Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1267 Scott Adams： Trump Presidential Library, Traveling With Restrictions, Fake News About the Fake News

00:00:00.000 hey everybody good morning how are you well it's nice to be home it was nice to be on vacation

00:00:16.020 but it's nice to be home too and i get to finally be with all of you i apologize for over sleeping

00:00:22.500 by three hours i guess every now and then i should have a full night's sleep and my body

00:00:31.460 decided that today was the day one of the problems with not sleeping much because i hate sleeping

00:00:37.880 is that every now and then when i don't set my alarm clock i'll oversleep by three hours

00:00:44.040 typically i wake up three four in the morning and i'm done i just don't like sleep don't recommend

00:00:51.660 being like me don't be like me instead be like this be a person who knows how to enjoy the

00:00:57.800 simultaneous sip what do you need well you need a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or gels or stein

00:01:02.620 a canteen jug or plastic vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee

00:01:08.480 join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes

00:01:12.660 everything better the thing you've been waiting for the thing that was late it's called the

00:01:17.000 simultaneous sip and man is it going to be good when you finally get it here it goes

00:01:21.200 go

00:01:22.000 yeah just as good as i told you right yeah you were thinking it's not going to be that good is it but

00:01:31.480 it was once again how about that well let me start by telling you um how hard it is to travel

00:01:40.940 during the age of coronavirus most of you know i was just on my coronavirus delayed honeymoon

00:01:48.800 took us months to figure out how we could do this safely and and make it work and thanks to my

00:01:55.420 wonderful wife christina who is a genius at making stuff work she figured out how to get us to the 1.00

00:02:03.520 other side of the world safely and back it was kind of amazing uh the the basic thing you need to know

00:02:10.800 is that it's masks all the way we went to uh borabora which is in french polynesia by tahiti just sort of

00:02:18.380 leave california and head toward new zealand but before you get to new zealand you stop and uh that's

00:02:26.480 where borabora is and so we spent a week there it was most amazing week so here are the things you

00:02:32.240 need to know the highlights um it was a high-end resort it was the four seasons in borabora could

00:02:38.400 not have been better it's just it's impossible there isn't any possible way this trip could have

00:02:47.100 been better once you get there getting there's hard but once you get there it's amazing best scenery

00:02:52.600 feeling service you've ever seen the other thing that's amazing is that the uh the resort i don't

00:03:01.280 know if they're going to last because their business was no more than i don't think there

00:03:06.320 were more than 30 people at the entire resort which is built to handle hundreds i don't know how many

00:03:12.180 hundreds but i think 300 or so and there were maybe 30 of us there so entire swimming pools beaches

00:03:19.580 with zero people except us so as a as a honeymoon it couldn't have been better like i'll never

00:03:25.700 experience anything like this in my life again because it was a you know a top level experience

00:03:33.440 with no other people for in a practical sense so i worry a great deal about the future of their

00:03:41.040 business but uh man it could not have been better if you get a chance to go before the crowds pick up

00:03:46.880 here's the risk profile we got tested once before we flew so we had to have a result now you i suppose

00:03:56.340 we had a little bit of exposure theoretically before we flew but once on the plane at least i've seen

00:04:03.400 studies that say that the planes are so good with their filtration these days that your odds of getting

00:04:09.600 on a plane are actually really really low

00:04:11.820 uh people wore masks but of course they fall asleep and their masks fall off them so i would

00:04:18.440 say masking is pretty good on the plane if you think that makes any difference i'll talk about

00:04:23.020 that in a minute um so i wasn't worried about the plane and once you get there there are no people

00:04:28.060 and the staff is all masked and they they do good social distancing etc so they won't even clean your

00:04:34.640 room if they think you're going to be around it for a while so so everything was done really really

00:04:39.580 well i think the four seasons did everything that they could possibly do and then you get another

00:04:44.940 test while you're there so you have to do one before you fly there once a few days after you've

00:04:50.580 been there and then once right before you come back and we did that same day now you've got to

00:04:56.080 coordinate all this in a foreign country right so you've got to find a place in tahiti that will

00:05:02.060 give you a test that you'll get a result the same day so you can fly later that day do you know how

00:05:07.440 worried i was that that wasn't going to work and and you know you've got four hours to get your test

00:05:12.700 and it doesn't come and you think to yourself uh i'm in a foreign country and i can't fly home without

00:05:18.740 this test and they said it'd be here by now and it's not you know you're checking your email you're

00:05:25.260 thinking they got they wrote down a code wrong or something you'll never get home now of course

00:05:29.920 these are silly traveler worries because it's not likely that a place that's a tourist destination

00:05:38.000 has not figured out how to get the tourist home that's the part i always forget is that i'm not

00:05:45.240 the first person who ever had to figure this out obviously they have a system so the hotel works with

00:05:51.100 you and the hotel will tell you where to get the test and they'll make sure that you can get a cab

00:05:54.780 there and back and it's all very civilized and easy but boy i'll tell you that the distance they

00:06:00.620 push that that swab down your nose in tahiti that set a record i mean the american tests were bad enough

00:06:08.520 but the tahiti tests they really went for some spelunking for depth there i think they tickled my brain a

00:06:14.660 little bit but the bottom line is if if i had to judge how safe i was and this is the bottom line of

00:06:21.520 this how safe i was traveling from the coronavirus versus how safe i would have been just staying

00:06:28.740 home and socially distancing the you know the normal but imperfect amount that we all do i feel

00:06:35.180 like i was safer on on the road i don't know if you could measure that in any way but if i looked at

00:06:40.660 all the testing that i did and all the other people did i ended up on an island in the middle of the

00:06:46.440 pacific without anybody who had either not been there two weeks without an infection already

00:06:51.660 or or they got tested within you know the day that they they arrived so it was actually probably

00:06:58.180 safer than just normal life and probably a lot safer it probably wasn't even close you know without

00:07:05.040 an actual scientific way to measure that i can't be sure so i'm only giving you a sense of it i'm not

00:07:11.660 giving you a scientific opinion it felt way safer than just staying home and that's that's a big

00:07:19.700 credit to the system that's that has adjusted that much to to make that possible so the traveling i would

00:07:26.140 say traveling with a mask is hard especially if you have to try to sleep on the plane because it's a

00:07:30.860 long flight we had a four-hour delay followed by a seven-hour flight on the way there if you add in

00:07:36.760 the travel time and the taxi time and everything else you know 12 hours in a mask it's a long day

00:07:42.980 but a lot of people who have just regular jobs are doing that every day so i'm not going to complain

00:07:48.540 about it so it was all good so here's a question that people keep asking me i have uh apparently

00:07:54.680 spoken differently about how we should look at business close downs the lockdowns versus wearing masks

00:08:03.480 masks and it's actually a fair question in one case i say that the business closures the forced

00:08:09.980 closures do not have scientific backing to suggest that they work would you agree with that that we

00:08:17.560 don't really have scientific backing to suggest that closing businesses as opposed to keeping them

00:08:23.440 open with all the right restrictions we don't have evidence which one of those makes a difference

00:08:28.500 now i just told you i did a very complicated extensive you know travel and i did feel safer

00:08:36.240 i don't know but it felt safer than normal life because it was so you know designed to be controlled

00:08:43.780 where normal life is messy right but if it's designed to be controlled maybe they can do it better than

00:08:49.620 your normal messy life right that's what i think so um i don't have a feeling of whether we can tell

00:08:58.900 that closing businesses helps or hurts so we don't have science because it's it's hard to measure and

00:09:06.140 it's kind of too early for to even know if you did so what do you do you don't have science but common

00:09:13.760 sense kind of can point in both directions can it you could make a case that social distancing would

00:09:20.440 be better served with business closures but then how do you factor in the fact that it wouldn't be

00:09:25.480 normal business it would be opened under you know certain careful restrictions would that make it safer

00:09:31.420 than normal life it might who knows so i would say business closures are unproven scientifically

00:09:39.080 and so there you should really you should really pause to see if you want to do that because we

00:09:46.480 know the cost of it could be gigantic in terms of extra poverty and all the things that that causes

00:09:52.500 but i say the opposite or something very different about masks and people have pointed out that that

00:09:59.520 looks like an inconsistency why is it that i say i can't make a determination about whether closing

00:10:06.060 businesses make sense but my common sense of it which is largely an illusion common sense is an illusion

00:10:12.840 but my feeling of it my having observed it up close my feeling of it is it's a mistake to close

00:10:20.020 businesses there might be some exceptions like possibly a gym but no even a gym they would do good

00:10:27.940 procedures so i would say anybody who is willing to open up and do careful procedures my my logical

00:10:35.300 just experienced brain that sees the world says probably opening businesses would be a better

00:10:43.540 you know way forward and california is starting to open up a little bit uh starting this week so

00:10:50.400 that's good but i don't say that with masks now masks also have this problem that um we don't know

00:10:58.000 exactly what masks are doing in the context of the coronavirus we know they've been measured in

00:11:03.320 different contexts for different purposes and you know in the past we know that the experts

00:11:08.460 overwhelmingly say you should use masks we know that uh other people point to other studies and say

00:11:14.500 no these studies show masks don't make a difference so why is it that i would have a different opinion

00:11:20.240 about masks in which i say you should go ahead and wear them take the recommendation of the experts

00:11:25.300 whereas the business opening stuff i'm a little squishier on and it looks like maybe we should just open

00:11:31.180 the business and not do that why why do i make that difference and the difference is this here at

00:11:37.240 first some context you live in a life in a world in which you don't have scientific studies for almost

00:11:44.400 anything you do you don't know that waking up a little early will make your life better or worse

00:11:50.240 you don't know that this meal you ate is the smart one or not smart one you don't know if you know

00:11:55.800 you don't know much about anything you don't know the house you might buy the job you might take the

00:12:00.780 commute you choose almost everything you're doing all day long is stuff that nobody studied you've just

00:12:07.820 lived in the world long enough where you say i think this looks like a better choice than this but

00:12:13.080 there's no way to know you just got to take your shot masks are a little like that and there's a rule

00:12:20.440 that i use that i apply to just about everything which is that friction pretty much always works

00:12:27.800 now i'll leave i'll leave a little wiggle room because i'm sure there's some case where it doesn't

00:12:33.200 but if you've lived long enough you see that wherever friction is applied or wherever it's removed it has

00:12:40.500 exactly the predictable impact if you tax something people will do less of it if you build a wall

00:12:47.820 it'll be harder for people to get over it won't stop it but it'll be harder might reduce it if you

00:12:55.860 restrict anything you get less of it and with my living in the world without the science just living

00:13:05.740 in the world i say hey if the problem is stuff shooting out of your mouth and we know that that's

00:13:11.560 far bigger problem than what you're touching that seems to be you know the common understanding

00:13:16.580 if it's stuff that's shooting out of your mouth and you can put some friction on that thing

00:13:21.120 does it stop every bit of the virus no no we know it doesn't stop all of the virus but we do know that

00:13:27.880 the amount of the viral load makes a big difference in what the outcomes are so as long as we know that the

00:13:35.500 degree of viral load makes a big difference and we and common sense and living in the world says well

00:13:42.600 this mask probably limits some of that does it stop all of it no nobody thinks that nobody thinks a mask

00:13:51.080 stops a virus nobody thinks that there's no expert who thinks that they think it might slow it down

00:13:57.640 might add a little friction now do you need to do a scientific study in every situation in your life

00:14:05.760 in which somebody is applying or taking away friction to know what kind of effect that will have

00:14:11.100 you would be right 99 of the time if you just said that friction is a real thing and wherever it is

00:14:18.760 added you get less of a thing wherever it's subtracted you get you get more of a thing that's

00:14:24.180 it now could i be completely wrong could we learn someday in the future that masking was more bad than

00:14:32.940 good absolutely you could totally learn that so if you think i'm telling you i'm no i know with my

00:14:40.060 great brain certainty 100 that you know masks are definitely the reason i don't think that's

00:14:47.140 knowable and anybody who has that opinion i would respect that but i do think that if you're doing a

00:14:52.820 risk management assessment given how high the stakes are i would say it's a good risk and that the

00:15:00.740 consensus of experts is still solidly pro mask if you see a growing number of experts who tell you

00:15:08.760 masks don't work i would take that seriously but right now i don't see that i see people who are

00:15:14.300 not experts looking at studies they don't understand which are usually on slightly different things

00:15:20.380 you know what whether it works in a let's say a surgery setting etc for different different kinds of

00:15:26.840 diseases i would wait for the a pretty big consensus of experts to say they don't work

00:15:34.380 before i would even consider that they don't work and we don't have anything like that now if you've

00:15:40.140 seen actual medical experts a consensus not a rando doctor person but actual growing consensus of

00:15:49.020 doctors saying masks don't do anything i would take that seriously but that doesn't exist and you got

00:15:56.360 to ask yourself why right because because there are people on every side of everything you don't have

00:16:02.900 you don't have enough doctors to form sort of a sort of a movement away from masks you don't that means

00:16:10.400 something you should you should take that seriously now does that mean the mat that the experts are right

00:16:14.940 no but since it matches with my uh common sense if you want to call it that it's always an illusion

00:16:23.140 then i'm willing to take that as a reasonable risk to wear the mask here's the funniest uh scariest

00:16:31.580 thing in the world there's some reporting that trump is getting stronger

00:16:37.200 by being out of the news that we've i think everybody has made the same observation that trump

00:16:46.600 if he just stopped talking for a while as president if he had just stopped talking for a while

00:16:52.060 that his popularity would have gone through the roof if he just stopped being a little bit

00:16:59.380 as trumpy as he is now that's a ridiculous thing to hope for because the whole point of electing trump

00:17:07.200 is that he wasn't going to change you he wouldn't have even been elected in the first place if people

00:17:14.180 thought he was going to be a different person when he took office right that's part of what you expected

00:17:18.580 that trump is trump excuse me that said um he's sort of uh let's say involuntarily forced into some

00:17:30.680 silence after his office his uh term ended and the less he talks i feel like the more popular he's

00:17:38.960 gonna get because you've got this big populist energy if you will that suddenly became leaderless

00:17:45.840 what happens when you have this much energy let's say the populist whatever the trump movement was

00:17:53.400 you have that much energy and then the leader goes silent what happens does the energy just dissipate

00:18:02.000 well i guess uh the people on the left hope that would happen does it transfer to another leader

00:18:10.280 it could but who is that don't you think we know by now who is the who is the natural inheritor of the

00:18:20.140 energy that the trump movement or the populist movement created i don't know i mean there are some good

00:18:27.540 republican candidate potentials for 1994 some of them more more trump-like than others but there's not

00:18:36.500 really a natural you know there's not a name where every one of you would say well what about x not

00:18:43.760 really right yeah matt gates i think is his own is his own person i don't see him as exactly a trump

00:18:50.140 clone uh but but he would be at least in terms of the populist uh policies would be very close to that so

00:18:58.740 he'd be a yeah ted cruz cruise has some problems politically at the moment because he's being branded as being

00:19:05.460 part of the insurrection so here's the interesting part if you thought that trump was a problem

00:19:14.980 before the democrats decided to crucify him

00:19:19.120 let me say that again so you won't think i chose that word accidentally if the democrats thought that

00:19:28.000 trump was a problem before they decided to crucify him and then he went silent for a while how many days

00:19:40.420 and the only problem is if you thought that the so-called insurrection was a problem

00:19:49.280 wait till you see the resurrection

00:19:52.340 resurrection because the resurrection's going to be a bigger problem if you're a democrat now i'm not

00:20:01.480 going to predict that trump after having been legally and politically crucified would go away

00:20:11.440 effectively as if dead for a while while the movement that he led grows in his absence grows

00:20:21.000 if he were to return 0.99

00:20:25.000 it's a big fucking problem 0.98

00:20:28.520 now i predicted he won't that i had predicted that he would not be politically viable 0.97

00:20:36.100 because he wouldn't be able to get the same people who supported him the same way before

00:20:41.060 and i'm going to stick with that i'm going to stick with my prediction that he will not

00:20:45.880 run for office again so i'm going to stick with that but if you wanted to guarantee that he did run for

00:20:53.400 office and win just keep doing what you're doing because every time you hear somebody who was

00:21:01.880 associated with trump get taken down at first you say oh okay that's a special case that's somebody

00:21:09.160 who did something illegal and of course the law is the law so i understand that one oh there's another

00:21:16.680 one oh it's somebody okay well okay they did something else yeah that i guess that was pretty

00:21:21.880 bad so i guess that's a special case you know they were trump supported but that's a special case well

00:21:27.160 there's another one there's another one that had there's three more every time you hear another trump

00:21:33.000 supporter being taken down it starts with yeah there was i guess they had to do that they broke some

00:21:38.840 laws and then it starts to be people taken down for things they may or may not have thought people

00:21:46.200 being taken down for signing up for to have a parl and gab account that just happened that was just in

00:21:51.720 the news somebody got fired for simply having an account on parl parl and gab that's it that was the

00:21:59.720 entire accusation they had an account on an alternative social media platform every time you hear about

00:22:07.320 that stuff it feels as if the people who associated with it and all that populist energy might be picking up

00:22:15.880 power it's exactly what the democrats don't want to happen but i think they're doing it as aggressively as

00:22:23.640 they possibly could and it's building up this sort of resentment revenge energy you don't want to build

00:22:31.720 up too much resentment revenge energy and that's what the democrats are doing because it's the more revenge

00:22:39.240 they put into the system the more is going to come back wouldn't you agree we have a system in which

00:22:44.520 the more revenge you put into it the more is coming back that's there's no way around it the the republicans

00:22:53.080 are not going to sit there for four years of revenge being taken out upon them without an equal and

00:22:59.640 opposite reaction it just there isn't any way that can happen and so

00:23:06.440 the democrats are creating a situation for trump's resurrection that is the one you don't want

00:23:15.160 that's the one you don't want and i don't even think i want that one because that's going to be too much

00:23:21.320 energy and not exactly the right place all right that's too much energy and

00:23:30.680 they really they have a real problem here this is a real problem i'm still going to stick with my

00:23:35.240 like i said my uh prediction that he won't run for office again but man are they making it dangerous

00:23:42.520 they are really making it dangerous because if they don't if they don't take the boot off our neck pretty soon

00:23:51.800 let me put it this way i don't know if this is a

00:23:56.040 uh a republican quality um i don't identify republican as you know i don't identify even conservative as you know

00:24:05.560 um but i have this quality and i i think it might be common to the right so i might have this in common

00:24:13.000 which is i am really really flexible really flexible until i'm not and i can't even i can't even tell you

00:24:23.080 where the knot kicks in because i'm always surprised in my normal life you know i'm exactly the same not just

00:24:29.960 my political opinions but the way i live my in-person life very flexible very very flexible

00:24:38.440 until i'm not and when i'm not it just falls off a cliff when i'm not it's absolute there's no

00:24:48.680 negotiation once i hit a certain point and i i scare people because i don't have any warning before that

00:24:54.520 happens i worry that that's what's happening with the political right which is they're flexible

00:25:03.000 they're taking it all right all right we we gave it to you pretty hard when trump was in charge you

00:25:08.360 know okay all right a little slap a little slap we had that coming we said some bad things too okay

00:25:14.760 another little slap i you know turn the other cheek yeah i'm not looking for trouble okay that's three

00:25:21.560 that's three um i'm gonna i'm gonna shake that off that's four that's four um still okay holding it

00:25:30.440 down don't want any trouble that's five you know where this is going right there there is a

00:25:40.120 psychological atomic bomb that's being created by the actions the revenge actions of the left

00:25:49.320 that they can push a little bit you know they can get away with that and even people on the right i

00:25:56.040 think at some level you're saying yeah elections have consequences i wish i wish our side won yeah we

00:26:03.800 gave it to them pretty hard it's a it's a political game they're giving it back a little bit but there is a

00:26:09.640 limit there is a limit there is a limit and if they reach that limit they're going to get a leader of

00:26:18.760 the populist movement that they didn't want could be trump again that would be a big problem could be

00:26:24.920 trump again a big problem for the left anyway but it'll be somebody else and you don't want it to be me

00:26:32.360 that's for sure you don't want it to be me all right the funniest story in the news is the uh talk

00:26:40.120 about the trump library somebody wrote an article in the or an opinion piece in the washington post

00:26:46.120 saying that trump should not have a uh presidential library he should not have a library come on

00:26:55.000 well joel pollack uh called that out and wrote about it and here here's just something that joel

00:27:01.240 wrote in the bright part he said the paper who's talking about the washington post he said the paper

00:27:06.760 whose motto is democracy dies in darkness presented an argument thursday by an art and architecture

00:27:12.920 critic philip kennicott about why the history of the trump administration should in fact be shrouded

00:27:18.680 in darkness kennicott wrote trump must never have an official presidential library and congress should

00:27:24.280 move quickly to make sure he never will well game on not only as as joel points out not only should trump

00:27:35.400 have a presidential library but it needs to be the best one at least in terms of popularity

00:27:43.480 it needs to be the best one and the best way to do this would be make a commercial

00:27:49.080 would you not pay a small entry fee to see a properly designed trump presidential museum oh yeah

00:27:58.280 you would yeah you would you'd pay for that if he did it right right if it's just a boring museum

00:28:03.640 where you walk through and see some photos and stuff you're not you don't care about that too much

00:28:08.520 but if he made it funny imagine if you will as joel points out one wing being the the russia

00:28:17.480 collusion mental hospital wing imagine going into a trump museum and you go into one room and it's

00:28:24.600 nothing but a bunch of videos playing in a loop of adam schiff and other republicans making accusations of the

00:28:32.680 uh political uh of the uh russia collusion hoax you could have one room for every hoax

00:28:43.000 you could have the fine people hoax room you could have the drinking bleach hoax room but you could

00:28:48.680 also have the cnn fake news room where it's a an entire exhibit of only the fake news that just was on

00:28:55.320 cnn it'd be clips and examples and then then the debunk of you know you'd have the fake news and then

00:29:01.080 the debunk of it why it's wrong and then kids could go learn there and and as a school outing you could

00:29:07.560 go and you could learn how the news is all made up you tell me you wouldn't buy a ticket to that you

00:29:14.280 would buy a ticket to that now add in an animatronics not animatronics let's say a a deep fake trump

00:29:23.880 who can who actually has some ai built in so it can interact with you it's like a 3d hologram of trump

00:29:31.240 but it's actually programmed with i guess google and some other companies now have some ai that's

00:29:36.760 whole next level so by the time it gets built maybe some of that will be available where it can really

00:29:42.040 really understand the context of conversation then you build a hologram trump who can speak back to you

00:29:48.600 basically using tweets or things he said before so he matches them to your content but it's trump's

00:29:55.080 actual words he'd be saying what he tweeted or what he said in public some point you could totally build

00:30:00.520 that you wouldn't want to see that you wouldn't want to go up and talk and have a conversation with

00:30:06.200 deep fake holographic trump you would do that you would do that all right

00:30:12.280 so yeah trump needs a presidential library and it needs to be commercial it needs to be huge hugely

00:30:22.840 popular i mean and it just needs to be awesome i would mostly look forward to how they would name

00:30:28.040 the restrooms uh because i think adam schiff needs to be part of that uh yeah or at least you know the uh

00:30:37.480 the new green new toilets have two buttons depending on what your business was you get the

00:30:42.840 little button for you know number one and big button for number two well i think the big button should

00:30:49.320 be named uh adam schiff and the little button should be whatever but then there should also be a

00:30:56.280 i'd like to see a stormy daniels interactive exhibit

00:30:59.320 sort of like a ride well you could use your imagination there i don't have to fill in the

00:31:07.080 blanks all right um this is a predictable problem apparently there were a bunch of vaccinations

00:31:15.480 available in washington heights a part of new york city which has high minority population i think

00:31:22.440 mostly hispanic if i'm correct and a bunch of white people came in and got those shots

00:31:29.320 so they were available for people over 65 and a bunch of old white people went in there and

00:31:35.880 and took those shots so they weren't available for other people now wouldn't it be better

00:31:44.120 that maybe we didn't divide our health care by race

00:31:50.120 i don't know how this could possibly go well you know i said this before i think on a tweet

00:31:56.680 um i'm completely on board with the fact that african american citizens should get some priority

00:32:05.400 because they have worse outcomes i get that but there's such a big difference between asking me

00:32:12.040 personally if i would mind waiting you know waiting for other people to go ahead in which case i'll say

00:32:17.400 yeah i will yeah that's a good argument some other people should go go ahead of me i mean we're all

00:32:23.320 doing that right everybody's saying if you're over 80 you go first if you're if you're uh you know

00:32:29.240 doing uh frontline health care you should go first etc so i don't have any problem with the concept

00:32:35.400 of as a citizen of letting other people go first and that and black citizens would be at the top of my 0.99

00:32:42.360 list because they have worse outcomes so of course yeah i'm completely on board with that but what happens

00:32:47.960 when your government tells you that's the rule that's different isn't it if you ask me personally

00:32:54.440 i'm fine with it but if you tell me it's the law that my race will determine my health care outcomes

00:33:01.240 at least in this way i've got a problem with that i just don't feel that that's where the

00:33:06.360 government should be getting involved but if you ask me voluntarily you know if if even let's say

00:33:12.360 joe biden who is legally acknowledged as my president i don't have to agree with him politically

00:33:20.440 if he simply said look the only way this is going to work is for you is for you citizens to

00:33:27.560 step up and make some sacrifice you know who you are don't get your shots first i'd say let us work

00:33:34.360 that out because there are people whose psychological condition is such that they probably need to get it

00:33:41.240 sooner because they can't deal with things psychologically right or they don't have the

00:33:47.160 ability to socially isolate as well as i can if i can socially isolate better than 95 of the world and

00:33:55.400 i think that's actually true in my case shouldn't i wait a little bit longer makes perfect sense to me

00:34:01.880 you just have to ask that one of the things that's i think deeply missing in this country

00:34:07.080 is just asking when was the last time somebody did that when was the last time your leaders

00:34:14.760 said look i don't want this to be a law because it's a bad precedent i don't want to make it a law

00:34:21.960 that you know white people go last for shots it's just not a good precedent but i will tell you 0.89

00:34:28.280 you know what the risks are and i want you to act like good citizens i want you to do what's right

00:34:34.520 use your conscience look at your own risk and reward nobody can make that decision for you

00:34:41.640 and you decide what's right and then act on it that's all we're going to ask of you as citizens

00:34:48.120 you just decide what's right now i don't know how that would turn out maybe maybe that wouldn't work

00:34:54.040 out but i feel like that's where we should be on this we joe biden should be asking people like me

00:35:01.320 because i'm sort of on the bubble you know i'm not old enough that i can get it get into the shots

00:35:06.680 but i could make an argument about comorbidity i've got asthma so maybe i should be at the top of the

00:35:11.640 line but i wouldn't mind waiting because i can socially isolate better than most people so special

00:35:18.920 case i'll wait a little bit all right um just ask so that's a that's a direct a direct request to joe biden

00:35:29.560 just ask seriously just ask i think a lot of people would be willing to help out um

00:35:38.920 so i guess we have to talk about game stop and i guess i have a different opinion about this whole

00:35:43.240 game stop stuff i'm watching it with the same level of entertainment you are i also don't care

00:35:50.280 if the billionaire hedge fund people lose some money i don't know how that works for the people

00:35:55.880 who invested with them i feel as though they're ordinary investors who would get it in the shorts

00:36:01.480 no matter what happens but that's true of this the stock market in general so

00:36:07.240 so i watch it with amusement but here's what i'm not seeing that other people are seeing

00:36:11.400 that it's some kind of a um it's marking some kind of a shift or it's telling us something about

00:36:19.800 the larger society or or the little people versus the rich i don't see any of that i just see

00:36:28.920 sort of a one-off thing that somebody discovered they could do it grew in popularity of course part

00:36:35.000 of that is you know the political climate and our history of uh the rich people getting richer

00:36:41.320 etc etc but to me it doesn't feel like the beginning of some kind of giant shift in culture or change

00:36:49.560 or anything it just feels like a thing that happened i don't see it having a large uh carryover

00:36:58.520 now as i saw in the comments uh apparently a lot of chinese youth are getting into this as well

00:37:04.840 i would imagine that this will result in some kind of rule change because otherwise these large group

00:37:10.840 of organized investors will uh destroy the market for gain because pretty you could pretty much target 1.00

00:37:18.200 any company and manipulate it in this way and apparently it's legal uh you know hedge funds are not that

00:37:26.040 different but i guess this only works as a legal process if not too many people do it so that might be the

00:37:34.920 the long-term change is that if the hedge funds have been doing it and now other people can organize to do it

00:37:41.160 there's too much of it and if there's too much of it then maybe it has to be regulated away if there's some way to do that

00:37:47.960 i don't know if it's even practical but um so they might break break this opportunity for the hedge funds

00:37:56.120 maybe but probably not so my my best guess about where this all comes out is it just becomes a

00:38:02.440 new story that fades away maybe there's a rule change that stops it later um but i see it more

00:38:09.960 as a prank than anything else and you know there's and of course there's the sub stories about uh i guess

00:38:15.800 the sec said it's going to review how some of the brokerage firms acted when they stopped trading

00:38:21.880 uh which disadvantaged the little investor so that has to be looked into but it looks like the legal system

00:38:28.920 or the government regulation system will look into it so i don't know that there's as much there

00:38:36.200 as other people are thinking it feels like this feels like the kind of story that's a story because trump

00:38:41.720 is no longer in office you know something is going to fill the news cycle no matter what you take out trump

00:38:48.120 and there's this giant empty spot that has to be filled i don't know this story isn't interesting

00:38:53.320 to me but um it's capturing the imagination who do you think would who do you think would be the

00:39:01.320 natural leader of the populist movement if let's say if trump does not resurrect who would be the natural

00:39:09.880 leader give me some names now i heard you know matt gates uh i've heard uh well who do you think

00:39:16.760 who would even qualify to take that role

00:39:22.440 that's you yeah you know there wouldn't be a better president than me on some level but i would never

00:39:31.480 want that job so it's never going to happen that the only the only thing that would make me a good

00:39:35.800 president i probably had more bad qualities than good so don't don't vote for me for president

00:39:41.000 um but the one good thing i would bring is i wouldn't feel the need to lie to you

00:39:48.520 maybe if you take the job suddenly you have all kinds of reasons to lie but i wouldn't really feel

00:39:53.000 the need to because i don't think there's anything i couldn't explain in a way that i just wouldn't need

00:39:58.680 to so um but it would be the worst job in the world so i wouldn't want it all right

00:40:07.480 in the news uh fbi attorney kevin klein smith you heard of him on the russia collusion hoax business

00:40:15.160 he forged in he forged email in carter page's visa process uh his fisa process and you know he forged an

00:40:23.400 email just think about that a u.s attorney forged an email ruined the life of this carter page guy

00:40:32.040 for all practical purposes his his professional career just got kneecapped and all he received

00:40:39.160 received for that was a 12 months probation 400 hours of community service and a hundred dollar fine

00:40:46.840 now i don't know what is typical for what kind of a uh sentence you get for that kind of a crime i

00:40:59.160 suppose they probably say something along the lines of no prior crimes uh maybe they argued he thought

00:41:06.680 he had a good reason i'm not sure that shouldn't make a difference uh maybe they just said this is

00:41:12.920 similar to similar to other crimes oh i'm seeing people say tulsi gabbard rand paul uh for a populist

00:41:21.400 leader um maybe so so but what do you think of this 12 months of probation no jail time for throwing the

00:41:31.400 entire country and people's specific lives into horrible situation i feel as if this is not even

00:41:42.760 close to appropriate if you forge something in the role of a government professional especially

00:41:51.400 an fbi attorney that's got to mean something that's different from a regular crime right can you treat

00:41:59.080 a government action against a citizen the same as you could just do citizen to citizen crimes i feel as

00:42:07.160 as if he's being sentenced as if this were just a regular white collar crime this was not a regular

00:42:16.760 white collar crime this almost destroyed the whole freaking country and it destroyed some people's lives 1.00

00:42:22.520 for sure this should have been five to ten years that feels about right to me five to ten years

00:42:30.360 wouldn't you say if you were just going to compare it to other crimes that you're aware of

00:42:35.640 five to ten years completely inappropriate um and this is the sort of thing that in the context of the trump

00:42:47.400 energy or populist gaining momentum will while trump is sort of absent from it at the moment

00:42:54.360 this is the sort of thing that's adding energy to that because this seems so blatantly uh i hate to

00:43:01.560 say unfair but that's how people will register you know the world there's no such thing as fairness but

00:43:06.920 people will register this is unfair in other news black lives matter movement has been uh nominated for a

00:43:15.080 nobel peace prize which is interesting for a movement which many would consider a racist movement

00:43:23.560 now obviously its intention is to be anti-racist but in in application it became a overt racist movement

00:43:31.480 i would say now that is not to say that the people in it are bad people but in terms of just how it

00:43:38.760 evolved and what it turned into i would say that it turned from an anti-racism thing into just a completely

00:43:45.640 racist movement uh even though the the goals of it of course most people would agree with of all that 0.55

00:43:52.600 uh black lives matter of course so um i i think the the nobel peace prize has become just ridiculous at 0.98

00:44:04.440 this point i mean you know it always has been ridiculous but it went to a new level of 0.97

00:44:09.560 ridiculousness i suppose we say that every year um funniest thing i'm seeing lately in the news is

00:44:16.120 do you remember daniel dale who i guess works for cnn as their fact checker so during the trump

00:44:22.760 administration he would come on and fact check trump and say everything that trump said was was wrong and

00:44:28.600 now he's uh he's in the role of defending biden for things taken out of context about biden

00:44:37.480 so he claims that this was taken out of context that when that when biden was talking about executive

00:44:42.920 orders you know he said something along the lines of you shouldn't do a lot of executive orders unless

00:44:48.280 you were a dictator now apparently that was completely taken out of context and it was right it was taken

00:44:55.640 out of context so how is that different from every cnn story about trump pretty much all of the news

00:45:04.280 about trump was just stuff taken out of context but they didn't didn't call it out now daniel dale will

00:45:10.360 have to call out all the times that biden is taken out of context so he went from a cool job where you

00:45:16.280 get to criticize trump all the time into a way less cool job where he's got to defend biden for things

00:45:23.960 that biden maybe should have said a little more clearly or added some better context or something so

00:45:30.360 poor daniel dale his job just got demoted to biden apologizer apologist i mean

00:45:37.000 apparently china had this clever scheme to one of the big companies was offering to build test labs in

00:45:46.920 this country and the accusation here is that that would have allowed them to collect a bunch of dna

00:45:53.560 from americans and that china is in the process of collecting as much american dna as they can

00:46:00.440 now i can't think there are probably a whole bunch of ways you can misuse dna and of course the scariest

00:46:05.880 one is any kind of a weapon that would be dna specific which we do worry could be possible

00:46:13.640 i think it might be possible actually so that's pretty dangerous thing but here's the question

00:46:18.280 that this asks that this raises why is it in the year 2021 chinese companies have something close to

00:46:27.160 free reign in the united states they i'm sure they have restrictions but chinese companies can do business

00:46:33.240 in the united states in a way that american companies can't do business in china now you can do some

00:46:39.640 kinds of business but it's not anywhere close to equal why do we let that happen well why in the world

00:46:48.040 would we let our our rival china do something closer to unrestricted business in our country with this 0.99

00:46:56.280 kind of risk you know if they put our if they put any technology into your company you've got a risk that

00:47:01.800 they're stealing your secrets through the technology if they do any kind of medical thing you've got a

00:47:06.920 risk that they're going to steal your dna if you do any kind of other thing there's going to be some

00:47:12.280 other risk every time the chinese are buying into this country it opens up some kind of a risk why do we 1.00

00:47:19.960 let them do business here why is that legal does anybody have any idea why that's legal i can't think of

00:47:28.040 any reason why that should be legal if we can't do it in their country now if they opened up and said hey

00:47:33.320 let's just make it the same you can do you can do whatever whatever we do there you can do here

00:47:38.280 but that's not going to happen if we can't do business in their country they should not be able

00:47:43.880 to do business in our country it should be the same and why is that even controversial who's on the

00:47:49.320 other side of that argument is there somebody in the united states who says yeah yeah we really do want

00:47:55.320 the chinese to be putting their money into our into our economy are they putting so much in that we 0.97

00:48:02.760 would be we'll go into a depression if they stop investing i don't know i guess i need to know more

00:48:09.400 about that but i've never heard a reason why china should do business with us when we can't do the same

00:48:13.880 kind of business with them if there is an argument for that i'd love to hear it but i think it's just 0.97

00:48:20.200 stupid from a security perspective it just seems stupid um are you having the same impression i have 0.97

00:48:30.680 with joe biden's spokesperson jen pisaki here's my take on her day one oh she seems pretty capable 1.00

00:48:42.520 yeah she seems bright and uh looked like a perfect choice for the job really i thought it was a good 0.94

00:48:49.000 choice although i feel like they should have chosen a a woman of color um but you know she she looked 0.99

00:48:59.080 very capable and qualified and she had a good background and etc but as time goes by do you know

00:49:06.600 some personalities the more you see them the less you like them but there are others the more you see

00:49:12.760 them the more you like them you know some people don't they don't wear well if you know what i mean

00:49:19.480 there's something about jen pisaki who is let's say whatever is the opposite of dana perino 1.00

00:49:28.280 i'll just pick her as my example the more you see of dana perino who had been spokesperson under bush

00:49:36.120 the more you see of her the more you like her she just has one of those personalities the more you

00:49:41.480 see the more you like that's why she's you know has a lot of time on fox news the public likes seeing 1.00

00:49:48.120 her but the more i see of jen pisaki and this has nothing to do with being a democrat has nothing to 0.99

00:49:54.200 do with being a woman all right so if you're looking for any isms i don't think it has anything to do

00:49:59.480 with any of that she just has a personality that the more you see of it the less you like it am i

00:50:07.560 right and and the reason i use you know dana perino as my opposite example is because she doesn't have 1.00

00:50:15.000 that and i would say uh kaylee mcenany even if you hated how she treated the press she's also one of 0.99

00:50:24.200 those personalities where the more you see of her the more you like her and that's just not true

00:50:29.160 of everybody the more you see of adam schiff the less you like him right now could it be that i'm

00:50:37.000 being biased simply by political leanings and i'm thinking to myself now i'm just agreeing with people

00:50:44.120 i want to agree with and i'm just having some bias about people who might have a different opinion

00:50:48.920 from me could be i mean it might be it might be that that's all that's happening here but i put

00:50:54.920 the question out to you this seems like there's something about her that a little bit lasts a long

00:51:01.800 time if you know what i mean all right are you is anybody getting that same vibe very capable very

00:51:08.760 smart but a little bit of her goes a long way and i don't know if that's going to be a factor going

00:51:15.160 forward um but the story related to this is that uh when she was asked whether they're going to see

00:51:23.400 joe biden some more for these press conferences and she only answered cleverly oh are you eager to

00:51:29.960 see him is that what you're saying and the reporter said sure and then she didn't answer the question

00:51:38.520 don't you think it's going to be more and more of a story the longer biden goes without

00:51:45.320 opening himself up to unfriendly questions because the whole point of the these uh

00:51:51.640 presidential press conference things is that it opens you up to unfriendly questions

00:51:57.400 is biden going to avoid unfriendly questions for four years can he get away with that probably can

00:52:05.560 here's something i recommend to you on cnn uh i've said this before but while i criticize cnn's

00:52:13.240 uh news coverage quite a bit cnn as a network does some non-news programming that often is really good

00:52:23.560 so a lot of these cnn specials they're just about to say a certain topic they're quite well done uh and

00:52:30.600 i recommend them quite often they've got one coming up that's being teased i think anderson cooper is

00:52:37.560 running this and uh they're talking to some q supporters to sort of dig down and figure out

00:52:43.320 what's up with with the q believers and there's a a teaser where anderson cooper is talking to a

00:52:50.680 completely rational looking guy a guy who you'd say to yourself and first of all uh he looked like he

00:52:57.080 might have uh i'm guessing no i don't want to guess somebody's ethnicity but i'll say he's

00:53:02.600 the person he's talking to is not a uh typical uh white bread looking guy let's just say that but

00:53:08.760 i won't guess what his ethnic background is but that makes it interesting too because you're imagining

00:53:13.640 the q believers as a bunch of you know super white people but here was one that anderson was talking to

00:53:20.440 who was not in that category and said that he believed that at one point that anderson cooper ate babies

00:53:27.320 he said that to anderson cooper and then he apologized for thinking that anderson cooper ate babies and then

00:53:38.840 he went on to say other things he believed about uh cubing working with interdimensional uh blue

00:53:46.760 bird-like creatures what what and here's the amazing thing the guy he interviewed looked like a

00:53:57.800 completely normal smart person who could operate in the world and do just about anything a very capable

00:54:07.400 reasonable looking person and that person looked right in the camera and said to anderson cooper

00:54:13.320 yeah i believed you ate babies sorry blue avians is what i guess the q people call it now 0.96

00:54:24.120 what do you make of this do you say to yourself well that's a crazy person 0.97

00:54:29.640 or do you say to yourself there's there are lots of crazy people do you imagine that the q people are 0.98

00:54:35.800 mentally weak do you think that the q people are extra gullible do you think that the q people uh have some 1.00

00:54:48.600 kind of strange mental defect that makes them believe these things whereas you do not here's the bad news

00:54:57.000 people they're completely normal that's the bad news the bad news is the people who believe

00:55:08.200 the q uh the stories that anderson cooper was eating babies the people who believe that

00:55:15.400 completely normal or at least average or typical or

00:55:20.120 routine human beings how do i know that you're not going to like this i'll probably lose a few

00:55:29.480 followers the next few minutes because people believe every religion no matter what religion you have

00:55:40.120 which i think we can agree can we can we stipulate something that whatever religion you have

00:55:46.840 is the true one let's just agree with that now i don't know what your religion is they're probably

00:55:53.160 different but just say that the one you have that's the right one okay but now that you know that you

00:56:01.320 have the right religion lucky you you could have you could have gotten it wrong but you didn't you got

00:56:07.560 the right one that means that there are billions of regular people who got the wrong religion

00:56:13.400 religion do you know what you would believe if you got the wrong religion

00:56:20.280 it might involve magical sounding stuff a little bit for the wrong religion now your religion is the

00:56:28.200 right one so lucky for you you're smart and wise and you don't fall for gullible stuff but yours is a

00:56:35.080 good one but you can observe that there are people who look otherwise normal who got all the wrong

00:56:42.280 religion people thinking you're reincarnating well unless you believe that in which case it would be 0.93

00:56:47.240 right but if other people believe that you don't that's crazy um so you have religions in which there are

00:56:56.680 people walking on order and resurrecting maybe that's the real one but you got other ones in which

00:57:03.400 somebody's riding a flying horse to heaven maybe that's the real one and maybe the the other one's not

00:57:12.120 some people believe in reincarnation as i said some people believe in heaven simply believe there's nothing

00:57:18.360 there one thing you can say for sure is that regular normal human beings with completely functional brains

00:57:28.040 we'll believe anything it's actually just built into our nature we will believe anything but here's

00:57:34.680 the only thing i want to add to that because on some level you knew that right the thing i want to add to that

00:57:39.400 is that the way humans believe is almost like choosing what clothes you're going to wear

00:57:47.480 i think that and you can see it with this uh this person who's talking to anderson cooper the the

00:57:53.960 xq believer he the way he spoke of it was almost like a lifestyle choice to adopt a set of beliefs

00:58:03.640 because adopting that set of beliefs had some benefits maybe it made you part of a group maybe

00:58:08.120 it made you interested maybe it was intellectually stimulating but whatever the reason was it was just a

00:58:14.200 choice and i would submit to you that people choose their their filter or the the set of things they

00:58:21.720 believe based on what just feels good as the same way you decide well i'll wear this shirt or this other

00:58:30.760 shirt when you get dressed how do you make that decision which shirt to put on say well i like this one

00:58:37.480 this is a better shirt today i feel like this shirt and that belief is more like that that we pick

00:58:43.320 the belief that sort of gives us some benefits makes us feel good makes us feel connected whatever

00:58:48.920 and that we don't actually say are these beliefs based on science or truth can i prove it am i being

00:58:55.800 gullible what about those other people why do they believe something different it's nothing like that

00:59:00.920 it's simply a lifestyle choice to buy into a set of beliefs and then treat them as though they're true

00:59:08.040 even on some level knowing that you just made a choice to treat them as true as opposed to them

00:59:13.000 being objectively true anyway you should watch the q special i think you're actually going to learn a

00:59:19.800 lot about how completely normal people can choose choose to believe something crazy i'll give you an

00:59:28.200 example of that when i watch the one of my favorite shows is about ancient astronauts and ancient aliens

00:59:37.720 uh allegedly have you know building the pyramids and allegedly interacting with lots of uh lots of

00:59:45.080 different uh early cultures speaking of which i'll show you a picture if i can do this on camera

00:59:51.400 so in uh tahiti they've got all of these let's see if i can do this if i can hold it just right you can

00:59:58.520 see it there's a little uh totem looking picture all over the place in tahiti where it looks like an alien

01:00:06.440 like these this big-eyed alien thing and they're all over the place as if the early tahitians had had 0.99

01:00:14.600 contact with an alien race and now they're building them into all their their imagery and i thought to

01:00:21.320 myself well maybe they just liked you know creating imaginary creatures that looked identically to how we

01:00:28.760 would imagine an alien looks it's just a coincidence maybe maybe that's what's going on but when i watch

01:00:36.520 those shows i suspend my critical thinking and i allow myself to live in a reality in which the aliens

01:00:44.760 did come down and taught people how to build pyramids and those are why the cave drawings look like advanced

01:00:51.480 aliens with spaceships sometimes now do it when i do that when i accept that reality for the point of

01:01:00.520 entertaining myself by watching this am i really accepting it as an actual reality or am i accepting it as

01:01:10.200 an entertainment reality and i feel like it's different my my inner sense of it is that if you put a gun to 0.99

01:01:20.120 my head and said all right now you're gonna have to bet with your real money or or we're gonna kill you 0.86

01:01:26.520 if you're wrong you have to bet did the aliens teach the early people how to build the pyramids all right

01:01:34.200 you got to put your real money on it now i'd bet against it i'd bet against it and i wouldn't feel

01:01:43.160 too unsafe when i did i'd feel confident that i could bet against the aliens having built the pyramids

01:01:51.080 or helped on them but when i watch those shows i like to accept it as true because it makes it more

01:01:57.880 fun so i find that i can wear reality like a shirt i can just put on my alien astronaut shirt and i can

01:02:06.680 just wear it for a while and then i can just take it off and if somebody says now you have to bet

01:02:11.800 your real money i'd say oh real money real money okay let me take off the shirt once you learn that

01:02:18.920 people can change their their religion basically like they can change a shirt because it's more of

01:02:24.920 a lifestyle decision it's not based on what you really think is true in many cases once you realize

01:02:30.280 that distinction it starts explaining a lot of what you see that people are adopting a belief

01:02:36.760 that just feels good and they will and they can lose that belief if there's something that makes

01:02:43.240 it stop feeling good and the queue stuff you know had this business in the capital which was an event

01:02:49.240 that made it stop feeling good and the moment it stopped feeling good there were some people such

01:02:54.360 as this guy talking to anderson cooper who said okay it doesn't feel good anymore now i'll change my

01:02:59.160 belief all right um who killed more people the ccp or q well that's easy 0.98

01:03:08.920 all right that's about all i got now um

01:03:16.600 i was just looking at your comments people love the ancient alien stuff it just captures your imagination

01:03:22.840 all right was it a good honeymoon yes it was yes it was um i'd show you some pictures but

01:03:33.720 you'd feel bad all right i'm going to put together some uh some some of my best i think i've had some

01:03:39.880 time to plan micro lessons on how to program your brain now it's my favorite topic how to reprogram

01:03:47.000 your brain but i've got another take on it that i think will be useful that will be on the locals platform

01:03:52.360 only for subscribers and some other micro lessons that could be on there this week and

01:04:01.400 somebody says if aliens were real we'd have seen photos by now yeah yeah given that all we have is

01:04:08.840 we have cameras in every pocket in the civilized world yeah i think we would have a picture of an alien

01:04:14.200 by now i think so yeah locals is a platform in which subscribers can subscribe to

01:04:22.280 my content that you don't see otherwise so i have the the stuff that you do see but i add

01:04:28.280 i add useful content that you wouldn't see otherwise i'd like to know how to sleep

01:04:34.840 um i think i did did i not do a micro lesson on that already if not i will and i will talk to you tomorrow

01:04:42.360 all right youtubers sorry i was not streaming on youtube while i was out of the country

01:04:51.720 the the button disappeared and so there's some things you just can't do outside the country

01:04:57.560 and for some reason that i didn't have that option um

01:05:04.760 yes i am back in california

01:05:10.520 all right uh

01:05:13.800 just looking at your comments all right that's all we got for today and i'll talk to you tomorrow

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 30, 2021

Episode 1267 Scott Adams： Trump Presidential Library, Traveling With Restrictions, Fake News About the Fake News

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript