Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1097 Scott Adams： Ask Me Anything Today

00:00:00.000 Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. 0.97

00:00:03.900 Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. 0.97

00:00:08.640 Hey, everybody.

00:00:09.760 Come on in here.

00:00:11.220 It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of the day.

00:00:15.580 I know it is for me.

00:00:18.000 And watch how some of that good feeling transfers onto you.

00:00:23.100 That's how it works.

00:00:24.360 If I'm in a good mood, you're in a little bit better mood.

00:00:27.420 And today, we're going to do an experiment.

00:00:30.720 Yeah, something exciting.

00:00:32.800 Normally, I'm very prepared when I get on these periscopes.

00:00:36.400 I've looked at the news.

00:00:37.400 I've checked my Twitter.

00:00:39.080 Today, I just woke up.

00:00:41.240 So the question is, can I do this periscope with no preparation whatsoever?

00:00:46.620 Well, we'll find out.

00:00:48.320 And I'm going to be taking questions as part of my strategy for being unprepared.

00:00:54.080 Does it really matter today?

00:00:56.160 Nope.

00:00:56.660 There's no news today.

00:00:58.520 If you check the news, which I did briefly, you will notice there's not really any news.

00:01:05.100 It's just made-up stuff about somebody may have said something, done something.

00:01:09.240 Somebody feels bad about something.

00:01:11.720 Somebody's personality is bad.

00:01:13.260 They're worried about somebody might do something.

00:01:15.940 Their character is bad.

00:01:17.460 Somebody's loyalty.

00:01:19.180 Nothing.

00:01:20.220 There's no news.

00:01:21.060 But first, the simultaneous sip.

00:01:24.200 And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or sign, a canteen jug or flask or a vessel of any kind.

00:01:30.300 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:01:32.740 I like coffee.

00:01:33.540 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.

00:01:41.420 It's called the simultaneous sip.

00:01:43.580 And it is sure good.

00:01:44.960 Ah, how did I predict Kamala?

00:01:52.940 I'm going to take that question first, even though you are not a guest yet.

00:01:57.460 If anybody wants to ask a question on here, you can see guest mode has appeared at the bottom of your screen.

00:02:03.480 If you have a mobile device, it doesn't work on a laptop.

00:02:06.100 And you can press that, and it puts you in a waiting list for me to accept you as a guest.

00:02:12.640 So the question was, how did I predict Kamala Harris?

00:02:16.960 And I almost hate to tell you, a lot of it had to do with her look, because we're a very visual species.

00:02:27.260 And the way people look makes a difference.

00:02:29.740 If you were, you know, short and bald, could you be president of the United States?

00:02:35.400 Talking about myself now.

00:02:38.620 Not too easily.

00:02:40.040 Not too easily.

00:02:40.960 If Jeff Bezos ran for president, could he become president?

00:02:46.200 Well, he has every skill in the world, right?

00:02:48.680 So you think, well, if Jeff Bezos can't run for president, who can?

00:02:53.400 And the answer is, it might make a difference how you look.

00:03:04.800 Kamala Harris has the look.

00:03:07.680 And the look is not before you say, oh, it's because she's female or attractive or something like that.

00:03:13.540 No, it's not that at all.

00:03:16.160 Now, she has both of those things.

00:03:17.860 She's female and attractive for her age. 1.00

00:03:20.880 You know, everything has to be highlighted or everything has to be normalized for age.

00:03:25.240 But that's not it.

00:03:27.760 The part that set her apart is that she has a predator look about her.

00:03:35.320 Now, she can, obviously, she can be giggly and happy and smiley. 1.00

00:03:39.240 She can be a prosecutor, the senator, an attorney general.

00:03:42.740 So she's got a good talent stack.

00:03:45.060 But she has a predator look.

00:03:47.620 She is ambitious, which, weirdly, people are trying to make sound like a negative.

00:03:54.260 Talk about your sexism, eh?

00:03:57.120 Do they ever say that about men?

00:03:59.580 Has anybody ever said, we don't want that man to be a vice president because that man is too ambitious?

00:04:06.840 Nope.

00:04:08.600 I've never heard that.

00:04:10.440 Maybe somebody's said it once, but I've never heard it.

00:04:12.720 But they said that about Kamala Harris, as if that's a negative, that she's ambitious.

00:04:20.480 So if you put predator and ambitious and has the right look, but is also the right demographic, I thought she would be a strong matchup for Trump. 0.95

00:04:30.080 What I didn't see coming in the primaries, and I didn't see this at all, complete blind spot, is that she was terrible at campaigning, just terrible. 1.00

00:04:38.960 Well, and that was reflected in the result.

00:04:41.980 She was one of the first to drop out.

00:04:44.240 But the thing that I could tell about her, which is obvious, is that she's smart.

00:04:51.180 And remember the ambitious part?

00:04:53.260 If you are smart and ambitious, you are also coachable.

00:05:00.000 Coachable.

00:05:00.480 Meaning that if she really, really wanted something, she would go find somebody who could teach her how to get it.

00:05:07.680 In fact, you know, she's had mentors all her life, right?

00:05:12.580 You know, that's part of the good and the bad part of her story is that she's had the advantage of mentors, Willie Brown in particular.

00:05:20.440 So if somebody can learn, then if you were selected to be on the ticket, you would be coached by the top coaches in the world.

00:05:32.960 Whoever is coaching Kamala Harris right now, let me tell you something with complete certainty.

00:05:39.640 It's not her sister because her sister was the campaign manager, I guess, when she was in the primaries.

00:05:47.660 And everything that Kamala Harris did seemed wrong.

00:05:51.640 Something that a professional would have said, how about less of that and maybe more of something else?

00:05:57.300 And that never happened in the primaries.

00:05:59.060 But as soon as she became, she sort of disappeared for a while.

00:06:03.040 And then she started talking again.

00:06:05.280 And there were some things that she fixed, which I had predicted.

00:06:08.600 Because that's the obvious way this would go, is that she would get better help.

00:06:13.840 And she would get better at doing public stuff.

00:06:17.660 And she stopped being jumpy.

00:06:19.660 If you used to watch, her shoulders would go up when she talked.

00:06:22.780 And it would make her look less confident.

00:06:25.200 She'd be like, well, I don't know why we're not doing something about this.

00:06:28.580 And why don't we do this?

00:06:30.120 And that largely stopped.

00:06:32.840 Now think about that.

00:06:33.640 That was a lifelong habit that just sort of stopped.

00:06:38.480 Somebody's coaching her and she's practicing.

00:06:41.460 If you can find somebody who's a learner, keep them. 1.00

00:06:45.340 And I'll tell you an anecdote about that in a minute.

00:06:50.540 So she had the right look.

00:06:52.740 She had the right demographic, person of color, woman.

00:06:56.120 She was a senator.

00:06:58.380 And she could be coached up to a higher level.

00:07:01.040 And then when Biden became the likely candidate for the top spot, it was sort of obvious at that point.

00:07:07.620 Now, let me offer this challenge to you.

00:07:12.300 I think it was – I might have been – I don't know if I was the first or near the first to say that Biden had a mental disability, meaning that there was something happening with age.

00:07:25.940 Can anybody confirm that?

00:07:28.460 Because I'm not going to make the claim.

00:07:30.720 But I don't remember anybody in public – here we're just talking about public people.

00:07:36.140 I don't remember anybody in public who was as early as I was because it was a long time ago when I said, are you listening to him?

00:07:45.400 It's not all there.

00:07:46.940 Now it's a little more obvious.

00:07:48.140 Everybody can see it.

00:07:49.480 But I think I might have been among the first.

00:07:51.340 So if you take the fact that he can't make it all the way but he's likely the nominee, add to the fact that she would be the perfect solution to that and they had some personal connection there and that apparently Kamala Harris was a favorite of some of the old school.

00:08:08.300 The Hillary Clinton people were some of her staff in the primaries.

00:08:14.720 So it all just kind of made sense that she would be the puppet of the puppet or she would be the double puppet play.

00:08:21.340 So there you go.

00:08:22.740 You want to know the real answer?

00:08:23.960 It's none of those.

00:08:26.620 I'll tell you the real reason that I predicted it and it's none of the things I just said.

00:08:32.120 They're all true and I did go through that thinking process.

00:08:35.920 Do you want to know the real reason?

00:08:38.540 I could just see it.

00:08:40.500 The real reason is I could just see it.

00:08:42.720 I could see it like it was the hand in front of my face.

00:08:45.300 Now, probably, that feeling that I could see it, which was identical to the feeling I had when Trump was running, it wasn't that I was predicting it exactly.

00:08:57.760 I just saw it.

00:08:59.440 I could just see it just like I was looking at it like it was right in front of me.

00:09:03.520 Now, probably, that's just imagination fueled by the fact that the requirements for that to happen were in place and my brain wasn't quite processing it logically, but it presented that little movie for me because it had done the work.

00:09:19.800 It just hadn't explained it yet.

00:09:21.880 So the explaining it is what I did to you.

00:09:23.980 So there is a logic and a structure to it, but the real reason?

00:09:28.260 I just saw it.

00:09:30.420 I just saw it like it was right in front of me.

00:09:35.040 Now, you all watched or some of you tried to watch the Democratic Convention.

00:09:40.600 I tried to watch a little bit of it, but it was just painful and useless and didn't have any point.

00:09:47.300 AOC is the big story today because she said she endorsed Bernie Sanders in her one-minute speech.

00:09:58.260 Not endorsed.

00:09:59.340 She said she – what's the other word?

00:10:02.700 It doesn't matter.

00:10:03.620 But anyway, apparently, that was just a procedural thing because she sort of had to say that, but that she does endorse Biden.

00:10:11.620 But it certainly looked a little suspicious, got to admit.

00:10:16.660 She was not legally, legibly speaking.

00:10:20.820 I don't know what you're talking about.

00:10:21.760 Yeah, so I've warned some of you before.

00:10:28.340 I'll probably start blocking for this in the future, so I want to warn you.

00:10:33.900 So there's somebody in the comments who's making a Kamala Harris knee pads joke.

00:10:40.660 And the knee pads joke, they're funny the first few times you hear them.

00:10:45.740 You're like, oh, I get it.

00:10:47.760 It's because of this or that.

00:10:49.420 Well, actually, it was never funny, funny.

00:10:51.580 But at least you could understand why somebody would say it the first time.

00:10:55.600 If you're still making that same joke about Willie Brown and Kamala Harris, it's time to let it go.

00:11:03.660 It's just not funny.

00:11:05.820 It's not even a little bit funny.

00:11:07.960 It's not clever.

00:11:09.000 It's not insightful.

00:11:09.840 It's just bad form.

00:11:12.680 So eventually I'll probably start blocking people for making that comment because I just, I sort of just don't want it in my universe.

00:11:20.440 It's not that I'm offended per se.

00:11:22.320 I don't get offended on behalf of other people.

00:11:25.220 It's just so boring.

00:11:27.520 Just really find something else to say.

00:11:31.800 Oh, nominated was the word.

00:11:33.320 Thank you.

00:11:33.660 So AOC used the word nominated, not endorsed.

00:11:38.040 All right.

00:11:40.240 So let me take a question or more.

00:11:45.300 Whoa.

00:11:46.140 We got lots of people who want to ask questions.

00:11:48.520 Let's see if we can get somebody who's really lively.

00:11:51.980 I think Flip.

00:11:54.940 All right.

00:11:55.340 Somebody named Flip is going to be interesting.

00:12:00.380 Can you hear me?

00:12:01.760 Flip.

00:12:02.920 Hey, do you have a question for me, Flip?

00:12:04.640 I do.

00:12:05.140 So James Altucher, friend of yours, wrote a really interesting article about the death of New York and how, unlike the financial crisis or September 11th, now we have bandwidth.

00:12:17.400 So there's no reason for the offices to fill back up or people to come back.

00:12:21.340 So I'd just be interested to see your perspective on the future of cities in America, specifically New York, but generally just cities.

00:12:27.760 Yeah, you know, let me give you some context.

00:12:33.520 A long time ago when radio was huge and television did not exist, the television was invented and it obviously was catching on quickly.

00:12:43.680 And then soon there was color TV and everybody said, hey, I guess radio is going to go away because why would you have this radio in your living room that you all gather around to listen to the radio shows when you have a television?

00:12:56.640 And it makes perfect sense, right?

00:12:58.900 Like radio obviously will be extinct.

00:13:02.420 But instead, radio got bigger.

00:13:04.680 It just moved to the automobile.

00:13:07.860 It wasn't obvious that that was going to happen.

00:13:10.520 And then radio became, you know, the Rush Limbaugh's and the Howard Stern's.

00:13:14.580 It became huge.

00:13:15.560 And I say that only because we are really bad at predicting.

00:13:19.580 We meaning all people.

00:13:21.280 So if you look at New York City and you take the most obvious prediction, the most obvious prediction would be why do we need retail stores at all?

00:13:29.900 We have Amazon.

00:13:31.900 Why would anybody go back to a place that's crowded and congested?

00:13:35.560 It's hard to do anything.

00:13:36.820 It's expensive.

00:13:38.020 And now law enforcement has gone away or it's not enough to protect your store.

00:13:42.540 So the straightforward walk right down the highway that has nobody blocking you is New York's going to have a lot of trouble, at least with the business part of it.

00:13:55.640 But going back to my radio versus television analogy, the other possibility is that New York will find a way to be a different New York.

00:14:03.960 So, for example, all that retail space could get picked up by tech companies, just one example.

00:14:12.540 And then suddenly it's not so much retail stores, but you've got your Googles and your Amazons maybe, that sort of thing.

00:14:18.840 So it's completely unpredictable, more unpredictable than anything.

00:14:23.480 What I think is the least likely outcome is that it will go back to the way it was.

00:14:28.340 I think it will have to go back to something different.

00:14:30.680 But personally, I don't know why anybody would live in New York City at this point.

00:14:37.720 And I think that the cities might be coming to a close faster than they would have.

00:14:44.740 I think you're going to find that building homes that people can afford at very low incomes in places where there were no cities and no towns before should be the future.

00:14:55.040 And that would leave some big questions about what do you do with the stuff that's already been built that nobody can afford to live in.

00:15:02.080 And at that point, supply and demand should even things out.

00:15:05.720 And then it will be cheap to live in New York and people will live there because it's cheap.

00:15:10.700 That might be what happens to it, oddly enough.

00:15:13.860 So that's just one possibility.

00:15:14.980 So I don't know if that came anywhere near answering it, but I think in the future, cities will move to small structures, maybe even single-story things that people could build themselves, but are really good to live in and have schools and everything else you need.

00:15:32.160 All right.

00:15:32.380 That was my answer.

00:15:33.840 Thanks for the question, Flip.

00:15:35.180 Thanks, Scott.

00:15:35.980 All right.

00:15:37.580 Let's see what else we got here.

00:15:38.700 How about Jill?

00:15:46.120 See if we can get Jill to connect. 0.97

00:15:48.260 Jill, can you hear me?

00:15:53.740 Kamala Harris' pick was brilliant when you said it because I know she just lost and you made the prediction anyway.

00:15:59.960 And I said, you know, Scott sees there's free money and he's picking it up because it's like, what do you have to lose?

00:16:07.960 If Kamala Harris doesn't get anywhere further, you lose nothing.

00:16:12.520 And if Kamala Harris does win big in this, which she has, then you look like a god, right?

00:16:20.480 No, I would say that that would have been true with my Trump prediction in 2016 because at the time, nobody thought of me as a political pundit and nobody thought of me as someone who could predict anything.

00:16:36.020 But when I got the Trump prediction right, you know, that wasn't as special because lots of you got that right as well.

00:16:43.340 I think what was different is I said it in public, which maybe stand out a little bit.

00:16:48.080 But with the Kamala Harris one, once I had been established as somebody who talked about politics, if I had been wrong on this one, I would have been mocked forever.

00:16:59.460 I would never have been able to turn on my Periscope without a troll coming in and say, why should we listen to anything you said? 0.97

00:17:06.040 You picked Kamala Harris to be the nominee, and that's the dumbest thing that ever happened. 0.97

00:17:12.060 I would never hear the end of it. 0.61

00:17:14.360 I love predictions that are out on the edge because they stand the greatest reward, and that certainly did right there, and I loved it.

00:17:22.320 And as for the cities going away, I think the original reason cities became in existence in the first place in civilization was for protection against marauding wild people that were on the outskirts of the cities.

00:17:36.000 And I'm not sure that would not go away in the new future with Antifa and Antifa-like groups and marauding people who are looking for stuff.

00:17:48.760 I love that point because, yeah, the earliest cities had walls around them, and they were fortified for defense, as you just said.

00:17:56.220 But today, we might still want to put the wall around New York and Seattle, but for a different reason, to try to keep all the marauding people on the inside.

00:18:03.800 Don't let them get into the countryside.

00:18:06.000 I live here in Seattle, and it's not so bad.

00:18:08.680 Just to the north end of Seattle, we had some protesters on the corners, and that was great.

00:18:14.920 You could go down there and talk to them, and there's nothing really in the areas that aren't right in the middle of the city.

00:18:23.860 So right in the middle of the city is where all the protests have always concentrated, so it's not so bad as you might think.

00:18:28.820 What about the retail stores?

00:18:30.900 Once you get out from the epicenter of it, are the retail stores open and functioning?

00:18:36.000 The retail stores are open and functioning.

00:18:38.420 A lot of them are low in stock because they were raided by some organized criminal activity that went through and just looted them all at once to dilute the police presence.

00:18:52.020 They got a bunch of their windows busted in and were ripped off majorly.

00:18:56.400 Like Best Pife, for example, was practically cleaned out.

00:18:59.200 I went down there to shop the other day, and there weren't any products on the shelf that I wanted, so I had to order them off Amazon.

00:19:04.920 So those retail stores are good except for the fact that they don't have any products to sell?

00:19:10.840 That's it, yeah.

00:19:12.660 All right.

00:19:13.880 That could be better.

00:19:14.840 All right.

00:19:15.040 Thanks for the question.

00:19:16.220 Thank you, sir.

00:19:16.880 All right.

00:19:17.200 Bye.

00:19:18.480 All right.

00:19:19.180 Let's take another one.

00:19:20.660 That doesn't sound like an ideal situation.

00:19:22.520 They've only been robbed once and have no product to sell, but otherwise, they're terrific.

00:19:29.720 Let's see if I can get this to work.

00:19:33.580 Okay.

00:19:34.060 That one didn't work.

00:19:35.220 That was for you, Justo, but you went away.

00:19:38.160 How about Will?

00:19:40.380 I think Will might be here.

00:19:44.520 Will, do you have a question for me?

00:19:45.920 Will, do you have a question for me?

00:19:48.640 Good.

00:19:49.240 Good.

00:19:49.660 Thanks.

00:19:50.160 Good.

00:19:51.680 I was kind of writing it down and didn't get finished with it, but we've seen the far left causing mayhem.

00:19:58.660 It's gone on across the entire globe from Europe to here.

00:20:04.380 We see Antifa really causing a lot of trouble in the cities, and it just seems like we may be headed to a place

00:20:14.940 where the normal people get fed up with this and take up arms against the far left,

00:20:20.480 and I'm afraid this could be a worldwide little pockets of civil war.

00:20:25.980 Do you think that there's any possibility of this?

00:20:29.940 You know, I'm hesitant to predict because you could get canceled pretty easily for making it sound like you're promoting violence, right?

00:20:41.380 So let me be as careful as I can by starting out and saying, I don't promote any violence, and I don't hope that any of this happens.

00:20:50.480 But if you were just going to connect the dots and say, what is the most likely outcome of what you're watching?

00:20:57.600 It does end with some firearms.

00:21:00.380 That would be the most likely outcome, because it doesn't look like the protesters are going to just burn themselves out by making their point and moving on.

00:21:09.220 Because the ones who just wanted to make a point about systemic racism, I feel like they made their point.

00:21:15.180 There's no more point that needs to be made.

00:21:17.780 The ones who just want to destroy everything and tear down, they don't have an end date because there's no reason for them to stop.

00:21:24.400 They're having fun.

00:21:26.140 It seems like it's a social event, gives them meaning.

00:21:30.760 So what would stop the worst of them, the ones who are there for anarchy, not the ones who are there for social justice?

00:21:37.320 What would stop the anarchists from just going until everything's gone?

00:21:41.980 Nothing except force.

00:21:44.000 And it does seem that the citizens don't seem to want to put up any force in the cities where it's happening.

00:21:51.500 And probably because it's not that close to their personal homes.

00:21:56.820 As soon as this moves close to homes, that's when you see the couple who brought out the firearms.

00:22:03.360 That will happen everywhere.

00:22:06.020 So as soon as the protesters leave the zone where it's just a business, where there might be some business insurance,

00:22:12.560 people have a different investment, emotionally a different investment in their work than they do in their family.

00:22:19.260 But boy, you've seen a few anecdotes of the few times that Antifa has gone into a little bit more rural or suburban area.

00:22:30.280 The McCloskeys, yeah, the couple that brought out their guns. 0.79

00:22:33.260 In rural areas, my neighborhood, there are a lot of guns around here.

00:22:38.360 I mean, people don't bring them out, but I can tell you for sure, this neighborhood's pretty strapped.

00:22:43.660 And people would take out their self-defense at the moment the Antifa showed up.

00:22:50.680 But that alone isn't going to stop anything because it will just go where it's a softer target, right?

00:22:56.400 If they get resistance, they'll just go somewhere else because they don't have a reason to quit.

00:23:02.140 But what would give them a reason to quit is if something bad happens.

00:23:07.360 And again, I'm not promoting it, so don't cancel me.

00:23:11.420 I'm not saying you should do this.

00:23:13.320 But the odds of one – let me tell you what it would probably look like.

00:23:19.180 One military veteran who has some skills.

00:23:23.320 I'm not going to say more than that, right?

00:23:26.100 Just one military veteran who just says, you know, this has gone beyond protest.

00:23:31.580 This isn't the First Amendment.

00:23:33.140 I would die for the First Amendment.

00:23:35.560 If it's just freedom of speech, I'll die for you.

00:23:38.840 That's, you know, a military person might say such a thing.

00:23:41.720 But if you're destroying my country, I have a vow to protect it, and I don't see anybody else doing it.

00:23:49.700 So the odds of somebody with a military background getting almost activated, if I could say that,

00:23:58.180 because remember, if you're in the military, you're programmed.

00:24:00.940 You know, you're actually wired differently than anybody else for good or bad.

00:24:06.200 You are wired to be a different creature.

00:24:08.760 And I think some of that lasts, I would assume.

00:24:11.740 I mean, if PTSD can last, I would expect that also the, you know, the rest of the training or experience would have some lasting benefits.

00:24:19.600 And it would only take one event, again, I'm going to speak generically, just one event that would make it a really bad idea to go out in the street and be identified as Antifa,

00:24:32.160 because they would think it would happen again.

00:24:34.220 Now, it might have to happen more than once for people to say, uh-oh, it's a trend.

00:24:39.040 It happened twice.

00:24:40.080 But I see that as the likely outcome, that there will be somebody with a military background who will say, not my country.

00:24:50.000 I'm looking around.

00:24:51.580 Not my country.

00:24:52.520 The media would paint that person as far right, and they would become a villain in the eye.

00:24:59.680 You know, the entire news media is run by leftists pretty much, other than Fox. 0.92

00:25:05.580 Yeah, yeah, it would become a story about the crazy Republicans. 0.60

00:25:11.040 Yeah, you're right.

00:25:11.520 It would become one of those stories.

00:25:13.240 It doesn't necessarily have to be a Republican or even a conservative who might just have enough.

00:25:18.420 It could be just somebody who lost their store.

00:25:20.860 You know, it could be somebody who was a victim of it.

00:25:23.340 Somebody who, you know, a friend got beaten up by Antifa.

00:25:26.280 It could be just somebody who's had enough.

00:25:28.540 Yeah.

00:25:29.320 But in all likelihood, if there's, let me just say this.

00:25:33.420 Listen, these things don't stop without force unless the group that's doing the bad stuff has a reason to stop on their own, and they very much don't.

00:25:43.340 The ones who want anarchy only want to stop when everything's broken.

00:25:47.640 So only force will stop them, and the government has indicated that it doesn't want to use it, at least the local government.

00:25:55.480 And because we don't have a dictator, it turns out we don't have a dictator.

00:25:59.960 Surprise.

00:26:01.040 Trump's not a dictator.

00:26:02.220 The federal government won't move in, and we'll let the local people just destroy their own city if they want to. 0.91

00:26:10.280 So the only way anything stops is with force.

00:26:14.260 If it's not going to come from the government and be sanctioned and the appropriate kind, it will happen.

00:26:21.020 It will just come from another source, and then that's when the bad stuff happens.

00:26:25.760 So does that answer your question?

00:26:28.420 It does.

00:26:29.040 Great.

00:26:29.480 Thanks a lot.

00:26:29.940 All right.

00:26:30.480 Thank you.

00:26:30.840 All right.

00:26:32.500 Let's take another one.

00:26:34.220 If that don't get me canceled, what will?

00:26:40.180 All right.

00:26:41.780 Cryptic, are you there?

00:26:44.060 Hello.

00:26:45.200 Can you hear me, Cryptic?

00:26:47.560 Do you have a question?

00:26:48.920 Do you have a question for me?

00:26:49.940 Scott, how do we save music?

00:26:51.760 How do we save music and art?

00:26:53.120 What's the save?

00:26:56.120 It looks pretty good to me.

00:26:58.180 Let me elaborate.

00:27:00.840 Well, actually, have you developed that thing where when you look at an artist's profile and you kind of say, oh, I could tell that they're an artist and that.

00:27:12.220 Is there anything that you're kind of developing with that, like a theory with why that's so?

00:27:17.280 Because I'm actually a rapper in Austin, Texas.

00:27:20.560 And I feel like with my background in business degree, economics and all that, I feel like I'm really singled out.

00:27:28.660 And I'm just like looking at everyone around me.

00:27:31.720 And it's insane.

00:27:33.960 It's like the way everybody is like in the music business, like, you know, superb, like Black Lives Matter, like supportive and stuff.

00:27:41.580 But do you know why that is?

00:27:44.860 Yes, I do.

00:27:46.140 In fact, my book, Loser Think, is on that exact question.

00:27:49.980 It has to do with your talent stack.

00:27:53.360 So as you said, if you have exposure to decision-making fields, business, economics, law, medicine to some extent, engineering, any of the fields that teach you how to think, you're probably going to do better in understanding your world and dealing with it.

00:28:10.200 And the people who become artists have two problems.

00:28:13.980 One is there's a self-selection thing.

00:28:16.400 So the people who decide, hey, I think I'll be an artist, it might be because they're good at lots of things and they chose that.

00:28:22.380 But it's also a lot of people say, I just don't like math.

00:28:26.920 Math isn't going to be my thing.

00:28:28.620 I don't want to sit in an office.

00:28:30.340 So there's a self-selection thing.

00:28:32.300 And then there's a non-exposure because they're not doing the things that would teach them how to make decisions.

00:28:37.940 And then there's the associating with other artists, which is likely if you're in that world.

00:28:43.720 So they have three things working against them.

00:28:45.440 Self-selection, who they hang out with, and then lack of exposure to decision-making.

00:28:50.680 So it's pretty straightforward.

00:28:52.200 These are people who are either unable or untrained to look at things rationally.

00:28:57.820 And I feel sorry for you if you're in that world and you have to deal with them.

00:29:04.240 Because have you tried to have any kind of a rational discussion with your peers that you're talking about?

00:29:11.240 And is it just head-shaking?

00:29:13.480 Yes.

00:29:14.640 It's not just a difference of opinion, is it?

00:29:17.100 There's something else going on there, isn't there?

00:29:19.660 Right.

00:29:20.160 It's literally like I'm watching two movies on one screen, like my own movie.

00:29:25.880 And then I'm watching them have discussions that I just want to jump in there and just say,

00:29:32.260 why do you guys think this way?

00:29:34.440 But I just have to bite down and just kind of accept it sometimes.

00:29:39.600 Because I feel like it's just so overwhelming, the difference in opinions.

00:29:45.720 It's wild.

00:29:46.640 So just for fun, try this.

00:29:50.000 The next time these topics come up with your friends,

00:29:52.900 if you don't want to out yourself as the one who disagrees,

00:29:55.900 just try to give some clarification and say,

00:29:58.500 you know, suppose the protesters got everything they wanted,

00:30:02.640 you know, in social justice, et cetera.

00:30:05.340 How would it be paid for?

00:30:07.220 And if they say, well, we'll get the top 0.01% to pay for it,

00:30:12.300 then you say, why would they stay around?

00:30:14.800 And why would they stay in this country if they're being pickpocketed?

00:30:21.500 Anyway, see how that goes.

00:30:24.300 We'll do.

00:30:25.740 Oh, yeah.

00:30:26.320 Move to Austin.

00:30:27.200 I'll see you here whenever you eventually move over here.

00:30:30.320 Well, it's not impossible.

00:30:31.820 Thanks for the question.

00:30:33.860 Take care.

00:30:34.200 For sure.

00:30:34.720 Take care.

00:30:37.240 All right.

00:30:37.640 How did I get so many listeners for taking questions?

00:30:41.060 I'm surprised.

00:30:41.600 All right.

00:30:43.220 Let's see if Daniel has a question.

00:30:48.900 Daniel.

00:30:50.200 Hey, Daniel.

00:30:51.060 You have a question for me?

00:30:56.180 The last question, in a way.

00:30:58.560 I wanted to ask you about education.

00:31:00.300 A lot of us don't really like the idea of college these days.

00:31:05.960 I've been.

00:31:06.800 I really didn't like learning that everything had to be understood through the lens of race,

00:31:12.580 class, and gender.

00:31:14.020 So I kind of wanted to ask you, as far as, like, a liberal arts education or learning how

00:31:21.080 to think, what would you recommend as a starting place for, like, a personal system for that?

00:31:25.960 Well, for learning how to think.

00:31:28.980 If you want to understand the people who don't think well, and I think that's a good start,

00:31:34.000 Google persuasion reading list.

00:31:37.640 So you'll find my list of books that are in the persuasion and influence realm.

00:31:43.320 So I'd say that's a good start because it tells you what is irrational and why people are like that.

00:31:49.440 But then the fields that get you to think better are economics, law, engineering, you know, science.

00:31:58.440 Anything that has any kind of a structured process for figuring out what's true and what's not is going to get you there.

00:32:05.660 In economics, you spend a lot of time figuring out which variables matter and comparing two things to other things.

00:32:12.380 So you end up just automatically building a brain that does that reflexively.

00:32:16.500 So anybody from, I use this example all the time, if I talk to somebody who is not experienced with economics,

00:32:24.260 had no influence, and I say, is this president, whatever president, doesn't matter which one,

00:32:29.380 doing a good job or a bad one, they'll say, oh, yeah, good job.

00:32:33.000 Or they'll say, oh, terrible job.

00:32:35.020 He's botched everything.

00:32:36.720 But if you ask an economist, hey, economist, is this president doing a good job or a bad job,

00:32:42.480 the economist will say, compared to who, right?

00:32:46.640 Because that's the starting point.

00:32:48.020 Compared to what?

00:32:49.200 There was no other president doing the same job at the same time under the same circumstances

00:32:53.740 so that you could see how they acted compared to this one.

00:32:57.500 Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but on net, is one of them going to be better than the other?

00:33:01.860 You don't really know.

00:33:02.720 It's unknowable.

00:33:04.100 So the economist is just completely on a different page with the person who hasn't studied any of that.

00:33:10.300 So in terms of college, I would say that the softer the skill, the less useful it is.

00:33:18.800 Okay.

00:33:19.480 The English literature, Russian studies of literature, I suppose, you can tell.

00:33:28.280 Just go for the ones that have some decision-making elements to them, and you'll do better.

00:33:32.940 But do take some kind of a writing and speaking course.

00:33:36.220 Those are good for everybody.

00:33:37.540 All right?

00:33:37.780 All right.

00:33:38.280 Thanks, Scott.

00:33:38.760 Appreciate it.

00:33:39.260 All right.

00:33:39.640 Take care.

00:33:40.300 Yeah, college is going to be really different in a few years.

00:33:45.580 I'm glad, finally.

00:33:49.040 Let's see if Michael Sweet has something to say.

00:33:53.420 Michael, do you have a question for me?

00:33:59.120 That is anticipated?

00:34:01.800 The chaos.

00:34:02.500 Yes, go ahead.

00:34:03.160 If there is no result from the election by the time the inauguration comes down, I think it would go to the House of Representatives.

00:34:14.860 Do you think that's so, and how do you think that would play out?

00:34:18.200 Well, I'm no constitutional scholar, but I would think that if we don't have a result by Inauguration Day, that our options would be to either postpone the election or to have it again, or postpone the result in the inauguration or to redo it.

00:34:39.360 And I don't know the legality of any of that, but I imagine we could make it pass legal muster because I think the Supreme Court is going to say, no, the Constitution says these are your deadlines.

00:34:52.960 But the Supreme Court is humans, not a machine.

00:34:56.620 So if you say to the humans on the Supreme Court, but, you know, this year we just couldn't do it.

00:35:01.920 It wasn't an option.

00:35:03.260 I think at that point people just get flexible and they say, well, you know, okay, we're originalists and we don't like to deviate from the Constitution.

00:35:14.100 But the intent of the Constitution was to get a good result that people believe.

00:35:19.620 That would be easy.

00:35:20.440 Nobody would argue with the fact that the intention is to get a credible result and the Republic requires that.

00:35:28.020 It's not optional.

00:35:29.500 It's not optional that people believe it was a real election.

00:35:32.980 Not in our system.

00:35:34.360 That's not optional.

00:35:35.720 So you're going to do whatever you can to make that problem go away.

00:35:39.180 And I think that's going to be either delay or just redo it.

00:35:42.240 Just wait.

00:35:43.480 So you might get a few extra months of a Trump administration that the other side didn't want.

00:35:50.440 If he lost, which I don't think is going to happen.

00:35:53.040 So that's where I think it will go.

00:35:54.840 I think people will just get real flexible.

00:35:57.440 But I also think that there's really no chance of having a credible outcome in the first pass.

00:36:03.700 It just doesn't seem possible.

00:36:05.500 It doesn't matter who wins.

00:36:07.000 It just doesn't seem possible.

00:36:08.400 So the one and only outcome I can see that would be credible enough to avoid election-related mass unrest is if Trump won by a landslide.

00:36:21.780 Or I suppose if Joe Biden won by a landslide.

00:36:26.460 So if either of them won by such a margin that even whatever stuff happened with the mail, you could even say, okay, 2% or 3% of that, which would be a lot.

00:36:36.980 If you had 2% or 3% fraud in a national election, that would be a lot of fraud.

00:36:43.820 But if one of them wins by 10%, you can let it go.

00:36:49.120 So anything short of a major landslide, which is not really common in our system, at least lately, is going to be trouble.

00:36:59.660 And I think that means delay or redo.

00:37:01.300 So that's my guess.

00:37:04.660 Great.

00:37:05.000 Thanks, Scott.

00:37:06.200 Thank you.

00:37:06.540 I appreciate you.

00:37:07.000 I always appreciate your perceptions.

00:37:09.220 Thanks.

00:37:11.220 All right.

00:37:12.080 Let's see who else is here.

00:37:14.140 How about Sammy the dog?

00:37:18.860 Sammy, who has an icon like a dog?

00:37:22.180 Are you there, Sammy?

00:37:24.660 Sammy may have been watching on a device that doesn't work for this.

00:37:30.300 So we're going to try D.D.

00:37:34.320 D.D., whose name is two parts.

00:37:37.540 Those are the same.

00:37:38.840 D.D., do you have a question for me?

00:37:44.320 Pleasure.

00:37:44.900 It has to do with the word chaos.

00:37:48.060 I recently observed many Democrats using that word.

00:37:53.380 Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton used it.

00:37:58.020 Michelle Obama used the word.

00:37:59.580 This chaos, do you think it's an effective branding word or do you think it's weak?

00:38:07.820 Well, you know, I've been asking myself the same thing because they use it all the time.

00:38:13.040 I do think that people have a sense that everything's unbalanced and that things need to be rebalanced.

00:38:21.580 So chaos definitely gets you there.

00:38:24.100 It's like, hey, this president is full of chaos.

00:38:26.180 So I think they're using chaos like they use dark.

00:38:29.260 You can take anything he does and say it's chaos.

00:38:32.140 How about the way he dealt with the Middle East?

00:38:34.080 Well, it's just chaos.

00:38:35.940 So it's a word like botched where you accept it uncritically.

00:38:39.760 If somebody says, well, this manager is not managing as well as this other manager, you might say to yourself, well, I have a different opinion.

00:38:48.500 Let's look at the variables.

00:38:49.820 Let's look at, you know, really compare these.

00:38:51.880 But if somebody says that one person creates chaos, you feel like you're done, right?

00:38:59.240 Because you're never going to want the chaos, anything.

00:39:02.360 It's just an automatic, no, chaos.

00:39:04.720 Thank you, no.

00:39:05.940 Thanks for offering.

00:39:06.960 I don't need any chaos.

00:39:08.200 So dark, chaos, botched, any of those words that have in them a sense of nonspecific badness are very good because they don't have enough specific badness to work with.

00:39:23.040 So as long as they can keep using these general words about his personality, his credibility, his chaos, they don't have to explain exactly what he did wrong or what they would do better.

00:39:34.300 And that's bad for them, you know, if they have to explain the details because the details don't work in their favor.

00:39:42.200 What the Democrats want, first of all, they don't agree with each other.

00:39:46.900 So if you're a Democrat and you're trying to sell the national unity, hey, everybody vote for this one person, it's better if you don't get too specific because if they do, their own team will leave.

00:39:58.480 As soon as they say we're going to do this or that, people who are Democrats will say, ah, wait a minute, that's not what I signed up for exactly.

00:40:06.660 I wanted something way more left of that.

00:40:09.160 So the Democrats have to hide their intention from their own side as much as they have to make a case against Trump.

00:40:16.000 So that word works really well for that, I would say.

00:40:19.060 Now, I've often said that Trump has the reverse message, which is law and order.

00:40:25.840 Now, law and order is not punchy like, you know, botched or chaos or dark.

00:40:33.100 It's a little too boring and ordinary.

00:40:35.700 So if the president could come up with a response word and the best play for the president would be to use the word against them.

00:40:44.700 Because remember how fake news the president took the gun out of their hands and flipped it around?

00:40:49.420 It's just like that.

00:40:50.660 If you look at the rioting, it's chaos.

00:40:53.020 So you could certainly make the case that the Republicans are the anti-chaos team and the Democrats are the chaos team.

00:41:03.220 I'm kind of surprised he hasn't done that yet because it's such an obvious play.

00:41:07.740 So maybe you'll see that.

00:41:09.980 All right.

00:41:10.200 Thanks for the question.

00:41:11.320 You're welcome.

00:41:11.700 Thank you.

00:41:12.480 Bye.

00:41:15.660 All right.

00:41:16.580 Let's see what Blues Lover has for us today.

00:41:23.780 Blues Lover, can you hear me?

00:41:25.260 Do you have a question?

00:41:29.400 For podcasts, I am a former California person, moved to South Carolina.

00:41:33.700 And I'm also an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, Native Americans.

00:41:40.580 And I feel that Native Americans are not being acknowledged in the current climate.

00:41:47.580 With mention of the 1619 program and also watching a young girl in Georgetown saying black people used to live here, encouraging white people to move out.

00:42:00.840 But so did my people.

00:42:03.920 Good point.

00:42:06.000 So, yeah, my tribe is actually from the southeast complex of Mississippi and Alabama.

00:42:10.820 So, although I'm a conservative and I'm really against identity politics, I want to know how Native Americans can become part of the conversation of lifting people up or just our general acknowledgement of who we are in our education or economics.

00:42:33.560 Well, that's a good point.

00:42:34.780 It was only a few years ago that I thought I was Native American, too.

00:42:40.860 I had the Elizabeth Warren problem. 0.83

00:42:44.240 My family, we had all been raised to believe that we had some proportion of Native American blood.

00:42:50.660 But when I did a DNA test, it turns out it's zero.

00:42:55.320 Exactly zero.

00:42:56.060 And I've heard a lot of people since then say that they had a similar situation.

00:43:00.440 So I guess it was trendy to say that you were part of Native American, which is part of my answer.

00:43:07.860 Native Americans have always had sort of a positive image in the standard, you know, European-based person who came over to the United States.

00:43:19.280 So there's always this mythic, you know, noble kind of a thing.

00:43:25.340 So people would often say, hey, yeah, we're one of those, too, because it was so positive.

00:43:29.980 You like to claim it as part of your identity.

00:43:33.440 So you have a little different situation.

00:43:35.560 You don't want to have apples and oranges here with the black community. 1.00

00:43:38.080 But, of course, if you notice last night, as each of the states got 30 seconds to do their nomination of Biden, that there were a number of Native Americans who were selected to represent their state.

00:43:53.100 And I only watched it for a little bit, but I think I saw three out of maybe 10.

00:43:58.000 And I thought, wow, that's really very high recognition of the, you know, the Native American populations in those states.

00:44:04.960 And, but you're right, you're right.

00:44:09.060 The problem with the Black Lives Matter movement is that if it works, it's self-destroying. 0.99

00:44:16.980 Because if it works, it would cause extra attention to go to one part of the public, and the rest of the public would say, wait a minute, we weren't in favor of extra attention so much, we just wanted equality.

00:44:30.900 So you can imagine that anything can overshoot the mark.

00:44:33.880 So I think Black Lives Matter will destroy itself because it has a message that has a timer on it, right? 1.00

00:44:42.620 Yeah, good. 0.96

00:44:43.760 Yeah, it's sort of, you can see the fuse is burning, and you're saying, okay, this isn't going to last much longer when the leaders of Black Lives Matter are saying, let's, or even members are saying, let's kick these white people out of their house and give it to black people and stuff like that. 0.52

00:45:02.360 So it's sort of self-destroying.

00:45:04.060 So let me say this.

00:45:06.220 Is what you're looking for more attention because you would want more resources to go in that direction?

00:45:12.460 Or is it more just a recognition that you're looking for?

00:45:15.680 I think a recognition, but also perhaps resources.

00:45:21.020 Trump has been great for the Native Americans.

00:45:23.080 He signed the Murdered Missing Indigenous People bill, as well as allowed tribal lands for us to leave it to other people in the tribe, which previous presidents had not signed.

00:45:37.320 So he's done a lot, it just doesn't get attention.

00:45:41.880 So as somebody who, let me just say for you and your audience, when I hear people say we're a nation of immigrants, it like kind of bothers me a little bit.

00:45:52.600 And I don't, I don't like identity politics, but I'd like us to be acknowledged at the table as just being equal, not being better than or original or anything, just at the table.

00:46:09.000 But you know, to my other statement, do you find that there's much day-to-day any kind of discrimination against Native Americans?

00:46:18.460 Is that, is that even part of your experience?

00:46:23.140 Well, I, I have blonde hair, part of the colonization.

00:46:27.480 So there is some discrimination for Indians that don't maybe fit the complete bill.

00:46:35.060 By the way, we don't go by DNA.

00:46:37.220 We, we do go by genealogy.

00:46:39.340 So, you know, we have actually, there's a card that people get if you're an enrolled member.

00:46:44.300 So, so it's kind of interesting.

00:46:47.280 But I, I, we, I think we are being discriminated against with the 1619 project.

00:46:56.080 Oh, that's true.

00:46:56.860 Yes.

00:46:57.460 Well, in the sense that your, your, your place in history is minimized by that.

00:47:04.420 Yeah.

00:47:04.720 You have a good point.

00:47:06.020 Or being released.

00:47:08.140 Yeah.

00:47:09.260 Yeah.

00:47:09.780 Like, like the, well, yeah, I can see that.

00:47:13.100 So you have the disadvantage of numbers, right?

00:47:16.900 What percentage of the United States is Native American?

00:47:19.520 Is it 2%, 1%?

00:47:21.900 I, I, I, it's under three.

00:47:24.380 Yeah.

00:47:24.700 It's under three.

00:47:25.640 Yeah.

00:47:25.920 So having numbers would help.

00:47:27.900 Everybody who's in that one or 2% is going to have trouble getting attention in this world.

00:47:34.720 So your, your point is well taken.

00:47:36.620 Thanks for the call.

00:47:38.040 Thank you.

00:47:39.120 All right.

00:47:43.140 Interesting.

00:47:43.860 All right.

00:47:44.200 Let's see if we've got another caller here whose name I will not try to pronounce.

00:47:53.300 Hello, caller.

00:47:54.060 Can you hear me?

00:47:56.220 Hi.

00:47:56.540 How do you pronounce your first name?

00:47:58.240 Ching.

00:47:59.300 Okay.

00:47:59.840 Ching.

00:48:00.660 Do you have a question for me?

00:48:02.420 Yes.

00:48:02.780 Uh, so my question was about building good habits.

00:48:08.360 Like, um, sometimes like I have bad habits, like, uh, I don't want to get out of bed.

00:48:17.540 And like, then I just make myself more and more miserable.

00:48:21.240 And I know that every time I don't procrastinate, I just get up and I do my meditation or do

00:48:29.440 anything, I'll feel better.

00:48:32.120 But for whatever reason, sometimes I just keep slipping back into those bad habits.

00:48:38.380 Now, when you're in it and you, let's say you're laying in bed and you're saying, I should

00:48:41.760 get up, but I'm just not.

00:48:44.060 Is that the situation where you, you know, you should, and you're just not doing it?

00:48:48.760 Yeah, I know I should.

00:48:50.260 And then I think, uh, I just, I start tormenting myself with like all these thoughts.

00:48:57.100 All right.

00:48:57.720 Try this. 0.51

00:48:58.500 So this is a tip from my book, um, loser think.

00:49:02.640 And, uh, it has to do with how to, how to, how to break couch lock.

00:49:07.780 Uh, cause I have this myself.

00:49:09.280 I'll be sitting on the couch and I'll be perfectly happy, but I know I'm supposed to be doing

00:49:13.580 something else and I just can't get myself off the couch.

00:49:16.060 I just, my brain is having a conversation with my body and it's saying,

00:49:20.260 you know, you should be doing something else.

00:49:22.180 And my body is just like, nope, I'm going to sit on the couch.

00:49:26.040 Here is the hypnotist trick for breaking that.

00:49:30.420 You wiggle your pinky, just wiggle your pinky because it's your, your brain won't have an

00:49:36.160 objection to that.

00:49:37.100 And neither will your body.

00:49:38.140 So you just wiggle it.

00:49:39.680 And then you let that wiggled finger go to the rest of your hand and you just move your

00:49:44.240 hand.

00:49:45.240 As soon as you move your hand, you'll be able to move your arm and you can stand up.

00:49:49.160 So in other words, you take agency over your body because for momentarily, it's as if your

00:49:54.600 body and your brain are disconnected.

00:49:56.540 It's almost like they're having a conversation with each other.

00:49:59.020 Hey, get off the couch. 1.00

00:50:00.380 Not really.

00:50:00.920 So as soon as you take control of the smallest part of your body, just wiggle your pinky,

00:50:07.400 it, uh, it reactivates your connection and it tells, tells your body who's in charge.

00:50:12.280 And then your executive function can say off the couch.

00:50:15.560 And now we're onto something else.

00:50:17.140 That's the first thing.

00:50:18.260 Second thing is you should develop a system, a consistent system of rewards for anything

00:50:25.040 you want to do more of.

00:50:26.420 So if you want to exercise more, make sure that when you're done, immediately after you're

00:50:31.220 done, exercising is always a reward.

00:50:33.600 I like to have a nice smoothie that is delicious.

00:50:37.200 Spend some time looking through my phone and just have some downtime and not work.

00:50:42.360 And to me, that's like a delicious little, you know, 35 minutes there.

00:50:46.780 And so that reward just trains us like dogs to seek the reward, even if we're not consciously

00:50:52.980 thinking it.

00:50:53.620 So there's a book called, uh, habit by, uh, Charles Duhigg, D-U-H-I-G might be two G's.

00:51:02.760 I forget.

00:51:03.680 Um, and he, he teaches you how to develop habits.

00:51:06.580 So I would recommend the book habit, try the pinky trick and give yourself a reward for 0.63

00:51:13.100 whatever you want to do more of.

00:51:14.340 And that will get you started.

00:51:15.480 Okay.

00:51:16.460 Thank you, Scott.

00:51:17.600 You're welcome.

00:51:18.260 So, and that was a very functional question because there are probably a lot of you who

00:51:26.400 are saying, you know, I'd like to hear the answer to that question.

00:51:29.540 Let's see if, uh, Taylor has a question.

00:51:33.720 Taylor, come to me.

00:51:35.360 Your technology has failed.

00:51:37.340 Taylor, we will go with Amy.

00:51:40.960 Amy.

00:51:41.160 Amy, Amy, Amy, Amy, can you hear me?

00:51:48.800 Are you the Amy who recently sent me something in the mail?

00:51:52.540 No, I'm the Amy who told you that, uh, Fitton was not a lawyer.

00:51:58.280 Oh, yes.

00:52:00.240 That was quite a shock to me because I just assumed he was.

00:52:03.160 I think it's because the, the person who had his job before that was a lawyer, right?

00:52:07.960 I don't know about that.

00:52:09.300 He's been doing that a long time.

00:52:10.660 I just like the fact that he's got pecs and byes, you know, he's, he's, he's pretty, uh,

00:52:17.120 strapped with that.

00:52:18.820 You know, you, well, you're a little bit younger than I am.

00:52:22.340 And so, um, but you know, we're fighting to keep our young appearance and all that kind

00:52:28.380 of stuff, particularly as a woman, it's really necessary as you might not know or do.

00:52:35.060 So anyway, I do have, I've been struggling with this, sending kids back to indoctrination centers

00:52:44.660 from people on the right and people on the left wanting to keep the kids home, which you would

00:52:50.200 think that they would want to keep their kids indoctrinated or in that.

00:52:54.660 So I've been struggling.

00:52:55.880 I have a grandson at home and he's going in person two days a week and I've got him home

00:53:01.120 three days a week, which has been wonderful because now I can see what he's not getting.

00:53:07.260 And it's scary as all get out.

00:53:10.960 It really is.

00:53:12.100 Yeah.

00:53:12.340 I don't think a lot of us, I will speak for myself.

00:53:14.740 I don't think we knew how bad it was.

00:53:16.860 I was opposed to public school because I saw, um, the destruction of just putting kids in

00:53:23.260 that environment because kids are terrible to each other.

00:53:27.680 It's awful.

00:53:28.760 And you're, you're guaranteeing that you're putting your kid into a bullying, a bullying

00:53:32.900 situation unless they are the bully.

00:53:35.700 So there's no, there's no good answer there.

00:53:37.680 So it's a very cruel world.

00:53:40.540 And I've, I've spent a lot of time trying to think, well, would it be better to homeschool?

00:53:45.680 Because then you don't get the social, socializing, uh, unless you really work on making sure it

00:53:51.100 happens.

00:53:51.800 I don't know.

00:53:52.620 On, on balance, I think public school is bad for kids on balance, you know, given that

00:53:59.020 you could educate them a different way.

00:54:00.580 Well, my grandson is on the spectrum.

00:54:05.120 And one of the things that is nice now is that, that they aren't demonized as they were

00:54:10.640 like when we were in school and we didn't really even know what we were dealing with

00:54:14.180 back then in the late sixties and seventies.

00:54:17.800 And, um, so there is a lot of understanding, but then again, he's, he's just for the socialization. 0.96

00:54:26.720 But as a literalist, I'm afraid that he's going to suck all this stuff and turn into something 0.80

00:54:33.280 that really won't serve him best in the long run. 0.93

00:54:36.780 So, you know, I, Oh, you know, I think, I think it's going to go the other way because,

00:54:42.820 uh, when you say on the spectrum, are you saying on the spectrum, like he'll, he'll be an engineer

00:54:48.280 someday or on the spectrum, like he has more problems than that?

00:54:51.940 No, that's, that's the goal because he, he truly is a math genius and he has perfect pitch.

00:54:57.980 So he's a music genius as well.

00:54:59.980 So I, I wouldn't worry about him.

00:55:02.820 I don't, because here, because here's the thing.

00:55:05.480 He's, he's wired based on what you're saying.

00:55:08.000 He's wired for rational thought.

00:55:11.460 And if somebody tells him something that he can't see and observe, I just don't know he's

00:55:16.500 going to be gullible.

00:55:17.600 So you, you, you may have raised somebody who is unusually resistant to the very thing you're

00:55:22.860 worried about.

00:55:23.660 Well, that's what the hope is.

00:55:25.200 That's what the hope is.

00:55:26.180 Because, you know, dad has a degree as a master's in computer science, and we've got another son

00:55:31.000 with a PhD in chemistry and, you know, and, and I have a STEM degree and my husband has

00:55:36.460 a STEM degree.

00:55:37.540 So, I mean, they don't have a chance.

00:55:40.000 They don't have a snowball's chance in hell of going to the left.

00:55:43.620 I hope.

00:55:45.940 Well, well, we'll see.

00:55:48.000 All right.

00:55:48.300 Thanks for the call.

00:55:49.260 Well, thank you.

00:55:50.500 All right.

00:55:51.120 Take care.

00:55:55.000 Boom, boom.

00:55:56.720 All right.

00:55:57.640 Let's do one more.

00:55:58.760 We'll take Donna, and then we'll wrap if Donna's technology works. 0.99

00:56:05.800 Donna, are you there?

00:56:09.420 Good morning.

00:56:10.620 What's your question, Free?

00:56:11.780 I'm curious if you read the New York Times article or any of the other responses to the

00:56:16.280 thousand page Senate report.

00:56:20.160 I glanced at it, and it looks like they're trying to make an opposite claim of reality,

00:56:26.540 but saying, you know, about Trump's campaign ties to Russia, et cetera, et cetera.

00:56:31.060 I'm having trouble making all of that mesh with everything that you've been talking about.

00:56:37.360 And, you know, I want to be able to talk about it with people in a way that makes sense.

00:56:41.220 So I'm curious if you read it and if you have any comments on it.

00:56:43.680 I don't read the New York Times because I don't trust it as being a credible news source anymore.

00:56:52.860 I hate to say that.

00:56:53.700 I mean, it's just the worst thing in the world.

00:56:55.800 And I don't say that as a partisan.

00:56:58.380 I say that as an objective fact.

00:57:00.700 The news just isn't really giving us news anymore.

00:57:03.180 So I don't read it, and if it's beyond a paywall, I'm not going to, like, pay to read something I don't trust.

00:57:09.440 So you're saying that they're making the case that the Trump campaign did have connections to Russia?

00:57:17.980 Is that what you're saying?

00:57:19.260 What it said was that some people in Trump's campaign talked to some Russians.

00:57:26.960 But that's true.

00:57:27.520 So, yes, so the claim is that because there's a lot of information about people in Trump's campaign talking to Russians,

00:57:36.840 that that proves everything that they've been talking about since the beginning.

00:57:41.820 Yeah.

00:57:42.640 Well, I think you just have to dismiss that as the fake news doing what the fake news does.

00:57:49.000 You know, the most normal thing in the world is for an incoming administration to have people that they know in the Russia sphere.

00:57:57.520 Keep in mind that Russia's objective is to make sure that whoever the administration is, 0.55

00:58:03.840 or even if it's a maybe administration coming in, that they would give them as much contact as they possibly could,

00:58:10.520 because the more contact, the better from Russia.

00:58:12.360 So remember, you've got Russia doing perfectly legal things, which is have a phone call, have a meeting, talk to somebody, create a channel.

00:58:21.800 So it sort of would have to look like this.

00:58:26.200 Under every situation, I believe it would look like this.

00:58:31.420 It wouldn't matter what the administration was.

00:58:33.620 So the way I would answer it is you realize that whoever is the next administration after Trump,

00:58:38.520 whether it's this year or some other year,

00:58:41.280 whoever is next is going to have a lot of initial contacts and past contacts with Russian folks.

00:58:49.280 So you should first explain it away as normal and say it's going to be like that for every administration regardless,

00:58:56.780 and always has been.

00:58:58.080 I'm sure there hasn't been a past administration that didn't have some serious contacts with lots of Russians.

00:59:03.920 They have an embassy.

00:59:05.220 They have a reason to have contact.

00:59:07.280 We have a reason to have contact with them.

00:59:09.340 There's nothing unusual about it.

00:59:11.220 So there's no story there is what I'd say.

00:59:13.420 Gotcha.

00:59:14.100 Okay.

00:59:14.520 Thank you, Scott.

00:59:15.120 I appreciate it.

00:59:15.920 All right.

00:59:16.240 Hope that helped.

00:59:16.820 Okay.

00:59:19.220 I don't want to go any longer,

00:59:20.980 but I was surprised that we got as many people here to watch this.

00:59:24.360 Let me just wrap up on the Democratic convention last night.

00:59:30.600 It's obvious that this recorded speeches and stuff just doesn't have the same pizzazz as anything live,

00:59:37.800 but I thought they did a little bit better job last night.

00:59:43.000 I don't know who the candidate is who's running because it seems like he's a non-entity except for his name.

00:59:49.940 And everybody's just waiting for the moment that Joe Biden has to talk to somebody without looking at a teleprompter.

01:00:00.040 Everything else kind of doesn't matter.

01:00:03.900 So we've got to see that before we know anything.

01:00:06.480 So Bill Clinton talked and got mixed responses,

01:00:10.660 and even CNN, one of their panelists, was making a big deal about why isn't he canceled already?

01:00:18.380 And that question just lingers.

01:00:22.400 So, oh, is tonight the nomination, official nomination tonight?

01:00:28.960 All right.

01:00:29.560 Well, I don't know if that'll be interesting either.

01:00:33.340 And that is all I have for today, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

01:00:37.060 Thank you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 19, 2020

Episode 1097 Scott Adams： Ask Me Anything Today

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