Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1084 Scott Adams： Teachers Unions Should Pay Reparations, Churches Finding a Way, Peter Navarro and HCQ

00:00:00.560 Bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. What a day, what a day.

00:00:12.580 Come on in, come on in. There's still time, still space. You can get the best seat if you hurry up.

00:00:19.860 Make sure your coffee is warm or your beverage is cold, depending on your personal preferences.

00:00:25.200 Unlike Joe Biden, I think everybody is different. I don't lump people by ethnicity. No, I don't.

00:00:34.480 I believe we are all special and different and unique. And I think that the only thing that

00:00:40.260 could make this morning better, well, maybe not the only thing, but the thing that could make it the

00:00:46.060 best, is a simultaneous sip. And you are going to enjoy that now. And all it takes is a cup or mug or

00:00:54.720 glass, a tank or gels or stine, a canteen, a drink or a flask of a vessel of any kind. Fill it with

00:01:00.100 your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine

00:01:06.040 hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the fake news. It's called

00:01:12.460 The Simultaneous Sip. And it happens now. Go!

00:01:21.940 Well, I would like to share with you something that made me so happy this morning. And I tweeted

00:01:29.020 it so that you could be happy too. There is a genre of entertainment that I had never seen

00:01:37.180 before that I really liked. I mean, it just completely made my day. And I'll call it a

00:01:45.400 genre. I know you're going to say to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, we've known about this forever.

00:01:52.160 Why are you the last to find out? Well, that's probably true. But here's the genre. Young black 1.00

00:01:59.340 men listening to, let's call it just for convenience, old white music. That is awesome. 0.95

00:02:07.940 The first one is these two black teens who look like the most fun two people you'd ever

00:02:15.380 know, listening to a Phil Collins song for the first time. And it was in the air tonight,

00:02:23.080 I think.

00:02:23.400 Now, here's the thing. If you've never heard Phil Collins, and yeah, yeah, yeah, I know

00:02:28.300 y'all have your opinions. Some people love him. Some people hate him. I personally think

00:02:33.520 that his best songs are amazing. And watching, so the video is the two young black kids. And

00:02:43.140 for some reason, the fact that they're black helps the story, right? You get that, right? 0.97

00:02:48.740 Just because they're listening to something that they had not been exposed to before. And

00:02:54.580 here's what makes it amazing. So first of all, just watching them light up and enjoy the music

00:03:00.640 and being maybe a little bit surprised by it is good. So that alone is entertaining. But

00:03:07.280 here's the part that really sort of got to me. Music for me is a sympathetic thing. And

00:03:20.540 what I mean is this. The music that I first heard when I was with my college friends is

00:03:29.400 the music that always reaches me the most and probably always will. And it has to do with

00:03:34.180 the fact that I learned very early that I don't seem to have much in the way of independent

00:03:40.840 musical preferences. You know, I'm not a big music guy. But if you put me in the room with

00:03:47.500 people who really like the music that's playing, what I respond to is the other people. So if

00:03:54.260 somebody else is getting like just a massive pleasure and the music, I don't get it directly

00:04:00.040 from the music, but I get it from the person. And then the music seems to be what's working. But

00:04:06.100 really, it's the combination of the person's influence. Because humans are mimics. You put

00:04:12.080 us in a room with anything, and we will be more likely to mimic it. Music probably more than most

00:04:18.780 things is mimicable. So when I watch this video, and then there's another one of a, let's see,

00:04:26.920 what's his name? He goes by NoLifeShack, S-H-A-Q on YouTube. It's a huge account, a couple million

00:04:34.520 followers. And it's a, I don't know, 20-something, I'm guessing, black man who's listening to various

00:04:42.060 musics for the first time, and Leonard Skinner. Leonard Skinner is the one. Now, there's another

00:04:48.560 thing here that's useful. And by the way, this is persuasion is sort of the context here.

00:04:55.120 So I'm talking about music, but it's not really about the music. It's about how the persuasion

00:05:01.760 works and how we are mimics. But I'm working on this hypothesis about what makes music work.

00:05:11.880 And it's a really deep, kind of complicated, hard to understand thing. There's something in humans

00:05:19.020 where we're wired for some kind of a beat. But what I felt when I was watching, and again,

00:05:25.980 it's important to the story, where I'm going here, that the people in the videos were black.

00:05:31.500 So two black youths, and then a 20-something black guy. And I got to tell you, that as they were

00:05:38.760 enjoying the music, and then I started enjoying them, and then through them remembering how much

00:05:45.840 I like the music, you know, from my youth, it is such a bonding experience. Like, I feel like I'm

00:05:54.680 already friends with the people in the videos. Never met them. Don't think I ever will. But

00:06:01.000 immediately, I was bonded to them. Like, if I met them in the street, I would feel like it would be

00:06:06.380 really easy to get along with them. Like, I would already be connected somehow. And, you know,

00:06:11.180 in our big, you know, world full of conflict and protest and such, watching the power of music

00:06:19.000 pull people together makes me ask some big questions. One of the questions is about the

00:06:25.880 origin of music, and the origin of dancing. And I'm not too proud, I'm not too proud to say

00:06:33.360 that when I watched No Life Shack, literally, he couldn't help himself but move when he was

00:06:41.700 listening to Leonard Skinner. I actually danced. I danced with him alone in my studio office at 4.30

00:06:53.240 in the morning, happier than you could ever imagine. Like, just purely happy. And he did that for me.

00:07:01.400 So, I would recommend his YouTube. It's No Life Shack. S-H-A-Q. Quite amazing. Now, here's the 0.98

00:07:11.240 other thing I wanted to say about music. There's something that I'm just sort of working on this

00:07:16.720 as a hypothesis. Curiosity is sort of a base impulse for human beings. And I've said before that

00:07:25.040 whenever you can invoke curiosity, let's say you're an author or any kind of entertainer,

00:07:31.400 curiosity will just bind people. You know, whether you're giving a presentation at work,

00:07:37.360 whatever you're doing, if you can inspire curiosity, people will stay around.

00:07:41.660 And they'll wait, because they kind of need to know how things end. We're just built that way.

00:07:46.580 And music, I think, does that. Because music, imagine if you would, your music was one beat.

00:07:51.840 And you knew where that was going to end. At the end of the song, it would still be

00:07:58.200 It wouldn't matter how good that beat was. Because it bores you. There's no curiosity.

00:08:08.080 But songs, you know that if they start slow, like Lynyrd Skynyrd does, if you're familiar

00:08:13.240 with the song, you know it. It's actually too slow. And watching the No Life Shack, hear it

00:08:25.420 for the first time, what you know as an audience member is, oh, the good stuff's coming. And

00:08:32.360 here's the fun. At the slow part, he got really excited and really liked the Lynyrd Skynyrd.

00:08:38.100 It was Freebird, actually. So it was Freebird, the song. And he's listening to it. He really

00:08:43.340 likes the slow part. It's like, yeah. And you can tell he's really getting into it and

00:08:47.460 genuinely enjoying it. But as a viewer, you're saying to yourself, oh, I know where this is

00:08:52.780 going. I am not leaving. I am not leaving this video until the tempo change, right? And

00:09:01.300 so the tempo changes, and he just goes nuts. But you can feel it in your body. Like, you get

00:09:06.940 goosebumps. And it just goes right through you. Because you're feeling it with him. It's

00:09:12.840 remarkable. And I would go so far as to say that if you are going to invent a new genre

00:09:19.620 of entertainment, damn, you couldn't beat this. Because it really has just all of the

00:09:24.660 elements in it. So there's that. I tweeted both of those so you can enjoy them too. I would

00:09:31.660 definitely recommend that you watch them alone. Watch it alone with headphones when nobody's

00:09:38.600 watching because you're going to find yourself dancing around. All right. Good news on the

00:09:43.380 payroll and on jobs. Jobs are down from 11.1 in June to 10.2. Is 10.2 good or bad? Well, it's

00:09:54.960 bad in normal times. But I have to say, do you know where we think back just a few months?

00:10:02.200 Just a few months ago, what were people talking about in terms of unemployment? They were talking

00:10:08.340 about 20%. They were talking about depression. Now, if you're keeping track of who is your better

00:10:18.160 predictors, I would like to throw into the mix that I did say, no, it's not going to be a

00:10:23.620 depression. Yeah, we are going to get out of this. And this 10% unemployment, as bad as

00:10:29.580 it is, certainly among our biggest challenges right now, it's not nearly as bad as it could

00:10:36.160 have been. It's a lot closer to what the optimists were saying than the pessimists. So keep that

00:10:42.500 in mind. Oh, as long as we're scoring things, to maintain my credibility as well as I

00:10:53.460 can anyway. I like to confess when I get stuff wrong. So when I get stuff wrong, if I don't

00:11:00.120 say it publicly, hey, I got that wrong, then maybe, you know, I'll have less credibility

00:11:04.980 in the future. So early on, when we first were going into shutdown, and people said,

00:11:11.100 hey, you know, this shutdown is bad. And we thought it would only be maybe a month or six

00:11:16.720 weeks. When I thought it would be really short, because nobody really knew. I mean, maybe that

00:11:24.080 was enough, maybe it wasn't. But when we thought it would be short, I actually said, you know,

00:11:29.420 I think the net deaths, if you take out the number of people who won't be dying on the highway,

00:11:34.960 you might come out closer to like 5000 people dead, if it's short. But of course, it wasn't

00:11:42.080 short. So my 5000 dead could not be more wrong. So it's about as wrong as anything can be. But the

00:11:51.620 wrongness had to do with not knowing how long the short that the shutdown would have lasted. Because

00:11:57.780 not not a lot of people are going to, let's say, end their life or become addicts in four weeks,

00:12:04.200 because you can sort of last that out, you know, maybe you can hold, it would be worse,

00:12:09.280 worse, but not that much worse. But if you extend it for months, and people lose their jobs, and,

00:12:14.460 you know, they can't, they can't do any of the social things that they normally do. Yeah, that's,

00:12:19.520 that's expensive. That's dangerous. People don't get their cancer screenings, etc. So

00:12:25.800 so that would be a case of me missing by about 1000 miles. But the part I missed,

00:12:33.840 that maybe we all missed is how long we would be shut down. That was the key key element.

00:12:39.280 All right, though, here's a question that I want to ask with respect, which is about the

00:12:45.500 church attendance during the pandemic. You've seen a number of people have cleverly tried to get around

00:12:52.580 the rules. I guess there was one church that did their service inside a Walmart, because Walmart could

00:12:58.520 be open, but churches cannot. I think it was Ralph Reed's group who used a casino to do a service

00:13:05.800 because casinos are open, but churches are not. And I asked this question, what would Jesus do?

00:13:14.280 Because it feels like I've always appreciated that question, because it does put you, you know,

00:13:21.260 put you into the view of, okay, if you were Jesus, how would you play this? And the reason I asked the

00:13:28.020 question is not a criticism. So don't take this as a criticism of religion. I'm pro-religion. I think

00:13:34.720 it works wonders in many people's lives. I think that's just objectively true. So no matter what you

00:13:41.200 believe about religion, it's just obvious it's good for people. We seem to be wired for it.

00:13:47.620 However, the evidence is overwhelming, I think. So I'm very, very pro-religion while not being a believer

00:13:54.400 personally. So I have a complete respect for it, for all the right reasons. But I have to ask,

00:14:03.940 is your constitutional right to your religion, which I would say is unquestionable? That is to say,

00:14:15.020 those people who say, you government, you can't tell us to not practice our religion. That's,

00:14:21.160 that's baked into the constitution. I'm with you. Same, same as if they had tried to suppress your

00:14:26.900 free speech. Totally with you. If it's in the constitution, sorry, those are the rules. Does it,

00:14:34.820 you know, is it, could somebody get hurt because of it? Yes. Sorry, it's in the constitution. Same with

00:14:41.700 free speech. Free speech isn't free. People do get hurt all the time. But do I think we should

00:14:48.860 not have free speech because somebody might get hurt by it? Nope. It's in the constitution. Those

00:14:54.180 are the rules we're playing by. And until somebody comes up with a better set of rules or changes the

00:14:59.240 rules, we're just better off saying, Hey, this is what we agreed on. Let's stick with it. So those

00:15:05.640 people who say it's my constitutional right to express my religious preferences and worship the

00:15:13.160 way I want, you know, within reason, of course, I say, absolutely. 100% support for your constitutional

00:15:22.200 right to avoid, to just ignore the government, literally just ignore the government. If the

00:15:28.620 government passes a law tomorrow that says, you know, we're going to shoot you if you practice your

00:15:34.280 religion, well, you have to overthrow the government, right? I mean, you have to overthrow 1.00

00:15:39.420 the government if they do that. So legally, constitutionally, absolutely. And if you want

00:15:48.140 to make the, if you want to make the cost benefit decision that you've looked at all the data,

00:15:54.780 you've decided that this risk is worth the reward. Okay. You know, as long as you've looked at all the

00:16:02.120 risks and all the reward, that's all anybody would ask. But here's the question. How would Jesus play

00:16:09.000 it? Would Jesus have said, let's say he made the decision and you said to him, look, we got, you know,

00:16:16.640 we've got this problem. We can't worship the way we want to, but we got to work around. We're going to

00:16:20.880 use the casino. The only downside, the only downside is not the risk we're taking on ourselves because

00:16:29.040 we're adults. You know, we can take our own risk. You know, you can't tell me what risk I can take.

00:16:35.380 So yeah. What do you think of that, Jesus? And Jesus, Jesus would probably say, I agree. You are adults

00:16:42.640 and you can take the risk that you want. But then there's this other pesky problem, which is what

00:16:49.560 happens if you transmit the virus outside of your group. What happens if infection spread because of

00:16:57.800 it? And then that went to people who were not making any kind of a religious decision. They were

00:17:03.780 just cutting your hair or whatever they were doing. And now they've got the virus. Somebody dies.

00:17:09.320 Would Jesus say, go ahead and do the ceremony in the casino because you're adults and you're

00:17:18.560 choosing to do it and the benefits, you know, are greater than the cost? Or would Jesus say,

00:17:23.400 you know, the people who are going to suffer here are not you. You know, the question of whether you

00:17:30.440 should do it isn't about you. It's not about you. It's not about religion. It's not about your God.

00:17:35.940 It's about what you, what risk you are willing to put other people. Now, would Jesus say, well,

00:17:43.780 yeah, maybe a few people will die. Or would Jesus say, you know, it's temporary. Let's just hold

00:17:52.000 off. You can worship it up like crazy when the churches are fully reopened. Man, we're going to

00:17:58.240 have a party. It'll be the best day ever. But for now, but for now, can you just think of your other

00:18:05.240 humans for a little bit? Now, I'm not a religious scholar. I will not pretend to speak for Jesus.

00:18:12.500 I simply put that question out there because I was raised in the Christian tradition. And I find it

00:18:20.220 confusing that Jesus may have supported something that was real fun and good for the worshiper,

00:18:27.720 but might kill somebody who was minding their own business later. Maybe. Maybe Jesus would take that 0.53

00:18:34.440 view. And if that's your view, that Jesus would back that, I would say you're on strong,

00:18:39.540 you're on strong ground. All right. Rand Paul tweeted a real clear politics article by Stacey Rudin,

00:18:48.260 who you need to know is a litigator active in the grassroots movement to preserve full-time

00:18:53.960 in-classroom education. All right. So there's a lawyer who is actually litigating. So she's,

00:18:59.700 I guess it's she, is active in the effort to get kids back to school. And writes an article that says

00:19:09.440 that social distancing and lockdowns have no scientific support. And I thought to myself,

00:19:18.420 what? So there's no scientific evidence at all that lockdowns work, or that even social distancing,

00:19:31.480 which is kind of the same thing, that they work. Now, the thought is that if, you know, once 1% of

00:19:38.220 your population is infected, that there's just nothing you can do. That you could be the most cautious

00:19:44.060 people in the world. But basically, it's going to get you. It's going to get you sooner or later.

00:19:50.000 However, I would note that although the argument is sound and very, it's provocative in the sense

00:19:56.520 that what is the argument against hydroxychloroquine? The argument against hydroxychloroquine

00:20:02.400 is that there are no studies confirming that it works. Right? There are no studies confirming

00:20:10.660 that it works. So they say don't use it. But there's also no study confirming that the lockdowns

00:20:18.800 work, you know, in this kind of situation. So who's being anti-science? If there's no evidence

00:20:26.140 that something works, but you know for sure it'll destroy your economy, do you do it? There's no

00:20:32.260 scientific evidence that a lockdown works. And which I believe to be true, only because it would be so

00:20:37.760 hard to do a scientific study. And it might be the only reason there's no scientific study, because

00:20:43.060 I don't know, it'd just be hard to study. But everybody thinks it works. And one of the things

00:20:48.320 I loved was this point that Rudin makes in the article, that human beings will imagine that their

00:20:56.560 leaders made the difference. And this is a point I've been talking about a lot. You think you can tell

00:21:02.640 which leaders are doing a good job because you're looking at the outcomes. It's just not a thing.

00:21:09.080 It has never been a thing. It's not even a thing in business most of the time.

00:21:13.400 As the Dilbert creator, I've been writing about this forever. My observation in all my business

00:21:19.920 experience is that managers would wait for something lucky to happen that had nothing to do with them.

00:21:25.480 And then they would claim credit based on that thing they did. That had nothing to do with anything.

00:21:32.240 So most of management is waiting for something good to happen on its own, and then figuring out

00:21:37.640 a way that you can claim credit for it. And that's not even a joke. Anybody who's had experience with

00:21:44.080 big companies knows, yeah, in a big organization, it's really about saying that you were responsible

00:21:50.920 for a coincidental uptick in sales, which might have to do with, you know, nothing. Let me ask you

00:21:58.240 this. So we saw that a number of companies like Amazon made tons of money because of the pandemic.

00:22:05.040 Do you think there are no managers at Amazon who are going to say, look at what a great job I did

00:22:11.180 because my profits and my segment are way up? Yeah, they will. They had nothing to do with it. It was

00:22:18.260 the pandemic. The pandemic made people stay home and order stuff on Amazon. But there will be

00:22:23.800 managers claiming credit, and successfully. They will be compensated for doing such a great job.

00:22:30.920 Because, well, look at all the sales. You made a lot of money. You guys are geniuses. It had nothing

00:22:35.940 to do with talent. Likewise, when all the governors and the leaders of all the countries, at the end of

00:22:41.740 this, they're going to be claiming credit for the ones who coincidentally got a good result.

00:22:46.280 And the ones who coincidentally got a bad result will be blaming it on somebody else because they

00:22:52.640 need to do that. But indeed, there may be no connection between getting back to the social

00:22:59.020 distancing, between any of the leadership decisions and what happens. Now, here's my problem with the

00:23:07.460 Rudin look. While I accept that there may not be any science for social distancing and the lockdowns,

00:23:15.720 that's probably just because it's hard to study. Almost nothing I do during the day has any science

00:23:23.500 to it. After I'm done here, I'm going to go downstairs and I'm going to eat a delicious avocado

00:23:29.740 with soy sauce and pepper, despite the fact that there has not been one single scientific study

00:23:37.580 to say that that's going to be the best thing I can do now. Might be something else is better to do.

00:23:43.620 Maybe I should wait to eat. Maybe I should eat something different. But I'm going to do it anyway,

00:23:50.260 despite no scientific backing whatsoever. Because some things just sort of make sense.

00:23:56.640 Now, the other thing that Rudin admits is that, you know, if obviously indirectly admits that if you

00:24:05.080 have a vaccine and you can stall until you get to the vaccine, actually social distancing might make

00:24:12.960 sense. It might make sense to stall if you knew you were stalling for something. But we don't quite

00:24:20.040 know that the vaccines are going to work. I have a good feeling about them, but I don't know.

00:24:27.380 So I think in the context where you have a real chance of therapeutics, a real chance of keeping

00:24:33.680 the hospitals running, and a real chance of getting to a vaccine, and I think those are all real.

00:24:40.560 That that is the one situation in which you don't need that much science to do a shutdown.

00:24:45.300 So while the case is strong counselor, from a lawyer perspective, it's sort of a good argument,

00:24:55.020 but it's a lawyer argument. Meaning, when I say it's a lawyer argument, I mean it sounds good,

00:25:01.680 but it's missing the biggest part, which is the whole point was to stall to keep the hospitals open

00:25:07.660 and to make sure that we had time to get to some better treatments. So under those conditions,

00:25:16.560 actually, I think you don't need too much science to take your shot.

00:25:24.840 All right, how about this? Why is it that Kanye West can't debate? Is it because he's black?

00:25:34.340 Now, of course, it's not because of that. It's because they have rules and he doesn't have enough

00:25:41.000 voters. There's some threshold that he's not going to be anywhere near. But still,

00:25:47.060 wouldn't you like to see Kanye West debate? Now, even Kanye says he's not running for president,

00:25:53.440 he's walking. So he's signaling quite clearly, plus the number of states that he's actually running in

00:26:00.360 is limited. But he's signaling quite clearly that he's in it for, let's say, the influence or the

00:26:08.560 positioning or maybe for the message, but not so much in it to win. Still, wouldn't you like to see

00:26:16.200 him debate? I mean, come on. Can you imagine the ratings for a debate that Kanye West, President Trump

00:26:26.080 and Joe Biden? It would be the best thing you've ever seen on television. And would the public benefit

00:26:34.780 from having a debate that drew more people in, that drew in more people than normally would watch

00:26:43.160 a political event? Yeah. Yeah. I think it would be actually really, really good for the republic.

00:26:48.800 Now, the fact that there are these rules about when and when they debate, I think that's independent

00:26:56.620 of the fact that I could just hold a debate, couldn't I? Isn't it still a free country? I'm not

00:27:03.160 saying I'll do this, but can't I just say, hey, I invite all three of you to my debate. It's going to be

00:27:10.700 such and such a time. And if all three, they just have to say yes. If they said yes, it's a debate. It

00:27:17.160 doesn't matter if there was some threshold that someone else cares about. If I'm not a party to

00:27:23.500 that decision, I can just have my own debate. So there's nothing that would stop it, except for

00:27:28.420 the three people not wanting to do it. Now, would Kanye want to do it? I don't know. I don't know.

00:27:34.980 It'd be amazing if he did. Would President Trump say yes, if Kanye said yes?

00:27:40.000 I think so. Don't you? Don't you think President Trump would say yes, if Kanye said, you know, he'll do

00:27:49.200 one and there was an event that allowed it? I think he'd say yes. I don't know. Would Joe Biden say yes?

00:27:57.420 Well, if Kanye and Trump said yes, I think his handlers would try to keep him out of it. But it

00:28:04.800 would be fascinating if he said yes. Anyway, I'd like to put that in the mix. What's interesting

00:28:11.500 is that Kanye seems to be doing exactly, exactly the smartest thing. Because you don't need to be

00:28:18.860 president to have power. You just have to find a way that your message and your influence can get

00:28:25.600 leveraged up. So apparently he's going to be on the ballot in Wisconsin, maybe the most important of the

00:28:33.740 swing states. It could be. It could turn out that way. So he's finding this little area where if he

00:28:39.740 can siphon off black votes from Democrats, he pretty much puts President Trump into office. And I think

00:28:46.440 he's largely admitted that if that happens, that's okay with him. At least okay. Maybe better than okay.

00:28:53.800 But here's the thing. He's now putting himself in a position where he could ask for something.

00:29:02.660 Right? Imagine Kanye West saying, look, I'm on the ballot. I'm going to change the election.

00:29:10.500 If you'd like that not to happen, I want one thing. And then who knows what the one thing is? If it were me,

00:29:18.520 I'd ask for something about the school choice. I'd say, look, whoever gives me free competition and can

00:29:26.040 fix education for everybody who's poor, not just black people, because I think Kanye would be the 0.91

00:29:32.520 one person who would say, how about helping poor people rather than just black poor people? So I think

00:29:40.560 he would be a good one for that message. I imagined he would think of it that way. And although I can't

00:29:46.460 read his mind, I don't want to put it, I don't want to assume that I can imagine what's in the mind

00:29:51.200 of anybody, much less Kanye. Right? I mean, if you can imagine what was in his mind, then you would

00:29:59.560 be able to do what he could do. But since you and I can't do what he can do, let's assume we can't

00:30:05.440 read his mind. So let's get away from that. It'd be fascinating. I'd just love to see him be part of

00:30:13.480 the process. And I think it could be deeply, deeply important if he wants it to be.

00:30:21.060 Let's talk about Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Now, obviously, he's not a racist. I don't think

00:30:28.160 anybody really could make that case. But you can be insensitive, you can have a blind spot and you

00:30:34.720 could accidentally offend. And I think that's where he's at. So as you all know, he made the

00:30:43.140 statement that he thought that the Latin American was, what was the name he used to work? The Latin

00:30:50.380 American? Yeah, the Latino community, he said, was incredibly diverse. And then he said, quote,

00:30:56.720 unlike the black community. So he's imagining that the Latino community is diverse, but the black 0.85

00:31:04.100 community is not. And when he went on to try to clarify that, because of course, that caused a

00:31:09.420 backlash. He clarified that the Latino community, you know, it's not just Mexico, but it's, you know,

00:31:15.300 the South American country is Guatemala, et cetera. And that that's what he meant. To which I say,

00:31:23.520 Joe Biden, you know, Africa is not one country, right? In the same way that South America is,

00:31:32.040 it's not one country, which was your point. Mexico is not Guatemala. There, you know,

00:31:38.020 there's some differences. But you know, Africa wasn't one country. So and of course, the black 1.00

00:31:47.400 community, like every community is full of unique voices. So he's getting some pushback for that. I

00:31:53.340 don't think he meant any harm. But it's a great political, political attack. And I think it gets

00:32:00.100 more to his mental competence. I mean, the way I read this story is that he's not verbally capable,

00:32:09.860 which is different than having some kind of racial animus. I don't think he has that.

00:32:14.140 Portland. Portland has gone from, I don't know, scary, tragic, it's always tragic, especially people

00:32:28.160 getting hurt. But it's also kind of funny in a horrible way. I'm not proud of it, because I'm not,

00:32:37.840 I don't want to minimize the pain and suffering and the real, you know, the real hurt economically

00:32:44.220 and physically for the police as well as the protesters. So it's a real tragedy. But Ted Wheeler gets rid

00:32:53.780 of the feds. So the mayor succeeds in getting rid of the feds, which the story was, the mainstream media

00:33:00.180 was trying to tell you that the cause of the protests was that Trump had the feds there, guarding just, you know,

00:33:07.020 the federal buildings. And once they pulled out, didn't make a difference at all. Made no difference.

00:33:13.720 So now you can see that the mainstream story about it was the feds that were the problem,

00:33:18.780 complete fake news. But now the feds are gone. So if you didn't like it, you get to have whatever

00:33:26.000 is the opposite of that. That's what they have. So the mayor, who at one point actually joined in

00:33:30.860 with protesters to show that he felt sympathy or empathy for their cause, that didn't work out

00:33:37.340 well, because the protesters were not kind to him. But now he's saying this. I'm just going to read

00:33:45.480 his quote. So Ted Wheeler, mayor of Portland, he goes, don't think for a moment that you are,

00:33:51.560 if you're participating in this activity, meaning the protests, you are not being a, well, actually,

00:33:57.080 the, not just the protests, but the more violent part of the protests. You are not being a prop for

00:34:03.420 the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, because you absolutely are. You are creating the B-roll film

00:34:09.680 that will be used in ads nationally. Yes. To help Donald Trump during this campaign. Yes. If you don't

00:34:16.520 want to be part of that, then don't show up. Oh, well. Oh, well. And watching the Portland protests

00:34:25.300 turn into a campaign ad for Trump, which is exactly what happened. Not just approximately,

00:34:34.200 exactly what happened. It literally transformed into a campaign ad for the other guy. You can't,

00:34:45.020 that is just too perfect. It's just too perfect. So on one hand, tragic. On the other hand,

00:34:55.860 comedic. I guess that's all I need to say about that. I tweeted today that I asked people if they

00:35:07.620 thought that the teachers unions should pay reparations because they are the primary cause,

00:35:15.420 let's say cause of 80%, that would be my estimate, of systemic racism. Now, they're not the initial

00:35:23.280 cause. The initial cause, you know, you could argue back to slavery and then the ripple into the

00:35:29.320 future. But the ongoing cause, you know, the current day thing you could change, because we

00:35:35.740 can't go back to the past. You know, if we can't rewind history and fix anything in slavery, but we can

00:35:42.100 deal with what's today. Now, what's today is that the primary cause of every disparity, income

00:35:50.060 disparity and everything else opportunity would be the teachers unions. Now at this point, and I have

00:35:56.840 to admit, I'm very late to this argument, because the first time you hear this, doesn't it just sound

00:36:02.400 stupid? If you had never heard this argument before, and the first time you'd been introduced

00:36:08.680 used to it, was me saying, you know, the teachers unions are the cause of systemic racism. You'd say,

00:36:15.120 ah, I'm not connecting those dots. Aren't those like completely different things? Where are you going

00:36:22.400 here? But anybody who's dug into it even a little bit learns that the teachers unions are basically a

00:36:29.600 political organization who do a little bit of stuff for teachers, which gives them their power.

00:36:35.080 So they do do good work for teachers in the sense that teachers get good negotiating and union

00:36:41.360 type strength. That's all good. Don't want to change the fact that teachers have somebody who

00:36:47.920 can negotiate for them. Let's keep that part. But what you may not know is that the teachers unions

00:36:53.760 have a tremendous amount of money, because the teachers pay into that. And I thought that that money

00:37:00.360 went to mostly doing stuff for the teachers, wouldn't you think? But it turns out it's political.

00:37:07.540 They literally spend, depends on the union, because there are different unions, but they could spend

00:37:12.880 30 to 40, 50 percent of their entire budget fixing elections. In other words, putting money into,

00:37:22.640 you know, especially the local elections, where they have so much money, they can change who gets

00:37:28.580 elected. So the teachers unions extort the teachers, get this big pot of money, maybe half of it they spend

00:37:36.720 on union-y stuff that's good for teachers, but maybe the other half, and we're talking all about lots of

00:37:42.360 millions of dollars here, goes directly into political campaigns, political activism, and not even

00:37:48.500 directly related to teaching. Now, if you said to yourself, Scott, Scott, of course they're putting money

00:37:54.180 into political stuff, because every group has an interest in what laws get passed, etc. I'm not

00:38:00.600 talking about any of that. I'm talking about general Democrat policies for just unrelated to school.

00:38:09.860 Now, as long as the teachers unions have money, they can affect the political process. And as long as

00:38:17.560 they're affecting the political process, one of the things that they're also doing is guaranteeing that

00:38:22.120 they stay the way they are. And the way they are is no competition for teachers. So you don't want,

00:38:29.580 the union doesn't want the people that are protecting, the teachers, to have competition from another

00:38:34.900 school that might, you know, lower the bargaining position of the teachers. That part actually makes

00:38:39.580 sense. It makes perfect sense. But it's also just perfect sense for the teachers. It's not perfect

00:38:46.940 sense for the union. It's not perfect sense for the republic. It's not a free market situation.

00:38:54.980 And we know that competition and free markets are really the only solution to anything that doesn't

00:38:59.720 work. If something doesn't work, you've got to be able to offer an alternative. And that's what the

00:39:05.920 teachers unions prevent from happening. Because any politician who pushed for school choice is going

00:39:13.900 to get the full weight of millions of dollars of teachers union money pushed against them in the

00:39:19.440 next election. We'll get primaries and everything else. So I would say that if you fixed education,

00:39:25.820 you would do the most that could be done among the things that are actually practical. It's the most you

00:39:31.520 could do to fix the situation for the black community. Because good education gets you good income,

00:39:38.540 fixes everything. Better health care outcomes, fewer people in jail. And even if the police stop you,

00:39:46.700 they're going to say, oh, you know, I've had only good experiences. So it's basically the alpha

00:39:54.420 problem. And I'm going to modestly say that 80% of ongoing systemic racism comes directly from the

00:40:03.280 school unions. It's very direct. There's no indirect argument here. It's very direct. And maybe 1%

00:40:11.000 of the total problem in the black community is police abuse. Maybe 1%. Now, I'm not saying that,

00:40:19.220 you know, all police are good or that we shouldn't work on that. Seems like a pretty big problem,

00:40:24.080 especially if the problem of policing affects you mentally and emotionally. It's a big problem.

00:40:31.520 Like, I don't want to take away from how big that problem is. But as big as it is,

00:40:37.700 it's about 1% of your total problem in the first systemic racism. About 80% school unions is my

00:40:46.300 estimate. All right. Here's one of those fake news situations where the headline is opposite of the

00:40:54.100 story. And by the way, I'm going to get to the part where Peter Navarro name checked me on CNN

00:40:59.200 yesterday and changed my whole day. That's coming up next. But there's a story. It's one of those

00:41:07.220 Twitter things where they collect the story and then they put the headline on it. So here was the

00:41:12.200 headline that hydroxychloroquine is not effective, according to scientists. So what does not effective

00:41:21.240 mean? Well, that's pretty clear, right? Not effective means don't take it. All right. That's

00:41:28.380 completely clear. If a drug is not effective, do not take it under any conditions because there's only

00:41:36.400 a downside. But then you read the actual details that this headline alleges to summarize. And the

00:41:44.300 headlines are that it is unlikely to be effective. Unlikely to be effective is the opposite. Because

00:41:55.520 what would be unlikely to be effective? 40%? 40% chance? If there was a 40%, which would be less

00:42:04.480 likely than, you know, 60%. So if there was a 40% chance it would work, and it's completely safe, as

00:42:12.880 nothing's 100%, but as safe as a drug can be, and it's really cheap, under those specific conditions,

00:42:20.920 you would take it. So say that it's unlikely says you should take it, as long as the safety and the

00:42:31.480 costs are just, you know, dead simple, well known, not an issue. Right? So you can see the fake news

00:42:41.380 trying as hard as they can to turn, well, it might be worth a shot. Talk to your doctor. Now, obviously,

00:42:47.520 talking to your doctor has always got to be in there. But not effective is opposite of unlikely

00:42:53.200 to be effective in this situation. Journalists, do they know that? Would a journalist know that

00:43:01.280 they had created a headline that was literally opposite of the details of the story? I don't

00:43:06.620 know if they would. I don't know if they would, because they don't seem to work in terms of

00:43:11.440 probability. They seem to work in terms of, it's true or it's not true. All right. So after I got

00:43:19.160 off Periscope yesterday, some of you know this story. If you follow me on Locals, I gave you the

00:43:23.760 sort of behind the scenes. So yesterday, I'm just in my studio, right where you see me, and, you know,

00:43:32.960 I've been working, doing something else. A few hours had passed, and I thought to myself, you know,

00:43:37.680 I'm going to fire up my computer and see what the news is. Because you know me, I like to follow

00:43:42.460 the news. So I think, let's see what the news is. And I turned to my computer. I'm typing away and

00:43:48.680 pull up the news. And I'm the news. And I'm like, oh, I want to watch the news. I don't want to be

00:43:58.140 the news. Don't make me the news. And the news was this. So Aaron Burnett on CNN was in a testy

00:44:05.700 exchange with Peter Navarro, economics advisor to the White House, the president. And Navarro was

00:44:13.300 trying to make his case in the sort of risk management sort of sense. But, you know, TV is

00:44:19.240 very limiting, especially if the person you're with is talking over you. So neither of them could

00:44:24.420 quite say what they wanted to say. They were sort of on top of each other, and time was limited,

00:44:29.360 et cetera. So toward the end, Navarro said, and I will quote, so imagine me, imagine me just looking

00:44:41.660 at the news and seeing this. If you've never had this experience, it's just so trippy, because you

00:44:46.480 feel like the news should be separate from you. But then when you turn on the news, damn it, it's me.

00:44:51.120 I am the news today. And this is what Navarro said. He said, I reach out to all your viewers.

00:44:58.240 Scott Adams, you know Scott Adams, right? He's the guy who wrote the Dilbert cartoon. He did a

00:45:02.560 beautiful 10-minute video on Twitter, and the thesis of the video is that CNN might be killing

00:45:07.260 thousands because of the way they've treated that. So I would just ask, I'll let Scott Adams' video be

00:45:12.300 my defense on this. Now, if you thought that went over well,

00:45:17.720 you haven't been following things closely. So Erin Burnett says, with an angry look on her face,

00:45:28.420 can I just say something? I find that to be offensive, because he's a comic strip writer,

00:45:34.340 said Burnett. I just said that because I want to be clear. I just said that Dr. Fauci,

00:45:40.040 and then she said she wanted to hear from the experts. Now, of course, it took about five minutes

00:45:47.700 for the Daily Beast to create a story that says Navarro, you know, refers to Dilbert cartoonist

00:45:55.280 for hydroxychloroquine. Now, think of that headline, that the White House refers to the Dilbert cartoonist

00:46:04.020 for their argument about hydroxychloroquine. Not so good, right? But it's okay, because obviously,

00:46:12.140 an article about a video would have a link to the video. Well, I saw it's there today, but I don't

00:46:18.340 think it was there yesterday. Maybe I missed it. In The Hill, they treated it a similar way and didn't

00:46:24.140 link to the video. So not only did a story about my video not talk about the video at all, but it

00:46:34.860 didn't link to it in most of the hit pieces that came out immediately after. Now, what does that

00:46:41.500 mean? Can you imagine, can you even imagine that if I had said something in that 10-minute video that

00:46:48.520 was crazy, is there any chance that wouldn't be a headline? No. Because once the White House says,

00:46:55.840 look at this, it sort of ties them to my presentation. You don't think that CNN and

00:47:04.400 the others who came out to mock us, you don't think that they would like to mock what was in

00:47:08.960 that video? Don't you think that they'd like to say, and then he said, the craziest thing,

00:47:15.400 and here it is. Here's the clip of Adams being stupid. No. No. They all treated it as if I was

00:47:23.060 giving medical advice. Do you think I gave medical advice? Well, I would say that I gave risk management

00:47:31.640 advice and that I broke down the arguments for and against hydroxychloroquine with respect to

00:47:37.740 experts on both sides. So I would say that what I did is what Aaron Burnett does. Right? I'm not a

00:47:46.880 doctor. I'm simply letting the public know what doctors are saying. That's what Aaron Burnett was

00:47:53.320 doing. She and I were doing the same job. The only difference is I did it way, way better, if you

00:48:00.020 saw the video. Now, Navarro, his background is economics, and that's his job. My background is

00:48:10.180 also economics. I've got an economics degree and MBA, and I did financial analysis and prediction

00:48:18.280 models and stuff for 16 years. At least I had a 16-year career. Much of that was that stuff.

00:48:24.420 So I'm not only completely educated in the right way to look at this stuff, but I have vast experience

00:48:32.240 in it. I mean, a lot of experience at looking at stuff like this and breaking it down to what the

00:48:37.320 argument is, and then just looking at the risk management. So what I presented, of course, was not

00:48:42.180 medical. It was just framing the argument and showing it as a cost-benefit in which you should

00:48:48.300 look at all the costs and all the benefits and do a risk analysis, a risk management analysis. But

00:48:54.180 was there anybody who covered the story who said the White House economist wanted you to see

00:49:02.660 something written by somebody who has a background in exactly this stuff that breaks down the argument?

00:49:09.420 There's no medical recommendation. It just breaks down the argument in a way that you can see what

00:49:15.000 the point is. Did anybody report that? No. No. But, and I looked at my traffic and impressions,

00:49:25.540 and it really looked like there was something happening there. I'm not going to make that

00:49:32.740 accusation yet, but it did look like there was a lot of suppression. Now, here's what Navarro did

00:49:40.660 completely right. And I've taught you this so many times. One of the keys, well, 50% of persuasion,

00:49:49.300 I like to say, is getting your attention. You can't persuade somebody if they're paying attention to

00:49:54.080 something else. I mean, I suppose you could cleverly, but it's, you know, not much of a thing.

00:49:59.280 Now, and I've taught you that the way President Trump gets attention is what I call a little bit

00:50:07.500 wrong. So if you say something that you want people to focus on, but you insert into it something that

00:50:13.700 is unambiguously going to make people say, oh, that's wrong. I got a question about that part.

00:50:18.900 Then that's a home run. Trump does it over and over and over again, which is why you can't turn away.

00:50:24.480 Everything he says, you say, I know what you're trying to make me think about,

00:50:30.300 but why does that one thing bother me so much? It just feels non-standard. I got to look into this.

00:50:36.200 And you've seen other people who are good at persuading do the same thing. You see me do it.

00:50:41.340 Well, you saw, you just watched it today with the Black Lives Matter question about the teacher's

00:50:48.940 unions. If you take the teacher's unions and just say, oh, they're doing a bad job,

00:50:53.560 people might pay attention or might not. But if I add to that, they should pay reparations.

00:50:59.360 What's that do to your brain? The reparations part is the part you're supposed to say,

00:51:03.880 that doesn't sound right. Right. And that's what binds you to the topic. It's the thing that I added

00:51:10.900 that doesn't fit, that makes it perfect. Now that's intentional. In my case, I designed my

00:51:17.740 message to add the little bit of wrong right into it. And you saw that. That's very intentional,

00:51:22.460 very designed. You see Mike Cernovich do this routinely. People who know how to persuade

00:51:29.520 will put a little bit of provocation into it to just lock your attention onto it.

00:51:34.860 When Navarro pointed to my video, it was not only a good summation of his argument. So that part is

00:51:44.600 just good sense. But because I'm the Dilbert cartoonist, you can't look away. You can't look

00:51:51.600 away because that part's just wrong. Yeah. Excuse me. Why is a comic writer? I guess that's what

00:51:58.960 Aaron Burnett called me. Why is a comic writer talking about U.S. policy and medicine? How does

00:52:07.120 that make sense? So it was that bit of wrongness, which guaranteed it would be stories on multiple

00:52:12.540 fronts. But the fake news thwarted both of us. It was an excellent, excellent play. Because what

00:52:20.540 should have happened is they should have drawn attention to the video. People would go in with

00:52:25.380 all the wrong impressions about maybe I said something medical. They would look at it and

00:52:29.340 they'd say, oh, this is actually just a pretty clean breakdown of risk management. That's all

00:52:34.040 it was. And it should have been this perfect moment where everybody came in mad and found

00:52:40.060 out, oh, I was mad at the wrong thing. This is just an argument. But instead, the fake news

00:52:47.360 suppressed it and gave headlines that are completely misleading. Now, I've talked before about the

00:52:52.600 the Gell-Mann effect. The Gell-Mann effect is, he was a physicist who noticed that when stories

00:53:04.720 about physics were there, he knew they were wrong. But if there was a story on some topic

00:53:09.320 he was not already an expert on, he thought, well, it's probably right. Which, of course,

00:53:13.900 doesn't make sense. Statistically, probably the news in general is wrong, which would make

00:53:19.700 more sense. Now, I experience this daily, right? Because there's always some story or report

00:53:26.580 about me. And I know if it's true or false. But you don't. You don't. So when other people

00:53:34.360 were watching the story, they probably believed the headline. They probably believed that there

00:53:39.220 was a crazy cartoonist who was making medical advice. Probably medical advice. So anyway,

00:53:46.920 if I had the ability to be embarrassed, maybe I would be. But I just don't have it. And then

00:53:53.580 here's the best part. So it's been a full day now, or close to a full day. And not one critic

00:54:01.340 who watched the video had a complaint with it. Do you hear that? Nobody who watched the video,

00:54:10.500 nobody. So it was Peter Navarro pointing to my video. And while his arguments were, you know,

00:54:17.720 they were attacking like crazy. And he says, well, you know, look at this video as like summation

00:54:22.440 of the argument, nobody criticized it. Not a single point, not a sweeping generalization,

00:54:31.300 nothing. Because there's nothing in it to criticize. It doesn't really take a stand,

00:54:37.960 which is much to disagree with. It just clarifies the existing risk management decision.

00:54:43.640 And then in the article in the, the, I think it was the Daily Beast. And they were talking about

00:54:49.700 Navarro when he, and they're, they're quoting him. And this is an actual sentence about a US official

00:54:58.400 in this country. And they're quoting him and they say, quote, this is Peter Navarro. Let me tell you

00:55:06.040 why I got involved with this. He barked. He barked. What kind of writing is that?

00:55:12.700 I'm pretty sure he talked. Let me say what this should have said. Let me tell you why I got

00:55:18.440 involved with this. He said, how about he said, because that's what happened. I watched it. It was,

00:55:26.620 it was, there were words that came out of his mouth. He talked, he said it. Did he bark it?

00:55:35.680 So words like barked and botched and stuff, or how the fake news takes no news at all and turns it

00:55:42.260 into something. So I might, I was thinking about doing a parody fake news article in which you just

00:55:50.840 use insults instead of news. Because if you think about it, the fake news mostly replaces the actual

00:55:58.640 news with personal insults. Think about it. Once you see that filter, that news has been replaced with

00:56:06.240 insults. It's hard to unsee it because that's basically what happened. Insults get clicks.

00:56:12.880 News? Maybe not. All right. Somebody says, Ezra Pound botched civilization. Yeah. Botched and barked.

00:56:24.240 They're kind of similar. They're just such powerful words. All right. Yeah. I need to do a robot

00:56:31.960 read some news again. I got to get back to that. He mansplained it. Yeah. Yeah. Mansplained

00:56:39.600 is another one. You can make something look dumb just by saying instead of he explained

00:56:43.840 it, well, he mansplained it. It's like, oh, that guy. All right. Slaughter beaters at a hundred

00:56:53.800 percent. At the current time, it is hard to imagine any outcome except Trump winning. I mean,

00:57:01.940 I have to admit, in other elections, I could imagine the future with a, you know, a president

00:57:09.900 from other, either party, whichever candidate. But I don't even have a, like a vision of what

00:57:16.660 a president Biden would look like. It's just like this empty space. I literally can't even

00:57:21.600 imagine it. So that might be influencing my opinion. But I saw a teaser from Rasmussen this

00:57:29.740 morning that the president's approval was up. I think the president's approval is going

00:57:34.980 to continue improving. I think the economy will improve. I think people will just sort

00:57:41.040 of get acclimated to whatever the virus situation is. And I think that Biden will continue to

00:57:47.800 decline. I heard there's a rumor that Biden has selected his vice president, but we'll wait

00:57:54.820 to hear about that. Now, if it's Kamala Harris, I'll probably get on Periscope as soon as I

00:58:04.300 see the announcement. If it's not, well, I'll wait until the regular Periscope and I'll say,

00:58:10.300 well, got that one wrong. But if it's Kamala Harris, you're going to have to give it up for 0.52

00:58:16.340 me. All right. You're going to have to give it up because I called her as the head of the

00:58:21.480 ticket, as the nominee in 2018 and stuck with it. If she becomes the vice president with the

00:58:29.140 Biden administration, the candidate, she's effectively the top candidate. And that would 1.00

00:58:36.940 be my best prediction ever. All right. People are still saying it's Michelle Obama and still

00:58:44.560 saying it's going to be Hillary Clinton. Let me bet everything I have that's not Michelle

00:58:49.720 Obama. I will bet my entire net worth and I will borrow. I will borrow money just to bet

00:58:56.680 it's not going to be Michelle. You know, she's the most popular woman in the world, I understand,

00:59:02.780 but I believe she has zero intentions for that kind of a life. All right. That's all I need.

00:59:08.600 And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 07, 2020

Episode 1084 Scott Adams： Teachers Unions Should Pay Reparations, Churches Finding a Way, Peter Navarro and HCQ

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