Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1282 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About Well-Dressed People Misinterpreting Each Other, Also Known as Politics

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. It's going to be one of the best. Well, have you

00:00:08.120 ever heard that before? It's always true. It's going to be one of the best coffees with

00:00:13.460 Scott Adams all day long. Yeah. And I can almost guarantee that by not doing another

00:00:20.740 one. Although I might. You never know. Hey, Omar. Good to see you. The rest of you, come

00:00:27.140 on in here. Take a seat. And if you'd like to enjoy this to the maximum capability, I'll

00:00:33.400 bet you know how by now. All you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein,

00:00:38.020 a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like

00:00:41.160 coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the

00:00:46.000 thing that makes everything better except impeachment. It's called the simultaneous sip

00:00:52.600 and it happens now. Go. Oh, I was wrong. It's making impeachment better too. Yeah. Didn't

00:01:01.780 see that coming. Sneaks up on you. That's how they get you. Savor it. Savor it. Okay. Now

00:01:10.760 we can go on. Dr. Funk Juice. Good to see you. I'm in a good mood today for no particular

00:01:21.720 reason. Do you ever have that happen? I think it's just a good night's sleep. You get a good

00:01:28.200 night's sleep and suddenly the world is a wonderful place even when it isn't. Let's talk about all

00:01:34.260 the news. Such that it is. Elon Musk tweeted today that the most entertaining outcome is

00:01:44.580 the most likely. The most entertaining outcome is the most likely. Now I wasn't sure if he

00:01:51.560 was pairing that tweet to an earlier tweet of his own in which he said that he'd invited

00:01:58.120 Kanye to talk within the Clubhouse app. It's an app where you could have audio conversations.

00:02:05.360 And so he may have been referring to that specifically, but somebody noted the similarity

00:02:11.300 in our thinking. Now, is the similarity in our thinking because one of us influenced the

00:02:19.300 other or is it because we are both, let's say, interested in, I won't say believers, but

00:02:28.100 interested in the simulation theory. Because if we are a software simulation, there might

00:02:35.820 actually be a reason the most entertaining outcome is the one that happens. Because in

00:02:40.620 other words, we might be some, you know, multiplayer game in which interesting elements are introduced

00:02:48.380 intentionally, either by an AI or by a game designer, I guess. So now there's an interesting

00:02:56.140 question. Somebody says, is Elon Musk a hypnotist? Well, let me point out the following. Elon Musk was

00:03:07.860 originally part of the PayPal founders that included Reid Hoffman and why am I forgetting there for a

00:03:17.480 second? The other Trump supporting billionaire, whose name I'm just forgetting for a moment. But you

00:03:24.680 notice that there was a surprising number, yeah, Peter Thiel, sorry. Peter Thiel, there were a few

00:03:31.320 others, but those are three famous ones who went on from there to larger fortunes. Let me tell you,

00:03:38.440 those three people have very deep talent stacks. And I can say from personal contact, at least in two

00:03:51.520 cases, that they just understand more topics than other people. And part of what some of them

00:04:00.320 understand, I would think all three of them, is the topic of persuasion. And they do all seem to

00:04:08.740 understand it. I think Reid Hoffman was one of the, maybe the person who came up with the scheme for

00:04:15.900 suggesting friends on social networks. You know how, where, you know, if you have some friends,

00:04:22.580 it'll suggest other friends and there's some other techniques like that. So if you look at the success of

00:04:28.500 a lot of their products, the psychology is built in. When Elon Musk builds into his cars,

00:04:39.140 the ability to have, what is it, like a poison gas protection mode or something,

00:04:45.860 he's replacing the need for advertisement by simply being interesting. Now, how many people are smart

00:04:53.880 enough to do that consistently, to just get rid of advertisement, but to consistently just be

00:05:00.900 interesting? So people can't stop talking about you. You don't need advertising then. Well, he does

00:05:06.320 that, right? And you see him doing it across his whole line. So when you see the various things that

00:05:13.000 at least three of the founders of the PayPal situation, you see what they can do. And you see

00:05:20.080 that they bring the skill set to different areas and they just keep succeeding over and over again.

00:05:25.400 It's not an accident. It's not an accident. It's partly because their skill stack is so deep.

00:05:32.800 It includes understanding the psychology of situations. So I would not say that he was a

00:05:38.720 hypnotist per se, but his skill set definitely overlaps with psychology. And if you've got somebody who has

00:05:46.520 an engineering brain, think about this. If you have an engineering brain, which Musk presumably was just

00:05:54.620 born with and developed over time, and then you add to that the understanding of psychology and what

00:06:02.780 motivates people, you can be a billionaire too. Do you know the reason I'm not a billionaire?

00:06:10.820 Because I'm not an engineer. If I were also an engineer, instead of just somebody who talks about

00:06:18.660 them, I feel like I'd probably be a billionaire. Because if you combine, you know, high-level

00:06:24.460 engineering, the kind of creative entrepreneurial type that a Musk or a Thiel or a Reid Hoffman have,

00:06:32.540 if you take that skill set, you combine it with understanding people, you're done. You're done.

00:06:40.820 That pretty much covered the whole freaking world. So it's not an accident that somebody like

00:06:47.940 Musk succeeds. You just look at his talent stack and say, well, yeah, how are you going to hold that

00:06:53.380 back? So I would say that it is likely that people who believe in the simulation, and when I say believe,

00:07:05.560 I just mean the statistical understanding that it's a trillion to one likely that we're a simulation,

00:07:11.920 but you can't know for sure. At least we can't know yet for sure. I think we will. I do believe that

00:07:18.960 there will come a time when we can develop a test or a scientific way to look into it, and we'll

00:07:26.800 actually know if we're a simulation. I think that's ahead of us. Like, literally, we will know, because we'll

00:07:34.380 figure out a clever way to test it.

00:07:36.800 So that's that. You know, I said on Twitter today that most of what passes as politics these days

00:07:47.540 is little more than well-dressed people misinterpreting what the other side said.

00:07:52.520 And a lot of people came in and said, willfully. The other side is intentionally, willfully

00:08:01.580 misinterpreting what the other side said. And I'm here to tell you that that's an illusion.

00:08:09.200 I used to believe it myself. I used to see, you know, one political side saying something that was

00:08:14.460 obviously a lie, and I'd say to myself, well, they know they're lying. They're doing it for effect,

00:08:20.020 but they know they're lying. I don't think so anymore. Clearly, in some cases,

00:08:27.620 clearly, in some cases, they are lying. But the more I spend time with people who are genuinely

00:08:35.700 arguing their case, the more it's obvious to me that the difference in news coverage,

00:08:41.700 you know, who sees what news, completely determines your opinion. So the people who only watch CNN,

00:08:47.860 CNN, they do believe CNN when it says that the fine people hoax was real.

00:08:55.460 Why wouldn't they? If the only news you had seen said that the fine people hoax was real,

00:09:01.220 and you saw all these credible looking people saying it and saying it every day for two years,

00:09:06.100 and it's all you saw, would you be lying when you repeated it? You wouldn't be. You wouldn't be lying

00:09:14.520 at all. You would actually frickin believe it happened. All the people who believe the drinking

00:09:22.020 bleach hoax or the injecting disinfectants hoax, all the people who believe that really happened

00:09:27.960 believe it because their entire news universe covered it like it happened.

00:09:33.020 They treated it like it was a real thing that happened. Why wouldn't they believe it?

00:09:39.340 So this is a big deal in terms of your understanding of the world you live in.

00:09:46.200 Those people that you think are willfully lying to you and intentionally telling you an untruth,

00:09:52.820 they're not. Some are. There's no absolute here, right? Some are. But not 90%. I'll bet you a solid

00:10:05.300 at least 90% literally believe the things they're saying. Literally. And in fact, you could put a gun

00:10:14.160 to their head and say, look, all right, I've got a magic gun that will go off if you're lying.

00:10:20.940 They would stick with it. At the risk of their own life, I do believe that they believe the things

00:10:27.700 they're saying. Most. Some not. But most. All right. And by the way, if you were not a trained hypnotist,

00:10:37.900 it would be hard for you to get to that place. You would still think, well, it's still obvious.

00:10:43.860 It's a lie. Isn't it obvious? You don't even need another news source to know that the president did

00:10:49.740 not call neo-Nazis fine people. You don't need a news source to tell you that didn't happen.

00:10:56.140 Right? Common sense would tell you that didn't happen. But it's so easy for people to buy into

00:11:00.620 their team's narrative that I do believe they believe it, mostly. Here's just a throwaway thought

00:11:09.280 that I like to inject into the universe every now and then. There are a number of things that

00:11:15.520 we argue over politically that we don't need to. And I would argue that immigration is one of those

00:11:22.240 weird issues where the way we're approaching it is super disruptive and it makes us fight with each

00:11:33.480 other about where immigration should be and what's right and who's really the Nazi and all the crazy

00:11:40.420 stuff. But what if, what if, let's say I'm president. The day I become president and people say, what is

00:11:49.080 your immigration policy? I say, I'll figure that out. Here, we're going to use a system. And the system is

00:11:56.960 going to be this. I'm going to get the smartest people, bipartisan economists, and I want them to

00:12:03.760 tell us what measures we should look at in the economy or crime, or maybe drugs, etc. Which measures

00:12:11.860 should we look at to decide how much immigration to let in in any given year, and from what countries?

00:12:19.080 Why don't we just have a set of rules? This is as if the GDP is over 4%, which would be really good,

00:12:26.960 then you let in a little bit more workers, because you're going to need workers. If the GDP falls,

00:12:33.100 or unemployment reaches a certain rate, you cut it back, because you don't want to be competing with

00:12:38.560 your internal workers. Well, if I'm president, and I present you with that proposition, and say,

00:12:46.360 look, let's let's take you and I out of this. Why am I arguing with you, when neither of us really

00:12:52.800 know the right answer? Do you know the right number of people to let in to make the economy better

00:12:58.060 versus too many? Do you know that? How would you know that? How would you possibly know what is the

00:13:08.580 right number of immigrants to let in? You don't know that. I don't know that. So pretending that we 0.99

00:13:14.520 know the right number is just like a stupid argument. It's just two stupid people who don't

00:13:19.560 know anything arguing with each other with their stupidity. Nobody knows the right number.

00:13:25.360 But if we got this bipartisan group together, and they said, look, under these conditions,

00:13:31.060 you let in more. Under these conditions, you let in fewer. Under these conditions, you let in,

00:13:36.680 let's say, more people with technical degrees from India and other countries. Under these conditions,

00:13:42.900 you let in more workers. It should be fairly objective. Now, the people who come up with these

00:13:48.860 standards could easily be wrong. That's how economic things are, right? They're not usually

00:13:54.980 that good. Economic projections and, you know, any kinds of triggers and stuff like that. They're

00:14:01.140 always going to be really gross. But at least it would keep us from fighting with each other.

00:14:06.920 Wouldn't it be better if we were all just fighting with the algorithm and saying, hey, I don't think you

00:14:12.240 should be four percent, maybe you should take that down to three and a half. That would be a far more

00:14:19.080 unifying argument to have. So why am I arguing with another citizen when we should be on the same side?

00:14:29.020 Right? We should be on the same side. We should be arguing about the process. We shouldn't be arguing

00:14:33.460 about the people. As soon as you're arguing about me, you're on the wrong topic. Let's figure out a process,

00:14:40.720 a system that works at least as rational, even if it's not perfect.

00:14:48.400 If I ran for president, I would do it without telling you what my policies are.

00:14:55.140 And I would win. Here's how I'd do it. I would tell you what system I would use

00:15:01.160 to arrive at my decisions. And that's all I would tell you. I wouldn't tell you what the decision will

00:15:07.640 be. I might predict what I think it will be. But I won't tell you what it will be. I'll tell you that

00:15:14.120 the way I'll deal with it is I'll bring in the people on both sides. I will publicize it. I will

00:15:20.760 actually broadcast my conversation with both sides. We'll have some iteration where I've got some

00:15:27.440 questions and they have to come back to me with some answers. And when it's all done,

00:15:31.360 I will present both arguments. As president, I will present the argument that I disagree with

00:15:39.520 as well as I can. First. First. So I would present first the argument I disagree with. And I would do

00:15:47.280 the best job I could of genuinely selling it. And then I would say, we understand why people think of

00:15:54.280 this. Because it's a pretty strong argument. Then I would say, the full argument for the other side,

00:16:01.040 let's say the side I've agreed to back. And I would say, this is a good argument too. And when I compare

00:16:08.580 these two good arguments, I feel that this one has a little more value. Here's why. We can't know which is

00:16:16.600 better, because it's a complicated world and predicting things is crazy. But we can know this one has some

00:16:22.620 qualities that we're looking for as a country, perhaps, or maybe some risk management qualities

00:16:27.960 that we would all appreciate. I'm pretty sure I could get elected president without telling you

00:16:35.220 what any of the decisions would be. Because the moment I tell you what the decision will be,

00:16:40.560 you should stop trusting me immediately. Because between the time that I say this is what I would

00:16:46.980 do and the time that I could get elected and do anything about it, there could be a lot new

00:16:51.220 information. I might find out things that I didn't know, I might become president and get the secret

00:16:56.360 information and, you know, the homeland security information I didn't know before and change my

00:17:01.760 mind. So I'd rather tell you, here's my process. I'm going to try to follow the Constitution.

00:17:09.260 Got some basic, basic rules of, you know, what is fair and right for the world. But basically,

00:17:15.280 I'm going to let people argue it out in public. And I'm going to, I'm going to give full attention

00:17:20.740 to the minority argument or the argument that's not going to win. Full attention. You have to give

00:17:26.100 them complete attention. Otherwise, you're not credible. That's what most of our politicians are

00:17:33.680 doing wrong today. The best political way to sell something is to sell the other side's argument first.

00:17:44.300 That makes you look credible. If you can explain the other side's argument as well as they explain it,

00:17:51.800 and even better, it would be better, right? If you can explain the other side's argument as well as

00:17:55.960 they can explain it, and then you tell why your argument might be a little bit better than that,

00:18:02.460 well, at least you're credible. At least, right? You're not trying to just be a manipulative,

00:18:08.920 you know, dick, which is pretty much every politician at this point. All right, so that's

00:18:16.480 all fantasy because none of that's going to happen. We're learning now that President Trump was way

00:18:21.740 sicker with the coronavirus than we thought. They were actually thinking about putting him on a

00:18:25.580 ventilator, which, as you know, is usually the end of the road, meaning that once you're on the

00:18:32.420 ventilator, you don't come back. And he was close to that, they say. What do you make of the fact

00:18:38.680 that we didn't know that? What do you make of the fact that the White House apparently was lying to

00:18:45.080 us about the severity of our leader's condition? What do you make about that? Somebody says,

00:18:52.700 is it true? Yeah, that's the first question. The first question is, is it true? Can you believe it?

00:18:58.140 You know, it's the right question, but there are some specifics to it that make it sound

00:19:06.360 real. I'm completely on board with all of you who say you can't trust this automatically.

00:19:14.900 So don't trust it automatically. It could be fake news. But my bullshit detector tells me it's not.

00:19:24.900 And my bullshit detector is telling me that the details are a little too detailed. And it's a

00:19:31.200 medical thing. It just doesn't feel like the kind of thing that they would lie about. And if they did,

00:19:36.760 you probably would have already heard the other side saying, no, that's not true. He never had,

00:19:42.100 it was never that bad. So there seems to be a lack of any pushback, although the president's not in

00:19:48.380 office, so he doesn't have an official pushback machine. But it looks true enough to me. If I had to

00:19:55.380 bet on it, I'd bet it's true. Now, if it is true, is that an impeachable offense? Because I don't recall

00:20:05.040 that Pence was ever put in charge. And how coherent was President Trump when he had 80% or his oxygen was

00:20:17.040 in the 80s near death, or near high risk of death. So I feel as if almost everything that they're going

00:20:27.580 after Trump for to impeach him is not nearly as bad as things we know he did. Or if this is true,

00:20:37.520 we know he did it. I feel like the public needed to know this. And I feel like this is really bad,

00:20:44.860 bad. If it's true. Again, can't assume it's true. But if it's true, it's really bad. The other part of

00:20:52.400 this story that makes me interested is that they tried hard to get the Regeneron drug. And it looks

00:20:59.760 like maybe it worked in his case. Trump thought it worked. But where are we on Regeneron? Do we know

00:21:06.700 that works now? Is that randomized controlled trials have proven it works? And are we making enough of

00:21:14.600 it? And who makes it? I have lots of questions about Regeneron? Because does it work? Do we know

00:21:22.120 that? Why aren't we making more of it if it works so well? So your news is failing you on pretty big

00:21:29.780 point there. Here's something that is bugging the fuck out of me today. There's something that's

00:21:41.360 just bugging me a lot today. Just a lot. And I can't say it's necessarily important. I mean,

00:21:48.920 it might be. It might be important. And it's this. Jamie Raskin, Senator Raskin, brought up the fine

00:21:58.360 people hoax and sold it as if it really happened. You know, the idea that Trump had actually said that

00:22:04.220 the neo-Nazis and racists were fine people. Now, if you watch any of my content, or you're associated

00:22:10.120 with any content on the right, you know that that's debunked. You know that the hoax is caused

00:22:15.060 by cutting off the part where he clarifies he's not talking about them. Without any prompting,

00:22:21.840 Trump clarifies, I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the other races. So they just cut that part out,

00:22:30.140 and then it makes it look like the opposite, like he was talking about them.

00:22:33.300 Um, so, so Raskin brings that up. And I say to myself, if the Trump legal team doesn't start

00:22:44.600 by debunking that simply by showing the part that they left out, if they don't start by debunking

00:22:50.880 that, they're worthless. And they shouldn't be paid. Honestly, if Trump hired lawyers who don't go

00:22:58.160 after this, the single biggest hoax used as a, you know, a foundational point in the entire defense,

00:23:06.520 if they just gloss over that, if they just act like, oh, well, that's what you say. Now here's

00:23:12.920 what we say about something else. If they let that stand, they should not be paid. Seriously,

00:23:21.780 they should not be paid. You know, Trump always gets, uh, gets a lot of heat for not paying

00:23:28.660 subcontractors and some of his lawyers thought they wouldn't get paid. But I don't hate the fact

00:23:34.280 that there's somebody out there who doesn't pay for bad work. I don't hate that. Have you ever had

00:23:40.300 any work done on your house? Was it all great? Was it all terrific? All the subcontractors,

00:23:47.540 your plumbers, your electors, they all did great work, right? And, but they probably got paid no

00:23:53.020 matter how good their work was. If Trump being a builder who needs to, you know, make a profit,

00:24:00.040 if it was his habit not to pay people who did bad work, I just like that some people exist who do that

00:24:07.680 because I can't personally do it. I'm still going to pay for the bad work, right? Because I just don't

00:24:12.500 need the trouble. But I don't hate it if that's his habit. Now, of course, you don't know if that's

00:24:19.680 why he's not paying. You know, you wonder if he's just being selfish or he's just getting away with it

00:24:24.700 because he can. Who knows? So I don't have any details on this, but, um, I do think that people

00:24:30.540 who don't do the job should not be paid. And if they, if they let this go, I would say number one,

00:24:38.340 that Trump deserves to be impeached. Uh, not in a legal sense, but if he leaves Trump supporters

00:24:47.640 exposed on this hoax, if he lets the world who now has to pay attention because it's an impeachment

00:24:54.960 trial, they can't just skip it. CNN can't turn it off. You get, you get how good this is? CNN

00:25:03.240 CNN can't really change the channel now. If Trump's lawyers say, we're going to make you watch the

00:25:09.180 entire fine people hoax video for the first time, they can't cut the commercial because that would

00:25:16.400 make it a bigger story. And if they sit there and let you watch it, the entire country is going to

00:25:21.800 find out that one of the most basic things I believed about Trump never happened.

00:25:27.240 Now, if Trump allows his lawyers to skip this, then fuck Trump, right? He's leaving us exposed at us

00:25:40.080 being anybody who ever said anything good about him for four years. So let me say this again as

00:25:45.240 clearly as I can. Trump owes his base, doesn't he? And nobody would argue with that, right? Trump's base

00:25:55.220 supported him, even when things were tough. Trump owes his base a similar consideration. And his base

00:26:07.060 is very exposed right now because that fine people hoax hangs out there like this cloud over all of our

00:26:14.260 heads, as if we somehow supported a president who had supported neo-Nazis. That didn't happen. We didn't

00:26:23.860 support a president who supported neo-Nazis. We supported a president who condemned them in

00:26:28.960 clear voice without any prompting. That's who we supported. Now, if he can, if he tells his lawyers,

00:26:37.200 look, I don't care if I win or lose this thing, but you're going to fix that fucking thing.

00:26:43.220 That's all I'm going to ask of you. I don't care if I get impeached and removed,

00:26:48.400 probably not going to run for office anyway, but you've got to fix that fucking thing. 0.89

00:26:55.880 That's all I'm going to ask of you. Because you've got to do it for him. You have to do it for Trump.

00:27:02.100 But you have to do it for us. All right? It's not just about Trump. The rest of us are on trial.

00:27:08.760 Us being, again, anybody who ever said anything good about Trump. We're all on trial.

00:27:13.640 And if these fucking lawyers let this opportunity go by, and they don't debunk this thing in front of a

00:27:21.720 captured audience of the public, they are fucking worthless and should not be paid. Should not be

00:27:30.820 paid if they let that go. Now, I tweeted just before I got on that if I were defending the president,

00:27:41.060 even not as a lawyer. Just me. I could win his case from the starting position that his lawyers have

00:27:49.240 today. In fact, it would be hard to lose. Because all I would do is say, all right, let me tell you

00:27:57.780 for the first time you've ever heard this, how the left has manipulated information and created hoaxes.

00:28:04.800 And one by one, I would debunk each of the popular hoaxes about this president.

00:28:10.760 But here's how I would start. The first hoax I debunked would be a Biden hoax. Why? Well,

00:28:19.780 I told you earlier in this live stream, if you can't describe the other side's argument,

00:28:25.480 then you're not credible. You have to be able to describe the other side. And Biden was the subject

00:28:33.040 of a hoax perpetrated mostly by the news on the right that he had once recently said that signing

00:28:40.780 EOs is what a dictator does. And then he signed a bunch of EOs. He never said that. He said that a

00:28:48.480 certain type of thing you couldn't do with an EO and that you would be a dictator if you tried,

00:28:53.980 but that there were other things that, of course, you could do EOs about. And he did.

00:28:57.800 So that's an example of complete fake news about Biden. And I would start with that. I would literally

00:29:05.240 defend Biden against one of his, you know, more aggressive claims against him. And then I would

00:29:12.240 say, look how the right believed that because their news source told them it was true. And they did

00:29:18.820 believe it. Right. And then I would say the same technique has been used against President Trump for

00:29:25.680 four years. Let's run through some examples. I would show the fine people hoax. I would show the

00:29:31.560 drinking bleach hoax. I would show the feeding the overfeeding the goldfish hoax. I would show the

00:29:37.800 Covington kids hoax. And I would show the brand new Swalwell hoax. Swalwell showed a tweet as part of

00:29:48.520 his argument against the president. Yesterday, he showed a tweet from a woman who said that if I believe

00:29:55.020 she said, if Trump wanted, they would, quote, bring the cavalry. Swalwell presented that as

00:30:01.340 cavalry, meaning military, meaning violence. It turns out that cavalry is a prayer group. 1.00

00:30:11.700 That's right. The woman whose tweet was mentioned said, um, we're a prayer group. We were saying that

00:30:20.380 we'll bring our prayer. All right. So I would show the world that Swalwell had just made this up

00:30:28.640 and showed it in a context and that that's how all of the hoaxes are created. They're all created by

00:30:35.440 removing context. And likewise, the impeachment of the president is made by removing context,

00:30:42.260 specifically the context of, uh, do it peacefully. And then they're doing another trick that I don't

00:30:49.540 know. I guess I don't know enough of the history of this trick to know whether legally this makes sense

00:30:55.920 as a legal strategy. But they're doing what I call the, the tapestry approach to blaming the president

00:31:02.640 for inciting violence. And the tapestry approach says this, there was no one thing he did. It's really

00:31:10.500 a whole bunch of things he did that you would maybe think are unrelated. But once you've looked at

00:31:17.180 them, you know, together as a presentation, they form a tapestry of incitement to violence, which

00:31:24.180 guaranteed the capital assault was going to happen. So that's the case that they're making. To which I

00:31:30.040 say, is that a thing? Is the tapestry approach to inciting violence? When did that become a credible,

00:31:41.360 legitimate argument? Because I don't think it is. Is it? I mean, in, in what world is it the

00:31:49.980 accumulation of unrelated events, which caused a specific incitement at this point? And we ignore

00:31:57.200 all other variables? Like all the other variables that caused the capital assault to happen? We're

00:32:03.260 just ignore all of them? It's just Trump? Here's what I say. Ask yourself this. Number one, would,

00:32:11.740 would there have been an assault on the capital if we had a credible news industry?

00:32:19.220 Well, here's what would have happened. If we had a credible news industry, they would have reported,

00:32:27.760 hey, it looks like this election was fair enough, and that we've done audits where we can.

00:32:34.580 And there's no specific claims that we can trace down that look like there's real. So we, the

00:32:41.600 respected and credible news organizations, think that it's time to move on and just have a Biden

00:32:48.440 administration. Suppose the news had been not fake news and aggressively fake news for the last four

00:32:56.920 years. Would the people who assaulted the capital have believed the election was fixed, which is what

00:33:04.780 they believed, or would they have said, oh man, everybody in the news is telling me it was fair enough.

00:33:12.940 I guess maybe it was. Do you think that this could have happened in a world in which the news was trying

00:33:21.180 to be fair? Because I don't think CNN was trying to be fair. I mean, really, they weren't trying.

00:33:27.620 MSNBC, they're not really trying to be unbiased. So let me give you a little flashback to years ago,

00:33:36.920 I took a test called the GMATs. Now the GMAT is a test you take to see if you can be qualified to

00:33:42.900 get into a business school to get your MBA. One of the questions that was on the test, or types of

00:33:48.380 questions, that they've now removed, and they've removed it for a good reason, and I'll tell you

00:33:52.980 why. They would give you a scenario, a little story of a business person who had a problem,

00:33:58.140 and then they would say, what is his biggest problem? In other words, what does he need to solve

00:34:04.240 to make whatever he wants to work? And there would be several things in the list, and I would look at

00:34:11.580 the list, and I'd pick one, and then I'd look at the answer guide, because I was practicing, and I'd get

00:34:16.140 it wrong. And I'd think, I think the answer guide is wrong, because it's my opinion against theirs.

00:34:24.380 Just my opinion. My opinion is that this was the most important thing. The answer guide said it was

00:34:30.120 something else, with no explanation. Now here was my argument. If in order to solve the problem,

00:34:38.540 you needed both things to be solved, it wasn't one big problem. If you solved it, then everything else

00:34:46.340 would take care of itself. It wasn't like that. There were multiple things that every one of them

00:34:50.960 had to be solved for the solution. Now, if you need all of them to be solved, or you don't have anything,

00:34:59.580 which one's the important one? Right? None of them. None of them is the important one. They're all equally

00:35:08.300 important, because they all have to be solved 100%, or you can't do anything. So that kind of question

00:35:15.820 got thrown out on the GMATs, because they were just subjective. It was obvious after a point that

00:35:24.180 you could just argue about what was the important one, and nobody would know the difference.

00:35:30.360 And then I was going to tie that back to an earlier point, which I don't remember at all.

00:35:36.700 So in your minds, if you can remember what I was talking about just before I started talking about

00:35:41.080 the GMATs, figure out a way that that made sense with whatever the hell I was talking about,

00:35:47.200 and now imagine that I was coherent, because I'm not right now. Okay. Thank you for the help.

00:35:56.180 Oh, the tapestry. Yes. So the tapestry prosecution imagines that each of these things happening is

00:36:05.180 somehow, you know, the important one, and that, you know, that you can somehow suss out of all of

00:36:12.400 the things happening, you know, that the fake news is priming us one way, the Democrats themselves are

00:36:18.320 priming the public another way, Trump is priming people a certain way, and then how about this?

00:36:25.380 Why are we arguing that Trump incited the public? Did you see that happen? It looks like it, right?

00:36:33.460 It looks like Trump said stuff about the election, and that incited the public. Let me blow your mind

00:36:41.560 now. That didn't happen. You thought you saw it, right? You thought you watched Trump saying stuff

00:36:50.540 about the election, and you thought you watched people getting worked up about it, and you thought

00:36:55.800 you saw them attack the Capitol over it. It didn't happen. Here's what happened.

00:37:01.540 Trump's base got Trump incited. Trump was just one of the people incited. His base was who was

00:37:11.180 incited. Do you know why his base was incited and believed it was a fake election? Is it because

00:37:17.540 Trump said so? No, you fucking idiots. Not you. I'm talking about other people. You're the smart ones.

00:37:23.700 No. No. Trump believed the election was stolen because his base believed it. Why did his base

00:37:32.420 believe it? Because it's believable. And we live in a world in which it's perfectly believable.

00:37:40.260 And their expectations were violated because they expected a win, and then they didn't get one.

00:37:46.240 Now, does that mean they're right? Well, we don't have evidence that they were right or that they

00:37:52.860 were wrong. We have a non-transparent system which has not been fully audited. We can say for sure

00:37:59.420 that there is no court-proven evidence of massive fraud. We all agree with that. But your illegitimate

00:38:08.200 press and your illegitimate politicians have told you, just by repetition, that if you can't find

00:38:16.120 evidence in a hidden system, that means there's no problem. That's stupid. That's just stupid.

00:38:25.220 If you can't find evidence, it just means you can't find it. Doesn't mean it's not there.

00:38:30.900 When I go look for ketchup in my refrigerator and I can't find it, have I proven it's not there?

00:38:39.860 Well, if I were good at looking at things, it would be close to a proof. But I'm really bad at looking

00:38:45.180 at things. If I open my refrigerator, I can't find the ketchup. It's just a guy thing. It's just a sea 1.00

00:38:51.320 of noise in there. I can't find the ketchup. But that doesn't mean it's not in there. It's in there.

00:38:57.780 I didn't put the ketchup in a drawer. It's in there. I just can't find it. So I haven't proven

00:39:06.100 it doesn't exist because I can't find it. And that's what we've been sold, that the ketchup

00:39:10.920 doesn't exist because you can't find it. Oh, by the way, you also haven't opened up the door

00:39:15.200 to look for it because it's a non-transparent system. Again, I lost my train of thought. I'm sure it

00:39:26.640 was really good. I shouldn't digress so much. All right. But I could win. I could totally win the

00:39:37.080 president's case from this point. I would just make sure that people understood that there are

00:39:42.540 that the tapestry of causes are not just Trump causes. There's an entire tapestry of his base

00:39:51.520 believing that the election was fraudulent. And why did they believe it? Because they live in a

00:39:57.080 world in which everything that had been presented has been a lie. The fine people hoax, the drinking

00:40:02.520 bleach hoax, you just go down the line. So the people who said the election was fair are the same people,

00:40:09.140 roughly speaking, same, not really the same, but feels the same as the people who have been lying

00:40:14.860 for the last four years. Why would they believe it? And what possible reason would anybody have to

00:40:22.220 believe that a non-transparent system run by serial liars with gigantic interest in falsifying the

00:40:31.640 result would have been fair and free? What exactly would be the reasoning for them to accept that

00:40:38.500 uncritically? Now, it could be true. I want to say this as clearly as possible. I personally don't

00:40:46.340 have any proof of widespread election fraud. Do you? Do you have any? I'd like to see it if you have it.

00:40:53.260 I don't have any. I've seen statistical indications, but I don't think that they hold up in court.

00:41:01.300 Those statistical indications may be enough for you. I'm not even sure if they're true,

00:41:05.880 much less you should interpret them the way you might be interpreting them.

00:41:09.820 Let's talk about Mike Lindell in his video in which he says there's 100% proof that we know the

00:41:15.820 election was fraudulent. There were a number of claims he made. I recognized a number of them as

00:41:21.680 having been debunked, but there was one claim that he held out as his strongest claim.

00:41:29.000 His absolute proof, he called it. Absolute proof. And I asked on Twitter for people

00:41:34.260 who had any debunking sources to his claim. The claim was that there is documented evidence that

00:41:43.260 you can see Chinese intrusions into our voting system, that there are logs showing the IP addresses

00:41:49.980 and the IP addresses clearly come from China, and that you can trace what those IP addresses did

00:41:55.820 once inside the system. And what they did was flip votes from Trump to Biden. Now, that's the claim

00:42:02.500 on the video by Lindell. So I asked people on Twitter if that's true. You know, has anybody dealt with

00:42:13.640 that or tried to debunk it? And the evidence I got is that the source of the information is not mentioned.

00:42:20.360 And I said, what? Are you telling me that the absolute proof, the 100% proof, the log of data that is the

00:42:31.500 100% proof, there's no indication where that log of data came from? Apparently there isn't. So what kind

00:42:40.800 of credibility do you put on, it's a very detailed thing by somebody who is allegedly an expert in this,

00:42:47.460 but the source of the data is not mentioned? What kind of credibility would you put on that?

00:42:57.420 Zero. Zero. Yeah, the right answer is zero. Even if it's true. Even if it's true, the amount of

00:43:05.880 credibility you should put on it is zero. Because when somebody says, here's my data from a source

00:43:12.440 unknown, that's the end of the conversation. That is the end of the conversation. It's not the

00:43:19.120 beginning. It's the end. Don't tell me about your data that you got from your secret source,

00:43:26.480 Mike Lindell. I love Mike Lindell, by the way. Big fan of his pillow, as well as his company and what

00:43:34.000 he's done. And he's a great salesperson. He's clearly making an impact on the election, or at

00:43:42.300 least on the politics of it. But we need a source, Mike Lindell. We need a source for that data or

00:43:50.440 it's not helping. It's not helping if you don't have a source. All right.

00:43:55.980 So, let's see if the impeachment trial does what we hope it would do. I'll bet it won't.

00:44:06.580 Governor Cuomo is getting a lot of heat. Today's new report is that his advisor, one of his top

00:44:13.560 advisors, or his top advisors, admits that they were hiding the number of deaths in nursing homes

00:44:20.020 in New York because they didn't want to get in trouble. What? Yeah, they're saying it directly.

00:44:30.860 So, the Cuomo administration, at least his aide, and I assume the governor was part of this decision,

00:44:39.180 they admit, at least on a phone call, somebody admitted that they hid the information to keep

00:44:46.200 it out of the press. Now, the excuse was that Trump was putting legal pressure on them. And because

00:44:55.340 they had legal pressure on them, they didn't know what to do. And they sort of panicked, basically,

00:45:00.440 because they didn't want to go to jail. But they also didn't want to lie. And if they had a choice of

00:45:07.280 lying or going to jail, it looks like they chose lying, because they didn't want to go to jail.

00:45:13.120 Now, that probably wasn't a wise decision, in retrospect. But people do make bad decisions

00:45:21.420 under pressure. So, I don't doubt that that's what was happening. It sounds reasonable. Don't know.

00:45:27.220 But it's reasonable. So, should Cuomo be impeached for that? Well, I don't think I would buy his book

00:45:37.080 about how to handle an epidemic or a pandemic. I feel like that should hurt his book sales a little

00:45:45.380 bit. But I'm trying hard to stick to my original philosophy that I had at the beginning of the

00:45:56.260 pandemic, that our leaders would make big mistakes, and we should forgive them in advance. Because there's

00:46:02.780 no way there wouldn't be big mistakes in the fog of war and guessing what works and guessing what

00:46:08.280 doesn't work. There had to be big mistakes. But this one doesn't feel like the other mistakes, does it?

00:46:14.720 It would be one thing if you underplayed or overplayed masks, or you thought hydroxychloroquine

00:46:19.900 was a good risk management thing. But this feels different, doesn't it? This doesn't feel like a mistake

00:46:27.700 that had anything to do with the, let's say, the fog of war. It looks like a mistake of somebody just

00:46:33.800 covering their ass because they got caught in a mistake. So, it's the covering your ass part that

00:46:40.040 is really the unforgivable part. I actually do forgive, still. I know you don't, but I'm going to

00:46:47.540 stick with my philosophy and not change it, which is that our experts really didn't know what to do.

00:46:52.740 And some of them were going to do the wrong thing. This nursing home thing was clearly a mistake.

00:47:01.080 But it was a mistake you kind of expected. So, I don't think I would judge that as harshly as many

00:47:07.940 of you do, even though people died, even though it was a mistake, even though you probably should

00:47:12.160 never be re-elected. That should probably be the end of your political career. But still,

00:47:19.480 put it in context. Interesting story, there's an ammunition, I don't know if they're a wholesaler

00:47:27.640 or a retailer. They must be a retailer. But they sell ammunition, and it's a Phoenix ammunition,

00:47:35.060 F-E-N-I-X, and then in parentheses, Kulak. I don't know what the real name of the company is.

00:47:41.080 But they have a new policy in which they won't sell you ammunition if you check a box that says

00:47:46.920 you voted for Joe Biden. They won't sell you ammunition. And I thought to myself, is that

00:47:54.920 legal? It is, right? That's legal. Or is it? Can somebody tell me if that's even illegal or legal?

00:48:05.600 Because Biden voters do not fall into any protected group, right? They're not necessarily women or 1.00

00:48:12.260 minorities or anything else. And the reasoning is that Joe Biden is trying to destroy their company

00:48:19.680 by making it hard to buy ammunition. And so he doesn't want to support their voters.

00:48:26.720 I feel like that's fair. I feel like it's fair. But I'll tell you what else it is. It is also

00:48:35.100 Elon Musk brilliant. This is Elon Musk brilliant. Because how much advertising does Phoenix ammunition

00:48:43.240 need to do now? None. They can just take whatever their advertising budget was and just throw that 0.99

00:48:51.600 away because they don't need advertising for a while. This is brilliant. This is how to advertise.

00:48:58.760 Because do you think conservatives are going to love this company for this decision? Oh, yeah. Oh,

00:49:03.980 yeah. I don't identify conservative. But even I love this company for doing this. Because they're

00:49:10.920 completely within their rights, I think. Right? I mean, I need a fact check on that. But I think

00:49:15.980 they're within their rights. And if they are, this is a perfectly good statement. And they say directly,

00:49:21.460 we don't want your money. If you were a Biden supporter, we'd rather make less money than sell

00:49:27.220 ammunition to people who are trying to put us out of business. It's not a bad play. It's pretty

00:49:33.800 clever. All right. In the category of the left eating their own, because they don't have as much

00:49:39.960 Trump fodder to go after. Here are the latest ones. A writer named Nathan Robinson, who used to work for

00:49:49.200 The Guardian, had tweeted that the cancel culture is nonsense, because everyone who gets, quote,

00:49:59.140 canceled ends up on their feet, and they get book deals, and they come out fine. And so his point

00:50:05.060 that point is that there's not really a cancel culture per se, that's sort of overblown. Well,

00:50:12.460 he was just fired from The Guardian for writing about US military aid to Israel. A little bit

00:50:18.460 politically incorrect, I guess. So he got canceled. Joss Whedon, who is no friend to President Trump,

00:50:30.360 but very successful director type, has been blamed by many people for being a horrible person to work

00:50:38.000 with. And more people who have worked with him are coming out to try to cancel him as being...

00:50:45.740 Here's the latest claim. On one of the movies, I guess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,

00:50:54.340 there was a rule saying that he was not allowed in a room alone with this woman, Michelle, who I

00:51:00.460 think was 14 at the time. He wasn't allowed to be in the room alone with her. Okay, that says

00:51:07.420 something. So we don't know which of these allegations against him are real and which are not,

00:51:11.780 but there sure are a lot of them. Sure are a lot of them. But he's getting canceled by the left.

00:51:18.580 So the left continues to eat their own in an amusing way, which we enjoy.

00:51:28.020 Somebody says Phoenix, I guess it's Phoenix, F-E-N-I-X, ammo already sold out. Well,

00:51:35.160 get some more ammo, guys. We'll send some more business your way. You know, as I have

00:51:40.560 promised you, I want to be part of the solution to this cancel culture. Now, just the small part, 0.92

00:51:50.100 I've got, you know, 600,000 whatever followers on Twitter. So it's, you know, medium small. But

00:51:56.460 every time somebody gets canceled for something that's just purely bullshit,

00:52:00.400 I'm going to promote them. I'm going to let you know so that if you have a choice about where to

00:52:07.100 spend your money, maybe you throw a little at the people who got canceled and you support free speech

00:52:13.020 that way. So if you hear of any other examples of people getting canceled, let me know. And I would

00:52:21.520 include in this, just to show how fair I am, I'm going to include in this Nathan Robinson,

00:52:29.320 who got fired from The Guardian, who didn't even believe in cancel culture as real.

00:52:35.040 But he's obviously a high-end writer. And I think that Nathan Robinson should get a job offer.

00:52:42.580 And I'd like to see him come out well, just like he said other people who got canceled did,

00:52:47.220 just because he might be more, I don't know if he is actually, but if you imagine he's more left

00:52:52.360 leaning, I'm not sure if that's true. So don't take that as true. But if he is, that shouldn't

00:52:57.340 make a difference. He got canceled. People who got canceled, let's support him. Now, if Joss Whedon

00:53:05.420 gets canceled, that's because he's doing criminal, horrible things. I'm not going to support him.

00:53:09.720 But if he just got canceled for freedom of speech,

00:53:11.940 or supporting the president or any of that stuff, then I think we should throw you a little

00:53:18.840 money, put a little money your way. All right. Nationalism was over. Well, I'm not going to

00:53:32.840 read the second part of that. That's pretty provocative thing you're saying there. All right,

00:53:38.580 let me see this question. Scott, Scott, Scott, did you hear MSNBC's Nicole Wallace suggesting drone

00:53:45.260 striking U.S. citizens recently? Yeah, I think the context was malicious, right? So the context was if

00:53:53.520 there was some militia that was a domestic terror organization, I'm not sure I take the drone strike

00:54:01.580 thing too seriously. Don't make the same mistake that the left always makes, which is to take everything

00:54:08.440 as literal. I don't believe she means use a drone strike against people who voted for Trump.

00:54:15.460 All right. I don't believe she means that. I think she means if we could identify a genuine

00:54:20.760 FBI certified domestic terror group who might actually go kill people, that why would you treat

00:54:28.360 them differently than any other terrorist group? So I think it was more of a conceptual point.

00:54:36.700 It wasn't really about drone striking any Americans. So I'll use the same standard to defend 0.78

00:54:43.500 her that I do when other people use hyperbole. It's just hyperbole. In fact, I think there should

00:54:49.480 be a cabinet level position, and it should just be me in that cabinet, to explain to people how

00:54:56.280 communication works. Literally, just to explain how communication works. Because people think they can

00:55:02.920 read minds based on what you say. Oh, I see what you say, but I'm going to read your mind and then read

00:55:09.880 into what you say a completely different meaning. There needs to be a cabinet level position of just to

00:55:15.120 explain to the public that that's not a thing. They don't have mind reading ability. Yeah, my book, Loser

00:55:21.760 Think, that's over my shoulder here, talks about this. A highly successful book, which you should be

00:55:29.320 reading. People are loving it. And yeah, it would be the Ministry of Truth. No, it wouldn't be the

00:55:36.140 Ministry of Truth. Because the Ministry of Truth would tell you what's true. And of course, that would

00:55:42.040 be a problem because people should decide for themselves what is true. I would only tell you

00:55:46.660 how communication works. I would only tell you, no, this person is using hyperbole. It's a common form

00:55:54.460 of communication. It doesn't mean she wants an actual physical drone to kill actual people. 0.99

00:56:02.780 When Biden says that some EOs would be dictator-like, he doesn't mean all EOs. He means the kind that you

00:56:10.920 shouldn't do, the kind that you need a congressional vote of a certain kind. So that's what I would do.

00:56:18.540 I would just explain how talking works. I would explain that if the context has been removed,

00:56:23.520 that you can't understand it. You have to get the rest of the context. Just simple stuff.

00:56:28.720 And just act like the public doesn't understand that because they don't. They don't understand

00:56:33.840 that video is mostly a lie. People still think that if they saw it with their own eyes,

00:56:39.520 they've seen truth. But in the world of 2021 and 2020, if you saw it with your own eyes on video,

00:56:46.340 it's probably fake. It's probably out of context. Probably. More often than not.

00:56:53.520 All right. Department of Speech Precision. Yeah, maybe. Who's my favorite drummer?

00:57:04.760 You know, I'm developing some favorite drummers, but I don't have one yet.

00:57:11.560 All right. All right. That's all for now. And I will talk to you later.

00:57:20.360 All right. YouTubers. 0.96

00:57:26.440 Okay. There is no evidence that I have a favorite drummer. That is correct.

00:57:32.360 I don't know if I would be a good press secretary because the problem with being a press secretary is

00:57:41.240 that you have to, uh, basically you have to say what your boss wants you to say. You don't really

00:57:48.140 get to say whatever you want to say. So being handicapped by having to say what my boss wants 1.00

00:57:53.580 me to say would largely make me ineffective at that job because I'd really need to do it my way

00:57:59.420 or I wouldn't be that effective. All right. That's all I got for now. And I'll talk to you tomorrow.

00:58:07.880 All right.

00:58:17.220 How about you?

00:58:19.820 How about you?

00:58:23.860 How about you?

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 12, 2021

Episode 1282 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About Well-Dressed People Misinterpreting Each Other, Also Known as Politics

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