Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1229 Scott Adams： I'll Tell You What Keeps America Together and How the #GoldenAge Can't be Stopped

00:00:00.000 Well, happy Merry Christmas Eve. We made it. We made it at least to Christmas Eve. If 2020

00:00:12.560 wasn't the hardest year of your life, you've had some hard years. But we're here. We made it.

00:00:20.700 And let's see if we can make it to summer. Then we win. And if you would like to maximize your

00:00:26.740 experience of the best part of the day, what's the best part of the day? That's right. That's right.

00:00:31.980 It's this. This is the best part of the day. The rest of your day might be pretty good. Could be

00:00:38.300 excellent. In fact, the rest of your day might be extraordinary. But it won't be as good as this.

00:00:47.000 Are you ready? All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen

00:00:54.040 jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite holiday liquid I like, coffee.

00:01:00.900 Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes

00:01:05.120 the holidays extraordinary. It's called the simultaneous sip. Heard around the world. And

00:01:12.060 it happens now. Go.

00:01:12.900 Well, in the news, President Trump is issuing pardons. It's outrageous. Can you all join me

00:01:27.340 in being outraged at the people that the president is pardoning? Are we good? Are we done with the

00:01:37.800 outrage? There's something I've been explaining to people on Twitter this morning, and it goes

00:01:43.480 like this. You don't pardon innocent people. I mean, if you can, that's great. It would be

00:01:53.320 great if you knew someone were innocent, but they were in jail. Yeah, maybe pardoning them

00:01:58.120 would be the right thing. But that's not exactly what pardons are for. The pardon is to give the

00:02:05.320 president an unfettered ability to pardon. And a big part of that is you can't question it.

00:02:15.040 You can say to yourself, why are these people on the list? But that's going to be true for every

00:02:20.620 president. Probably there are favors involved or whatever. But our system allows us. And so I

00:02:25.960 refuse to be outraged by the system working exactly the way it was designed to work.

00:02:32.880 The president has this power. Had it been a different president, pardoning different people

00:02:40.520 who I liked more or less than this group? Same response. I'm not going to get outraged about

00:02:47.280 the system working the way it was designed. The other news is that apparently the GOP has rejected

00:02:53.140 the call for the $2,000 direct checks to people instead of the $600.

00:02:58.820 And I guess Trump vetoed the omnibus bill, but it looks like they have a veto proof.

00:03:06.900 They can override the veto, so it's going to happen anyway. But I would rank as the biggest mistake

00:03:12.520 of 2020, this, I don't even know if it's a decision, but this action by Congress to deny the $2,000

00:03:22.300 check on Christmas Eve. Just let that sink in. Now, many mistakes have been made in 2020 because

00:03:32.260 we're humans. And especially when you introduce the pandemic and you have this fog of war and

00:03:38.260 so many unknowns. And scientifically, we didn't exactly know what was right to do. It took us a

00:03:44.040 while to crawl our way through it and learn enough that we can get on top of the virus,

00:03:48.660 which were almost there. But here's the thing. There are some kinds of mistakes

00:03:56.000 that you can forgive quite easily. And I'll remind you again, and Christmas Eve is a good time for

00:04:02.560 this, that at the beginning of the pandemic, I said, we should forgive in advance all of our leaders.

00:04:10.300 We should forgive in advance all the mistakes that they are about to make. Because the mistakes

00:04:17.680 that they were going to make, and they did, you know, various leaders, experts made a variety of

00:04:24.140 mistakes. Up till this point, there'll be more. They weren't the kind of mistake that you should,

00:04:33.040 you know, want to destroy somebody over. They were the kind of mistake that you make because you don't

00:04:38.800 know what is the right thing to do. Now, if your mistakes are because you don't know what is the

00:04:43.440 right thing to do, you wish the mistake had not happened. But it's hard to criticize somebody

00:04:50.120 for trying hard and having the right intentions, but it didn't go well. That's not what's happening

00:04:56.400 here. With Congress rejecting the $2,000 checks, and yes, I understand that they didn't just reject the

00:05:05.260 checks. It was about the bulk of the rest of the stuff they didn't like, like foreign aid and

00:05:10.900 whatever else they didn't like in the bill. Those were the reasons, okay? But here's the thing.

00:05:18.520 You don't tease the public about maybe getting enough money before Christmas and then yank it back.

00:05:27.980 I get that there were reasons, and I'm not even going to argue that the reasons were good or bad.

00:05:33.260 I'm saying the entire situation, not just the rejecting of the $2,000 when it was rejected,

00:05:40.180 but the whole situation that Congress got us to where they would reject the bigger check

00:05:47.340 on Christmas Eve is the biggest mistake I've seen in 2020. And it's a year of a lot of mistakes.

00:05:57.160 Now, the reason it's the biggest mistake is that it's not because anybody didn't know something,

00:06:04.580 right? Pandemic mistakes were legitimate mistakes. People didn't know what to do.

00:06:11.460 There were smart people disagreeing on what to do. I forgive those mistakes. I don't forgive this

00:06:18.640 mistake. This is not the kind of mistake you forgive because they knew what they were doing.

00:06:24.480 Every single person involved knew the result of their actions would bring us here.

00:06:34.660 It's almost not even a mistake. It's almost just a slap in the face of the American public.

00:06:41.620 So congratulations, Congress. I didn't think you could be worse, but you did it. You got there.

00:06:50.960 You got to the only thing that could have been worse, yanking that money away from the people who

00:06:57.020 desperately need it on Christmas Eve. The only thing that's stopping me from massive profanity

00:07:03.840 is that I'm trying to keep things positive today. It's Christmas Eve. But unambiguously and without

00:07:11.520 without any question, the biggest mistake, blunder if you want to put it, is this. There's nothing even

00:07:18.680 close to this because of the intention problem. But let's talk about something a little bit more

00:07:23.960 positive. Are you with me? Would you like me to take it up a little bit? Come with me.

00:07:33.280 You'll like it. You'll like it. Here's a little bit of positivity that dropped recently. You've all

00:07:44.200 heard of Naval Ravikant. And what you might know is that his Twitter feed is unusually valuable.

00:07:51.780 So the things that he tweets and has tweeted over the recent years are so valuable that even my publisher

00:07:58.880 asked me to contact him and say, would you please convince him to do a book? Because if he ever does

00:08:05.020 a book of this content, it's so freaking good and useful, like actually directly changes your life kind

00:08:13.800 of information, that it would be the number one bestselling book in the world. And I think that

00:08:20.100 actually would be easily true, that if Naval wanted to make a book, it would be probably number one in the

00:08:26.820 world. I think it would be easy to predict. But he was not interested and is not interested in

00:08:33.160 a book. And his reasons support why you should pay attention to him.

00:08:42.520 Who could read? Can you think of any other situation in which someone knows they could have a number one

00:08:50.340 bestselling book with not really even a lot of work? Because the material exists, you could just have a

00:08:55.520 ghostwriter, assemble it, put your name on it, you're good to go. But there's something

00:09:02.460 about the value of, let's say, products or content, in his case, content. If you make something in the

00:09:12.240 world that a lot of people like and want, you could probably sell that thing and become rich.

00:09:19.800 So making something that's bad and nobody wants, well, nobody buys it and nobody's better off.

00:09:25.520 If you make something that's really good, people are going to pay a lot for it. And a lot of people

00:09:31.100 are going to pay a lot for it. But here's the weird part. If you make something even better than

00:09:37.380 that, something that somebody is willing to pay a lot for, if you make something that's even better

00:09:42.380 than that, you can't sell it because it would be immoral. It would be immoral to keep something

00:09:52.260 from the public that would have that much benefit. If you put a friction between this thing, whatever

00:10:00.780 it is, and the public, you're just not a good person. If the thing that keeps poor people from

00:10:07.640 Naval's content is that they can't afford the book, is that a place you want to be?

00:10:15.360 No. No. Naval's content is so valuable that he understood from the beginning that it would be

00:10:25.860 immoral to sell it. And so somebody, Eric Jorgensen, decided to put Naval's, I think with Naval's

00:10:36.960 approval, put it together in a book that is free. So it is a book. It's free. You can download it. It's

00:10:46.400 called the Navalmanac. N-A-V-A-L-M-A-N-A-C-K, like almanac. It's like a Naval almanac put together.

00:10:57.760 Navalmanac. And so this is available for download. And now everybody everywhere has the benefit of

00:11:08.580 this. There's another example of this. Can you think of another example of something that's a

00:11:13.600 product that's so good, you can't charge for it? Can you think of another one? The vaccinations.

00:11:21.500 Yeah, the coronavirus vaccinations are so important to society that you can't charge for them.

00:11:31.220 If we charged for those vaccinations, that would be the height of immorality. Nobody would be in

00:11:37.740 favor of that. So just look for that phenomenon. If something is too good, you can't charge for it.

00:11:45.220 You just can't. Now, I'd say that we've reached D-Day for vaccinations, meaning that the war against

00:11:57.240 the virus just turned into an offensive war. And you remember, well, maybe you don't remember,

00:12:04.340 but in World War II, the big swing in momentum was D-Day, the invasion of Normandy and the troops

00:12:13.640 coming in. And eventually that cleared out Europe of the Nazi scourge. And it seems to me that we've 0.91

00:12:20.880 reached D-Day. I don't know what day you want to call it the first vaccination, I guess. And now a

00:12:25.720 million people have already received it. A million people already got the vaccination. It's pretty good,

00:12:32.020 isn't it? You have to read a Sam Harris article that I tweeted. So it's in my Twitter feed from

00:12:39.080 yesterday. Sam Harris breaks down how the decision was made about who gets the shots and who doesn't.

00:12:48.160 And you really have to read that article. So this is, I would say this is Sam Harris doing a real solid

00:12:56.640 benefit for the country. Because I didn't really understand everything that went into deciding who

00:13:04.660 gets the shots first and who, you know, what the order is. But let me tell you, when you find out

00:13:10.840 how that was decided, you're not going to like it. You're not going to like it. But you have to see

00:13:17.760 Sam Harris's description of it. I don't want to ruin it. Just look at it. The bottom line is that

00:13:23.640 the determination of who got it first was not made based on saving the most lives.

00:13:33.940 It was made based on a wokeness. So you got to read the article. It's mind-boggling. 0.99

00:13:42.120 But the good news is that we're on the offensive now. It looks like the number of deaths,

00:13:47.620 according to one model, by April 1st, we could have 567,000 people died from the coronavirus.

00:13:59.780 That number is, it's so shocking that it's hard to even read it. Honestly, I didn't think it would

00:14:09.720 get that high. And I'm still optimistic it won't get that high. But I think we're going to blow

00:14:15.180 low past 400,000, no matter what. So let's think positively on that.

00:14:24.160 So Trump vetoed that defense bill. I'm kind of glad he did, because it was really on principle.

00:14:30.840 You know, it'll still get passed, because there's a veto-proof majority, I guess, for it. But I like

00:14:36.940 the fact that Trump vetoed it on principle, because it was filled with pork and crap. 0.99

00:14:43.420 There's a new poll from USA Today that says that history will judge Trump's presidency, 0.99

00:14:52.940 that 50% of people said that they thought he would be judged as a failed president,

00:14:58.280 which is suspiciously the number of Democrats who listen to fake news. But as I've said,

00:15:04.600 they are wrong. And the history, the further you get away from 2020,

00:15:09.760 the better Trump will look. And in 50 years, I think Trump will be regarded as one of the top

00:15:18.100 three presidents. But it might take a long time for us to get that kind of perspective. Because then

00:15:23.540 you're just looking at what he did. Your feeling about his personality and what you felt during this

00:15:29.980 year will fade over time. And simply the decisions he made and the things he accomplished will be left

00:15:35.680 behind. So his reputation is going to climb. Not right away, but it will. So Andrew Yang has

00:15:45.020 apparently filed to run for mayor of New York. That's one of the best things I've heard today.

00:15:54.300 Isn't that kind of cool? Can you think of anybody off the top of your head who would be a better

00:16:00.800 choice to be mayor of New York than Andrew Yang? I mean, you know, even if you're not the same party

00:16:07.900 as Andrew Yang, it's kind of a great choice. Because what we like about him, regardless of

00:16:14.020 your party affiliation, what people like about Andrew Yang is that he's not a dogmatic, you know,

00:16:20.960 he's not just going to make decisions because it's what the team does. He's actually someone who

00:16:28.660 looks at the facts and is smart and does reasonable things, doesn't seem to be tied to any specific

00:16:35.000 way of being. He just seems smart and capable. I think he'd be a great choice. We'll see how he

00:16:43.580 goes. Well, I'm going to go into my positive part of my live stream now, right? And I want to give

00:16:52.260 you a little story. Maybe some of you have heard it before, because I've told it before. I'm going to

00:16:56.680 give you a little story that's just the base, sort of setting the table for what I'll be telling you

00:17:02.520 next. All right. So later, I'll connect the stories, but I'll just start with this. So several years ago,

00:17:08.680 I was asked to give a speech for Salesforce. Now, Salesforce is a big multi-billion dollar fast

00:17:15.840 growing company created by entrepreneur and now CEO, Mark Benioff. And prior to giving the talk to

00:17:25.140 Salesforce, I got to hang out with Mark Benioff for a bit, and we were just sort of chatting.

00:17:32.880 And at some point, the conversation turned to, and I don't know how it got there, but sort of

00:17:39.260 methods for success. And Benioff told me his, I guess you'd say his main theme or principle for

00:17:49.780 success. And I'd never really heard it before in those terms. And the word he used was intentions.

00:17:57.720 And the way he, I think I'll try to explain it as best I can. Maybe I'll get it a little bit wrong.

00:18:02.760 But the idea is that it's one thing to want something, but it's more powerful to put your

00:18:09.700 intentions in a clear package and put it out in the world. And his kind of way of seeing the world is that

00:18:19.020 clear, clean intentions attract everything you need to make them work. So that people are attracted

00:18:27.520 to, let's say, confidence and certainty and intention well described. Because we live in this world that's

00:18:35.700 sort of ambiguous and, you know, you don't know exactly what's the right thing to do, what's going

00:18:42.140 to get you in trouble, what's going to work. So anytime you see somebody who's a leader, and a leader

00:18:48.340 gives you a clear intention, and it looks like a good one, and it's, and what they want is very

00:18:54.620 unambiguous, people are drawn to that. And so that was his secret. Now I would make the distinction

00:19:02.080 between intention and affirmations is whether you put it into the world. An affirmation is something

00:19:09.620 maybe that you're chanting or writing down about a something that you would like to accomplish.

00:19:15.100 That's sort of an internal process. So your affirmations are you talking to yourself.

00:19:21.860 An intention, if you do it right, is something you put into the universe, and other people see it,

00:19:28.580 and then they're drawn to it. Now I saw it, I saw him play out that theme minutes after we talked.

00:19:36.900 It was a dinner for the staff, and I got to sit at the table with the executives. And so while I was at

00:19:44.240 the table for dinner, one of the executives used his moment of access with the CEO to talk with him

00:19:51.680 about a PowerPoint presentation he was going to give to some important group. And so the top executive

00:19:57.980 shows Benioff the PowerPoint thing. And Benioff's first comment, and I'm going to paraphrase the

00:20:04.900 conversation so this is not exact words or anything. And Benioff looks at it, he goes,

00:20:10.120 put on the front page, on the top of it, make sure you tell the audience about our 1% plan.

00:20:19.040 Roughly speaking, they have this deal where Salesforce gives, I think, 1% of their profits to

00:20:24.580 charity, and the employees donate 1% of their time to charity, something like that. And so Benioff says,

00:20:32.000 put that on the front. And his executive says, oh, I've got that, I've got that information, and it's

00:20:39.700 in the body of the thing, I think it's page three or something. That's sort of the best place for it

00:20:44.880 to be, you know, given the flow of the presentation, it belongs in the body of it. And Benioff listens to

00:20:53.420 his explanation, and he says, put it on the first page. And then the executive tries again. He says,

00:21:01.320 yeah, it's very important, of course, and, you know, we've put it right in the best possible

00:21:05.400 place it could be in that third page. You know, that's the flow. And Benioff looks at him, and he

00:21:11.820 goes, put it on the first page. And he argued again, third time. The executive says, yeah, yeah,

00:21:19.840 it's right where it belongs. And Benioff looks at him for a third time and says, put it on the first

00:21:27.320 page. And you could see it finally hitting this guy. Intention. Benioff was very clearly saying,

00:21:37.440 no, our intention is to help the world. We're going to do that by making money. That's good for us too.

00:21:45.740 But our intention is to help the world. And that's going to be on the first page.

00:21:52.140 So our intention is to be good people, help the world. And we're going to do that by making money

00:21:56.820 and having a strong business. The executive wanted to show how the business was going to be great.

00:22:03.440 And because the business was great, hey, we'd make some extra money. We could do this 1% thing.

00:22:08.380 That was backwards. Intention was backwards. Benioff, unique among his people, I think,

00:22:19.820 understood the power of that. And that by putting the intention out, he could, you know, he could

00:22:25.320 attract what he needed. And sure enough, one of the fastest growing companies in the world,

00:22:30.120 amazing success. Hold this story in your mind. I'm going to circle back to it.

00:22:38.380 I've been asked a lot about my past prediction from over a year ago that we would be entering

00:22:44.540 the golden age. And then instead of the golden age, we entered a pandemic. That looks very

00:22:53.360 different from the golden age. In fact, it looks a little opposite. If you had to say,

00:22:59.620 what's a golden age? You would describe it very different from a pandemic.

00:23:03.400 So, am I wrong? Is the golden age not coming? I think it's definitely coming. I'm more certain

00:23:15.980 than at any point. And it's because every construction phase starts with demolition.

00:23:24.560 We're in the demolition phase. Was it possible to get to something that is extraordinarily better

00:23:32.140 without demolition? No, not if there's already a building there. If there's already a building

00:23:38.500 there, which is society as it's evolved, you can't build the new thing until you do something

00:23:45.520 about the old thing. They occupy the same space. So there is no such thing as upgrading a thing

00:23:54.760 unless you can destroy the old thing. Now, it was not our choice to destroy the old thing. The pandemic

00:24:02.440 made that choice for us in a way. But demolition had to happen. Don't think that the demolition is the

00:24:13.120 sign of where we're going. The demolition is your signal. And I'll make the case a little bit stronger

00:24:19.620 here. It's your signal that it is maybe the darkest before the dawn. And that the way you can tell

00:24:28.040 that something good might be coming often is because it looks really dark. And that's what happens before

00:24:35.240 good things happen quite often. So the fact that things look dark at the moment, do not take that as

00:24:41.820 a signal that that's the direction. We're going through a phase that had to happen. There wasn't any way

00:24:47.460 around it. There was no way around. We had to destroy what was there to build something better. Is that what

00:24:53.780 we're doing? Well, I can't speak to the experience for other countries. So I know we have an international

00:25:00.800 audience here. So I'll just speak to an American experience. I think you'll find maybe a lot of this

00:25:06.400 applies everywhere else. But there's a lot of things we learned this year. And when I tell you what I think we

00:25:16.160 learned, it might blow you away. Because you probably haven't thought of it in these terms before.

00:25:23.280 And it goes like this. If you had asked me a year ago, what is it that makes America, America?

00:25:31.660 What is it that binds us and holds us together? I would have given you answers such as, I would have said,

00:25:40.040 well, it's about the Constitution. It's about a shared values. I'd say it's about the way we've been

00:25:51.580 socialized. I might say something about a culture. Somebody might throw in religion.

00:25:58.760 But you'd probably have a big, complicated answer. Yeah, liberty. Somebody would say freedom.

00:26:07.080 You'd have a big, complicated answer of what it is that holds America together. Why doesn't America

00:26:13.640 just fly apart? For 200 years, we've not only held together, but gotten stronger. Why? What's the

00:26:22.780 glue? Now, here's what's mind-blowing. In the past year, everything that I would have said holds America

00:26:32.740 together, dissolved. All of the connecting structure, all of the glue that I believed was holding the

00:26:43.080 country together, just fell apart. For example, do we have a democracy, a democratic republic?

00:26:52.540 No, we don't. The Constitution just sort of failed this year. We don't have, because of the way the

00:27:00.740 system worked, nothing that you could identify as the will of the people being expressed in the form of

00:27:07.300 a republic that turns into a government. We don't have that. How about freedom of speech?

00:27:16.420 Nope. Apparently, social media censorship, if you go too far in the wrong direction, you don't have

00:27:24.300 freedom of speech anymore, at least in a practical sense. You have it in a legal sense, but you don't

00:27:28.900 have it in a practical sense. So we sort of lost our freedom of speech. How about our freedom in general?

00:27:35.880 Well, we kind of lost that too with the pandemic. So we found out that our press, which was one of the

00:27:43.820 most important parts of keeping our liberties together, the free press. We found out we don't

00:27:50.380 have a free press. I mean, it's free if you're not paying for it, but it's so illegitimate that you

00:27:59.760 can't even say we have a press in the way that, you know, we imagined it even a year ago, I would say.

00:28:06.820 So we don't have a press. We don't have an election process. We've got, you know, we don't have the same

00:28:17.260 shared beliefs. Even the idea of patriotism completely disappeared. There are still patriotic

00:28:24.980 people, but the idea that it was a shared value, that patriotism was something we all stood for the

00:28:30.820 flag, nobody knelt, doesn't exist. How about our shared history? At least we have a shared history,

00:28:37.780 right? Not anymore. Now we have the 1619 Project, which is an alternate history. I'm not saying it's

00:28:45.040 right or wrong. It's just saying it's a different history. So we don't have a history anymore. We don't

00:28:51.740 have the Constitution, you know, exists, but it's not really guiding us in the way we thought was

00:28:57.060 holding us together. We don't have a free press. We don't even have freedom. We don't have a freedom.

00:29:01.900 We don't have freedom of speech. So everything that I would have said is essential to holding America

00:29:09.340 together. But what happened? Did America fly apart? When everything that held it together, that you

00:29:21.660 thought held it together, and I thought held it together, it all disappeared in the last year.

00:29:27.560 And America got stronger. Everything that makes America, America disappeared. And America got stronger.

00:29:43.040 Now I'm saying stronger because if you look at the stock market, which I know doesn't represent all

00:29:48.100 people, but it's a good proxy for how strong the nation is, right? It gets reflected in the stock market.

00:29:55.240 So there's lots of work to do and to take care of people who are disadvantaged in every way,

00:30:00.300 especially during the pandemic. But the country got stronger. So what are we missing?

00:30:09.840 Apparently, and not even apparently, I'll say obviously, there is something that keeps America

00:30:16.340 together that was not those things. Now you could say it's the economy, maybe. But I haven't

00:30:25.220 a different opinion. I think what keeps America, America is intention. It's intention. When people

00:30:36.640 were talking about America is going to fly apart, and there's going to be a civil war, and I told you

00:30:44.220 there wouldn't be. I told you emphatically, there wouldn't be, and there can't be. And the reason that

00:30:53.420 there won't be, there won't be, and there can't be, I'm not talking about, you know, some unrest in

00:30:58.640 some city or something. But the reason that we won't go completely into anarchy and civil war

00:31:04.300 is we intend not to. That's it. The entire country, in my opinion, is held together by an intention.

00:31:19.900 Our intention is to stay together. That's it. Our intention is to stay together. Now, let me say a

00:31:28.480 little bit more about that. I've told you before that in your personal life, it doesn't matter what

00:31:35.320 you say you want. That's not the thing that will change your life. Your wants will not change your

00:31:42.260 life. But what you decide will. Your decisions are what does change your life. You decide it, and then

00:31:49.420 you do it. Wanting something is inactive. It's a decision. And that's also, the decision is also a

00:31:57.400 clear statement of intention. Because once you make a decision, your intention is solidified, right?

00:32:03.740 And I believe that all of us individually, for our own reasons, maybe, we have an explicit intention

00:32:15.120 to stay together. And so I would like to give my Christmas message to everyone here. This is my Christmas

00:32:25.300 message to the country. And it goes like this. So I'm speaking to, you know, America now. Now, the rest of

00:32:33.540 you, I know there's lots of international viewers. But just bear with me for a moment. Maybe some of this will

00:32:39.060 apply to your country as well. And I'm going to speak directly to black Americans. I'm going to speak

00:32:45.720 directly to Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, every other kind of ethnic Americans. Talking to all my

00:32:53.780 friends in the LGBTQ community and everybody else that I don't know in the LGBTQ community. Talking about

00:33:00.300 all Democrats, independents, Republicans, my friends, my critics, every religion, and every belief. I'm talking to

00:33:12.560 every single one of you right now. And I just have one thing to say. Just one message. I choose you. I choose you to be in

00:33:25.740 my country. Now, I don't mean it's up to me, obviously. I just mean that it's my intention to remain in this

00:33:32.780 country, an American, as part of an American country. It's my intention to be part of this great experiment

00:33:41.300 with everybody. No exceptions. Be you in jail, be you free, be you my critic or my enemy, it is my intention

00:33:53.060 to remain American. And I don't really ask anything in return. Because the moment you ask something in

00:34:03.920 return, you're doing it wrong. I don't ask anything in return. I just choose you. That's it. Anything more

00:34:15.660 than that makes it less, I think. So Christmas Eve is sort of a time for a gratitude. I think it's a good

00:34:25.940 reminder to be grateful. So I am grateful to all of you. I'm grateful to my critics for making me

00:34:34.060 stronger. I'm grateful to everybody who's ever disagreed with me for making me, you know, work a little bit

00:34:40.520 harder. I'm grateful to my audience. I'm grateful to all of you who have good intentions. Keep it that

00:34:49.240 way. And so I tell you that the golden age is not only coming, it can't be stopped. And we're in the

00:34:59.800 demolition phase. It's not the fun part. It's not the fun part. But we will get through this. And let me

00:35:08.160 tell you what's happening that maybe you've missed. Because you're looking at the coronavirus, you're

00:35:13.800 looking at whatever Trump is doing. But there's a lot of stuff happening that you're just not noticing.

00:35:19.600 It's slower. And it's taking us to the golden age in a way that is unstoppable. There's nothing that

00:35:28.840 can stop it. And let me say more about this. Of course, what the pandemic did was accelerate all

00:35:36.860 trends. That's the demolition phase. You've accelerated the trend toward things that were

00:35:41.940 going to go on a business and stop anyway. And so a lot changed. But there are some things

00:35:50.100 that I don't think you noticed. There has been a rewrite of the operating system

00:35:56.840 for the United States for sure. But I think maybe for people, maybe for reality. Here are some examples

00:36:06.080 of how the operating system of our entire reality has changed just in the last few years. Every bit

00:36:15.240 of this is newish in the last few years. Number one, when did you hear the idea of a talent stack?

00:36:25.160 Think about it. Think about the idea of a talent stack, the idea of combining talents so that you're not

00:36:31.420 the best in the world at any one thing. But you've collected some talents that work together well.

00:36:37.040 The way I collected my meager talents to be a cartoonist, I don't draw well. I'm not the funniest

00:36:42.560 person in the world. But there aren't too many people who can do all of that. So that was my talent

00:36:47.240 stack. So instead of trying to be the best in the world, have you noticed that the idea of a talent

00:36:53.620 stack has gone from something I wrote about in a book in 2013, how to fail at almost everything and

00:36:59.900 still win big, that one you see over my shoulder? From that book, have any of you noticed how influential

00:37:06.120 that's been? Have you noticed that the idea of a talent stack went from something in a book to something

00:37:14.440 like common knowledge in just a few years? And it's transformative. Because if you're, if you thought the

00:37:22.000 only way you could succeed was to be the best in the world at something and you knew you couldn't, and you

00:37:27.060 were right, because how many people can be the best in the world at anything, that was kind of

00:37:31.480 demotivating. But as soon as you realize that success is just a matter of assembling parts that

00:37:37.260 are available, skills, things you can learn quite easily, that's a whole new way of looking at the

00:37:43.640 world. How about the idea of systems versus goals? How many years ago was it that that wasn't a thing?

00:37:51.760 Now, I think people have talked about it in various ways forever, but when it came out in

00:37:57.020 that same book, how to fail at almost everything, it started to creep into the consciousness of the

00:38:03.460 world in a way that it had not until then. Now, part of that is because I'm a hypnotist as well as an

00:38:09.220 author. So if I write something, it has more chance of being influential just because I have the,

00:38:15.860 I've learned the skills in my skill stack of how to make things, you know, sticky. But have you noticed

00:38:22.840 that the idea of both talent stacks and systems being more important than goals have become

00:38:30.920 common knowledge? And when I say they've become common knowledge, I say that's when it becomes part

00:38:36.880 of the operating system. It's one thing when it's something that's in a book, but once it gets out of

00:38:42.740 the book and it, you know, takes over our minds, then it's the operating system. Now, what would the

00:38:50.140 world look like with just those two changes? That's it. Because before this, you had to, you had to have

00:38:57.460 enough money or whatever to get into a good school and college. And there were a few ways to succeed,

00:39:03.900 but they weren't available to everybody in the way that you'd want them to be. But now people know that

00:39:09.440 talent stacks and systems versus goals can be transformative, not just to society, but to

00:39:15.500 people. That's a big difference. How about this? A few years ago, you would have said facts are more

00:39:22.200 important than persuasion. Do you still say that? I think we understand now in 2020, something that I

00:39:31.260 said in 2013, and same book, had it failed almost everything. And it was, and in my book, Win Bigly, I said it

00:39:40.820 more clearly, and emphasize that persuasion is what is moving us, not facts. Facts, of course, are the most

00:39:48.860 important thing to the outcome. But we don't make decisions based on facts. We're just not that species. We

00:39:55.700 thought we were. 10 years ago, if I said, how do people make decisions? You'd say, well, they look at the facts,

00:40:01.000 they use their reason. What would you say today? Today, you'd say, well, they'll look at the facts,

00:40:06.680 and then they'll use their bias to make the decision, right? That's a big difference. We

00:40:11.960 understand now we are an irrational species in a way we didn't really know 10 years ago. I mean,

00:40:18.400 you always sort of knew it, but you thought it was other people, didn't you? Yeah, people are irrational,

00:40:24.520 specifically other people. But what you've learned recently is that, yeah, people are irrational,

00:40:29.760 you know, specifically other people, and also you, also you, also me. There's no, nobody gets an

00:40:39.640 exemption. We're all, we're all irrational. We're just trying to, we're trying to up our game. But

00:40:46.520 realizing you're irrational is the base requirement for improving your game, your thinking game, as it

00:40:54.740 were. That's a big difference. Imagine a world that went from thinking facts matter to our decision

00:41:00.460 to understanding they don't. How big is that? It's really big. It's really big. It's completely

00:41:08.060 transforms your entire experience of reality. How about this? How much do you trust your narrative

00:41:16.180 keepers? How much do you trust the news? You don't. 10 years ago, you probably said, well, if it's in the

00:41:24.680 news, it's probably true. Yeah, they can make some mistakes. But if it's in the news, it's probably

00:41:31.920 true. Now, what do you think? Now, you know, it's not true. You don't wonder if the news is accurate.

00:41:40.560 You know, it's not. And that's now common knowledge. President Trump did that for you.

00:41:47.460 President Trump took an illusion we were all under that the news was something like a legitimate

00:41:53.420 organization. And he taught us that it wasn't, that it was always an illusion, that the news is

00:42:01.120 a propaganda, you know, sort of experience. How about this? Do you trust science the way you used

00:42:12.120 to? Because I think what we've learned recently is that, yeah, you can, you can trust science as a

00:42:19.160 process. But number one, you don't know where you are in the process. It's a big problem, right?

00:42:25.380 We love science as a process of going from the unknown to, you know, learning something useful.

00:42:31.880 But you never quite know where you are on that journey. Are you in the middle, where you're still

00:42:38.540 confused, but it's different from where you started? Or have you reached the end, where you actually know,

00:42:44.720 you know what's going on, and it's not going to change? You don't really know. But there's a bigger

00:42:49.000 problem. We don't really trust science. We end up trusting scientists. And while I love science

00:42:58.720 as a process, what do we know about people who are explaining to us anything? Whether it's the news

00:43:06.840 they're explaining to us, or science they're explaining to us. Well, what we know now is that

00:43:11.100 it's being filtered through humans who are so flawed and so biased that it doesn't matter how good science

00:43:18.180 is, you're never going to know. Because the only thing you know is what a scientist tells you.

00:43:25.380 You don't know anything about science, unless you're directly involved in it. We know what the

00:43:30.920 scientists tell us. And we now learn to distinguish, right? I would say 10 years ago, you would have said

00:43:39.180 that the scientist and the science, while different concepts, you could treat them like they're the same,

00:43:45.480 right? Because if the scientists told you something 10 years ago, you'd say, oh, that's what

00:43:51.980 science says. What do you say now? Today, if a scientist tells you something, you're far more

00:43:59.720 likely to say, wait a minute, that's not necessarily science. That's a scientist who may be biased,

00:44:07.960 may be bought off, may be wrong, may disagree with people. But it's a different level of credibility.

00:44:13.520 And now we understand that. We didn't understand that before. Of course, there are big changes in

00:44:19.420 society. Commuting will never be the same. I don't think people will go back to the commuting ways

00:44:25.180 that they had, because it just was so unpleasant. The only reason that commuting was the thing that it

00:44:30.580 was, where it was not unusual for people to spend an hour each way to get to work at home,

00:44:36.740 two hours in many cases. I know people who commute two hours each way, every day. I think that's going

00:44:45.860 to go away, right? I mean, I don't see people going back to that. And here's the reason. I've taught you

00:44:51.880 before that one of the best ways to predict the future, just one of the things that's a good variable

00:44:57.500 to understand, is that people can get used to anything. If it sort of creeps up on you, you can

00:45:05.580 get used to it. It wasn't always that a commute took forever and you sat in traffic. You just sort of

00:45:11.520 got used to it. You hated it. You never got used to it in the sense that you didn't hate it.

00:45:17.440 But you sort of accepted it, because you got used to it. Then the pandemic comes,

00:45:23.260 and then suddenly you don't have to commute. Now you're not used to it, are you? Now commuting's

00:45:30.180 a big problem, because you're not used to it. After the pandemic's over, you're going to say to

00:45:35.280 yourself, what the heck did I ever, why was I doing that? It was crazy. I mean, now that we have the

00:45:42.520 right technology that you can work remotely, it just doesn't make any sense. So I don't see that ever

00:45:47.700 going back. Likewise, I don't see cities going back to what cities were. I don't know what cities

00:45:54.260 will become, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to live in one, especially because commuting doesn't

00:46:01.140 make sense either. So cities will change. I don't know how. But again, I'll go back to the Andrew Yang

00:46:08.000 running for, I think he's going to run for mayor of New York City. Nothing would be better for the

00:46:14.980 United States. And forget about what you think of Andrew Yang's, you know, party affiliation. Let's

00:46:20.880 say you're not a Democrat, so you just can't get on board with a Democrat thing. But who would be

00:46:28.940 smarter, better, more trusted, more qualified to do a little A-B testing and find out what a city can

00:46:36.340 become? Not what a city used to be, but what could a city become? What is the thing that's after the

00:46:43.280 pandemic? Can you think of anybody in the public domain who would be, who you would trust to wrestle

00:46:51.600 with that question? Because there's no right answer. Somebody's going to have to have some intuition,

00:46:56.920 some skills, some real ability to dig in and be creative and take some chances and all that stuff.

00:47:04.220 He's perfect. He's perfect. New York City, New York City, if you don't elect Andrew Yang,

00:47:11.200 you're crazy. You'd be absolutely crazy. I don't care who he's running against, 0.99

00:47:19.100 Republican or Democrat. I don't care who he's running against. You need to do this,

00:47:25.240 not just for New York City. You need to do it for the country. Because whatever New York City does,

00:47:31.240 everybody's going to watch, right? And it's the biggest thing. So if you can make it work in New

00:47:37.120 York City, there's a good reason you might be able to reproduce it. So I see just the fact that

00:47:43.420 there is an Andrew Yang, that he just exists. Just the fact that he exists and that he just paired

00:47:50.800 himself with this specific problem, one of the most important levers for the future.

00:47:56.820 You don't get to the golden age without re-engineering some basic stuff. As basic as UBI,

00:48:05.180 which, by the way, we just got used to. That's what the direct payments are for the coronavirus.

00:48:10.440 It's kind of a UBI, in a way. So that's coming. I think that the future, we will be able to beat

00:48:18.020 pandemics better. I think that what we learned from all of this, what we learned from the pandemic

00:48:24.420 probably will put us in really good shape for future pandemics, but also future viruses and

00:48:30.560 future collaborative science and collaborative medicine. I think we took a gigantic step forward

00:48:37.360 in terms of medical science, not to mention telehealth and things that changed because of

00:48:43.060 the pandemic. So now you can get a doctor on a video call, no matter what state you're in.

00:48:48.400 You know, shopping will always be different. Here's another big change. The rise of independent

00:48:55.880 voices. Let's say independent journalists, the Tim Pools of the world, independent voices,

00:49:03.420 the Joe Rogans of the world, independent... I'm not sure what you would call me. Does anybody have a

00:49:09.960 label for me? What would you call me? Tell me in the comments. I'll look for it. If you were to label me,

00:49:18.400 pundit? I'm not sure that pundit quite fits. Because when you say pundit, you're usually

00:49:25.400 thinking of somebody who's advocating one side or another. I don't know. Maybe that's me.

00:49:32.020 But the rise of independent voices to replace a broken corporate media is probably a really good

00:49:39.120 thing. It's probably a really good thing. And here's another thing that I don't think you quite

00:49:46.240 understand how important it is. Have you noticed that through my books and these live streams

00:49:54.400 primarily, that I've trained an army of better thinkers? I know that sounds like a pretty, I don't

00:50:03.760 know, egomaniac thing to say. But if you've experienced the last few years with me, I think

00:50:10.240 you'd agree. I think you would agree that I have succeeded in training a whole bunch of people. I

00:50:19.040 don't know how many. It's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. But at least hundreds

00:50:24.240 of thousands of people who have learned a different way to approach problems, and maybe a better way.

00:50:31.640 So I think that's bigger than you think. Because you don't have to get everybody on board to know

00:50:40.440 something is going to work. If you get a critical mass, and I think we're maybe there, of better

00:50:47.380 thinkers, that stuff will spread. So that's something to look forward to. I feel that television and

00:50:55.120 movies are being replaced by other entertainment, live stream, for example. On Christmas morning,

00:51:01.680 what will be the only live content that's new original content that's available for you to watch

00:51:10.540 on Christmas morning? Well, there'll be some news programs, right? But they're all going to be the

00:51:15.160 special holiday stuff you don't want to watch. But then there'll be me, because I'll be here

00:51:20.380 Christmas morning. I'll see you then. And I think that the independent people like me,

00:51:27.620 who just have some benefits that they can transmit, are a big deal in the world. Not just me, but

00:51:36.400 the whole idea of it. I think we're entering a phase where wokeness is jumping the shark like crazy.

00:51:44.160 Now, I'm in favor of wokeness. But like everything, there's such a thing as too much. I'm in favor of 0.93

00:51:55.620 ice cream. But if you ate a barrel of ice cream, you'd be sick and you might die. There's no such

00:52:02.120 thing, except for maybe money, I guess, or good looks. There are some things that you just can have

00:52:10.280 too much of. And wokeness is one of them. So I love the idea that any group of people can say,

00:52:19.700 hey, we would rather be referred to by this term. Please don't use this other term. We don't like

00:52:26.120 that. I'm okay with that. I think everybody should, just a basic element of respect is that

00:52:35.860 you should be able to be referred to in a respectful word or way that you like. But of

00:52:46.680 course, that can go too far and then it becomes coercive. And I think we're seeing that. So I think

00:52:51.260 the wokeness stuff is starting to hit the wall. It can't go forever. There's nothing that really

00:52:57.640 goes forever. Everything hits a resisting point. And I think the wokeness is near, but not at. 0.89

00:53:04.640 It's very near the point of resistance where it just won't go further than that because it can't. 1.00

00:53:10.620 It's just too stupid. So it's already reached a level of pure stupidity. And once everybody 1.00

00:53:18.320 realizes that, we'll say, all right, that's far enough. We like the fact that we don't have

00:53:23.540 insulting words for people, but let's keep it to that. But like I say, a lot of the wokeness 0.89

00:53:30.780 stuff is all positive. You just can't go too far with it. And then it becomes negative. We're also

00:53:35.580 entering a phase that I'll call a holographic reality, enhanced reality. We are right on the

00:53:41.880 cusp of merging the non-real and the real into one reality. It might be because you're wearing some

00:53:49.580 special glasses that show things in your reality that didn't exist. And it's going to change

00:53:55.460 everything. You'll be able to put on 3D glasses and attend a meeting almost in person. So those

00:54:02.520 technologies, which we always knew were coming, right? You know, 20 years ago, you knew all these

00:54:08.060 technologies were coming, but it just takes a while. We're almost there. This is sort of the coming

00:54:15.080 year. This enhanced reality and virtual reality stuff is going to go to another level. We also have

00:54:22.000 a shift of awareness about things such as the role of China in the world. Now we understand China as a

00:54:28.520 malign influence. I think we probably thought of them more as a, let's say, a friendly competitor or

00:54:35.900 something. And our understanding of what China really is and what their intentions are, because

00:54:43.000 they've made their intentions very clear too, unfortunately. Understanding that is a big, big

00:54:49.600 psychological and mental shift. But it was necessary to keep us safe.

00:54:57.400 And here's another one. Hallucinogens are being normalized, or in some cases legalized,

00:55:05.080 but at least normalized. Now, if you don't think it's a big deal that the safer kinds of hallucinogens are

00:55:14.660 being normalized and sort of being incorporated into medical science as well as our general

00:55:20.540 understanding of how to live, it's gigantic. It's gigantic. It's so gigantic, I don't even think I

00:55:30.940 can explain it. Because if you haven't experienced the hallucinogens, if you haven't experienced them,

00:55:40.340 to know what they do to your understanding of reality, it becomes permanent. And here's the way

00:55:46.700 I describe it. If you live a world, let's say you do mushrooms as an example, and you experience life

00:55:54.000 in a completely different subjective reality, while understanding that life didn't change.

00:56:00.640 That the actual stuff that was bothering you before, none of it changed. But you're a different

00:56:06.220 person for a while. Once you realize that you can live a completely different life with the same

00:56:12.940 world, it changes you permanently. Because then you understand how subjective your actual life is.

00:56:20.020 It's not the thing you're locked into. Your life, you are not locked into it, or the way you process it

00:56:26.680 in your mind. You can really change that. And that one experience teaches you that, and then that lesson

00:56:33.320 becomes something that reinforces itself through your life. So what seems like a smallish little

00:56:39.220 corner of the reality is, oh, by the way, some hallucinogens are being normalized. It's a little

00:56:45.960 bit at a time. Feels like not a big thing. It's a really big thing. It's a really big thing. And you

00:56:53.660 don't know. And by the way, if you want to find out how exaggerating, how much exaggeration there is

00:56:59.720 here, talk to somebody who has tried these things. That's all. Just talk to somebody who has the

00:57:06.960 experience and ask them if the change is permanent. And they'll probably tell you yes. They might not,

00:57:13.060 but they probably will. So this is what I would like to leave you with today. In summary,

00:57:22.680 in summary, United States is not held together by the stuff we thought held it together. It's not

00:57:33.140 because of the Constitution. It's not because of freedom. It's not because of our free press. It's

00:57:38.880 not because of any of it. We just intend to stay together as a country. And none of that's changed.

00:57:47.540 You know, you hear people talk about blah, blah, blah. Texas is going to spin off. But it doesn't want

00:57:53.860 to. Right? Not really. Texas doesn't really want to be its own country. It's something you say,

00:58:01.360 something you talk about. But given, you know, if the rest of the country just played fair,

00:58:08.520 Texas wants to be part of the United States. And keep this one message with you. The intentions

00:58:16.960 you put into the world will create your reality. And the intention that I put into the world right

00:58:24.980 now is that I want everybody in the United States, and again, you can generalize this to the world,

00:58:34.200 but let me just talk to Americans and in the United States. Black, Hispanic, Asian American,

00:58:42.940 old, young, rich or poor. LGBTQ, abled, disabled, differently abled. Every one of you. I choose you.

00:58:57.100 I hope you choose me. And that is my New Year's, actually Christmas Eve message for you.

00:59:05.920 Have a great Christmas. I will see you in the morning.

00:59:14.680 And that's all for you too, YouTube. I will see you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 24, 2020

Episode 1229 Scott Adams： I'll Tell You What Keeps America Together and How the #GoldenAge Can't be Stopped

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript