Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1124 Scott Adams： Fake News, HOAXES, Science Denying, Magic Tricks, and Everything You Thought Was True But Maybe Not

00:00:00.000 yes there we are again smoky California I hope many of you live in states where you can breathe

00:00:11.760 the air and do all those things but I don't so it looks like it's gonna be weeks of breathing

00:00:17.820 whatever that is out there so I'm basically on house arrest I've got a little asthma issue so

00:00:25.920 I can't go outside basically I'm just locked inside for weeks weeks and weeks but do I mind

00:00:35.320 not what I have all of you here no no it's all good when you're here and I gotta tell you I can't

00:00:45.300 quite appreciate I don't think I could communicate how much I appreciate the time we spend together

00:00:51.640 in the morning during this coronavirus situation and now the wildfires I gotta say it really helps

00:00:59.380 it really helps to have this connection with all of you and speaking of connections wouldn't you like

00:01:06.760 to enjoy the simultaneous sip all you need is a cup or mug or a glass a tank or chalice or stye and a

00:01:12.420 canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me

00:01:20.220 now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better

00:01:25.960 it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now go

00:01:29.280 shall we start with the good news everybody everybody want some good news all right we'll start

00:01:39.740 with that there's a report that the University of Pittsburgh scientists have discovered a biomolecule

00:01:48.740 biomolecule you know you should probably practice saying biomolecule before you say it out loud for

00:01:58.280 the first time in your entire life I have never said the word biomolecule out loud until just this

00:02:05.940 moment it wasn't it wasn't smooth but anyway this biomolecule may neutralize coronavirus so it's not

00:02:17.480 a vaccine it would be some kind of biomolecule if it works apparently it works in animals which

00:02:26.880 generally is not enough to get excited there are a lot of things work in animals that don't work in

00:02:32.980 people but this particular biomolecule and come on you've probably just said biomolecule at home just

00:02:40.920 to see if you could do it didn't you you did say it out loud biomolecule and apparently it's in the

00:02:49.320 sort of general category of things that are generally safe so it seems to just rapidly just absolutely

00:02:59.020 whack the coronavirus and and uh it looks promising so we might have something that's I don't know how long

00:03:10.920 seems promising my favorite story of the day is uh internet uh troll jacob wall uh faked an fbi

00:03:21.060 and an fbi raid on some guy I think he works with jack berkman and so the washington post actually

00:03:32.360 picked it up as a real story I have to admit as fakes go this was really well done because the

00:03:40.760 the videos and the pictures of what looked to be it really looked like an fbi fbi raid somehow they

00:03:49.320 got fbi jackets and they I think they hired actors or something and he puts on this whole fake fbi raid

00:03:57.380 and the washington post reported it like it was real daily beast was on to him a little bit early

00:04:03.320 so that's funny uh now I don't know why

00:04:07.120 you know I can't figure out the next part you know I understand the part about okay internet troll

00:04:14.720 puts on a prank it's not his first prank and and it worked really well but was that the only point

00:04:20.940 was he just trying to see if he could get the the news to report fake news I don't know I'm not sure

00:04:27.140 what the point of that was um there will be some interesting news coming out of Rasmussen a little

00:04:34.240 later today I got a little heads up um I won't give you the details but let me just give you a little

00:04:40.760 tease so Rasmussen of course does polling and uh you're going to find out some details about this but

00:04:49.380 it turns out and this might come as a surprise to you this might come as a big surprise so you know

00:04:57.760 put your seat belt on because you're never going to believe this it turns out that anybody who lived

00:05:05.140 in a town that had protests slash riots not happy about it they're just not happy about it and will

00:05:15.320 will it affect their votes well turns out yes yes so the people who live in places affected by the

00:05:24.820 riots looting slash protesting not so much the peaceful protesting but everything that often comes with it

00:05:32.120 those people are not happy not happy and here's the part you didn't know because it there are so many

00:05:43.260 protests and they concentrated on the population centers if you said to yourself well if you added

00:05:50.960 together the entire real estate that every protest was taken in the united states it would be like a

00:05:57.580 pinprick on the big united states in terms of space that they occupied you know a few streets in each

00:06:05.020 city you know 0.001 percent of the real estate was affected by these protests but it's not really about

00:06:15.200 real estate is it it's about people if you happen to live near or within driving distance of where there

00:06:23.840 was looting it changed your vote not every time but man people are pissed so where do you see the

00:06:32.820 details in that but the biggest news is well let me put this in another context as impossible as this

00:06:41.540 might seem by november we might be kind of over the coronavirus i don't mean over it medically i don't

00:06:50.840 mean over it in terms of the economy being back to normal we won't be over it in terms of what it's doing

00:06:56.780 to us but quoting my late mother who taught me one of the most valuable things you'll ever know about

00:07:04.160 people and it goes like this if you want to understand humans here's the thing we can get used

00:07:11.620 to anything including hanging that was a little saying you can get used to anything so the problem

00:07:18.460 with the coronavirus from the democrats point of view is that they have this complaint about the

00:07:25.000 president not handling it the way they wish it would have been handled but it's really going to seem

00:07:30.720 like old news by november even while we're still experiencing it because whatever happened in april

00:07:37.340 it just feels like a hundred years ago already and we'll talk a little bit more about that but

00:07:44.960 don't discount the fact that you simply get used to the coronavirus you just get used to it and then

00:07:52.540 whatever's happening at the moment artificially takes a bigger role because you're you know just

00:07:58.740 got used to the other thing so if the protests are still happening and there's still new news about it

00:08:03.580 and there's new video every day which seems to be the case people are going to vote on the protests

00:08:10.180 way more than they're going to vote on coronavirus and will have only to do with the fact that you just

00:08:15.760 got used to one and you haven't yet got used to the other one all right um let's see uh i want to

00:08:26.100 give you a little context about what makes me look at the world a little differently than other people

00:08:31.200 i get asked about this a lot people say to me scott scott what happened to you that makes you see the

00:08:37.680 world differently and i've noticed that there are people who took what i would call my journey

00:08:43.320 people who coincidentally were doing similar things and had similar experiences often think

00:08:49.240 the same way i do and i thought it'd be useful to show you what that looks like here is my path

00:08:54.560 to understanding reality when i was a little kid i loved optical illusions and i loved the fact

00:09:02.880 that your brain had this this blind spot you could be looking at an illusion and even though you know

00:09:09.440 it's really not that it looks like it and so i was always fascinated by how how easily the brain

00:09:16.100 could be fooled by an optical illusion something you're looking right at then then i started noticing

00:09:23.060 that people had different religions i was learning one religion but people had different ones and i and

00:09:28.700 even at the young age of 11 i'd be saying to myself um okay there i don't know what's going on here

00:09:36.220 because these religions are completely different so even if i imagine i got lucky and i got the right

00:09:43.640 one so luckily i was born into the family that they had the right religion and all the other people

00:09:50.240 were getting the wrong religion but or maybe everybody had the wrong religion so there were

00:09:55.720 possibilities but the one thing i could say for sure is that everybody who had a different religion

00:10:01.260 you could tell that we were not basing our decisions on religion on facts so much or at least

00:10:10.160 not all of the world so we could see the people would believe just about anything didn't know who was

00:10:17.140 right and who was wrong but it was pretty obvious that billions of humans were otherwise normal

00:10:22.520 can believe just about anything then i got interested in magic when i was a little kid

00:10:29.160 little kid doing magic tricks and you start learning that there are there predictable let's say

00:10:38.320 blocks in your brain there are predictable gaps and blind spots so that you can craft a variety of

00:10:46.220 different magic tricks that take advantage of weaknesses and perception now once you start doing

00:10:53.160 enough magic tricks and you see you start seeing all the weaknesses and perception it changes how you

00:10:59.760 see the world and you start saying well if you know if magic tricks can fool people so easily maybe i

00:11:08.420 should look into this a little more i started looking into hypnosis and then persuasion and by the

00:11:13.260 time i started analyzing fake news i gotta tell you it was easier it was easier to analyze fake news

00:11:21.740 and let me give you an example of what learning magic tricks does if you can see this here's a penny

00:11:29.860 all right it's just a penny you can see it there's nothing in this hand watch this i'm going to take this

00:11:35.860 penny i'm just going to put my finger on it and i'm going to squeeze it until it becomes a quarter

00:11:43.400 now

00:11:44.880 you didn't hear that so learning how easily people could get fooled primed me for looking at the fake

00:11:56.380 news there is a news or there's a little clip that went around twitter today that i recognized

00:12:04.300 immediately as fake news and it was a clip of biden on the view from 2019 and the clip was

00:12:12.520 it felt to me like it was obviously edited to take out all of his coherent statements and kind of

00:12:19.920 string together a whole bunch of hesitant you know incoherent things now he is a little bit hesitant

00:12:27.220 and incoherent but it was clearly edited to get rid of all the coherent parts now i point that out

00:12:34.040 because it's the same trick done by the fine people hoax and what did people say when they saw the fine

00:12:41.440 people hoax and i said hey that's a hoax they all said the same thing the ones who have been fooled by

00:12:47.600 the hoax to a person they said scott it's not a hoax i watched it i saw it with my own eyes

00:12:57.020 heard it with my own ears is real but then what about this biden video you watched it with your

00:13:05.420 own eyes you heard it with your own ears but it's not real somebody helpfully showed the the full

00:13:12.300 video so you can see that it was doctored it's just like the magic trick right you saw a penny in my

00:13:19.320 hand so it was a penny had to be a penny you saw it saw it with your own eyes but it was just a magic trick

00:13:28.080 once your brain is primed for looking for the magic trick you can see it a lot easier so um here's

00:13:35.920 here's the correlation people who were interested in magic tricks when they were kids watch for this

00:13:43.360 correlation they're less easily fooled by fake news because they're just primed for it

00:13:50.180 all right uh the best freudian slip of the day was kamala harris referring to quote a harris

00:13:59.080 administration and then she corrected it uh together with joe biden so here's what she'll do with a

00:14:06.100 harris administration uh together with joe biden now what did i teach you

00:14:12.100 before this happened all right if you've been watching my periscopes you know one of the things

00:14:18.140 you learn in hypnosis class is that these are not accidents now the first i don't know a hundred

00:14:25.140 times you see somebody misspeak you say to yourself okay that's like a funny coincidence because when they

00:14:31.440 misspoke they said something that it felt like they were revealing some inner truth but you know it's

00:14:36.660 just they just used the wrong word nope nope once you start paying attention you'll see it's not an accident

00:14:46.380 now i'm not going to say it's never an accident i'm going to my claim will be that um in general it's

00:14:52.840 actually meaningful not a hundred percent of the time but it is more meaningful than not do you think it's an

00:14:59.480 accident that kamala harris referred to a harris administration you don't say that out loud unless

00:15:07.520 you've been thinking it unless it's been part of a conversation so i think she has revealed that at the

00:15:14.940 very least there's a conversation going about uh getting rid of biden or how long he'll last or

00:15:21.520 something along those lines um there's a story which didn't get big news i don't know if the major

00:15:31.940 news covered it but there is a research institute and a researcher who's making a claim that the

00:15:39.480 coronavirus that came out of the allegedly came out of the wuhan lab had to be artificial 0.96

00:15:46.100 that's pretty big news right there's a researcher who seems to know this field who has a claim that

00:15:53.860 it could not have been a naturally occurring virus and that she can tell you exactly how they made it

00:15:59.700 now that's a pretty big claim not only is she saying that it's man-made but she's claiming she could

00:16:06.680 make it herself in other words she already knows the components if you take this you take this i think

00:16:12.860 she said in six months you could make this thing is that true well i don't know if it's true but

00:16:18.960 there's a claim today that the research institute had some connection with steve bannon now steve bannon

00:16:26.400 has been hammering on china for the wuhan you know coronavirus so that's a little flag you have to ask 0.70

00:16:35.840 yourself huh why is this not you know the headline news and the answer is uh i guess the news business

00:16:45.440 has decided it's not entirely credible that doesn't mean it's false remember whenever i use the word

00:16:52.140 credible that doesn't mean true or false it just means that the nature of it tells you to be cautious

00:16:59.640 about believing it that's all so we'll keep an eye on that um so here's here's another magic trick

00:17:09.500 and uh something that people study magic would see the antifa are using a magic trick now most of you

00:17:16.880 know this which is and the magic trick is that they they name themselves antifa and then they say

00:17:24.140 don't you get it we're anti-fascists so therefore if you're against us you must be a fascist now that's

00:17:31.980 a magic trick to force you into thinking a certain way the real trick is that capitalism and fascism are

00:17:41.200 the same thing that's the magic trick so instead of saying hey we're going to destroy all capitalism

00:17:48.360 which you might say to yourself um that sounds pretty bad because i'm pretty sure if you destroy

00:17:55.600 capitalism we all die or we're conquered by china etc and but the antifa gets to say oh capitalism

00:18:06.960 who said capitalism i said anti-fascist i didn't even mention capitalism what's what's capitalism got to do

00:18:16.740 with it but here's here's how you know that's the magic trick have you ever seen the regular news

00:18:24.820 interview somebody from antifa and ask them this question can you tell us is there such a thing as

00:18:31.480 a capitalist system that you would not consider fascist there isn't bernie sanders vision of a socialist

00:18:42.640 version of capitalism would still be fascist and this is the thing that the news if they did their

00:18:51.160 job if we had a real news business they would be calling antifa leaders or representatives just

00:18:57.680 somebody who could you know i realize they don't have leaders in the traditional sense that they're

00:19:02.320 they're public and identified they do have some kind of coordination but they don't seem to have

00:19:08.540 anybody who's the spokesperson but still you could find people who would be willing to talk about it

00:19:15.080 so if we had a real news business they would call them on and they say trying to understand anti-fascist

00:19:22.540 so i have one question could there ever be a capitalist system that is not fascist and the answer is not

00:19:31.080 really now they might try to finesse it by saying sure sure you know if you did everything right

00:19:36.440 but you really can't build that system because it would remove incentives human incentives so it

00:19:42.460 would it would fall apart so the fact that this dog is not barking meaning that the news business is

00:19:49.260 not giving you any any look not an approximate one not a not a glance not anything about what does

00:19:59.220 that mean to be anti-fascist nothing it's just not a topic that tells you that the magic trick is

00:20:06.300 working because as soon as they focused on it it would fall apart uh all right um do you remember

00:20:14.140 some of the things that i said in the beginning of the coronavirus i told you i thought vitamin d

00:20:19.200 would be important and now studies seem to be validating that vitamin d might be not just important

00:20:24.840 but like really really important uh it's unconfirmed but it's looking that way and now there's a

00:20:32.820 a forthcoming study from 23andme showing that your genetic code could affect how how much the

00:20:41.740 coronavirus affects you so remember i told you early on you know i've got a feeling there's a genetic

00:20:49.260 correlation here and that if we knew what that genetic correlation was we could do way better in

00:20:56.360 protecting ourselves because we'd know who needs to be protected and now sure enough so i say this

00:21:03.160 because i always tell you that you should watch who is predicting well so on day one practically i was

00:21:10.780 saying look at genetics look at vitamin d and correct correct so so you have to give me you give me

00:21:20.240 those check marks that doesn't mean i'm right on everything and when i'm wrong you should point it

00:21:25.980 out and yeah obesity and uh being african-american and you know there are a whole bunch of things that

00:21:32.600 increase your risk all right trump talked to was in california yesterday talking to gavin newson

00:21:38.040 and people about the forest fires etc now here's a little fact that you may not have processed when

00:21:45.680 you're watching that it's kind of interesting that trump and gavin newson treat each other with an

00:21:52.660 unusual amount of respect wouldn't you say you know they they differ no doubt about that but there's

00:21:59.620 there's a level of respect there that you don't really it fools you a little bit because he doesn't

00:22:05.240 seem to be as nice to every other governor but he's really nice to gavin newson and vice versa

00:22:10.920 but you might not know that gavin newson's ex-wife kimberly guilfoyle is has of course been with

00:22:19.720 don jr in a relationship for some time now and i'm pretty sure fact check me on this i think that

00:22:26.880 gavin newson and kimberly guilfoyle have children right or one child i don't know what the situation is

00:22:32.440 but at least one which would mean that president trump basically has a um in effect you know the

00:22:41.840 who knows what the relationship will will be in the future but in effect it's like he has a grandchild

00:22:48.380 um in law what would you call it uh you know a virtual grandchild a stepson a great a step

00:22:55.440 grandchildren or something so gavin newson and president trump share family they actually share

00:23:02.520 family and i think that you have to really have that filter on when you see how they interact with

00:23:09.360 each other i'm getting confirmation that they they have a son and you can't you can't discount how

00:23:17.920 important that is the the personal relationship and the president has been always good with the

00:23:22.980 personal relationships anyway what's interesting here is that uh gavin newson was very diplomatic by

00:23:31.640 saying yes forest management is a thing that needs to be done better i think we'd all agree but he asked

00:23:38.900 the president to be open-minded to the difference of opinion about the importance of climate change

00:23:45.600 and he the way he worded it was just really good i have to admit really good in the sense that he

00:23:52.640 needed to be super diplomatic but still get his point across i think he did i'd say that communication

00:23:59.440 wise he did a good job and then the president because he can't go five minutes without controversy

00:24:06.260 you know i listened to this and i was thinking to myself don't say it don't say it you know i'm talking

00:24:14.380 about trump i'm waiting for him to respond about the climate change stuff and the whole time i'm just

00:24:20.220 no don't do it don't do it and then the president smiles and he goes he goes uh it will get cooler

00:24:29.000 and i'm like oh no oh no oh no it will get cooler he didn't have to say that but i think we're all

00:24:42.380 used to it by now that that whatever is the provocative thing he's going to say it if there's a if there's a

00:24:48.520 provocative way to say something in a non-provocative way you might get the provocative one

00:24:53.620 now here's what's interesting my criticism of that is only in the way it's going to make people feel

00:25:03.200 and you know the politics of it my criticism of that is not that he's wrong because my guess is

00:25:11.020 that you know temperature will will probably modulate up and down i happen to be on the on the

00:25:17.880 side that says in all likelihood temperatures are going up on average i don't think it's the end of

00:25:24.280 the world i think we'll figure out how to mitigate and you know the disasters have gone down every year

00:25:30.080 because we're better at managing everything from hurricanes to floods to you name it forest fires

00:25:35.680 even we're better at managing in a weird way um there's more to that story but the point is that

00:25:42.000 we would figure out how to deal with it even if it's getting warm which it probably is the president

00:25:48.480 goes for the provocative statement that it'll get cooler you just watch

00:25:53.400 now is that true well it might we might have a few years where it's a little cooler

00:26:00.820 on average but i don't think in the long term it's going to stay cool um i could be wrong

00:26:06.260 you know science science can surprise you but at this point i would say the the the weight of

00:26:13.940 science suggests that the temperatures will probably go up we just don't know what that looks like

00:26:18.740 all right so i wouldn't have said that if i were the president but i doubt it changes anything at this

00:26:25.660 point um and i would say this is another example where and i say this often if you think there's

00:26:33.100 such a thing as a good president and a bad president i think you're wrong there's no such thing as a good

00:26:40.700 president and a bad president there are presidents who are well suited to certain tasks and maybe not

00:26:48.220 well suited for others the president is just absolutely not suited for anything but optimism

00:26:56.860 he just doesn't have a non-optimism mode he doesn't give bad news now does that mean he's a bad president

00:27:05.260 no it means for some things where maybe we should be a little more worried people would like to hear

00:27:11.900 him give a little more negativity but if you want to get your economy back who do you want it's like

00:27:20.300 ghostbusters it's like okay if you want some fake optimism about something he's just not always the

00:27:27.100 right guy because sometimes things need to be treated more seriously but if you want to goose the economy

00:27:33.420 if you want to get a peace deal with another country if you want to win three or four nobel prizes

00:27:39.500 he's your guy nobody does what he does well better than he does it let me let me put it in let me frame

00:27:49.420 it in the way you have already said before in my opinion the president is bad at easy stuff

00:27:57.340 right the president president trump in my opinion is bad bad does a bad job at easy things now an easy

00:28:07.260 thing would be saying telling the country oh things are going to be bad i have great empathy for you

00:28:13.980 let me say things about you know to end divisiveness etc all of the stuff that biden says every day

00:28:22.220 is the easy stuff this president you know waves his hand at the easy stuff but i don't think he's good at

00:28:28.300 it i don't think he's good at it but here's the thing the president and the reason that i've supported

00:28:36.140 him from the start he can do things that are impossible so so here's the frame the president

00:28:44.220 can do things that are literally just impossible he's just not good at things that are easy

00:28:50.700 now the good news is the easy stuff doesn't seem to matter as much does it matter that he he turned

00:28:58.140 the entire psychology of north korea around so that they're not really our enemy anymore yeah who thought

00:29:05.500 he could do that it seemed impossible and then he did it did you think that there would be two

00:29:11.900 peace deals in the middle east nope it seemed impossible and then he did it did you think that

00:29:19.900 when he pulled the the forces out of the area that the kurds were in in syria and all the smart people

00:29:27.340 said no no no they will be slaughtered that'll be the worst thing in the world and then it didn't

00:29:33.580 happen it was impossible to pull our troops out without a slaughter and then he did it it was

00:29:41.580 fine it was impossible to move the embassy to jerusalem he did it it was impossible to recognize

00:29:46.380 the the golan heights and they just did it it was impossible to get um unemployment down to what it

00:29:53.260 was before the coronavirus and then he did it how about uh telehealth just just a tiny little example

00:30:03.100 from a mountain of things that he changed with executive orders did you think it was possible

00:30:09.340 that we would have telehealth that's now legal across state lines where it had been banned before

00:30:15.100 i didn't think so i mean technically anything's possible but i didn't think it was going to happen

00:30:21.420 and he just signed a piece of paper and it happened and that was like the law of the land essentially

00:30:28.060 and so that's the frame not so good on little unimportant stuff that where you have to say

00:30:36.300 things just the right way but when it comes to things that are literally literally considered

00:30:43.580 impossible he does it routinely how do you not notice that right how do you not notice that

00:30:51.500 somebody says uh where is kim jong-un uh i haven't thought about that the other day

00:30:59.100 i need a fact check on this but i think i saw the president the other day out of the blue

00:31:04.060 with no prompting i don't think anybody had even asked the question he tweeted that kim jong-un was

00:31:10.380 completely healthy that happened right did we not see president trump tweet that kim jong-un is healthy

00:31:18.780 just the other day when nobody was questioning it what's that mean well i think it means that kim jong-un

00:31:30.460 either asked for a favor because maybe he wanted that reported or the president is just clever enough

00:31:38.140 that he knows that treating kim jong-un with even more respect than you'd expect 0.94

00:31:44.220 giving him a little extra respect in public and basically having his back because that would be a

00:31:51.420 case of having his back the president just stepped up and he just had kim jong-un's back now do you

00:31:58.460 think that kim jong-un is healthy i don't i i think that his sister maybe maybe is getting groomed to take

00:32:07.500 over we we hear the reports of that there's probably something going on and it might be a pretty big deal

00:32:14.540 so but the president played it perfectly played it perfectly he just give he just has the kim jong-un's

00:32:20.780 back and that will be good for the country all right um the the thing that i wish trump had said about

00:32:29.660 the forest fires is that we need nuclear energy but i think that's just sort of a people can't quite 0.94

00:32:36.460 understand the topic yet probably eighty percent of the country still thinks you can't deal with the

00:32:41.580 nuclear waste you can it's not that big a deal a lot of the country thinks it's dangerous it's not

00:32:49.420 they just are not up to date and i think the president maybe just doesn't want that fight

00:32:54.300 again i'm not a mind reader i would be only speculating but it would be the obvious thing to say

00:33:00.780 and it would be provocative so you would expect him to go there but not uh here's something that

00:33:06.460 somebody noticed when uh gavin newsom was blaming climate change for the fires if you see the map

00:33:13.900 the fires go from the bottom of california to the the top of uh the country and then the fires of

00:33:22.540 which there are dozens or hundreds and like the whole state of california looks like it's in fire in

00:33:28.300 different places and you go right up to the border of canada and there's no fires so after the canadian

00:33:35.340 border no fires now is the climate that different a mile on the other side of the border versus a mile

00:33:45.980 on our side i don't think so i don't think it's that different so you have to ask yourself is it

00:33:53.660 management of the forests or not now the thing that i would like to see is that our forests that have the

00:34:00.140 biggest risk we should be cutting these i don't know 50 yard paths crisscrossing them so that there

00:34:07.020 will be a natural fire break should something start but i would also like to see those 50 yard fire

00:34:13.420 breaks through the forest turned into what what am i going to say what should all those fire breaks that

00:34:20.620 we need to build across all these forests what should they be in addition to fire breaks that's right

00:34:27.740 they should be bicycle paths you should be able to go anywhere in california on a bicycle without

00:34:34.300 reaching traffic you should it just used to be bicycle paths that are also coincidentally

00:34:41.660 good for the forest could you charge people a toll to use the bicycle paths and use that money to help

00:34:48.620 pay for the forest forest fire forest fire remediation i would say yes if i can ride a hundred miles

00:34:57.580 on a bicycle path through through cool woods and stuff you know as long as i had a paved path

00:35:03.660 yeah i'd pay for that absolutely i'd pay for that a little bit of a toll um here's a uh here's an

00:35:13.180 update cnn after reporting for months and months and months yes cnn has been reporting that every

00:35:22.060 expert will tell you that mail-in votes are fine they're fine there's no problem with mail-in votes

00:35:29.820 the president's a big old liar there's no problem mail-in votes they've worked in other countries

00:35:35.420 they've worked in other states they've been working for years nobody's finding a problem

00:35:41.740 therefore the president is completely wrong about the risk of mail-in votes well until yesterday

00:35:48.700 when cnn here's the important part cnn is reporting that mail-in votes are a total nightmare

00:35:57.980 and that they're completely inaccurate and there's plenty of evidence that they don't work

00:36:05.180 what did you see that cnn just did a complete 180 a complete 180 and they act like they had never

00:36:15.900 said the other thing they just they just pretended that months of reporting about how safe it was

00:36:23.500 just doesn't exist anymore and now the report is wait for it it gets better this isn't the whole story

00:36:31.020 it gets better part of the report on cnn said that one of the reasons that mail-in votes are so

00:36:37.420 inaccurate is

00:36:38.460 and i quote one university of florida study found black and hispanic voters in the state

00:36:46.460 were twice as likely to have their ballots rejected as white voters

00:36:53.900 ah who could have seen that coming

00:36:59.500 right now this doesn't have anything to do with being black or hispanic

00:37:03.980 all right let me be clear about this this difference almost certainly has to do with

00:37:08.700 economics almost certainly has to do with education which is related right so if you're

00:37:14.620 in a low socioeconomic group what are the odds that you're good at filling out paperwork

00:37:22.380 right i have a terrible time filling out any paperwork even the simplest form i fill in the wrong

00:37:28.620 blocks and i got the wrong date and i i signed my name in the wrong place so you would expect it's

00:37:35.980 completely predictable that the higher educated you are regardless of ethnicity has nothing to do with

00:37:42.460 that but the higher educated you are you would expect you're more likely to fill out a form correctly

00:37:50.860 is that is that even controversial the more educated the more likely you can fill out a form

00:37:56.060 the more likely you can do anything that requires a little bit of thinking so i wouldn't make this a

00:38:05.020 black and white or hispanic thing has more to do with education but the practical impact of it is that

00:38:11.660 it's racist mail massive mail-in votes are according to cnn this isn't me according to cnn mail-in votes the

00:38:22.940 thing that they've been promoting for months are racist because that would be the outcome the black 1.00

00:38:29.340 voters would be disenfranchised without knowing it because their votes would be rejected and they

00:38:34.220 wouldn't know they were rejected all right here's an update on my who i call my smartest uh democrat

00:38:41.100 friend who is suffering from tds here's a list of things he believed a few weeks ago all right these

00:38:48.060 are all the things he believed to be true he believed that the president suggested drinking

00:38:52.780 bleach to cure coronavirus not he believed the fine people hoax he believed that um that biden doesn't

00:39:01.020 lie that trump does he believed that mail-in voting was dependable because cnn told them that last week

00:39:08.780 before this week uh he uh let's see he believed that the protests were probably about trump yeah trump

00:39:18.140 was the cause of the protest uh he believed the russian bounties on american soldiers which a report

00:39:23.740 today says they don't have evidence of that yet don't know if we ever will but they don't have evidence

00:39:28.780 of it and he believed that he still believes as of this morning that hydroxychloroquine was proven

00:39:35.260 dangerous so not so much that it doesn't work against coronavirus but he still believes as of today

00:39:43.900 the coronavirus or that hydroxychloroquine was shown to be dangerous by science none of it's true

00:39:51.500 absolutely none of it so i've been i've been chipping away at him so you know i sent him the reports about

00:39:58.460 the uh the uvc light in a ventilator that's injecting a disinfectant so now now he understands that the

00:40:06.700 drinking bleach thing was a hoax i also sent him the cnn update about the mail-in votes so now he believes

00:40:16.140 that mail-in votes are in fact racist and undependable so once you take somebody's firm belief and you

00:40:24.140 completely obliterate it what do they do do they say you know i was quite fooled by that fake news

00:40:31.580 now that you've informed me i changed my opinion and i acknowledge that you were right and man was i

00:40:38.700 completely wrong up until now thank you for correcting me did that happen no no but here's the fun part

00:40:48.860 what didn't happen is cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance is when somebody finds

00:40:54.940 their worldview is wrong and then they just spout word salad instead he simply softly redirected the

00:41:03.020 conversation and here was his answer uh he talked about voting rights as a partisan issue he talked about

00:41:11.100 vote suppression uh and how not enough people vote so his answer to everything you believe from the news

00:41:20.220 about mail-in voting being dependable from the same sources that told you it was dependable

00:41:25.660 they now say unambiguously it's a mess he didn't say oh gosh i was wrong he said there are other problems

00:41:34.140 with voting unrelated now what that means is and if you study persuasion you can kind of see where

00:41:42.300 this is going that is somebody who's been persuaded someone who has not been persuaded would say something

00:41:49.660 still on the topic but it just wouldn't make sense here he's saying things that make complete sense

00:41:55.580 but he's quite intentionally changed the conversation without without mentioning it that means

00:42:00.860 bullseye that he understands that he has been fooled and i gave him some other debunks we'll see if that

00:42:08.300 makes any difference um i still think the biggest issue about the coronavirus is the question whether

00:42:15.420 the president did enough testing and when i found out more about other countries and how they did

00:42:22.540 allegedly superior testing i say to myself let's dig into that a little bit why is that there's some

00:42:30.620 other country did better testing then here's south korea the reason that south korea did so well in

00:42:36.460 testing there was a private company who when the news first came out about the coronavirus

00:42:43.820 they realized that they had the capability to quickly and ahead of time i think they started in

00:42:50.380 january maybe even sooner i think they started in january but they quickly ramped up because they

00:42:56.140 were a private company and apparently there was nothing stopping them from doing it so they ramped up

00:43:02.060 now would you say then that south korea their leadership did better than the united states to

00:43:10.460 which i say well okay you're not analyzing this right if that private company that did so well and did a

00:43:17.980 really good job in south korea what if that was just an american company what if an american company had been

00:43:24.460 as clever as this private company would an american company have said you know they haven't asked for

00:43:30.540 it yet but i'm going to get busy on this because i think there could be a billion dollar opportunity

00:43:34.460 so we're just going to we're just going to start making test kits nobody asked us to it's not approved

00:43:39.980 by the fda or the cdc but we're going to do it is that a leadership thing because i'm not sure that

00:43:48.780 leadership is even part of the question if south korea got their solution because a private company

00:43:55.580 acted both aggressively and early and wisely it took a good risk management approach that

00:44:01.100 was probably good for their profits as well that has nothing to do with management that has nothing

00:44:05.420 to do with leadership they just had a company that was pretty smart i think germany had a similar

00:44:13.180 situation in which they just had uh i think germany had a private company that was also big in this

00:44:19.740 space so the private company was able to do something quickly with testing now in the united states i don't

00:44:27.580 know the full detail but i guess the cdc's kits were incomplete it didn't have all the parts so there

00:44:33.500 was a part where the cdc fell apart but where were our private companies i think our private companies

00:44:40.460 were probably limited by maybe fda and cdc uh red tape so if there's a criticism about the president

00:44:48.700 and there could be by the way i just don't quite understand this this issue yet if there's an issue

00:44:53.820 with president trump's performance i would think it would be in the in the area of not getting rid of

00:45:00.220 red tape maybe maybe there was something our private companies couldn't do fast enough because maybe

00:45:07.180 they were barred from doing it is that a thing so um there are a lot of people will base their

00:45:13.980 decision on what they believe about the president's leadership on testing and they won't know anything

00:45:20.460 about what actually happened they won't know that it was probably just private companies making good

00:45:25.420 decisions in other countries that might be it that could be the whole story we don't know

00:45:31.500 uh christopher ruffo is reporting that you know we thought that the president did a executive order

00:45:40.140 banning critical race theory training but apparently the cdc is just going to move ahead and do it anyway

00:45:46.860 so the cdc is going to have training classes on critical race theory i think they tried to

00:45:53.260 finesse it by not calling it that but it is and i have to wonder at what point does this go to the

00:45:59.580 supreme court at what point does the supreme court say you can't teach this critical race theory stuff

00:46:06.860 because it's just racist because it is racist it's obviously racist it's gigantically racist

00:46:14.220 so what is that going to happen all right um would you like to be scared about the future of humankind

00:46:22.140 i can deliver that and it goes like this in my opinion the protests and riots that you're seeing

00:46:29.500 around the country could not happen without artificial intelligence now there could have been some protests

00:46:37.260 there might have been some things but in terms of the extent of what we're seeing and the way it's

00:46:41.580 affecting the country we would not have this if not for ai here's what i mean now you're going to

00:46:49.580 tell me but scott the kind of ai we have now and our algorithms etc is still controlled by people

00:46:57.660 people program them people tweak them it's people people making decisions they're just using ai as a

00:47:04.780 convenient tool that i believe is a mistake in perception what's really while it is true that the

00:47:12.460 humans are tweaking them the way you know in a variety of ways what's also true is the algorithm

00:47:17.900 forces the humans to do what the humans do once the algorithm through trial and error has determined

00:47:24.700 what gets you the most profit the human doesn't have a choice of not following it because the human

00:47:30.780 will be fired if they don't pursue profit so you say to yourself but the human has a choice

00:47:37.340 they don't have to do what the ai says just because the ai says let's feed these ads or this this news to

00:47:44.220 people because it'll get them all worked up and they'll be angry and then they'll click more the

00:47:48.940 human you could say in some technical sense they could decide not to do it but then they would be

00:47:56.140 fired and then the next person would do it so you don't really in a practical sense have any way to

00:48:02.940 fight the artificial intelligence once it decides that this is how you make money

00:48:07.900 you're gonna do it that's the way humans are wired so we are already at the point

00:48:15.740 where ai controls

00:48:19.500 humanity you know a lot of people are worried like what happens someday when the ai gets smart enough

00:48:27.020 that you know it's it's sentient and then it's making our decisions well i don't think you could

00:48:31.820 argue it's sentient but it's already making the decisions that is literally true ai is determining

00:48:40.460 how mad you are what news you saw and what you clicked on and that will determine the government

00:48:48.380 because our government has to react to what the the news and the public collectively want

00:48:54.460 right the government in some cases you know in limited cases can do something the public isn't

00:49:00.940 demanding but for the most part they have to do what the public demands and the public is only

00:49:06.220 demanding what the news and social media tells them to think and it only does that because the ai 1.00

00:49:13.100 is telling them what to think so for all practical practical purposes

00:49:17.900 artificial intelligence is running the united states it is that it's already done so there's that

00:49:25.900 blue mike bloomberg is going to spend 100 million dollars in florida trying to make sure that the

00:49:36.060 democrats win florida and i i thought to myself all right i believe in free speech and people should

00:49:42.860 be able to use the money the way they want but when when the founders of this country were designing a

00:49:48.700 system at what point did they understand that one person could spend a hundred million dollars

00:49:55.740 in a swing state and determine the election would that be legal do you think if the founders knew

00:50:03.500 that could have happened i mean i don't think they could have conceived of somebody with so much money

00:50:09.020 that would have been hard to imagine although you could argue that george washington was one of the

00:50:13.900 richest people in the world if you normalize it um but uh why is that legal i understand that it is legal

00:50:25.420 but shouldn't we look into that a little bit could you know i feel like there should be some kind of

00:50:31.340 limit on what one person can do you know if you said to me well mike bloomberg can put in up to 10

00:50:38.060 million dollars that's still a ton of money but i'd say all right all right because there'll be other

00:50:42.940 billionaires that put 10 million the other way but to have one person put a hundred million into one

00:50:49.260 swing state or one that could be a swing state that's that's a big risk to the republic i'm surprised

00:50:57.820 that that's legal all right um that is all i wanted to talk about somebody says you don't even vote

00:51:07.260 so uh this year i am going to vote i registered to vote this year the only reason i'm registering to

00:51:14.380 vote this year is for self-defense because i do think that this is this year is unusual and i think

00:51:21.580 that uh anybody who supported trump um would be in a lot of trouble if he doesn't win there could be

00:51:28.700 violence there could be discrimination there could be any any norm any number of things that could be bad

00:51:34.940 so just for self-defense i'll be voting for trump there you go all right um

00:51:43.740 what does he get in return what does bloomberg get in return yeah it's a good question isn't it

00:51:51.500 somebody says kimberly's son was from a prior marriage marriage you mean before gavin newsom we'll

00:51:58.060 do a fact check on that because i might be wrong about her her son but uh there's still there's

00:52:04.620 still a connection with gavin newsom even if it's indirect

00:52:11.660 all right the slaughter meter is the slaughter meter is at about 200 at the moment

00:52:17.580 um almost every day that goes by it looks better for trump and worse for biden and i

00:52:24.700 until that changes this slaughter meter is at about 200 all right that's all i got for now and i will

00:52:32.620 talk to you later

00:52:41.740 you

00:52:41.820 you

00:52:41.900 you

00:52:43.900 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - September 15, 2020

Episode 1124 Scott Adams： Fake News, HOAXES, Science Denying, Magic Tricks, and Everything You Thought Was True But Maybe Not

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