online if he was on the spectrum.
Because I was trying to understand why the communication, which would be a normal pattern of communication, was not just failing once, but consistently.
The things I thought were just normal sentences, he was interpreting in a way that I thought was very, you know, not neurotypical.
Now here's what I walked into.
Apparently, if you ask somebody if they're on the spectrum, that's taken as an insult.
How many of you think that's an insult?
Because it never even occurred to me that that would be an insult.
And I'd like to apologize.
So I apologized to him once people said, hey, that's an insult.
Why are you saying bad things about people on the spectrum?
And I thought, when did I do that?
If you ask somebody if they're on the spectrum, In 2024?
Generally, they just say yes.
Oh yeah, I'm on the spectrum.
Elon Musk says he's on the spectrum.
Do I have a bad feeling about him?
No.
Something like, you know, sometimes it feels like half of all of my audience, especially for Dilbert, are on the spectrum.
I love those people.
Literally, my favorite people.
Engineers, spectrum people.
So, it never occurred to me And by the way, I get asked if I'm on the spectrum about once a week, usually privately.
Somebody will say, you know, I don't, I don't know if you've looked into this, Scott, but I think you're on the spectrum.
You're showing a little bit of, and I always think it's not an insult.
It's just an observation and it might be true and it might be false, but I certainly don't think of it as an insult.
So if anybody was insulted, certainly I didn't mean it that way.
And I'll tell you my view.
is that it's no more interesting than being gay in 2024.
Right?
If somebody said, I'm gay, it would be the biggest nothing.
It would just be nothing.
So if you ask somebody, Oh, by the way, are you gay in 2024?
I wouldn't consider that an insult.
It'd be weird if you did.
So to me, I thought it was just an ordinary question, but if anybody's insulted by it, I apologize.
Um, So, it wasn't that.
I don't think he's on the spectrum.
Then that leaves, I'll tell you my remaining theories.
Either it was cognitive dissonance, but here's the fun part.
If it's cognitive dissonance, there's no real way to know if he had it or I had it or we both had it.
You know that, right?
Because if I had it, you probably had it too.
In other words, if there was something that happened there that triggered people who think like me, Well, that's most of you.
You know, the people who follow me and would have watched that typically, you know, have some agreement with the way I think.
Similar mindsets.
So if it triggered me into cognitive dissonance, in other words, I saw a world that didn't make sense, so I started hallucinating to make it make sense.
That's what cognitive dissonance is.
If it happened to me, I wouldn't have a way to know.
And you wouldn't be able to tell me, because you'd be in it too.
But my experience of it is that my observation would be that if he were in it, it would match all of my observations.
In other words, everything would make sense under that filter.
Doesn't mean it's true, because remember, it would also make sense if I was the one experiencing it.
So the thing I try to teach, but it's hard to even remember it myself, is that if you're in one of these situations where one of you, at least, Is having some kind of cognitive experience?
You never know which one.
Because the whole point of cognitive dissonance is that when you're in it, you're the only one who can't tell.
And if I'm in it, you're in it too.
It would be the same trigger for all of us.
So the trigger was there.
So the trigger was there for both of us, which is we were presented with a world, which isn't the world we lived in.
And we were asked to accept a world that we don't live in.
That should have triggered maybe both of us.
Maybe Michael and I were both in cognitive dissonance.
We wouldn't know.
And you wouldn't be able to tell us.
That's the fun part.
Because you would be equally triggered on each side.
If you were, you know, thinking like him, you'd think I was in cognitive dissonance and vice versa.
So it would at least explain the observation, but it doesn't mean it's true.
I'm going to give you a more fun explanation.
Here's my preferred one.
Remember I've told you that we don't know what's true, but some things predict better than others.
And one of the things I've predicted for a long time is that we might find out we live in a simulation by discovering That the reality we live in matches what you would build if you had resource constraints for your computer simulation.
So, imagine a simulation that had 100 million people in it, and they all had to have memories that were at least a little bit compatible.
So if I said, hey, yesterday I killed a wildebeest, and you were with me on the hunt, in order for us not to be crazy, you would have to remember that you killed a wildebeest with me.
So we'd have to have compatible memories.
Now think about 100 million people, all interacting with each other, and they all have to have compatible memories.
Eventually you just run out of computing space, because when you get from 100 million to 8 billion, the number of connections and permutations and things that one person influenced another person becomes so large, That it's hard to imagine, you know, even an advanced civilization being able to have that much computing power.
Now, to put it in perspective, I've predicted that within one year, we will have built our own simulations in which the people in it believe they're real and live complete lives.
In one year, we'll have little AI creatures in a game who don't know they're being observed by the builder of the game, who will just live their lives.
They'll live an entire life.
They'll have kids.
And if you ask them, they'd say they're real.
Now, in our current world, we have all kinds of resource constraints.
So what we should see, if we are a simulation, is that as our population grows, Our histories and our collective understanding of what happened yesterday should start to dissemble.
You should see a situation in which we don't agree on anything because the computing can't handle us agreeing.
All it can do is give us the illusion that we had some kind of common world, but we didn't.
So we would all be playing our own game with our own simulation, subjective reality, But mine doesn't need to agree with Michael Ian Black's or yours.
So in other words, because of resource constraints, you should see more and more people disagreeing on the rock that they're holding in their hand, like really, really basic stuff.
And that's what we're seeing.
We're seeing people questioning the basic reality of just what happened yesterday, or even what's happening right now while we're talking.
But here's the payoff.
If you were this advanced, let's say, advanced program from an advanced society that maybe is no more advanced than we are in one year, you would have to do things to manage the fact that you're running out of memory.
And you might say, we have to move from a model in which I treat every individual differently and manage their memory so that it's compatible to a silo.
Where there are two groups of people, and they have completely incompatible realities.
And that's what we see.
In order to save memory, it appears the simulation has divided us into basically two creatures.
The creatures on the left are experiencing an entirely different world, and it never has to be compatible with anybody on the right.
So in other words, when we have a conversation, we'll differ on all the facts and all the interpretation, and we'll say, my God, you must have TDS.
And then the other side would say, my God, you must be racist.
And we would, instead of having common memories and common facts and common experiences, because that would be too much computing to keep it all straight, And consistent over time.
We have inconsistent memories, inconsistent experiences, and inconsistent facts.
And it won't matter because we don't talk to each other now.
This was the first experience in years, years, the first one in which I had a meaningful conversation with somebody who was not exactly on my wavelength politically.
Years.
And I don't think he'd ever talked to anybody who had my point of view.
Because when I said things like, well, you know, Biden made this the center of his campaign in 2020.
How many other people don't know that?
Now, other people might have completely different views of reality.
But my take is that it's unexplained.
Neither Michael nor I know exactly what happened.
And that's what makes it interesting.
It looked to me like reality was just bifurcating and you could watch it in real time.
That's what it looked like.
All right.
I also noted that, so Michael said he was no expert on climate change, but seemed to be inclined to believe the experts, which would be a normal thing.
But one of the things that I think is very common, let me test this.
Let me see if this is common knowledge in my audience.
Those of you who are watching right now, how many of you know, in the topic of climate change, what the heat island effect is and why that's important?
How many of you think, well, everybody knows that, because I think it was the first time that Michael heard it.
But how many of you think that's common knowledge?
I don't know.
It might be maybe only 25% of you, perhaps.
I see one now.
I'm just going to look at the ratio of yes to no.
A lot of nos.
But the yeses look to be 75%.
That's very unscientific.
But just looking at the comments, maybe 75% of you are, yeah, I know what that is.
And then maybe 25% could be more, could be half.
Uh, are not familiar with it.
So if there's that many not familiar, let me just quickly say, if you're measuring the temperature of the earth, the way that's done is there are sensitive thermometers placed in various parts around the world, and they made sure that they didn't put it near any cities or big concrete areas, because concrete attracts heat that's not actually, you know, normal.
So the heat readings would be skewed if they were too close to any, you know, big cities or anything.
So they made sure that they were nice rural places, but then the cities grew.
So the thing they were avoiding became the thing that they couldn't avoid because the cities grew to where the thermometers were.
So that means that we don't have a record that would show you, show us with the same kind of thermometers under the same conditions, what the temperature was and what it is now.
Now, if you'd never heard that, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that scientists could measure the temperature of the Earth.
But once you hear just a little bit about how they do it, it immediately becomes obvious to anybody with experience that it's not real.
Now, again, I don't know if the world is getting warmer or not.
I don't know if humans are contributing to it, and to what degree, or if it matters in terms of the future.
But I can tell you for sure that we can't measure the temperature of the Earth.
And we will laugh at that someday.
Someday that will be like, you know, finding out if somebody's a witch by seeing if they float.
It's going to feel like that.
It's like, seriously?
In 2024?
Are you telling me that three quarters of the planet thought that you could measure the temperature of the Earth?
We're not even close to being able to do that, in my opinion.
In my reality.
All right.
Cheap fakes seems to be the new hoax, as Mary Catherine Ham was saying, that it's the new Russian disinformation.
So I guess cheap fakes is how the Democrats will tell you that the thing you're seeing with your own eyes isn't happening.
No, Biden's fine.
Oh, no, he's not dead.
No, he's not dead.
No, look at him move.
He's not moving.
No, he's fine.
I'm pretty sure his limbs are stiff.
He's got rigor mortis.
He hasn't moved in days.
He's fine.
He's fine.
There's no problem.
You and your cheap fakes.
So that's happening.
The Daily Caller has a story that the military has turned into a vast DEI bureaucracy and they're The main thing is to make sure that we've got lots of diversity.
This, of course, on paper, should be the end of American military dominance.
Because, if you haven't noticed, white men are saying, why would we ever be in the military?
And white men are about, I don't know, 90% of the actual shooting people.
You know, the people who actually have like a weapon, And are killing people, the ones knocking down doors, the special forces, you know, the special forces are, I think, 85 to 90% of white guys and Hispanic and Asian, but mostly white guys.
So, and I'm not saying that's good or bad.
It's just what it is.
So if you take the people who are doing the bulk of the fighting, And you say, well, there's no reason for you to do it now, because you're not fighting for what you thought you were.
You're fighting to be a second class citizen.
And the military will make sure that when you're in there, you know that your buddies are not equal to you, they're superior, because they're going to get that promotion, even if you're equally qualified.
And they'll tell you directly.
I mean, you're not, it's not an interpretation.
It's, you know, it's the entire thing.
So no, if you're a white man in America, it would be, to me, seems somewhat ridiculous to join the military.
Would never have said that before DEI, of course.
Anyway, so that looks like a bad situation.
Imagine being those two astronauts that are strapped on the International Space Station, and they don't have a plan or a timeline to get them back.
But this is what the bureaucracy back at their home company, Boeing, is saying.
Quote, we are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process, he said.
We are letting the data drive our decision making relative to managing the small helium system leaks and thruster performance we observed during rendezvous and docking.
So how would you like to be trapped in space?
And the people responsible for getting you back are talking like this.
We're taking our time, following our standard mission management.
Okay.
Now, apparently they're not going to run out of, they're not going to run out of food or water, but imagine the mindset of being trapped in space and your bosses are like, well, we're not in a super hurry because you know, we want to do it right.
But more importantly, we want to make sure that the effort to get this right is You know, properly diverse.
So, yes, they do want to save the lives of the astronauts.
Duh!
Of course they want to save their lives.
It's not as important as diversity, but it's in the top two.
It's in the top two.
So, it would feel great to know that you were in the top two priorities for saving your life.
So it made me curious, how is Boeing doing on the ESG?
You know the ESG?
Environmental, social, and governance.
So that would include whether they're promoting enough diverse candidates.
But it would also show if they're good for the environment.
So ESG, of course, as you know, is in lots of different companies, and it's a very big thing.
And if you're a big company, you don't have a big ESG You know, push, you're going to be evaluated by independent evaluators, and then you're trouble.
So what did the independent ESG evaluators say about Boeing?
Well, I asked ChatGPT, and if it's correct, this time there were three big entities that rated Boeing for the ESG.
One gave them a excellent Got an excellent.
Good.
Good for them.
They're excellent on ESG.
The other rating agency gave them, oh, okay.
The other one gave them average.
So one said they were excellent on ESG.
The other just said average.
Then the third one said they're high risk, which is way below average.
So you've got three companies looking at their ESG.
One says they're excellent, one says they're average, one says they're high risk.
Now, under those circumstances, you might say to yourself, I'm not so sure this ESG stuff is even real.
It would appear to me that ratings agencies have no way to even have a common understanding of what ESG is, which is true.
It's almost like the entire thing is complete bullshit, which it is.
But Boeing has a big diversity problem.
Although they do have 27% women and 61% of their employees are white, but they have a sizable Hispanic and pretty good Asian American population in their ranks.
But their percentage of black employees at Boeing is so low that I didn't even get a percentage for it.
So they have a big goal to get their diversity for black employees specifically.
They want to increase it by 25%.
So Boeing is working on improving their diversity specifically within the black community.
They're trying to get a 25% increase, but I think that would be 25% on 1%.
25% on 1%. So I feel like their goal is to get from 1% to 1.25% or something like that.
So it's very small to also small.
But as I said, the good news is that saving those two astronauts is definitely in the top two priorities.
So they should feel good about that.
So Google and a couple of smart people, I guess, are offering a $1 million prize for any AI that can solve simple logic puzzles.
That humans can solve even when they're kids.
Now, apparently AI is great for doing things where there's pattern recognition, but pattern recognition is not logic.
And apparently it fails completely, all of the models do, the LLMs.
They all fail at just even simple little puzzles of logic.
And so there's a new test that's apparently a well-accepted test of logic, which a kid could, you know, a small child could pass in many cases.
Not too small, but a child could pass.
And you get a million dollars if you can do it.
Now, if you spend a lot of time with AI, as I have, as just a user, you very quickly learn that it doesn't have logic, which is weird, because it seems so smart, But it really doesn't have logic.
And you can beat it in an argument.
It's almost trivially easy because it'll spew out patterns.
But as soon as you get in a logic trap, it just falls apart and agrees with you or something.
So, yeah, it's very obvious that AI cannot do logic.
And I don't know that the fact that they have to offer a million dollars suggests that nobody has any idea how to make it logical.
Now, I would like to remind you of something I've been telling you since the start.
And this prediction will just get better and better until you all agree.
The reason we'll never be able to make machines smart like us, let's say logical like us, is because we only imagine we're logical.
And we would never agree even what logic looked like.
Now these tests that I'm talking about, the Million Dollar Challenge, these are just like puzzles, so there's no narrative to them or anything.
They're as close as you'd get to pure logic.
So it might be able to do that.
But imagine if it took its pure logic into anything else that mattered.
As soon as it did, you'd say, well, I guess it's not working.
Going back to the conversation I had with Michael Ian Black, suppose AI had logic, And we were to say, you know what?
We've got some disagreement about what happened, and some of it's a logical disagreement, let's say, hypothetically.
Let's have AI judge us.
And then the AI would say, AI, I've looked at your conversation, I've looked at the transcript, and I judge that Michael is being logical, and Scott is not being logical, and here's why.
What do you think would be my reaction to that?
Wow!
I didn't realize I didn't realize I was being so illogical, but now that the superior intelligence of AI has corrected me, I guess I have to rethink my entire life.
Here I thought I was logical, but I guess I'm not.
No, that would never happen.
Even my brain, even knowing that this happens, there's no protection, here's what I would say.
I would say, I guess the AI isn't working, because it got the logic wrong.
So we can never have logical machines when we as humans can never agree on what is a logical argument.
As soon as you get down to the narrow range of math and puzzles, as soon as you get into any human thing, we just won't agree what's logical and never will.
All right, The Spies Who Lied.
New York Post had that headline, I love it.
Talking about the 51 intelligence people who signed that laptop letter.
Hunter's laptop was probable Russian disinformation, when of course it wasn't, and it was a lie.
We're finding out that two of the 51 were allegedly, and there's some disagreement about that, actually contractors for the CIA when it happened.
And one of them was the organizer of the letter.
And the claim is that the organizer of the letter was actively working as a contract employee for the CIA.
And he was a former CIA acting director.
So the fake letter, allegedly, remember there's a disagreement here, allegedly, the former CIA acting director put it together knowing it was fake.
Or at least knowing that, you know, there was no reason to say it was Russian misinformation.
So he says that he was not under contract, but there's some document that would suggest he was.
Now, how do you interpret that?
Generally speaking, if somebody said, I did not work for them, and there was some document that says they did, I feel like I would believe the person over the document.
Because maybe the document was annotated or something.
But in this case, since the CIA folks are actually allowed to lie, including domestically, if he says, I don't work for the CIA, that really doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because if you work for the CIA, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to say you didn't.
That seems like basic CIA stuff.
Do you work for the CIA?
Nope.
So I'm not sure his denial has any credibility in this specific case.
Normally it would, but who knows.
So yes, the people who think that the CIA has been managing the information, let's say, atmosphere in the United States, this would be, let's say, circumstantial evidence to support that.
We've learned that among the migrants coming in, the many millions of them, allegedly, according to the Department of Homeland Security, there have been at least 400 migrants who were brought here from ISIS-affiliated smuggling networks.
So ISIS has their own smuggling network, and 400 of them, and the whereabouts of more than 50 of them are unknown, but 150 of them have been arrested out of the 400.
Which means there's a lot of them that we know where they are, but they're not arrested.
Anyway, I think you see the size of the problem.
Yeah.
And I don't know if the Biden administration is taking seriously the threat of getting their pronouns wrong.
I mean, it's like it's not even, they're acting like it doesn't even matter or something.
And that's, I find that alarming.
There could be a lot of people coming in with ISIS affiliations that we're misgendering just carelessly.
And I think that's got to be taken into account.
But I would disagree with calling the people coming in that are ISIS affiliated.
Let's not call them illegals, please.
It's insulting.
You know, they're people.
They're not illegals.
People can't be illegal.
There could be illegal acts, but I think it's unfair to call the ISIS operatives coming into the country as illegal.
I would prefer the term ISIS positive.
They're ISIS positive.
Yeah, let's take some of the emotion out of it and just treat them like regular citizens.
I hope to God they can vote.
All right, you can't tell when I'm being serious, probably, if you're just coming in now, but I'm not that serious.
All right, let's see.
Speaker Mike Johnson saying that the House is gonna write an amicus brief for Steve Bannon, for his Supreme, I guess for the Supreme Court that's gonna review his situation, where he did not agree to a, what is it, Uh, to talk to the, uh, Congress.
You refuse them, and I guess you could go to jail for that as Peter Navarro is still in jail.
But I guess you can only go to jail for that if you're a Republican in today's world.
Uh, Garland, of course, was in the same situation, but nope, no problem for Garland because he's not a Republican.
Peter Navarro, no such luck.
Anyway, an amicus brief just means they're arguing on behalf of Bannon.
So it's a friendly argument in favor of him.
Now, is that going to work?
Because the argument is that the January 6th Committee was illegitimately formed, and therefore there should be no legal implications, or at least no risk of jail.
If the people asking him to do the thing, which is appear and testify, were not legitimately formed.
And since the House is the group that formed him in the first place, if the House concludes that it was illegitimately formed, I would think that would be persuasive to the Supreme Court.
I feel like that would matter.
But we'll see.
And I think this is being sped up because the Supreme Court needs to act pretty soon.
Are there any decisions that have come out yet?
I think there were some decisions pending that might come out like right now So we got some big stuff pending Anyway Here's a little story Here's a tiny little story So small Doesn't mean anything It's such a little trivial It's just a nothing of a story and you should not take Anything from it except it's complete irrelevance to everything.
Okay, just tiny tiny little thing but over in Fulton County in Georgia There's the attorneys for Fulton County They're trying to argue they want a They want to get rid of the injunction Let's see if I got the legal words right at the moment there's a legal order
To preserve a bunch of ballots that have been allegedly, allegedly, that witnesses say are fake ballots.
So if I understand this correctly, Rasmussen has been talking about this a lot.
If I understand it correctly, there's a room, a locked room, in which witnesses have said, we've seen those ballots and they're fake.
And all you'd have to do to know if they're fake is unlock it.
And the judge has ordered that it should be unlocked, and I think for over a year it hasn't been.
And there's no explanation for why it hasn't been, and nobody's been arrested or threatened for not doing it.
Now, after, I don't know, a year or 18 months or whatever, or however long it's been, it's been a long time, after a long time of the court saying it should be opened, Now the state wants to make sure that it's never opened and that whatever is in there is destroyed before it's evaluated.
So given all of the things that people need to do in their life, all the things that a lawyer could be doing, all the things that a government could be doing, how important is it to have a legal case
To destroy evidence that might be the most important evidence that the election was either clean, which would be good to know, or totally rigged, which would be good to know.
No matter whether the ballots show something irregular or not, we really need to know, because we have witnesses that says they're fake, and that there would be enough of them that it would totally have changed the election.
Why would anybody spend their time Given all the other uses for time, why would they spend it trying to destroy the evidence when all you had to do was unlock the door and then people would look at them and say, okay, these are real.
And then you could destroy them legally.
You wouldn't need any process.
Just unlock it and say, take a look.
If you see anything irregular, you know, let us know.
So if those, if those ballots were completely fine, Why would anybody go to court to have them destroyed before they're looked at?
Can you think of any reason to destroy them before they're looked at when there is a credible claim that it would change the entire understanding of America?
It wouldn't just change the election.
It would understand the basic understanding of America.
If the witnesses are correct, And I don't know one way or the other.
I mean, most of the claims have turned out to be not correct.
If you were going to bet on it, you should bet against it.
Because, really, every claim has not quite, you know, hasn't quite proven that the whole election was rigged.
There are lots of claims of individual improprieties.
So, I'm going to say that my assumption is guilt.
Remember my standard?
If it's an individual, a citizen, you are innocent until proven guilty, and I'm gonna, you know, die on that hill.
But if you're the government, and their lawyers are working for the government, and you do something that's this suspicious, your functioning, working assumption is that the election was rigged.
So in my opinion, this is confirmation.
I don't need to say anything else.
If they're putting this much attention into destroying the best evidence that there might be a problem, instead of embarrassing the other side by showing that there's no problem, especially since the court said they have to, there's only one interpretation I can think of.
The working assumption is that the election was rigged, and that it's now demonstrated to my satisfaction.
I would say that all my questions are answered by the fact that they can't let you look at these.
Would you agree with that?
Would you agree that if they're not willing to simply unlock a door, the simplest thing you could ever do, and the court told them to do it, and they're trying to have them burned instead of that, there is no second way to understand that, is there?
Can anybody come up with an alternate explanation of why that could be the case?
Unless it's exactly what you think it is.
I can't think of anything.
Well, Trump has regained what I'll call partial free speech.
How about that?
Let's celebrate that he got partial free speech.
So now that the trial is over, that Judge Murshan stuff, he had some gag orders.
But now that it's over, I guess Trump can say stuff about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and the other witnesses at the trial.
So that's very nice of the judge to give an American citizen his fucking freedom.
Oh, thanks.
Thanks, Judge Marchand.
He was leaning against it, but he decided to do it.
He was leaning against it.
He's an American citizen.
Now, if you're in the actual court case, I understand why, you know, that's a special situation.
But once it's done, once you have a result, how in the world do you argue that he shouldn't have free speech like everybody else in the world?
That's crazy talk.
So yeah, so Trump gets partial free speech.
Thanks.
So the The Republican-oriented legal entity, America First Legal, I think that's Stephen Miller's creation, that's doing all of the legal responses to all the many bad things that Democrats are doing, continues to be a superstar.
To me, this is one of the best things happening in the world right now, is that there was a counterforce that the Republicans put together To challenge all of the legal fuckery that was becoming monumental, really.
It was just out of control.
But now they're just pushing back on everything.
Just everything.
Just overwhelming pushback on everything you can push.
So here now they're sending a directive to all 50 states on how they should prevent illegal aliens, they call them.
From voting amidst reports that the illegal migrants are being given voting materials and would be allowed to vote if they don't get detected.
So now whether or not this works because one imagines that Democrat states will just do what they want.
Because they don't really care that America First Legal says this.
But you also imagine that if America First Legal tells them that the law requires them to prevent non-citizens from voting, and then they go and they do it anyway, I'm not enough of a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer at all, to know if that makes it a stronger case later if they sue them for not following their own laws.
I think it does.
Because then you could determine that they definitely knew what the law was and that they intended to, you know, they obviously violated it because they knew what it was and they didn't act on it.
So, everything that America First Legal does, you know, I retweet a lot of their stuff.
I love all of it.
Like, I'm not sure every case is as strong as every other case.
But you've got to push back on every single thing, and it's got to be really expensive for the other side.
And they've got to lose a few.
I mean, it's just necessary.
It's mutually assured destruction.
And my big question is, is this America First legal sufficiently funded?
Because Republicans should be putting a billion dollars into this.
Like, I don't know what their budget is.
It's not a billion dollars, but it should be.
I think the Republicans should think in terms of a $1 billion budget just for the legal stuff, just for legal pushback.
Because the world has turned into that's the whole fight.
The elections are almost irrelevant.
It's more who wins the legal battles about how the election will be held.
Because you know if there are legal battles to say we'll have massive Mail-in ballots and no signature requirements.
Let's say that's a change before an election.
That's the election.
That's the whole election.
It's the rules.
So if the only thing that matters to the outcome is the rules, and we get to change them before the election, then the only thing that matters is how big the budget is for the legal entities fighting each other.
And so I think Republicans You need to think about $1 billion as an annual budget just for the legal push.
And I believe also that this should cover, I think that that billion should go to support people like Peter Navarro and Bannon and all the lawyers who got destroyed financially with the lawfare.
There should be a lawfare protection insurance That is, basically, if the Democrats come after you with lawfare that's bullshit, like they did with all the January 6th lawyers that were Republicans, then there should be some gigantic protective fund that says, we're going to make this free.
And maybe even pay to keep the family alive, because the person being sued won't be able to work.
So, $1 billion, I think, is the target.
And if you're thinking, no, Scott, they can, they could do it for $20 million.
Screw that!
$20 million is a loser number.
They need a $1 billion fund, a large part of that to just protect Republicans who are being law-fired, like Trump.
I think Trump's entire legal bill should be covered by an entity that's just protecting all the Republicans who are just trying to live their life and didn't know they were committing any crimes.
It should be getting all the January 6 people in.
So 1 billion should be their budget.
And if you're listening, tell your boss I said 1 billion should be your budget, or whoever you get your money from.
I don't know who you get money from.
Well, cyborg technology is becoming big.
You've heard that there are organic, like, fake brains that were just grown in a lab that are used as computers.
They're like a million times better on energy consumption.
I don't know how big that'll get, but if it's a million times better on energy, that's pretty impressive.
Now we have these bees that are being hooked up to sensors in their brains.
So apparently you can do brain surgery on a bumblebee.
So I don't know if they're bumblebees.
Honeybees.
They're honeybees.
So honeybees have an intense ability to smell and they can even smell lung cancer.
And you can't trust the bees to smell it and then tell you.
Because bees are terrible with language.
You say, hey bee, do you smell any lung cancer?
And the bee is going to go... useless.
Totally useless.
So instead, they hook up the bee to some machines that can detect that it's detecting some lung cancer.
So the bee's brain becomes part of the machine, basically.
It's like a cyborg device.
And so if you got all that, I feel like we're going to have more and more cyborgs.
But the cyborgs are not necessarily a human being plus machine.
It could be a fake organic brain plus machine.
It could be a fake honeybees brain plus machine.
So we're going to have this weird cyborg world where it's not a human plus machine.
We'll have that as well.
But it will be all manner of organic things plus machines, at least for some period of history.
All right, so we keep talking about the Ukraine wars pushing Russia and China together, and they'll be best friends, and Russia has resources, and China's buying 20% of their stuff, or 20% of what China buys is from Russia, or something like that.
But China's buying a lot of resources from Russia, natural resources, energy mostly.
And here's what I would say.
And this is one of those filters that comes with age.
When you look on paper and say, all right, the things that NATO and the United States and Europe are doing are pushing Russia toward China, and that's all bad, because they're both adversaries in a way.
I'm going to add this filter.
This is not predictable.
None of this is predictable.
On paper, it looks like a disaster.
It looks like our adversaries, we just made them friends.
But they were sort of already friends.
They have a common border.
I mean, they're pretty intent on avoiding war with each other.
And they're very intent on being trading partners because they have a common border and war would be crazy.
So it's not like a big change that China and Russia are becoming best friends.
But think of all the ways this could go wrong.
And also think that have we ever been in a situation We're our adversaries, we're also our suppliers, and we were their customers in a very big way.
China is such a weird situation that we call them an adversary while we're doing business with them like crazy.
You can't really get to a war with somebody who's your business partner, and I'm wondering if that's ever happened.
Has there ever been a war between two countries that had a really strong trading situation?
I don't know enough about history to know has that happened.
Because I feel like usually what happens is that war is about resources.
You know, unless it's a crazy kind of war.
And that resources, you would go after a country that you didn't have anything to do with, so you could get their resources.
You know, that would be colonization.
But why would you attack somebody that you already have a gigantic economic machine that's working for both of you?
Has that ever happened?
You know, you've heard that no two countries that have McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other, but I think that's happened by now.
Maybe, yeah, I think that's happened by now.
But more than just having a McDonald's, when you have a gigantic trading situation that you both need or want, How do you ever get into a war?
Now, here's the other thing that I don't think is obvious.
If you imagine that Russia and China work together, and that it's good for both of them, I don't think you've met China.
I don't think China wants Russia to do really well.
They just sort of want to buy their stuff.
And the nature of business is that if you can do it, you will dominate your trading partners.
If you can do it.
If you can't do it, you won't.
But if you can, well, you're definitely going to do it.
So what happens to Russia's autonomy when China is completely responsible for their survival?
It's not so good, is it?
Not so good.
Now, so here's the unpredictable part.
The unpredictable part is, are we sure that it's good for Russia that they're becoming more dependent on China?
I don't know.
I mean, it's probably good for China, but, you know, China was going to trade with Russia anyway.
I mean, it's not like there was something preventing them from doing trade before.
I'm not even sure there's any difference in how much they're trading, unless they got a price advantage or something.
I guess all I'm going to say is that the thing that you can predict about Ukraine pushing Russia and China together is that it's unpredictable.
It could go totally wrong for Russia.
It could be the worst thing they've ever done.
You just don't know.
The other thing I would offer is that we assume that all three countries are ready for war at any time.
You know, China, Totally big military.
Biggest military.
They're building up their naval capacity.
They got nukes like crazy.
Man, could they go to war.
United States?
Well, strongest military in the world.
We've got everything.
We've got bombs.
We've got nukes.
Oh man, you wouldn't want to mess with us.
Russia?
Ah, my goodness.
Look at Russia's military.
They're just playing.
They're just toying with Ukraine.
They could take them over anytime they wanted if they wanted to, you know, take the casualties.
But there's holding back a little bit, you know, NATO probably.
So we've kidded ourselves into thinking there are three tigers.
But that's largely based on the lying that comes from each of those countries.
Because they're not going to tell you if they have any weakness in their military.
And what I wonder is if any of those three militaries could handle a war after the first two weeks.
I don't even know if they can.
I have a feeling that all three of them are just full of shit and none of us are ready for war.
And that we'd all run out of fuel in about 10 minutes.
That's what I think.
That's why I think that the future is just drone war and nothing else.
I saw somebody describe, I wish I could remember who said it because it was so brilliant, that in the future there will be massive, you know, swarms of drones and that will be the main way of attack.
I think that's obviously true.
But somebody said it's like using nuclear weapons, but without the radiation.
So imagine that a gigantic swarm goes over a city, you know, a city you wanted to attack for some reason, and the drones just kill every living person.
But they keep the infrastructure and they leave no radiation.
They just literally kill anybody who walks outside.
And if they don't walk outside, they're going to starve to death.
So it basically just kills all the people, but leaves all the buildings and no radiation.
That's dangerous.
Because at least with a nuclear attack, you could be assured that they would attack back.
So you won't do it.
But when the drones can do that, and it's guaranteed that they will be really soon, what's to stop you from using them?
If you were looking at a country that didn't have drones.
If they didn't have nukes and they didn't have drones, and you could darken their sky with drones and basically kill anybody you wanted to, that's going to be a tough thing to keep in the box.
So look for that.
All right.
Well, Biden has got the all-important Adam Kinzinger endorsement.
Did not see that coming.
So I've said that there are no men, no straight men, who are also Democrats.
And then Adam Kinzinger, he endorses them.
So is that proving me wrong?
Or is that the exception that proves the rule?
Well, it's not quite that, but I have to say it's an exception if you get paid for your opinion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Adam Kinzinger has found a way to monetize being Adam Kinzinger.
So if somebody has found a way to monetize being the way they are, and then they give an announcement, I'm going to be the way that I have monetized, I think we should ignore it.
But I would like to point out that there are other important Men who may be endorsing Biden.
So, Kinzinger won't be the last.
For example, there's still the Sam Bankman-Fried endorsement.
I don't know if he's said anything yet.
He's in jail, so it's hard to know.
And then there will be some men who are deeply uninformed.
So, you've got Adam Kinzinger, you've got Sam Bankman-Fried, you've got people who are paid Consultants and operatives.
And then men who are not paying attention.
So he does have some men.
It's not like a zero.
He's got some.
All right.
Do you follow Simon Atiba on X?
Highly recommended.
I think he should have a million followers.
He's one of my favorite followers.
So he writes for an African publication, but he does a lot of stuff you'd like in what you would identify as a pro-Trump format.
Anyway, so he's a great, great poster.
This is what Simon says about himself.
He says, I may actually be an unrecognized genius.
Now, if that's not enough to follow him, just take a look, right?
He's just really interesting.
So, I mean, he's got a Trump-like personality.
I may actually be an unrecognized genius.
He says, Governor Doug Burgum says he will be at the debate on Thursday, and Trump has said this VP pick would be at the debate.
So Simon is thinking that the more he sees of Doug Burgum, the more he thinks that he might be a good VP pick.
But attending the debate is not much of a tip-off because Vivek said he's also attending the debate.
I would expect that you would see the other names like Rubio and maybe JD Vance, but at least JD Vance, also saying that they'll attend.
By now, I think all the folks who are in the running, They know who has been picked, or at least they know they haven't been.
And I think they're all in on the fact that it's going to be fascinating to have them all in the audience so that we can keep speculating who it is.
It's so Trump.
Trump knows how to put on a show and he always teases you.
So he just makes it like you're sitting on the edge.
Oh, who is it?
Who is it?
I am so curious now, when normally I wouldn't be.
Because he's just keeping up the mystery of it, and he's leaving little hints, and he's just doing that Trump thing that nobody else can do.
Nobody can do this.
Let me say that clearly.
Nobody else can do this.
This is just purely a Trump skill that just nobody else has.
Had to put on the show.
And he's put on a hell of a show.
So you should expect at least most of the candidates that were in the discussion to attend.
And it doesn't even mean that he's going to pick one of them.
Because remember, it's all part of the show.
If he surprises you, well, that's part of the show, too.
He's not obligated to pick one of the ones that are on your top five.
Could be a total stranger or somebody you don't know.
But I am going to... I'm going to play along just for fun.
All right?
I had told you I've been dismissing Doug Burgum every time he comes up.
And usually I do it without an argument.
I usually say, well, it's not Doug Burgum.
And I talk about the other ones who are more interesting.
Here's what I've been getting wrong.
And I think Simon might be right.
Simon Atiba.
And I think he might be an unrecognized genius.
Could be.
He might be.
Because here's the thing we always get wrong when looking at the vice president.
You say to yourself, well, Trump needs a, you know, photogenic, exciting pro-Trump, you know, somebody who's really a fighter.
You know, you have all these qualities that you want to sort of match Trump, but be the VP version.
That's not how VPs work.
The reason it's not going to be Vivek is because of Vivek.
Did that make sense?
Vivek is way too strong.
So at one point it sort of sounded like it made sense, but the stronger Vivek gets, it makes less and less sense.
Because you could use him better in any other capacity.
Vice President can be wasted.
A Vice President, what you want, and remember I said this about Pence, you want the most boring person who looks like they could do the job.
That's what you want.
The most boring person who looks like it could do the job.
Name anybody who fits that standard better than Doug Burgum.
Doug Burgum is the ultimate boring guy who could totally do the job.
And he's, I guess he gets along with Trump.
That's all you need.
Gets along with Trump.
Seems, you know, totally on board.
Could do the job.
And as boring as fuck.
That's sort of the gold standard for a vice president.
And I'm embarrassed that I didn't see it earlier.
Now, just for fun, I'm going to predict that Simon is right.
And that the pick will be Burgum.
I know most of you are saying, but wouldn't it be just free to pick a black Vice President and just sort of, you know, get some of that goodness, get a little goodwill and make it harder for them to call you a racist and all that.
Normally, yes.
But in the in the context of DEI, I'm not sure it is the right move.
Because here's the thing.
I think Tim Scott's very solid.
But if he got picked in the context of other people also being solid, because there are quite a few good choices, wouldn't you say to yourself, just a little bit?
It felt a little bit DEI.
And that would be terribly unfair to Tim Scott, who's had a very successful career and has every qualification for president, much less vice president.
So terribly unfair.
But it would feel like maybe.
Right?
But if he picks Burgum, you're going to say to yourself, well, there is somebody committed to picking the right choice.
And he didn't go with the easy, popular, you know, um, I saw a poll that, uh, uh, Byron, uh, why am I forgetting his name?
Byron, you'll give me his last name, but he got a pretty low, um, You got a pretty low rating from people in terms of vice president choice.
So that would be a good enough reason not to pick him.
I think Dr. Carson, Ben Carson, he's never been in politics.
Well, not elected politics.
He hasn't been an elected politician.
And I'm not sure that's the right choice for a VP.
I would make an exception for vague.
Because he's shown that he can pick up basically anything quickly.
And I think Carson could pick up anything quickly, too, but he's 72.
Like, you don't really pick the 72-year-old non-politician for vice president.
Could he do the job?
Probably, yeah.
I think he could do the job.
But the most obvious one is somebody who's been in politics, is really boring, gets along with Trump, and completely ignoring any DEI aspects to it.
I don't know.
Bergen's a possibility.
But let me tell you, because I say this all the time, the vice president speculation is not something I have any skill for.
I don't have any filters or background that would make me good at it.
And I've never got one right yet.
So the fact that I'm going to agree with Simon, think of it more as Simon's prediction.
That way, if it's wrong, you can blame Simon.
And if it's right, Maybe he's right.
He might be an unrecognized genius.
All right, so follow him.
RFK Jr.
is going to hold his own debate at the same time as the other debates, except the way he's going to do it is he's going to answer the questions that are happening live.
So I think what he'll do is listen to the question and then turn it off, and then he'll answer it as if the question had been asked to him.
Now, I love that.
I absolutely love that.
Because he had to do something, you know, not nothing.
And that's some good counter-programming.
But here's what he said about the likelihood that Trump would win the debate.
And I want you to listen to the exact wording and see how much you appreciate this.
Because my take on RFK Jr.
is that I don't line up with a number of his important policy preferences.
But I've never disagreed with anyone And like them more than him.
He is the most likable fucking guy, even when you disagree with him.
And man, I don't know if that's just a Kennedy thing, that they all just learned it at birth or something, but here's what he says about Trump in this big contentious world where everybody's got to be mean and I'm the best and you're shit and all this.
Listen to what he says about Trump.
He said, quote, I would predict that Trump will win because I really I think Donald Trump could win a prize for the greatest debater in modern American history, probably since Lincoln Douglas.
He said that in an interview with Piers Morgan.
And there's more.
He said his conclusion that Trump would win comes from, quote, watching him run through 16 Republicans and easily outmatching them in debates.
He also said Trump has, quote, Now, I do think it's possible for Biden to beat him in the debate.
Let me be clear about that.
So here again, I'm not agreeing with Kennedy.
I don't think it's possible for President Biden to beat him in that debate.
Now, I do think it's possible for Biden to beat him in the debate.
Let me be clear about that.
So here again, I'm not agreeing with Kennedy.
I think Biden has at least a 50% chance.
And honestly, I'm leaning in his direction.
Because I think Biden just has to show up, and it's going to look like he killed it.
And I think Trump, if he's just Trump, is going to say things that are perfectly clear to you and me.
And CNN will say that he decided he wants to drain all our blood and turn us into vampires.
And we'll say, what?
Where are you getting that from his ordinary language and ordinary things?
Well, I don't know.
Let me play it for you.
If you say that the winner is based on what the public reaction, I think the mainstream media is going to declare Biden the winner.
So I definitely disagree that Trump is going to tear through him.
I do agree that you and I will think he did.
But I love the fact that he's running against Trump and he doesn't have any qualms whatsoever for saying that he might be the greatest debater in American history.
And it's because he has extraordinary techniques.
Extraordinary techniques.
Persuasion.
I think back to 2015 when I was mocked for saying that he was a persuasion master.
Can we put that to rest?
Can we put it to rest when one of your main two competitors for the presidency says unambiguously, best debater in American history, Since Lincoln Douglas?
And that it's based on skill?
I mean, that's incredible.
I've never liked anybody so much while disagreeing on a lot of points.
Anyway, some people are saying that Biden cleverly outmaneuvered Trump and fooled him into accepting debate criteria that will be bad for Trump.
There's no audience and he didn't get to pick the side and You know, you get to sit in chairs and the microphone's turned off.
Yeah.
Oh, so I'm seeing in the comments, a good comment, that RFK Jr.
is just raising the bar for Trump so that he doesn't cross the bar.
That's a good observation.
It could be seen as a purely political statement, because it does have that effect.
But it's also probably true.
I think he actually believes that Trump is good at debating, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to, you know, take a little shine off the debate.
So that's a good comment.
I agree with that.
However, I still think it's true.
I think it's his actual opinion.
Anyway, so did Biden win by creating this debate situation that's bad for Trump?
Or, I have a competing opinion, That Trump accepting a debate in the worst conditions for Trump is a super strong thing to do.
And even the Democrats are noting, wait a minute, Trump is going to the Bronx?
Wait a minute, Trump is in Detroit?
Like, why is Trump in all these places that you don't go and walking away victorious every time?
Right?
Every time.
He's going where he shouldn't go.
And showing you that even that doesn't stop him.
In my opinion, agreeing to a debate in which everything is stacked against you and everybody can see it, even the Democrats are bragging about it, is the ideal Trump situation.
It's a trap that he knows how to beat.
And only he.
You know, it's hard to imagine another person Who would be as capable of walking into this bad situation and just owning it.
So, I've told you the Andre Agassi tennis strategy, that you try to beat the player's best part, you don't go after their weaknesses.
Because if you can quickly make them doubt their strengths, let's say their forehand is really good, but you make them miss a few, then you just run the table.
Because once you've got their confidence, they're dead.
So Trump can go in there with Biden maybe feeling a little confident that Biden set up the situation perfectly.
And if Trump gets a few good jabs in, it's not going to look like that worked.
And then Biden's going to be, oh, shoot, I guess I have to rely on my skill.
And I'm against the best debater in the history of the country.
We're literally putting the best debater since Lincoln Douglas against a guy with obvious dementia.
I mean, at this point, that's not really a debatable point.
I mean, you might call it some other problem, but it's brain problem.
And we don't know what's going to happen.
That's the funny part.
We don't know what's going to happen.
Well, Matt Gaetz is introducing some legislation that would allow you to pay your taxes with Bitcoin.
That seems right.
And I think Trump is getting a lot of credit for being a person of a certain age who has listened to people who understand Bitcoin and embraced its potential.
And it's a big, big deal.
And it's also free votes, because the pro-Bitcoin people are really going to be pro-Bitcoin.
And if one person is, yeah, let's do lots of Bitcoin and the other is not, those are free votes.
Free votes with no real cost, because using Bitcoin is probably a great idea.
I think most smart people agree.
Now, here's the thing that I still think is a terrible idea, but I don't know why yet.
And I know just enough to confuse myself, right?
So here's the question.
Hypothetically, and I asked ChatGPT to tell me why this wouldn't work, and it couldn't.
So ChatGPT couldn't tell me why this wouldn't work, which doesn't mean it works.
And my idea was to, for the United States to simply create a crypto, not one that's already there, just create a crypto, that's pegged to the dollar, and you're gonna say, wait, wait, they've already done that.
But not to replace cash.
In addition to cash.
So they would just be operating like Matt Gaetz wants to do with Bitcoin.
Which, by the way, I think is step one to what I'm talking about.
I think that Matt Gaetz introducing the idea that you can pay your taxes with Bitcoin is setting the stage for paying your taxes with a different kind of crypto that doesn't yet exist.
Because here's my hypothesis.
And by the way, this is a weak hypothesis.
I'm not going to die on this hill.
So as soon as it looks like it's not going to happen, I'll be like, okay, I was wrong.
So, but here's what it feels like.
It feels like since neither the Democrats or Republicans have any kind of a plan for the deficit and the deficit will clearly destroy us.
Obviously.
There is no way to survive with just growing faster and having more taxes.
There is no path to survival.
But that just means that if there's a path to survival, it won't be the normal path.
So it won't be normal growth plus some normal financial manipulation.
It won't be anything normal.
So we either have to be very innovative or dead.
There isn't any other choice.
We have to innovate in a way that we couldn't even imagine, literally can't imagine, or we're absolutely fucking dead.
We do not have a survival plan, and neither Trump nor Biden have even suggested a survival plan.
Neither of them.
Neither of them.
Kennedy doesn't have one either.
There is no survival plan for the United States, and we probably have five years at most.
Now, I do think we'll be fine.
So I didn't mean to scare you.
It's just that when you realize that doing the two normal things that are the only things you've ever done, fiddle with taxes and growth, when you know that can't work, then it frees you to do things you would never even consider under normal situations.
In other words, an emergency Clarifies everything.
Everybody gets flexible in an emergency.
You saw the pandemic.
Everybody did things that they would never do under normal circumstances.
So, once we reach maybe a little bit closer to the emergency, we've only got, you know, six months left to live, I wonder if we could exchange all of the debt, the $35 trillion, for a crypto that never existed until we made it out of nothing.
Now before you say, Scott, that's massive inflation.
No, there's no money being added.
You're replacing dollar for dollar.
You're taking the U.S.
dollar and just say, boop, we're going to repay all of the national debt in crypto that's worth a dollar.
So you'll be made whole.
Every one of you will be made whole.
But we might be introducing some extra crypto in there to pay off some extra stuff.
So it would still be inflationary, because you'd still have to add some extra, but not $35 trillion extra.
The $35 trillion would just be a one-for-one replacement of crypto for U.S.
dollars.
And then both of them, under this theory, would be accepted by the United States in payment of taxes.
Maybe also in payment of tariffs.
So, if the United States says, as a country, we'll accept tariff payments, any kind of international payments, any kind of domestic tax payments, we'll accept all that in our own crypto, it immediately has backing.
That's what would back it.
You don't need gold if the government says it'll take it to pay your taxes.
That would be the backing.
The fact that the government accepts it.
So, could you Use crypto in some way that I don't quite understand.
Now, if you're smarter than I am about both crypto and economics, you're probably at home screaming, the obvious problem with that.
Here's the obvious problem.
I don't know what it is.
I'm not saying there isn't an obvious problem.
There probably is.
I just don't know what it is.
And I also present this as what I call the bad idea.
I've told you before, one of my Contributions to the country is my inability to be embarrassed.
I've just floated an idea that I fully expect somebody who knows more than I do to say that is the dumbest stupid idea I've ever heard.
And let me give you the obvious reason that you're not seeing why you're so dumb and this could never work.
But I've taught you the bad idea plan.
The bad idea strategy is when you're brainstorming and you're all going to die if you don't come up with a better idea, and we're all going to die if we don't come up with a better idea.
Let me be clear.
We're all going to die.
We're going to fucking starve to death if we don't figure out how to pay off the debt right away.
You know, five years from now, we're all dead.
We will starve to death if we don't figure out an innovative way to handle it.
So, I throw this bad idea into the mix so that other people who are much smarter than I am about everything crypto and economic can say, you know, that is a bad idea, but wait.
What if we did this?
And that's what I'm going for.
So it's a Hail Mary pass.
And the Hail Mary is that my bad idea is big enough and bold enough.
And now with Matt Gaetz setting the stage that crypto could be a payment for taxes, everybody will understand that crypto can be a way to pay taxes.
He's setting the psychological stage for maybe a bigger play.
No, right now he's just in crypto, or he's just in Bitcoin only, and that's the safest place to be, because enough people have some sense that that would be a reasonable thing to do.
I think Matt Gaetz might be setting this up for a big play.
It's just, we're so close, but I don't know if we're there.
Anyway, so that's what I got for you.
That is my show for today.
Thanks for joining.
It went way too long.
And if you stayed with me, I really appreciate it.
Let's go look to find out what the Supreme Court is going to do.
I'm going to say hi to the locals people just quickly and say goodbye to YouTube and X and Rumble.
