Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1051 Scott Adams： If You Can Read This, I Have Not Been Cancelled. Let's Push it a Little Farther.

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. We're going to fix everything today. Yeah, you may have noticed

00:00:17.820 there are quite a few problems in the world and a lot of people sleeping in today and not trying

00:00:25.160 to solve them, but not me. I'm up early. The crack of 4 a.m. every day, sometimes earlier, trying to fix

00:00:34.280 all the problems in the world. I think I'm getting close. We're almost there. Today I think I'm going

00:00:40.180 to push it over the edge. Unless I get canceled, always a possibility. But first, what do we need

00:00:46.860 to do? You know, it's called the simultaneous sip. It's the best part of your day. It really is.

00:00:52.520 And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask,

00:00:58.680 a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the

00:01:05.860 unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including

00:01:10.520 the economy, the coronavirus, racism, you name it. It's all going to be better with a sip. Go.

00:01:17.560 Hmm. You know, you might not be able to measure the difference, but I think you can feel it.

00:01:28.980 All right. Let's talk about all the things.

00:01:33.080 It's starting to look like TikTok is toast. So Mike Pompeo suggested that he didn't want to get

00:01:43.980 in front of the president and talking about TikTok, but they're looking at it. Now, when you say I don't

00:01:51.200 want to get in front of the president, that means he's already decided. They must be just figuring out

00:01:57.360 I had to do it. And one of the things that happened was that the stock for Snapchat just

00:02:05.220 zoomed yesterday. Now, full disclosure, I own some Snapchat stock. Not much compared to, you know,

00:02:13.940 my portfolio. But I bought it, I don't remember, two years ago or something when it was at a low.

00:02:20.480 And it just zoomed up because I was even saying this yesterday to Christina. I said, why doesn't

00:02:27.640 Snapchat just copy Tic Tac's feature and just put it out of business? Because that's sort of a common

00:02:35.760 thing that, you know, Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook all do. If somebody has a killer feature,

00:02:41.780 the others eventually just copy it. So what is there about TikTok that can't easily be copied?

00:02:48.000 Nothing except the network, right? The only thing about TikTok that's hard to copy is that they

00:02:55.140 already have a big audience. So you've got somebody to talk to. But so does Snapchat. The number of

00:03:01.380 people who have Tic Tac and don't have Snapchat, it's probably not that big. Snapchat can just

00:03:08.880 put that TikTok function in there and that's it. That's it. And I would expect that to happen. And

00:03:15.540 again, I own some of their stock. So you should take that into consideration. Meaning I'm not trying

00:03:22.940 to pump up the stock price, but I think that's inevitable. It's going to happen.

00:03:29.360 How about we forgive all dead people and maybe move on with our lives without them?

00:03:35.060 Is anybody in favor of maybe just letting dead people be dead? And just say,

00:03:41.740 you know, you weren't perfect. But guess what? In 200 years, when people look back at us,

00:03:49.200 what are they going to say? Do you think in 200 years, people are going to look back at today and

00:03:55.980 say, you know, in 2020, those were some wise, ethical, morally proper people. I'm sure glad we built a bunch

00:04:06.260 of statues of those people from 2020 because they didn't do anything that we find abhorrent today.

00:04:14.040 I don't think it's going to go that way. So while we cannot forget or overlook the flaws of our

00:04:22.060 ancestors, maybe we should just forgive them and move on. How about just living in the future or the

00:04:28.360 present? Just don't live in the past anymore. I've told you before that I just can't get interested

00:04:34.980 in symbols. I'm just not that interested in the people kneeling and complaining and the statues

00:04:42.260 and stuff. I'm opposed to statues if they're offensive to a big portion of the public. But

00:04:49.060 I just can't personally be interested. I don't know why. It seems like it's the biggest thing in the

00:04:54.660 country. And yet I just, I just can't find any reason to care if a statue gets destroyed. I mean,

00:05:02.960 at least I don't care any more than I would care about the equivalent dollar value of any private

00:05:09.400 property. I mean, I don't want to see property destroyed. But statue is a statue. That's just me.

00:05:16.180 So I'm just telling you that I'm not invested in the question. But I think maybe we should move on

00:05:22.680 and not care so much about the past. I think it's a good sign. Now, some people have said,

00:05:29.040 hey, getting rid of all your cultural references of the past, your statues and whatnot, is step one

00:05:37.860 in revamping the whole system. You know, first you scrub it of all these, all the symbolism, and then

00:05:43.820 you can get down to the gears of it and start changing it. And maybe that's what's happening.

00:05:51.540 Maybe this is step one of some slippery slope. Maybe. But here's, here's the other possibility.

00:06:00.640 The other possibility is that the reason that the statues are being attacked is that that's the

00:06:06.220 only thing they can attack. Could it be that the statues are being, and the symbols are being destroyed

00:06:12.700 because there's nothing else they can do? There's just nothing else. There's nothing after that.

00:06:18.060 Because what do you do next? One of the things which is impressive, in my opinion, is that the

00:06:26.080 Black Lives Matter protesters, not counting, there's always going to be a few bad eggs and some people

00:06:31.820 had some weapons and stuff. But overall, they're not showing up with open carry. They're not,

00:06:37.980 you know, for the most part, the protests are overtly trying to be peaceful, even though there are

00:06:44.100 bad elements that, of course, show up and make it not so. Which is kind of impressive, actually,

00:06:49.920 that it's gotten this far. But it kind of tells me that the people on the left don't feel they have

00:06:55.180 any leverage to do anything that matters. And if you can't do something that matters, but you have all

00:07:01.080 this energy, and it needs to do something, well, there are only two possibilities. You do things that

00:07:06.720 matter, or things that don't matter. That's it. Things either matter or they don't. And if you can't

00:07:14.720 do anything that matters, and you have all this need to, you know, get your energy out, and your

00:07:21.280 complaints, it's going to go somewhere that isn't helpful. Knocking down statues, I suppose that's where

00:07:27.900 it happened. So that's my view of the world, that they're just doing the thing they can do,

00:07:31.980 because they don't know what else needs to be done. I've often said that, often lately, anyway,

00:07:42.440 that the biggest problem in the world is that we're all bad at measuring things. Let me say this

00:07:51.020 as clearly as possible. There are no politicians, and there are no citizens, almost no. I'd say 99%

00:08:00.700 this is true. There's going to be the 1% that I'm going to talk about. But this is 99% true, 0.96

00:08:06.760 that you and I, and all the people watching this, we're not good at analyzing things.

00:08:14.960 But we kind of think we are, because we latch on to some statistic that came from our side.

00:08:21.340 We go, oh, well, that's the one thing I need to know, that one statistic. But if we've learned

00:08:26.620 anything in 2020, it's that the data is wrong. I don't even have to tell you what topic I'm talking

00:08:33.420 about. I'll just make a general statement and watch how right I am. Here's my general statement,

00:08:40.140 that data you just showed me, it's wrong. I don't even know what the data is. I didn't even need to

00:08:46.300 look at it. I don't even know what topic we're talking about. But can I say with some confidence

00:08:50.560 that your data is wrong? Yes, I can. Unfortunately, I can. Would you bet against me? The very next person

00:08:59.780 who comes to me, like I'm just sitting here in my chair. And would you take this bet that the very

00:09:05.320 next data I'm exposed to, whatever it is, I either look at it on the internet, or my friend mentions it

00:09:13.900 to me, whatever it is, would you take this bet that the next data I'm presented with is not real?

00:09:21.480 It's fake or misleading or out of context. I will take that bet that it will be wrong or misleading

00:09:27.920 almost every time, almost every time. Certainly over 90%, way over 90%.

00:09:36.620 So we live in this absurd world where we're all arguing with each other. You must use data

00:09:43.580 and good reasons. Use your data and good reasons. Here's my data. Oh, by the way, it's all unreliable.

00:09:53.340 And here are my reasons. And oh, by the way, I never learned how to have good reasons and analyze

00:09:58.720 things. But we must use data. We must use our reasons, even though we don't have data,

00:10:04.600 and we're not good at reasons. That's the weird world we're in. We're shouting at each other

00:10:10.600 to do something that we all know is the wrong thing to do. Now, in theory, if we had good data,

00:10:19.280 and we knew it was good, and we had people who were good at reasoning, good at analyzing,

00:10:25.440 well, that would be exactly what you'd want to do. You'd want to take your smart people,

00:10:29.540 you'd want to give them your accurate data, you want to have them wrestle with it and come up with

00:10:35.180 some good recommendations. You don't live in that world. Nothing like that ever happens.

00:10:42.020 The data is all crap, and the people analyzing it are all liars or unqualified. They're either 1.00

00:10:48.840 unqualified or lying, and you can't tell the difference. So what do you do? It seems to me that

00:10:55.900 there's something that he's evolved in society that would have made the founders of this country,

00:11:02.080 the Thomas Jefferson types, come up with a slightly different plan for government. And it looks like

00:11:09.080 this. Do you notice that there's a function missing in government? It's the smart person.

00:11:16.200 Why don't they have a smart person in government? Now, when I say smart person, I'm just being

00:11:24.380 provocative. What I mean is, let's take, for example, Nate Silver. So Nate Silver, I tweet him

00:11:34.320 often because he is extraordinarily good at not only understanding the statistical pluses and minuses

00:11:42.720 of any situation. He can find the errors. He can explain the errors as well. So he's not only good

00:11:48.040 at analyzing, but he's really good at communicating. Kind of rare to have those two skills, but his

00:11:53.960 talent stack includes that. So he understands politics and statistics, and he communicates well.

00:12:00.020 There should be a permanent government, maybe a cabinet post that does nothing but analysis.

00:12:09.520 Now, I know you've got the management, what's the MBO, Management Budget Office or whatever. So I know

00:12:17.120 there are entities within the government that analyze things, but not really, right? The Treasury

00:12:23.240 Department might look at taxes, and somebody else might look at something else, and HUD would be

00:12:30.600 looking at some stuff of its own. But are all the people in all these groups trained to look at

00:12:36.720 things? Are they trained to analyze data? Are they statistically trained? Can they put it in a

00:12:41.780 larger context? Probably not. I think there should be... Now, let me propose this. Imagine President

00:12:49.740 Trump said the following, all right? This will just blow your mind. This isn't going to happen,

00:12:57.820 but just imagine it because it would lock down the election for Trump. He can lock it down

00:13:02.680 with 60 seconds of saying what I'm going to say now. We need a cabinet position for analysis. 1.00

00:13:12.280 We need a cabinet position for analysis for all of the big topics. I want a cabinet that will dig in 0.68

00:13:21.000 and tell me, can you tell me what's going wrong? You know, what's wrong with this situation? Can you tell

00:13:26.380 me if the data is right? Can you compare it to what other people are saying about the data? Can you tell

00:13:32.260 me, you know, do a Snopes-like thing, do a fact check on it? And make sure everything's transparent

00:13:38.260 so the public can weigh in, because, you know, even the experts are going to be wrong sometimes.

00:13:44.280 So even your cabinet position of data analysis, a Nate Silver-like skill set,

00:13:51.360 even that will be wrong sometimes, because that's the nature of the world. So you want the public to

00:13:56.800 be able to weigh in and have counterpoints and have a robust, robust process. But suppose the

00:14:03.320 president said, you know, our biggest problem in the world is we're not good at comparing things.

00:14:09.480 We're not good at comparing anything, just nothing. We're not. Now, if you want more,

00:14:16.880 a deeper dive on that point, you should look at my book, Loser Think, the newest one.

00:14:24.240 But I'll give you some examples of that as we go. All right, here's an example.

00:14:29.900 How many of you can answer this question? I just tweeted this this morning. How many adults who

00:14:35.500 graduated high school, at least high school, with at least a B average, were shot by police in 2020?

00:14:44.420 How many people who had at least a B average in high school and graduated later as an adult

00:14:54.040 were shot by the police? Do you know the answer to that? How many of them? The answer is you don't

00:15:02.020 know. You don't know. Do you know why you don't know that? Because we don't have a cabinet position

00:15:08.440 where there's somebody who knows how to look at data and can figure out what actually matters

00:15:13.900 versus what doesn't matter. Does it matter that we would know how many people with at least a B

00:15:21.500 average in high school were shot by police? In my opinion, that might be one of the most important 0.58

00:15:27.780 pieces of data in the country. I don't even know if anybody collects that data.

00:15:33.480 But I would think it's important. Why? Why do you think that's important? Because the assumption

00:15:40.140 that needs to be tested is that if you are educated and you have options and you have a certain kind of

00:15:47.860 let's call it brainwashing as a child. You have a school that brainwashes you in the right ways.

00:15:54.180 Let's say they brainwash you to be polite to authority. I'll call it brainwashing. But wouldn't you

00:16:02.240 like your children to be brainwashed, to be polite to authority? Doesn't mean they have to, you know,

00:16:10.260 they have to trust authority, but just being polite. Now, when I say brainwashed, I mean because

00:16:16.680 children kind of need to be just brainwashed. They can't make decisions like adults. And in fact,

00:16:21.720 adults aren't good at decisions either. So you just need to brainwash them because it's a good 1.00

00:16:26.240 program to have running in your head. So my assumption is that people who have at least a B

00:16:32.740 average and graduated high school had something like a good brainwashing beginning. And I use

00:16:40.680 brainwashing provocatively because I want it to bother you a little bit because that's what

00:16:47.120 makes the memory stick. So I'm intentionally bothering you just a little bit to make this stick.

00:16:53.740 It's good brainwashing. So if you don't know that, then you don't know how much do the actions of the

00:17:01.780 person who stopped by the police have an impact on the outcome. That's right. We're actually talking

00:17:08.140 about whether it matters that your actions have an impact on your outcomes. Can you believe that's

00:17:16.060 actually a statement that I have to make in 2020 to other adults? I have to say, you know, maybe the

00:17:23.700 things you do actually are part of what influences the outcome. So I said this in my attempt to get

00:17:32.800 as close to being canceled as I can. And I got no pushback from this. Think about this thing. I'm going

00:17:39.720 to restate it today. But think about what I was allowed to say. And I say allowed socially, allowed

00:17:47.660 without getting canceled, meaning you're still listening to me. So I haven't been canceled yet.

00:17:52.320 And it goes like this. The whole police are abusing black people during police stops appears to be a 0.94

00:18:01.440 completely fake story. Because the thing we don't measure is whether the people stopped all act the 0.76

00:18:09.220 same. We act as though, you know, we analyze the situation and we say, no, we don't even need to

00:18:16.020 measure the different ways people responded to being stopped, as if that wouldn't matter to the

00:18:22.680 outcome. We don't even wave our arms at it and say, well, maybe people act differently. Do you think

00:18:30.800 that police would have a different response based on the way you act? How about just the physicality of

00:18:38.400 the police? How about just that? Is there a reason that women don't get killed by the police so often? 1.00

00:18:44.840 Well, yeah, it's probably because the police don't perceive that they themselves are in danger. And if

00:18:51.180 the police don't feel like they're in danger, they're not going to be as aggressive. Human nature. But say

00:18:57.980 you grew up in an inner city. If you grew up in an inner city, would you put a priority on looking tough?

00:19:05.280 I would. Wouldn't you? If you lived in the inner city, wouldn't you put a little extra attention to

00:19:14.660 making yourself look tough? You might dress a certain way. You might make sure that you've got some muscle

00:19:22.500 definition. You might talk a way that suggests you're part of a tougher group. You might actually,

00:19:28.840 your body language might come to conform to what you think is the right way to act in the situation.

00:19:37.280 So is there any chance that the people being stopped by the police are acting in similar enough

00:19:43.840 fashion across every demographic that the only thing you have to measure is their race? That's stupid. 1.00

00:19:51.080 That is just stupid. Now, what we need is a cabinet position. Somebody who has the skills to look at 1.00

00:19:59.660 data and say, well, if you're not studying how people are reacting to the police stop, you haven't

00:20:05.280 studied anything. You actually haven't studied anything. You've only studied one variable in

00:20:11.340 isolation when obviously the biggest variable is how people act. Nobody can, nobody will dispute this

00:20:18.980 point. The biggest variable is how the person acts. Nobody disputes that. But we're acting like it's

00:20:27.300 not true because it would feel racist to say, well, what are the odds that, you know, black people act

00:20:33.460 the same as white people? If you're dumb about how you present it, yeah, it sounds pretty racist. But if 0.98

00:20:40.160 you do it the way I did, which is if you, if you come up through a different experience, you should be

00:20:45.900 acting differently in the same situation than somebody who has a different history and background

00:20:52.200 and experience. Why wouldn't you? I mean, it would be irrational to assume that people with completely

00:20:58.700 different context and completely different histories and feelings about the world would respond the same

00:21:06.420 in given situations. It just doesn't make sense. And if you haven't, if you haven't measured it, and

00:21:12.000 nobody has, it's never been measured, I don't even have to check to know that, then you don't know

00:21:17.140 anything. We have protests that are destroying the country almost entirely because people don't know

00:21:24.320 how to measure stuff. That is my opinion. How about, here's what I think is the biggest problem in the

00:21:37.520 world. There are some problems, let's say, in the racism realm, in which you can't fix them too well

00:21:43.680 if you wait too long. That's true of problems in general, right? If you've got a small leak in your

00:21:50.120 roof, the sooner you fix it, the less damage there will be. So it is true of things in general that

00:21:56.140 the sooner you can get on them, it's quite common that that's the best time to fix them. And so in

00:22:02.580 race relations in black America, the soonest you can fix something is early school and childhood 0.94

00:22:09.280 experience. If we fixed school such that everybody of every ethnicity has something like a good

00:22:18.940 experience and they get brainwashed right, and I'd just like to use this one experience. Be brainwashed

00:22:25.060 to be polite to authority. They don't have to respect it, but you have to be polite, otherwise

00:22:33.040 you get your ass kicked. So what happens if we fix school and why haven't we? Why haven't we fixed 0.99

00:22:39.400 schools? Well, one of the reasons is that we don't understand that cause and effect seems to matter.

00:22:46.120 You know that Republicans like to get rid of government regulation and red tape.

00:22:53.140 Democrats are trying to get rid of the laws of physics.

00:22:58.440 Right? The laws of physics say that every cause has a specific effect. So Republicans would say,

00:23:06.160 well, yeah, every cause has an effect. So if you want a certain outcome, you have to act the way

00:23:12.100 that that cause will create the outcome. Let's say, for example, not going to jail would cause you to

00:23:19.440 have a better life. Staying off drugs would cause you to have a better life. Studying causes you to

00:23:26.880 have a better life. So Republicans accept the laws of physics, that there is such a thing as incentive

00:23:34.140 and cause and effect. But they don't like all the government regulations, the artificial stuff.

00:23:39.520 So they accept the natural laws of the world, but not the unnatural stuff of government. Just a

00:23:46.600 generalization. Democrats are literally railing against the laws of physics. They're actually railing

00:23:53.700 against the laws of physics. Because the assumption that is below everything is that the way people act

00:24:00.660 is not having that big of an influence on their outcomes. The Black Lives Matter frame is that 0.87

00:24:09.520 the big variable is the unfair system. That's what Black Lives Matter needs you to believe, 1.00

00:24:17.220 because their messaging requires that to be the biggest problem. So that's where you focus.

00:24:22.400 Now, is it? How big is the problem of racism in, let's say, the average Black person's life? How big

00:24:31.460 is the problem of racism compared to, and we all acknowledge it's big, right? So I'm not saying it's

00:24:37.300 small. I'm saying it's big. But how big is it compared to the impact of their own decisions?

00:24:43.540 Which one of them is bigger? In my worldview, it's 100 to 1. The things you do are 100 times more

00:24:52.980 powerful than racism, which is also pretty darn big. Racism isn't small, it's big. But your actions

00:25:01.480 are 100 times bigger. They're not even close. So it's like gravity. If you were to measure gravity,

00:25:10.420 you'd say, well, gravity is pretty strong. I can't even get off the Earth. You know, you need a lot

00:25:14.540 of energy to get a rocket into space. So gravity is really strong. But actually, gravity is a super

00:25:19.420 weak force, if you look at it in a different way, if you were good at measuring things.

00:25:27.680 So strategy matters. And let me say this. If we change the schools one of two ways,

00:25:38.220 actually, let me make a more complete picture. As many of you have been prompting me in the

00:25:44.320 comments, which I saw going by, the big problem for the black community is that the schools are bad.

00:25:52.260 If you gave any kid a really strong first several years of education, up through graduating high

00:26:01.900 school, if you get that right, everything else is going to be a lot better, right? And the main

00:26:08.040 thing that is preventing that from being right is a lack of competition. And the reason there's a

00:26:14.040 lack of competition is because the school unions are very strong. And it's better if they don't have

00:26:21.060 competition. It's better if they just negotiate to keep things uncompetitive, which is the current

00:26:26.780 situation. Now, on top of that, there are a lot of schools. If there are a lot of schools, it means

00:26:32.860 there are a lot of teachers. And there are a lot of people who are related to teachers and families

00:26:37.080 of teachers. So because there are so many teachers, you have, quite naturally, a big union with a lot

00:26:44.740 of power. And that's the problem. So institutional racism is, I would say, 95% the teacher's union.

00:26:54.620 If you were going to make a chart and say, all right, here are all the elements of institutional racism,

00:27:01.840 you've got your judicial system, you've got your economic system, hiring, firing, and so you make

00:27:07.360 the whole chart. I would say that 95% of the impact of a person's life would be the teacher's union.

00:27:17.060 So that would be the one thing that destroys 95% of your life. And then all of the other things

00:27:24.680 added together, including the judicial system, the justice system, the cops and everything else,

00:27:31.400 all of it added together would maybe be 5%. So that 5% is still pretty big, right? If you had a 5%

00:27:42.660 problem in your life, you would be bothered by it all the time. 5% is pretty big for a problem,

00:27:49.120 right? But 95% is because you didn't get it right in the beginning with the first years of education.

00:27:55.940 And that's all the teacher's union. Now, specifically, any situation that doesn't have competition

00:28:01.800 is going to become a bad system. That's what the teacher's union does. They remove competition.

00:28:07.920 So if you put that back, let's say that the coronavirus caused a resurgence in new business

00:28:16.260 models for online education. I think that's going to happen. Suppose that instead of having every

00:28:22.340 teacher who works today becoming just an online teacher, which would be the worst idea in the world,

00:28:30.440 because you'd be taking teachers who are bad in person and videotaping them, which makes them

00:28:35.880 even worse, basically. So that, of course, if you're going to online, the model you should end

00:28:41.860 up with is that the best teachers in the world are something like best-selling class makers. In other

00:28:50.020 words, there'll be teams of professionals the way that movies are made. They'll make a class. They'll

00:28:55.940 sell it on Amazon or somewhere else. And they'll get, you know, a dollar per student, but they'll make

00:29:01.880 millions and millions just like a best-selling author would make. Now, in that world, how many

00:29:06.320 teachers do you need? Not as many, right? If it's digital, then everybody who takes a fifth-grade

00:29:14.640 class might choose from, let's say, 20 different teachers who have been, you know, identified and

00:29:20.900 reviewed as just the best teachers with the best class. So you might only need 20 good teachers for,

00:29:29.180 you know, fifth-grade American history. That's it. 20 teachers. So digital online education should

00:29:38.400 decimate the number of teachers in the long run. This is not something that happens next year. But

00:29:43.520 in the long run, which should make the teachers' union less important, which should introduce some

00:29:49.680 kind of competition, which could be the biggest solution to institutional racism ever. But how

00:29:58.900 do you get people to actually study and do online education? Well, not everybody has a screaming

00:30:05.000 internet, Wi-Fi, and a brand new laptop. So I don't know that every kid can learn digitally. Plus,

00:30:13.020 there's a behavior issue. There's a lot to be worked out. But in the long run, I think there will be

00:30:18.680 fewer teachers just because one teacher will handle millions, you know, the best teacher. And that

00:30:25.260 should break the hold that the teachers' unions have on the schools, which should be really helpful

00:30:34.400 in getting rid of institutional racism. All right. And I think that also there should be introduced a

00:30:44.020 strategy class, a life strategy class. I always talk about my book, How to Failed Almost Everything

00:30:49.540 and Still Win Big. But I talk about it as an example. Right? There are other books that tell

00:30:54.620 you how to have a strategy for life that makes sense. Now, I want to do a better job of explaining

00:31:00.720 why I say that companies, when they talk about strategy, it's just BS. But people need to have a

00:31:08.100 strategy. Right? Here's the, I thought of a better way to explain this. In the business world, you

00:31:15.320 wouldn't say it's a strategy to have an accounting system. Right? You would just say, well, you just

00:31:20.860 need an accounting system. That's not a strategy. That's sort of just basic stuff you need to be in

00:31:27.440 business. Likewise, when I talk about strategies for people, when I say stuff like, you know, build a

00:31:35.100 talent stack, these things should be as basic as having an accounting system. In other words, calling

00:31:41.920 these things life strategies is probably too much of a word. They're not really strategies. They're kind of

00:31:49.440 like having an accounting system if you're a business. Basic stuff, everybody should do. Now, if it's something

00:31:56.980 that everybody should do, I'm not sure it's a strategy. Right? So strategy might be a misleading word. Is there

00:32:03.640 anybody who should not try to have multiple skills that work well together? No, no, there's nobody who

00:32:10.420 should not have that strategy. Therefore, I'm not sure it's a strategy. It's more of just a baseline

00:32:15.580 good thing to do. All right. NBC Universal has announced that its new goal is to have 50% women

00:32:27.280 in the news organization. They don't say what the ratio is now, but they're trying to get to 50% women

00:32:33.500 and also 50% people of color overall in the organization. Now, there's no way around that.

00:32:41.780 That is public racial discrimination. Right? Because they're saying fairly clearly that

00:32:50.260 they're going to discriminate against white people because they need to get to 50% people of color 0.98

00:32:56.820 overall. And if it were going to happen on its own, if you didn't need to do anything actively to let

00:33:04.240 it happen, it would have already happened. So they are saying we have to do something active

00:33:09.180 to fix this ratio as they see it. What could you do that would be active? Well, you could try to,

00:33:16.940 you know, you could recruit harder and you could make sure that you've really, you know, done the best

00:33:22.740 putting the net out there. So there's some basic things you can do that are sort of generic,

00:33:27.440 but ultimately you just have to tell the white people that they can't have the job.

00:33:32.020 In the end, that's the only way you can get there. And so I asked this question, which again, 0.55

00:33:37.740 would have probably gotten me canceled a month ago. I said, I tweeted, retweeted that tweet. I said,

00:33:43.480 challenge, find a fortune 500 company that isn't actively discriminating by race and gender

00:33:50.760 in a similar fashion to the way NBC is announcing it plans to discriminate. They actually announced

00:33:57.160 it. Imagine announcing your plan to discriminate based on race and feeling no, they have no

00:34:06.240 embarrassment. There's no penalty. In fact, they will be rewarded for it, for announcing in public

00:34:13.420 that they plan to discriminate based on race and gender. That's our world. Anyway, so I put that out

00:34:20.180 there and said, find a fortune 500 company that isn't doing the same thing. How many do you think

00:34:26.260 I got? Well, I got one suggestion of a company that's actually owned by, I guess, Chinese entities. So

00:34:34.200 you know, it was a special case, but basically nobody had a suggestion of any company in the fortune 500

00:34:43.320 that is not publicly and obviously discriminating by race and gender. Now, if you were a, if you were

00:34:50.940 a 14 year old black kid and I were to poll you and I say, Hey, Hey, you know, 14 year old black kid 0.77

00:34:59.400 from the city, come here, come here. I got to talk to you instead of randomly going through life. Let's

00:35:05.580 have a strategy, but your strategy might not be exactly like other people's. So this would be a case

00:35:10.920 where people would have specific strategies, except for the general notion of you should go

00:35:15.660 where, you know, you should go where you have the best opportunity, which is generic. And I would say

00:35:21.500 to this 14 year old black kid in the inner city, has anybody told you that if you go for a job at a

00:35:28.900 fortune 500 company, which by the way, are really good jobs, fortune 500 is the good jobs. If you went for

00:35:38.140 one, does anybody, has anybody told you that if it's you and a bunch of white people applying for

00:35:42.600 the same job, you're pretty much going to get that job every time. Has anybody told you that?

00:35:48.940 What would the 14 year old black kid say? Would he say, Oh yeah, we all know that. Yeah. Yeah. All

00:35:54.880 we have to do is stay in school, get a, get a B plus pretty much a good job at every fortune 500

00:36:01.000 company within your field. How many, how many would know that? Maybe none, maybe none. Right. I mean,

00:36:11.080 I don't know. I haven't asked the question, so I shouldn't assume, but I'm thinking it's none. So

00:36:16.800 how much of an impact could you have is simply going to a young person say, you know, the only thing you

00:36:23.660 need to succeed is just make sure your grades are good. You know, stay out of jail, don't do drugs,

00:36:30.600 but basically just focus on your grades. Your life's going to be pretty darn good. Way better

00:36:37.160 than other people, way better than other black people, way better than most white people. You'll 0.99

00:36:42.720 be way above average for all people with this simple strategy. How many people are talking to the 14 year

00:36:49.880 old black youth in the inner city and saying, just do these things works every time or pretty close to 0.63

00:36:56.700 every time? Nobody. So if you're telling me that I need to worry about your police brutality, I say,

00:37:05.780 I'm open to the whole conversation, but you have to measure it correctly, which is not being done.

00:37:11.380 And then therefore you've not presented anything I could confirm is an actual problem in the real world.

00:37:17.260 Certainly the worrying about it is a problem, but the actual problem is not demonstrated by the

00:37:22.500 data, which doesn't mean it's not there, right? All we know is that the data hasn't demonstrated

00:37:28.500 it's there. All right. Kanye continues to be interesting. I got, I got a comment from somebody

00:37:37.560 who said, stop talking about Kanye so much. You will be disappointed. So you should leave now.

00:37:42.860 I'm going to be talking about Kanye today and probably more because it fits perfectly with

00:37:50.040 the whole persuasion theme that I like to talk about. Plus he's interesting. So we know a little

00:37:57.000 bit more about his planned run. Number one, he's given himself 30 days to really decide. So he's not

00:38:03.500 decided to run. He's decided to decide to run. And he's given himself 30 days because after that,

00:38:10.120 the deadlines for getting into the race are passed in too many states. So he came up with a, so he's

00:38:21.260 running as an independent. He said provocatively that if he, if Trump were not in the race, he would run

00:38:27.680 as a Republican. That's right. Kanye said he would run as a Republican if Trump were not the Republican

00:38:34.680 candidate. Did you see that coming? I think you could sort of suspect it a little bit because I

00:38:42.000 think Kanye, one of his greatest contributions to the world among quite a few is his role modeling,

00:38:51.160 weirdly enough, because, you know, I know immediately you're going to say, oh, there was that, those things

00:38:56.400 he did, which were not good role model things. But there's, there's one thing he does, several things

00:39:01.560 he does that are just the best role model. I mean, just crazy good role model, which is first of all,

00:39:09.740 how hard he works, right? How much do you want a role model that works that hard? That's pretty good.

00:39:18.880 Trump, Trump was a hard worker too. So we like that. How would you like to have somebody who has

00:39:24.120 perceived no barriers to his own success? Well, Trump had that, right? Trump never saw a barrier

00:39:33.060 to his own success and indeed became president. Kanye, likewise, sees no barriers to music. He was,

00:39:41.220 he was like not an inner city guy, but he still made it in, in a field where people thought you had to be.

00:39:48.080 He succeeded in fashion, you know, gigantically. Nobody thought that would happen or a lot of

00:39:55.820 people didn't. And now he's running for president and he apparently doesn't think that there's anything

00:40:00.320 that could stop him. So how good is that as a role model? It's great. It's great. You love to just

00:40:07.080 see more people like that. So there's that. And then there's the talent stack thing. He has stacked

00:40:15.420 talent after talent together to achieve what he's done. So these are all just tremendous role model

00:40:23.100 qualities. You, you know, and I know you'll find other things in his past. You'll say, well, what

00:40:29.380 about that? What about that? And I get that, but I think that the big picture is, is the art,

00:40:36.160 the creativity, the skills, the ambition, the, the mindset. I mean, I think that's, that's the

00:40:41.980 overwhelming feeling you get from him. I think we forgive any small imperfections.

00:40:49.400 But so he decided to name his party, the birthday party. That's right. So Kanye's party is the

00:40:56.920 birthday party, which is kind of genius. Here's why. Is there anybody who doesn't like a birthday

00:41:03.180 party? I suppose there might be some introverts who don't. But first of all, when you hear the word

00:41:09.240 Democrat, I don't know, does that have any uplifting feeling to it? Republican doesn't really feel

00:41:17.640 uplifting, doesn't make you happy. It's just a word, right? But when you say the birthday party, don't

00:41:23.140 you immediately kind of smile? Hey, what's the name of your party? We're the birthday party. And he

00:41:28.460 explained it this way. He said, when he gets elected, it'll be everybody's birthday. How perfect

00:41:34.400 is that? Yeah, when I get elected, it'll be everybody's birthday. Kind of really, really

00:41:39.460 good. All right. Now, I don't know if he comes up with all of this himself, or is he not conversation

00:41:45.600 with other smart people? But if you look at just the first thing he did, name his party, kind of nailed

00:41:52.400 it. How about the second thing he did, which has come up with a slogan? His slogan is one word. Yes.

00:41:59.140 Yes. And his name is Y-E. So he's two-thirds of yes, just with his name. Yeah. And he clarified,

00:42:07.620 it's not yup. It's not yup. It's not yeah. It's yes. How much do you love a slogan that is so

00:42:18.100 ambiguous and yet so clear? Because yes is completely ambiguous. Well, yes to what? What am I agreeing

00:42:26.660 to? On the other hand, it's perfect. Because you fill in the blanks, don't you? My cat is

00:42:34.300 visiting. So if you see a tail go by, that would be my cat boo. So he got his slogan, one of the best

00:42:44.340 I've ever seen. Yes is better than Make America Great Again. And that's saying a lot because I think

00:42:52.200 Make America Great Again will go down in history as one of the great campaign slogans. But yes,

00:42:59.200 it might be better. It might actually be better. So if you're trying to count him out because, oh,

00:43:06.260 he's not serious or whatever, I would just point out that he's in the conversation for the presidency.

00:43:13.060 I would point out that the first thing, two things he did were kind of genius. Here's some other

00:43:19.280 things that will give you pause. He's talking about a systems design approach to government.

00:43:27.440 What? Does that sound like something I might like? Yeah, he's talking about government in terms of

00:43:35.220 design. Oh, no. If I've often said that if anybody ever talked about government with those with that

00:43:46.020 frame as a design problem, that I would support that candidate. Because that mindset is exactly what

00:43:56.400 we need, really. Now, when asked about specific details, he said, well, I haven't researched that

00:44:03.080 yet. So he doesn't have an opinion on tax rates, for example. I think that's fair. And I like the

00:44:09.160 honesty of it. He'll say, I haven't looked into that. I don't know anything about that. I'll get good

00:44:13.300 people, and we'll figure it out, kind of like everybody else. So is Kanye serious? I would say

00:44:20.120 probably not in terms of 2020, but it would be very smart of him to have one, let's say, partial run

00:44:29.180 in 2020, because it makes him the automatic person you think of for 2024. So putting his name in this

00:44:36.240 year is brilliant no matter what happens, because it's still a better setup for 2024. We saw with Reagan,

00:44:42.900 with Nixon, with Trump, you could think of some more presidents who had an unsuccessful run,

00:44:49.420 but then it's the first person you think of for the next election.

00:44:56.500 So Trump has been getting a lot of fire for saying that the coronavirus fatalities are less than 1%.

00:45:01.720 Actually, what he says is the other way. He says, 99% of people will be fine, don't have to worry

00:45:07.800 about it. But 1% will have a problem. And of course, the news has said, that's not true. You are putting

00:45:15.960 fake data into the world. But is it not true? Again, we don't have a cabinet level position for data

00:45:24.660 analysis. Someone who could tell you what I'm going to tell you now, which Andres told me, so I'm going

00:45:32.120 to get I'm getting it from somebody smarter. If you looked at the total of confirmed cases, it's higher

00:45:38.880 than 1%, depending on where you are, it's, you know, could be 4%. But you know, it's, it's a lot more

00:45:45.400 than 1% if you're looking at confirmed cases. But one thing we know, with no doubt whatsoever, is that the

00:45:52.840 number of total cases is far bigger than the number of confirmed cases. Nobody disagrees with that. And if you

00:46:01.300 were to look at the number of likely cases, you know, just sort of did the math and say, all right, if we found

00:46:07.480 this many cases, we're pretty sure there are at least this many cases. So under those conditions, it turns out that

00:46:15.380 the president is basically right. If you could find all of the infections, you would discover that fewer than 1% of

00:46:24.560 them are going to die. So you've been watching the news tell you that the president's math is all wrong, when the

00:46:33.700 president's math is all right. Did you know that? You know, when when I saw the president making that claim, I said to

00:46:41.600 myself, Oh, well, he's just exaggerating in his usual way to draw attention to the fact that the risk is low ish. So that's

00:46:51.560 just his normal routine. But it turns out in this in this case, he's actually just right. The entire news cycle has been

00:46:59.320 hammering him on the left anyway, hammering him for being bad at math. But he's just right. And the public can't tell

00:47:08.780 the difference. There's a new bottle coming out, which should be no more reliable than all the other

00:47:15.800 models for Coronavirus deaths. The new bottle says that without masks, you might have 200,000 deaths by

00:47:23.220 November 1. And keep in mind, November 1 is not the day that the virus goes away. November 1 might be the

00:47:31.220 day that the virus starts getting much, much worse. So the model says 200,000 by November 1. And then God

00:47:38.420 knows what happens after November 1, because it's not going to get better, unless the virus magically

00:47:44.200 goes away. Or we magically have a vaccine, which I don't expect. So and then if we do wear masks,

00:47:52.940 this particular model, it doesn't even matter where it came from, you don't even know, you don't even

00:47:57.460 need to know the details. None of these models are terribly accurate, we assume that it would be only

00:48:04.580 something 160 some thousand deaths if people wore masks. So that if you do the math, there's something

00:48:10.200 like a 45,000 death difference between masks and no masks. Why is this reported on CNN? Well, obviously,

00:48:19.380 they're trying to produce a number that they can pin on the president for being the number of people he

00:48:25.300 killed by not wearing a mask in public. You know where this is heading, right? The whole setup is just to

00:48:32.000 create an actual number from an expert that they can pin on the president as the number of people

00:48:37.200 he killed. Of course, the Republicans play the same game with the, with, let's say, Mayor, I'm sorry,

00:48:44.980 Governor Cuomo by saying, well, you know, he's responsible for X number of deaths in the senior

00:48:50.880 care facilities. I'm not sure that putting a death count on all of our politicians is the best way to go.

00:49:00.160 But it does help. I got to admit. Now, wouldn't you like to see a data expert look at this new claim on

00:49:09.920 this new model and tell you if you should care about it? Kind of like that. Maybe it can't be a cabinet

00:49:17.360 position because then they wouldn't be independent. So maybe there needs to be some kind of independent

00:49:22.160 data analysis entity that doesn't have a political affiliation. That would be better. All right.

00:49:29.440 So if we get to 200,000 deaths, and I don't know if we will, but if we do, there were people,

00:49:37.580 and I asked this question early on, I said to people, if you think this is just the flu,

00:49:43.460 what number of deaths would change your mind? And one smart person I asked that question,

00:49:48.900 you know, said 200,000. So we have this interesting situation where we still have the two worlds,

00:49:54.960 where one part of the population thinks, the United States anyway, still thinks this is just

00:50:00.660 sort of a bad flu. And we shouldn't take it so seriously, because it's baseline danger for being

00:50:08.180 a human being in the world. But at around 200,000 deaths, people start saying, okay, okay, you got

00:50:16.080 me. This is not a normal flu. That's a lot of deaths. I think we're going to get there. But we'll

00:50:24.180 see. Still, the wild card is nobody knows why flus ever go away. Nobody knows why a virus ever goes

00:50:30.420 away. The normal virus, this one, any, they don't know why they go away. But maybe that'll happen.

00:50:36.240 And the funniest thing is that one of the things Trump got criticized the most for is saying that

00:50:42.900 the virus might just go away, which turns out to be completely scientifically valid. Sometimes

00:50:50.120 the virus just goes away. And we don't know why. So is it impossible that this one would go away?

00:50:57.740 Well, why is the death count dropping? Does anybody know the death count today?

00:51:02.760 Somebody says, are deaths being recorded accurately? Probably not. But they're probably

00:51:10.600 being recorded consistently. Meaning that, you know, what if one hospital is doing it a certain

00:51:16.320 way, they're probably going to continue. But in total, you should see the pattern is either going

00:51:21.760 toward fewer or more. So the direction would be more important. And the direction seems down

00:51:27.940 unambiguously. Yeah, somebody said, where's the where's the Spanish flu? Are you telling me that of

00:51:34.240 all the people in the world, that that literally all of them would somehow get rid of it or become

00:51:41.620 immune to the Spanish flu? Not a single person still has it to continue giving it to another person?

00:51:47.940 Nobody. There's something wrong with how we understand viruses. And it makes it feel like we're in a

00:51:53.620 simulation. And the virus is just a software update. I mean, it feels like that because it just has a

00:51:59.660 beginning and an end. And we don't know why it has either one. I guess beginning we kind of know.

00:52:06.920 All right, that is what I wanted to say for today. Note the degree to which I've extended my powers of

00:52:16.000 freedom of speech. Take note of my technique, in case you would have to like to have better freedom

00:52:22.920 of speech yourself. Number one, that always has to be number one, if you want to maintain your maximum

00:52:29.160 freedom of speech without getting canceled. And yes, yes, I know freedom of speech is about the

00:52:34.300 Constitution. It's about the government. It's not about the people. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck everybody

00:52:40.500 who tells me free speech is only about the government. Fuck all of you. That's, you're just living in the 1.00

00:52:46.440 past. In the present, free speech for a practical purposes is about how other people treat you because

00:52:55.000 of cancellation culture. So I don't want to hear anybody correcting me that free speech is about what

00:53:00.920 only the government does, because you're just living in the past. I'm not, I have no interest in

00:53:05.960 living in the past with you. You're welcome to live in the past. Please go live in the past if you enjoy

00:53:11.480 it. But don't bring me there. I don't want to live in the past. So anyway, the most important thing you

00:53:18.020 need to do to maximize your freedom of speech is to show that you have good intentions. If your

00:53:26.060 intentions are good, people will give you a lot of latitude, because they'll say, well, he means well,

00:53:31.800 maybe that's not the way I would have worded that. But as soon as they think you mean, mean wrong,

00:53:39.680 everything you say will just sound like it happens to that filter. So you see that with President

00:53:44.860 Trump, everybody who thinks he means well, hears him saying things that don't sound that bad.

00:53:50.800 Everybody who thinks he is, you know, evil incarnate, they hear everything as the worst possible

00:53:56.720 description. Oh, can somebody remind me, speaking of that, dark and divisive was the term that the

00:54:04.360 Democrats started trotting out again after Trump's speech at Mount Rushmore. Correct me if I'm wrong,

00:54:09.940 but I thought I heard a clip in which Kayleigh McEnany used their own term against them and called the

00:54:16.460 Democrats dark and divisive. Did I hear that? Because if I did, and I think I did, that was one of the

00:54:25.260 most clever things ever. Not by itself. But imagine, if you will, that dark and divisive is powerful.

00:54:33.440 That's why they use it, because they have advice from people who understand these things, and they know

00:54:38.320 it's a powerful phrase. If you were trying to take the power out of a powerful phrase that your opponents

00:54:45.120 are using against you, how would you do it? Well, one way would be if it's mockable. If there was something

00:54:52.760 about the words dark and divisive that just automatically becomes something you could joke

00:54:58.460 about, or you could make somebody think about it as a joke, that would work. But I don't see that

00:55:03.220 opportunity with dark and divisive. There's nothing really funny about that, right? So you can't go

00:55:08.880 the mocking route. But what you can do is take the power out of it. You know, as Jay-Z famously says

00:55:16.860 about the N-word, the reason he would use it a lot in his songs is to take the power out of it.

00:55:22.420 So if the Republicans started using dark and divisive as a go-to description of Democrats,

00:55:30.280 because taking down statues is pretty dark and divisive, right? All right, I'm getting confirmation

00:55:36.600 that she did exactly that. If she continues to do that, it completely takes dark and divisive off the

00:55:44.140 table. Because if you start hearing it as a generic thing that any politician says about the other

00:55:49.080 side, it's empty. She can actually open that thing up, remove its guts, and give it back to you as an 1.00

00:55:58.420 empty vessel. And she did it once. And let me ask you this. From the moment that Kayleigh McEnany

00:56:08.600 said dark and divisive as a description of anything the Democrats are doing, after that,

00:56:15.660 did you hear any Democrats using it? Because she might have killed it. She might have killed it with 1.00

00:56:21.460 one sentence. Because I don't think I've seen it since then. Have you? Can anybody confirm that

00:56:28.180 there's any national figure who has used the phrase dark and divisive about the Republicans

00:56:33.580 after McEnany took the power out of it? Because you know, if they keep doing it, she's going to keep

00:56:42.140 doing it. So if you hear the Democrats revive that, that dark and divisive thing, I think the

00:56:49.400 Republicans are just going to revive it at the same time and just neuter it, which I think is a

00:56:55.160 brilliant play that I don't believe I've seen anybody else smart enough to do. So again, it's obvious to me

00:57:02.000 that McEnany is just operating at a different level than what we've seen before, maybe ever, really.

00:57:09.160 She's just operating at a different level. All right, that's all I have to do for now. And I will talk to

00:57:15.440 you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 08, 2020

Episode 1051 Scott Adams： If You Can Read This, I Have Not Been Cancelled. Let's Push it a Little Farther.

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