Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1153 Scott Adams： Court Packers, Immunity, Biden Blunders, Missing Coronavirus Data

00:00:00.000 hey come on in here everybody it's time it's time for coffee with Scott Adams best part of the day

00:00:14.940 I think so yeah I think so there's a little bit of question whether it was the best part of the

00:00:20.480 day or really just top two top three but I think I think we have our answer day after day best part

00:00:30.320 of the day and all you need to hold on let me put on my microphone this would be better

00:00:36.280 something tells me you weren't hearing me as well as you should have

00:00:41.720 how about now yeah better better isn't it yeah you thought this couldn't get better

00:00:51.700 and it just did surprise yeah and all you need to do all you need to do to take this

00:00:59.400 to the next level to see if you can find yourself a cup of mug or a glass of tank or chalice or sign

00:01:06.160 a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee

00:01:14.040 and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes

00:01:18.780 everything better and I'm gonna ask you to savor it yeah savor it go

00:01:24.840 yeah savor it savor it okay good

00:01:34.660 well so today later today I will be appearing on msnbc you're not gonna want to miss that

00:01:45.920 I don't know what kind of questions they're gonna ask me I'll be on airy milber show at the they give

00:01:54.360 a start time that's usually well in front of the time I'm actually on camera but 6 p.m eastern time

00:02:02.380 3 p.m california time and uh they'll be talking to me so we'll see how that goes

00:02:10.260 you know I I think I told you I I uh started saying no to all uh interview requests recently

00:02:19.300 so I don't have I don't think I have anything else on my calendar uh but when this one came in I thought

00:02:25.820 to myself well this one's gonna be too much fun I'm gonna have to take this one um it has been

00:02:34.360 brought to my attention that there's a very interesting piece of content on uh on hbo called

00:02:43.300 the vow it's a multi-part uh documentary about a cult it's called it's called a cult called uh

00:02:53.460 nxivim or something n-x-i-v-m I don't know how you pronounce it nix nexivim

00:03:02.280 but uh I started watching it and I think I'm halfway through but uh I can already tell you

00:03:10.080 you've got to watch this thing so I will be talking about it in the context of persuasion

00:03:16.040 because the cult has some interesting techniques and it is really good documentary because the access

00:03:24.920 they have where actually things are on film or on audio it's remarkable and if you really want to

00:03:31.800 understand uh how influenceable or how persuadable people are or what they are willing to believe

00:03:40.940 you got to watch this thing because if you think people are gullible or people can be uh fooled

00:03:48.700 you haven't seen anything and I'll talk about the technique after I give you time to watch it

00:03:55.200 so allegedly today there's a big announcement from Apple about their 5g phone

00:04:01.280 and most of you are saying to yourself well that's nice a 5g phone it'll be a little bit faster

00:04:09.200 than a 4g phone aren't we glad that each of our phones are a little bit better than the last one

00:04:15.420 but I think you'd be missing the big story on this one if you didn't notice stocks were solidly up

00:04:23.160 yesterday and at least part of the reason is probably Apple and part of the reason is when 5g

00:04:30.480 becomes common now you've got you've got a little bit of a pipeline problem uh or a capacity problem

00:04:37.560 so I don't know if your 5g phone is going to give you 5g speed right away every place you would use it

00:04:44.540 but probably you know it'll probably start out pretty good and here's the thing you need to know

00:04:52.320 about speed speed doesn't just help you do what you were going to do anyway but make it faster

00:05:00.040 this kind of speed will change what you do you'll be able to do things that you couldn't do before

00:05:07.180 uh I don't know if that means holograms or 3d or virtual reality worlds probably all of that

00:05:14.800 uh I don't know if it means um just completely changing how you commute we almost can't see the

00:05:23.120 ways this is see the ways this will change things let me give you my example if you have a

00:05:31.500 let's say a car that can go five miles an hour you can use it to tool around locally but you're not

00:05:40.740 going to take it very far but if you have a car that can go 100 miles an hour and it can you know

00:05:46.020 drive for hours and hours then it's a whole different application it's not something you use around town

00:05:52.620 it's something you can take a long trip with so this 5g stuff is way bigger than you think it is 1.00

00:05:59.280 and it'll take a while for all the all the reasons that that's true to seep into your consciousness

00:06:05.560 this is gigantic um so I tried watching the supreme court nominee hearings for acb uh amy coney barrett

00:06:17.560 and I thought the whole thing was so worthless I couldn't really watch it is anybody trying to

00:06:25.180 watch that thing I feel sorry for the uh the news networks that are covering it because they kind

00:06:31.600 of have to cover it it's big news but there's literally nothing happening because apparently

00:06:37.440 the democrats don't want to go too hard at the nominee because it might backfire but on the other

00:06:44.640 hand they have to act like they're putting up a fight or they have to use their time to complain

00:06:49.580 about the president or or obamacare so it turned into nothing but theater it we took this important

00:06:58.760 government process and just turned it into you know kabuki theater or something it doesn't have any

00:07:07.560 functional purpose at all and yet we're going to still do it that's the weird thing about people

00:07:15.460 i suppose as the dilbert cartoonist i'm glad it happens but people will do things they know don't

00:07:21.500 make sense just because of inertia or the way things are so that's what we're seeing i i would say that's

00:07:28.360 worth about zero minutes of your time to watch those hearings because you know where that's going to go

00:07:33.780 um are you disappointed with the republican uh and trump plans on health care

00:07:42.600 i feel as if trump has a far better um at least opportunity to sell his health care preferred

00:07:54.020 you know method if he would package it up better but the way it's being framed right now is that

00:08:00.920 there's this thing called the aca or obamacare and that trump wants to kill it

00:08:06.620 and that's the frame he wants to kill it and he doesn't have anything that has a name on it

00:08:13.420 that's sort of packaged as its replacement so if you're a senior citizen or you're just somebody who

00:08:20.620 thinks you're at risk of losing your health care what are you going to think about this situation

00:08:26.160 you're going to say to yourself uh i kind of know what obamacare is because i think i have it

00:08:32.160 and the republicans are offering freaking nothing now that's not true they are actually

00:08:39.200 offering a bunch of stuff but they haven't packaged it in any way so when you think about it you don't

00:08:46.300 think of it as anything you say well i'm glad that you know maybe there's something about drug prices

00:08:52.120 going down and you know i'm happy that maybe the mandate won't be there and i might be happy about

00:08:58.160 you know tele telehealth being you know allowed over state uh boundaries etc so if you thought about

00:09:06.340 it there'd be a whole bunch of individual things that you liked but they don't feel like a replacement

00:09:12.060 for obamacare it just feels like you're losing something and have i told you before that the threat

00:09:20.320 of losing something always feels more oppressive than the opportunity to get something

00:09:27.280 so the way human psychology works is that we're way more concerned about losing something we

00:09:33.520 already have than we are excited about getting a new thing and that's very important to know about

00:09:40.080 people so right now what uh what the uh trump administration is offering is less how would you

00:09:49.520 how would you like to have less stuff now when they're not that is not an accurate description of

00:09:55.260 what they're offering but it feels like it and they've sort of allowed that frame to to take

00:10:01.340 form that there is this health care thing yeah it's not perfect but even that's going to go away

00:10:07.660 that doesn't describe what would happen but that's the frame that has taken form and i think the

00:10:16.460 republicans have to answer for that i would go so far as to say that if if uh if trump loses and let's

00:10:25.420 say the republicans lose the senate as well and if it turns out that the reason that that happened

00:10:33.780 was people were concerned about health care and they didn't think the republicans had enough of a plan

00:10:39.860 i would say they earned the loss i would say the republicans deserve to lose under those conditions

00:10:47.180 now i don't want that i don't want that to happen i would hope that they would do a little better job

00:10:52.660 in the next next few weeks of saying what they would do versus the aca but at the moment

00:10:59.580 they have framed it in a way they deserve to lose honestly because health care is uh kind of what's

00:11:08.020 left now if they did lose because of that the irony would be that trump would have succeeded so well

00:11:16.120 that he succeeded him himself out of a job meaning that the only thing left to talk about was the thing

00:11:24.800 he didn't make enough of a you know an impact on because we wouldn't be talking about isis because he took

00:11:32.480 care of it we're not going to be talking about the nafta because he renegotiated it we're not going

00:11:38.940 to be talking about north korea because they seem to be sort of not a problem at the moment we're not

00:11:44.560 going to be talking about uh renegotiating with china because that will be already underway we're not

00:11:51.100 going to be talking so much about the you know even the border because the border looks like it

00:11:56.560 became somewhat less of a problem because immigration slowed down i believe because of

00:12:02.300 coronavirus so the so the president by doing a good job has reduced the number of topics we care

00:12:10.240 about and even the economy is recovering well people would say well i think it's on the right path

00:12:17.280 that probably do okay under a different administration so he really has narrowed the targets down to the

00:12:25.220 one thing that he's not strong on which is health care he kind of needs to fix that and pretty quickly

00:12:31.820 i would think um and as i say he there's plenty to talk about and here's what here's what i think

00:12:42.100 the republicans have done wrong from the start and i've said this the democrats have a better goal

00:12:49.360 but the republicans have a better system now i favor systems over goals so therefore i favor

00:12:56.960 the republican approach but they haven't uh but they haven't framed it right they haven't packaged it

00:13:05.160 right and here's how i would package it i would accept the democrats goal and i would say yeah even

00:13:12.160 as a republican it is our absolute goal that everybody will have health care affordable health

00:13:19.200 care we'll just get there in a different way and what we would hope is that we would take it from

00:13:24.980 whatever it is now i don't know 12 percent eight percent what how many people don't have health care at

00:13:32.840 the moment and i would say okay it's it's at this number whatever it is around 10 percent uh by the end

00:13:40.400 of my fourth year i would like that to get that down to two percent if you heard something like

00:13:46.600 that you might say to yourself okay they got a system they've got a goal that i agree with and

00:13:53.860 bernie's got you know if you look at sort of the bernie type plans that biden might do or kamala harris

00:13:59.800 might do it looks more like it's harder to get there it's like they don't have a plan to get there

00:14:05.740 that makes sense math wise so i think so i think that's where the republicans could go

00:14:12.200 um i've suggested on twitter that trump should run an ad saying that he's the only candidate for

00:14:20.780 president who's immune to the coronavirus now of course there is a debate as to whether

00:14:27.780 as to whether trump has any immunity or if he has immunity is it short term some say four months

00:14:37.560 some say longer and i don't know that it matters because it would be so hilarious if he started

00:14:45.180 tweeting that he's the only candidate who's immune to the coronavirus that the press would go nuts

00:14:51.020 because they'd be no no that is not scientifically valid and the uh wish you could shop for doctors

00:15:02.680 by procedure yeah that's a good comment um anyway so it would be funny if he did that i don't think he

00:15:11.560 will uh a troll came after me today on twitter and said he can't wait to see how unhappy i am

00:15:19.600 and you know what will i do if trump were to lose the election and and i replied back

00:15:26.600 to the effect i don't think you know me very well i would get over that in about 10 minutes

00:15:33.580 i don't have a i don't have a long recovery time from bad news you know some some bad news you have

00:15:42.240 to work on you know it causes you work to get out of the hole you ended up in but i don't spend a lot

00:15:49.240 time fretting about the past and the past happens immediately right you know if it turned out and

00:15:57.960 i'm still predicting that trump will win but if it turned out that he didn't i'm pretty sure i would

00:16:03.520 get over that in about 10 minutes that's just me you might have a different experience um biden

00:16:11.300 apparently has revealed a little bit about his court packing ways and by the way is it just me

00:16:17.460 or does court packing sound vaguely like an insult you freaking court packer doesn't it just have the

00:16:26.800 right consonants and sounds to sound like an insult you freaking court packer you damn court packer you 0.88

00:16:36.380 well it sounds like an insult and here's what biden said uh to give us another hint what he's thinking

00:16:44.120 about he said quote i'm not a fan of court packing but i don't want to get off on that whole issue

00:16:49.920 biden told cnn cnn affiliate i want to keep focused the president the president would love nothing better

00:16:58.440 than to fight about whether or not i would in fact pack the court or not pack the court

00:17:03.560 is is he the dumbest guy you've ever met in your life now i think he might have been smart at one point 0.76

00:17:12.960 in his life uh yeah no fair with the uh the comments i'm saying there let let's let's let's uh let's not

00:17:23.540 make it uh let's not make it gay jokes okay the court packer by itself sounds like an insult you don't

00:17:31.360 have to bring it into another domain um so here he is saying he's not a fan of court packing

00:17:39.940 he's very cleverly or stupidly i haven't decided which it might actually be brilliant because we

00:17:48.160 might have reached a point where people are so irrational about everything that biden can actually

00:17:54.960 just say something that he knows will be taken two different ways by two different groups so he can say

00:18:01.560 something that will make republicans sound comfortable because he says i'm not a fan of court

00:18:06.860 packing so if you're republican you hear that say not a fan of court packing okay okay he's obviously

00:18:14.720 not a guy who's going to do court packing so i guess i feel comfortable about that so the republicans

00:18:21.060 have something they can you know hold on to meanwhile the the progressives who would like some court

00:18:27.620 packing they listen to the second part of it goes you know i just don't want to get off on that

00:18:32.780 whole issue so uh i don't want him to fight about whether i would or would not pack the court so

00:18:40.240 he's still leaving it open leaving it open but here's the real question why are you asking joe biden

00:18:47.860 about court packing the only one that matters yeah i'm seeing in the comments you're way ahead of me

00:18:53.620 does it does kamala harris like court packing because something like greater than half of voters 0.99

00:19:01.440 including the people voting for who would vote for biden even most of them believe he won't make it

00:19:08.360 four years so you're not really talking about biden's opinion you're talking about biden's opinion for a

00:19:15.420 while plus kamala's kamala's opinion for whatever time is remaining or even the second term if if she

00:19:26.120 were the one to run for the term after that so uh shouldn't we be really pushing on that

00:19:34.060 you know i think we've heard everything we need to from joe biden but we kind of need to hear from the

00:19:41.680 vp uh nominee and if we don't hear from that you have to assume that she's in favor of it or at least

00:19:49.600 that there's some chance she's in favor of it uh which uh which should change people's minds

00:19:59.240 all right there's a cdc study uh this will be a good indication of how useless data is

00:20:06.980 the cdc studies shows that 85 percent of covid cases were people who often or always wear masks

00:20:14.740 so what what's that tell you number one is from the cdc so you can trust that right no not anymore

00:20:23.960 unfortunately we we've had a bad experience with experts recently so there's there's no such thing

00:20:31.480 as a credible source of data anymore there there are still organizations that are sort of credible

00:20:37.920 but not when they give you data it doesn't matter who it is anybody giving you data

00:20:43.580 in 2020 is probably lying to you or incorrect uh and when i say probably i mean nine out of ten times

00:20:53.420 so would you conclude that if 85 percent of people who get covid wore their masks what's the obvious

00:21:04.100 implication all right draw a conclusion 85 percent of them wore masks and got it anyway therefore

00:21:11.960 therefore go therefore masks don't work right it's good evidence it comes from the cdc

00:21:21.080 so that's reliable right and 85 percent of the people with masks got it anyway so i guess those masks don't

00:21:29.980 work is that what you have concluded well if you're bad at analyzing data you concluded that

00:21:36.820 if you're good at analyzing data you might say something like uh julia pollack tweeted who is an economist

00:21:45.380 what have i told you about economists economists are trained at understanding whether the right things

00:21:54.280 have been compared and knowing and knowing whether a rational comparison has been made and she points out

00:22:01.720 the following two problems number one um it's people who claim to have worn masks

00:22:10.440 people lie people lie about how often they wear masks especially if they're being asked by somebody

00:22:17.000 you know would judge you if a stranger calls you and says do you wear your mask often even people who

00:22:23.880 don't wear masks often or don't think they wear them that often are going to be tempted to say oh

00:22:30.120 yeah yeah i totally wear my mask pretty much all the time even if they don't that's one problem i think

00:22:37.720 that's the smaller one and then the other problem is that that they're not accounting for the differences

00:22:42.680 in risk and exposure exactly who wears a mask in the first place somebody who needs to

00:22:52.840 do do people get coronavirus if there are people who are not around any virus the people who don't wear

00:22:59.720 masks are far more likely to be the people who who rightly uh judge that they're not at much risk

00:23:07.880 risk because they're maybe you know not spending time around crowds maybe they live in a town that has

00:23:15.640 almost or no coronavirus risk you know maybe they're maybe they're young you know so they're not bothering

00:23:23.720 but um correlation on this is probably backwards uh it's probably backwards now you can't tell

00:23:32.840 but you have to allow this great possibility that the reason people wear masks in certain situations

00:23:41.000 and they're less likely to wear masks another is because they know where the virus is at least

00:23:46.920 statistically and so they wear the masks if they're in a place where there's a lot of virus now where are

00:23:53.560 you likely to get a virus probably in a place with a lot of viruses uh i used to joke where i lived a few

00:24:02.600 a few homes ago whenever i looked outside and i saw somebody going for a run

00:24:08.520 they would almost always be overweight and i would say to myself that's weird does running make you fat

00:24:15.800 because all the people i see running look like they're trying to lose weight so running must make you fat

00:24:23.880 and then i and of course that's a joke the correlation is backwards the people who thought

00:24:29.560 they needed to lose a few pounds when running so i i think that might be what's happening with this mask

00:24:38.040 thing is that uh it's it's useless data in any case um california has an interesting situation

00:24:47.720 apparently some gop entity has put up uh ballot collection boxes of their own

00:24:54.120 account you didn't see that coming did you so there are these official looking ballot collection

00:25:00.440 boxes that are not trying to look like government entities so they're not pretending they're the post

00:25:06.440 office it's just it's obviously a private gop thing and you can just throw your uh throw your

00:25:13.640 ballot in there do you trust that would you trust a private ballot collection box that's not a government mailbox

00:25:26.440 if you trust that you're really gullible now i'm not going to say that the people who put them up there

00:25:34.920 have bad intentions don't know i'm just saying that i wouldn't put my ballot in a private ballot collection box

00:25:47.080 and if you're if you're dumb enough to do that you shouldn't be voting

00:25:54.680 you're not smart enough to vote if you put your if you put your ballot in you know bob's collection box

00:26:04.360 oh yeah you're saying to yourself well

00:26:11.560 it looks like they spelled all the words right on the collection box looks good enough to me

00:26:17.640 what could go wrong

00:26:22.680 and so the government of california has declared that these things are illegal but here's the funny part

00:26:31.160 how can it be illegal to have a box with some words on it

00:26:35.880 it couldn't possibly be illegal because it's not pretending to do anything to be anything other than

00:26:41.240 what it is it would certainly be illegal if it were pretending to be the u.s postal service

00:26:46.920 right that would be illegal it would be illegal if they were you know claiming to be something they weren't

00:26:53.160 but it's claiming to be exactly what it is a convenient way to have your ballot get picked up

00:27:03.240 now i certainly wouldn't trust it but how is it illegal

00:27:11.400 let me ask you this if i took a box you know just a box i could carry and i knocked on your door

00:27:18.760 and i said hey you know i'm picking up some ballots and i can save you a trip to the mailbox

00:27:24.120 if you like you can throw your ballot in my box that's in my hand and i'll carry it over to the

00:27:30.040 mailbox for you i'll carry it to the post office would that be illegal well it depends on your state

00:27:36.600 right if you live in a state where a ballot harvesting is illegal yes doesn't matter if you

00:27:43.240 have a separate box doesn't matter if you knock on the door if your state says you can't bring

00:27:48.680 somebody else's ballots in it's illegal but in california apparently that's not illegal it's not illegal

00:27:56.280 to knock on the door and say can i take your ballot so the state of california is trying to claim

00:28:03.400 that these little boxes that do the same thing as knocking on the door is just a little bit more

00:28:08.360 efficient why knock on the door if you're not ready you know wait till you're ready you just put it in

00:28:14.920 the box and the the thing that's hilarious about this is that i'm pretty sure democrats thought they

00:28:22.760 had the advantage with this ballot harvesting stuff and then the republicans do what republicans do

00:28:30.440 what is it the republicans do that's better than what uh democrats do consistently

00:28:36.040 they come up with better systems if you're gonna if you're gonna build something or manage something

00:28:44.120 call a republican republicans are pretty good on systems they're pretty good at setting up a you know

00:28:50.520 a mechanism you know figuring out how to make something work that's what they do right it's what they do

00:28:58.520 democrats their system looks a little bit like uh chop or chaz right looks a little bit more

00:29:05.640 chaotic so you don't want to trust the democrats to set up a system uh so they set up they set up this

00:29:13.560 thing and the very first thing that happens is the the republicans in california come up with a superior

00:29:20.600 system and they get these boxes built and distributed all over and now they have now the government's

00:29:27.240 gonna have to fight with what it means to be uh to to be harvesting balance and as far as i know

00:29:33.560 they're gonna have a hard time declaring these things illegal because i don't think there's any law

00:29:42.120 that says you can't have an accurately labeled box sitting in on your on your lawn if it's accurately labeled

00:29:51.160 it's accurate

00:29:51.960 um so anyway that's hilarious on a completely different topic uh i follow a twitter account

00:30:02.600 by the name of somebody named brian romele r-o-e-m-m-e-l-e if you want to look for it

00:30:10.920 definitely worth following he has lots of uh new technologies and you know what's what's coming next

00:30:16.680 kind of tweets and one of them just just will blow your head off apparently now our hologram

00:30:25.640 technology is so good that there's this device from let's see called uh port l hologram so you can

00:30:36.200 follow them at at port port l hologram all one word port l hologram and you can see that they have

00:30:44.520 this thing that's a phone booth sized in which inside the little phone booth sized

00:30:51.400 hologram generator there is a full-sized human being who looks exactly like somebody you're standing in

00:30:58.920 front of and and you know they're walking and talking and they they could be a deep fake or that

00:31:05.720 or it could be a projection of somebody who's standing somewhere else and they're just being

00:31:10.040 projected as a hologram and uh it looks pretty amazing looks pretty amazing somebody says you

00:31:19.560 just looked and it looks terrible you you must be looking at something different than what i'm looking

00:31:23.720 at but it is it will be difficult to explain how powerful this is and let me tell you a little story

00:31:31.960 from my experience to give you a sense uh yeah my cat boo's doing a walk by i told you this a while

00:31:40.760 ago um microsoft has a version of their uh what do you call it enhanced reality where it places objects

00:31:50.200 in the room with you but you can't see them unless you're wearing the special goggles now if you're wearing

00:31:55.560 the special goggles you know you have a cool experience and here's the experience i had

00:32:02.600 when i tried them out in my home i saw a demo version before they were available i put on on the goggles

00:32:10.440 in my own home this is the key part my own home and i put them on and i turned on a um i think it was a

00:32:21.240 a mystery game so it was like a murder mystery game where there would be characters that would

00:32:27.720 interact in your space and there would be this murder mystery and you'd have to figure it out i

00:32:32.600 guess and i put the glasses on and i see it map the room it puts a a layer of uh like wireframe you

00:32:41.400 could see the wireframe going over your furniture and stuff in your room and you think whoa that's cool

00:32:46.760 it just mapped my whole room but here's the freaky part it didn't just map the space in your room

00:32:54.360 it knew what the things were it knew what a chair was uh my cat's gonna do another walk through if you

00:33:01.720 see a tail go by and and then it introduced characters into my living room and they walked

00:33:09.160 into my living room from a doorway from another room that it just happened to know was a doorway because

00:33:16.200 it mapped it those full-sized characters walked in front of me and sat down on my couch the couch was

00:33:25.400 l-shaped some of them sat in one l and some of them sat on the other part of the l and they set

00:33:31.400 something on my coffee table and it blew my freaking brain out now these particular uh um enhanced reality

00:33:41.800 creatures uh did not look like realistic people in other words they you could see through them a

00:33:48.760 little bit so you could tell that they were sort of shadow people but they were good representations of

00:33:54.680 people now when you take that over to the uh the hologram world imagine now the glasses are off

00:34:03.720 imagine doing this same experiment but no glasses it's your own room and maybe you've replaced the

00:34:10.600 light bulbs with this technology i doubt that's possible but imagine it wouldn't be too hard to

00:34:16.440 just put some sensors and lights in any room so your room could produce a photo realistic hologram

00:34:24.600 that could interact with your room it could walk around it could walk around until you see this

00:34:32.840 yes you don't know what's coming trust me there's some stuff coming that is bigger than anything you

00:34:40.600 could ever imagine and if you're worried about everything that's been invented already been invented

00:34:46.520 nope nope there's stuff coming that hasn't been invented i mean it has been but it hasn't been

00:34:53.640 commercialized so you've got some fun stuff coming some really fun stuff and i'm sure you're already

00:35:00.600 thinking about the applications all right uh and i i've said in a related matter i've said this before

00:35:07.720 but it's worth reiterating then no matter who wins in 2020 the presidency i believe trump will be our last

00:35:17.240 human president the last human president and what i mean is that ai will effectively be making our

00:35:25.000 decisions there will still be a person who gets elected but they won't have the flexibility that

00:35:31.320 past presidents had to use their judgment and their instinct and their hunches and whatever

00:35:36.840 and make decisions that are real leadership decisions rather in the future the algorithms will

00:35:42.680 decide what things we see and then we'll decide that those are the most important things

00:35:47.480 and if those are the most important things and we could tell you know who favors which part of the

00:35:55.480 policy for those most important things the leaders are just going to have to follow it now you say to

00:36:02.360 me scott scott scott the algorithms are not ai the algorithms are just some math and they're made by

00:36:10.840 people it's the people that decide what the algorithm does and then the algorithm does things but it's all

00:36:17.240 people the the algorithm is just a little tool it's no different than scissors and a computer it's not

00:36:23.880 important it's just the tool is that what's happening i i think that's where we differ let me give

00:36:30.840 you an example uh this week i was complaining that uh youtube had had demonetized one of my videos

00:36:38.840 earlier in the week and there was no reason given so i complained about it on twitter and to youtube's

00:36:47.640 credit they noticed i was complaining on twitter and they contacted me on twitter and said which you

00:36:53.720 know which video was it we'll do a manual review so i and they said you know it's not obvious what's

00:37:00.200 wrong with it you know they couldn't just look at it and oh it's obvious what you did wrong they said

00:37:06.120 we're gonna have to manually review it so i give them the link they manually reviewed and then this

00:37:11.080 morning they got back to me and they said it's the video is fine it's been re-monetized so problem

00:37:19.240 solved right here's the weird part the humans are not aware still what was wrong with it in other words

00:37:29.240 the algorithm flagged it took it you know demonetized it and never revealed its secret

00:37:38.920 for why now when the humans looked at it they had the ability to reverse it but do you think that your

00:37:44.920 video would have been reversed if you were not the dilbert guy if you didn't have half a million people

00:37:51.560 following you on twitter and you hadn't complained in public and you weren't leaving kind of a big

00:37:58.200 footprint would yours have been corrected i'd like to think that youtube is is so you know so on it that

00:38:07.480 it wouldn't matter who complained if they saw a complaint they would deal with it i'd like to think

00:38:12.600 that's true but i'll bet they wouldn't have seen it i don't think you could have reached them i just had

00:38:18.360 this little you know semi-famous person advantage that probably helped and if there were no humans

00:38:26.440 who know why i was demonetized if this were to happen to you who would who would have made the

00:38:32.520 decision to demonetize you no human being involved no human being would be involved in the initial

00:38:40.520 decision to demonetize you and no human being would ever explain it to you or fix it later you would

00:38:47.320 be too small now what would happen if the algorithm simply decided you know using its math that decided

00:38:55.640 to focus on some videos that had certain messages and not on others would the people who made the

00:39:03.400 algorithms be aware of it would they know exactly that this video was emphasized over this one

00:39:10.760 apparently not because they couldn't tell why mine was demonetized there's a little bit too much

00:39:17.720 complexity maybe the people who look at monetization are not the ones who programmed it they wouldn't

00:39:22.840 know what they're looking at anyway and if they asked it would be too complicated a conversation so

00:39:28.520 they wouldn't really know if you asked the programmer the programmers would probably and first of all

00:39:33.320 it's not like there's one programmer yeah it would be a team of programmers who probably only know their

00:39:39.000 little hunk their little piece of the algorithm just guessing that seems like a reasonable guess

00:39:46.200 i don't think anybody would be able to answer the question so the complexity is what gives

00:39:52.680 uh ai free will i'll just let that hang there for a little while the complexity is what gives ai in this

00:40:05.160 case the algorithms that decide what you see on social media is what gives it a free will

00:40:11.720 what do i mean by that free will in human beings is based on the fact that you can't predict what i'll do

00:40:18.280 that's it because i'm complicated my brain is complex so you can't tell based on what i'm

00:40:26.520 doing now it's too complicated you can't you can't get all the variables you can't determine all my

00:40:32.440 inputs you don't know what my cause and effect is you don't know my body chemistry you don't know my

00:40:37.560 history but if you knew that and if you had the galaxy-sized brain to look at all those inputs and figure

00:40:46.680 out how my brain is wired you could know what i'll do the only thing that gives me the impression of

00:40:53.400 free will is that even i don't know what i'm doing sometimes and you certainly don't know what i'm going

00:40:59.400 to choose so it is only my complexity the fact that you don't know what i'm going to do that gives you

00:41:06.200 the impression i have free will this morning when youtube told me that they they didn't know basically

00:41:15.880 uh they didn't have to say this directly it's obvious in context they don't know why the

00:41:20.840 algorithm did what it did it's too complex today was the day the ai was confirmed it already had it but

00:41:33.160 today was the day that it was confirmed to me the ai already has free will exactly like mine

00:41:43.080 it does what it does by formula and it will do that if it gave it the same inputs it would do the same

00:41:48.120 thing every time if it was exactly the same inputs but it's too complicated we can't predict it it's on

00:41:55.400 its own now it has free will i'll just leave you with that thought all right moving along uh here's an

00:42:04.120 interesting factoid disney world in florida is open with obviously you know masks and whatnot whereas

00:42:12.600 disneyland in california remains closed differences between the how the states are managing this this

00:42:19.720 is one of the best things that's happened in the coronavirus because this is going to be the closest we

00:42:26.680 will get to knowing which of the two methods worked so if the disney world that opened ends up with a good

00:42:36.680 result meaning very few people who get the virus because of it to the extent that they can determine

00:42:42.840 that um that's going to tell us something and if they cause massive infections because they opened in

00:42:50.040 disney world in florida well then california was the smart one i think we're going to find out

00:42:56.760 something pretty useful because it's pretty it's sort of unusual that you would have such a apples to

00:43:02.200 apples comparison between states so good to know uh you know if you said to yourself i think they should

00:43:10.440 both open up you know you could make that argument and i think disney is making that argument they think

00:43:15.320 they should open up but you should also be a little bit happy that you got a good comparison thing

00:43:21.240 here we're going to know something about disney world that's going to be really really useful i think

00:43:27.160 and i'm i'm guessing that we'll be able to track that somehow um don't you know that data is important

00:43:35.160 has anybody told you that we should make decisions based on data has anybody mentioned that lately in this

00:43:41.960 election certain uh this election cycle that's all you hear we must use the data we must listen to the

00:43:50.520 experts follow the data follow the data that's what all the dumb people say following the data would be

00:43:58.200 terrific idea if you had data following the data would be a terrific idea if you had the data and it was

00:44:07.080 reliable and it was right under those conditions and you knew what to do with it you know you knew

00:44:15.800 how to act based on that data but that's a lot of ifs isn't it here's a good example what is the only

00:44:24.520 data about the coronavirus that you would need uh need to know to really understand where we are and where

00:44:33.240 we're going what is the one bit of data you would need you might say to yourself a death rate nope

00:44:43.160 nope that's what i would have said a few weeks ago i would have said as long as you know the death rate

00:44:48.200 that's pretty much what you need to know in terms of you know where we're heading

00:44:52.520 um somebody else somebody smarter would say you need to know the hospitalization rate because first

00:44:59.000 of all the hospitalization rate can to somewhat some degree you know will predict the death rate

00:45:06.440 but also you need to know your hospital capacity you don't want to go over it and you you also get

00:45:13.880 your people who have long-term problems and they would be picked up in the hospitalization wouldn't be

00:45:19.800 picked up in the death rate so that's all you need right somebody says recovery rate nope

00:45:26.440 you don't need the recovery rate you don't need the hospitalization rate you don't need the death

00:45:34.600 rate it would be good to have and they have value so i'm not saying you shouldn't know them i'm saying

00:45:42.200 that the most important data which we could get it's it's achievable we could collect it we haven't

00:45:49.640 and it goes like this how many people are dying who are getting the right meds and the right treatment

00:45:59.240 right because that's all that matters if we're if we're throwing people in who are having problems

00:46:05.480 today with the average of how they were doing before we had good therapeutics back in the day when

00:46:11.960 we would stick people on ventilators and the ventilator itself would kill them that i think a lot of the

00:46:18.200 deaths were from ventilator misuse nobody's fault because nobody knew what to do in the early days

00:46:25.400 certainly definitely not any kind of medical malpractice or anything i'm not suggesting that

00:46:30.680 but we didn't know so can you tell me that you know or that anybody has collected the only data that

00:46:38.520 matters you went into the hospital and you got your remdesivir let's say you know you were at that stage

00:46:46.200 or you got your regeneron or you got your vitamin d you got your zinc and maybe your baby aspirin whatever

00:46:53.400 else maybe some azithromycin and that's the only data i want to know now on top of that i also need

00:47:02.200 to know availability of those meds so if the regeneron needs let's say two weeks or three months

00:47:10.120 or whatever it is to ramp up so everybody can have it in this country i need to know that because

00:47:15.960 that's telling me you know when when we can get to a better place same with the remdesivir so i would

00:47:23.000 want to know how many people are dying with the right treatment let's call it the trump protocol okay

00:47:31.240 just to keep it simple the same stuff trump got you have to assume is the good stuff right

00:47:37.640 so plus remdesivir i don't think he got that but he didn't need it

00:47:43.720 so if we don't know that do you know anything seriously do you know anything if you don't know

00:47:51.720 that it's the only number i think matters to how well we're doing when we're going to get out of this

00:47:58.920 how bad is it do we open up do we not open up all of our decisions are based on this one thing

00:48:06.040 how do we do today like today october 13th how would you do today if you went into the hospital

00:48:13.640 and you got the full trump protocol right because it's nowhere near the death rate of march and i feel

00:48:22.760 like we're making decisions based on march you know march through october death rates which would

00:48:30.760 be insane so um and somebody says the deaths are are grossly inflated but i would say that anybody

00:48:40.840 who got the trump protocol would be certainly confirmed to be somebody who's got a coronavirus

00:48:47.240 problem yeah i'm pretty sure by the time you get the full protocol they know that the coronavirus is

00:48:54.440 the thing that's going to kill you or not you know so um there is definitely a question about how the

00:49:00.920 deaths are counted but i think we could count the uh if you looked at the excess uh mortality

00:49:08.440 you'd be okay so if you knew excess mortality had gone down to normal because people who got the

00:49:16.520 treatments their death rate had gone down to a trivial number um that would be a lot to know all

00:49:24.600 right so you can love having data but if you collect the wrong data doesn't matter if you know as i mentioned

00:49:32.280 earlier if you're the cdc and you collect the data that 85 of the people getting the virus are wearing

00:49:38.360 the mask how did that help you in fact it probably hurt you because people would misinterpret the data

00:49:45.800 now they might misinterpret it in a way that actually helps you if it made them wear them

00:49:50.200 where no in that case i think they would wear the mask less so people would misinterpret it and

00:49:55.400 do the wrong thing data is very overrated data is usually wrong

00:50:02.520 that that's just the fact uh all data is usually wrong and wrong enough that it would change how you

00:50:13.720 deal with it um somebody says i'm laughing at your blind loyalty

00:50:22.520 to your cult leader um you must be new here that whoever's laughing at my blind loyalty to my cult leader

00:50:30.200 you must be brand new and you must have joined later in this very periscope because the entire

00:50:36.920 first part of the periscope was criticizing trump for health care not being you know packaged into a

00:50:44.120 good plan did you miss that part did you did you miss the part where i said it would take me 10 day

00:50:50.440 10 minutes to get over him losing if he lost

00:50:53.000 what is it about all of you democrats who can't see anything clearly if if you can see one thing

00:51:03.080 clearly it's that i'm not a slave to uh dogma if you don't get that you have missed the most

00:51:11.560 essential part of me that i could change my mind in a heartbeat on anything it's it's one of my uh

00:51:18.920 that's one of my advantages in fact it's the only reason anybody's watching me if if all i did was

00:51:24.840 get on here and do a blind obedience uh everything trump does is terrific if that's all i did i don't

00:51:32.920 think people would be too interested in coming back because i would just be another celebrity with a stupid 0.50

00:51:38.520 opinion it's only because i do have the facility to go in either direction that makes me worth watching

00:51:47.560 for my critic who i'm talking to right now uh you might also not know that i consider myself left of

00:51:56.280 bernie at least on the social stuff now i don't think that bernie is good at math so he doesn't know

00:52:02.280 how to pay for the things he wants and that's the problem i'm not going to be impractical i like his

00:52:08.840 goals have everybody you know have a good education and uh you know want everybody to to be free you

00:52:17.080 want to you know etc but uh but he needs to be able to figure out how to do it it's got to be practical

00:52:25.400 all right that is all for today and i will talk to you tomorrow

00:52:37.960 so it's so awkward when i try to hit that little x to end this and i can't hit it with my thumb

00:52:45.000 all right periscope is turned off we're on youtube only now live streaming

00:52:50.680 uh thoughts on kanye and joe rogan and his presidential ad i didn't see that does kanye

00:52:57.240 have a an ad this is an actual kanye ad

00:53:07.080 data are facts statistics or interpretation not true data are alleged effects if data were facts

00:53:16.600 we'd probably be in a lot better shape but usually data is out of context and it's just wrong

00:53:25.320 is local still thing oh yeah let me give you an update on locals so locals.com is a

00:53:33.080 platform um full disclosure i have a small investment in it as well and that's where i do

00:53:40.280 everything that you that i don't do in public i do there so there's a whole bunch of other content on

00:53:45.880 uh including micro lessons on success and being more being more effective as well as some content

00:53:53.560 that's a little too edgy to be on twitter or to be on uh youtube so uh locals is not only working but

00:54:01.000 uh is it's working embarrassingly well the the number of people who were willing to pay a subscription

00:54:08.360 to see extra content actually uh is humbling because way more demand than i could have imagined

00:54:16.360 and so far they seem happy the retention is excellent people are adding every uh every uh

00:54:22.840 week so yeah locals.com you go there and you can follow people like me people like uh greg gutfeld

00:54:29.400 um i think uh don jr is there a bunch of other people are going over and what you'll see there is

00:54:37.240 uh stuff you can't see in other places um somebody says you need a coupon code no you don't need a coupon

00:54:44.840 code um the the creators can create a coupon to give you a discount but you don't need that you can just

00:54:52.840 go there and sign up um and it's working great by the way and the community over there is just people

00:55:00.520 who want to be you know part of my community so i have basically no trolls imagine a social media

00:55:08.840 platform that because it's subscription it basically eliminates all of the trolls every bit of content and

00:55:16.440 other people can other people post things as well so i look at other people's content and it's exactly

00:55:22.920 what i want to see and it's because somebody who followed me kind of knows what i would like to see

00:55:29.480 and knows what other people who follow me would like to see and so it's this whole environment where

00:55:34.120 i only see stuff that's interesting and i wanted to see it it's the weirdest thing and there are no trolls

00:55:40.200 and and people pay a subscription fee to be there somebody says what is the seven dollar

00:55:46.120 subscription fee for it is for content that you won't see anywhere else but on top of that uh

00:55:53.080 there's and i didn't see this coming exactly there's a little bit of a patreon element to it

00:55:59.560 patreon allows you just to um essentially donate to creators that you would like to incentivize to do more

00:56:07.320 and so i think a lot of people just join locals because they're supporting my voice

00:56:12.520 uh and then they also give some extra content but uh the if you like robots read news my edgier uh

00:56:22.120 comic that i only do on the web um some of those i will tweet i'll put onto twitter so you just so

00:56:29.960 it's a access and advertisement for locals but uh most of the really naughty ones i just keep on locals if

00:56:37.800 it's if it's if it's too edgy i just keep it there all right that's all for now and i will talk to you

00:56:44.200 oh just to give you one more example of what is on locals yesterday i did a detailed um tour of my

00:56:51.720 office you know down to the down to the real details which some people would find interesting but

00:56:59.480 others would not and i'll talk to you tomorrow

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - October 13, 2020

Episode 1153 Scott Adams： Court Packers, Immunity, Biden Blunders, Missing Coronavirus Data

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