Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1266 Scott Adams： GameStop, China, and How to Lie to the Public

00:00:00.000 um hey everybody come on in it's time yeah it's time for coffee with scott adams is it still the

00:00:13.560 best time of the day yeah yep every single time some of you are prepared i know you are

00:00:20.860 and if you're really prepared what do you have with you well you probably have a cup or a mug

00:00:28.880 or a glass maybe a tank of gels or stein a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your

00:00:34.440 favorite liquid i like coffee join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here of the

00:00:40.480 day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip and even if you have

00:00:46.780 a tiny little hotel cup it's still gonna be awesome go

00:00:50.560 so i'm in tahiti at the moment which is a stopover from bora bora it's the big island you go to for

00:01:04.920 your main flights back home but i also have to get a coronavirus covid test this morning before i can fly

00:01:13.440 so am i concerned that i could get a covid test in tahiti and actually get a result before i get on

00:01:22.580 my plane i'm a little concerned about that yes i am but the worst case scenario is i have to stay in

00:01:30.040 tahiti for another day so wouldn't be the worst thing um let's talk about all the news are you ready

00:01:37.840 got lots of it got lots of good stuff it's a it's a fun news day and i'm going to start a new segment

00:01:45.520 i'm going to call the fake news news it's news about the fake news because the fake news has covered

00:01:53.620 the fake news i don't need to cover that i'll just cover the fake news is news for example uh apparently

00:02:01.640 there's a gentleman who's been uh arrested uh i don't know if he's been arrested but he's being

00:02:07.620 charged or something as an iranian agent who apparently has contributed opinion pieces to the

00:02:14.740 new york times that's right an unregistered agent of iran uh has written opinion pieces in the new york

00:02:23.100 times now do you say to yourself uh new york times how can they be so whatever they are

00:02:30.580 to allow some unregistered agent of a foreign country to get you know get through and be putting

00:02:37.140 opinion bases in their in their in their publication i have a feeling that this is so common

00:02:45.640 that probably almost every news organization has been at least a little bit touched by this sort of

00:02:53.820 thing i feel as if you know china and iran and russia etc they probably all have journalists don't you

00:03:02.320 think you know either directly or by influence or people who lean their direction just get the kind

00:03:09.680 of right kind of jobs and they become uh they become the writers so i don't know that this is unusual

00:03:16.580 i would expect that iran and lots of other countries would have people they influence who

00:03:22.560 in turn influence you and you wouldn't necessarily know about it until one of them gets caught and

00:03:28.220 it's a and it's a headline so unfortunately i think this is more normal than not normal and when

00:03:34.440 you're reading your fake news one of the questions you could ask yourself is this hey is that article

00:03:40.800 being written by an enemy of my country you don't know you just don't know but you have to at least

00:03:47.560 at least consider the possibility that the person writing the article is literally the enemy of

00:03:54.120 your country that's a real thing and it's common enough i think that you should sort of have that

00:04:00.560 little program running in the back of your head hey is this a real opinion or is this an enemy of my

00:04:06.520 country here's some more fake news news about fake news so john carey was uh asked about uh

00:04:19.400 i i can't think of john carey without thinking of a tree he reminds me of an old growth tree so much

00:04:28.200 that that's all i say i've told you before that i can't see people the same way if i ever see their

00:04:34.680 animal because most people look like some kind of animal you don't realize it until until the idea

00:04:40.760 occurs to you like oh that person looks a little bit like a i don't know a horse i think and then

00:04:48.600 you can never see anything else except that person looks like a horse well john carey i just see a tree

00:04:55.640 and so that's all i can see when i when i see him a talking tree

00:04:59.240 um and by the way i'm sure there's i'm sure there's something that i remind you of that's

00:05:05.480 yeah yeah groot i am groot

00:05:09.240 um so he was saying in response to the question about uh people in the oil industry who might lose

00:05:16.600 their jobs pretty big deal right oil the energy business in this country is a giant industry

00:05:23.480 critical for national success and if we go green and try to keep the oil in the ground as they say

00:05:32.360 and the gas in the ground i suppose it's a big deal and it could have big employment impacts so what

00:05:40.680 did john carey say about the people who would lose their jobs if the oil industry gets squeezed he said

00:05:49.000 quote what president biden wants to do is make sure that those folks have better choices that they

00:05:54.920 could be the people to go work to make solar panels what did he really say that in public

00:06:04.040 john carey really said that the people in the energy business would lose their jobs

00:06:09.320 they can go make solar panels there are a few problems with that number one when when does that

00:06:17.960 solar panel make it kick in same day they lose their job or would it take years to build an industry

00:06:25.160 that could employ as many people as as have been lost to it could you have an american solar panel

00:06:33.160 manufacturing industry that would ever be price competitive with making them overseas there's a

00:06:39.640 reason it's made overseas we don't know how to do it we don't know how to do it uh inexpensively

00:06:46.760 compared to where they where it could be done somewhere else so is there going to be a domestic

00:06:52.360 solar panel industry when they can't possibly make them in a way that they can make a profit now

00:07:02.360 maybe and i'd like to think this is true automation will make it possible to do that and be competitive

00:07:08.920 with with china because if china needs robots to make stuff and we need robots to make stuff 0.53

00:07:14.680 it ends up being about the same price it's only when people are making stuff that they get the

00:07:20.520 they get the big advantage so maybe we can make uh solar panels cheaply enough but if we make them with

00:07:28.520 robots that's also not labor right the only way we can compete on price and that's the only way the green

00:07:38.680 new deal energy stuff will work is if it's economically competitive only way you can do it is without labor

00:07:46.920 i think you know just economically it makes sense i don't know how you can do it with labor

00:07:51.720 when our labor is more expensive than other countries so that's the first problem there's a timing problem

00:07:58.200 but it's not really the same people that's the problem do you think that the oil industry people who get

00:08:05.560 fired are living in the place where the solar the solar factory will be do you think the people in

00:08:11.800 pennsylvania will say if they lose their job do you think they're going to say oh good pick pack up the

00:08:18.440 car we're going to go live in i don't know sunny someplace else and make solar panels well some will

00:08:27.080 but here's the thing that makes it the fake news uh and i'm sure that cnn for example will never say what

00:08:33.560 i'm saying that is that it is true that they might create new jobs with this green technology

00:08:41.880 at the same time it's true that there will be jobs lost in the more traditional older energy companies

00:08:48.840 but what he's not telling you is that the people who get the new jobs will be different people

00:08:55.560 that feels really important to the story right

00:08:57.800 hey a million people will lose their job but don't worry there will be a million new jobs

00:09:05.480 for other people the people who are going to lose their jobs still have a problem

00:09:10.840 you know unless that solar panel factory springs up the same day they lose their job and they're

00:09:17.320 and they have the right kind of skills and it pays pays the right amount of money

00:09:20.840 i mean there is a lot of ifs in this idea and so what makes it a fake news is that

00:09:31.880 leadership is all about tough choices right now is it a correct but tough choice to move the economy

00:09:41.400 toward a more of a green green industry hard to know hard to know in the long run of course we need to

00:09:49.960 get there but it's a question of timing and you know do you do it do you do it economically or do

00:09:55.560 you rush etc so there are very smart people um i think mark cuban would be an example of a very smart

00:10:04.760 person who would say that the green new technologies are are really good they're going to be good for

00:10:10.680 the economy good for jobs etc i hope i'm characterizing his opinion correctly that the green new energy

00:10:18.040 business could be quite a hopping thing um but if it's different people and it doesn't happen at the same time

00:10:30.200 shouldn't you tell the public that shouldn't that be one of the things you say look public

00:10:35.640 i know this isn't going to be easy but we have these reasons we want to do this we think it's good in

00:10:40.840 the long run for the country um but it's going to take some sacrifice by this group this other group

00:10:49.880 will get the benefits they'll get jobs over here and this state this state will lose jobs and nothing's

00:10:56.680 going to happen for you you're just going to lose jobs but this other state will do great because they're

00:11:01.080 going to build some build some green factors that would be honest honest leadership would be

00:11:08.680 it's going to hurt but some other people will do better and on average that's where we need to be

00:11:15.240 as a country in the long run so there's just no way around it that would be leadership but they can't

00:11:22.440 say that because they don't want to lose a state so they have to lie lie and say that those people

00:11:28.200 losing jobs i'll just get other jobs all right you're all watching the the news about gamestop right

00:11:33.560 how many of you understand that story so the the basic story that a bunch of individuals on reddit

00:11:44.600 got together and decided to massively collectively buy stock in this one company called gamestop now

00:11:54.200 this is having the effect of uh being a

00:11:57.080 uh you can see in the comments there's uh lots of yeses lots of yeses wow i'm actually quite kind

00:12:05.400 of impressed at the quality of this audience and i mean that i don't know how many general audiences

00:12:13.160 would have so many people looking at the comments and most of you say you understand understand that

00:12:18.360 story it's kind of impressive actually jesus look at look at the look at the number of people in the

00:12:24.440 comments who say they actually understand that story it's a complicated story i thought i was

00:12:29.320 going to have to explain it to you wow wow i think some of the smartest people in in the internet are on

00:12:36.680 this uh are on this uh live stream now this is amazing i'm really very impressed i suppose it's the

00:12:43.720 people who understand it we're we're going to comment but but even still i'm surprised but let me give

00:12:49.320 you the basic idea for if anybody doesn't know how this works so there are big companies called hedge

00:12:55.400 funds who try to make money by driving down the price of a stock this is not good for the company

00:13:03.160 that owns that stock because people are just playing manipulating their stock the way they would do that

00:13:08.600 is they would buy a contract if you will that says they will make money if the stock goes down now if

00:13:15.240 you see that a bunch of smart investors with a lot of money have just made big bets that a stock will

00:13:21.320 go down what are you going to do if all the smart people just made giant bets that a stock is going

00:13:27.320 to go down and you own that stock you want to get the hell out of there right because it's going down

00:13:34.280 not only are they telling you it's going to go down but they make it to go down that's that's the

00:13:39.960 manipulative part right there might be some stories that come out about some bad things happening at the

00:13:44.840 company they may be true they may be more opinion you don't know but the the big hedge funds have

00:13:51.320 the power to drive down the price of a stock which does nothing for you does nothing for the company

00:13:58.680 now in some cases they would argue that they're just adding efficiency and they're they're driving

00:14:04.280 down the price of a stock that deserves to be driven down in other words they're they're not

00:14:09.960 destroying good companies they're destroying companies that have some issues but keep in mind they've

00:14:14.680 gone after tesla imagine if they drew they had driven tesla and a business that was a possibility

00:14:22.920 i think i don't know if they have that much power but they did try to drive down the price of tesla at

00:14:27.480 one point which makes uh elon musk not their friends well let me just say that elon musk

00:14:35.400 is enjoying watching the short sellers get taken at least that's the reporting

00:14:42.120 so here's how it works if i can explain this easily um if you let's say you own some stock

00:14:48.360 in a company called game stock and i can go to you and i can say hey i would like to borrow your stock

00:14:57.000 for x amount of time specific amount of time and at the end of that i will give you your stock back

00:15:03.000 and you would say why would i let you borrow my stock why the hell would i do that and there are two

00:15:09.080 reasons one is i'll give you a fee for borrowing it you could think of it like interest but it's not

00:15:15.240 it's like a fee for borrowing it for a while and so you'd say okay i get a fee but what about when

00:15:22.360 you give it back to me that stock might not be worth the same amount i'll give you 100 shares

00:15:28.360 and when you give 100 shares back to me are they still worth something because the stock went down in

00:15:34.200 the meantime i got a little fee and that's cool but when you gave me my stock back it wasn't worth

00:15:40.360 anything it went down to you know a dollar or something so you would have lost as the person who

00:15:47.080 let me borrow your stock you would be a loser in that case why would you do with that why would you

00:15:52.440 ever let me borrow your stock well the only reason you do it is that you think the stock is going to go

00:15:57.400 up so you think that when i give that stock back to you it'll be worth more than when you got when you

00:16:03.720 when it was first borrowed and enough more that you come out ahead not only did i get a fee for

00:16:09.560 letting you borrow it but when you gave it back it was worth more than i gave it to you good deal

00:16:15.240 right so you always have to have somebody who thinks something's going up and somebody who thinks it's

00:16:19.800 going down to make a trade one of them's right and one of them's wrong that's how the stock market

00:16:25.560 works but you need somebody on both sides right so that's why somebody would lend you stock they think

00:16:30.760 it's going in the other direction so let's say you're uh you're a hedge fund and you've you've

00:16:38.120 done one of these deals and you say i'm going to give this stock back to this guy it's just 100 shares

00:16:43.800 of stock but the people at reddit get together and they say we don't have a lot of money individually

00:16:49.880 we're just people but if we all get together and buy this stock like crazy the hedge funds

00:16:57.560 don't have a choice later of buying the stock at your higher price and therefore you make a profit

00:17:04.760 because they're they have a contract that says on this specific date i have to go get stock that

00:17:10.920 i've already sold by the way i borrowed your stock but as soon as i borrowed it i sold it

00:17:16.440 it so as soon as you lend your stock to me you don't have it anymore but neither do i i borrowed

00:17:24.120 it and sold it all i have is cash so at the end of that contract period all i have is cash but i owe

00:17:30.840 you a stock you know you got to get your 100 shares back so i have to go buy those at the in the market

00:17:37.320 but the reddit people drove up the price now i can't afford to buy them i don't have enough money

00:17:44.280 i can't get enough money there's nothing i can do but i owe this gigantic amount of money because the

00:17:51.400 redditors drove up the stock price how do i give you back the money the shares i borrowed i can't

00:17:57.000 afford them so i go out of business so you i go bankrupt at least maybe not out of business ultimately

00:18:04.680 but uh so the redditors are intentionally driving out of business the hedge funds because they did the 0.54

00:18:10.440 math or somebody did and figured that they could buy enough collectively to actually bankrupt gigantic

00:18:17.080 hedge funds which they don't really feel are so good for the country and it's this massive shift in power

00:18:27.960 because the the retail small investors found out hey if we band together and use these communication

00:18:34.680 tools we can be as powerful or more powerful than the the hedge funds and we can just drive them out

00:18:40.680 of business and make a profit too now if you're listening to this and say to yourself hey i think

00:18:48.200 i just found a way to make some easy money i'm going to buy me some game stop uh stuff and that stuff's

00:18:55.160 going to keep on going up and i'll just make a quick quick profit a lot of people did that a lot of people

00:19:02.040 got in low probably sold high made a ton of money with almost no time going by but don't assume that

00:19:12.600 because it happened to you there should be in the long run about as many losers as winners right

00:19:18.600 because there always has to be a buyer always has to be a seller otherwise there's no transaction

00:19:23.960 so in the long run you're going to get i don't think this is exactly true but something closer to as

00:19:28.920 many winners as losers so if you want to flip a coin and bet your entire uh net worth on it

00:19:37.800 i would advise against it sort of a coin flip it's not it's not a guarantee that's not it's not safe

00:19:45.240 and if the coin flip doesn't go your way it's not that you didn't make money it's that you lost it all

00:19:51.000 right you just lost it so super risky if you're trying to figure out how risky it is

00:19:57.240 super risky but if you have lots of people putting in small amounts that wouldn't make a difference

00:20:02.760 to their life if they lost them you know hundreds of thousands of people putting in a thousand dollars

00:20:07.720 a piece say wouldn't change their life if they lost them so i think this is really it's not a question of

00:20:14.280 what's right or wrong good or bad we do see that the robin hood app apparently stopped letting people buy

00:20:22.040 the stock they can sell it but not buy it which is good for the hedge funds but not good for the retail

00:20:27.240 people so let's see how much power the hedge funds have because the hedge funds are still trying to

00:20:33.800 still trying to uh you know manipulate it in their direction so it's a battle of wills at the moment we

00:20:39.960 don't know which way it's going to end but it's an interesting story and apparently it shows some hatred for

00:20:45.640 the big money people that is bubbling into the you know bubbling up from the public in a way that we've

00:20:52.200 never seen before all right um i'm still getting uh still getting weird comments about my tweet

00:21:03.160 when in which i asked if it's too late to impeach george washington for slavery and i'm watching a

00:21:11.160 technique by the the fake news industry uh to marginalize me as as a public commenter because i

00:21:20.120 don't comment exactly the way they would like and and i've seen the technique before so here's the

00:21:25.880 technique and this is how uh trump uh trump was the victim of this once and now it's happening to me

00:21:33.720 in a smaller way do you remember when trump made his john mccain statement uh they were talking about

00:21:40.520 john mccain being a hero and i think it was when trump was running for office and he said i prefer people

00:21:47.480 who don't get caught now if you don't know that was a joke then it looks very disrespectful

00:21:56.120 to anybody who's served but if you do know it's a joke well it's not really disrespectful it's just a

00:22:03.560 joke all right and it was a funny joke stop everything stop everything hold on hold on

00:22:19.800 i just had to show you what it looks like out my window right now

00:22:22.440 that's crazy take a look at that if you're listening on podcast i'll i'll get back to uh

00:22:31.880 our scheduled program but the uh the scenery here is just a joke this it's just crazy all right

00:22:42.120 back to john mccain i know that's what you really want to talk about so what the what the fake media does

00:22:48.600 is they they will misinterpret somebody say trump and then i'm going to tell you how they do it to

00:22:55.960 me they'll they'll start by misinterpreting something that was clearly a joke and they

00:23:00.040 turn it into oh it's a disrespectful thing if they repeat their their misinterpretation enough

00:23:06.280 the misinterpretation becomes the truth at least in terms of the public and the public says oh yeah it

00:23:13.000 wasn't a joke it was being disrespectful so once they've they've sold you on the fake news that that

00:23:21.160 trump was being disrespectful to service people which is of course not what was happening he was

00:23:25.800 just mocking mccain um then that becomes the truth and then they mock you for it and then the mocking

00:23:34.120 is of the thing that never happened right so the thing that trump would be mocked for is the thing that

00:23:39.400 didn't happen likewise when i did my tweet about uh you know maybe we should think about impeaching

00:23:44.680 george washington the first thing they do is misinterpret it as not a joke

00:23:51.560 it's such a joke it's a joke do you think that i really want to impeach george washington no

00:23:59.080 now the second thing they do is even if they recognize it as a joke they you know even a joke has

00:24:05.320 a political point to it and this one does now the point i'm making is that it would be a complete waste

00:24:12.920 of the public's time and the government's time to impeach trump because he's not going to run for office

00:24:19.720 again if you think he that if you think that's going to happen or at least if he ran he wouldn't he

00:24:24.600 wouldn't have a chance of winning at this point if you're worried about it that's kind of tds

00:24:29.800 because trump wouldn't have enough support from republicans to win again right and you need at

00:24:36.120 least your own team you can't win without your own team and he would he would have lots of support but

00:24:41.640 not enough so i think uh trump would know somebody still thinks he would win he wouldn't win you

00:24:49.080 wouldn't have any chance if he ran again i understand that you think uh you think that's not the case but

00:24:55.880 but my point which is my opinion is he has the same odds of winning and being in office again as

00:25:04.760 george washington meaning none right so my point is it's a waste of time because neither of them will

00:25:11.320 ever be you know president again but instead of that obvious point which i thought was obvious when i made it

00:25:17.960 that uh the democrats who are criticizing me have decided to interpret it as me not understanding

00:25:26.360 that the issue of slavery was very different from the issue of inciting people to do whatever they

00:25:33.480 claim trump did in the capital now that's a case of not understanding how analogies and jokes work

00:25:40.760 or at least not understand the point in this case but since they can repeat that forever forever

00:25:47.800 now if uh if i do something else that they don't like they will say and he thought that uh slavery

00:25:56.120 was the same as you know so they'll create a story in which i'm so dumb that i made this tweet but it

00:26:03.080 will be based on misinterpreting a simple point that it's a waste of time to impeach anybody after

00:26:07.400 they're out of office and not going to run again uh so that's that's the fake news play they'll create a

00:26:13.480 fake narrative and that will be the thing that you'll have to answer for the rest of your life

00:26:19.320 and they can use that against you at any future time

00:26:23.720 um i'm actually surprised there's so many people who think trump could win

00:26:28.840 uh and i don't think there's even the slightest chance you would run for a lesser office such as

00:26:34.360 governor or senator you don't go from president to a lesser office i mean you could i just don't think

00:26:41.720 that's just not anything anybody would do um somebody says why purposely try to be misinterpreted

00:26:51.720 well uh sometimes i do that for fun and this was a case where i was pretty sure people would

00:26:59.480 misinterpret it and i thought it would be funny and it was but they'll use it against me the trouble

00:27:05.160 is that it just won't have that much effect in my case um here's uh here's a little thing you should

00:27:13.560 know about so some academics from harvard duke and johns hopkins got together pretty smart people right

00:27:21.960 if they're academics at those schools harvard duke and john hobson john johns hopkins pretty smart people

00:27:29.400 got together and released a paper in which they claim that the coveted lockdowns will result in a

00:27:36.200 staggering one million excess deaths over the next decade and a half due to increased problems with

00:27:44.200 health and health related issues because of unemployment so what they've done is they say

00:27:50.040 we know that unemployment leads to you know x percent of problems the coronavirus will cause more

00:27:57.960 unemployment and therefore you can you can just figure out how much that will affect things

00:28:05.800 here's my problem with that doesn't that sound like something you want to believe

00:28:11.640 right when you heard this you said yes finally i got science on my side right but was it science

00:28:21.640 was that science or was that an economic kind of projection um except with except economics it's more

00:28:30.280 of an employment uh estimate and then related to health care and how people will uh will thrive or not

00:28:39.480 under different employment scenarios here's my problem when you hear a new paper came out that exactly

00:28:48.280 agrees with what you want it to say that's when you should really crank up your skepticism because the

00:28:56.120 best way that you can be fooled is by somebody telling you that science agreed with you but you gotta know

00:29:03.320 that science is wrong in this kind of stuff maybe more often than right when it comes to financial predictions

00:29:11.000 does this sound familiar in any way all right it might sound like my criticisms of climate change economic

00:29:19.000 predictions if you've watched me for a while you know that i i don't argue with the science part of

00:29:24.680 climate change because what do i know i'm not a scientist and uh their arguments seem to have lots

00:29:31.320 of backing from lots of different directions no matter how they slice it it looks like co2 added to the

00:29:37.560 the atmosphere should cause warming all things being able but when they take that which i can't judge

00:29:45.880 and don't have any reason to think it's false um they take it to an economic projection over 80 years then

00:29:52.600 it's just ridiculous because nobody can do that that's not a real thing that's like a horoscope reading

00:29:59.000 tea leaves nobody can make an 80 year economic prediction it's just not a thing

00:30:03.720 but they do anyway to scare you into action today now the reason that economic projection

00:30:11.640 doesn't make sense for 80 years is because there'll be lots of innovation and surprises you know nobody

00:30:16.200 saw the coronavirus coming a lot of surprises could be wars could be meteors could be we discovered gold

00:30:23.720 and you know how to make gold out of plastic i don't know anything could happen in 80 years

00:30:29.480 the same the same is true of this economic prediction if you're willing to go with me on

00:30:36.440 the fact that you can't predict climate change economics which could be bad or could be good

00:30:42.280 they're just not predictable you just can't predict that stuff um it should be the same analysis for this

00:30:49.400 do you think people can really no matter how smart they are because these are smart people

00:30:54.360 working in the right fields it looks like and would you trust them they're very smart i believe they're

00:31:01.160 almost certainly trying to tell you the truth probably credible professionals should you believe that

00:31:07.800 there'll be a million excess deaths for because of the shutdowns and coronavirus when it agrees with

00:31:15.960 what you want it to agree with that's the problem isn't it it's the same problem with the economic

00:31:21.800 predictions for climate change the people who want that to be true so that their argument is true

00:31:28.760 they're going to see it as true

00:31:33.080 somebody says twitter is ruining conservatives what do you say scott

00:31:37.240 well i don't know that they're ruining conservatives i would have to i think i would have to see some

00:31:44.760 examples of conservatives being banned from a social media platform for saying things that are true

00:31:54.040 you know if you get banned for being reasonable that would be a problem if you get banned for things

00:32:01.480 that you know a reasonable person could say is hate speech i don't know if i can defend that if you get

00:32:07.960 banned for saying things that um are clearly not true you have some explaining to do but the real problem

00:32:17.960 of course is that it's not um it's not uh it's not applied equally right so the people who get to

00:32:26.360 decide what is true will say that when conservatives say something that they don't think is true they have

00:32:31.880 to go away uh whereas if if cnn tells you the fine people hoax was real or the the bleach drinking hoax was

00:32:40.840 real or or russia collusion was real and it turns out it's not that nobody gets uh penalized for that

00:32:48.520 stuff adam schiff no penalty for lying to the public for for years um somebody says why did peter navarro

00:32:57.240 get kicked off i don't know the specifics um i know for example in the carpe donctum situation i think

00:33:03.880 that was a copyright issue wasn't it uh which is just its own its own issue um and peter navarro if he

00:33:12.760 got kicked off i don't know the situation people are telling me he's banned i would assume he made some

00:33:18.440 claim about the election integrity and the powers that be have decided that questioning the election

00:33:25.160 the election is too risky so where they might allow something to remain on the internet that is

00:33:33.320 known to be false as long as it's harmless but that one could be you know potentially deadly if you get

00:33:40.840 that one wrong so should people be banned for saying that the election was stolen i don't think so

00:33:49.160 don't think so um but you don't have to say that let me tell you what i said recently give you give you

00:33:58.040 a better way to approach this um which i'm pretty sure i wrote down here huh maybe i didn't

00:34:09.480 do do do do oh here it is so here's something i tweeted which has not gotten me banned yet this is a

00:34:19.640 technique which i've taught you before which is you take people's opinion that you believe is absurd

00:34:26.200 and you agree with it and then you amplify it so agree and amplify so instead of saying

00:34:33.000 uh i think this election was stolen which for which there is no court approved proof and then getting

00:34:40.520 banned by by social media here's what i say i agree with i agree with the narrative but watch the way i do

00:34:48.360 it so here's me agreeing with the narrative and i tweeted yesterday in my ongoing effort to avoid being

00:34:55.080 canceled so i've set the stage so people know that whatever comes is because i'm avoiding being canceled

00:35:02.120 and then i say i hereby agree that an absence of court approved proof of election fraud is proof it did

00:35:07.800 not happen courts are the ideal place for those challenges software systems are unhackable and full

00:35:15.800 election transparency already exists what did my critics say when i said that because i just described

00:35:26.840 the the narrative that's acceptable

00:35:31.000 but because i'm associated with you know a political side whether whether i think that or

00:35:36.760 not i'm associated with it people are going to need to argue it which part of this

00:35:44.040 hundred dollars per word removal i see where you're going with that but that's a different topic

00:35:47.960 um let me read the the pieces of this again people call this sarcasm or satire let me see if you can

00:36:00.280 find any satire or exaggeration or sarcasm i'll read the parts again and here's the clever part there isn't

00:36:10.360 many there's there's no there's no hyperbole in here there's no exaggeration there's no satire i

00:36:17.480 literally wrote the mainstream narrative down first part that i said i agree that an absence of court

00:36:25.000 approved proof of election fraud is proof it did not happen now as you know absence of proof is not

00:36:34.280 logically proof of absence but that is the narrative it's what george stephanophilus says it's what cnn says

00:36:41.640 every day it's what msnbc says every day it's what the biden administration says every day i'm agreeing with

00:36:47.960 them that the lack of proof is proof that it doesn't exist now the fact that that is a log a famous

00:36:55.560 logical impossibility not impossibility a logical fallacy it isn't my fault it isn't up to me to

00:37:04.040 defend having an opinion which is a logical fallacy and like a famous one it's not even a it's not even

00:37:12.040 a remote one that not too many people have heard but it's like one of the most famous logical fallacies

00:37:18.280 that an absence of proof is not proof that there is nothing there

00:37:22.120 so i simply stated the exact belief that's coming from every direction with no exaggeration

00:37:32.280 are you with me so far you're with me so far that there's no exaggeration in that

00:37:37.400 so is that sarcasm is that satire it's literally what they're saying if i had if i had extended it

00:37:45.560 that would be satire if i had made it something it wasn't really meant to be

00:37:50.040 sarcasm maybe but this is actually precisely what it is there's no deviation from what i said from the

00:37:57.800 actual official narrative that a logical fallacy is the policy of of the government and social media

00:38:05.800 literally that's the policy about the second part the courts are the ideal place for these challenges

00:38:13.880 the questions about fraud now do you believe that courts are the ideal place for this well you could

00:38:21.400 argue that the court said we don't have jurisdiction so that would be a variable the courts have said

00:38:29.960 it's too late to make this challenge in some cases they've said that there's a technical problem in some

00:38:36.840 cases but that's you i mean that might be something you say but not me i agree with the mainstream

00:38:47.080 narrative that the courts are not just a good place for that the courts are not just the only option

00:38:55.160 that anybody has it's way better than that because the courts have shown that there's no fraud

00:39:02.440 fraud and if they can do something that powerful to show there's no fraud without even looking at the

00:39:08.920 evidence they're ideal because see how inefficient it would be to have a court case and people would

00:39:17.240 present evidence and it takes months and you need a jury and it's very expensive well that's not very

00:39:23.160 ideal is it that's not ideal the ideal is they don't even have to look at the evidence and they can still

00:39:31.160 conclude with certainty that there's no fraud that's ideal it's ideal so if i agree with the narrative

00:39:41.960 that the courts they got this that you couldn't even come up with a better place to take these court

00:39:49.480 challenges it's ideal and you know that they that you're thinking to yourself scott they don't think it's

00:39:57.080 ideal they think this part i'm not making up that the courts have settled it they don't say the courts

00:40:07.960 have mostly settled it they don't say the courts have given us an indication that everything's all right

00:40:14.040 they say unambiguously completely the courts have have decided on this it's done if that's true

00:40:22.680 and they decided on all of this without even having actual cases you know where evidence is shown and

00:40:29.240 all that stuff if they did all that without the expense of the evidence that's ideal how can you get

00:40:36.920 better than that somebody says the courts did not rule how does that matter if they're the ideal place

00:40:45.080 and they said i'm not going to rule on that then that's all you need to know because it was done at the

00:40:49.800 ideal place so i'm just agreeing with the official narrative that courts are ideal for that um now

00:40:59.400 you might say to yourself but even your critics reading that would say well not really ideal maybe

00:41:05.880 it's just the only option you have but that's not their story i'm just agreeing with their own narrative

00:41:13.240 then i also said that software systems are unhackable that is their position because there's lots of

00:41:23.160 software involved in the accounting etc there's no um there's no belief that they were hacked there's

00:41:32.040 no evidence of that or there's no proof of it let's say there's no court approved present there's no

00:41:37.720 court uh let's say agreed evidence or proof that any software was corrupted so i want to make sure i

00:41:46.200 don't get sued by dominion or anybody who's who's suing somebody personally i have no information

00:41:53.960 that would lead me to conclude that any software system had been corrupted

00:41:58.280 but i would go uh i would agree with my critics here as i am quite aggressively that we also know

00:42:08.040 it can't be hacked in the case of the election software how do we know that it can't be hacked

00:42:15.720 we know that because the people who are happy with the outcome tell us there's nothing to look at

00:42:21.000 if there's nothing to check no reason to check what do you conclude can you conclude that you know

00:42:30.360 everything's fine without checking well only if you know that it can't be hacked you would have to know

00:42:37.080 it can't be hacked or at least can't be hacked without being detected you would have to know it

00:42:42.040 can't be hacked and is therefore unhackable to be happy with not checking i don't see how you could

00:42:50.840 conclude anything else you would have to assume that software systems at least some of them are

00:42:57.080 unhackable and that this might be one of them

00:43:02.200 and you would have to assume also that the election had full transparency because if there were if any

00:43:06.920 transparency problems existed then the people asking for audits and more transparency would be

00:43:13.320 right because everybody wants more transparency in an election right who would argue against it

00:43:18.760 so i'm just agreeing with it the elections must have already complete transparency because otherwise

00:43:26.200 any reasonable person would say oh maybe we need a little more transparency but they don't so

00:43:31.640 find any part of this in which i'm departing from the mainstream narrative i don't think i am i think

00:43:41.800 they literally believe an absence of court approved uh proof is proof it doesn't exist i think they

00:43:49.640 actually believe the courts were the ideal place for these challenges i think they actually believe

00:43:54.680 that at least the election software was unhackable which which you would have to generalize if there's

00:43:59.960 any software that's unhackable it's all unhackable right because unless they invented something that

00:44:08.040 nobody else has uh such as a way to keep insiders from ever taking a bribe then why doesn't everybody

00:44:16.360 else use it unless they're just making mistakes they should use the same unhackable technology

00:44:23.720 that the that the elections use if it if it exists and i and i believe it exists because i'm told it does

00:44:30.120 and they must also believe there's full transparency in the election otherwise they wouldn't be arguing

00:44:34.600 and saying that everything's fine so um that would be an example of aggressive agreeing with people

00:44:43.000 and how much pushback do you think i got on that tweet

00:44:50.360 it's hard to push back on it isn't it the only way you can push back on that tweet is by disagreeing

00:44:55.880 with your own opinion because i agreed with your opinion everything i said agreed with your opinion

00:45:02.680 so if if it looks stupid to you i don't see how that's my problem if i agree with you and you and 0.99

00:45:10.920 my agreeing with you looks stupid maybe you should have rethought your opinion in the first place before 0.99

00:45:17.080 you got me to agree with you all right um reuters is reporting that enrique terrio the 0.99

00:45:27.320 leader of the proud boys which at least reuters calls an extremist group makes you wonder what's what's

00:45:34.440 the definition of an extremist group is there is there a definition of that or can the news just

00:45:41.720 tell you somebody is you know are democrats an extremist group is aoc an extremist for wanting to

00:45:49.640 radically change the economy with the green new deal i don't know is an extremist always somebody who

00:45:56.600 has bad intentions what's what's what's it mean anyway so they they just label the group extremists

00:46:04.520 now i'm not supporting the group or denying the group or disavowing them i feel like they got some

00:46:12.520 they've got some good things but uh a lot of problem things with the proud boys so it's not it's not

00:46:18.440 to me to defend them uh but you know you can condemn things they do which is different from

00:46:26.280 condemning all the members all right and by the way i would apply the same standard to every group you

00:46:32.200 know there's got to be some good people in antifa probably there's probably at least one person in

00:46:38.040 antifa who's not a complete loser so anyway he's uh he's being accused of being uh an informer a past

00:46:47.800 informer for the feds and local law enforcement apparently they say he's repeatedly worked undercover

00:46:55.240 for investigators after he was arrested in 2012 according to a former prosecutor and a transcript

00:47:01.880 from 2014 from federal court stuff so what do you make of the fact that the leader of the proud boys

00:47:11.480 is a well-known informer police informer or law enforcement informer do you think he was doing the

00:47:20.280 same thing with the proud boys or is that the biggest coincidence in the world is that the

00:47:26.600 biggest coincidence in the world that's a big one that's a big coincidence yeah somebody's saying it's

00:47:34.360 a psyop can't rule it out i don't have any reason to believe he was but uh he's an interesting character

00:47:42.840 and i would i would say if if i were a member of the proud boys the day that i learned this i would

00:47:49.880 not be a member of the proud boys anymore yeah you can do whatever you want and i suppose just getting

00:47:56.920 a new leader might be all you need but if i found this out that my leader was a well-known police informant

00:48:06.120 i'm pretty sure i would change change organizations or form a new one or something

00:48:14.280 gordon chang who is very anti-china maybe as much anti-china as i am he writes in the in the hill that

00:48:23.160 the chinese leaders did not test trump militarily late they didn't they didn't push him but they're

00:48:30.120 already pushing biden and this part blew my mind this is what gordon chang writes in the hill he says

00:48:39.320 that uh she president she looks like he is going after biden as it is clear chinese leaders think

00:48:46.440 or at least thought they could bully the new american president now that's the kind of statement where you

00:48:52.440 say how do you know what anybody's thinking right and that's kind of a stretch but uh gordon chang

00:49:00.600 supports that statement by saying how do we know that he goes the derisive derisive is it derisive

00:49:07.160 or derisive the derisive comment of d dong chang a professor at renmin university were recorded and

00:49:14.760 publicly circulated around china d basically claimed that china would be able to determine outcomes in

00:49:21.400 washington washington if trump lost the election

00:49:29.240 that's pretty shocking right so in other words we actually have a recording where somebody who's a

00:49:35.000 professor at a university that's you know well controlled by the the chinese government

00:49:41.000 and he was willing to say in public that china would be able to determine outcomes in washington

00:49:47.160 if trump lost the election

00:49:51.400 what they're saying it out loud that if it's biden they can push him around

00:49:57.640 and that trump they weren't they weren't willing to push him around because it was too risky

00:50:01.400 wow now will you see this story in reuters no will you see this story in cnn no msnbc no no you won't

00:50:15.080 um so it's it's left to you know pundits and people like me and people like gordon chang to tell you that story

00:50:25.480 um

00:50:25.640 um i think we're we've reached a point especially with the ability to communicate anywhere anytime

00:50:33.960 adding to that the fact that uh humans are bribeable and there's a lot of money in the world

00:50:40.120 i feel as if we're reaching the point where every government is just going to be controlled by

00:50:47.880 outside money because they can

00:50:50.120 uh and the way it looks like the way governments will be controlled is through the news

00:50:57.400 so if you try to control the government by let's say bribing or directly controlling an american

00:51:03.240 politician well you can do that but that's a little risky isn't it controlling a politician

00:51:10.760 you know somebody else if somebody finds out the politician took a check or did a did a paid speech

00:51:15.800 for some other country yeah you're probably going to find out there's going to be a record of it

00:51:21.480 somewhere it's a bad look but suppose instead you create an army of uh influenced journalists

00:51:30.680 who little by little seep into the into the you know the mainstream media and become your news

00:51:39.480 what happens when you've got some influential journalists

00:51:43.000 journalists um influential journalists and they're they're creating the news narrative

00:51:51.320 and it's just based from china or russia or iran or something that looks to be what we have

00:51:58.920 because what would have stopped china or iran or anybody else from capturing journalists in this

00:52:05.960 country what would stop them from doing it i can't think of anything because there'd be probably a

00:52:11.720 hundred different ways that you could bribe somebody and why wouldn't they i'm sure we're doing it we

00:52:16.920 must be doing it in other countries right so the the new uh the new war if you will is an information

00:52:26.600 war i hate to say info wars but maybe somebody who came up with that term understood what was coming

00:52:33.640 better than anybody else uh and that is is world war three essentially you know world war three is uh

00:52:45.000 you know what we do with cyber plus what we do with information warfare so we are in deep information war

00:52:53.320 with china and iran and our other adversaries and i don't know if we know it

00:52:59.240 it's hard to win a war you don't know you're fighting right so china could actually conquer the united

00:53:05.720 states just with changing the news narrative and you know looking at the way things are going it looks

00:53:13.880 like they have a good shot at it right

00:53:21.080 so our country has given its information by stooges so here's a question for you

00:53:27.560 do we know how much influence uh china in particular has on different news organizations

00:53:35.560 do we know i don't know um somebody's mentioning andy no gno no and apparently he had to move out of

00:53:44.280 the country or he did move out of the country because of death threats against him and his family

00:53:48.440 for just reporting that's it he just reported mostly on antifa black lives matter protests

00:53:56.760 but for that you know his family was targeted he got lots of death threats and has moved out of the

00:54:02.120 country are there any are there any democrats who've had to move out of the country yet because of death

00:54:09.640 threats nope remember i when i told you that republicans would be hunted now i don't know if andy would

00:54:18.520 i don't think he would classify himself as a republican i don't know you know i don't know one way or the

00:54:23.240 other but since he was clearly reporting on stuff that the left didn't like and i think he gets you

00:54:29.720 know andy's probably has more followers on the right he would be associated with them now when i said

00:54:36.280 republicans would be hunted and people would say to me mockingly give me one example of that

00:54:43.800 well there it is andy no he he was hunted literally they found his family they found his home

00:54:50.280 and they did threats against him and his physical home he was hunted he had to leave

00:55:03.720 they moved to canada and spain on their own when trump won in 2016 oh yeah that didn't happen

00:55:08.440 somebody says yeah yeah nobody really moved rand paul was hunted by his neighbor right

00:55:14.600 um steve scalise was hunted by that shooter but that was a different situation

00:55:26.200 twitter must really be afraid of peter navarro's navarro report you say well you know the trouble with

00:55:33.080 uh the navarro report and the trouble with anything that does a laundry list of election allegations

00:55:40.440 is that if you do if you do a list of things that you're alleging about the election credibility

00:55:47.960 that list is guaranteed to have some bullshit on it guaranteed because we don't know what's true and

00:55:56.120 what isn't so if you put together a bunch of allegations and let's say there are 10 things on the list 0.98

00:56:01.400 there's no way all 10 of those things are going to be true no way they might none of them be true

00:56:09.320 but with the one thing you can guarantee is that not all 10 of them are true there's going to be a

00:56:15.320 an explanation for something and if you do if you do that approach it makes you very

00:56:20.680 non-credible because it guarantees you're saying at least something that's not true

00:56:25.480 about the election and then you can get banned so if i were to give you advice i would say do maybe

00:56:33.720 one claim at a time if you think it stands out as one that hasn't been addressed in any way

00:56:41.320 then then you would live and die on that one claim so maybe maybe you feel like you've got a good case

00:56:47.160 there i wouldn't recommend it actually because it's actually a little too dangerous to question the

00:56:51.720 election but if you do a laundry list you're definitely dead because the laundry list will

00:56:57.640 have enough wrong stuff in it guaranteed that that will be enough to get rid of you all right um

00:57:08.040 and yeah i think some of the math claims are interesting but they don't guarantee anything

00:57:15.000 you know that the statistical stuff would have to have been

00:57:18.120 backed up with some some more detail to be meaningful it raises questions but that's all it does

00:57:26.200 am i moving to texas i think i have too many reasons to stay here

00:57:32.040 here being california not here here all right i'm going to give you one more look

00:57:35.800 we're here in tahiti on the way home to the states tonight late flight oh so tomorrow morning i should

00:57:53.560 be still flying or at least unavailable if i land before it's time for the periscope maybe i'll try doing

00:58:01.880 it from the car or something if i have a signal but chances are you will not see me tomorrow but

00:58:06.680 you'll see me the day after and i'll try to do it tomorrow if i can see you later

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 28, 2021

Episode 1266 Scott Adams： GameStop, China, and How to Lie to the Public

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