Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1058 Scott Adams： Talking With Bjorn Lomborg About His Book False Alarm, Plus Ridiculous News

00:00:00.000 Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody 1.00

00:00:10.700 come on in gather round it's gonna be a good one oh yeah i always say that but isn't it always right

00:00:20.200 yeah you know it is i always say it's gonna be the best one and and then it is so i guess you

00:00:28.860 got that going on um if everything works out i'm going to have author bjorn lomborg on here today

00:00:36.360 but i'm terrible on follow-up so uh if that doesn't work out we'll make sure it works out soon

00:00:44.020 but before i see if i can connect him uh i'll give him a few minutes if he's if he's up and around

00:00:51.060 to uh to connect on periscope before we do that what do we do first always the same thing always

00:00:58.120 the same thing the best thing ever it's a simultaneous sip and all you need is

00:01:01.820 a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein a canteen jug or flask of a vessel of any

00:01:07.700 kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the

00:01:16.320 dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better including coronavirus global

00:01:22.980 warming climate change you name it it's all better with the sip join me now

00:01:29.680 ah i can feel the earth begin to cool i can feel people's fevers beginning to go down

00:01:41.320 just a little bit now bjorn is here yes let's make this work

00:01:49.060 please technology all right first try did not work bjorn if uh you can hear me

00:01:59.860 it's not unusual for the first try not to work

00:02:05.120 so um make sure that you're on a mobile device such as your smartphone i think you're back

00:02:13.060 let's try again all right bjorn please work oh the technology is not working

00:02:22.440 um i never know what the problem is when it doesn't work on the first few tries

00:02:28.540 but we'll get this watch this

00:02:31.100 i'm gonna make this work so i can see him uh continuing to try to connect

00:02:40.600 hey bjorn are you there

00:02:45.040 i can hear you success uh wonderful bjorn lomborg you are the author of false alarm this excellent

00:02:56.460 book that i'm holding up right now and can i describe you as the president of the copenhagen

00:03:03.080 consensus think tech would that be you certainly can yes and uh i'm looking at your uh your twitter

00:03:11.260 profile in which you say that that involves smart solutions through economic prioritization

00:03:17.600 which is you're talking my language now bjorn um and this is your new book false alarm when is this

00:03:25.600 out is this out now this is out from uh yesterday so just fresh off the press all right and your

00:03:32.460 topic of primary concern at least in terms of this book is climate change correct yes and

00:03:40.160 before i start asking you some questions i have to tell you that you and i have a weird thing in

00:03:44.860 common that you don't know about and uh correct me if this is wrong but i think i have a pretty good

00:03:50.920 memory of this the first time i ever saw you was on an appearance on bill maher's show do you remember

00:03:57.520 the first time you were on his show it was actually my second time i remember that i contacted you

00:04:03.740 afterwards uh okay yeah yeah yeah no yeah um and the thing i remembered was that you you put bill maher

00:04:12.040 into cognitive dissonance because of course he's a big climate change doomer and he normally the

00:04:19.280 doomers are talking to scientists not business people who are looking at both the costs and the

00:04:24.420 benefits and know how to project things into the future as people like you do and you you completely

00:04:31.100 destroyed his worldview to the point where he the only thing he could do was act like you didn't you

00:04:37.120 didn't just say something it was the damnedest thing i was watching and i said what just happened here

00:04:41.900 and then i you know you realize it was just cognitive dissonance he couldn't he couldn't process

00:04:47.700 how logically and obviously right you were because it didn't fit any of his worldview so we just

00:04:54.300 pretended it didn't happen and went on so enough about me um so in your book false alarm available

00:05:05.260 everywhere so i'm sure you can get it in everywhere the books are sold um you you're basically going

00:05:12.760 through the skept would you call it the skeptical argument on climate science or do you have a

00:05:17.260 term you prefer well i i would tend to think of it as the rational point of climate uh uh the

00:05:25.220 rational climate argument because look what i'm trying to say is it's actually a real problem but the way

00:05:32.400 that we've been presented with this is it's the end of the world and if you are being told this is the

00:05:38.900 end of the world and and and remember this is not just uh a uh a vague little sort of claim

00:05:45.060 kids around the world are scared witless you know washington post survey showed that 57 of all

00:05:52.180 american kids now are afraid of global warming and if you ask adults if you ask adults around the world

00:05:59.980 it turns out that almost half of all adults in the world now believe that it's likely that global

00:06:06.660 warming will lead to the extinction of the human race this is just this is just outrageously out

00:06:12.480 there this is a way beyond reasonable concern this is and so i try to say look that's not what the

00:06:21.200 un climate panel is telling us it is a problem about the end of the world and we should fix it

00:06:26.300 now uh we're having a little bit of connection problem i hope that'll resolve itself but walk us

00:06:34.000 through uh my understanding is that even the ippc the ultimate um international body that tells you

00:06:41.840 what's going to happen with climate change that if you actually look what they say their input the

00:06:47.500 impact on the you know the gdp in the future is trivial is that true it's well perhaps not trivial but

00:06:55.580 it's very small so to give you a sense of proportion uh the they've done estimates of what is the negative

00:07:02.140 impact on climate change in about 50 years so half a century from now the net impact of all climate

00:07:09.780 change if we do nothing will be equivalent to each person on the planet losing somewhere between 0.2

00:07:17.320 and 2 percent of his or her income but that's not nothing wait but hold on let's let's add a little

00:07:24.060 bit of context to that when you say losing it that's in that's an economic term right you don't actually

00:07:31.160 start with more and then you end up with less i think what you're saying is that instead of making

00:07:36.600 a hundred dollars over 50 years you only made 98 dollars exactly and which means which means you

00:07:45.060 wouldn't even know it you there would be nothing in your environment or your experience which would

00:07:51.260 tell you you didn't get that extra two percent right well it would be very hard for anyone to notice

00:07:57.560 just to give you a sense the u.n also expects that by 50 years time the average person on the planet

00:08:04.800 will be 2.63 times richer than we are today right so right you just point out that means

00:08:12.220 in the worst case instead of being 2.63 times rich by 2005 we will be 2.56 times less rich

00:08:22.040 yeah uh bjorn if you have someplace in your wherever you are that you've got a little

00:08:29.960 stronger signal that would be good your your signal is coming in and out but uh look for the the viewers

00:08:35.400 let me just uh the point is that you'll be 2.6 percent to 2.6 times richer by then so that little

00:08:45.800 bit you didn't get that maybe you could have gotten you won't even know the difference um and

00:08:52.460 the big problem with the climate change argument is that there are not enough people like you

00:08:59.000 who are who are looking at not just the um the science of it because people get stuck on the science

00:09:05.800 because it's not really a scientist who can tell you what the problem's going to be and people don't

00:09:11.000 get that the person who can tell you what the problem is going to be is the person who can tell

00:09:16.100 you what's going to happen to the economy because if the economy is still strong you can fix almost

00:09:21.100 anything would you say that's true that's absolutely true and but but but i i think we also need to

00:09:27.580 recognize it's not like this is an unheard of argument uh so the only climate economist to get the

00:09:34.540 nobel prize is bill nordhaus from yale university and this is exactly what he points out he's

00:09:40.980 says look global warming is going to be a problem it's going to cost us

00:09:44.620 yeah and and by the way as far as i know i've never heard a scientist argue with what you say

00:09:55.060 because you're sort of a slightly different domain than science but i don't think scientists say you're

00:10:00.440 wrong do they well a lot of scientists are not comfortable with this not being alarmist so i think a

00:10:07.960 lot of them will say that doesn't sound right but what is talking about real world impacts one of

00:10:16.600 the things that drive me up the wall and that's what i use uh pretty much the first third of the book

00:10:21.460 to talk about is how you are being scared the stories that are technically true but often dramatically

00:10:28.880 in this meeting let me give you one example uh last year uh washington told us how uh because of global warming

00:10:36.820 people see 187 million people being flooded by the end of the metric this way

00:10:42.660 let me uh bjorn because there's a little bit of problem with your connection i might break in and

00:10:49.540 just summarize what what i'm hearing you saying so the audience hears it clearly so you're saying there

00:10:54.060 was 187 million people projected to be uh victims of flooding is that what you said yes sorry i'm just

00:11:02.300 trying to move to another part of the house does this work better that's better yes okay uh so yes

00:11:08.960 187 million people would get flooded this was the book uh the washington post uh headline and

00:11:15.760 everywhere uh on the planet what that replied was that nobody would do anything in the next 80 years

00:11:25.060 so basically they'll see first lap off open their knees and then eventually take the problem

00:11:32.220 yeah we're having more uh audio problems but i think what you're saying is that the assumption is

00:11:39.060 that nobody would do anything about it that there would no there would be no remediation over 80 years

00:11:44.480 when in fact uh what is uh is it uh uh uh what's the country that's already underwater uh

00:11:53.760 holland all right so yeah uh so so we can see that the uh the ability to remediate against flooding

00:12:03.300 is pretty good if you have 80 years and you've got a lot of time now what what the what the study

00:12:09.780 actually showed was if you allow people to adapt which of course they will of course you will not

00:12:15.600 see 187 million people having to move you will see 305 000 people having to move so it was 600 times

00:12:24.700 exaggerated and of course remember every year more than twice that number move out just of california so

00:12:32.260 it's it's not something that the world can't adapt and handle we're simply being told stories that are

00:12:38.240 very scary but end up being very little representative of the real world because we forget adaptation is

00:12:44.740 give me an idea what's behind all the exaggeration in the sense that the the obvious thing is that the

00:12:51.780 the news model requires you to get worked up in order to click on things for them to get advertising

00:12:57.340 income so aside from the the media which has an incentive to exaggerate things for their business

00:13:04.860 model is there anything else behind the wrongness well i i think the the media part is an incredibly

00:13:12.220 important part of it and and and we we tend to forget that media exaggerates on all kinds of things

00:13:19.000 it's just that global warming turns out to be such an incredibly good generator of really scary stuff

00:13:25.700 but of course it's also because politicians love this setup look you can't really make a better setup than

00:13:33.200 what you're seeing with global warming politicians get to say the end of the world is made but i

00:13:39.140 can save you right and also we get to say i can save you and the cost will only come in the next election

00:13:46.600 so yeah well you know i i i used to do uh you know financial projections and stuff in my corporate job

00:13:54.360 long ago and the perfect situation for any corporate uh person is that you get to spend money today and be a hero for what you're

00:14:03.180 fixing but nobody will know it will work until you've already been promoted or left for another

00:14:08.440 job in other words exactly what you want to spend money today because that's how you get power and

00:14:13.800 influence and yay look at all these things i did and then you will never be responsible for the outcome

00:14:18.880 because that's in 80 years and oh absolutely and and you know the the fun thing is to see we've been

00:14:25.440 doing this for 30 years so you can actually look back and see how little we've achieved so last year the

00:14:32.280 u.n actually released a very surprisingly honest review of what we've achieved over the last 15

00:14:38.480 years and what they said was we cannot tell the difference after all the work up from obama and

00:14:44.800 everybody else around the world all the money we've spent on climate they cannot tell the difference

00:14:49.920 you know isn't there this feels like a subset of a problem that is plaguing basically every big

00:15:02.960 public decision which is our data is undependable and the people who are analyzing the data are not

00:15:10.420 qualified it feels like it's everything from coronavirus to you name it it just seems to be the

00:15:17.740 same problem the data is bad and we don't know how to look at it anyway i i would i'll probably

00:15:24.820 analyze it slightly differently because i think we you know we spent in in the order of what uh 50

00:15:30.560 billion dollars on on on climate research so it's not like we don't have a lot of good data

00:15:37.860 i think there is a lot of organizations that want to convince you this is the end of the world

00:15:44.020 because then they can get you to support really really expensive policies uh and i think we as

00:15:50.880 taxpayers need to fight back and say look i'm happy to spend money on on solving real problems that'll

00:15:58.840 actually have dramatic impact to better the world in the future but i'm not just going to spend my

00:16:04.160 money to do almost no good and waste most of it right and uh what do you think of uh if you had a

00:16:10.780 moment to look at i don't know if you follow american politics enough but uh joe biden's

00:16:15.300 two trillion dollar plan which i had to dig really hard uh i had to look through multiple articles to

00:16:22.660 find out if nuclear energy was even part of it so two trillion and and the most of the coverage

00:16:29.360 didn't even mention nuclear energy but i found one article that suggested he wants to go strong

00:16:36.220 at nuclear and especially the new and the new designs which yes the trump administration

00:16:42.880 doesn't talk about it but they're doing all of that stuff they're pushing for the the new test

00:16:48.760 facilities etc um is that a productive way to go does that this is nuclear on your uh on your good list

00:16:57.140 uh nuclear is definitely one of the solutions that we could envision for global warming i think the

00:17:04.200 big problem about nuclear is that right now nuclear is much more expensive than most other power

00:17:10.220 sources that's why we need a lot more research and development into you know the fourth generation

00:17:15.920 nuclear power plants so for instance bill gates and many others are spending lots of resources

00:17:20.560 to get that next generation that's going to be safer cheaper and also much more uh dependable

00:17:27.020 if we can do that that'd be amazing but again this is just one of the many ways that

00:17:33.220 we could fix climate you know innovation fundamentally is going to be the way that we will fix this

00:17:38.220 problem like basically every other problem yeah exactly and when i look at the nuclear situation

00:17:45.620 it's too expensive i don't know if you've uh dug into the the details of that enough to answer this

00:17:51.140 question but the the things that are stopping us is number one it's hard to iterate if you if you try

00:17:57.460 something it's really expensive to build a second nuclear energy plant and see if the second one is better

00:18:02.980 than the first one so it's not like building an iphone where you can just do it in the lab until

00:18:06.960 you get it right so that's one problem the other problem is that we don't standardize the big ones

00:18:12.760 so we've got multiple models and if you just built the same damn thing one after another even using

00:18:19.400 current generation three technology before you even get to the super safer safer stuff of generation four

00:18:25.960 could we do generation three let's call it current technology which has had uh zero deaths

00:18:34.340 historically is that true zero deaths from it's a very very low death yeah i think it's zero actually

00:18:41.240 if depending on how you count it and um are those the two problems you see iteration i guess uh government

00:18:50.020 regulation and how long that takes but iteration and standardization are those the two things that

00:18:55.420 will change the economics my understanding again from from nuclear technology is that that's really

00:19:01.600 what's been lacking we've been building masterworks uh each one of them instead of actually building

00:19:07.180 just a long stream of them and and indeed that is one of the points that they're trying to do with

00:19:12.320 fourth generation to say if we can standardize this and basically build it like uh uh uh uh uh a uh

00:19:20.500 what do you say a factory of uh uh a 4t sort of assembly plant sorry that was what i was looking for

00:19:28.300 an assembly plant where we just churn out all of these and you just assemble them like lego uh lego on

00:19:34.100 on on the spot and then you run it that will be enormously much cheaper but again it requires a lot of

00:19:41.480 research and development because we're not there you know when you look at the new power plants that

00:19:45.780 are nuclear power plants that build around the world they end up being fantastically expensive and

00:19:51.520 one of the reasons as you just pointed out is because there's all this regulation and i just find

00:19:56.860 it's going to be very hard to imagine that that regulation will go away yeah and the secondary problem

00:20:02.080 i understand is that if the nuclear power plant is are these one-offs then you don't have something that

00:20:08.640 you can export to other countries and if you're not the uh let's say the big brother of the smaller

00:20:14.760 nuclear program in the smaller country then somebody else is going to be and that could be china or china

00:20:20.980 or russia so you so simply by not having a robust nuclear energy program in this country we're giving up

00:20:28.420 uh we're giving up influence over a lot of the planet but worse when you go to space it's going to be

00:20:35.840 nuclear power and if you don't own space you might as well just give up because whoever owns space owns

00:20:41.360 the planet that's the end of it that's that's my opinion uh yeah no but i i think i think the

00:20:49.260 fundamental point here and the insight is to recognize that unless we get cheap green energy

00:20:55.260 we're just not going to switch over because you're not going to convince most people around the planet to

00:21:00.080 say all right i'll get the same power slightly less effectively slightly less dependably and much

00:21:06.220 much more expensively that's just not a selling point except for you know a few percent for people

00:21:12.100 who are very very engaged in climate and so the reality is we need to invest a lot more into green

00:21:17.720 energy research and development to do that and actually you know to his credit that is part of

00:21:23.160 biden's plan so you know at least there's a lot of things in biden's plan a lot of them i i think are

00:21:28.000 going to be a waste of money but that actually turns out to be a really good idea yeah um and

00:21:33.960 there's also a weird thing that uh i can't get over which is the people who are most concerned about

00:21:39.960 climate change you know they tend to be focused on the political left i don't think that they

00:21:46.100 understand how racist it is because that's their other biggest issue to let's reduce racism but if you

00:21:52.900 say to the developing countries you can't use what we used to get here because it's too polluting

00:21:58.560 then are you basically just telling all the brown people that they can't have what white people have

00:22:04.160 now it's like oh no no we got here this way by using you know oil and coal but you can't do that

00:22:10.780 you're gonna have to wait why don't you just wait and we'll find something clean for you

00:22:15.800 we don't know how long it'll take but until then you'll have to starve would you mind waiting

00:22:20.540 it's the most freaking racist thing you've ever heard there's nothing there's no black lives matter 1.00

00:22:28.140 thing there's no i mean this is this is on a level literally with slavery in terms of uh how

00:22:36.440 prejudicial it is against people of other colors i mean it's it's massively destructive and yet the same 0.87

00:22:45.020 group are in favor of both of those things and we think this all the time you know we're basically

00:22:49.640 telling poor countries no you can't have uh coal power because it is going to make coal more worse

00:22:55.480 which is true but of course that coal power is ultimately going to make that country much much

00:23:00.480 richer so we work together with bangladesh government uh to look what would it take to put in

00:23:06.220 extra coal power plants it would dramatically increase life quality in bangladesh it would make the average

00:23:13.220 person in bangladesh that's 16 percent richer yeah and just yeah create global water problems but

00:23:22.180 just to give you a sense of proportion for every hundred dollars you produce for bangladesh you create

00:23:29.140 20 cents of climate problems yeah we're we're having a little audio problems again

00:23:36.500 so let me let me uh just uh do one more topic here and then we'll we'll let you get to the rest of

00:23:43.760 your day i'm sure uh with a new book out you've got a lot to do this week my guessing um so i'm

00:23:51.660 really interested in the uh the super storm and the natural disaster story where every time there's a

00:23:58.320 hurricane somebody on television will tell us that climate change is is what caused that darn hurricane

00:24:04.140 what's the more reasonable rational view of the big storms and natural national or natural disasters

00:24:12.420 so we're certainly not seeing more storms hitting the u.s actually if you look at landfalling hurricanes

00:24:19.820 and strong landfalling hurricanes they've slightly declined over the last 120 years for the u.s but in

00:24:27.380 general much much more importantly is that many more people live much closer to harm's way with much

00:24:34.960 more stuff so fundamentally the reason why you see dramatic impacts of hurricanes now is because

00:24:41.040 there's many more people you know look at florida coastal counties florida's popular coastal population

00:24:46.720 has increased over the last 120 years a 67 fold whereas the u.s population has only increased fourfold

00:24:54.640 so clearly they also have much more expensive homes so clearly you're going to get a lot more damage

00:25:00.440 and again if you want to help these people the way to do so is by getting better building code

00:25:07.400 and also by saying something you're going to get wiped out every five or one year

00:25:13.780 yeah yeah and you know i i always look at that situation and i ask myself who is it that lives on the

00:25:23.120 beach because it's not the poor people right uh no in the united states i mean it must be different

00:25:29.880 in other places but in the united states it feels like there's a pretty strong correlation between

00:25:35.020 being rich and being able to have a house on the beach and if i were to ask if i were to say what

00:25:40.280 would be the best thing for the economy of the united states i'm just joking here but just to make a

00:25:45.660 point the best thing for the economy of the united states would be for a big storm to come by

00:25:50.760 about every three years knock down all the rich houses and give the poor people not poor people

00:25:56.200 but the middle class people who do construction more work because because the rich people have

00:26:02.260 insurance insurance is priced to pay for itself the rich people live in their other house while the

00:26:07.840 you know the beach house is being repaired i mean you you could imagine that it would be a plus

00:26:12.580 to wipe out rich people's houses every few years just so people have enough to do to rebuild them

00:26:17.840 uh i'm just kidding on that but yeah it would certainly teach them to be better at producing

00:26:23.660 their houses well i mean and one of the big problems of course is that we're subsidizing

00:26:27.900 rich people because we're subsidizing much of their insurance uh so we should definitely not be doing

00:26:34.120 that and that of course would get fewer people to build close to harm's way right yeah subsidizing

00:26:39.600 people to build that that's just crazy uh all right so what is it that i uh i'll give you the

00:26:46.320 question that every author hates but uh since you're toward the beginning of your book tour

00:26:52.660 i'll get you ready for it okay so this would just be practice the worst question everybody wants to

00:26:58.580 hear as an author what is it i forgot to ask you in other words it's just a chance to mention

00:27:05.240 something that maybe you wanted to mention that sure so so i think i think the the rest of the book

00:27:11.160 really is about two things it's first of all talking about all the things that haven't worked so

00:27:16.500 you know we we promised the paris agreement uh it's going to cost one to two trillion dollars a year

00:27:22.780 and it'll do almost nothing to actually fixing climate change we're telling

00:27:27.700 all right we're losing you a little bit bjorn we're losing the audio a little bit um i think

00:27:42.660 we got the gist of that though uh would you mind if we uh if we end now uh just because the audio is

00:27:48.240 kind of sketchy i know sorry about that i don't know i'm not certain i can hear you perfectly oh

00:27:56.480 okay now you're you're cutting a little bit in now i'll make sure everybody knows uh your book i'm

00:28:01.340 holding it up i'll tweet about you and i thank you very very much for uh for coming on this you're

00:28:07.360 exactly the kind of author that my audience likes to hear from so thank you very much and good luck with

00:28:12.780 the book hey thank you very much scott all right take care everyone all right bjorn is one of my

00:28:20.580 favorite uh public figures has been for years because he he is one of the few people who look

00:28:28.640 at the costs and the benefits and know how to do it it's uh it's refreshing all right a few other

00:28:34.740 things um yesterday i was uh uh trying to change a light bulb and i ended up tweeting about it

00:28:44.760 because it was so hard it was one of those compact fluorescents and in in theory you just pull it out

00:28:50.720 straight and push it in straight but it didn't work and so i'd spent over a month trying to change

00:28:56.280 one light bulb i'd ordered different bulbs thinking maybe i had the wrong one i tried everything

00:29:02.000 and uh the funniest part about it was listening to the other people's comments because when i tweeted

00:29:08.420 it you know people waded with their comments but the funny part was how many people have thrown away

00:29:14.040 perfectly good lamps and and light fixtures just change the light fixture because they couldn't figure

00:29:20.260 out how to change the light bulb now if you've never tried to change a compact fluorescent light bulb

00:29:27.800 you don't know how hard it is and again this is let me let me explain this is the entire process

00:29:34.080 here's a hole here's the light bulb push it straight in if you want to take it out pull it straight out

00:29:42.920 and and i spent a month not being able to do it even trying that exact thing and apparently other people

00:29:52.100 have just thrown away their lamps changed their fixtures hired a handyman to just change the entire

00:29:57.900 light fixture because they couldn't change the light bulb and here's the point of this this was not just

00:30:03.440 to complain about my uh personal inability to do things the law the larger point is this and i'm going

00:30:10.740 to hit this a lot who tested that this is a gigantic national standard who tested that how many times did they

00:30:20.980 have uh an average person come in and say hey can you see if you can change this bulb and then watch

00:30:28.400 them now if you try to remove a compact fluorescent you'll find that it breaks in your hand about half

00:30:36.020 of the time it breaks the glass part just breaks off in your hand when you're trying to just change

00:30:41.220 the bulb uh nobody tested that and so i submit to you that we have a gigantic problem in this country

00:30:51.640 in the world of products that were never tested and yet are now standard in all of our homes never tested

00:30:58.160 um have you heard a lot about uh uh mary trump's book no you know mary trump the niece of trump who wrote

00:31:09.880 anti anti anti donald trump book and apparently the worst thing that uh that came out of this because

00:31:17.800 it's the one that they pull from the book is that she alleges that uh donald trump paid someone to take

00:31:24.840 his sats that's it now first of all i doubt it's true i mean anything's possible it wouldn't change my

00:31:34.220 opinion of anything because i have that 20 year rule i just don't care what people did when they were 18

00:31:39.860 do you care what anybody did when they were 18 would you would you say we've got to impeach this

00:31:46.220 president because when he was 18 he did something clever that worked out well

00:31:50.420 i'm sure it wasn't you know if it happened and by the way i would say the odds of it being true are

00:31:58.080 not really that high but even if it is true that's it that's the best you have you're an insider you've

00:32:06.100 got all this access to the family and the best you have is that when he was 18 he did something that any

00:32:11.940 18 year old would have done if they could have gotten away with it ah that's pretty empty

00:32:18.340 apparently kanye is out he's out of the race but here's what's interesting

00:32:23.860 um he actually did try to get on the balance

00:32:27.860 so there is uh documented evidence that he put real money into trying to get on the balance so he

00:32:34.020 was serious uh some of you wondered if he was serious but i think that's been answered he was

00:32:40.160 serious now what do you make of the fact that he was in the race for you know less than two weeks

00:32:46.340 do you say to yourself well that proves he's a flake and he was never really that serious and

00:32:53.080 what kind of a president is he would he be if he didn't even plan the the you know getting

00:32:59.540 nominated and all that the way it should be and here's my answer to that he played it perfectly

00:33:06.220 i think kanye played it perfectly because here's what i always say there's nothing better

00:33:15.240 for improving your odds of becoming president than having run in the past

00:33:20.740 right uh trump had sort of flirted with running in the past and therefore because every time there

00:33:28.540 was an election for several elections before the time he actually got elected trump's name was always

00:33:34.580 in the top 10 because he put it there trump put his name in the top 10 for every future election

00:33:43.160 by simply making noise but not going very far in initial attempts or initial flirtations with running

00:33:50.560 initial talking about running etc kanye is using the same play you know people who have lost

00:33:58.180 elections then went on to win were you know quite a few right nixon reagan trump himself um it's fairly

00:34:06.460 common biden is has run before and that has a lot to do with why he's uh where he is although being

00:34:13.640 vice president was more of it and i would say that kanye's play of reminding us of kanye for president

00:34:22.180 letting us wrestle with the idea for a little while and then waiting until 2024 was exactly exactly

00:34:29.860 the right play exactly the right play because he didn't really have a chance of winning and everybody

00:34:36.620 would have been mad at him if he if he changed the election result which he would have it probably

00:34:41.640 would have caused uh trump to win sorry my cat's in the way so i don't think he could have played

00:34:48.300 that better honestly the get in and get out in 2020 if i could have advised him you know if and i

00:34:57.060 didn't by the way but if i could have advised him on the best way to play this i would have said this

00:35:02.140 i would have said flirt with it get in there get some noise but really you're getting ready for 2024

00:35:07.640 perfect um i am entering a voluntary coronavirus quarantine starting today i believe um which is

00:35:19.080 not because i have coronavirus as far as i know uh i do have a test scheduled but it's not because i may

00:35:26.820 or may not have coronavirus it's because i have some minor surgery scheduled so the current process in

00:35:33.360 case you didn't know for getting a surgery in this environment and by the way i expect the surgery

00:35:38.720 to get canceled it's in two weeks and i expect it to get canceled because of capacity but at the moment

00:35:46.080 it's scheduled and that means that i have to quarantine for two weeks and that means no christina

00:35:52.960 right i mean i'm talking about the serious kind of quarantine so that starts today i might get a little

00:35:58.600 squirrely uh and i might do some evening podcasts just because i'll be here all alone for two weeks

00:36:04.620 now the process is they'd like you to quarantine yourself for two weeks before surgery but one week

00:36:12.020 before surgery i'll have the actual test that takes about two days to get a result so something like

00:36:18.200 you know five days before surgery i'll have uh presumably a negative test and then i will uh go into

00:36:26.200 by surgery i think they test again just before you go into surgery but i'm not sure all right uh

00:36:33.400 there's a lot else going on today um i i always talk about stefan collinson who's an opinion person for

00:36:43.840 cnn uh and he i i start to think of him as triumph the insult dog so triumph the insult dog uh was on

00:36:55.580 uh uh what's his name uh tall redheaded guy uh uh you know you know the show you know the thing

00:37:04.980 oh my god i just turned into joe biden you know the thing uh tall redhead night show uh give me the 1.00

00:37:16.400 name why the hell am i blanking on his name you know this all right um and he writes that this is a

00:37:27.700 president who has tremendously failed to beat back the virus and has long since stopped trying to lead

00:37:34.100 the country out of the darkness he's saying that the president has failed to beat back the virus

00:37:40.480 and he stopped trying to lead the country out of the darkness now here's my question for cnn because

00:37:47.400 i have a lot of a lot of commentary about the president doing everything wrong here's my question

00:37:52.800 uh yeah conan o'brien thank you okay i don't feel bad that i can't remember a person named conan

00:38:00.000 because it's not exactly bob all right um and here's my question for cnn what is it that the

00:38:11.320 president should have done differently who whoever asked that question if the president is doing

00:38:18.660 everything wrong and as triumph the insult dog stephen collinson says um that he's he's he's stopped

00:38:27.860 trying to lead us out of the darkness and he's failed to beat back the virus what exactly should

00:38:33.120 he have done differently because all of the decisions about closing and opening are local

00:38:38.600 right uh the president i think did all the things that a president could do he closed international

00:38:46.360 travel from china and europe so those are things the president can do he made sure that uh we had

00:38:53.660 enough ventilators something a president could do and he you know uh did i think a good job or the

00:39:02.260 country did or somebody did in getting the ppe and the protective stuff uh although we may be running

00:39:08.240 out soon because of the new stuff what exactly is it that the president should have been doing

00:39:13.960 should he have followed the expert's advice well if he'd followed the expert's advice he wouldn't

00:39:21.040 have done the things that were right right he wouldn't have taken the virus seriously he wouldn't

00:39:27.180 have closed travel from china he wouldn't have done those things if he'd listened to the experts

00:39:32.800 and then what about the mask situation well that was complicated because there was a you know there

00:39:40.360 was an effort to save the masks for the health care professionals which i agree with i don't know if

00:39:46.700 that was the best way to do it but i'm not going to criticize i'm not going to criticize fauci uh or

00:39:52.680 others for lying about masks uh if the purpose was it was just the only way to protect them for the

00:39:59.860 health care people and i don't know another way if you said to me no scott the obvious way to do that

00:40:06.020 would be tell the public the truth and just ask them not to hoard these supplies well in the real world

00:40:12.400 that doesn't work in a pandemic people are going to hoard you can ask them not to hoard oh but people

00:40:17.980 are going to hoard so if you can tell them they don't need to hoard there's no purpose to it maybe

00:40:24.780 it's a better play so did fauci and other experts the surgeon general for example did they intentionally

00:40:33.480 lie to us about the value of masks i don't know if all of them did some of them might have believed the

00:40:39.680 other experts and just parroted them but if they did lie to us but the purpose of it was for our own good

00:40:47.060 i'm actually okay with that i don't know if you are but i do not mind my leaders lying to me under the

00:40:55.760 very unique circumstances that is in my best interest now usually that's not the case so you don't want

00:41:05.100 lying to be approved i just don't know that there are too many cases like this one where unfortunately

00:41:12.620 lying was maybe the only only good play for the benefit of the country i hate it i mean you could

00:41:19.120 be you could hate it but if you don't have a better idea just keep that in mind all right

00:41:25.440 and was there some expert who knew all the right answers and didn't tell the president

00:41:31.800 was there was there some smart thing that smart experts knew that if they'd only told the president

00:41:40.360 that he would have maybe implemented i haven't heard of any have you so when they say the president

00:41:48.480 is failing don't you have to ask yourself at what are not other countries also having problems

00:41:56.660 and is the president to blame for what happened with nursing homes not really now where you could

00:42:04.560 have room for disagreement would be the uh the president uh advocating going back to school

00:42:12.020 at the same time that um others would say that's a bad idea because it will increase infections i am

00:42:21.040 solidly on the president's side on going back to school but here's the thing we live in a world where

00:42:28.740 you're not allowed to tell the truth in public but i can watch this i'm going to tell the truth in public

00:42:35.980 ask me and ask yourself if you've ever heard this going back to school will kill teachers and it will

00:42:43.080 kill kids i'm in favor of it okay that's the first honest opinion you've ever heard in public

00:42:52.140 going back to school will kill teachers some of them will kill uh some students probably not too many

00:43:02.600 as a percentage will spread the infection will kill grandma when the kid comes home all of that's 1.00

00:43:09.840 going to happen and it's almost certainly better than the alternatives because we don't have a

00:43:15.720 better alternative we just don't so i think our best play is to do the best we can of protecting the

00:43:24.180 teachers etc here's my suggestion i understand that teachers are far less enthusiastic about opening

00:43:32.560 schools than parents are big surprise right who is surprised that the teachers many of them older

00:43:39.780 many of them susceptible who is surprised that they wouldn't want to go to work in a crowd

00:43:45.300 you know even with some social distancing its kids are not going to be that disciplined uh who

00:43:52.680 would be surprised the teacher doesn't want to go back to that environment you shouldn't be too

00:43:57.880 surprised all right and i don't think that we should abuse one professional class teachers who did not

00:44:06.740 sign up for danger duty all right people who decided to be teachers did not wake up one day and say i

00:44:13.620 think i'd like to be on the front line of a dangerous situation no no i have a different opinion about the

00:44:21.060 military and about health care professionals because they did sign up for that they did say i am going to

00:44:28.260 intentionally put myself into infectious and or dangerous situations this is the career i choose

00:44:34.340 there's there's a bigger benefit i take the risk if that's what we were talking about i'd say all

00:44:40.420 right all right you know we'll send the kids back to school and you've signed up for it but teachers

00:44:46.980 did not sign up for that risk it is completely unreasonable completely unfair for the rest of the

00:44:54.420 public to try to force them back to work into a situation that at least half of them think is too

00:44:59.940 dangerous given the costs and the benefits here's what i would suggest as a workaround you ready

00:45:08.980 the benefit of a teacher in the room as opposed to remote teaching is that it's it's just a first

00:45:16.180 of all it's a way to get the kids out of the house so the parents can go to work so there's certainly a

00:45:22.580 child you know watching process that you you need a physical school for secondly you need to hand out

00:45:30.980 things and discipline people and say stop doing that etc here is my hybrid solution that the that the

00:45:40.260 teacher uh only appears remotely if they prefer let's say the older teachers don't want to take the risk

00:45:47.780 they can prefer they can appear on a television remotely to their class but you would have a much

00:45:55.140 younger person let's say a college age type person who is the in-class um manager if you will

00:46:05.300 so let's put a name on it because they're not teaching the the young person who is the physical

00:46:10.500 presence and the authority in the room would simply be a manager of the situation

00:46:16.980 but the teaching would still come from the teacher who would be in a big old tv screen right in front

00:46:21.940 of the class they could still hear the teacher the teacher could still see the class and anything

00:46:27.460 physical that needed to be done could be done by the younger less risky you know person who's sitting

00:46:34.980 in now uh or how about let me give you another suggestion let's say you build uh separate

00:46:41.860 entrances and exits and bathrooms for teachers so they have a situation where the teacher is just

00:46:47.380 behind plexiglass the whole time just behind plexiglass and you never actually or physically

00:46:54.740 could touch a teacher you couldn't even get close to them if you wanted to because the teacher's in the

00:46:59.220 front of the class and there's just a big plexiglass thing here they couldn't get there if they wanted to

00:47:04.420 now you don't need plexiglass if you have enough space from the first row of desks

00:47:10.260 to the teacher i mean it could be just a fence so that nobody you know gets close but you could

00:47:16.420 probably figure ways around that one of the things i heard is that it's impossible to open up the

00:47:22.340 schools with social distancing in other words that the desks being six feet apart there's just not

00:47:29.460 enough physical space i would challenge that assumption because i think that in an emergency

00:47:35.540 situation you would use all of the space you might you might uh you know not use the gym for gym class

00:47:43.060 because maybe it's too dangerous to have an inside gym class anyway so you might use some of the the gym

00:47:48.420 floor you might use some of the cafeteria floor and while it's warm you make people eat outdoors you

00:47:54.420 probably want to do that anyway so probably you could get pretty close now some students might

00:48:01.700 want to still stay home and they could just tune in uh digitally just like anybody else

00:48:09.380 so i think that the president's instinct to push toward reopening is absolutely correct if you take all

00:48:17.060 the pluses and minuses of the economy etc into consideration but you have to protect the teachers

00:48:24.180 you have to protect the teachers that is completely unreasonable to send them back into this

00:48:31.380 virus petri dish i do not support that so if we don't have a solution that the teachers are okay

00:48:37.620 with i say don't do it keep the kids home because you can try harder all right if if your district

00:48:44.660 hasn't figured out a way to keep the teachers safe they should boycott or strike or something and i would

00:48:52.580 be on their side because we do have enough ways to keep them safe if we're not using it then they

00:48:59.300 should not go to work that's my opinion but we do want to solve that all right um so

00:49:10.500 so avanka trump is not getting enough attention in my opinion for her alternative career path effort 1.00

00:49:17.060 so she's working on uh a deal i don't know all the details but i think she's working with big

00:49:21.860 corporations to try to train and hire people who do not have college degrees so that you could say

00:49:28.820 well i i want to learn this specialty i don't need an english degree to do this job but if this corporation

00:49:35.380 will teach me that's a good solution i think that's one of the best things happening in the country right

00:49:41.300 now in terms of it makes sense on every level and it's just so obviously good for you know minority

00:49:47.700 people it's obviously good for low-income people it's obviously good for anybody who doesn't want a

00:49:53.220 college debt this is just one of the best things that's happening in the country and it gets this

00:49:58.340 little bit of coverage and then people mock it because it's avanka right i mean it's it's a crazy world

00:50:06.900 when the best things are ignored um joe biden had one of the most classic uh

00:50:17.140 gaffes i've ever heard and this one he didn't even stop to correct it and he he said in a sentence we

00:50:24.820 have to get our kids back to school and then he said in the same sentence we have to get our kids to

00:50:31.060 market swiftly we have to get our kids to market swiftly and he didn't even stop to correct it he

00:50:39.140 just went on what what are you kidding um are you kidding um so just add that to the list now again

00:50:53.300 i remind you that the hilarious thing to me is watching democrats act like there's nothing wrong

00:50:59.380 with biden i don't see it yeah yeah he misspeaks now then but nothing wrong uh of course the larger

00:51:06.580 context is the wayfair rumors are you aware of those all right the most ridiculous fake news

00:51:15.140 or fake i guess it's a rumor it's not news that the actual news people are not covering this because

00:51:21.220 it's not true uh which is strange for the news business usually they cover things whether they're true

00:51:27.140 or not but in this case uh i would agree with them not covering it and the the rumor on the internet

00:51:33.780 is that the the big company wayfair that sells furniture is a gigantic entity um has been secretly

00:51:41.540 using their the pages of their website to sell children instead of products okay i could stop there

00:51:50.260 and you'd say okay that doesn't sound true and you'd be right because wayfair is not really selling

00:51:57.300 children but people have these fake pages and they've got their argument because it uses children's

00:52:03.620 names on the products and has a price that doesn't make sense and i don't know if they're photoshopped or

00:52:09.380 mistakes or what but what i can tell you with complete confidence wayfair is not selling children

00:52:17.540 they're not selling your children but in the context of these wayfair rumors which are all

00:52:24.020 over the internet and again i say it wayfair isn't doing anything none of none of that's true it's

00:52:29.700 ridiculous all right now if i'm wrong on this you should never listen to me again

00:52:35.700 okay if i'm wrong about this wayfair thing being ridiculously stupid and not true if it turns out

00:52:41.780 i'm wrong never listen to me again that's your deal you have permission to never listen to me again

00:52:49.860 but i'm pretty confident about that one i've decided that uh non-fiction writers are the most dangerous

00:52:57.940 people in the world uh because they don't know what they don't know but they think they know a lot

00:53:05.940 and so the more i see writers writing stuff and they don't know what they're talking about

00:53:13.540 they are seriously leading the world in the wrong place if you saw my bjorn lomborg uh conversation

00:53:20.740 just now you know that the information that you and i receive about climate change is from writers

00:53:28.660 mostly because i don't talk to scientists too much i just read what is written so really i'm reading

00:53:35.620 the opinion and the framing from a writer and it's so dangerously bad and uh you know unable to look

00:53:45.300 at costs and benefits and incapable of analyzing anything i want to give you an example of that

00:53:53.060 um well yeah okay i got a good example that coming up uh it's in a bloomberg opinion piece there's a

00:54:02.660 thread on it today that i tweeted but let listen to this one um this one sentence by an actual

00:54:11.540 professional writer who gets paid by bloomberg or actually i don't know if it's an opinion piece

00:54:17.300 do they get paid i don't know their business model but it's an opinion piece in bloomberg

00:54:21.940 and it said this and it was the this is one comment in a larger piece

00:54:26.180 about um all the the rich people complaining about cancel culture so this is a piece in favor of cancel

00:54:34.660 culture so we could stop right there you know you don't even need to know what the writer said if they're

00:54:41.860 writing in favor of cancel culture maybe you shouldn't listen to them but let me let me read this ridiculous

00:54:50.180 sentence quote could it be that increasingly diverse voices and rich conversations are a threat to their

00:54:58.740 free speech uh and she's talking about the rich people who wrote the uh there was some 30 some people

00:55:05.940 who signed a document against cancel culture so that's the context could it be that increasingly

00:55:11.940 diverse voices and rich conversations are a threat to their free speech or more accurately

00:55:18.820 the prerogative the prerogative i hate that word the prerogative of famous and powerful people

00:55:26.980 to speak at length on all sorts of things without interruption or disagreement so this writer is asking

00:55:34.740 the question if there's really a problem with cancel culture is there really is this really a bad

00:55:41.300 thing all you rich famous writers or are you just complaining about it to get more space for your

00:55:48.180 own ridiculous comments without any counter comments now i'm not even going to tell you what's wrong 0.71

00:55:55.220 with this opinion because it's so stupid i don't need to write i'm pretty sure that the people railing 0.58

00:56:01.220 against cancel culture do not have a secret agenda of silencing the rich and diverse voices and

00:56:10.340 conversations i'm pretty sure that zero people have ever had that thought in their head zero zero people

00:56:18.180 on the whole planet seven billion plus people not one person has ever had the thought because

00:56:25.300 it's a stupid one that this writer has assigned it to them could it be that they don't like diverse

00:56:33.380 voices and rich conversations uh no it could not be that and this is someone who's paid bloomberg

00:56:42.580 actually prints this stuff amazing amazing speaking of writers writer uh barry weiss barry b-a-r-i a woman's name

00:56:54.980 in this case barry was uh until recently she just quit a staff writer and editor for the new york times

00:57:00.900 and she was she describes herself as a centrist and in the world of new york times a centrist means

00:57:10.740 far right uh that's that's my own framing not anything that anybody else said and although she

00:57:18.100 does call herself a centrist but that means that she has some i would say as a centrist would be

00:57:24.100 somebody who has a little bit of appreciation or empathy for the opinions on the right may not share

00:57:31.060 them all but would have a little bit more appreciation for them but also for the left

00:57:36.740 without necessarily agreeing with them all so that's my understanding of a centrist somebody's

00:57:42.340 a little bit open to both sides but doesn't necessarily agree with either side on all things

00:57:46.900 she she quit because she said uh that it was just an unfriendly place to work and that because she 1.00

00:57:55.300 was not as left as the other people i'm paraphrasing this is not her words that she was basically it was

00:58:01.460 just such a toxic environment that she just had to get out of there but here's one of her one of her uh

00:58:07.300 comments in a lengthy uh resignation letter which is worth reading is that she said twitter is not on the

00:58:14.420 masthead of the new york times but twitter has become its ultimate editor weiss said uh and

00:58:24.100 she says she goes on stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences

00:58:30.340 rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions

00:58:36.660 and she says i was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first

00:58:40.580 rough draft of history now history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a

00:58:47.540 predetermined narrative well barry the first thing you got wrong is to assume that history was ever

00:58:54.980 objectively written by anybody history is not objective history is written by the winners and

00:59:03.540 you know whoever gets to write about it so she was wrong on that but uh i love this framing of the

00:59:12.900 in this case the new york times the most let's say prestigious of all news organizations we might say

00:59:20.260 that even they according to this insider who just quit are basically just parroting twitter

00:59:27.460 now who is the first person who told you that influential people on social media are actually

00:59:36.260 the new government i did right so social media has effectively become the new government because

00:59:44.660 the media has to parent social media i don't know if they have to but their business model sort of

00:59:50.900 influences in that direction and and once the social media and the media have you know formed an opinion

00:59:59.860 the politicians fall in line so the politicians you know they may uh suggest a new idea but that is

01:00:07.700 sort of up to social media and the public and then the and then the uh regular media to support it or not

01:00:14.820 and then the politicians know what freedom they have to either go with it or not and of course when i

01:00:20.740 say the public supports it or not i mean their side so there are only things in our world that

01:00:26.580 are supported by the left and only things supported by the right and the few things in the middle we

01:00:31.380 don't hear much about because it's not fun all right here's some more cancellations uh viacom cbs

01:00:39.860 decided to can uh what's his name nick cannon because they allege he made anti-semitic comments in his

01:00:49.140 podcast and here's the funny thing about it uh when i read the comments that he made

01:00:57.620 i at least based i didn't hear the details maybe it's worse if you hear the the full thing but just the

01:01:03.540 surface reporting of the things he said i don't know it just sounded like an opinion to me

01:01:09.780 it did not sound like he was uh intentionally doing anything anti-semitic and indeed he considers

01:01:18.500 himself semitic in other words and even he said this how can i be anti-semitic when the whole thing

01:01:24.980 i was saying was that i'm semitic so you can't be anti yourself and i thought well okay you could argue

01:01:33.140 whether he's semitic or not but you can't argue the point that if he includes himself in the in the group

01:01:38.740 that he's criticizing then it's more like criticizing your own group it's a weird hybrid

01:01:46.260 because who is it that gets to say that nick cannon is or is not semitic and you know he's

01:01:53.060 got some story about black people being the real semitic people i don't know if it's true or false

01:01:58.180 but whether it's true or false or has any historical backing i have no opinion i don't

01:02:03.380 care doesn't matter doesn't sound right doesn't sound right right i mean it doesn't sound right

01:02:10.900 but that doesn't mean it's not right i just don't have any knowledge or information to argue it one way

01:02:15.540 or the other but because he did not apologize he got canned and i ask you should you apologize

01:02:23.300 for insulting your own group as you see it

01:02:30.420 somebody says it was anti-white that's what it was could be i didn't see the details did not see

01:02:36.260 the details and there was something about the the rothschild in there that you know makes your eyebrow

01:02:41.380 go up what what do you say about the rothschild because there might be a little conspiracy theory in

01:02:47.300 there so i don't know what he said but i just note that that happened and he didn't apologize

01:02:53.940 and i'm not sure that you should apologize if it's your actual opinion do you apologize

01:03:00.500 if it's your opinion and you still hold it because that doesn't seem like an apology situation

01:03:06.580 that seems like i just have an opinion and somebody didn't like it so they fired me

01:03:10.500 i don't know i'm not supporting his opinion and i'm not attacking it uh it's just a weird hybrid

01:03:19.220 that he did not have bad intentions whatsoever i think i think can't tell what people are thinking

01:03:26.980 really but it looked like that all right um here's something i did that hasn't gotten me canceled and i

01:03:35.140 think that that is hilarious uh i i tweeted this yesterday and wait will you see how much attention

01:03:42.900 it got i tweeted this i said have you ever seen an engineer scientist or statistician argue that police

01:03:50.420 are killing black citizens at an alarming rate ask yourself why now do you see what i did there

01:03:58.820 uh let me explain it because i think you see the general idea but there's a little bit more to it

01:04:03.940 the natural frame for our conversations about big stuff and the black lives matter stuff is big 0.89

01:04:11.540 stuff our natural frame is either the left versus the right or maybe black versus white or you know

01:04:20.340 black versus non-black but our our natural inclination is to just put things in this this group versus that 0.89

01:04:27.860 group which is terribly unproductive and also makes you stupid because you're not really

01:04:33.860 using reason you're just saying well what team am i on so i guess i support the team

01:04:38.500 but what i did was reframe that instead of thinking of as black versus non-black or left versus right

01:04:45.060 how about people who know how to look at data versus people who don't

01:04:51.140 how about that that's my frame people who are trained to understand data and to analyze it versus

01:04:58.900 people who don't and so i put this on here and you would think that i would get canceled immediately

01:05:04.340 for this but uh unlike nick cannon i think people are afraid of me meaning afraid to give attention to

01:05:14.020 this point of view because you know if you gave attention to the point of view that the black lives matter

01:05:23.940 the the primary trigger the the primary trigger not the only topic they have they have general topics

01:05:29.620 about systemic racism etc but the trigger the primary thing that the the protests have been about the

01:05:37.620 george floyd situation is complete bullshit it's complete bullshit and i gave myself enough freedom by 0.92

01:05:47.860 setting the groundwork in the things that i've done up to this point that i might be the only

01:05:53.060 person in the world who can say that out loud do you know anybody else who's saying this that the

01:05:59.300 black lives matter uh the trigger of it i'm not saying racism doesn't exist i'm not talking about the

01:06:04.900 the larger questions that's another topic but just the question of police killing black people at a

01:06:12.900 at an oversized alarming amount it just isn't true now when i changed the frame to why is it that you

01:06:20.740 you don't hear any engineers scientists or statisticians uh being on the same side as the black lives matter

01:06:27.700 protest the reason is these are all the groups that know how to look at data

01:06:32.820 and there's a very simple data analysis mistake which caused all these protests and it's this they looked

01:06:40.500 at the percentage of black people killed versus the percentage of white people killed by police

01:06:46.820 and that's just a data analysis error because when you look at the percentage of black people killed

01:06:53.700 by police you're not really looking at police violence against black people what you've done is

01:06:59.940 you've accidentally studied how many black people commit crimes or how many black people live in a

01:07:06.900 neighborhood that's a high crime neighborhood you've accidentally looked at the wrong thing because

01:07:12.180 police are stopping black citizens at a higher rate why well most of it because it's the neighborhood 1.00

01:07:19.700 they live in is higher crime and you know certainly there's it's a separate issue of whether uh too

01:07:27.700 many black people are being stopped and frisked the stop and frisk part is a i think its own topic but

01:07:34.180 the correct way to look at it is in the total number of stops police encounters what percentage of them

01:07:41.140 the black people were stopped were killed versus the percentage of white people killed

01:07:46.660 when they were stopped by police now that would be the correct way to look at the data and when you

01:07:51.300 do there's not much difference in fact white people are killed a little bit more often but not statistically

01:07:57.540 so so the entire protests are built on this weird little lie that can only be supported so long as you

01:08:07.380 never have in the news an engineer a statistician an economist uh or what's the third thing a scientist

01:08:18.180 somebody who actually knows how to look at data you will never see somebody who knows how to look at data

01:08:26.660 talk about this data because it would ruin the whole thing as soon as as soon as you talked about

01:08:32.820 data now what that means and if you take this to the larger thing compare the issue of uh black people

01:08:40.580 being killed by police which i think we'd all agree we want less of it right so if there's anything we

01:08:46.180 can do to make less of that i'm all on board all right i'm completely on board with looking at new ways to

01:08:52.820 do policing without police i think that's actually a really good uh path to explore but the only way i would

01:09:01.380 do it is by testing it small to make sure it doesn't blow something up right so if if you wanted to

01:09:08.180 replace police and the way that you wanted to do it uh is uh with some alternate methods let's test them

01:09:19.700 totally let's test them see see what happens but do it small see if find out if it works but here's my

01:09:26.500 issue with the black lives matter protests over police killing police killing might be not might

01:09:32.260 be probably is not probably is absolutely is i'm going to go for full certainty on this the smallest

01:09:38.900 problem in the black community it's the smallest problem why are they protesting over their smallest 0.95

01:09:45.380 problem the total number of people killed by police in general it's your smallest problem do you know what's

01:09:52.020 a big problem how about uh health care for black people in general how about that yeah that's a way

01:10:00.260 bigger problem health care for black people in general on a scale of one to ten that's like a ten

01:10:07.860 if you were to say on the scale of one to ten where is number of people killed by the police

01:10:13.700 black people killed by the police during police stops that's a two one or a two

01:10:19.860 on the scale of one to ten just because there's so few people involved how about a good education

01:10:28.180 for black people you know better education especially in the inner cities areas where is

01:10:33.380 that on a scale of one to ten ten ten that is ten and if the scale was higher it would be higher

01:10:43.780 it's not anywhere close to the problem of police killing black people during stops not even close

01:10:51.460 you know that one's a two education is a ten what are the democrats trying to do reduce the ability

01:11:00.340 of black people to get a good education by removing school choice which is literally the only way to fix 1.00

01:11:06.340 nobody even has another idea really it's the only way so the black population that has 1.00

01:11:15.620 by um and i think that the illegitimate press is largely to blame for this imagine a world in which

01:11:22.900 uh there were the protests were happening just the way they're happening now but if you turned on cnn

01:11:29.380 they would say you know this is actually your smallest problem statistically if you're just to

01:11:34.980 look at the numbers this is by far your smallest problem because all of the crime etc is coming

01:11:41.540 from the same one thing you know bad education uh there's there are questions about family structure

01:11:47.380 etc which i don't fully understand what's behind all of that i've got some real questions there uh about

01:11:53.300 you know what is actually exactly behind the number of single parents etc i'd like to know more about

01:11:59.860 that but um anyway if the news accurately reported things in the size that they should be reported

01:12:10.740 the protests wouldn't be happening because every every time they turned on the news they'd be watching

01:12:15.860 their own news source and their own news source would say okay they're working on the smallest

01:12:21.140 problem and ignoring the big ones again and then all the protesters would say well that's not any

01:12:27.060 fun why are we out here working on our smallest problems again uh did you know this was our smallest

01:12:33.860 problem you didn't know either okay but now we know because it's on both the left and the right

01:12:39.860 news sources which is usually more dependable if it's reported both ways so in my opinion the protests

01:12:48.020 and all that come with it including the extra coronavirus if in fact there is any that comes

01:12:53.620 out of it is entirely the illegitimate press's problem when i told you that non-fiction writers are the

01:13:00.500 biggest risk to the country i mean this this is all non-fiction writers who are writing fiction

01:13:09.060 ironically um the the news business is just non-fiction writers that's what they do they write about

01:13:15.940 non-fiction and if they wrote correctly and if they were good at their job in other words if their

01:13:22.180 talent stack included the ability to look at data they would not be putting us in this position do you

01:13:29.460 know what they'd be doing supporting things that would give black people a better education

01:13:35.300 right because that would be the top priority not even close not even close to any of this other stuff

01:13:42.020 all right um we found out recently that uh mark levin you know him from fox news and he's got a radio

01:13:52.580 show i believe and other things and apparently a former wikipedia wikipedia editor and if you know the

01:13:59.700 the model of wikipedia you have all these volunteer editors so for every topic you could have multiple

01:14:06.340 editors who have been sort of approved i guess to be able to change things but the editors can get in

01:14:12.580 battles so somebody could change something then another editor can come in and change it back

01:14:19.460 but they do have rules about what is uh right to change and what is not right to change and one of the

01:14:28.180 rules is if you point to a source then you can keep it in there like you don't want to remove something

01:14:34.020 that has a legitimate source uh but if you put something in there that's a claim without a source

01:14:41.060 then another editor can successfully get rid of that but apparently there was this a huge battle over

01:14:48.420 mark levin's page in which somebody kept filling it with untruths and the other editors would try as

01:14:55.220 hard as they can to scrub it out but i guess it was just like a raging multi-year battle in which

01:15:01.860 somebody continued to put smears on there and other people continued to try to get rid of them

01:15:08.100 i don't know where it ended up i'm not sure if it's back to the smear or back to gone

01:15:14.900 all right um

01:15:18.660 uh oh i accidentally talked about that before all right there's a tweet that says that uh from uh

01:15:25.940 dr uh kolvinder kaur so dr kaur i think i'm pronouncing it right k-a-u-r uh tweeted that there

01:15:37.140 are 53 plus published hydroxychloroquine studies for covid 19 uh showing strong efficacy as a prophylaxis

01:15:46.980 and as treatment in early covid um so that's the claim the claim that there are 53 plus published studies

01:15:56.420 showing that hydroxychloroquine works and that the government is sort of you know blocking it from

01:16:03.380 being used and then on top of that uh dr zelinski who most of you know he was the doctor who is using

01:16:10.100 hydroxychloroquine with all of his patients in new york and claimed a much better much better rate of

01:16:18.580 recovery than other people like much much better so he's one of the leading proponents of hydroxychloroquine

01:16:24.180 now here the first thing the first thing you need to know is in my understanding there is no

01:16:30.340 gold standard test of this drug yet so you can fact check me on that but i don't believe there is

01:16:37.380 any controlled clinical uh you know gold standard study using it as a prophylaxis but there do seem

01:16:46.660 to be studies showing that if you give it to people when they're almost ready to die it doesn't help

01:16:52.100 much so we've seen those uh as someone suggested and i think i have to agree it has the look of

01:17:00.420 intentional failure the studies on hydroxychloroquine look to the untrained eye just an observer looking on

01:17:09.540 like they were designed to fail because from day one the the uh the potential of the drug was always

01:17:17.460 about giving it to you early that was always the claim but what got tested first what got tested

01:17:24.740 first is giving people uh toxic doses more than you would ever give somebody when they were at the

01:17:31.140 end of their life and it was just too late now if you were going to design a study to test the claim

01:17:38.180 that a drug given early as a as a preventative prophylaxis or at least to catch things early

01:17:44.340 if you were going to test that claim would you do it by a toxic dose given to people who are near death

01:17:53.060 you wouldn't but suppose you were a big drug company and you wanted to make sure that people

01:17:57.940 did not think hydroxychloroquine would work what would what kind of study would you fund

01:18:03.940 if you wanted the public to think hydroxychloroquine which is cheap and widely available is not the way

01:18:11.220 to go well if i were a drug company i would immediately fund a trial that i knew wouldn't work

01:18:19.540 and it would look exactly like the trials that we saw now this is not uh i'm not claiming

01:18:26.100 that's what happened i don't have any information that would suggest that that happened but i'm saying

01:18:31.060 that if you're looking at it from the outside and you're even a little bit objective it looks like

01:18:36.660 doesn't mean it happened looks like it was designed to get you the wrong result i know what i know what

01:18:44.260 a trial would look like if somebody's trying to get an accurate good useful result and it's the opposite of

01:18:51.140 that right yeah i'm seeing in the comments that you say it sounds like that's exactly what happened we can't

01:18:59.060 say that's what happened but we can say it looks exactly like it so but i want to make a comment on

01:19:07.300 zelinski as well he tweeted out recently uh some data showing the different outcomes the death rates

01:19:15.620 for various countries and he had them sorted by whether they use hydroxychloroquine early or they

01:19:21.780 didn't now at the bottom of the list was the united states where it is not commonly used early it's only

01:19:28.660 used too late and the death rate was very high and then the one at the top of the list they were using

01:19:34.900 it early and the death rate was very very low compared to the united states not even close i mean way way

01:19:40.820 difference and then as you go down the list you get down to countries that also use hydroxychloroquine

01:19:48.740 early they also have way lower death rate than the united states so so far that's consistent right so all the

01:19:57.380 people with hydroxychloroquine are having good results according to this one chart and the united

01:20:03.380 states isn't it's getting bad results but here's the problem if you look at the best people using

01:20:10.420 hydroxychloroquine compared to the ones who are getting the worst results but are also using it in

01:20:16.980 the same way early there's a gigantic difference it's like a 10 times difference so even the even the

01:20:24.180 countries that reportedly are using it early there's something like a 10 times difference in their

01:20:30.100 outcomes what does that tell you it tells me it's not the hydroxychloroquine but that chart was supposed

01:20:38.500 to tell you that it's hydroxychloroquine which one of us is right so dr zielinski obviously knows more

01:20:46.420 about all of this than i do but the chart that he presented to make his case to me because i spend

01:20:54.980 more time looking at data you know i used to do it for a living i've got a economics background etc but

01:21:00.980 when i look at the data that he presented it says to me it's not the hydroxychloroquine

01:21:05.860 um it says that if you can have a 10 times difference using it there's something else going

01:21:13.060 on there's probably something that some of these countries have in common beyond that

01:21:19.700 so that doesn't mean it doesn't work i'm just saying that i i'm not convinced and i'm going to

01:21:25.140 stick with my 30 chance it's a game changer which is a strong chance you know 30 is a pretty solid chance

01:21:32.660 but it's less than half all right so i'm still on the side that if we were to do a controlled

01:21:39.940 clinical style a gold standard scientific test that there's a two to one chance you won't find it

01:21:46.820 works all right but a 30 chance you will now if it turns out that it works um will you say that i was

01:21:55.860 wrong you should not because you should remember that i just put odds on it and if something goes

01:22:02.580 the 30 way versus the 60 something percent way it doesn't mean i'm right or wrong because the only

01:22:08.740 thing i could be right or wrong about was assigning the percentages and i've given room for it to go

01:22:14.580 either way all right i've talked too much i've gone too long so i think i'll end it here somebody says

01:22:24.020 you mess it up bro about what yeah i see in your comments you're asking about whether zinc

01:22:29.860 is included or not included i've seen lots of contradictory studies i've seen studies that say

01:22:36.580 it's not the zinc i've seen studies that say it is the zinc i've seen studies that say no no it's not

01:22:43.060 the zinc it's the azithromycin and so there are studies that have both zinc and azithromycin and

01:22:49.860 hydroxychloroquine and then you say well that worked but was it the azithromycin that some people say is the

01:22:56.500 active ingredient or was it the zinc or was it the combination of the two or the combination of the

01:23:01.380 three those are all the things we don't know and it's a lot all right and i will talk to you tomorrow

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 15, 2020

Episode 1058 Scott Adams： Talking With Bjorn Lomborg About His Book False Alarm, Plus Ridiculous News

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