Episode 1191 Scott Adams: Show us the Kraken or Maybe we Stop Believing it is Coming
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
139.98805
Summary
Coffee with Scott Adams and a special guest to talk about a printer that won't print, a deal with Mexico to pay for a border wall repair, and why the news is boring without Trump. Plus, a story about a guy who thinks the generals are right about troop levels.
Transcript
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
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Hey everybody! Come on in. It's time. Yeah, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
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Best time of the day and we'll be looking for the Kraken today.
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Yes we will. But first I would like your opinion.
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I've been trying to print my notes for today to my printer.
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It doesn't give me an error message, doesn't tell me what to do, has plenty of paper and plenty of ink, but it just won't print.
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Should I rip it out of the wall and throw it off of my balcony so we can watch it crash in pieces on my sidewalk below?
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But first, in order to enjoy this day to the maximum,
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you're going to need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or gel,
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just not a canteen jug or a flask or vessel of any kind.
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And fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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It's the thing that makes everything better, except the cracking.
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And it happens now. It's called the simultaneous sip.
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All right. Well, let me look at my little notes on my tiny little phone,
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because my printer just isn't getting it done today.
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Have you noticed that the news is boring without Trump?
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You know, all Trump has to do is dial back his own public efforts by, you know,
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30 percent or whatever, and suddenly there's no news.
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Because the news industry completely stopped, you know, looking for actual news,
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and they just started reporting on whatever Trump said and then insulting him.
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So, all right, there are enough people telling me that I should recycle my printer,
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that I'm going to do it, but only to show you that it doesn't work, okay?
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If that doesn't work, maybe we'll throw it off the balcony.
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So, it looks like the United States is getting money from Mexico for the wall.
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Not directly, but apparently we have some kind of deal with Mexico that if somebody tries to destroy the wall to get through it,
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that they will be fined to pay for the repair, and Mexico will collect that fine and give it to the United States.
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So, if a Mexican wannabe illegal migrant hurts the wall, we get paid to fix the wall.
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But it's not Mexico paying for the wall, of course.
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Another big story is the president wants to draw down forces in Afghanistan and maybe other places.
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And here's a little story that is good context for deciding whether the president or the generals and the pundits are the ones who are right about troop levels.
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Years ago, I used to be a budget guy at a big bank and then the phone company.
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And at the phone company, my job was to go to all the individual departments and say, how much budget do you need for next year?
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And then I would sum up all of their detailed requests and take it to the big boss.
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So, I summed up all the individual budget requests, took it to the boss, and it was too much.
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So, I thought that what would happen next is he would look at each of the individual department requests,
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and then each one individually he would look at and say, okay, they're asking for a little bit too much,
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or this one's a higher priority than this one, so we'll cut this one, but we'll fund this one.
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Instead, the big boss looked at me and he said, cut everybody's budget by 10%.
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That would be completely irrational because all of these managers have done detailed studies
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to find out exactly what budget they need to do the job that you've told them they have to do.
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So, you can't just cut it 10%, because some people probably padded it, maybe some people didn't ask for enough.
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It's completely irrational to just cut it 10% across the board.
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And so, I made my argument that that didn't make sense, and the big boss looked at me and he said,
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just cut it all by 10%, just cut it all by 10%, and watch everybody make it work.
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I cut everybody's budget by 10%, and what do you think happened?
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So, 100% of the underlings complained bitterly because their detailed budget was just ignored.
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And they just said, I just give them 10% less than last year.
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There wasn't a single problem that happened because of that decision.
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Now, when Trump says to his generals, you need to draw down these forces, what do the generals say?
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We've done a detailed study, and we can't possibly operate without this many people.
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In fact, you should be adding people, not subtracting people in Afghanistan.
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And what does a good, experienced, big boss say in that situation?
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When all of the experts, all of them, every general, every person who's fought there,
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every one of them says, no, you can't cut those forces.
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Here, we'll take care of you so you don't have to suffer.
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So, if you've ever worked in a big company, you know that the president is the one who's
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At least if you say, my goal is to get rid of all of them, and I'm going to do it as fast
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And I feel like the generals, et cetera, will make it work.
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So, apparently, he's going to draw down some forces, and they will make it work.
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Amazon is going into the pharmacy business, which could be a gigantic deal.
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Because I feel as if Amazon should be your doctor.
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I took some blood tests and urine tests the other day.
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So, I got a full panel of, you know, just generic blood tests.
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But when I get the report, it's sent to me as the patient.
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And it's two pages of things that make no sense to me as a consumer.
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Because I don't know what these little, you know, these various figures mean.
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Now, it does tell you if you're within the field or not.
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But it doesn't tell you if you had too much of this or too little of it, what would it mean?
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Because some of the values are sort of, you know, toward the edge of the field.
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Now, if they had made it friendly and simply said, look, here's your test.
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And if anything is confusing, just click on it.
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And you can see a full description of what may be problems you might have if this indication is too high or whatever.
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Now, what is it that Amazon does amazingly well?
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So if you see Amazon getting into the health business, the first thing you should say to yourself is,
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Shouldn't I be able to get a blood test anytime I want?
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Because all they do is draw blood and send it off.
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And get results that I don't even need a doctor to look at.
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That I can just read it and say, oh, this one says you should cut down on dessert and maybe exercise more because you're a little pre-diabetic.
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I could completely understand that if they put it in English, but they put it in medical terms, so I can't.
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Anyway, so if the only thing that Amazon did is start turning the medical field into something that has a good user interface that you could actually understand what you're looking at,
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that would be gigantic and would certainly help the competitive situation.
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So President Trump fired the homeland security cyber chief, Christopher Krebs, because Krebs had announced publicly that this was the most secure election ever.
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And I guess if you're working for Trump at the moment and you say the election is the most secure one ever, you're going to get fired.
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And it's also being reported that the election officials in each state had been contacted, I think by the New York Times.
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New York Times contacted all the election officials in each state and said, has there been any fraud or problems this year?
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All the people who were in charge of the elections in each of these states have reported, and I think we can believe them,
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that the people who were in charge of the elections did a great job, according to the people who were in charge of the elections.
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And the New York Times asked the people who were in charge of the elections if the people in charge of the elections did a good job.
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And the people in charge of the elections said, yes, the people in charge of the elections did a great job, maybe the best one ever.
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It's possible that nobody's ever done a good job this good.
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And the New York Times printed that like that was telling you something that you needed to know.
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Go into any prison and ask the prisoners if they're guilty.
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But you'll be amazed how many people in prison will tell you that they're innocent.
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And they must be innocent, because you're asking the person who knows, right?
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I mean, the person in prison, they have the most information,
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the most credible information about whether they committed the crime.
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Because they were a direct witness to whether they committed it or not.
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And if they say they're innocent, well, I think you have to free them.
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You ask the people who would be incriminating themselves if they answered one way.
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So when the guy who's in charge of making sure that our elections are fair
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says that he did a terrific job, and it might be the best election fairness you've ever had,
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the election is great because it was my job to make it great,
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If there wasn't somebody auditing him, you don't know, right?
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Because the last person you should trust is that guy.
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He's the one person in the whole country that you shouldn't believe.
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Have you ever done an employee performance review?
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Did you ever have your employee come in for an employee performance review?
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And the employee says, you know, wasn't my best year.
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Because if you ask people if they did a good job,
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they're kind of going to say yes pretty much every time.
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So we can't listen to any of the people who were in charge
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what is it, a special counsel, Durham or whatever,
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it's because you can't ask the Department of Justice
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So if you don't have a special counsel or an audit,
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Here's something that should have been in the news,
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Because I should not be getting better information
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than I should be from the professional news organizations.
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I don't think what I'm going to read is correct.
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until you see some fact checking in the comments.
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But, according to Kyle, who messaged me this morning,
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he believes that he has seen in the news so far
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he says that the recount has had the following changes.
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Is it true that there are four different counties
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Do you think I care how they pronounce their county?
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If you put an extra letter in the spelling of your county,
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I'm going to pronounce it any fucking way I want.
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If you don't want me to pronounce it the wrong way,
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be over 11,000 votes that have switched to Trump
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because you don't know if Georgia is going well
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Why do I have to get it from individual on Twitter