Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1235 Scott Adams： My Nobel Prize, China's Octopus Strategy, Those Stimulus Checks

00:00:00.000 Bum, bum, bum, bum. Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. It's time. It's time for

00:00:08.260 Coffee with Scott Adams. While we still have a little bit left in this year, you want to

00:00:13.820 get all the goodness out of it you can. Squeeze it. Squeeze it. Squeeze the goodness out of

00:00:20.560 2020, what little bit there was, and then savor it. That's right. Squeeze it out and

00:00:28.220 savor it. That's the advice for today. And all you need to enjoy today, to its

00:00:33.060 maximum extent, is a cup or a mug or a glass, tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or

00:00:38.280 flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And

00:00:44.680 join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the day thing that

00:00:47.780 makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens now. Go.

00:00:53.560 Oh, yes. Here's a little thing for you that you didn't know. Did you know that on Dilbert.com,

00:01:08.860 where every Dilbert comic that's ever been published is available for free, that you can search by

00:01:15.600 keywords. So if you wanted to find all the comics about a certain topic, 4G, 5G, passion, whatever,

00:01:24.780 you can just do a search. The comic will come up if you want to use it for a presentation.

00:01:30.380 Any professional use, you just click a button and you can license it for that. So in case you were

00:01:35.560 looking to spice up any presentations, are people doing presentations now? Is anybody doing PowerPoint,

00:01:44.800 slides, because of all the remote work? Do they work as well on Zoom? I don't know. I wonder if the

00:01:51.380 whole PowerPoint thing is down. I've told you before, one of the things I like to do, and I will

00:01:58.220 always be somewhat misunderstood for this, the story of my life to be misunderstood.

00:02:06.440 Well, I know, yes, I know you can do screen sharing on Zoom. I'm just wondering if it's as common to do

00:02:11.580 slideshows on Zoom as it would be in person. So I like to trace influence wherever I can. So if I

00:02:20.060 think I might have influenced something, I like to see, was that really me or were there other people

00:02:26.360 influencing in other ways? And so the interesting case of this, I've dug down a little bit more,

00:02:31.300 is the question of calling out passion as BS. Now, I did a little googling and the history of it's

00:02:42.400 kind of interesting. So let me tell you. So in 2013, my book had failed almost everything and

00:02:48.940 still wouldn't be came out. And one of the chapters was passion is BS. And I was telling people that

00:02:54.900 if they succeed, if they succeed, and something works out really well, they'll probably get pretty

00:03:00.300 passionate about it. So instead of searching for your passion, just do something that you know will

00:03:05.680 work and makes you money and makes you proud, and you'll find your passion that way. Now, in 2012, so that

00:03:17.980 was my book in 2013, which was based on a blog post I'd written sometime earlier. In 2012, a year before

00:03:27.760 that, sometime around the time I wrote my first blog post on it, Cal Newport's book came out so good

00:03:33.980 they can't ignore you. And I haven't read the book. So I can tell you with certainty that I wasn't

00:03:41.540 influenced by reading the book because I haven't read it. But I'm told that it's very similar. And that

00:03:46.840 would have come out prior to my book, about the same time as the blog post, but he would have written

00:03:53.480 the book, probably 2011 or so before the blog post. But even before that, so that was 2012. But even

00:04:00.780 before that, Mike Rowe, back in, there's a 2009 and somebody said a 2004 reference to it as well. But let's

00:04:09.500 say, mid or early 2000s, 2009, at least, but maybe 2004. He had talked about bringing your passion with

00:04:21.340 you instead of pursuing your passion, his point being that there are lots of dirty jobs, as he liked

00:04:27.640 to call it with his TV show. And that all of these jobs, you know, have, you know, they have a use,

00:04:35.580 they're important, they have to get done. And that it's better to just be good at something.

00:04:40.560 And the way he expressed it was to bring your passion with you. Now, that's a little different

00:04:46.140 than what I was saying. Because I was saying that, you know, you can't just bring your passion with you.

00:04:54.660 Because that's not much difference, different than saying follow your passion. Because if you could

00:05:02.000 be passionate about anything, that'd be pretty terrific. But how do you do that?

00:05:08.020 How do you just be passionate, and then just bring it with you? So I think the Mike Rowe thing,

00:05:13.940 while Mike Rowe is a national treasure, I'm a big, big fan of everything that Mike Rowe does,

00:05:19.400 I would say that the prescription of bring your passion with you is a little closer to the BS

00:05:27.160 than it is something you could use. In other words, if I told you, hey, just bring your passion

00:05:33.400 with you, what would you actually do? Right? If it doesn't change what you would do,

00:05:40.320 it's not really telling you something useful. So I don't know how you'd bring your passion with you

00:05:46.440 unless you were just naturally passionate about everything. So I think it's a better advice

00:05:52.780 to say that you just, if you just do something well, that eventually you're going to be happy

00:06:00.160 about the outcome. Whether you're passionate or not is an argument, but you'll be happy about your

00:06:04.800 life. Going back further, I found the first Dilber comic I could find using that same search thing I

00:06:12.920 talked about on Dilber.com. In 1998, I was mocking, in the comic strip Dilber, I was mocking passion.

00:06:20.840 So in 1998, I was calling out passion for BS. That's the first, the first printed place that

00:06:31.180 I've seen it. In 97 or so, the Dilber Principle came out. My book was a big bestseller. And it talked

00:06:38.960 about all the business practices being BS. So in the 90s, I kind of owned that argument that passion

00:06:46.900 and a lot of the other management buzzwords were BS. By the 2000s, it was turning into books and

00:06:55.680 sort of becoming a thing that people were saying. And by 2013, I kind of put a bow on it. So you can

00:07:02.180 see that this influence stuff is nearly impossible to trace accurately. Meaning that, could it be

00:07:11.780 that all the people mentioned from Scott Galloway was talking about this concept the other day?

00:07:18.280 Could it be that all of us sort of got to the same point independently? And the answer is, well,

00:07:27.460 you can't really be independent of the Dilber comic in the 90s. If you're old enough to remember the

00:07:34.140 90s, if you live through the 90s, it was hard to miss the Dilber comic. All right, if you're born today,

00:07:40.700 you might miss it. It's not as big a deal. But in the 90s, it was on all the magazine covers. And it

00:07:46.980 was, you know, it was just the biggest thing. So certainly, everybody was aware that I was calling

00:07:51.780 out passion and the other buzzwords for BS. But that doesn't mean I influenced anybody.

00:07:58.840 There's an idea called the zeitgeist, which is the idea that for some mysterious reason,

00:08:05.420 and the mysterious part doesn't mean magic. The mysterious part probably just means we don't know

00:08:11.040 why, as opposed to magic. And the mysterious part is there, it does seem that there are some kinds of

00:08:18.540 ideas that spring up in different parts of the world and in different people at the same time.

00:08:24.500 So apparently, that's a thing. Now, is it a coincidence? Is it just a coincidence that people

00:08:30.900 will have similar ideas at the same time? Probably, in some cases, it's just nothing but a coincidence.

00:08:37.880 Other times, probably lots of people are having the same idea, but you only notice a few of them.

00:08:43.600 And then you say, oh, just two people had this idea, but there might have been millions of them,

00:08:47.360 you just didn't notice them. But I would think that maybe the bigger effect

00:08:52.920 here is that sometimes you're just ready for things. Do you know what I mean? If something has

00:09:00.340 been going a certain way for a while, people are going to be ready for whatever is the opposite of

00:09:06.500 that message. So there's something about just the totality of the signals that we're all getting,

00:09:12.900 and many of us getting the same signals, because we watch, for the most part, the same popular media

00:09:18.640 in some form. So I think there is something that suggests certain ideas by the atmosphere.

00:09:26.820 Like there's just stuff happening that makes you think of an idea, but it makes other people think

00:09:31.320 of it at the same time. So I remind myself of this whenever I think I have an original idea.

00:09:38.140 The odds of it actually being original are really low. Now, I've told you before

00:09:44.700 that the value of a good idea is, tell me, in the comments, what is the economic value,

00:09:55.380 let's just say economic value, of a great idea? A great idea. Like a really, really great idea.

00:10:04.320 Whether it's a business idea or something that could be commercialized, what is the value of it?

00:10:09.640 Yeah, zero, right. So you've been trained well. The value of a great idea is zero. It's all about

00:10:18.640 implementation. You would do better implementing a pretty good idea, or just a solid idea, than you

00:10:25.700 would doing a bad job implementing a great idea. And by the way, nobody really knows what great ideas

00:10:32.800 are until they happen. Usually it's after the fact. You know for sure they were great.

00:10:39.640 So anyway, there's a Hilaria story. Hilaria. Have you been watching the story about

00:10:47.520 Alec Baldwin's wife? Her name is Hilaria. And apparently she was born Hillary. So her given

00:10:57.880 name was Hillary, but I guess her family called her Hilaria. And I don't know what's true in this

00:11:03.620 story. So I'm not going to allege that one version of this is truer than the other. I'll just tell

00:11:08.700 you the story. So somebody is calling out Alec Baldwin's wife for being some kind of a fraud. 0.63

00:11:18.380 And again, this is not me saying it. I don't know what's true and what's not in this story.

00:11:24.220 But the allegation is that early on, she would pretend to have a Spanish accent and that she was

00:11:31.220 Spanish by birth and that she had some kind of, she came here from Spain or something. Turns out

00:11:38.520 that's not so true. Number one, she's not Spanish. Number two, didn't grow up in Spain. Number three,

00:11:49.380 when she says her parents live in Spain or Mallorca, I think, they moved there later. So it had nothing to

00:11:56.100 do with her growing up. She grew up in Massachusetts. So she was a white girl named Hillary who grew up in 1.00

00:12:03.060 Massachusetts. And there's some videos of her early before she was as well known as she is now as Alec

00:12:10.840 Baldwin's wife, in which she was actually talking in a Spanish accent. But then there's more modern videos

00:12:18.320 of her no accent. And she's tried to explain it a little bit. And Alec Baldwin has sort of told people

00:12:28.140 to leave her alone. And in my opinion, this is the smallest story in the world. I wish Hilaria well,

00:12:37.900 and I wish her kids well. I wish, I even wish Alec Baldwin well, even though he's sort of annoying in

00:12:45.180 terms of the Trump stuff sometimes. So I don't wish anybody bad. And I don't think this is important.

00:12:50.640 And I also don't think it's any of our business, really. Whether or not she put on a little bit of

00:12:56.520 artifice is interesting. It's interesting. And it's funny. But it's not important in any way. So we

00:13:06.420 shouldn't take it as important. But I would just put this in a larger story that it feels as if

00:13:12.960 everybody who is either a Trump supporter or a Trump critic is meeting a bad end. Does it feel

00:13:21.000 like that? It doesn't matter which side you're on. If you're well known as either a Trump critic or a

00:13:27.740 Trump supporter, I feel as if you've got a target on your back. And there's going to be some bad luck

00:13:34.120 that comes your way, which might not be an accident, right? Because there'll be people who want to get

00:13:38.400 you. That's how they get you. And I keep wondering, is this ahead for me? Or has it already happened?

00:13:48.320 I'm not sure. Why is it that people are there? They're dropping like flies, no matter which side

00:13:55.500 they're on. And I've got to feel like I must have been targeted so many times, just as any prominent

00:14:03.560 Trump supporter has been. And I wonder, have they tried to take me down and it didn't work?

00:14:11.440 Or did they not try? What do you think? Do you feel that the, I don't know who is they in this case,

00:14:19.200 just random people who might want to take people down for being on the other side?

00:14:23.260 Do you feel that anybody tried to take me down?

00:14:25.160 There were lots and lots of, you know, hit, hit articles and bad tweets and stuff. But I don't

00:14:33.360 know if, I don't know if anybody took a good try at that. That might be ahead of me. So if I get

00:14:40.060 taken out, if so, if somebody takes me out, don't be surprised. Have you noticed there's a lot of the

00:14:49.200 news is about Jake Tapper this week, because he said some things about Kayleigh McEnany, not telling the

00:14:54.540 truth, etc.? Does it seem to you, and this will be a case of me doing some mind reading and speculation, it's not

00:15:02.200 something I could know. But does it seem to you like the hosts of CNN are jealous that they're not the stars? I feel

00:15:11.400 like they feel bad that they only get to talk about the news, as opposed to being the star of the news. Do you get

00:15:18.280 that feeling? Again, it would just be our own imaginations. We don't know what's in anybody's heads.

00:15:24.540 But it just feels like when you're watching it. Are you jealous that you're not the star of the show?

00:15:32.240 You don't like just being the narrator, right? Kind of want to be part of the show, which would be

00:15:38.660 normal. If I if I had that job, I'd want to be part of the show. I'm sure I'd feel exactly the same way.

00:15:45.380 But it's also good for your career if you're if you have a higher profile. So there's also a

00:15:52.440 functional reason to do it. What do you think of the odds that Joe Biden will get the Nobel Peace

00:15:58.160 Prize? Seems pretty high, doesn't it? It doesn't matter what he does, he's gonna get it. Well,

00:16:06.760 let me share with you a little prize I got back in 1997. This is called the Reuben Award. R-E-U-B-E-N, 0.98

00:16:19.960 named after Rube Goldberg, who was a famous cartoonist of the past. And Rube Goldberg,

00:16:27.260 whose name is on the trophy. So this is the top award in cartooning. So this would be like the

00:16:35.500 Academy Award, but for a cartoonist. Now for years, when I was a new cartoonist, I dreamed,

00:16:43.800 I dreamed of someday, someday, I will win the award for top cartoonist. And then one day,

00:16:54.160 I won the award for top cartoonist. I in the year I won that for top cartoonist. I also won the top

00:17:02.120 award for top comic strip. So I won the top of my specific field, but also the number one

00:17:08.580 in the whole field of cartooning. So it was the biggest, the biggest award you could possibly get.

00:17:15.600 Let me tell you how I felt. Nothing. Nothing. I thought that if I would win this frickin' award,

00:17:25.920 it would make me feel good for the rest of my life, or something like that. I thought that winning

00:17:31.580 this thing would feel just so satisfying. Like, ah, finally, I've achieved this goal.

00:17:42.700 The moment you win it, and it happens instantly. It really does happen instantly. The moment you win

00:17:49.180 this thing, it doesn't mean anything. All of its value just goes out of it. And then you realize

00:17:59.220 that winning this award was some people sitting around who said, who's going to win it this year?

00:18:06.660 Well, who have we picked in prior years? Well, we don't want to give it to those same people again.

00:18:11.880 This literally happened. Literally, they didn't want to give it to the same people who keep winning

00:18:17.140 it, because then Calvin and Hobbes and Bill Watterson would just win it year after year.

00:18:21.860 Because at the time, you know, when I won this award, Calvin and Hobbes was, you know, still

00:18:27.160 in its heyday. Do you think any cartoonist would have won an award if all it mattered is who's the

00:18:34.300 best cartoonist? Because it would have been, yeah, it would have been a Gary Larson. It would have been

00:18:40.880 Bill Watterson for just straight cartooning. But because they wanted to give the award to other

00:18:46.700 people, they decided it was my year. And it was just some people sitting around saying, well, if we

00:18:53.080 give the award to this guy, he's got a big name, so we'll attract people to the award ceremony. And what

00:18:59.920 we really want is a good award ceremony. So the entire thing, the entire thing had no meaning. It was

00:19:08.900 just something that they did to promote their own event. And I got dragged into it by being a high

00:19:14.520 profile at the time. Now, similarly, similarly, prior to making a big with cartooning and with Dilbert,

00:19:25.000 I thought that if I ever achieved a certain dollar amount of net worth, I would, I would be the

00:19:33.060 happiest guy. Like all my life, I really, really wanted to make a lot of money. And I didn't know

00:19:39.820 how, but I knew I did not want to be average income-wise. I wanted to have a lot of money.

00:19:47.360 And from my earliest memories, I always had been aiming at exactly that. And then one day,

00:19:54.000 after I got a big publishing contract, I got a check in the mail. I won't tell you how big it was,

00:20:01.840 but it was national news at the time. There were headlines about it. And it was a big publishing

00:20:07.920 deal because Dilbert was pretty hot and made a lot of news articles. And I got that check. Now,

00:20:14.460 of course, keep in mind, this is over 20 years ago. So a check that's really, really big and 20 years

00:20:20.520 ago doesn't look the same today. But it was a really, really big check. And it was big enough

00:20:25.400 that I said to myself, I don't, I never have to worry about money again. It was actually big enough.

00:20:32.600 No, it wasn't, no, it wasn't 25 million. That would have been nice. But it was big enough that

00:20:38.060 I knew that if I didn't want to, I didn't really even have to work again. I mean, I wouldn't have

00:20:44.820 lived in, I would not have been able to live in splendor for the rest of my life, but I wouldn't have

00:20:51.880 had to work if I didn't want to. And when I had achieved that goal, even the specific dollar amount,

00:20:58.420 that's the thing, I had a specific dollar amount, and I hit it. And it happened sort of all at once.

00:21:05.100 The moment it happened, how did I feel? Achieving the biggest, the biggest goal of my whole life.

00:21:13.280 How did I feel when I achieved it? Depressed. Instantly, instantly depressed. And one of the worst

00:21:24.040 bouts of depression I've ever experienced, actually. Now, I don't have depression, clinical

00:21:30.780 depression, except that a few weeks of every year, something's going wrong. So I seem to have a

00:21:36.460 periodic, you know, every now and then, a few weeks are pretty bad. But I don't have anything like

00:21:42.300 clinical depression. I'm nowhere near that category. But this is the most depressed I've ever felt.

00:21:48.540 And it was after I'd achieved my biggest goal. Why? Because that was my organizing principle for my

00:21:55.100 whole life. Every decision I'd made, in terms of career-wise, was all aimed at this one thing.

00:22:03.620 And then I got it. The purpose of my life disappeared. I was like the dog that chased the car and caught it.

00:22:14.920 Well, now what the hell do I do? I was completely lost. My whole life, I had to reinvent it, basically.

00:22:24.360 And the way I chose to do it was following, I think, instinct, in a sense. And I believe that we're all designed

00:22:33.560 the following way. That first, you have to take care of yourself. Let's say you're in mortal danger, right?

00:22:39.520 Your first priority is live. You know, I got to get out of this danger. So you're not thinking about

00:22:44.880 helping other people, right? If you're in mortal danger, you just got to get out of it. But once

00:22:49.240 you've taken care of yourself, you can start thinking about maybe your family, people close to

00:22:54.780 you, taking care of them. As things get better for you, maybe you take care of them. You say, well,

00:22:59.640 what can I do for the town? What can I do for the country? What can I do for the world?

00:23:04.900 And so I found myself just being drawn down that funnel, almost like I didn't have a choice.

00:23:12.780 Because once I had literally achieved everything I wanted, because I should have had higher goals,

00:23:19.740 I suppose, but I got what I wanted. And I immediately found myself biologically drawn toward making my

00:23:30.060 impact more external. In other words, instead of getting stuff for myself, I was done. I needed to just

00:23:37.800 biologically, I felt the impulse to help other people. Now, I'd like to think that what I experience is

00:23:44.620 universal or close to it, that anybody who would be in my experience would start thinking externally, because

00:23:52.600 I hope we're all wired that way. I just hope that's natural. And so I started to look for ways to find

00:24:02.160 my, let's say, find my satisfaction and meaning by being useful to other people. And the second,

00:24:11.800 one of the things that happened there is I got married and tried to be useful in the context of a

00:24:17.680 family. Because if you can, you know, make one family work, that's a pretty big accomplishment,

00:24:24.680 right? If everybody could make one family work, it'd be a great world. But during that time when I was

00:24:30.040 making the one family work as best I could, I didn't have as much energy for the external world. And once I

00:24:38.340 did, once I was divorced and things there were, let's say, not, I couldn't affect them as much.

00:24:44.860 Uh, I literally felt lost again, because it was the second time I'd lost my entire meaning of life.

00:24:54.360 So at first I'd been chasing wealth and then I got it. And then I wanted to have something like

00:24:59.700 a meaningful, you know, family life. And then once that ended, not, not in a good way, it was divorce.

00:25:06.880 But once it ended, I had once again lost my meaning. And I remember the thing, I remember actually

00:25:13.860 the day that I got it back. And again, I think that it's biological. I don't think, I don't think

00:25:20.540 this was a mental process. I think my biology was, you know, pulling me along just the way it would

00:25:26.840 pull me along to take care of a family. Once that wasn't there, it pulled me along. And I actually,

00:25:32.480 I, um, made a promise to myself and to the world. And I realized that at that point, I no longer

00:25:44.060 belonged to myself, if that makes any sense. I belonged to the world. Because any benefit that

00:25:53.940 I could produce was probably going to end up external because it was, you know, I didn't

00:25:59.500 have the internal reason anymore. And when I made that decision to realize that what I'm going to do

00:26:09.400 for the rest of my time is figure out some way to help other people in whatever way makes sense for

00:26:16.860 my, my particular skills, I found meaning again. And so when I do this, or when I write the books,

00:26:24.920 it's a lot of work. You know, it's not easy in a sense, but it has so much meaning that it's

00:26:32.040 pleasurable in its own way. So I don't know why I brought that up, but it seemed important for some

00:26:39.060 reason. So, oh, I was triggered by the fact that Trump is being mocked with some fake news, New York

00:26:45.760 Magazine, is doing this fake news story that claims that President Trump is telling his dumb

00:26:51.640 supporters that he won two Nobel Prizes, when in fact he was, he was nominated twice, but has not

00:26:58.840 won a prize. Now it's fake news because while he did once speak of it, let's say unclearly, he obviously

00:27:08.520 knows he didn't win the prize. I don't think he's trying to convince his supporters he really won the

00:27:14.800 prize. But being nominated twice, that's a pretty big deal. I'd be bragging if I'd been nominated

00:27:21.240 twice. So it's just fake news. Let's talk about China. The more we learn about China, the more

00:27:27.740 distressing it is. And I have to give it to China. Their long-term strategy is really, really good.

00:27:36.860 really good. And it goes like this. I think they've referred to it by some other term, like a,

00:27:45.540 like, what is it? Universal war or something. But the idea is that everything the country does is in

00:27:52.340 the context of trying to dominate other countries. So it's like a permanent war footing, but it's not

00:27:59.720 just military, it's economic, it's influence, it's cyber, it's everything they can do. And when you

00:28:07.500 see all the ways that they've succeeded in this, and you see that they have a, you know, they have a

00:28:12.140 hundreds of years span, like they're planning hundreds of years in advance. Yeah, one belt, 0.92

00:28:18.800 one road. What's the Belt and Road Initiative, somebody's saying. But when you see how much influence

00:28:27.440 they already have, it is shocking. And here's the main thing you need to know. Money and military

00:28:37.100 are now basically the same thing. Now, they're used differently, and they have their different

00:28:42.620 purposes, etc. But the more money you have, the more your economy is strong, the stronger you are

00:28:51.180 to defend yourself and also to dominate other countries. And what China has going for it is that

00:28:56.020 its natural size should get it to the point where the Chinese government has more money than anybody

00:29:03.640 else. Now, at the moment, the United States collectively probably has more money and resources

00:29:09.980 than than anybody else who can control, you know, one pot of anything. But eventually, there's no way

00:29:16.880 around the fact that China is just so big, that if they just grow naturally, and we grow naturally, 0.91

00:29:23.500 they're going to be bigger, and it's not going to take long. And already, they have so much money

00:29:29.460 that they can corrupt every every element of society. Let me ask you this. If I had more business

00:29:38.120 in China, I think I've got a few clients over there for English speaking newspapers, nothing important.

00:29:44.680 They don't do much licensing or books. But imagine if you would that I'll just pick a number. Imagine if

00:29:51.660 25% of my income came from China. And that wouldn't be unusual for a lot of businesses, right? So they

00:30:01.180 might either have manufacturing there, or they might want to have a big market there, or they already do,

00:30:07.200 etc. But imagine me doing exactly what I'm doing now talking on live stream, but 25% of my income

00:30:15.880 comes from China. Do I say the same things? Nope. No. No. Because even I would be really reluctant

00:30:26.300 to give up 25% of my income just to make a point on one topic. Now, I hate China more than most of you.

00:30:36.400 You know, my stepson died from fentanyl and other stuff. And so I blame China for that. So I've got a 0.98

00:30:42.880 personal beef with China. But I don't think I would be going after them nearly as hard 1.00

00:30:49.940 if I had an actual, you know, meaningful financial interest. I just wouldn't. Now,

00:30:57.580 wouldn't I love to tell you that I'm the kind of guy, hey, people, I'm the kind of guy that would do

00:31:03.760 any, you know, I'll do what's right. I won't be influenced by money. But that's not the real world.

00:31:09.040 The real world, even if you already have money, you're influenced by money. Even if you don't need

00:31:14.900 any more money, you're still influenced by money. It would be great if we could turn that off, but we

00:31:20.440 really can't. And you're not even always aware of it, right? Because you're making millions of choices

00:31:26.180 a minute about what to do and what not to do. And it would be really easy for me to not mention

00:31:31.800 that China is the biggest threat to the United States, and that they do clearly intend to destroy 0.98

00:31:38.980 us. Now, let me say that as clearly as possible. China's intention, as far as I can tell, is to

00:31:46.600 destroy the United States in the long, long run, meaning that to dominate us and to make the United 0.99

00:31:53.300 States unimportant compared to China's influence in the world. And it looks like they're on a path to do 0.99

00:31:59.500 that. It would be hard to imagine that they would not succeed, because they have a gigantic advantage.

00:32:07.540 Their economy is just so gigantic. So if we don't find a way to make more money than them,

00:32:14.640 or to shut them out from our technology development, we are absolutely screwed. Maybe not in my lifetime,

00:32:23.240 but if you're 30 years old, definitely in your lifetime, you would be Chinese. You want to hear a 0.98

00:32:28.980 scary thought? I thought of this yesterday. Imagine if you would, China somehow got like actual control 0.98

00:32:36.140 of the United States. You could argue that they have a lot of control because they have money and

00:32:41.660 every politician basically is bought by China, except Trump, as far as I can tell. Trump might

00:32:47.480 be the only politician who's not bought off by China. And so we're seeing this happen now,

00:32:56.300 right in front of us, China taking over the world. And if we don't treat it like we're right in the 1.00

00:33:03.660 middle of an actual war, we don't have a chance. So anyway, the thing I realized is that if China 0.93

00:33:09.860 could control the United States today, they would kill me. Actually, literally, physically,

00:33:18.140 no joke, no hyperbole, no exaggeration whatsoever. If they already controlled the United States,

00:33:26.300 they would kill me on week one. You might be okay, because you haven't spoken up. But I've spoken

00:33:33.020 up. I'm dead. I'm physically dead on week one, if China controls the United States. 0.82

00:33:41.240 Um, so that's how much control they have. And, uh, the beauty of their strategy is the very much

00:33:51.660 like the, uh, alleged, but not proven election fraud, which is only alleged. And there's no court

00:34:01.420 proven proof. Are you hearing that? I'm saying that so I don't get censored. Uh, obviously the

00:34:07.880 situation of the election, uh, uh, invites massive fraud. So if massive fraud had been invited by the

00:34:16.260 system because it was easy and it was profitable and you could certainly get away with it and it

00:34:20.700 didn't happen and it didn't happen, I wouldn't, I don't know how to understand that world, but let's

00:34:27.120 say, let's agree there's no court proof that it happened. It's just sort of impossible to imagine it

00:34:32.640 didn't happen, right? Um, I don't even know where I was going with this point. Uh, we're talking about,

00:34:39.980 uh, China. Oh, so the China strategy is like the alleged election fraud strategy. If the election

00:34:50.300 fraud happened, if it did, in all likelihoods, it happened in small ways in a lot of places so that

00:34:58.500 if you found any one place that happened, it wouldn't be enough to change the election. So the

00:35:03.460 court would say, yeah, that's fraud, but you know, the part you found was small, so we can't do anything

00:35:09.440 about it. So it looks like China has packetized their war as well, because if China did like a

00:35:17.620 massive push on any one thing, that'd be a problem, right? Suppose they put all of their energy into cyber

00:35:25.020 war. Well, that would be an actual war. And we'd say, what are you doing? There's, there's like this

00:35:31.580 gigantic cyber war. It's all already pretty big, but I imagine it could be bigger. So we would treat

00:35:37.260 that as like war. But what if it's a little bit of cyber war? Maybe you could say it's a lot, but it's

00:35:43.660 not over the line where we have to start bombing them. And there's a little bit of bribing, but not so

00:35:50.720 much, we're going to stop trading with them. There's a little bit of cheating on the trade,

00:35:56.200 but not so much that nobody wants to stop trading with them. There's a little bit of influence by,

00:36:03.080 let's say, buying a lot of shares of media properties in the United States. Do you know

00:36:07.440 how much of our media properties are owned by China? A lot. But if you only looked at that by itself,

00:36:14.620 you'd say, yeah, that's a problem. But by itself, it's not such a big problem. So this,

00:36:22.240 this packetized war, where they're attacking us literally on every front where you can be attacked,

00:36:29.100 they're sending us fentanyl. Imagine if they sent us more fentanyl. So the amount they're sending now

00:36:36.080 is killing what, 50,000 Americans a year. Imagine if they upped that to 2 million. Well, then it's war.

00:36:43.180 That's actual war. That's actual war. If 2 million people a year were being killed in this country from

00:36:48.800 their fentanyl, we would actually militarily respond. But 50,000 a year, they found our sweet spot.

00:36:57.400 Just enough to hurt. Not enough that you want a nuclear war. Right? Because right now it's only,

00:37:06.180 well, my stepson died, but maybe yours didn't. If your kid didn't die, it's not your biggest problem.

00:37:15.560 Right? I mean, the reason I have such an attitude about it is my kid died. You would too. And so

00:37:23.060 they have this brilliant strategy of packetizing all of their evil. So it's just small enough

00:37:30.200 that you don't nuke their fucking bastard asses. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Now, I'd like to

00:37:41.200 think that the United States is giving as good as it's getting. I don't know that that's the case.

00:37:45.960 Because we hear about what China does. We don't hear what we do to China. But I'd like to think it's 1.00

00:37:50.900 a lot. And if it's not, it ought to be. Let's talk about this, the checks. So President Trump

00:37:59.920 is doing something politically clever, which is he's pushing for the larger dollar amount for the

00:38:06.680 direct checks to individuals. And when I say he's doing the smart thing, let me explain to you

00:38:13.620 politics. It's very complicated. If you're going to promise the public a dollar amount, a check,

00:38:20.080 always go for the big one. I know that's hard to understand, because politics is complicated.

00:38:28.800 But let me say it again. If you have a choice, always go for the big one. That will never be

00:38:36.220 wrong. Politically, it'll never be wrong. So Trump has exactly the right political instinct that the

00:38:42.360 $2,000 right is the right number for him to be remembered by, not the $600 thing. That looks like

00:38:49.260 just a failure and not even trying. Now, but what is the counter argument? Let's go to CNN and read

00:38:57.240 the counter argument for why $2,000 checks should not be given. Because you know, if President Trump

00:39:04.700 wants it, they're going to want to argue the other side. So what is the argument against the $2,000?

00:39:13.860 Well, let me check CNN. No argument. There's no argument against it on CNN.

00:39:23.160 Let's flip over to Fox News. Fox News, do you have an argument against the $2,000 checks? Yes. Yes,

00:39:32.720 they do. They have a Republican on and the Republican says, why would we be giving $2,000 checks to rich

00:39:40.280 people who didn't lose their jobs? To which I said, what? We were going to give the $2,000 check to just

00:39:49.180 everybody? If you're an adult, you get $2,000. If you're a couple, you get $4,000. And I thought to

00:39:55.900 myself, you're kidding, right? That's not really the plan, is it? Because I had assumed, maybe

00:40:03.520 incorrectly, it sounds, I had assumed that they had some kind of a needs test. I don't know how you'd do

00:40:10.160 it. Because if you did it based on last year's income tax, that doesn't match the fact that you

00:40:15.900 lost your job this year. So how would you exactly document in a massive, fast way that you deserve it

00:40:23.980 and I don't? And I guess that's the problem, right? Maybe the, somebody says $75,000 a year.

00:40:31.780 I don't, can you fact check that? Because the Republican senator's name, I don't remember,

00:40:37.700 who was on talking about it, acted as if there was no income check. Now what he did say, so maybe I'm,

00:40:45.140 I'm going to modify in real time here, because based on your comments, I'm thinking that what he meant

00:40:51.160 was, check me if this, if I'm wrong, what he meant then was that if you made $75,000 or whatever,

00:41:00.340 but you hadn't lost your job, maybe you shouldn't get to $2,000. So is the, is the problem just that

00:41:07.900 if you still had a job, why are you getting $2,000 when there are people who don't even have any job,

00:41:13.640 right? Somebody says limited based on AGI. Yep, we didn't get it. Well, but you're not talking about

00:41:24.220 the current checks, right? I know the old, the last, the last version had a needs check. Anyway,

00:41:30.780 so do a fact check with me on that. But let me add this. If it's true that people who

00:41:37.080 are over that amount were to get a check, let's say for convenience, the government just said,

00:41:44.640 and I'm assuming this is not the case, right? But assume they said this, we'll just give a $2,000

00:41:51.420 check to every adult. Could you depend on people who were well off to re-gift that same $2,000

00:42:00.540 to something local that needed it? In other words, if, if I got a $2,000 check

00:42:06.220 and the president or somebody else said, look, we don't have time to decide if you needed the check,

00:42:14.480 but do us a favor, be a patriot. If your income is about the same as it was before the pandemic,

00:42:21.520 take your check and figure out the best way to apply it locally. Whatever that is,

00:42:27.500 might be the food bank, might be something else. Could you depend on wealthy people to do that?

00:42:33.620 Well, not all of them, of course. Some wealthy people will just be busy or they'll just cash the

00:42:38.740 check or whatever. But I would think that the vast majority would say, yeah, I don't deserve this money.

00:42:47.080 You know, that wasn't the purpose. I'll be happy to find a way to give my $2,000 to the community in

00:42:53.080 the best way. I feel as if 80% would do it. At least above a certain income, 80% would do it.

00:43:01.400 You know, if you're at, if you're at $76,000 a year, or let's say you're 75 and you get the check,

00:43:09.320 or you're 76 and you get the check, you know, that's an arbitrary cutoff.

00:43:15.960 All right. So I guess I don't know enough about that, but my point stands that the news is not

00:43:20.500 reporting this well enough that we even understand the topic. But I guess Bernie Sanders is pushing

00:43:25.520 for the $2,000 at the same time as, as the same time as Trump is. So Trump and Bernie Sanders on

00:43:33.720 the same side with this $2,000 stuff, which I favor completely. How many of you, here's,

00:43:43.140 here's a weird random question. So yesterday I had an experience. I won't, I won't describe the

00:43:51.000 details in which a major part of my assumption of reality, let's say my personal reality was

00:44:00.600 challenged, meaning that I found out I was completely wrong on something so basic to my understanding of

00:44:09.020 my life, that it just blew me away. But here's the funny thing. It's not even the first time this month that

00:44:17.680 that's happened. I've had my entire understanding of, of reality, or at least my place in it,

00:44:25.340 completely scrambled. I feel like five times this year, like I've never seen before, just really,

00:44:35.480 really basic assumptions about reality. And, and my place in it specifically, just blown away.

00:44:43.780 Have any of you had this experience that you've lost, you've lost more of your illusions this year

00:44:50.880 than any other time? And where's the slaughter meter? You know, the, so part of my annoying reality

00:45:01.060 now is that all the people who believe that there was a fair election are coming over to mock me for

00:45:06.760 predicting that Trump won. I'm not going to, I'm not going to concede that Trump got less votes.

00:45:15.020 I mean, in terms of the electoral college thing, I'm not going to concede that he got, he got less

00:45:20.580 votes. I will concede that there was an election. I will concede that there was an official process.

00:45:27.140 I conceded early on by congratulating Biden when the networks were calling it. I'm certainly on board

00:45:35.800 with the fact that the process is going to march forward, whatever. But don't ask me to accept

00:45:41.840 that that election was valid. And, and, and let me, let me go stronger. If you're trying to force me to

00:45:49.780 say that election was valid when it obviously wasn't. Obviously. Put the mirror, put some earmuffs

00:45:57.580 on the kids if you would like to hear some cursing. Would you like to hear some cursing? Little holiday 1.00

00:46:02.960 cursing? Put the earmuffs on the kids. Here it comes. If you're telling me I can't say out loud in public

00:46:12.260 that the election was obviously fraudulent, my, my statement based on the fact that the setup

00:46:18.800 of how the election is designed guarantees massive fraud. It can't go any other way just because it's

00:46:25.520 possible. If it weren't possible, then I'd say maybe it didn't happen. And if there were no profit

00:46:31.440 for doing it, in other words, there's no upside, I'd say, well, yeah, it's possible, but nobody's going

00:46:36.440 to do it because there's no point to it. But if it's both possible, and there's a gigantic upside.

00:46:43.060 Yeah, of course it happened. Massively. Don't know if it changed the result. Don't know if it's

00:46:51.640 always changed the result. There's lots of stuff we don't know. But stop fucking pretending it was a

00:46:58.540 fair election. We all know it was a fucking fraudulent election. We do know we don't live

00:47:06.420 in anything like a republic, or anything like a democracy. We don't. That is a fucking lie. And

00:47:14.080 don't you tell me that I can't say in public that the election was completely bogus. Now,

00:47:23.980 certainly bogus in the sense that it doesn't have credibility with much of the public, and I'm in that

00:47:29.920 category. But if you ask me, why didn't the courts find all that proof, to which I say, you're just on

00:47:39.220 the wrong topic. If you get on the right topic, maybe we can talk. The topic is that by its design,

00:47:46.880 there had to be fraud. That's it. I'm done. If you want to talk about what somebody else, who is not me,

00:47:53.160 did or did not do in some court case that had nothing to do with my point, knock yourself out.

00:47:59.960 But I'm not part of that conversation. All right. So there's that.

00:48:09.480 What do you think is going to happen in Georgia? I keep, I was wondering why there weren't as many

00:48:14.260 predictions. But even CNN in an opinion piece say they think that Republicans will win. Do you believe

00:48:20.640 that? I mean, I don't, I don't have a reason to believe it or disbelieve it. But if you believe

00:48:25.840 that fraud is possible and profitable, and it's easy to get away with, I'm not sure that Georgia is 0.99

00:48:32.260 going to go our, well, your way, if you're Republican. I've got a feeling that the cheaters are really

00:48:42.000 making a tough decision in the coming week or so, don't you think? So suppose you were, hypothetically,

00:48:48.440 suppose you were a trickster and you were planning to steal the election in Georgia. You were planning

00:48:55.100 to do it. You know how. You're all set up. You can do it. You know you can do it. But you know

00:49:03.220 everyone's watching. Everyone's watching this one. So if you were going to try some voter fraud,

00:49:10.240 would you do it on this one? It's an interesting question because the stakes are sky high. So given

00:49:20.180 that the stakes are so high, that suggests yes. Given that it's possible, even with as much scrutiny on

00:49:27.860 it as there will be, also suggests it's going to happen. So the two conditions for massive fraud are,

00:49:34.560 is it possible? And, you know, meaning you can get away with it, or you have an expectation you can

00:49:41.640 get away with it, even if you did get caught. And that there are lots of people involved, so there's

00:49:47.180 always somebody bad, willing to do bad stuff. And that there's a big upside.

00:49:50.660 My prediction is there should be massive fraud. There should be. Because all the conditions to have it

00:50:03.560 exist, and all of the conditions to stop it do not exist. There's nothing in place that I'm aware of that

00:50:11.500 would stop it. Because if we could stop it, we would have stopped it in the national election. If we knew how to

00:50:17.380 stop any of this, it wouldn't be happening. So while I understand the idea that Republicans usually come

00:50:25.760 out stronger in these kinds of elections, and so the history, you know, suggests that the Republicans

00:50:32.260 should win, we might be in a position where they'll just steal it. And there won't be a damn thing you can

00:50:40.960 do about it. Because they'll packetize it, just like China, just like the national election. They'll make 0.98

00:50:46.620 sure that whatever you find individually will be small. So no change. So I don't know if I'm even going to talk

00:51:02.180 about that. Here's a thing I found out the other day. Did you know that your testosterone level is related to

00:51:13.360 your confidence? Did you know that? You probably did, right? But it's true for both male and female.

00:51:20.140 That might be the part you didn't know. So your testosterone level, even if you're female,

00:51:26.560 can affect your sex drive and your confidence, etc. Did you know that in a woman's monthly cycle 0.99

00:51:33.660 that there is one week in which her testosterone is lowest? Did you know that? Yeah, it's the week 1.00

00:51:41.220 before the actual period starts. So in the PMS period, women have lower testosterone. And I think

00:51:49.920 you can just Google it. That's fairly well demonstrated. And if it's true that testosterone

00:51:57.000 is connected to confidence, and I feel like that's well demonstrated, you should expect that women during

00:52:03.940 that week would experience less confidence. Now, here's something I was going to put on

00:52:12.020 Locals, the subscription service. And I might shorten this and put it on there. But it's what I call the

00:52:20.180 observer effect. And the reason I'm giving a name to something that you all understand, that an observer

00:52:27.660 can be wrong. That's not really a shocking statement. But when you give something a name,

00:52:32.880 you give it extra power. For example, naming Trump derangement syndrome, or TDS, allowed you to talk

00:52:40.880 about it and gave power to that concept. Here's some others where just naming it gives it power.

00:52:46.380 The Dunning-Kruger effect. Until the Dunning-Kruger effect had that name, it was harder to talk about it.

00:52:53.540 It wasn't as powerful. But as soon as you put a name on it, oh, we all know what that is. Now the

00:52:58.400 power of that thing can increase as people understand it and talk about it. And naming it gave

00:53:03.500 you power. The Gelman-Amnesia effect, the Peter principle, the Dilber principle. So any of these 0.62

00:53:08.580 things which were concepts that got a name, the name gave them power. And so I'm trying to give power

00:53:14.900 to this thing I call the observer problem. I'll give you some examples. And the first thing that

00:53:22.040 happened when I tweeted about this, here's what I tweeted, and then I'll tell you what the response

00:53:25.920 was. I said, how many of you will hallucinate an opinion for me today, because you're bad at mind

00:53:31.080 reading, and then criticize that hallucination like it is my fault? I call it the observer problem.

00:53:37.500 Predictably, and I could have told you this would happen in advance, people went into the comments and

00:53:41.960 said, oh, yeah, that's just the straw man thing. You're just you're just renaming the straw man.

00:53:48.440 No. No, I'm not. I can see why you think it's similar. The straw man, in my opinion, you won't see this in

00:53:59.240 the definition, but in the wild, and in my opinion, the straw man is somewhat intentional. Or at the very

00:54:05.600 least, the person doing it doesn't care if they're being accurate. So a straw man is where, you know, you make

00:54:12.400 an argument, and then somebody changes your argument into something weird, so that they can criticize

00:54:18.060 it. So they're not really criticizing the real argument. They're criticizing what's called a

00:54:22.720 straw man, or a fake version of your argument that's weak and hollow. So that exists. And of course, that's

00:54:29.840 called being a straw man. But the observer problem, I would say, is different. And the difference is that

00:54:35.980 the observer doesn't know that the problem is on their end. The person doing a straw man either knows

00:54:43.560 it intentionally, or they kind of suspect it. You know what I mean? You know, it's not like they

00:54:49.300 necessarily know it consciously, but they kind of know it. But the observer effect is they actually are

00:54:56.200 just hallucinating. They actually think something happened that didn't happen. And then they're arguing

00:55:00.900 their hallucination. And I think that calling it the observer effect, you're going to see it in a

00:55:08.720 bunch of contexts. Now, I'm going to tie together this thing about the testosterone and confidence.

00:55:13.880 All right. It goes like this. Follow along with this reasoning. If you are a cocky, overconfident

00:55:21.480 person, and you run into another cocky, overconfident person, how do you get along? Pretty well.

00:55:29.580 Pretty well. And I say that as a cocky, overconfident person. Whenever I meet somebody who is like me,

00:55:38.940 overconfident, I get along marvelously. Because they don't scare me. They're familiar. I go,

00:55:47.020 oh, that's me. Hey, look at me over there. That guy's just like me. Suppose you have low confidence,

00:55:54.380 very low confidence. And you meet somebody else who has low confidence. How do you get along?

00:56:00.260 Probably pretty well. I've got low confidence. You've got low confidence. Hey, we're not threatening

00:56:05.380 to each other. We get along. But what happens if somebody with low confidence, whether temporarily

00:56:12.520 because it's just where they are in their life or their normal biological cycles, it doesn't have to be

00:56:19.020 anything to do with your monthly cycle. You could just have low confidence. What happens when a low

00:56:24.860 confidence person comes into contact with a cocky, high confidence person? Let's see where I'm going.

00:56:34.040 To the person with low confidence, a person with high confidence looks not just like somebody who's got

00:56:41.360 an advantage. They look disgusting. They look sickening. They look like it makes your skin crawl.

00:56:52.220 And that's the observer problem. The observer is looking at somebody, let's say in this case,

00:56:58.460 it's not somebody who is so grandiose and they're thinking that they actually are a full narcissist with

00:57:04.720 bad impacts. Let's just say it's somebody like me who intentionally picks a point of confidence above

00:57:11.780 my actual ability as I see it because I want it to be there. The most functional place you can put

00:57:19.280 your confidence is above your actual abilities. Not much above, but above them as you understand them.

00:57:26.160 Because the problem is you might underestimate your own abilities.

00:57:29.060 So to avoid the problem of underestimating your own ability, you intentionally, if you're smart,

00:57:36.320 and this is what I recommend, you try to pin yourself to a level of confidence above what you

00:57:43.180 believe is realistic. Because you're usually wrong about what you can do. Let me give you an example.

00:57:50.360 When I tried to become a professional cartoonist with no experience of being a cartoonist at all,

00:57:56.020 I was putting my confidence well above anything that was rational about where my skill was.

00:58:04.520 Completely irrational. Also intentional. I was intentionally shooting above where I believed

00:58:11.020 I could hit because I also believed I had an illusion about what my potential was. And I was trying to

00:58:17.780 find a system that would overcome my own illusion about my low quality of ability.

00:58:24.480 And so I quite intentionally peg my confidence well above what feels like I can do because I don't

00:58:33.520 know. And this periscope or yeah, this live stream is a good example. And I've told you this story.

00:58:39.560 When I first started doing the live stream, before I had my sinus surgery, my voice was terrible. I had

00:58:45.340 voice problems before. I'm nasally not good at this. I don't have a good physical look. I'd be better on

00:58:52.600 radio. There are a million things wrong with it. But because I peg my confidence above what is

00:59:00.260 obviously my ability, I sometimes can hit it and just surprise myself. And the number of times that

00:59:09.580 you do hit the level that you don't think was even really realistic is amazing.

00:59:14.920 Have you seen my wife? Have you seen my wife? I could end the conversation with, have you seen my

00:59:22.740 wife? All right. A perfect example of if I had not pinned my confidence well above what any kind of

00:59:32.600 common sense says works, I would have missed the marriage that I'm in, for example. So I would say that

00:59:42.180 it's always a good, it's a good, uh, good technique to put your confidence above your actual belief of

00:59:48.080 your ability. It's just good technique. That's all. But the problem is that when the observer is

00:59:54.620 watching somebody like me just use technique to, to put my confidence above where it belongs, I am

01:00:02.440 disgusting and narcissistic and just like a, an abomination because our confidence levels are

01:00:12.800 mismatched. Now that's the observer problem. The problem lies entirely in the observer in this

01:00:19.260 example. Did I have a problem? No, I actually had a good technique and a solution and one that has been

01:00:26.120 a driving force to all of my happiness and success. So I don't have a mental problem. I have a success

01:00:34.920 technique that works over and over and over again. But the observer says the problem's on my end.

01:00:43.900 But the problem obviously is just the observer can't handle the differences in the, in the confidence.

01:00:49.260 It's just disgusting if you don't have it. Now, the day that that observer does something amazing or

01:00:55.980 something's turned around and their confidence comes up to something more equivalent to my

01:01:01.380 artificial confidence, how are they going to look at me now? Not the same, not the same, but I didn't

01:01:08.680 change. Nothing about me changed. It was only the observer changed. And I would say that this is

01:01:14.280 probably, you know, uh, this observer problem crosses pretty much everything, personal, professional,

01:01:21.700 political. You see the observer problem just everywhere. So, uh, well, thank you. Some of

01:01:30.000 you are just too nice, but in the comments, somebody says, I happen to be happily married, but my wife

01:01:37.420 isn't. So somebody here saying more wallet size than a confident size. Well, you know, I don't separate

01:01:45.260 that. Uh, I don't, I can't remember if I've said this in public before, but when people say, Hey,

01:01:52.520 somebody likes you just cause your, your money or whatever, it would be one thing if I had inherited

01:01:57.580 my money, but if you've earned your money, uh, I think I'll, uh, borrow something. I think Naval said

01:02:05.620 this once or some version of this. If I lost all of my money today, do you know how long it would

01:02:12.080 take me to get it back one year, right? You couldn't separate me from my money. You could

01:02:19.380 take it all the way and I would just go get it back because that's who I am. You can't change who

01:02:25.500 I am by taking my money away. That's just temporary. I'll just go get some more because I know how to do

01:02:31.180 that. I built a talent stack that's designed for making money. I can make a ton of money if you took

01:02:38.400 it all the way tomorrow. I just, and it wouldn't even necessarily be cartooning or something. I

01:02:42.360 would just do something else. Uh, so for those who say your money is attractive, I say, well,

01:02:49.920 in relationships, do you know the number one cause of breakups and fights? The number one cause of

01:02:57.280 breakups and fights is money. So if you can take that variable out of the equation, you're more

01:03:05.120 attractive. So suppose you said, uh, Scott, you're great, except you're, uh, let's say you're an

01:03:11.200 addict or you're an alcoholic. Would you ever say, but Scott, you know, we'll separate that and we'll,

01:03:19.900 we'll evaluate you without that. No, if you're an alcoholic, that's kind of pretty basic to who you

01:03:27.640 are in the same way that being able to make money, it's pretty basic to who I am. That's just built

01:03:34.800 into my DNA, apparently. Plus technique. Um, uh, dumping the first spouse after getting rich is a 0.92

01:03:47.340 common theme. Well, I was rich, uh, before I had my first spouse too. So I got rich first. Um,

01:03:54.780 haters will always hate. I don't see, uh, I don't know that that's the case. I don't know that haters

01:04:06.540 will always hate. I think what I'm adding to that is that there's a reason some people have an observer

01:04:13.100 problem that they're disgusted by something else. And it has nothing to do with the something else that

01:04:18.500 has to do with where they are. So that's what I'm adding. If I'm adding anything. Um,

01:04:27.260 somebody says, Google my net worth. Uh, let me tell you that, uh, here's all you need to know

01:04:33.640 about that. If you Google my net worth, it says $75 million. Forbes made that estimate. They made that

01:04:40.440 estimate 25 years ago and haven't changed it. So do you think that my net worth stayed the same for

01:04:50.020 20 years? So that's all you need to know about it, right? So if you're asking me if that number is

01:04:56.040 accurate, just ask yourself that. Do you think it didn't change in 20 years? I've done a few things.

01:05:03.520 So either the number was never real or it didn't stay real for long, right? It's either either by

01:05:12.740 now it's doubled or I did dumb things and cut it in half or it was never right to begin with. So now

01:05:18.260 you should put zero credibility in estimates of other people's net wealth. Ask yourself, how would

01:05:24.780 they, how would they know? How would some publication know my net worth? Right? Is there any way that

01:05:33.980 they could do that? There's no possible way they could do that. It's all private. They couldn't

01:05:38.760 possibly know. What if I had, uh, you know, put a million dollars into Uber, you know, when it was

01:05:45.300 first came out? Well, my net worth would be hundreds of millions of dollars. Who would know that besides me?

01:05:51.020 Nobody. Nobody. I did not actually do that. I wish I had. Um, so no, don't believe any of those

01:05:59.180 numbers. Those are ridiculous. Where does my money go? Uh, most of it I've given away, frankly.

01:06:06.960 I've given away, when I say given it away, I mean intelligently in, in ways that make sense,

01:06:12.420 including to X's and stuff. That's, that's giving it away in a sense. Um,

01:06:17.620 so my, my plan was always to die poor, but then I got married again and I'll probably have to modify

01:06:28.580 that. So yeah, I do own Tesla stock. I'll admit that. Um, I will tell you that when the pandemic

01:06:39.380 happened, um, I'm, I'm not a good investor. I actually have lots of background in that,

01:06:44.440 but if you were to look at my track record, you wouldn't be impressed. So I'm never going to try

01:06:48.900 to sell you on the fact that I'm good at investing. All right. So, so start with, you know, understand

01:06:54.580 my humility, but every now and then there's a stock, uh, there's an investing concept that's closer to a

01:07:05.060 guaranteed profit than really investing. And that happened during the pandemic. So when the pandemic

01:07:11.640 happened and the entire stock market took a dump, I grabbed every piece of cash that I could get my

01:07:18.380 hand on and put it into the stock market at the bottom. Now, was that gambling? Because it was a

01:07:26.800 pretty big move and you know, um, I didn't know the future. It's like nobody can know the future.

01:07:34.320 Here's why that was not a gamble. If the pandemic had driven the, um, economy so far down that we,

01:07:42.680 it was a, I don't know, the economy failed and the country failed, well, it wouldn't matter what you

01:07:47.200 had your money in. So if the whole country was going to just fail, just wouldn't matter.

01:07:53.320 But if, if the pandemic was going to be temporary, which was the smart bet, everybody figured it was

01:07:59.500 temporary. We didn't know how long, but temporary that all, that the ones that did not go out of

01:08:04.640 business would probably accelerate. So buying, uh, Amazon stock at the bottom of the pandemic

01:08:11.920 wasn't really a bet, was it? I think it's up, uh, 70 or 80%. No, I think 60% since I bought it.

01:08:23.220 So buying, uh, buying Amazon at the bottom wasn't really a gamble. Likewise, I bought, uh,

01:08:30.500 Twitter and, uh, Tesla and, uh, Microsoft and, uh, a few others tech companies. And each of them are

01:08:39.300 up, you know, 80%, 200%, 60%. Now I didn't put my whole net worth into this, just cash that I had

01:08:48.080 not anywhere else. So here's the point. It wasn't exactly a bet. I just happened to have some cash

01:08:57.880 laying around that I could do that. And there really wasn't a risk at worst. I would have broken

01:09:03.580 even, I think in the long run, but by and large, it was likely to go up. Somebody says zoom zoom would

01:09:10.240 have been an amazing investment. If you were willing to take the chance, I would not have because there

01:09:15.300 was a risk that could go on. I just go into business. Zoom could have gone out of business

01:09:20.360 because of a specific China connection, but it didn't. Uh, Bitcoin. Um, so I am often asked to

01:09:30.120 talk about Bitcoin and I resist because I don't believe anybody knows anything about Bitcoin

01:09:37.860 in terms of where it's going. Now, smart people say that it will progress forever and, you know,

01:09:45.780 it'll just get more important, but I don't know that that could be known. Uh, I, I hear and understand

01:09:51.880 the smart people who say that the math is good and, you know, as, as long as, as long as there's not

01:09:59.040 some new surprise, it should just keep on going. And I don't disagree with that, but I don't find a

01:10:07.140 reason to agree with it. So I would tell you this, Bitcoin falls into the category of things

01:10:13.020 you probably ought to have in a diversified portfolio. If you don't have a diversified

01:10:18.780 portfolio, then you're just gambling. And I don't give any advice on gambling. The only advice I like

01:10:24.180 to give on investing is to diversify because that's the one thing you can be sure of makes sense.

01:10:29.580 Um, somebody says Twitter has neutered Scott by killing live periscopes. Well, actually I have

01:10:39.580 also used diversification in my platforms. So YouTube is growing at the same time that periscope will

01:10:46.820 disappear at some point. So we should be fine. And also the locals platform, that subscription,

01:10:53.300 will have a live stream sometime in, I hope in the next several months. Did I see Elon Musk's tweet

01:11:03.020 about Bitcoin? No, I did not. So locals doesn't have live video yet, but they're, they're working

01:11:09.160 on that. We'll have that pretty soon. All right. Um, yeah, I mean, I think it would be smart to own

01:11:18.820 some Bitcoin. I don't think it would be smart to put all your money in Bitcoin. You could win that

01:11:26.420 way. Some people have, but it'd be a gamble, not an investment. Um, periscope apparently didn't make

01:11:33.620 it in terms of, uh, uh, paying for itself. Uh, yes, I am on rumble as well. So you put the books up

01:11:45.280 one more shelf. You can never be happy. All right. Do Twitch. You know, I'm thinking about

01:11:51.860 doing Twitch, but, uh, don't know too much about it. I don't know that that's where I'd find an

01:11:57.800 audience. Twitch is a younger, right? The audience for Twitch would be, would skew much younger. So I

01:12:04.080 think that would not necessarily be my audience. I might do that though. Yeah, I'm on parlor, but I

01:12:09.120 don't use it much. All right. That's all I got for now. And I will talk to you later.

01:12:15.280 All right. YouTubers, um, 1.00

01:12:20.440 big on games. Don't be ageist. I'm just saying that, uh, the younger people, the younger my

01:12:29.020 audience is, the less likely they're going to be my audience. Um, too many platforms. Yeah. That's

01:12:39.060 why we need a God mode that can, that can publish to all platforms.

01:12:44.760 Penn Jillette is on Twitch. Huh? Interesting. Um, all right. You know, I, I think, um,

01:12:54.540 I could, uh, get on Twitch if I could fix my technology issues. Uh, doesn't the observer

01:13:01.940 problem rely on mind reading? I'm asked. Uh, well, it's usually the observer doing the mind

01:13:07.880 reading. That's, that's yes. Depends on that. Just get another iPad. Possibly. Uh, the Gavin

01:13:18.740 Newsom recall. You know, I have lots of, uh, complaints about California, but I'm not completely

01:13:27.580 convinced that they're caused by Gavin Newsom. I guess I don't follow state politics enough to

01:13:34.120 have a good, uh, opinion on that. Um, Paul, are you asking me about Q? I don't have anything to say

01:13:41.600 about Q. Um, wouldn't your opportunity to vote rigs apply to Republicans as well? Yes, it would.

01:13:49.820 Yes, it would. So whether or not Republicans were trying to rig elections, um, well, let's put it this

01:13:58.420 way. You should assume both sides are doing it, but there is a difference in who controls the big

01:14:03.920 cities in swing, swing districts. So if the Republicans were also cheating, they would have

01:14:10.340 been cheating in the wrong places because they don't control the same places as the Democrats.

01:14:14.480 So Paul, why are you sending me a Q with two little eyeballs over and over and over again? If I see

01:14:21.920 it again, I'm going to block it because I don't know what you're trying to send, but you could use

01:14:27.080 your words and just say a whole sentence and stuff. But if you just keep, uh, if you just keep tweeting

01:14:35.380 that same thing, I'm going to block you. All right. Any predictions for January 6th? Not exactly.

01:14:44.480 Oh, I think I missed the question I want to answer there. Why do you continuously talk about your

01:14:50.660 accolades and money? Uh, well, Blake, this is the observer problem and it's on you. What is your problem

01:14:58.600 with it? What is your problem with me adding context to make the story make sense? What, why does it bother

01:15:08.420 you if I talk about myself accurately? And that accurate account includes the fact that I'm a rich

01:15:17.840 and famous cartoonist? Do you think that I need to tell you over and over again for my own benefit?

01:15:23.300 Do you think that's what's happening? Or do you think that to understand the story better,

01:15:28.480 that context is just an honest part of the story? Blake, you are experiencing the observer problem.

01:15:35.040 Probably you have low confidence. And when you're in, you're exposed to somebody who has

01:15:41.520 unnaturally high confidence, it feels wrong and disgusting to you. And so you're probably

01:15:48.480 experiencing exactly what I was talking about. Um, and I also don't think that it feels honest

01:15:59.360 when you act humble, uh, in a way that's obviously acting, right? You know, I have lots of reasons to

01:16:06.500 be humble about lots of stuff I'm not good at, but being humble about things that are observable

01:16:11.980 is just sort of dumb. You know, does, does Michael Jordan act humble about being able to dunk?

01:16:21.340 I hope not. I think he could just talk about it objectively and say, yeah, you know,

01:16:26.740 that was a pretty good dunker. Uh, I feel like he could say that, um, somebody says, I have low

01:16:36.140 confidence by nature. How can I boost it? I'll tell you, actually, I have a solid advice for that.

01:16:42.580 The way to get better confidence is to do something well. You don't have to do everything well. You just

01:16:49.980 have to be able to hold on to the fact that there are things you can do well. So as soon as you can do

01:16:55.740 things well, then it turns your frame from I'm bad at things or I have no confidence into there are

01:17:02.440 things I try and I do well. And then there are things that I'm not working on or I'm not trying

01:17:07.900 or I don't care about. And I'm not so, not so good on those. Once you realize that the difference

01:17:13.500 between the things you're good at and the things you're not good at is your effort,

01:17:17.380 then there's nothing to feel bad about. You either put effort into something because you wanted to

01:17:24.400 or you didn't. And there's nothing about you in this and this. So just get good at something.

01:17:31.440 Here's the other thing I recommend. Also be bad at something. Be bad at something. Learn how to be bad

01:17:38.540 at things in public. Because if you can't do something poorly in front of other people and

01:17:43.940 survive it, you're going to be in bad shape. It's just like a superpower to learn how to do things

01:17:50.860 that embarrass you and just survive it. Am I getting the shot? My strategy for the shot is I will wait

01:17:59.900 for the last minute. So I'll have as much information as I could gather by then and then I'll make the

01:18:07.900 decision. But if I don't hear anything negative, I will, yes. Heisenberg uncertainty. Does it apply to me?

01:18:19.800 I don't quite understand the analogy. Accepting yourself. I don't know if I

01:18:29.200 buy into the advice that you should accept yourself the way you are. I feel that that's giving you

01:18:36.620 permission to be lazy. I would rather that nobody accept themselves the way they are.

01:18:43.840 You don't have to dislike yourself. That's going too far. But I wouldn't accept the way you are as

01:18:51.800 being good enough because I think you can raise your game a little bit. We all can. So you should be

01:18:58.480 perpetually unsatisfied with where you are if you want to get better. Look into OBS. I have used OBS.

01:19:05.760 It's garbage. Too complicated and too buggy. Yeah, being yourself is bad advice if you're a loser.

01:19:17.980 What do you think about getting the vaccine and still needing to wear a mask?

01:19:21.200 The mask thing has to be viewed as persuasion as well as medical. If you see it as only one or the

01:19:31.140 other, then it doesn't make sense. If you understand that you couldn't have a practical policy where you

01:19:37.880 only wear masks if you need to, you understand that's not possible, right? If it were possible

01:19:44.480 that only the people who needed to wear masks for medical reasons, let's say only people who

01:19:51.140 would not have the vaccine or not had the virus already and recovered. But the trouble is you can't

01:19:58.400 tell. And the moment you say, well, some people can have masks and some can't, who is going to wear a

01:20:04.800 mask to the store? Right? That's the end of it. There is no solution in which some people wear masks and

01:20:12.240 some don't. It's either all or none, unfortunately, because of the way people are built. We wouldn't

01:20:17.680 have any possibility of people managing their own symptoms and saying, well, I think my dry cough is

01:20:27.040 because it was dusty. Right? People would do that. They'd say, I kind of do want to get on that flight

01:20:34.180 to Hawaii. So I'm going to call my cough an allergy. Yeah, it's an allergy. You just couldn't do it.

01:20:42.940 Everybody's got to wear a mask if masks work. If masks work for anybody in any situation, everybody's got to

01:20:50.380 wear them. Nothing else would make sense. What if the vaccine doesn't work because of a mutation? I think that

01:20:59.060 that will not be a problem because the mutations are not the kind that are big enough that the

01:21:04.120 vaccination would not still hit the parts it needs to hit. Am I aware that small investors have a

01:21:12.220 structural advantage? Yes, I am. Because large investors need to make large investments. So that

01:21:18.560 limits the number of things that they can choose from. So yes, small investors have some advantage if

01:21:24.540 they can pick from more opportunities. Makeup stocks are down because of masks. So here's an

01:21:34.400 investment that I didn't buy because I do think they have some risk of going out of business entirely.

01:21:40.260 But Ulta, U-L-T-A. So they've got a lot of storefronts. They sell makeup. They're a big deal.

01:21:45.560 But I thought, huh, as soon as the pandemic's over, that's going to go crazy. But as somebody said,

01:21:50.940 makeup probably is a lot less now because of the masks. I think that's real. But as soon as you're

01:21:57.220 not wearing a mask and as soon as you could go shopping again, Ulta is going to be in real good

01:22:02.660 shape if they survive. So that's the part that makes it not really an investment. Buying a single

01:22:09.460 stock is not an investment, people. That's a gamble every time because you don't know what one stock's

01:22:15.140 going to do. Nobody does. You have to buy a bunch so that some do well, some don't. That's a good

01:22:20.420 strategy. All right. Too much about that. And now I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye for now.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 29, 2020

Episode 1235 Scott Adams： My Nobel Prize, China's Octopus Strategy, Those Stimulus Checks

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