Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1063 Scott Adams： Cognitive Dissonance in Trump Haters, Mask Science, Protests

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00:00:30.000 to this. It doesn't take much. All it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or

00:00:35.200 a canteen jug or a flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.

00:00:43.520 And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the unparalleled pleasure, the thing that makes

00:00:49.200 everything better, including the coronavirus, the economy, racism, protests, you name it.

00:00:54.900 It's all better with one sip. Go!

00:01:00.000 Ah, my white blood cell count is climbing. I can feel it. Well, the biggest news in the

00:01:11.640 world might be the rain in China, because it's raining so hard that the so-called Three Gorges

00:01:21.400 dam, which is a pretty big dam, it's damn big, might actually break, which is a really big

00:01:33.040 deal. A super big deal. So this would be a disaster on a level that would be hard to even calculate.

00:01:42.680 It looks like it might happen. And one of the risks is that the factories that make pharmaceuticals

00:01:50.360 for this country are in the flood zone. So there's a non-zero chance that the pharmaceutical

00:01:58.000 industry will get wiped out this week. So we got that to look forward to. But let's hope

00:02:05.580 that doesn't happen. I would guess that the Chinese are working very hard to relocate anything 1.00

00:02:11.680 that can be relocated. So maybe they'll prepare in time. Let's see. Portland, it's the 50th night of

00:02:23.520 protests with fires and big visual things. Check out CNN.com to find all the stories and the pictures,

00:02:33.240 the fires and the protesters. Nothing. If you look at the right-hand column on CNN.com, those are the

00:02:43.840 stories they don't want you to see. So it's over there. It's just one line of text. Portland, protesters,

00:02:52.020 no picture. So it's pretty clear that at least CNN doesn't want you to see those pictures.

00:03:00.080 But I don't think that even Fox News is playing it up. So I think there's some kind of agreement

00:03:06.960 not to show these protests. And I would love to know the real story behind that. All right.

00:03:15.260 I announced today that I'm going to start blocking anybody who argues that the science has proven

00:03:22.080 face masks won't help against the coronavirus. Okay, so don't say you weren't warned.

00:03:30.080 You can have your opinion and you can tell other people. But here's my reasoning.

00:03:37.640 I'm not a scientist. And I can't tell you definitively whether masks work or make things

00:03:44.060 worse. But I can tell you that if you're also not a scientist, and you go on and say definitively,

00:03:51.280 the science has proven masks don't work. I don't want you in my world now. Okay, because that just

00:03:57.960 hasn't happened. This is not true. If it's true that you've never seen the studies, including

00:04:03.660 yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, showing that face masks make a gigantic improvement. If

00:04:10.600 you've never seen those studies, then why not? I mean, I've seen both the ones that say they work

00:04:18.400 and the ones that don't. And I've seen lots of them. Lots of studies that say they don't work.

00:04:24.100 Lots of studies that say they do. If you haven't seen both, you shouldn't have an opinion.

00:04:30.980 So I'm only blocking people who are not aware of half of the world. I'm not blocking you because

00:04:38.160 of your opinion. I'm blocking you because it's been long enough. In the beginning, it makes sense that

00:04:45.660 you haven't been exposed to all the information. But now there's no excuse. At this point, if you

00:04:52.020 are not aware that major publications are reporting that face masks, even the casual kind, do make a

00:05:00.760 big difference, even if they're wrong. All right, this is important. Even if they're wrong. If you're not

00:05:09.180 aware of it, that's a problem. All right. So I just, and I'm so bored by it. I guess I'm bored that

00:05:19.980 people think that if they send me yet one more study from the past that say it doesn't work, that

00:05:25.840 that will be the one study that changes my mind and makes me be irrational. It just doesn't work

00:05:33.620 that way. All right. So that was just my personal frustration. Probably had nothing to do with you.

00:05:39.460 So here's a question I've been asking just because the answers are funny to me. It goes like this.

00:05:48.380 After three and a half plus years of Trump, three and a half years, I guess is right. After three and a

00:05:56.080 half years of Trump, we don't have to wonder what he'll do wrong. Because you've got three and a half

00:06:03.320 years to look at it. So I like asking people, can you tell me what is the worst thing he's done wrong

00:06:10.140 in your opinion? And here's why it's so funny. Number one, the answers are all over the place.

00:06:17.280 What if I taught you that you should assume is true? If there's one question and people are all

00:06:26.600 on the same side saying, Oh, Trump is bad. Trump is bad. So in that sense, they're very unified,

00:06:33.480 unified. Trump is bad. Now give me your top reason or top three or four. And you'll see their top three

00:06:42.000 or four reasons are first of all different, which is weird, because they're all on the same side.

00:06:49.220 Wouldn't they all have the same top reason? Or maybe the top three would be sort of similar,

00:06:55.980 but in a different order. But wouldn't people have the same reasons? And here's what's funny.

00:07:03.120 The top reason at the moment is, of course, going to be his coronavirus response. But let me ask you this.

00:07:10.920 Didn't people have exactly the same idea about getting rid of Trump before the coronavirus even

00:07:17.360 happened? Their opinions of why Trump should leave are identical now to what they were. All they've

00:07:26.540 done is change the reasons. Whenever you see this situation, where somebody keeps their point of view,

00:07:34.060 but the reason for it keeps changing, it's not a real reason. All right. If they add

00:07:40.880 new reasons, then you'd have something. It's like, all my old reasons are true, and I've added a few

00:07:47.060 more. But my top number one reason that hasn't changed. It's always the same. But I have added a

00:07:52.260 few more things. That would sound reasonable. But if you're complaining that your number one thing is

00:07:57.600 coronavirus response, even if it wasn't good, you have to ask yourself, wait a minute, have they just

00:08:06.400 added a new reason to something that was just they'd already decided and now they're just adding

00:08:11.300 reasons? You know, oh, my new top reason is this happens to be in the news this week. But I started

00:08:19.540 collecting some of the answers because they're funny in a certain way. They're funny in a certain way in

00:08:27.580 that. First of all, it got more attention than I thought it would. And this morning, people who

00:08:34.860 weighed in on this question included Brian Stelter, you know, from CNN. So Brian Stelter weighed in

00:08:43.780 with the critics. Also, Dave Isikoff weighed in and Matt Negrin, who apparently has taken over on the

00:08:55.620 MSNBC show Hardball. So all three of these people are sort of weighing in on the side of the people

00:09:04.440 saying, yes, here are all the things that Trump has done wrong. So here's the list of things that

00:09:11.880 Trump has done wrong. Now remember, this is a big decision. It's a big decision to get rid of a

00:09:17.620 president or to vote for a new president. So here are the reasons. He downplayed the risk of the

00:09:26.140 coronavirus to increase his odds of a China trade deal. He downplayed the risk of the coronavirus to

00:09:35.120 increase his odds of a China trade deal. So the first thing wrong with this analysis is that

00:09:41.560 he puts it in some kind of a personal sense. Because I'm pretty sure that the president

00:09:46.780 negotiating with China was sort of intended for the benefit of the whole country.

00:09:52.660 It's really not just something he did for himself. And it's just funny to hear anybody

00:09:58.000 talk about it that way. Now, the China trade deal wasn't about the country. That was just about

00:10:04.060 himself. Okay. All right. Let's take that a little further. And he uses, and this critic

00:10:14.540 uses the word downplaying the risk. Did the president downplay the risk? Or did he balance the risk?

00:10:23.960 Was he balancing competing interests by saying, well, the economy is important, the trade deal is

00:10:30.380 important, and coronavirus are important too. But it's not a case of one of them is the only thing

00:10:36.040 that matters. It's balanced. So isn't the president's job to balance the risks? But for this critic, if you

00:10:47.560 balance the risk, you can call it downplaying the risk. And all he did was substitute a word

00:10:54.960 for my word, and turned a reasonable thing into an unreasonable sounding thing, even though it's the

00:11:01.880 same thing. Let me state these two things with just different words. My wording is the president

00:11:09.520 balanced the risks of the economy, the trade deals, which are part of the economy, and the health.

00:11:16.900 He balanced them. When I use the word balance, that sounds true, right? Because he wasn't saying

00:11:23.980 one of them is the only important thing. He never said the economy is the only thing. He never said

00:11:29.800 the coronavirus is the only thing. He balanced them. Now, did he balance them correctly? Well,

00:11:35.820 that's not really the complaint. The complaint is he downplayed it. All this critic did was replace my

00:11:43.980 word balance with downplayed. But nothing was different. It was still the same thing. You can't turn a

00:11:52.580 good thing into a bad thing by changing one of the words. That's not a thing. But if you can imagine

00:12:00.040 that this person is a professional writer for the Atlantic, maybe you understand what's going on.

00:12:06.760 Here's the number two thing on the list of things that Trump got wrong on the coronavirus. He mocked

00:12:13.160 the virus in February. That's right. He was mean to the virus. He mocked it. He mocked the virus.

00:12:19.940 What exactly did that cause? Do you remember when you were feeling good? And then, ow, ow, I've got a

00:12:30.800 headache. What's causing my headache? And then you find out it's because the president mocked the virus.

00:12:37.520 That probably didn't happen, right? Or you went out to start your car.

00:12:40.580 Oh, God, my car isn't starting. Did the president mock the virus again?

00:12:49.680 There's no connecting tissue between the biggest complaints about what the president did and anything

00:12:57.480 in the real world, which is what makes it funny. Complete disconnect from the real world. So that's

00:13:03.660 the number two issue. Here's number three. Screwing up the European travel ban in March. And then there

00:13:10.780 was a detail given that there was a news article saying that by giving a two-day notice about the

00:13:18.080 travel ban in Europe, it caused all the flights to load up and people quickly traveled to get ahead

00:13:24.720 of the ban. And then, of course, some of them had virus and brought it into the country. Now, I ask

00:13:31.760 you this. What was the way he was supposed to do a travel ban? Do you think the people who quickly

00:13:38.080 got on planes in that two-day window, do you think that they were leaving the country that they lived in,

00:13:44.980 not knowing if they could get home? Or was it a case that people were simply going home

00:13:49.920 because they knew they were going to be there for a while? How exactly were you supposed to prevent

00:13:54.880 people from going home? How exactly was that going to work? And moreover, in what world are flights

00:14:02.860 not already pretty much all booked? Before the coronavirus, how often were you on a flight that

00:14:11.260 wasn't pretty much fully booked? It was kind of rare, right? So how much difference did two days make

00:14:18.860 when the only difference was going from pretty much full to actually full? And those people

00:14:27.060 probably would have had to be repatriated to their countries anyway. So I don't know that you could

00:14:32.520 make a case that that could have been done better or differently. I don't know what the better would

00:14:37.920 look like. If you don't say what would the alternative look like, you haven't really criticized.

00:14:43.660 The very minimum for a criticism is to say, you did X. If you had done Y, you know, and somebody else did Y,

00:14:54.300 you could see that that was a better result. But we don't have anything like that. We just have people

00:14:58.140 taking their best shot at stuff. And maybe some of it was imperfect. Here's another one. He sidelined

00:15:04.420 the CDC in April. What does that mean? What does it mean to sideline the CDC? Was the CDC the ones who

00:15:13.320 told us that, well, I won't go through the list, but the CDC was not exactly bathed in glory during

00:15:20.440 this. And what does it mean to sideline them? I don't even know what that means. Refusing to advocate

00:15:26.840 for masks in May or June. What difference would that have made? What difference would it have made?

00:15:35.180 Because Trump has never said masks don't work. And he has allowed his experts to tell you that they do

00:15:43.980 work. So Trump allows his experts to tell you they work. And then he sort of leaves it to the states,

00:15:51.500 because that's the system of government we have. If he had done more than what he did,

00:15:56.640 would he not be called a dictator right now? Because he's forcing the states to do things and

00:16:02.100 the states didn't want to do it? I don't know if he had that option. Did he have that option?

00:16:09.540 I would agree that he could say more about masks. But he's not stopping his experts from telling you

00:16:18.160 you should wear them. Have you ever seen that? There's nothing like that. He's letting the science

00:16:24.340 talk. And then he's telling you what he's doing. Could he do a better job of modeling behavior? I

00:16:30.700 would say yes. But I don't know that you could necessarily say you'd notice the difference in what

00:16:37.040 people did. And then something about blocking testing funding in July. I don't know what that was,

00:16:44.660 but it sounds like fake news. It sounds like when you hear somebody blocked funding,

00:16:51.060 and then you dig down, it's usually something more along the lines of, it was supposed to be in

00:16:56.060 another bill, or this bill had some things in it that didn't belong, or, or, you know, we were going

00:17:01.380 to do it a different way or something like that. So it's probably fake news. I never even heard of

00:17:05.220 that one. But I don't think that we have a testing. I don't think we have a funding limit

00:17:12.500 on testing, do we? I've never heard of that before. Anyway, here's some other things that

00:17:18.200 that are complaints. He turned America from a shiny hill of hope to a laughingstock.

00:17:26.220 Do you feel that when you wake up? Do you wake up in the morning and you're like,

00:17:30.400 oh, oh, I just realized again, I'm not on a shiny hill of hope. I did not wake up in the

00:17:41.920 shiny hill of hope. My country is a laughingstock. What? Because Justin Trudeau was giggling at that

00:17:50.680 one meeting that time? Does Justin Trudeau not take our phone calls anymore? If we call Bulgaria 0.97

00:17:58.560 and say, Bulgaria, we want to do a trade deal, do they say, no, you are not the shiny hill of hope.

00:18:06.280 You are laughingstock now. I will not do a trade deal with you. Does that happen? Because I don't

00:18:12.120 think any of this translates into anything real. Here's another one. Oh, so somebody else, I guess,

00:18:22.700 was this Matt Negrin who said, right, no one remembers why he was impeached. Somebody said

00:18:28.940 that to me. I don't know who it was. So one of the things you'll notice is that when you ask

00:18:34.000 what Trump is doing wrong, like what, or why has he done wrong, you'll get sarcasm instead of reasons.

00:18:41.780 So here's a perfect example. Right. No one remembers why he was impeached.

00:18:46.720 Do you know what my first response to that was? Why did he get impeached? Something about

00:18:53.760 Ukraine or something? A phone call? And I say to myself, oh, the thing that was so unimportant

00:19:01.900 barely held onto my memory and was completely political and was ridiculous and didn't matter

00:19:08.100 anyway. Even if everything that had been claimed about the president were true, what impact?

00:19:16.720 None. There's really none that I can think of. So anyway, it's hilarious to ask people to name

00:19:24.680 specifics. Oh, and then one of the examples was 11% unemployment rate, to which I thought,

00:19:32.580 really? Somebody is criticizing President Trump over the current unemployment rate? That's like

00:19:41.220 somebody who has never followed the news or something. I don't even understand that.

00:19:46.720 So everybody who says Sweden, I might start, let's start blocking people who mentioned Sweden

00:19:53.040 because Sweden is just different and we don't know why exactly. So Sweden is just different

00:20:02.740 and we don't know exactly why. So if you're making a point with Sweden, you're not making a point

00:20:09.800 that is really a point. All you're saying is, there's a country. What about Estonia? I don't know. What

00:20:19.540 about Estonia? We don't know why it worked, why it didn't, what they exactly did. We don't know.

00:20:26.240 Sweden is no longer an interesting question. There are just too many things different.

00:20:31.380 Let me ask you this. How many countries that regularly supplement with fish oil, which has

00:20:39.400 vitamin D, are having a bad outcome? I don't know. Sweden has herd immunity. Somebody says,

00:20:49.060 no, it doesn't. I doubt that's true. I doubt it's true that they have herd immunity and I doubt

00:20:56.060 they're even close. Could be. I won't say that it's zero chance, but it could be.

00:21:04.860 So here's a viewpoint that I want to share with you. Somebody shared this with me sincerely.

00:21:12.000 And because it was sincere, I wanted to share it with you and see if you feel the same.

00:21:17.920 And it goes like this, that the wearing of masks, while it might have a medical benefit or it might

00:21:26.000 not. So this is somebody who's, you know, at least open to it being beneficial. But the larger point

00:21:32.580 is that wearing masks could lead to the breakdown of society and the collapse of the country.

00:21:41.500 So the point of view, if I can, I hope I can express it right, because it was worthy of mention. So the

00:21:48.680 point of view is that if we're forced to wear masks, we lose the thing that connects us as human

00:21:54.800 beings. And once you've lost that thing that connects you as humans, because covering this much of the

00:22:01.240 face really disconnects you from people, that once you do that, the social cohesion of the country will

00:22:07.320 be diminished. And the risk of complete civil war becomes bigger than it would have been. Now,

00:22:16.320 it doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to be a civil war because you wore masks. That's not the claim.

00:22:21.260 The claim is that the odds of a civil war go up enough by wearing masks, that that's a mortal risk.

00:22:30.500 And it's enough of a reason not to wear masks. What would you say? Would you agree with that

00:22:36.500 statement that wearing masks loses our humanity and our connection to each other, sufficiently so

00:22:43.260 that it could cause it would be one factor that might make it more likely for a revolution, which

00:22:49.780 would be gigantic expense? I would say I don't buy into this at all, not even a little bit. But I

00:22:59.700 wanted to see if anybody else felt that. It feels like the smallest risk in the world.

00:23:07.040 But I wanted to see if anybody had a feeling of that. Oh, there's some people who are agreeing.

00:23:12.000 So there's somebody saying, yes, I agree. True. Empathy block. Others saying good grief.

00:23:17.640 No, agree, agree. So some people have some sympathy for that view. Now, I don't know that that is

00:23:29.500 something that could be tested. But just because something can be expressed in words as a risk,

00:23:36.400 doesn't mean you should consider it a risk. So I'm typically on the view of, well, you know,

00:23:43.620 there's not there's no such thing as zero risk, you should at least put some odds on it. But that

00:23:48.580 would not extend to something that is so obviously not a risk that maybe you don't need to do the

00:23:55.340 math. Oh, well, there's enough of you who think there's something to it. Let me ask you this. Do you

00:24:03.520 feel any different? I don't know that the people I care about tend to be the people that I see without

00:24:09.600 masks? Anyway, the people I would care about would be my family, you know, people who are close to me.

00:24:17.180 I just don't have that feeling. I just don't think it's a thing. But some of you do. So we'll leave

00:24:23.440 it there. That's all we can say. Charles Barkley had a public statement on video that was really,

00:24:31.140 he was echoing what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said, which is he was encouraging black people to not be 1.00

00:24:37.940 anti-Semitic, because it works so much against your self interest, because obviously does. And

00:24:46.020 Barkley says this directly, we can't be prejudiced if we're asking white people to respect us.

00:24:53.920 And he says, I don't understand how you beat hatred with more hatred. So I'm completely on board with

00:24:59.260 Charles Barkley. But listening to him, and also to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it reminds me that the black 1.00

00:25:08.160 community doesn't have a strong leader. It's really noticeable, isn't it, that the black community 1.00

00:25:15.540 has lots of concerns that are legitimate, but they don't have sort of this one leader.

00:25:23.620 And you'd think it would be Obama, but he's kind of, you know, retired, if you will. But when I hear

00:25:30.720 somebody like Barkley or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talk out in such a productive way, I mean, I think this is

00:25:40.340 exactly the most productive way that you could talk. I asked myself, why can't we get more Charles

00:25:47.760 Barkley? To me, he feels like he's really good for the country. I'd like to see him have more

00:25:53.680 leadership role. There's a new controversy about Roger Stone. So the controversy is, this is the

00:26:04.480 allegation. And you can put your own odds of whether this is true. And maybe by now we know, because I

00:26:10.580 I turned off my computer a few minutes ago. But the allegation is that he was doing an interview

00:26:17.240 with a black disc jockey, whose name I don't remember, and that allegedly Roger Stone said

00:26:25.740 when he thought that nobody was listening, I don't want to argue with this Negro. Now that is allegedly 1.00

00:26:34.960 what he said, what he thought nobody was hearing on the phone, but it was allegedly clearly heard.

00:26:42.920 And so when I heard that story, I said, wow, I've got to hear this for myself. I've got to hear this

00:26:49.640 for myself. So I clicked on the articles. I'm looking for the link where I can listen to it myself.

00:26:58.840 And it's not there. So I go, okay, okay. Maybe there's some reason the New York Times doesn't have

00:27:03.620 the link. So I go, I Google it. I go, I've got to hear this for myself. Because it just,

00:27:09.200 that doesn't, it sounds like the kind of thing that maybe didn't happen. You know what I mean?

00:27:13.860 So I've got to hear it for myself. So I go from article to article to article,

00:27:18.680 including something by the disc jockey himself with a tweet. And I'm looking for the link.

00:27:26.140 Has anybody heard it? Has anybody heard the actual audio? Because I don't know if we're going to hear

00:27:36.740 it. Don't they record all radio shows? You think somebody recorded that, right? So here is my

00:27:45.700 caution to you. Although it is reported, it is very clearly said on that audio. Just remember all the

00:27:54.640 times things have been clear on audio and video and just weren't true. So you should have a really big

00:28:02.740 dose of skepticism coming into that story. And I would, I would encourage this. If you don't ever hear

00:28:10.600 it with your own ears, it didn't happen. If you do hear it with your own ears and other people who

00:28:18.780 are not crazy, you say, I'm listening to it too. And I don't hear it. It probably didn't happen.

00:28:27.720 So I don't know. Will we ever hear that video? If it turns out to be a Yanni and Laurel thing,

00:28:33.340 where if you're thinking it, you can hear it. But if you're not thinking it, you can't hear it.

00:28:38.240 Probably didn't happen, is my guess. Probably not. All right. But I wouldn't say for sure.

00:28:45.400 Nothing for sure. There was an amazing campaign video that apparently was not made by the campaign

00:28:51.820 in which a Linkin Park song was heard. And I tweeted it because it was just one of the best

00:28:59.940 campaign ads, even though the campaign apparently didn't make it, because it showed the contrast.

00:29:06.300 So there was lots of contrast between the sparkling, bright capitalism that the president

00:29:12.240 promotes versus the cities falling apart under the Democrats. And it was a great contrast play,

00:29:24.320 but it got yanked because of that copyright problem, which is no surprise. All right.

00:29:30.600 All right. Oh, here's some more things that on the list of things that the president has already done

00:29:41.540 wrong. All right. Treason pandering to Putin. What was the treason exactly? Treason? Who saw treason?

00:29:51.240 That sounds imaginary. Pandering to Putin. What's the difference between being nice to dictators while

00:30:00.380 you're attacking them with cyber attacks and you're banning their, what are they doing? Sanctioning

00:30:11.060 them, et cetera. Anybody who says that the president is pandering to Putin is sort of the lowest level

00:30:19.140 of understanding of your environment. It's sort of the lowest level, because if you don't understand

00:30:26.240 the saying nice things to the dictator while you're negotiating with them, while you're trying to

00:30:31.640 make something work, it's just smarter. It's just smarter to be polite to them and show them a little

00:30:38.020 extra consideration while you're also being tough with them. If you don't understand that that's the

00:30:42.720 best way to go, you're not much of an observer. Here are the other complaints. Nepotism, corruption,

00:30:50.260 and profiteering. What would be some examples of things that hurt you because of any of these

00:30:56.980 imagined things? What was it that hurt you? I can't think of anything. Nothing's hurt me.

00:31:03.540 Destruction of institutions of democracy. Which ones? What would be the institutions of democracy

00:31:14.120 that the president destroyed? Have you noticed that all these complaints about the president are

00:31:19.120 these weird generic hallucinations that don't even have any connection? I think the institution was the

00:31:28.200 news. Do you think the president destroyed the news business? Is he the one that did that? Because it looks

00:31:35.420 like the news destroyed itself with their own business model. I don't see how you could see it any other

00:31:41.680 way. Anyway, Hillary selling our plutonium to Russia. What's that called? That's called just doing 1.00

00:31:50.640 business. If you believe that Hillary sold our valuable plutonium to Russia, then you did not

00:31:59.140 understand what happened. So first of all, the plutonium mines were in the United States.

00:32:05.680 If the United States needed plutonium, and the plutonium is in the United States in a mine,

00:32:13.680 would we care who owned it? No. We wouldn't care who owned it. We'd just say, oh, okay, you Russians, 1.00

00:32:22.220 you have to sell us all your plutonium now. You can't sell it to other countries. The fact that they

00:32:27.120 change ownership didn't mean anything. It didn't make any difference. Because they're still in our

00:32:33.280 country. If they didn't sell it to us, we'd just say, all right, you can't have it anymore. We'll just

00:32:37.660 take it back. There was never any risk. And our allies, Canada and Australia, they produced that

00:32:45.220 stuff. What, was Australia going to stop selling us plutonium or whatever we need? Was Canada going

00:32:52.460 to stop selling it to us? There was never a shortage. That was always a fake, just a fake Fox News story.

00:32:59.700 Was it not plutonium, uranium? Sorry. I don't know my plutonium is for my uranium. So erase

00:33:07.380 everything I said about plutonium and put in uranium. So thank you for that correction with

00:33:18.020 many exclamation marks. Uranium, uranium, uranium. I hear you. All right. Who do you want to moderate

00:33:27.340 the debates? I don't think it matters. I don't think the moderators make any difference.

00:33:34.700 Uh, she sold the plutonium for her personal interest. Well, she may have had a personal

00:33:43.260 interest, but not that it matters.

00:33:45.820 Uh, if China owns 35% of America, no problem. I don't know what you're talking about. Uh,

00:33:57.260 she took huge bribes. When you say bribes, you mean that the Clinton Foundation got some money? 1.00

00:34:04.540 Possibly so. But the problem is not the selling of the uranium. The problem would be the taking of

00:34:11.580 the bribe, wouldn't it? If, if that's demonstrated to be true. Um, the point is she got rich from the 1.00

00:34:20.460 transaction. Uh, I believe that the Clinton Foundation may have made some money. That's different. All right.

00:34:29.980 Uh, Russia, Ukrainian. Just looking at your comments. I don't have much to say today.

00:34:44.700 All right. Don't know your ass from your anium. That's, that's pretty funny. 1.00

00:34:49.580 Uh, imagine buying a psychology book from a guy who got a BA in economics in 1979 as expert. Well,

00:35:00.940 have I ever called myself an expert? I don't believe I have. And have I ever, uh, recommended

00:35:08.860 any form of persuasion that is not fairly routinely known by science to be persuasive?

00:35:16.780 I don't believe I have. So reporting on something and being an expert are different. The, the people

00:35:23.260 who call me an expert on persuasion, that's their opinion. That's not mine. I'm just reporting what the,

00:35:31.820 what the experts say works and what my experience says works. That's all I've ever called it. If I ever

00:35:37.740 call myself an expert on persuasion, you should criticize me about that.

00:35:43.180 Uh, I wouldn't call myself that. Please interview Tony Heller on herd immunity. I don't think I will.

00:35:54.860 Uh, here's, here's some things that I won't do. So you should stop asking. If you asked me to

00:36:01.180 interview one expert on a topic in which I've done some deep diving and I have some information,

00:36:07.340 uh, I might do it. So for example, when I talked about climate change with Michael Schellenberger and,

00:36:13.180 uh, and also, uh, Bjorn Lomborg, that was a topic I've done my own reading on enough that I knew I

00:36:21.580 could ask the right questions. But if I would have some other expert on an expert on,

00:36:27.500 um, I don't know, some other thing, if I don't also know enough to ask the right questions,

00:36:34.460 then I would be doing a disservice to you because having one expert blather is worse than having no

00:36:40.620 expert. So let me give you the order of, uh, of understanding. Your best situation would be two

00:36:49.260 experts who have opposing views, who have enough time to talk, and maybe there's a strong moderator

00:36:55.180 that can keep them on the right page. That would be the best way to get information. Two experts

00:37:01.020 battling it out without a time limit. The next best, in terms of understanding your world,

00:37:08.780 would be no experts. So the second best situation from having two experts on different sides is no

00:37:16.060 experts. That's your second best situation. Your worst situation is one expert. Because that one

00:37:26.220 expert, just like one attorney, will convince you that they make sense. Any expert can convince you of

00:37:33.180 anything if you're not an expert in that field. So if I were to bring on one expert, I would be giving

00:37:38.460 you disinformation. Because anytime one expert is presented and there's nobody there to ask the

00:37:45.020 right questions, that's misinformation. Now, it doesn't mean that it's always misinformation.

00:37:51.580 But it does mean you should put the lowest level of credibility on it, which effectively makes it

00:37:57.340 no information at all. And since there's at least a good chance that it's misleading, or the expert is

00:38:03.020 wrong, there's a good chance of misleading people, with no chance whatsoever of giving people credible

00:38:10.780 information. So anytime you say, can you put this expert on to talk about, let's say, herd immunity?

00:38:17.580 What do I know about herd immunity? Nothing. Some people say it's 10% to 20%. Some people say it's

00:38:26.700 60% to 70%. That's it. So if I have an expert on who says a bunch of stuff, would you be informed?

00:38:35.340 Well, you would have new stuff coming into your head, but I had no way to know that it's right.

00:38:41.420 So is that a good thing to do? It's a bad thing to do. It's a bad thing to do.

00:38:47.820 Have I read Michael Schellenberger's new book on climate change? Yes, I have.

00:38:51.580 I have. I have read it, and it's excellent. Could you interview Rachel Maddow to identify the exact

00:39:00.620 moment insanity begins? When you watch Rachel Maddow, does she look, what's the right word, sane? 0.98

00:39:14.300 I don't know if you have this impression. Now, I'm not making a medical diagnosis

00:39:19.340 of Rachel Maddow or anybody else. This is just an impression. Because I'm sure that the people on

00:39:25.660 the left have some kind of an analogous impression of people on the right. And it probably looks like,

00:39:32.300 when they look at them, they look like they're lying or stupid or something, because they can't

00:39:36.140 understand why their opinions would be different. But when I look at Rachel Maddow, she looks to be,

00:39:43.180 again, I'm not stating this as to be some kind of fact, because I don't know what's in her head.

00:39:49.340 But she looks to be hypnotized. Meaning she looks to be like someone who's dealing with

00:39:57.340 an hallucination, or a series of them, as opposed to somebody who's grounded in the real world.

00:40:04.940 It's just an impression. Does that mean I'm right? No, you should not take that as any kind of

00:40:10.220 credible anything. I'm just telling you my impression. But I'm wondering, do you have

00:40:14.620 the same impression when you see her? When you see her talking, do you say to yourself,

00:40:19.660 well, there's a different opinion. It's different from my own. Maybe different priorities. She has

00:40:26.460 different set of facts she's looking at. Does it look like just someone with a different opinion?

00:40:31.980 Because it really doesn't. It doesn't, does it? It looks like there's a phenomenon happening.

00:40:40.540 And it's not one that's good. Like there's something going on emotionally or psychologically

00:40:48.700 that's not quite right. And let me say again, if you were to take, you know, take an IQ test,

00:40:58.700 and you were competing against Rachel Maddow, good luck, because she's going to clean your clock on an 1.00

00:41:04.220 IQ test. If you're trying to test your knowledge of the world, historical or otherwise, against Rachel

00:41:12.300 Maddow, good luck. She's going to kick your ass, because she knows a lot. And her IQ is really high. 0.99

00:41:21.980 So really smart, really talented, really knowledgeable. And still, and still, I can't

00:41:30.460 get past the fact that my subjective impression is that there's something else going on there.

00:41:35.420 Just an impression.

00:41:40.140 And I don't think she's alone in that, by the way. And I think I could probably pick

00:41:44.620 out with some people on the right, who strike me the same way. But nobody jumps to mind.

00:41:51.260 And Blump's response. Somebody says, does Alex Jones look crazy?

00:42:04.620 That's a complicated question. Because Alex Jones presents himself as a sort of a character.

00:42:17.980 And the character he plays is a sort of a complete character. Now, I don't know how close his

00:42:26.540 character is to what he would be if you talked to him in person. Maybe it's exactly the same. I don't

00:42:30.780 know. Maybe just, you know, attenuated a little bit for TV. But Alex Jones is trying to be Alex

00:42:39.100 Jones. So that feels like a different situation from somebody who's trying to be a more objective

00:42:49.100 TV personality. I don't know that you could say Alex Jones is anything except exactly himself,

00:42:57.580 which is all he pretends to be. Somebody says, is she smart? Yeah, Rachel Maddow is super smart. 0.99

00:43:08.140 Don't take that away from her.

00:43:12.460 All right. That's all I got for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 19, 2020

Episode 1063 Scott Adams： Cognitive Dissonance in Trump Haters, Mask Science, Protests

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