Episode 1063 Scott Adams： Cognitive Dissonance in Trump Haters, Mask Science, Protests
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.57748
Summary
I'm blocking anyone who argues that the science has proven that face masks won't work against coronavirus, and I'll tell you why: it's because they don't have an opinion. And I'm blocking you because it's been a long time coming.
Transcript
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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
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a canteen jug or a flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the unparalleled pleasure, the thing that makes
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everything better, including the coronavirus, the economy, racism, protests, you name it.
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Ah, my white blood cell count is climbing. I can feel it. Well, the biggest news in the
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world might be the rain in China, because it's raining so hard that the so-called Three Gorges
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dam, which is a pretty big dam, it's damn big, might actually break, which is a really big
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deal. A super big deal. So this would be a disaster on a level that would be hard to even calculate.
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It looks like it might happen. And one of the risks is that the factories that make pharmaceuticals
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for this country are in the flood zone. So there's a non-zero chance that the pharmaceutical
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industry will get wiped out this week. So we got that to look forward to. But let's hope
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that doesn't happen. I would guess that the Chinese are working very hard to relocate anything
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that can be relocated. So maybe they'll prepare in time. Let's see. Portland, it's the 50th night of
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protests with fires and big visual things. Check out CNN.com to find all the stories and the pictures,
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the fires and the protesters. Nothing. If you look at the right-hand column on CNN.com, those are the
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stories they don't want you to see. So it's over there. It's just one line of text. Portland, protesters,
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no picture. So it's pretty clear that at least CNN doesn't want you to see those pictures.
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But I don't think that even Fox News is playing it up. So I think there's some kind of agreement
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not to show these protests. And I would love to know the real story behind that. All right.
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I announced today that I'm going to start blocking anybody who argues that the science has proven
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face masks won't help against the coronavirus. Okay, so don't say you weren't warned.
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You can have your opinion and you can tell other people. But here's my reasoning.
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I'm not a scientist. And I can't tell you definitively whether masks work or make things
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worse. But I can tell you that if you're also not a scientist, and you go on and say definitively,
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the science has proven masks don't work. I don't want you in my world now. Okay, because that just
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hasn't happened. This is not true. If it's true that you've never seen the studies, including
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yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, showing that face masks make a gigantic improvement. If
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you've never seen those studies, then why not? I mean, I've seen both the ones that say they work
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and the ones that don't. And I've seen lots of them. Lots of studies that say they don't work.
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Lots of studies that say they do. If you haven't seen both, you shouldn't have an opinion.
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So I'm only blocking people who are not aware of half of the world. I'm not blocking you because
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of your opinion. I'm blocking you because it's been long enough. In the beginning, it makes sense that
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you haven't been exposed to all the information. But now there's no excuse. At this point, if you
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are not aware that major publications are reporting that face masks, even the casual kind, do make a
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big difference, even if they're wrong. All right, this is important. Even if they're wrong. If you're not
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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
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people think that if they send me yet one more study from the past that say it doesn't work, that
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that will be the one study that changes my mind and makes me be irrational. It just doesn't work
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that way. All right. So that was just my personal frustration. Probably had nothing to do with you.
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So here's a question I've been asking just because the answers are funny to me. It goes like this.
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After three and a half plus years of Trump, three and a half years, I guess is right. After three and a
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half years of Trump, we don't have to wonder what he'll do wrong. Because you've got three and a half
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years to look at it. So I like asking people, can you tell me what is the worst thing he's done wrong
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in your opinion? And here's why it's so funny. Number one, the answers are all over the place.
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What if I taught you that you should assume is true? If there's one question and people are all
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on the same side saying, Oh, Trump is bad. Trump is bad. So in that sense, they're very unified,
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unified. Trump is bad. Now give me your top reason or top three or four. And you'll see their top three
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or four reasons are first of all different, which is weird, because they're all on the same side.
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Wouldn't they all have the same top reason? Or maybe the top three would be sort of similar,
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but in a different order. But wouldn't people have the same reasons? And here's what's funny.
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The top reason at the moment is, of course, going to be his coronavirus response. But let me ask you this.
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Didn't people have exactly the same idea about getting rid of Trump before the coronavirus even
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happened? Their opinions of why Trump should leave are identical now to what they were. All they've
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done is change the reasons. Whenever you see this situation, where somebody keeps their point of view,
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but the reason for it keeps changing, it's not a real reason. All right. If they add
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new reasons, then you'd have something. It's like, all my old reasons are true, and I've added a few
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more. But my top number one reason that hasn't changed. It's always the same. But I have added a
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few more things. That would sound reasonable. But if you're complaining that your number one thing is
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coronavirus response, even if it wasn't good, you have to ask yourself, wait a minute, have they just
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added a new reason to something that was just they'd already decided and now they're just adding
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reasons? You know, oh, my new top reason is this happens to be in the news this week. But I started
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collecting some of the answers because they're funny in a certain way. They're funny in a certain way in
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that. First of all, it got more attention than I thought it would. And this morning, people who
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weighed in on this question included Brian Stelter, you know, from CNN. So Brian Stelter weighed in
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with the critics. Also, Dave Isikoff weighed in and Matt Negrin, who apparently has taken over on the
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MSNBC show Hardball. So all three of these people are sort of weighing in on the side of the people
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saying, yes, here are all the things that Trump has done wrong. So here's the list of things that
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Trump has done wrong. Now remember, this is a big decision. It's a big decision to get rid of a
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president or to vote for a new president. So here are the reasons. He downplayed the risk of the
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coronavirus to increase his odds of a China trade deal. He downplayed the risk of the coronavirus to
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increase his odds of a China trade deal. So the first thing wrong with this analysis is that
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he puts it in some kind of a personal sense. Because I'm pretty sure that the president
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negotiating with China was sort of intended for the benefit of the whole country.
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It's really not just something he did for himself. And it's just funny to hear anybody
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talk about it that way. Now, the China trade deal wasn't about the country. That was just about
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himself. Okay. All right. Let's take that a little further. And he uses, and this critic
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uses the word downplaying the risk. Did the president downplay the risk? Or did he balance the risk?
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Was he balancing competing interests by saying, well, the economy is important, the trade deal is
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important, and coronavirus are important too. But it's not a case of one of them is the only thing
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that matters. It's balanced. So isn't the president's job to balance the risks? But for this critic, if you
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balance the risk, you can call it downplaying the risk. And all he did was substitute a word
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for my word, and turned a reasonable thing into an unreasonable sounding thing, even though it's the
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same thing. Let me state these two things with just different words. My wording is the president
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balanced the risks of the economy, the trade deals, which are part of the economy, and the health.
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He balanced them. When I use the word balance, that sounds true, right? Because he wasn't saying
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one of them is the only important thing. He never said the economy is the only thing. He never said
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the coronavirus is the only thing. He balanced them. Now, did he balance them correctly? Well,
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that's not really the complaint. The complaint is he downplayed it. All this critic did was replace my
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word balance with downplayed. But nothing was different. It was still the same thing. You can't turn a
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good thing into a bad thing by changing one of the words. That's not a thing. But if you can imagine
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that this person is a professional writer for the Atlantic, maybe you understand what's going on.
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Here's the number two thing on the list of things that Trump got wrong on the coronavirus. He mocked
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the virus in February. That's right. He was mean to the virus. He mocked it. He mocked the virus.
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What exactly did that cause? Do you remember when you were feeling good? And then, ow, ow, I've got a
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headache. What's causing my headache? And then you find out it's because the president mocked the virus.
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That probably didn't happen, right? Or you went out to start your car.
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Oh, God, my car isn't starting. Did the president mock the virus again?
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There's no connecting tissue between the biggest complaints about what the president did and anything
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in the real world, which is what makes it funny. Complete disconnect from the real world. So that's
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the number two issue. Here's number three. Screwing up the European travel ban in March. And then there
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was a detail given that there was a news article saying that by giving a two-day notice about the
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travel ban in Europe, it caused all the flights to load up and people quickly traveled to get ahead
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of the ban. And then, of course, some of them had virus and brought it into the country. Now, I ask
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you this. What was the way he was supposed to do a travel ban? Do you think the people who quickly
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got on planes in that two-day window, do you think that they were leaving the country that they lived in,
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not knowing if they could get home? Or was it a case that people were simply going home
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because they knew they were going to be there for a while? How exactly were you supposed to prevent
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people from going home? How exactly was that going to work? And moreover, in what world are flights
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not already pretty much all booked? Before the coronavirus, how often were you on a flight that
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wasn't pretty much fully booked? It was kind of rare, right? So how much difference did two days make
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when the only difference was going from pretty much full to actually full? And those people
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probably would have had to be repatriated to their countries anyway. So I don't know that you could
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make a case that that could have been done better or differently. I don't know what the better would
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look like. If you don't say what would the alternative look like, you haven't really criticized.
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The very minimum for a criticism is to say, you did X. If you had done Y, you know, and somebody else did Y,
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you could see that that was a better result. But we don't have anything like that. We just have people
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taking their best shot at stuff. And maybe some of it was imperfect. Here's another one. He sidelined
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the CDC in April. What does that mean? What does it mean to sideline the CDC? Was the CDC the ones who
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told us that, well, I won't go through the list, but the CDC was not exactly bathed in glory during
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this. And what does it mean to sideline them? I don't even know what that means. Refusing to advocate
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for masks in May or June. What difference would that have made? What difference would it have made?
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Because Trump has never said masks don't work. And he has allowed his experts to tell you that they do
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work. So Trump allows his experts to tell you they work. And then he sort of leaves it to the states,
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because that's the system of government we have. If he had done more than what he did,
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would he not be called a dictator right now? Because he's forcing the states to do things and
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the states didn't want to do it? I don't know if he had that option. Did he have that option?
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I would agree that he could say more about masks. But he's not stopping his experts from telling you
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you should wear them. Have you ever seen that? There's nothing like that. He's letting the science
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talk. And then he's telling you what he's doing. Could he do a better job of modeling behavior? I
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would say yes. But I don't know that you could necessarily say you'd notice the difference in what
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people did. And then something about blocking testing funding in July. I don't know what that was,
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but it sounds like fake news. It sounds like when you hear somebody blocked funding,
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and then you dig down, it's usually something more along the lines of, it was supposed to be in
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another bill, or this bill had some things in it that didn't belong, or, or, you know, we were going
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to do it a different way or something like that. So it's probably fake news. I never even heard of
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that one. But I don't think that we have a testing. I don't think we have a funding limit
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on testing, do we? I've never heard of that before. Anyway, here's some other things that
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that are complaints. He turned America from a shiny hill of hope to a laughingstock.
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Do you feel that when you wake up? Do you wake up in the morning and you're like,
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oh, oh, I just realized again, I'm not on a shiny hill of hope. I did not wake up in the
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shiny hill of hope. My country is a laughingstock. What? Because Justin Trudeau was giggling at that
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one meeting that time? Does Justin Trudeau not take our phone calls anymore? If we call Bulgaria
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and say, Bulgaria, we want to do a trade deal, do they say, no, you are not the shiny hill of hope.
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You are laughingstock now. I will not do a trade deal with you. Does that happen? Because I don't
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think any of this translates into anything real. Here's another one. Oh, so somebody else, I guess,
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was this Matt Negrin who said, right, no one remembers why he was impeached. Somebody said
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that to me. I don't know who it was. So one of the things you'll notice is that when you ask
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what Trump is doing wrong, like what, or why has he done wrong, you'll get sarcasm instead of reasons.
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So here's a perfect example. Right. No one remembers why he was impeached.
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Do you know what my first response to that was? Why did he get impeached? Something about
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Ukraine or something? A phone call? And I say to myself, oh, the thing that was so unimportant
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barely held onto my memory and was completely political and was ridiculous and didn't matter
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anyway. Even if everything that had been claimed about the president were true, what impact?
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None. There's really none that I can think of. So anyway, it's hilarious to ask people to name
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specifics. Oh, and then one of the examples was 11% unemployment rate, to which I thought,
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really? Somebody is criticizing President Trump over the current unemployment rate? That's like
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somebody who has never followed the news or something. I don't even understand that.
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So everybody who says Sweden, I might start, let's start blocking people who mentioned Sweden
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because Sweden is just different and we don't know why exactly. So Sweden is just different
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and we don't know exactly why. So if you're making a point with Sweden, you're not making a point
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that is really a point. All you're saying is, there's a country. What about Estonia? I don't know. What
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about Estonia? We don't know why it worked, why it didn't, what they exactly did. We don't know.
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Sweden is no longer an interesting question. There are just too many things different.
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Let me ask you this. How many countries that regularly supplement with fish oil, which has
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vitamin D, are having a bad outcome? I don't know. Sweden has herd immunity. Somebody says,
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no, it doesn't. I doubt that's true. I doubt it's true that they have herd immunity and I doubt
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they're even close. Could be. I won't say that it's zero chance, but it could be.
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So here's a viewpoint that I want to share with you. Somebody shared this with me sincerely.
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And because it was sincere, I wanted to share it with you and see if you feel the same.
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And it goes like this, that the wearing of masks, while it might have a medical benefit or it might
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not. So this is somebody who's, you know, at least open to it being beneficial. But the larger point
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is that wearing masks could lead to the breakdown of society and the collapse of the country.
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So the point of view, if I can, I hope I can express it right, because it was worthy of mention. So the
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point of view is that if we're forced to wear masks, we lose the thing that connects us as human
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beings. And once you've lost that thing that connects you as humans, because covering this much of the
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face really disconnects you from people, that once you do that, the social cohesion of the country will
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be diminished. And the risk of complete civil war becomes bigger than it would have been. Now,
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it doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to be a civil war because you wore masks. That's not the claim.
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The claim is that the odds of a civil war go up enough by wearing masks, that that's a mortal risk.
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And it's enough of a reason not to wear masks. What would you say? Would you agree with that
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statement that wearing masks loses our humanity and our connection to each other, sufficiently so
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that it could cause it would be one factor that might make it more likely for a revolution, which
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would be gigantic expense? I would say I don't buy into this at all, not even a little bit. But I
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wanted to see if anybody else felt that. It feels like the smallest risk in the world.
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But I wanted to see if anybody had a feeling of that. Oh, there's some people who are agreeing.
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So there's somebody saying, yes, I agree. True. Empathy block. Others saying good grief.
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No, agree, agree. So some people have some sympathy for that view. Now, I don't know that that is
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something that could be tested. But just because something can be expressed in words as a risk,
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doesn't mean you should consider it a risk. So I'm typically on the view of, well, you know,
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there's not there's no such thing as zero risk, you should at least put some odds on it. But that
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would not extend to something that is so obviously not a risk that maybe you don't need to do the
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math. Oh, well, there's enough of you who think there's something to it. Let me ask you this. Do you
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feel any different? I don't know that the people I care about tend to be the people that I see without
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masks? Anyway, the people I would care about would be my family, you know, people who are close to me.
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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
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it there. That's all we can say. Charles Barkley had a public statement on video that was really,
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he was echoing what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said, which is he was encouraging black people to not be
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anti-Semitic, because it works so much against your self interest, because obviously does. And
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Barkley says this directly, we can't be prejudiced if we're asking white people to respect us.
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And he says, I don't understand how you beat hatred with more hatred. So I'm completely on board with
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Charles Barkley. But listening to him, and also to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it reminds me that the black
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community doesn't have a strong leader. It's really noticeable, isn't it, that the black community
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has lots of concerns that are legitimate, but they don't have sort of this one leader.
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And you'd think it would be Obama, but he's kind of, you know, retired, if you will. But when I hear
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somebody like Barkley or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talk out in such a productive way, I mean, I think this is
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exactly the most productive way that you could talk. I asked myself, why can't we get more Charles
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Barkley? To me, he feels like he's really good for the country. I'd like to see him have more
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leadership role. There's a new controversy about Roger Stone. So the controversy is, this is the
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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
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when he thought that nobody was listening, I don't want to argue with this Negro. Now that is allegedly
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what he said, what he thought nobody was hearing on the phone, but it was allegedly clearly heard.
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And so when I heard that story, I said, wow, I've got to hear this for myself. I've got to hear this
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for myself. So I clicked on the articles. I'm looking for the link where I can listen to it myself.
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And it's not there. So I go, okay, okay. Maybe there's some reason the New York Times doesn't have
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the link. So I go, I Google it. I go, I've got to hear this for myself. Because it just,
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that doesn't, it sounds like the kind of thing that maybe didn't happen. You know what I mean?
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So I've got to hear it for myself. So I go from article to article to article,
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including something by the disc jockey himself with a tweet. And I'm looking for the link.
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Has anybody heard it? Has anybody heard the actual audio? Because I don't know if we're going to hear
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it. Don't they record all radio shows? You think somebody recorded that, right? So here is my
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caution to you. Although it is reported, it is very clearly said on that audio. Just remember all the
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times things have been clear on audio and video and just weren't true. So you should have a really big
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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
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are not crazy, you say, I'm listening to it too. And I don't hear it. It probably didn't happen.
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So I don't know. Will we ever hear that video? If it turns out to be a Yanni and Laurel thing,
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where if you're thinking it, you can hear it. But if you're not thinking it, you can't hear it.
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Probably didn't happen, is my guess. Probably not. All right. But I wouldn't say for sure.
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Nothing for sure. There was an amazing campaign video that apparently was not made by the campaign
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in which a Linkin Park song was heard. And I tweeted it because it was just one of the best
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campaign ads, even though the campaign apparently didn't make it, because it showed the contrast.
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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
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,
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
00:33:45.820
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?
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
00:41:40.140
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.
00:43:12.460
All right. That's all I got for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.