Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1061 Scott Adams： Fake News, Fake Science, Fake Everything

00:00:00.000 oh hey everybody good to see you come on in it has come to my attention that some people who watch

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00:01:21.860 pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better including

00:01:29.620 protests pandemics economics you name it it's all good go

00:01:33.860 well here's my favorite story of the day apparently the simulation is winking at us again

00:01:46.980 because there's a photo and a story about a fox an actual animal a fox who keeps stealing somebody's

00:01:55.620 washington post off of their porch or lawn i guess and so we have a literal story of fox delivering fake

00:02:06.500 news i i don't know what are the odds that these are just coincidences but it looks like the author

00:02:14.660 of the simulation is trying to send us a message do you get this one do you get it i'm sending a fox

00:02:23.140 to grab the washington post you get it right does everybody get this well it just feels like the

00:02:32.340 author of the simulation is trying to send us a message do you remember the story about the twitter

00:02:38.020 hackers who uh somehow they got into twitter systems and took over some accounts and tweeted some scams

00:02:46.260 about bitcoin well there are some conspiracy theorists uh and i'm not so sure that i'm not one of them

00:02:55.620 who think that maybe the whole bitcoin thing was a diversion and that the real purpose of the hack

00:03:04.740 wasn't really the bitcoin part although maybe they made some money too but rather they were trying to

00:03:10.500 cover up some deeper mischief which we may not yet know because once somebody has access to uh twitter's

00:03:20.980 innards what else can they do what other things can they discover seems like it would be uh quite a

00:03:29.620 playground there uh one possibility is that they have they had access to the direct messages of lots of

00:03:36.660 famous people and maybe those famous people will get blackmailed i don't know but uh let me suggest

00:03:43.860 that if you are leaving messages in a private place uh there's no such thing so be careful what you say

00:03:53.860 in any digital form because you're now at a place where you should assume you should assume

00:04:00.020 that somebody's looking at them um speaking of mary trump have you seen the latest uh

00:04:10.100 i guess trump's niece and i just i hate that we even have to talk about this because it's yet another

00:04:17.620 you know unverified claims from yet another book so so mary trump the niece her latest bombshell claim 1.00

00:04:26.340 which she was sort of badgered into saying on uh what's her name show on msnbc

00:04:35.140 and what mary trump said was that the i guess the trump family she didn't give a time frame but that

00:04:43.300 they may have used the n-word and that trump himself at some time in the distant past had also used it

00:04:50.820 now you know what's missing do you know what's missing from that story any kind of context

00:04:59.940 because let me make a statement in case this comes as a surprise to people

00:05:06.820 did did you know and i know this might come as a shock to some of you did you know that when people

00:05:12.500 speak privately quite often they will say all of the things you're not supposed to say in public

00:05:19.220 no not just some of them but all of them unless you have different friends than i do have have not

00:05:29.300 the people that you know personally at one time or another maybe not all in the same day

00:05:35.860 but have not your personal conversations used every bad word that could be used

00:05:41.380 surfaced every bad idea that could be surfaced and basically talked of every manner of bad thing

00:05:51.300 often in ways that if somebody heard you in public you would be cancelled

00:05:56.980 now in the old days you could say private things and maybe they would stay private because there's no

00:06:02.580 you know nobody's writing a book about you there's no digital record

00:06:06.740 and i would argue that people have two distinct lives one is the things they say privately

00:06:15.140 and the other is the things that they would be willing for the general public to hear

00:06:20.100 and i've suggested that if we were to have a digital bill of rights

00:06:24.820 that one of the rules we should at least consider is this that you should at least consider that if

00:06:31.860 somebody takes a private conversation and moves it into a public sphere that the person who moved it

00:06:39.460 into the other context becomes the author of it now this is a hard one right because you don't want

00:06:48.100 the person who's just reporting what happened to to become the author but i would suggest this if

00:06:54.420 somebody says something in public and then it's reported in public that's fair

00:06:59.460 right that's completely fair said in public reported in public but if somebody said something in

00:07:06.260 private it is universally true that we speak differently in private to people we trust often

00:07:13.460 saying things that are the worst possible thing you can say because that's what makes it funny

00:07:19.460 that's what makes it funny that you're not supposed to say it so people will say things in public

00:07:24.740 that are outrageously inappropriate because they can't they like their freedom it's not hurting

00:07:31.620 anybody nobody's going to hear it it may not be a reflection of their soul they just like to use

00:07:38.820 inappropriate words in private because it's more fun is there anybody who doesn't use inappropriate

00:07:45.380 words or talk about inappropriate things or at least things you wouldn't want other people to know

00:07:50.100 in public in private i doubt it it's pretty universal so i would say and of course this rule does not exist

00:07:59.700 but if it did i would say that mary trump is the only person responsible for making us think of the n-word

00:08:07.700 more than we need to um and one of the things that i've said this before but this bears repeating

00:08:16.420 you know that a third of the country doesn't have a sense of humor like actually literally doesn't

00:08:23.620 have a sense of humor in the same way that maybe about the same amount of the country doesn't have

00:08:29.220 musical talent i would be in that latter category so it's not an insult just people have different

00:08:36.500 skills or distributed all over the place but there are lots of people who literally don't have a sense

00:08:41.700 of humor and one of the things that they might not appreciate from people who do have a sense of

00:08:47.460 humor is uh what they don't appreciate is that sometimes the thing that is funny is the inappropriateness

00:08:56.660 of it so what you're laughing at is not at the subject of the joke let's say it mocks some group or

00:09:04.020 person or whatever if you laugh privately with an emphasis on the privately somebody privately tells

00:09:11.860 you a deeply inappropriate joke and you laugh you're not laughing at the target of the joke

00:09:18.340 if you have actual if you're unless you're a sociopath or you hate that person or something

00:09:23.300 but in general you're laughing at the fact that anybody would say that out loud to me that's hilarious

00:09:29.860 when anybody does something completely inappropriate i always laugh it's automatic

00:09:38.260 but here's the deeper question oh and i've also suggested that a digital

00:09:45.540 a digital bill of rights would include that if you did something more than 20 years ago it just

00:09:51.860 doesn't count it just doesn't count taking things from the past moving them to the present as if

00:09:58.740 as if our current sensibilities you know existed at the same time as the statement

00:10:04.820 it was just illegitimate to me so we should just ignore anything from 20 years ago but here's a more

00:10:11.060 interesting question has mary trump ever met the president there's that this is actually the hilarious

00:10:18.500 part apparently there's some question about whether they've even ever been in the same room

00:10:23.620 so we haven't seen a picture of them in the same room and uh that's funny now what's funnier is

00:10:32.420 uh the the physicality of the interview and i'm gonna have to go there you know you know they say

00:10:38.900 don't go there well i'm gonna go there i'm gonna go there now when you watch mary trump give the interview

00:10:46.180 uh she's not what you'd call a sympathetic character meaning that when you look at her she doesn't look

00:10:55.620 um emotionally stable which is different from saying that she is emotionally unstable the only thing

00:11:03.620 i know i'm not a psychiatrist right so i'm not medically diagnosing her but i have as a viewer i have

00:11:10.660 an impression so i'll just tell you my viewer impression because in the world of politics the

00:11:16.340 viewer impression matters it's not a medical diagnosis i wouldn't do that uh and what she looks 0.89

00:11:24.100 like is somebody who has severe mental problems you know emotional mental problems now i'm not saying

00:11:29.860 she does have them i'm saying she looks exactly like somebody who has severe emotional mental problems

00:11:37.380 so that i think works a little bit against her her credibility but here's here's the funniest thing

00:11:44.900 that works against her credibility are you ready for this and if you haven't thought of this yet

00:11:51.060 you're gonna laugh when i tell it to you now let me know if you've thought of this but here's the thought

00:11:58.340 when you're assessing her credibility consider that she looks like trump with a wig

00:12:04.740 she looks like a trump so she has the the face that looks like she looks like president trump

00:12:12.900 you know there's something about it that reminds you of him there's a familial uh you know something

00:12:19.780 recognizable and so you immediately think i feel like i'm listening to female trump talking about

00:12:27.060 the other trump and it's this weird disconcerting feeling that i think works against her credibility

00:12:35.060 for the very part of the segment that they would like to believe it so i think that part's just

00:12:41.620 funny i don't know if that really has any effect um and then as mike cernovich pointed out in a tweet

00:12:48.180 and i would agree that if you were going to say uh if you were just objectively looking at her as a

00:12:54.980 stranger and you didn't know anything about who she was what she was talking about and the only thing

00:13:00.180 you were doing is you turned off the sound and you watched her body language as she answered the

00:13:05.860 question would it look like she was telling the truth or would it look like she was concocting a lie

00:13:14.500 and i would agree with uh mike cernovich's view on that again we're not lie detectors we can't see inside

00:13:22.260 her brain but if i were to judge her from her mannerisms it looks exactly like somebody who's

00:13:28.180 making something up i don't know if she is making something up can't read her mind again it looks

00:13:36.180 exactly like somebody who's not credible so i'm fascinated to see if this story has any legs at all

00:13:43.220 you would think it would play into the whole uh you know the fake news view that the president's

00:13:49.060 a giant racist but i just don't know how much attention this story is going to get

00:13:54.100 because mary trump is so darn non-credible and it was a long time ago and i think everybody 0.98

00:14:01.300 probably something tells me that you know even the the black people watching this are saying to 0.98

00:14:07.300 themselves oh obviously everybody in the 60s and 70s in private conversations including all black

00:14:17.940 people including all every other kind of person including all people have said things that you

00:14:24.420 wish your your niece wouldn't tell people you said now that doesn't mean he said any of those things

00:14:29.300 uh and there's certainly evidence to suggest that he didn't and it's not credible but those are all

00:14:38.900 the factors i would take into consideration here's a question for you if uh you know i i tweeted the

00:14:49.380 other day that the closer society gets to being able to program a simulation of its own in other

00:14:56.740 words a software world where the characters in the world believe that they're conscious and real

00:15:02.500 people the closer you get to being able to do that the closer you get to understanding that that's what

00:15:09.300 you are now of course i talk about the simulation because it's fun but i will give you this following

00:15:16.500 thought to chew on and it goes like this why would anybody who could create a simulation create one

00:15:24.420 what would be the purpose of creating a software simulation of a world full of people who thought

00:15:31.060 they were real but were not why would you do it because the whole theory of the simulation is that

00:15:38.820 once you could do it you would do it and maybe you would do it lots of times well i would suggest

00:15:45.860 that the creators of the simulation might do it for the same reason that we will do it in other words

00:15:51.380 the closer we get to being able to do it the more we will realize oh yeah there is a reason to do it

00:15:58.180 and that reason is a b testing their own choices in other words if you have let's say a problem you're

00:16:06.740 working through in your life and you're wondering how to deal with it you could create a simulation of

00:16:12.500 yourself in an artificial world testing a lot of different things seeing how it turns out

00:16:20.500 now you'd have to have a really good simulation to think that the things that were tested in the

00:16:25.380 simulation would then translate into your so-called real world but if you had enough simulations and

00:16:32.580 you ran the simulation enough times you might get closer to saying okay every time i do something like

00:16:38.900 this i get a better result than when i do something like this so i would suggest to you to keep this in mind

00:16:46.420 that if we game got to the point where we could create in our civilization a simulation that would

00:16:53.220 test what would happen if we personally act in different ways we'd do it so just think about it we'd

00:17:02.740 probably do it somebody says it would be cruel i wonder if it would be would it be cruel to create

00:17:10.500 software that felt pain what do you think that's a really interesting uh uh ethical and moral question

00:17:19.860 isn't it would it be ethical to create software that thought it was a real creature with real feelings and

00:17:26.980 felt pain maybe not i don't know anyway i put that out there and the other part of that is have you

00:17:35.540 noticed that uh in your life and maybe people you know people have the same kind of problem over and

00:17:41.940 over again have you noticed that that that in your life your entire life even though your situation

00:17:48.340 your relationships where you live the job all of these things are changing but have you noticed that

00:17:54.420 you will have just the same sort of problem over and over and over again whereas all the people

00:18:01.220 around you will have that problem zero times and you say to yourself how could i always have the same

00:18:07.700 problem where other people don't have this problem but yet other people also have a theme problem meaning

00:18:15.540 they have the same sort of problem over and over again but i never have that one what's up with that

00:18:20.100 and that again would suggest that we are simulations testing things for our creators meaning that the

00:18:28.580 challenges that i get seem to be very similar in nature i won't go into it but the similarity i've

00:18:35.220 noticed forever it was like really the moment i solved that problem a new thing jumped up to give

00:18:40.580 me the same problem back in a different way how could that be and uh makes me think that that that

00:18:46.980 that's how you know which problem you were simulated to work through because you keep beating on the

00:18:52.500 same problem in different ways all right um i've suggested uh a lot of people have also that the the

00:19:00.020 best slogan for uh trump's campaign would be jobs not mobs now that that was a slogan that came up in the

00:19:08.500 last campaign but i think it's more appropriate now because we're seeing more mobs

00:19:13.460 companies so that contrast between jobs and mobs is now so big that uh it's just the perfect

00:19:21.540 campaign slogan so i'd be interested to see if the campaign you know tries tries that out what if

00:19:28.580 if if they like it the what you should expect is to see somebody not the president trying it out first

00:19:35.140 just to see how it does that would be a normal way to do it although trump uh has you has tweeted it before

00:19:42.340 so in that case you could assume maybe it's already tested um now i tweeted this i'm no political expert

00:19:51.940 and i don't pretend to be an expert on politics but it seems to me that the democrat strategy

00:19:59.220 uh of effectively legalizing violent crime right before a national election is not the best strategy

00:20:07.380 because what it looks like to me and it looks exactly like this to me is that democrats are

00:20:16.340 removing the controls on crime going into a major election because that's really the whole story

00:20:24.020 about new york city right they the uh there's no uh bail so you commit a crime you can just be released

00:20:32.100 commit some more crimes get picked up get released you know if you have a court date i guess you can just

00:20:37.940 leave uh i don't know what happens um so couldn't you do that forever is there any limit to how many times

00:20:47.460 you can just say well thanks for arresting me i'll see you later and just walk away and i don't know the

00:20:52.100 details but it sounds like you could so i can't see any world in which the democrats even have a chance

00:20:58.820 in november in terms of the presidency because if you're running on a platform of increasing crime

00:21:06.580 and the news is showing non-stop images of increased crime

00:21:12.980 i just don't know how that gets you elected i i just don't see how that could possibly work

00:21:19.700 i've heard people say that the president is basically has no chance of re-election because

00:21:24.260 the polls are so uh slanted but how many people have you heard who have changed their mind from trump

00:21:34.260 to biden in your life are there a lot of people doing that because i i think i have encountered zero

00:21:41.780 people that i personally know although i don't know if they'd mention it to me but it doesn't feel

00:21:48.340 it doesn't feel like uh you know what i'm observing makes sense all right new topic uh kareem abdul jabbar

00:21:58.500 if you're young you don't know he was one of the great basketball players of all time and he's kind

00:22:04.100 of politically active and he he's written a few uh op-eds one of them was about systemic racism i think i may

00:22:11.700 have uh criticized him for that uh i forget what but there was something i i quibbled with but he wrote

00:22:20.180 another uh op-ed just recently and this one really got my attention and so i want to give a shout out

00:22:29.460 and a compliment to kareem abdul jabbar because he wrote uh if if you didn't know he's uh he's black which

00:22:39.060 is important to this story and he wrote an op-ed in which uh he called out hollywood and the sports

00:22:46.180 world for their anti-semitic stuff that hasn't been really pushed back on enough according to kareem

00:22:54.980 now i would consider this one of the great acts of leadership that we've seen lately all right so keep

00:23:04.260 in mind i'm not i'm not a big kareem abdul jabbar fan in fact i thought he ruined basketball for years

00:23:11.860 because he was so good and so tall that watching him play other teams just didn't seem fun

00:23:18.180 because it just didn't seem like you could beat a guy that big and that good

00:23:22.100 so uh to me he sort of ruined basketball for a while so it's not like i'm a fan uh yeah he's one

00:23:29.220 of the great players of all time that's just a fact but he wasn't fun to watch in my opinion

00:23:34.740 and i've disagreed with him on some political stuff but i'm going to give him a plus plus plus

00:23:40.340 on leadership for taking what might have been a fairly unpopular stand i don't know

00:23:46.660 i'm not sure if he got any blowback for it but he came out strongly um against anti-semitism

00:23:53.460 in the middle of uh you know the black lives matter movement he he said hey let's i don't

00:24:01.140 want to say that he said all lives matter because he didn't but in effect kareem abdul jabbar was

00:24:09.300 saying let's not over focus on this one problem this anti-semitism thing is pretty big if you're

00:24:15.700 ignoring this you're not really credible that that's my paraphrasing of it and i appreciated

00:24:22.340 that i appreciated the fact that he stuck up for another group and i think the more of that you see

00:24:29.300 the healthier the country so thank you to kareem all right um people keep asking me why trump is not

00:24:37.220 uh promoting the wearing of masks why is trump not saying and this would be this is not my opinion

00:24:46.100 this is people talking to me they say you know these masks save lives we'll talk about the

00:24:52.900 controversy about whether they do or do not but people say to me they they save lives and it's obvious

00:24:59.460 say some people um why doesn't trump say you wear masks doesn't have to say that you have to doesn't

00:25:06.740 have to make it mandatory but if he just promoted it more people would say all right you know we like

00:25:13.380 trump he's saying wear masks we'll wear masks so why doesn't he do that if you know that people would

00:25:20.580 pick up on it i think that's safe to say if he promoted it more people would wear masks uh on the

00:25:26.660 republican side i think that's fair uh so why doesn't he do it is it a mistake of leadership

00:25:34.500 that he is not pushing masks here's my take on that because i had to think about it for a while

00:25:42.660 imagine if he did let's say he pushed masks what would happen if the president promoted the use of

00:25:50.420 masks it would be like hydroxychloroquine if the president said wear a mask cnn and msnbc would be running

00:26:00.500 non-stop pieces about how they don't work and it's making everything worse now if you don't think

00:26:07.700 that's true you have not been paying attention if you say to yourself scott scott scott the fake news

00:26:15.220 may be fake news but they're not going to run you know stories that would destroy the country with bad

00:26:22.020 medical advice just because the president had the opposite opinion they're not going to go opposite just

00:26:28.500 because he said it yeah they would that's exactly what they would do there's no chance if if the

00:26:35.700 president was promoting masks and if it was very persuasive let's say republicans just all masked up

00:26:43.220 from day one you wouldn't see democrats wearing masks they would say it was fake and he's anti-science and

00:26:50.580 they shouldn't wear a mask but here's the other part that i haven't seen a single person say

00:26:55.620 i have not seen a single person say this and it's the most important thing trump has been painted by

00:27:04.340 the opposition and the fake news as an authoritarian as a dictator if trump is being painted as an

00:27:14.020 authoritarian authoritarian and a dictator how would he be treated if he told everybody they had to wear

00:27:20.740 masks from the federal level he would be treated as an authoritarian dictator and even the republicans

00:27:31.460 would think so right so it would be the first time that the democrats would ever win a point

00:27:38.260 because mostly the two sides you know they send messages but they don't get through but one of the

00:27:43.460 messages the democrats have been trying to send is hey you republicans can't you see he's an authoritarian

00:27:50.820 dictator why can't you see it why is our message not penetrating your bubble get out of your fox news bubble

00:27:57.780 he's a dictator he's an authoritarian if trump told people to wear masks from the federal level that message

00:28:06.420 would completely penetrate the right and the right would say you know actually you got a point there

00:28:13.620 i think you got a point we don't want to hear this from the president now if the president does not

00:28:19.460 do it what happens well the states do it and and the cities do it now they don't all make the same decision

00:28:28.180 but what do you feel about the credibility of the decisions if they're made at the local level versus

00:28:35.700 the federal level it feels different doesn't it doesn't that feel different if your city has decided that you

00:28:44.020 should wear masks even if you don't like it doesn't that feel more legitimate than the president this is not

00:28:53.860 a president decision the fact that the president has stepped back from a little bit i wish he would

00:28:59.220 say it directly by the way the the best thing that the president could do is say you know i'm not your

00:29:04.180 dictator let your local let your local community work it out with you you see what the professionals

00:29:10.900 say you see that i wear a mask when i visit walter reed i'm not going to be the dictator work it out

00:29:17.780 locally but i hope you follow the medical advice that would be a good message i don't think

00:29:23.300 that he has done that uh well but when you're saying he's not doing it right you got to ask

00:29:30.020 yourself what would it look like if he did if he did it right according to the people who say masks

00:29:37.540 work he would have he would have made the democrats hate masks they would have questioned it and they

00:29:43.300 would have called him an authoritarian dictator and it just wouldn't have worked so it's sort of a trap

00:29:49.300 so um here's the other thing how do we judge all of the conflicting science about masks and whether

00:30:04.660 they work so i asked on twitter can somebody send me a good thread that that talks about them and here's

00:30:11.540 what i find uh and people will send me to an article that looks quite scholarly there's a phd or medical

00:30:19.140 doctor involved it'll be an article that says here's all the proof that masks do not work every every

00:30:26.580 study says they don't work and you say to yourself wow well that's pretty convincing it's a looks like some 0.60

00:30:33.380 publication that's respectable the person who wrote it looks respectable shows all of his sources

00:30:40.100 every one of them show that face masks don't work so that's it right good source credible person

00:30:48.340 every single every single cited study same direction masks don't work so we're done right except

00:30:58.500 you can go six inches down your twitter feed and find a credible person in a credible publication

00:31:07.460 pointing to studies showing they work

00:31:12.900 that and so here's my greater point the old the people you should not believe in any conversation 1.00

00:31:20.820 are the ones who are sure those are the ones you should not believe in any conversation at least if

00:31:27.620 there's complexity in science involved you and i don't know how to sort it through the science

00:31:33.140 science you do not know how to read those various studies and and say oh you know this is the good

00:31:40.180 one this is the bad one i trust this one i don't trust this we don't have those skills we do not have

00:31:45.780 those skills we only have experts telling us what they've seen because maybe they do have those skills

00:31:54.180 but here's the problem which expert are you going to listen to because they don't agree

00:31:59.860 if the experts don't agree how can you tell which is the good expert because it just takes your problem

00:32:07.300 of not being able to look at the science and come up with a good opinion all it does is transfer it to

00:32:14.580 well i can't also figure out which experts are credible it's all just stuff that you don't have 1.00

00:32:20.740 any ability to determine but you think you do the think you do part is the part that makes you stupid 0.96

00:32:29.540 if you can look at all these studies and say well looks like there's some people and some studies 0.86

00:32:34.660 that go the other way if your opinion is anything but i guess it's unclear that's the only opinion i

00:32:45.300 think you could have on it but you still have to make a decision right you don't get to say well it's

00:32:51.300 unclear so i'll just avoid this situation you're either going to wear a mask or not wear a mask

00:32:57.300 so you've got to pick so what do you do if you can't evaluate the science and you don't know who

00:33:03.460 which experts are credible you are left with some kind of a low information risk management decision

00:33:12.340 here's how i've made mine here are the mistakes that people make when they're looking yeah i'll work

00:33:20.020 into it here are the mistakes that the lay people are making when looking at the studies and even the

00:33:25.780 the question the first one is that they misunderstand the purpose of the mask the the masks for the

00:33:33.780 public are not about protecting the wearer it's about protecting other people all right so that's the

00:33:41.620 first thing so you see a lot of people who are very certain about things and they'll say nope mass will

00:33:47.540 not will not um protect you from getting the virus but that's not really the question so those people

00:33:55.460 don't understand the question because they're analyzing the wrong thing the other thing is some

00:34:00.900 people say the total quantity of air that comes out from around the masks is still the same because if you

00:34:09.300 exhale it's going somewhere so if it doesn't go straight out it's going out the side of the masks it

00:34:15.460 might even be going out in little jets because you're forcing the same amount of stuff out of

00:34:20.100 smaller openings and so some people say well it's the same amount of air that's going in it's all the

00:34:26.900 same this too is bad analysis because the point is not to reduce the quantity of air in the room nobody

00:34:36.500 said that's the point the point is to keep it local the point is that your exhalations are more likely to

00:34:44.260 stay stay local even if it's coming out of the edges to me that sounds reasonable and a lot of

00:34:51.620 experts say that it's reasonable too it is also not about the masks blocking viruses because people

00:35:00.500 will point you to a lot of science that says you know at the microscopic level that the holes of the

00:35:06.180 mask are this big and the particles the viruses are this big and even the smaller water drops are this

00:35:12.740 big and they fit through they fit through so if they fit through the mask the masks do nothing right

00:35:23.060 wrong because the air is what is mostly carrying the virus some of it you could imagine would get

00:35:30.420 stripped off some of it would be on smaller droplets etc but there really is no situation i can imagine

00:35:38.020 in which if you can't blow on a candle that's you know a couple feet away from you but you could

00:35:45.620 if you had the mask off it's doing something it's blocking some of the moisture that's carried in the

00:35:53.380 air and much of that moisture must have a virus attached you know the the worst argument i heard somebody

00:36:00.260 emailed me and said no what happened scott is that it's carried on the water uh droplets until it

00:36:06.980 reaches your mask and then the water is stripped off and then the free viruses go forward into the

00:36:13.380 universe now unburdened by the water droplets i feel like that's not what's happening again we're not

00:36:22.020 experts so we don't know but if virus travels on water droplets and water droplets are in any way

00:36:29.940 impeded or slowed down or kept more local i don't know any situation in which that isn't going to be

00:36:36.500 good in terms of transmission and then there's the question about um there's the question about uh

00:36:43.940 touching your face and a lot of people said if it if it makes you adjust your mask a lot

00:36:51.540 well that's just as bad as having no mask and it might be worse because your face your hand's

00:36:56.500 always going to be up around your face but i don't know about you but if i have a face mask on i do touch

00:37:03.540 my face a lot but i'm sort of touching my cheek with my finger you know i'm doing this and you know

00:37:10.260 maybe my chin once if i'm doing this isn't that like really different than touching the moist part

00:37:16.340 of your mouth because i would think it's sort of your your mouth and your nose and your eyes you know

00:37:22.900 your your moist parts that are the problem so if you cover this big moist mouth and you do touch your 0.93

00:37:30.660 cheek a little bit with your finger is that just as dangerous as all the times you touch your mouth

00:37:37.060 because people do touch their mouth a lot when they're not wearing a mask if you've watched

00:37:42.580 so anyway if you're totally certain about masks maybe you shouldn't be but you have to make a

00:37:47.540 decision anyway and i'm going to go with the uh the piss your pants model the piss your pants model 0.91

00:37:53.860 looks like this if you're standing next to somebody and they take a piss in their pants do you get as wet

00:38:02.740 as if they were not wearing pants and they were aiming at you now it's a bad analogy because the

00:38:09.620 virus there's no virus in the urine in that bad analogy but it's sort of how i'm thinking about

00:38:16.660 it it must be stopping some of the virus all right um today uh cnn did report on the number of

00:38:26.180 coronavirus deaths now i've been mocking them because they've been talking about the number

00:38:31.460 of infections but they leave out of that same story the number of deaths which is clearly the

00:38:37.460 more important part both important but deaths will always be more important but today they actually

00:38:43.140 reported it and and prominently why do you suppose they did that because it was a record all right

00:38:51.140 so as soon as the deaths were bad news it became part of the article when deaths were good news

00:38:59.060 meaning that the number of deaths were low compared to the number of people infected that actually looked

00:39:04.820 kind of like good news because it made it look like no matter whether you get infected or not we've

00:39:09.860 got something going on don't know what maybe the way we treat it maybe hydroxychloroquine who knows

00:39:15.940 maybe it's vitamin d i don't know but it looked like death was good news while infections were bad

00:39:23.460 news death rate falling being the good news not the deaths and as soon as the death count became bad

00:39:30.180 news because it's a record that's obviously bad news it became a headline and it's just so disgusting 0.53

00:39:37.860 138 138 000 people dead so far from coronavirus allegedly some princeton professors uh very cleverly

00:39:48.740 wrote an article in which they said maybe we should change uh july and august change the months because

00:39:56.500 july and august are named after julius augustus caesar and if julius caesar was a slave owner which he was

00:40:06.020 don't you have to change the name of those two months now it was a little bit of a more of a

00:40:11.060 challenging thought they weren't actually in favor of changing them and then they went on to say that

00:40:16.580 you'd really have to change the name of the democratic party because the democratic party up to the 1960s

00:40:23.300 when i was alive you know my actual lifetime uh was was the party of you know segregation and ku klux klan and

00:40:32.820 and all that other stuff so is there an argument that democrats must change their name from democrats

00:40:41.620 i would say yes i mean why would you be a member of a party with the same name as the party that was in

00:40:48.740 favor of all these racial bad things uh one of my other favorite stories in the news is jake tapper 0.84

00:40:56.820 having to call uh call bullshit on cnn's own pundits for spreading fake news 0.85

00:41:03.540 so kaylee mckinney was misinterpreted when she was talking about school openings she said that the 0.63

00:41:12.660 science should not stand in the way of going back to school and then she went on to say that the science

00:41:19.460 and she referred to a study credible study saying that the risks for children were low and therefore

00:41:27.300 the science would not stop us from going to school because the science supports it of course jim acosta

00:41:34.180 and some other people at cnn decided to interpret that as we're going to ignore the science and go to 0.80

00:41:42.100 school exactly the opposite of what she said jake tapper to his credit called bullshit on it and even 0.97

00:41:49.940 tweeted it bullshit so even he was not willing to accept the narrative which his own network had 0.98

00:41:57.060 immediately adopted that the uh the fake news that kaylee mckinney was in favor of ignoring science 1.00

00:42:05.540 and putting children back in school so they will die because orange man bad 0.91

00:42:10.820 uh and uh so i will give uh uh props to jake tapper for fact checking his own network which isn't easy

00:42:21.940 you know there's no there's no way of any no way anybody thinks that's easy to do and um i will give

00:42:28.820 him a second shout out by saying he's the only one who said about the charlottesville find people hoax

00:42:36.100 he's the only person who said that the context should include that the president um explicitly

00:42:44.100 disavowed the people that the rest of cnn was saying he was talking about as fine people so jake

00:42:50.340 is the only person i know who has called bullshit on his own network for misinterpreting

00:42:56.340 quotes in a fairly obvious way they're misinterpreted so credit him for that 0.91

00:43:01.460 that there's a story about portland because there are these uniformed scary looking people in

00:43:09.460 camouflage who are showing up in rented minivans and stuff and grabbing protesters off the street

00:43:16.900 and taking them away now the rumor uh or the way it's being treated on social media is that these are

00:43:24.820 unmarked unnamed unannounced we don't know who these um camouflage military looking people are

00:43:32.980 they have masks on they're just grabbing people off the street it's like the gestapo it's it's like

00:43:39.300 death squads it's like gestapo so that's how the left is uh framing it but they also of course have no

00:43:48.500 access to news from the right so they don't real see real news if they did they would be following

00:43:55.940 jack posavic on uh twitter who would tell you uh they have dhs patches on their uniforms

00:44:04.500 now it's hard to see because it's at night but i think he you know he's just better as spotting the

00:44:09.140 stuff from experience and we know that the department of homeland security said they were going to be

00:44:16.660 operating there they said they would be operating there and people with dhs um you know identification

00:44:25.060 on their uniforms did show up there so there shouldn't be too much mystery about who they were

00:44:32.820 and it should not surprise you that they were in non-military vehicles because you don't want to bring

00:44:38.980 in tanks and humvees and stuff like that it just makes it look too military but here's the part i

00:44:44.660 loved about it it is scaring the living out of the protesters which to me is hilarious let me read

00:44:52.660 this one quote um let's see uh so there was this protester who was frightened uh and he said he was

00:45:02.500 one of the ones that they they they nabbed and they took him somewhere but then they they let him go

00:45:07.540 and after he was let go he said this uh he didn't this is from a news reporter he did not know whether the

00:45:12.580 the men were police or far-right extremists who frequently don military-like outfits and harass

00:45:19.940 left-leaning protesters in portland and the 29 year old resident said he made it about half a block

00:45:26.980 before he realized there would be no escape because he tried to run from them and gave up then he sank to

00:45:33.220 his knees hands in the air and he said quote i was terrified pettibone told the washington post it seems like

00:45:40.420 it was out of a horror sci-fi like a philip k dick novel it was like being preyed upon

00:45:48.420 to which i say good good excellent excellent because i think it's useful for the protesters to feel

00:46:01.300 how the citizens of the city that they're abusing feel about them how happy are you that a protester

00:46:09.460 was afraid of somebody in a mask it's kind of perfect right the fact that the department of

00:46:16.820 homeland security wear masks so you can't see their faces it's really funny because uh we've been saying

00:46:25.060 that one of the things that you know has fueled these protests is the fact that people can wear masks if

00:46:31.300 you can wear a mask because of the coronavirus it's recommended then you can get away with stuff

00:46:37.940 because you figure well nobody's got a picture of me i'm wearing a mask so the masks have so far been

00:46:44.020 only to the benefit of the protesters well it looks like department of homeland security just took their

00:46:50.660 advantage away because if the department of homeland security who do not live in the city for the most part

00:46:58.340 they don't live in that city and if they're wearing masks you're not going to be able to find out who

00:47:03.220 they were because they probably don't have name tags if they do they ought to get rid of them they need

00:47:08.020 to get rid of the name tags so it's reminded me somewhat of the untouchables do you remember the

00:47:14.500 untouchables uh they were people who did not live in i think it was chicago who were brought in from the

00:47:20.740 outside and people didn't know i think people didn't know their identities because then they could work on

00:47:26.500 organized crime and they would not get bribed because it's hard to bribe somebody if you can't

00:47:32.100 find them you don't know their name and they're from out of town but it's easy to bribe let's say a

00:47:38.260 police officer who lives in your town especially if you're threatening their family if they don't take

00:47:43.940 your bribe so it looks like the department of homeland security are the untouchables the people coming in

00:47:51.940 who don't have an obvious identity and you can't get back on them and they're scary super super scary

00:48:00.340 right so i can't think of a better solution than to bring in masked super scary people with unknown

00:48:08.020 identities to clear things out of portland and you have to appreciate that as a strategy

00:48:12.980 but of course their counter strategy is to say you're you're uh gestapo um people worry about

00:48:23.140 we might enter world war three with any of our you know international foes china or russia etc but

00:48:32.180 i don't think you realize we're already in world war three world war three if you count war with russia

00:48:40.180 and china simultaneously as a world war we're in it we're in the middle of it let me give you a 0.70

00:48:49.140 a shocking statistic if you added together the number of overdose deaths from fentanyl in the

00:48:56.980 united states and the fentanyl we know comes from china chinese fentanyl has killed x number of people

00:49:03.620 if you add that number to the number killed by the coronavirus those two numbers together both

00:49:10.260 both caused by china have killed more american citizens than died in world war ii that's right

00:49:20.420 so if you believe that chinese fentanyl is intentional meaning they could stop it if they wanted to but

00:49:26.900 they don't and i believe that it's intentional and if you believe that they didn't tell the rest of the

00:49:33.220 the world about the coronavirus intentionally then we have already lost more um people to china's

00:49:43.860 aggression than we lost in all of world war ii think about it now if you're telling me that we're not

00:49:51.700 in a world war i would say you don't know what our cyber uh security people are doing you don't know how

00:49:58.500 much china is doing espionage and cyber stuff attacks against us and you don't know how much 0.88

00:50:04.980 we're doing to them because i'm pretty sure it's a lot so at the moment we're in a full-out war

00:50:12.980 that's just a weird war that it's it's being fought in ways that you don't see you know bodies you just

00:50:19.220 see uh in some cases you might see some protests or something that were caused by these this mischief

00:50:26.260 but uh the war is on the war is completely on and we're right in the middle of it it's just a

00:50:33.620 war like none we've seen before pompeo uh told congress that he says hong kong is no longer to be

00:50:43.460 considered autonomous now that doesn't come as a big surprise right the day that great britain decided

00:50:50.340 okay you know the lease is up and hong kong will be returned to some kind of chinese situation with 0.99

00:50:58.020 autonomous rule pretty much everybody smart said oh so it'll just be china because eventually 0.94

00:51:07.540 just because of geography and because china would want control over it it was obvious that hong kong 0.91

00:51:13.140 would lose its independence there's probably nothing that can be done about that but apparently there's

00:51:19.380 a hidden reason for pompeo to tell congress that hong kong is no longer its own autonomous thing

00:51:26.660 and it has to do with the fact that hong kong is a major worldwide uh financial center

00:51:34.020 and the implication is this that if hong kong is not autonomous you can't use it as a financial center

00:51:42.660 and if hong kong loses its role as one of the world's big financial centers and it looks like

00:51:49.140 that's guaranteed now because we're not the the free um the free markets of the world

00:51:55.300 the free uh yeah i guess markets is the right world they're not going to use china as their

00:52:02.020 financial center it just wouldn't feel safe so if hong kong is no longer autonomous as pompeo says

00:52:10.580 then um hong kong is going to lose their status as a financial center that's really big that's big

00:52:18.180 big big big big big big so that's a big deal so that's part of world war three we're in it 0.66

00:52:26.180 somebody asked me to rank trump's visual persuasion i guess he had a white house event with a red truck

00:52:33.220 and a blue truck and he put these uh fake weights on them to represent all of the regulations he was

00:52:40.420 going to cut and had the crane pull you know the weight out of one of the trucks etc and i didn't even see

00:52:47.940 that on the news i only saw it when it was sent to me on social media so i would say it was a real

00:52:54.500 good visual presentation but i don't know if it worked because it was sort of standard so i don't

00:53:01.540 know if it got the attention that they wanted to get because i didn't see it but maybe it did

00:53:06.820 um and that is what i wanted to talk about if you missed my uh special podcast last night i did a

00:53:18.180 live stream last night sort of spontaneously um on how to have a socialist system within the confines

00:53:27.380 of our capitalized capitalist system so that everybody can live the way they want and they

00:53:32.500 would not interfere with each other so you don't have to have one system for everybody so it's not

00:53:37.460 a good idea it's just an interesting idea and you might want to check that video out on replay everywhere

00:53:43.460 that my videos are found um so you can see it on youtube etc but if you'd really like to have some fun

00:53:51.300 you want to go to locals uh where my content in addition to this i do a lot of other uh content on

00:54:00.020 locals locals.com it has an app as well as website and don jr has uh moved on to locals which is a big

00:54:08.420 deal uh oh by the way i should tell you that i'm a a very small stockholder uh investor i guess not

00:54:16.260 stockholder but investor in locals so full disclosure i'm on locals i have a small investment in it

00:54:24.740 uh and uh don jr coming over is probably going to give it a lot of attention so

00:54:32.820 um somebody wants me to talk about the double counting and the bad counting of the coronavirus

00:54:40.260 stuff i'm not too interested in that actually because we know stuff is being counted wrong

00:54:47.220 but i think the direction of stuff is all that really matters and if the you know and over time

00:54:53.620 all these irregularities get worked out you know they'll get scrubbed out of the system in time

00:54:58.820 as long as we know the general direction that's probably good enough

00:55:02.660 all right um

00:55:10.500 how many cases would the u.s have to get for the majority of people to say okay let's all try

00:55:16.180 masks well the problem is that um people have convinced themselves that there is strong science

00:55:23.380 that's saying masks don't work so in theory as long as they believe that masks definitely don't

00:55:29.140 work and we've seen the science and you know i'm not saying that but people say that as long as they

00:55:34.820 think they don't work or that it makes things worse it wouldn't matter how many people died

00:55:41.460 um when policies are being implemented based on wrong numbers we should all care yes we should

00:55:48.740 but i don't think the wrongness that we're talking about is directionally wrong i don't think the

00:55:55.540 numbers are changing the direction of things and if they did they would only do it temporarily

00:56:02.580 um should cdc go to the white house though i don't know what that means

00:56:11.460 all right i'm just looking at your comments see if i missed anything

00:56:15.540 somebody says locals needs to move to a single fee for all access models don't like subscribing to

00:56:22.420 individuals yeah i think that's actually on the uh the board right now so they're actively looking

00:56:28.100 at that model now that model has some implications for creators for example if the the main reason that

00:56:36.500 you joined um locals was for one creator uh sort of unfair because your money would be distributed to

00:56:44.820 the other creators who are not the reason that you were there so it's hard to work that out and make it fair

00:56:50.340 um who won navarro or fauci you know i'm not too interested in the uh palace intrigue stuff that's just

00:57:01.140 somewhat predictable and uh doesn't really change anything

00:57:07.700 talk about new zealand and how well they've done with it well let's talk about uh countries in general

00:57:14.180 that have done well are you amazed that we don't yet know why some countries are successful and some

00:57:20.740 are not oh you think you know you think you know because you saw the chart that said the ones that

00:57:26.020 use hydroxychloroquine early that they all have good results right so that's it i mean you saw the chart

00:57:32.740 all all the countries with hydroxychloroquine early good result all the ones that don't so that's

00:57:38.580 it right that's the whole little thing well except you may have also seen the chart that shows that

00:57:45.300 vitamin d pretty much explains everything so could vitamin d explain everything we're seeing in the

00:57:54.100 other countries when in fact hydroxychloroquine use explains everything we see in the country

00:58:01.540 but also the graphs show that vitamin d does so those are two different theories except that oh wait

00:58:10.740 there are also graphs that show that the degree of mask use is the main variable and it very clearly

00:58:18.340 shows that the ones you use mass got better results

00:58:24.660 so what the hell is going on you'll so my take on this is that we don't know

00:58:30.180 exactly how much is masks how much is better treatment how much is hydroxychloroquine how much

00:58:37.460 is vitamin d that's in the atmosphere but also might be part of the treatment we really don't know

00:58:44.660 and on top of that you really yet and also somebody says immunity we don't know about immunity we don't

00:58:51.380 even know exactly the nature of the virus in terms of how it's spread there's so much we don't know

00:59:00.260 that um yeah correlation is not causation let me here's a here's a uh a brain test i was going to

00:59:08.340 give you so those of you who feel you are good at analyzing the stuff you see in social media so you

00:59:15.460 feel like you have a pretty strong decision on masks or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin d whatever it is

00:59:22.580 you've got a strong opinion let me ask you this this is a thought experiment if i told you there's a city

00:59:31.860 that has um the most strong locks on their doors they have the most bars on the windows they have

00:59:40.820 the most locks on the doors they have the strongest defense of the house and they even have a lot of

00:59:46.820 firearms and they also have the highest burglary rate what does that tell you they do the most to

00:59:56.100 protect their house but they have the highest burglary rate so that proves that protecting your

01:00:01.860 house doesn't work right right is that the conclusion if you have tons of locks and it's the most locked

01:00:10.100 up definitely lock your doors bars on the window and still the highest burglary rate well that proves

01:00:18.100 that locks don't work it proves that bars on the window don't work right no it doesn't prove that

01:00:27.620 it proves that if you have a lot of crime people are going to improve their locks

01:00:34.340 in fact the dumbest thing that people say about chicago gun control is that well it has the tightest 0.81

01:00:41.540 gun control and the worst murders so obviously gun control doesn't work no they have the tightest gun 0.98

01:00:48.580 control because they have the most murders cause and effect is backwards now did it help

01:00:56.820 how do you know how many murders would there have been if things were different you don't know so if

01:01:04.740 you don't know how things would have been in the alternative situation you don't know anything

01:01:09.700 and we think we do though so we think that well there's a correlation there i guess i guess locks on

01:01:16.900 doors don't work there's still burglaries and that actually as ridiculous as that sounded

01:01:22.500 that's most of the way people are analyzing stuff most of it is reversing cause and effect most of it

01:01:35.220 who are we talking about i know no one who has that situation

01:01:40.100 i don't know what you're talking about

01:01:43.700 somebody says proves you don't understand burglars very well proves you can't think

01:01:48.420 because what you're accusing me of is to say that burglars would not

01:01:54.020 prefer to burglarize the less protected house of course they would so we assume that those locks

01:02:02.260 did decrease some amount of burglaries for the ones with the best defenses there's nobody questioning

01:02:08.580 that friction works friction works but correlation and causation are still backwards

01:02:15.940 um do people get murdered with legal or illegal guns well if you looked at the uh the kinds of murders

01:02:25.940 you would find that gun control wouldn't have as big an impact on those murders as you'd like for

01:02:32.900 example gun control probably would not make any difference to gang violence right probably wouldn't make any

01:02:40.020 difference uh what about the hurricanes i don't know what you're talking about all right um but the gun

01:02:50.980 control is ineffective it only stops the law abiding yeah maybe i i don't know if we've actually studied

01:03:00.180 that all right that's it for now and i will talk to you later

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 17, 2020

Episode 1061 Scott Adams： Fake News, Fake Science, Fake Everything

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