Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1309 Scott Adams： Cuomo, Coronavirus, Crisis, Corpulence, China and Coffee

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, gather round. It's time. It's the best time. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams

00:00:11.680 and the Simultaneous Sip. Have you enjoyed it yet? Are you new? Well, if you're new,

00:00:18.720 you're about to be introduced to one of the greatest things of your entire life.

00:00:23.840 Yeah, it's called the Simultaneous Sip. And if you came unprepared, well, let me tell you what

00:00:29.700 you need. You'll have to hurry. All you need is a cup, a mug, a glass, a tank, a chalice, a canteen,

00:00:34.940 a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me

00:00:42.060 now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything

00:00:45.680 better, way better, super better. Let's do it right now. Yeah, that was good. Now, some of you

00:00:59.620 might be concerned if you start the Simultaneous Sip a little bit late, there is a grace period.

00:01:06.240 Yeah, there's a 10-second grace period. If you get your sip in anywhere in that 10 seconds,

00:01:12.660 simultaneous. All right, the biggest news of the day, by far, is that Milo Yiannopoulos has come

00:01:21.280 out as straight. Well, I'm not making that up. Milo Yiannopoulos just came out as straight. He's

00:01:31.300 decided that he's going to push conversion therapy, where you use your religion to, let's say, erase 0.99

00:01:41.620 the gay. I'm not sure how he would put it. I don't think Milo is the most credible person in the world 0.95

00:01:50.280 right now, but he's getting some attention, and he's good at that. So, anyway, for entertainment

00:01:56.760 reasons, he's always good for entertainment.

00:02:00.740 Just to be clear, I don't think conversion therapy is a good idea. All right. Well, here's a surprising

00:02:13.900 story. I don't mean to shock you, because I know you didn't see this coming, but sit down. Sit down. I

00:02:24.980 have some surprising news for you. There is a sixth accuser of Governor Cuomo. Yeah, who saw that coming?

00:02:37.460 It's almost as shocking as if, I'm going to go out on a real thin branch right now, I feel a prediction

00:02:48.740 coming on. Seventh accuser. Now, I don't want you to think I'm psychic, because I'm not, but I can see

00:03:03.340 the future sometimes, and I feel there's just a seventh accuser. I feel there is, but will we from

00:03:13.500 the seventh accuser? I think the odds are pretty good. Probably tomorrow. Oh, my God.

00:03:23.520 And with all this badness going on, people are trying to talk to Governor Cuomo's ex, his ex-girlfriend,

00:03:31.700 or was it wife? I guess girlfriend, Sandra Lee. And the headline that I saw said that she was seen

00:03:37.820 pumping gas in Malibu. She was pumping gas while her ex-boyfriend was trying to

00:03:46.640 do something that sounds a lot like pumping gas. Have you noticed that the G on the end of pumping

00:03:57.180 sort of disappears the G at the beginning of gas? If you say it closely, or you say it carefully,

00:04:06.280 it sounds like what Sandra Lee was doing. She was pumping some gas. But if you were to say this

00:04:16.580 about her ex-boyfriend, Cuomo, it would sound different. He was pumping gas. Yeah, he was

00:04:23.920 pumping gas. Say it quickly. It's funnier if you say it to yourself. Well, we have a situation on the

00:04:32.080 border. It's not a crisis. Darn you. It's certainly not a crisis. How could you think

00:04:40.800 it's a crisis? No, it's a challenge. We're told by the Biden administration, it's definitely

00:04:47.860 a challenge, not a crisis. And the resources are overwhelmed. So it's an overwhelming challenge,

00:04:55.360 but not a crisis. And I feel better about that. Do you remember when kids were in cages and it was

00:05:04.560 a crisis? I'm so glad all that's behind us, because now it's just kids in containers with an

00:05:11.160 overwhelming challenge. And I feel a lot better about that, even though there are way more people

00:05:17.200 involved. Jen Psaki said an interesting thing, and I refuse not to put a P in front of her name.

00:05:25.100 She's Psaki. You could call her Jen Psaki, if you like. But if you're going to put an unnecessary 0.86

00:05:32.700 consonant in the front of your name, I think I can pronounce it. Don't tell me what's silent.

00:05:39.740 Don't tell me to shut up about the silent P. I'm like, you know, Pierce Morgan. I want my freedom 0.91

00:05:48.720 of speech. If I want to pronounce the P in front of Psaki, well, damn it, I'm going to do it. So Jen 0.99

00:05:55.020 Psaki, or Psaki, if you like, said that most immigrants are being turned away. What? How can the Biden

00:06:06.360 administration turn away anybody? Are there, what, good immigrants and bad ones? Because it's almost as 0.96

00:06:14.700 if Biden is saying that some of them are good people. And I guess they get to come in. But some

00:06:24.480 of them, even the Biden administration is turning away. In fact, most. I would like to hear in one of

00:06:33.180 Joe Biden's many press conferences. He has several a day. You probably haven't heard of them. You

00:06:39.980 probably think there have been none. But I'd like to hear Joe Biden describe the philosophy.

00:06:48.740 What is it that would let you say some of the immigrants can get in and some of them cannot?

00:06:55.780 What exactly is the philosophy? Trump had a very clean philosophy. America first. That pretty much

00:07:05.560 takes care of all of it, doesn't it? America first. Are we done? Is there anything else that

00:07:11.580 needs to be explained? And pretty clear. But with Biden's policy of, you know, being kind and more

00:07:21.260 human, I guess, which we all like on a conceptual level. Conceptually, who doesn't like being kind?

00:07:32.320 It's a pretty good idea if you can afford it. But I think Biden needs to somehow articulate why some

00:07:40.400 people can get in and some can't. Now, I know there would be a distinction between the people who are

00:07:45.280 claiming asylum. But do we think the asylum claims are real? I mean, not really. Do we? Some of them

00:07:53.540 surely are real. But I would think the vast majority of them are just people gaming the system.

00:07:59.700 So do we let the people in who game the system? It's like, oh, okay, you're part of the good

00:08:06.100 immigrants because you're gaming the system. 0.81

00:08:09.040 I don't know. It feels like you either need to let people in or not let them in. It's a weird place

00:08:17.060 to put a dividing line. And I'm sure Biden will be talking all about that in his many, many press

00:08:24.820 conferences that happened, really. Don't they? Aren't there press conferences?

00:08:29.040 Here's a story that's got me wondering about things. There was a Nevada man who on Twitter

00:08:40.380 mentioned that he had tracked his mail-in ballot and found that somebody else had signed it

00:08:48.340 and voted for him. So he never got his mail-in ballot, but somebody did. And somebody voted for

00:08:56.440 him, allegedly. Now, the question I asked is, what? Isn't there something wrong with this

00:09:05.660 story? There's something wrong with the story, right? How in the world do you check to see if

00:09:11.740 your ballot got in? Well, apparently, at least Clark County, and I've heard other states and other

00:09:19.340 places, they do have a portal, a website, where you can go and you can check to see if your vote

00:09:25.260 got in. And doesn't it feel like this is a whole category of thing that we should understand as a

00:09:33.100 public, if you're engaged in the questions about voter fidelity and transparency and stuff? We've

00:09:42.200 all been talking about this endlessly. But how come you and I don't know whether you can check your

00:09:49.900 mail-in vote everywhere? Or how many places can you? And if you can check, is it easy? Do you just

00:09:58.300 go online and put in your social security number and it tells you if they got your vote? And this

00:10:04.500 gentleman who was sharing this experience showed me that I think they had emailed him when he

00:10:10.740 contacted and said there was some problem. They emailed him the actual signature of the person who voted on

00:10:16.260 his ballot. It was a different person. Now that's just one example, right? Just one example.

00:10:27.780 Whoever's saying I can't hear you, you know the problem's on your end, right? There are a lot of

00:10:35.260 comments going by. It looks like they can hear me. So work it out. That's funny. It's all about you.

00:10:46.740 That one person who can't hear me. Let's stop everything. Everybody just stop. There's one

00:10:52.200 person who can't hear me. I think we're going to have to just pause until he figures it out.

00:10:58.220 All right, let's go on. So my question is this. If we were to simply publicize all the places that

00:11:06.900 have portals where you can check to see if your vote got counted. Now, I don't believe you can check

00:11:14.280 to see if your vote was tabulated for the right candidate because that would be crossing the line

00:11:21.420 into knowing who voted for what. I think you can't do that. But you can tell if your vote was counted

00:11:28.720 if your ballot got in. So why don't we do that? Why don't we publish? Just pick a county or pick a place

00:11:39.560 where you think there might have been a problem and just publish the portal. I've never seen it.

00:11:46.260 Have you? Have you seen any news report? It probably exists, but I haven't seen one where somebody says,

00:11:53.060 hey, by the way, did you know you could check to see if your vote got in. And here's the address.

00:11:59.820 Just click here, put in whatever, probably social security number. I'm just guessing. And you could

00:12:04.860 see if your vote got counted. Now, there are people who believe they did not vote who would find out

00:12:12.260 their vote got counted. How many of them are there? Wouldn't you like to know? How many of you,

00:12:20.440 let me ask you, how many of you who voted checked on the portal to make sure, if it was a mail-in vote,

00:12:28.460 to make sure that your mail-in vote was received? Somebody says it's not social security number.

00:12:34.600 It might be address or name or something. I'm seeing lots of yeses. Oh, a number of you did.

00:12:43.460 Sure did. Oh, well, I'm quite surprised. How many of you who checked found out that somebody voted

00:12:50.440 who wasn't you? So, just so we don't get confused in the comments. So, stop answering all prior

00:12:58.820 questions. We'll give it a moment. Forget answering all prior questions. The only question is, if you

00:13:06.860 checked, did you find that somebody voted and it wasn't you? Is there anybody else who found a

00:13:15.740 problem when they checked? So far, I'm only seeing that people had no problem. They checked and their

00:13:22.540 vote was there. Yeah, received is not the same as counted, but at least we can find out if it got

00:13:30.960 received. Somebody says a driver's license is required. Maybe. A lot of people did check. I'm

00:13:41.940 surprised. I'm actually impressed. All right. Well, I can't tell from your answers if anybody found any

00:13:47.800 problems. But certainly, wouldn't that make you feel more comfortable if a lot of people checked

00:13:52.860 and there were no problems? I would like to know that. Speaking of voting irregularities, which I

00:14:01.840 must tell you, no court, have I mentioned that no court has found any, any proof of widespread voter

00:14:13.840 fraud. We all understand that, right? No court, no court in the land has found widespread voter fraud

00:14:22.620 proof. Now, they haven't looked for it, which seems important, but I will get banned from social media if

00:14:31.200 I don't tell you that they haven't found it. They also haven't looked for it, which could be a big

00:14:38.360 reason they haven't found it, right? But early on in the process when people were questioning the

00:14:47.020 election, I told you that I was aware of some stronger evidence that had not come out yet.

00:14:56.860 Apparently, it still hasn't come out.

00:14:58.480 But Matt Brainerd, who probably is the most credible among the people looking into this stuff,

00:15:07.580 says that he got delayed a little bit, but he's got a report coming out about Nevada in which he

00:15:12.820 claims, he claims by tweet, we haven't seen it yet, just a claim. He says, don't kick me off of social

00:15:20.060 media, because I'm not claiming this. Not me. I'm just saying somebody did. That his report on Nevada

00:15:29.380 will show that there are more fraudulent votes than the margin of victory. Now, that doesn't mean the

00:15:36.500 election was rigged. But this is the claim. Now, people have been mocking me for months, saying,

00:15:49.060 may I do an impression of my critics? I'd like to do a dead-on impression of all of my critics.

00:15:57.460 Oh, Scott, where's that good evidence you said was coming? Where's all that good evidence?

00:16:03.340 I think that was a pretty good impression. And my answer has been, hold. It is so hard

00:16:14.080 to have any kind of self-control in this world, talking about politics. And do you know how much

00:16:20.520 self-control it takes for me to just say, yeah, no court. Not a single court has found proof of any

00:16:30.260 widespread fraud. And I'll just keep repeating that. But in my mind, I'm thinking, hold, hold,

00:16:41.640 hold, hold. And this is what I'm waiting for. So I've been waiting for the Matt Brainerd stuff.

00:16:49.580 Now, if the Matt Brainerd stuff produces nothing credible, then I will say in public that I was

00:17:00.800 misled. I was misled and wrong, completely wrong, that there might be stronger evidence that you've

00:17:08.440 not seen yet. All right? So hold me to that. I think people like me should be held to account

00:17:16.280 for making a statement that strong and not being able to back it up. Because I made a pretty strong

00:17:24.640 statement that so far, I have not been able to back up. And if, and I'll, just to make it as

00:17:32.820 definitive as possible, if the Matt Brainerd stuff doesn't produce anything that looks credible to

00:17:41.560 you, then I will just, I'll just say, okay, I guess, I guess I was completely wrong that there

00:17:47.420 wasn't anything that I saw that you hadn't seen yet that would make me think there was something

00:17:53.160 there. So we'll wait for that. But if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And I will, I'll step up to that.

00:17:59.100 Here's an interesting story. Lindsey Graham is calling part of the COVID relief package

00:18:05.260 reparations. Because part of it allows that black farmers can get up to 120% of their loan forgiven.

00:18:16.460 Who made that 120%? That was a pretty bold, whoever came up with 120% instead of all your debt is

00:18:25.040 forgiven. I mean, I get why they're doing it to, you know, create a little stimulus and help people

00:18:31.040 get back on their feet. But it was an interesting way to do it. So somebody got away with something

00:18:36.160 there. So Lindsey Graham calls it reparations, which of course is provocative. But let me ask you

00:18:44.120 this. Have you seen anybody who favors the bill, and favors that part of the bill, explain it? Has

00:18:55.160 anybody been on TV to explain why they favor this specific part of the bill? Have you seen that? I

00:19:01.800 haven't seen it. Shouldn't we be asking somebody who voted for it, or who favored it, or who put it in

00:19:08.200 there to just give us their argument? And I would like them to give us an argument in a way that didn't

00:19:15.200 sound racist. Because maybe they could do it. Maybe they could do it. But if what happened is they snuck

00:19:24.360 some reparations in there, without calling it reparations, it would feel a little bit dishonest,

00:19:31.680 wouldn't it? Because I'm not even engaging with the question of whether reparations should or should

00:19:39.160 not be paid. That's an argument that can be had. And I've been actually quite, let's say, I've been

00:19:47.400 open to that argument, far more so than I imagine some of my audience. But if you sneak it in, and you

00:19:56.300 hide it, and you don't call it what it is, that's a different problem. To me, it just looks like

00:20:03.420 racism. I don't see how you could call it anything else. Now, you could say it is racism, but it's

00:20:09.640 reparations, and so it's adjusting for a past wrong, and so therefore it's the good kind of racism.

00:20:16.280 But I think we have to be careful about labeling some kinds of racism good. It seems like that could

00:20:23.500 be a problem down the road. All right. And of course, Biden will be talking all about this in

00:20:29.840 his press conferences. Won't he? Won't he? Here are some of the, you know, the coronavirus pandemic

00:20:38.580 has created more fake news and bad beliefs than anything I've seen recently. Let me just run down

00:20:46.800 a partial list of the things that people are still disagreeing on. All right. So you, of course,

00:20:54.960 have strong opinions of which of these is true or false. I'll just run down the list. We still don't

00:21:01.460 have general agreement of whether masks even work. So I won't get into the mask argument. I'm just saying,

00:21:10.060 how did we get to this point without knowing if masks work? Are you kidding me? Now, I've been

00:21:18.580 pro-mask since the beginning. Even when the CDC and the Surgeon General were saying, don't wear them,

00:21:27.760 I was saying, yeah, I'm sure they work. That's dumb. We should wear them. So I've been pro-mask the 0.99

00:21:33.600 whole time. But I'm going to tell you something that I've never said directly. It's not because

00:21:40.360 I'm sure they work. I think it's more likely they work than not. If I had to guess, if I had to put my

00:21:48.020 money on it, I would say they must work a little bit. But that's not why I'm pro-mask. That's not

00:21:55.800 why. It's the persuasion part of it. I have to admit. The persuasion part. Because when you've got

00:22:04.540 a mask on, you also are just constantly reminded that you're in this situation. The moment everybody

00:22:14.080 takes their masks off, you will instantly forget about social distancing. Instantly. Now, somebody has

00:22:22.640 said you put the mask on and it causes people to get closer to people than they would have because

00:22:28.200 they feel safe. Well, that's a judgment call. I don't know if anybody studied that. And I can see

00:22:34.080 a reasonable person would think that's a big factor. But my observation and my belief with some

00:22:42.900 understanding of persuasion is that wearing the masks is what allowed us to do social distancing.

00:22:50.300 I just think that the moment we took them off, we would just forget. We would just forget. And

00:22:59.080 watch the minute they come off. You know, everybody's going to be hugging again. It's going to be

00:23:03.880 instant. Because I think the human instinct for touching is just too damn strong. If you don't have

00:23:11.820 something that you're wearing on your body, you're going to shake hands. Right? Let me put it in

00:23:20.100 the simplest possible terms. If I don't have a mask, and I'm talking to somebody who doesn't have a mask,

00:23:26.880 and they put out their hand to shake hands, and neither of us have a mask, probably going to shake

00:23:33.520 hands. Right? Even if I think about it, I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it anyway. Suppose we

00:23:39.960 both have masks. We both have masks, somebody puts out their hand. That's happened, right? You've

00:23:46.580 probably been in that situation. And what do I do? I say, social distancing. And everybody goes, oh, okay.

00:23:54.260 Immediately. Having the mask on allows me to turn down the handshake. You get that, right? Now,

00:24:02.460 there's a similar argument going on in Texas, because the government of Texas, the state, decided that they

00:24:08.500 would drop their mandates. But individual businesses might still want to require masks and distancing.

00:24:16.020 So now the pressure is on the individual company. They've got to enforce this thing. They don't have

00:24:20.940 cover from the state anymore. That could make a difference. So we'll see. We'll just keep an eye on

00:24:27.020 that. I think Texas did the right thing. In my opinion, the pandemic is over. You know,

00:24:33.400 plenty of people will still die. That's a tragedy. But I think the pandemic is over. Because at this

00:24:40.300 point, we know, if you're under 40, and you don't have a high BMI, your risk is now not much bigger

00:24:49.520 than just the risk of life, you know, just getting hit by a car and stuff. So I feel for people under 40 1.00

00:24:57.560 who have, you know, good health and low BMI, especially, it's kind of over. We're still going

00:25:03.840 to go through the formality of it to mop things up. But the hard part's over.

00:25:11.860 Here's some more resilient myths. It was just the flu, that there was no pandemic at all. It was just

00:25:17.960 the flu. And again, I'm not giving you an opinion of which is true and not. It's just a miracle,

00:25:24.140 remarkable, or just remarkable, I guess, that there are so many things we still don't agree

00:25:28.900 on as people. We don't agree that the lockdowns worked. Probably will never agree on that. I think

00:25:37.360 they didn't. I think, I think my personal guess is that it did make sense to stop the mass gatherings.

00:25:45.980 Probably never made sense to close schools, probably never made sense, at least maybe in the beginning

00:25:50.860 when we didn't know much. It probably never made sense once we knew a little bit to stop retail

00:25:56.800 stores, right? Now, how about gyms? That's sort of an edge case. I suppose you could say people would

00:26:04.980 just, you know, they could not go if they're worried. But, you know, at this point, it does look

00:26:12.940 like the lockdowns were not, were a little too aggressive. That seems clear. We don't agree

00:26:19.080 whether Sweden was a success story or not. We don't agree on hydroxychloroquine still. I don't think

00:26:25.960 it's anything at this point. I thought it had some potential in the beginning. But at this point,

00:26:32.880 at this point, if you don't know for sure that hydroxychloroquine worked, it probably didn't.

00:26:40.160 Just saying. There's also the belief that the mass and the lockdowns are part of a larger plan

00:26:48.520 by shadow elites to train the public to put up with anything and grab power. That one's crazy.

00:26:59.220 All right. Some of these, I could imagine that my opinion would be wrong. For example, I can easily

00:27:05.600 imagine that my mask opinion would be wrong. Easily, right? That's the kind of thing where you could

00:27:11.800 be wrong. I could easily imagine that I'm wrong about Sweden, wrong about hydroxychloroquine, wrong

00:27:19.020 about lockdowns. I could be wrong about all that stuff. It's all possible. Let me tell you what I'm not

00:27:24.280 wrong about. That it's a big plot to grab power. I'm not wrong about that. It's definitely not

00:27:33.300 a gigantic scheme to grab power. That's the only thing I can say with complete certainty. Everything

00:27:40.200 else is sort of up in the air. Here's another one that I heard today. And I'll say, I'll ask for a fact

00:27:47.400 check on this. So one of the beliefs is that hospitals are over counting COVID because they

00:27:54.460 get reimbursed more for treating COVID people. How many of you believe that to be true? That

00:28:02.560 we're over counting COVID because hospitals have an incentive, a financial incentive to count people as

00:28:10.240 COVID. How many of you believe that? There's a little lag here. Seeing a lot of yeses. Yes, yes, yes. True.

00:28:21.460 Agree. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely, says my audience. Here's a comment I got on Twitter. And

00:28:30.060 give me a fact check on this, okay? That hospitals are not, they're not reimbursed based on what disease you

00:28:38.100 had. And as soon as I heard this, I felt stupid. Honestly, I felt stupid. Hospitals don't reimburse 0.99

00:28:48.720 based on what disease you had. That's not a thing. That can't be a thing. Here's the second part of

00:28:58.320 that because you're not convinced yet, right? Because you've been reading the reports that that's exactly

00:29:02.500 what they're doing. How many times have you read a news report that says that's exactly what they're

00:29:07.220 doing? They are, in fact, exactly charging more for coronavirus victims, right? You believe that?

00:29:15.900 Don't you believe that's true? Here's the second part of this Twitter comment.

00:29:23.460 Hospitals charge based on the services they provide. To which I said, oh, yeah, that's obviously true.

00:29:34.280 Let me put it this way. Do you think they're going to shove a ventilator down your throat

00:29:41.480 so they can charge a little extra? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think they are. Do you

00:29:51.380 think that they're going to put you in the, I don't know, the COVID expensive ICU if you don't have

00:29:58.860 COVID? Because they're testing you, right? I don't think any of this is true. I think it's almost a

00:30:08.100 hundred percent belief on the conservative side of the world. And I don't think it's even slightly

00:30:13.960 possible to be true. Now, give me a fact check on this. I could be wrong, right? And I could certainly

00:30:21.100 imagine that in the margin, you know, you could find a situation or, or, you know, a particular

00:30:27.140 patient who is, you know, miscaracterized. I'm sure that's true on individual cases. But as a

00:30:35.840 widespread, like, phenomenon? No. They're charging you for the stuff they do. And the hospital is not

00:30:45.120 doing a bunch of extra stuff, just pretending you have COVID so they can overcharge you.

00:30:52.080 That's not happening. So how many of you just had your head spun around? Probably most of you,

00:31:00.340 you won't change your opinion, because that's how it works. New information doesn't change people's

00:31:05.060 opinion. We're not wired that way. But some of you just said to yourself, what? I just thought that

00:31:14.040 was true. Not only is it probably not true, it's probably not even possible. But fact check me on

00:31:23.540 that. I could be wrong. Here's another one that we really have a case-demic, not a pandemic, because

00:31:31.560 the tests are getting all the, they're, they're too sensitive. So we're picking up people who don't

00:31:37.860 have it. I don't think that's true. How many of you believe that's true? Do you believe that we're

00:31:46.820 vastly, like really a lot, over counting the number of infections, because our tests are too sensitive?

00:31:55.600 And they're, they're over, look at the yeses. Yes, yes, yes. Um, I see some, well, I see some no's. Okay.

00:32:09.220 Uh-huh. I, so here's another one I could use a fact check on, but my current belief is that

00:32:14.620 that's not a thing. I don't think it's a thing. Is it? Because, um, so I know somebody recently who got a

00:32:27.460 false positive. So false positives are definitely a thing. But if you get a false positive, you usually

00:32:35.400 get a second test, don't you? Don't you? If you have no symptoms and you get a positive test, don't you

00:32:43.020 always get a second test? And given that the reporting is by individual, would the second test

00:32:50.200 erase the first test in the database? In other words, if you tested positive, I assume that gets

00:32:56.880 reported to the government, right? The moment you get tested, the government finds out. What happens

00:33:02.000 if a week later you get retested and you find out it was a false positive? You're the same person.

00:33:07.580 Does that cancel out the first test? You'd like to think it would, but do you think they designed

00:33:18.000 it that way? I don't know. I'm not sure they could. So here's what I think. I think the calling it a

00:33:27.400 case-demic is clearly wrong and that, uh, the problem of miscounting the number of, uh, people who

00:33:36.080 actually have it is probably a thing, but it's not, it's not explaining your observation.

00:33:43.440 Meaning that as long as the number of infections was somewhat related to the number of hospitalizations

00:33:51.000 and deaths, you didn't have to worry too much about the accuracy of those tests. Because if they're

00:33:58.400 moving in the same direction as deaths and hospitalizations, you are measuring something.

00:34:06.360 So I'm not sure that it matters too much how accurate those are, uh, at least within the

00:34:12.600 parameters we're talking about. Um, here's another one that people believe you can compare completely

00:34:18.260 different countries and their, and their outcomes and you can learn something. Sweden being the obvious

00:34:23.840 case. But any two countries you compare, you're almost always, uh, making a mistake. I just saw

00:34:31.160 one yesterday. It was another case of, uh, you know, this country didn't do masks and this one did

00:34:37.860 and their curves are identical. All right. And that's on the internet. And you're like, okay, here's a

00:34:43.260 country, no masks. Here's a country that looks sort of like it. They did masks and here's the curve and

00:34:49.800 it's just the same. It takes about five minutes for somebody else to come on Twitter and say,

00:34:57.120 oh, that one you said, don't wear masks. All the big cities wore masks. So in other words,

00:35:03.820 they both wore masks. So every time you think you've hit one of these like golden nuggets, it's like,

00:35:10.620 ah, I found these two countries. They're so similar that I can tell something by comparing them.

00:35:17.360 Never. Never. Zero times is that going to work. Zero times. You should assume every time you see

00:35:25.960 that one country compared to another country, you should assume it's false. And you will be right

00:35:33.540 probably a hundred percent of the time. And if you're only right 90% of the time, you should still

00:35:39.240 default to it's probably not useful. All right. Here's a question that I wonder why I don't know

00:35:48.840 the answer to. Why don't we know more about therapeutics? And I was suggesting that this

00:35:54.720 could be studied fairly quickly. And it would, you do it like this. Let's say you're a researcher

00:36:00.480 and you call some major hospitals that deal with coronavirus. And you say, can you give me your

00:36:06.460 coronavirus, you know, death and hospitalization statistics? So I think you could collect statistics

00:36:12.300 by hospital if you contacted them and you had some, you know, legitimate reason for it. I think you

00:36:18.600 could. Correct me if I'm wrong. And then you ask them what is their dominant therapeutic

00:36:25.980 resource? Like what's the thing they're using and what date did they change from, let's say,

00:36:32.980 one set of recommendations to a new one. Let's say when ivermectin became a thing. Is there a hospital

00:36:40.500 that went from not recommending it to saying you got to use it every time? And then you take those.

00:36:47.940 Now, if you're going to compare two hospitals, how useful would that be?

00:36:53.620 Zero. I just told you comparing any two countries is worthless. Comparing any two hospitals are

00:37:05.180 worthless because there are too many other variables. But suppose you got a bunch of hospitals

00:37:10.140 and you got enough of them so that whatever other differences might be canceling out.

00:37:15.600 And you say, look, all the ones that did ivermectin had great results. All the ones who

00:37:21.220 used something else had less results. And that still won't tell you for sure because there's

00:37:26.540 still too many variables. But it would certainly get you a little closer, right? You'd be maybe

00:37:31.440 crawling toward the truth if you had enough confirmation. And I'm just wondering why I don't

00:37:36.720 see anybody trying to get more information on therapeutics. Because when we keep talking about

00:37:42.280 this amazing drop-off that was unexplained somewhat after the holidays, and of course,

00:37:51.000 smart people said, uh, it's just the holidays. We just stopped traveling and now the curve is going

00:37:57.760 down. But at about the same time, weren't we hearing a lot about therapeutics?

00:38:04.080 Wasn't there a lot of news about therapeutics and the, you know, pre-holiday through today?

00:38:09.700 Okay. So I would imagine that the techniques the hospitals and doctors are using changed quite a

00:38:16.860 bit. Wouldn't you assume that the, uh, let's say the weight, you know, if not the specifics,

00:38:24.340 but at least the weight of what was, uh, diagnosed or prescribed therapeutically, don't you think that

00:38:30.920 looks completely different in February or March to what it did in, say, November? Do you,

00:38:39.420 do you think that on average, the doctors are prescribing pretty much the same stuff

00:38:43.820 therapeutically? I don't know. But I feel like this is a giant thing that we should understand

00:38:50.500 better. And it's studyable. It might be hard, but I think you could tease it out.

00:38:55.860 Um, do we have enough data now to know that in hindsight, and I don't blame anybody for not

00:39:04.320 knowing this earlier, right? Uh, I'll say again that I don't hold our leaders fully responsible

00:39:10.900 for their mistakes because they were all following expert advice and nobody knew what to do. So I'm

00:39:17.400 very soft on leadership mistakes during the pandemic because it was fog of war. Some people guessed

00:39:23.340 right. Some people didn't. The only obvious mistake, well, maybe there are a few obvious mistakes,

00:39:29.440 but one obvious mistake would be Great Britain not doing any, any kind of control. And then of

00:39:35.520 course they had to, they had to back up and put some controls on. Um, but do we know now,

00:39:45.180 now that we have the benefit of more, more information, don't we know that the way we should

00:39:50.600 have handled this is to say that everybody was under 40 and had a healthy BMI and no major

00:39:59.020 comorbidities that they shouldn't have had any restrictions at all? Do we know that yet? Or if

00:40:06.140 we don't know that, let's say under 40 was healthy if you're thin and no comorbidities, do we know

00:40:11.940 enough to know that under 30 would have been better? Because remember, we have to, we have to go all in

00:40:18.640 on the costs and the benefits because you're talking about everything from suicide to economic

00:40:23.720 hardship and the ripple effect through time. You know, maybe a million people will die from the

00:40:29.240 lockdown itself, some are saying, uh, long-term. But at this point, don't we know for sure

00:40:38.340 that we played it wrong? Again, I'm not blaming anybody. We didn't know, but I think we could have

00:40:44.720 kept the over 40s home and the overweight's home and just, and just plugged along. I think we could 0.99

00:40:51.980 have. And what would have happened? Here's my second question. It's related. Let's say everybody

00:40:56.940 under 40, just hypothetically, just say everyone under 40 got infected because they didn't do any

00:41:03.780 social distancing and the coronavirus is really sticky. So they just all got it. How much of an extra

00:41:12.220 risk does that put on the people who had to stay home? Well, some, but do you get the same amount

00:41:20.580 of super spreading from a thin person as you do from somebody who is overweight? Why don't you know

00:41:29.260 that? Because you know, there are such things as super spreaders, right? Some people are responsible

00:41:35.460 for most of the spread. It might be a 80-20 kind of situation, just roughly speaking, where 20% of the

00:41:42.400 spreaders are doing 80% of the spreading. Are those super spreaders, are they all over the weight

00:41:52.260 spectrum? Could you be a super spreader and weigh 120 pounds? Because you're not putting out much air

00:42:00.180 and you didn't have as much of an infection. Now, I'm sure there are some thin super spreaders,

00:42:08.340 but everything we're doing is statistical, right? It's all a matter of risk. If you had stayed away

00:42:14.460 from only overweight people, would you have also stayed away from almost all of the super spreaders?

00:42:22.620 Now, of course, you can't make any policy about overweight because who's to say who's overweight,

00:42:27.640 right? And people wouldn't abide by it and it would be discriminatory and it would be fat shaming and it

00:42:34.400 would be everything bad. I mean, look what happened to Chinese American citizens when China got blamed

00:42:42.500 for the coronavirus, right? So it's dangerous stuff. I don't know if you could make a policy about weight

00:42:48.980 because it would tear the country apart. But just statistically, we might know by now that that

00:42:55.880 would have been the way to play it. I don't know. Depends, I think, I think it all depends on the

00:43:00.980 question of whether thin people can be super spreaders. Well, not can be, but how often it 0.65

00:43:08.840 happens. If it could happen but rare, then we should have just let the thin people go on with their lives.

00:43:16.640 I asked this question on Twitter, very unofficial, unscientific poll. How many people gained weight or

00:43:23.760 lost weight during the pandemic? Let's see your answers in the comments. Did you gain weight or lose

00:43:30.160 weight? And if you don't mind, show us the pounds. You know, if you gained 20 or lost 20, just show us

00:43:35.760 the pounds. The result was 40% said they gained weight and 20% said they lost weight and the rest were

00:43:44.680 about the same. So in any given year, it feels to me that in any given year, 40% of people gain weight,

00:43:54.880 don't they? All right, I'm looking at your numbers. Lost 20, lost 30, gained 13, lost, gained same, lost,

00:44:07.300 gained up 10, etc. You know, I feel as though this experience really highlighted the importance of

00:44:18.400 framing. Now, I've told you that I'm going to try to use current events to teach you something useful

00:44:25.740 for your actual life. We'll just use the context of current events to do it. Do you think it's because

00:44:32.820 of the topic or the technology? It wasn't my Wi-Fi because I've got two devices running on the same

00:44:38.400 Wi-Fi. Okay, it looks like we're back. All right, looks like we're back. All right, so I was saying

00:44:45.520 that I'm going to try to teach you something useful for your real life based on current events. So it

00:44:51.360 won't be just talking about the news. Try to make it useful. And here's a framing that I think made a big

00:44:57.800 difference. In the beginning of the pandemic, when it was clear that we would spend some amount of time

00:45:03.800 not being able to do our normal lives, I told you that you should see it as an opportunity.

00:45:11.880 Because there might be never another time in your life where you would have, we thought weeks in the

00:45:17.400 beginning, but it turns into months, you would never have this opportunity to work on whatever your

00:45:22.960 side project is, or to get in shape. And that rather than seeing the pandemic as nothing but a

00:45:30.460 problem, you should see that it opened up some opportunities that you would never have any other

00:45:35.960 way, which is the ability to maybe work out more, spend time with your family, do whatever you want,

00:45:41.540 learn language, develop a thing. And when I'm watching the comments go by,

00:45:46.120 I wonder if the mental framing that people brought to this determined whether you lost 40 pounds,

00:45:56.280 as a lot of people did, or whether you just had a bad year.

00:46:03.300 I look at it myself, I started, I think I started two businesses, and I doubled down on my weight

00:46:10.920 training, got a little, got a little extra going here on the muscles. And I looked at it as a once

00:46:17.640 in a lifetime opportunity to do the things I could never otherwise have done. I will bet you that the

00:46:24.920 people who simply said, and it's just just a point of view, hey, opportunity. I'll bet you they're the

00:46:32.500 ones who lost weight. I'll bet you. And, and if you don't think they're simply changing your,

00:46:38.480 your frame or your filter on life, if you don't think that just reframing things can change your

00:46:45.140 actual life, this is a really good example. Now I can't prove it because I don't have the data to do

00:46:51.680 that. But I would really, really strongly suspect that the people who framed their impression of the

00:46:59.500 situation as an opportunity actually came out ahead. Probably did. And if you thought it was nothing

00:47:07.360 but a problem, and you just had to wait it out, that's probably what happened with you. So the George

00:47:19.200 Floyd trial is on. One of the jurors, juror number eight, he said he was concerned that rioters would attack

00:47:29.120 his house if he served on the jury and his name was released. That's how I would have gotten on a jury

00:47:36.720 duty too. In fact, I might have gotten on a jury duty once for something a little bit similar, but

00:47:43.680 I'll tell you about that in a second. If you're in a situation where you could be killed for just

00:47:52.240 sitting on a jury, you don't have to sit on that jury. Nobody can tell you you have to sit on that

00:48:00.740 jury. Let me say it as clearly as possible. If you have a legitimate reason to be afraid for your

00:48:07.360 safety, and I think these jurors do, this is very legitimate, it wouldn't be hard to figure out who

00:48:14.120 these people are, and that there could be some trouble after the fact. So I would say that every

00:48:21.960 one of the jurors should refuse to serve. They should all refuse. And the trial should just get

00:48:28.540 moved to someplace where they're not worried so much about it. So that was a smart juror, because he said

00:48:38.480 something that was honest, it was true. It is what the court wants to hear. They want to know what's

00:48:45.000 honest and true. And props. I would say this was exactly the way to handle it. I'm going to take an

00:48:53.920 aside and tell you about a little experience I had at jury duty. Now, first of all, I have served jury

00:49:01.200 duty, and I believe that you all should. In my opinion, everyone in the country should serve

00:49:08.260 jury duty. At least once. Because your sense of buying into the system is really enhanced by sitting

00:49:16.680 through the whole process. Your sort of faith in the system is restored. Believe it or not, it actually

00:49:22.700 restores your faith in the system. And part of it is that you see so many people who are unambiguously

00:49:29.740 serious about getting the right answer. Right? Everybody there, I mean, the defense attorney wants

00:49:37.100 their, obviously, advocates. But everybody involved, from the citizens, the judge, the people working in

00:49:44.000 the court, they actually legitimately just want to get the right answer. Just want to do what's good

00:49:51.180 for the country. And when you get immersed in that, it does change you. So I highly recommend it. If

00:49:58.720 you've spent your whole life trying to avoid jury duty, just go once. Go once, at least. You've got to

00:50:06.620 feel it. You have to breathe it to really, really buy into it. Here's how I got on a jury duty once.

00:50:15.960 The trial was about an armed person with a gun in a meth lab. So it was a dangerous repeat criminal.

00:50:24.980 Somehow we knew it was a third offense. I don't know if we were supposed to know that. But would

00:50:30.240 have gone to jail forever, and blah, blah, blah, and guns were involved, and it's a violent kind of a

00:50:35.140 person. Now, I was already famous by then. So while all of my other jurors may have had no risk

00:50:43.940 whatsoever, I would be sitting here with my name completely known, because it wouldn't take long

00:50:50.280 for people to figure out who I was. And I would be, if he got convicted, he would know that I voted to

00:50:56.740 convict him. And he's a guy with a criminal with a gun who has used guns. Now, I said to myself,

00:51:04.540 I do not want to, I do not want to be on the other side of a conflict with an armed career

00:51:11.580 criminal. And so when I was, when they asked, is there any reason anybody else thinks they

00:51:17.660 shouldn't serve, I raised my hand and said, I think drugs should be legal. And the judge said, what?

00:51:27.920 I said, yeah. It was a case about a meth lab. I said, yeah. I said, I think drugs should be legal.

00:51:33.100 And the judge said, but do you think you could be impartial anyway? And then I said, I would intend

00:51:43.820 to. As a citizen, I would certainly intend to look at only the facts and the law, but it doesn't work

00:51:52.020 that way. Bias is not the thing that you would intentionally overcome. If you have bias, you're the

00:52:00.520 one who doesn't know it. So I said, I would intend to use the facts and not be biased, but that's not

00:52:07.720 a real thing. People are, people are not designed that way. I could only intend to do it. It's not

00:52:13.820 something I could tell you I could pull off. Well, I get dismissed. Surprise, right? And the process is

00:52:21.840 you go to the bailiff and the bailiff has to sign something to let you leave. And as I'm in the back of

00:52:28.180 the court, they're still talking to the other people, the bailiff whispers to me, he goes,

00:52:33.300 you're in favor of legalizing meth. And he just looks at me like I'm the biggest piece of turd that

00:52:43.900 is ever about at this courtroom. He goes, you're in, you're in favor of legalizing meth.

00:52:51.140 And I looked at him and I said, maybe. And then he looked at me and said, you're a fucking idiot. 1.00

00:53:02.940 And then he signed my form and I got in my high-end sports car and I drove back to my mansion 1.00

00:53:11.020 education. And I felt really bad for being an idiot. He was still there working his job as a 1.00

00:53:18.980 bailiff. But I guess he's the smart one. I guess he's the smart one. So no, it wasn't because I

00:53:28.000 wanted to legalize meth. I just didn't want to be killed. And so I decided that this was a job

00:53:32.960 for a different citizen. Now I'm happy to do my part and even more than my part as a citizen.

00:53:38.500 I appreciate actually stepping up to help wherever I can. But this was not the job for me because I

00:53:47.260 would have been a little higher risk than other people. How many days are we going to go before the

00:53:53.280 Biden administration answers a question about why they haven't done rapid testing?

00:54:00.400 Same problem with the Trump administration. Why the FDA has not allowed the rapid tests.

00:54:05.880 And I guess it's because there's a reporting requirement, which is a dumb reason. So we have

00:54:12.240 to assume there's corruption. There's corruption in the Biden administration. I assume it was the

00:54:17.880 same corruption in the Trump administration because it doesn't seem to be the elected people. It seems to

00:54:23.180 be maybe the career people. And it looks like the FDA. So I'm just going to say as a default operating

00:54:32.160 assumption, the FDA has to be assumed to be corrupt. And only because they haven't even addressed the

00:54:39.000 question. If they ever address it and they have a good reason, I would say immediately, oh, well,

00:54:44.680 that's a pretty good reason. I wish I'd known that. But if they don't even address the question,

00:54:50.760 the default assumption has to be corruption at the FDA. It has to be. You can't run a country without

00:54:57.300 making that assumption. That if you can't get transparency, corruption has to be assumed.

00:55:06.100 Dr. Scott Atlas, who was with the Trump administration, he was provocative because he

00:55:10.400 was more of a open up the economy kind of a guy. He had an opinion piece here that said something

00:55:18.580 really interesting. Apparently, his field and his expertise is a health policy expert.

00:55:28.680 All right. So Dr. Scott Atlas, in addition to being a doctor, specifically, he was a health policy

00:55:35.920 expert, which he refers to as, quote, my field, with a broader scope of expertise than that of

00:55:43.800 epidemiologists and basic scientists. And his point is, that if you're listening to an epidemiologist,

00:55:55.720 you're listening to the wrong guy, even if it's an epidemic.

00:56:01.960 Do you buy that? Because the epidemiologist only knows, you know, his well of information.

00:56:07.980 Whereas somebody like Dr. Scott Atlas has a specific expertise in incorporating everybody

00:56:15.240 as well, and making a decision that looks at all the costs and benefits, which would include

00:56:20.280 everything from the suicides from the lockdowns to the economic stuff, rippling forward, etc.

00:56:28.200 What do you think of his argument? Is that a good argument? That the generalist would be the

00:56:34.560 better person to make the decision than the specialist? Because we just spent a year mocking

00:56:41.500 people who would not believe the specialists, didn't we? Didn't we just spend a year telling

00:56:49.380 each other we're fucking idiots if we don't listen to the specialists? And then he comes along, 1.00

00:56:55.260 he says, do you know there's another specialty, which is the person who can evaluate the specialists?

00:57:02.440 And that's him. He's looking smarter every day, isn't he? And so I ask you this. Suppose there was a

00:57:14.620 question in which Bill Gates and doctors, or let's say a doctor, we'll pick a doctor, disagreed.

00:57:23.200 How would you know which one to trust? I'll give you an imaginary situation, but it's not too far from

00:57:29.040 what's happening. Suppose you had a doctor, and let's make this average doctor pretty smart. IQ of

00:57:36.020 140 would be genius level, right? Not Einstein genius, but sort of ordinary genius where you're

00:57:43.880 in the top 2% of your class. You know, that's the sort of, you know, pedestrian genius, not Einstein

00:57:50.740 genius, but smart enough to be a doctor. That's pretty good. Get through medical school. And let's say

00:57:56.260 this doctor did some reading on the topic. So it's a doctor who, you know, dug in a little bit on the

00:58:04.340 topic. And let's say you have a choice of listening to this doctor, really smart, genius, and has looked

00:58:11.940 into the topic. Or Bill Gates. Bill Gates, I don't know what his IQ is, but if you know anything about

00:58:20.460 his backstory, it's probably in the 180 plus range. It's not normal. Let's just say that if Bill Gates

00:58:28.660 had a conversation with somebody who had an IQ of 140, that person would be like a chimpanzee to Bill

00:58:36.520 Gates. Now, I know you don't think that because you don't have an IQ of 180. And so you can't

00:58:45.720 possibly put yourself in his, his point of view. But just as your dog doesn't know how much smarter

00:58:52.520 you are, but you do, right? It's kind of invisible. You can't tell. You really don't know how much

00:59:01.960 smarter 180 is the 140. But let me tell you, it's almost a different species. All right? It's a big 0.86

00:59:10.600 difference. Now, let's say that Bill Gates decided to do a deep dive. And he talked to lots of doctors.

00:59:18.220 He talked to this doctor. He talked to other doctors. He read some papers. He did some analysis,

00:59:24.660 et cetera. And let's say they came to different conclusions about what's the best thing to do.

00:59:29.320 Which one of those would you believe? Okay, I'm not done yet. First, you're going to say to me,

00:59:36.940 Scott, a doctor is dedicating his life to helping patients. You can trust a doctor in general,

00:59:45.780 because they dedicate their life to helping patients. So that's pretty good. As opposed to Bill Gates,

00:59:53.280 who's a robber baron, who's dedicating his life to taking over the world, possibly taking all of

01:00:00.140 your money, maybe enslaving you, possibly putting a chip in your body to control you forever like a

01:00:05.940 robot. Did I forget to mention that stuff? Well, here's the thing. Bill Gates walked away from the

01:00:15.860 most profitable thing you could ever imagine, which is running Microsoft. And of course, he could have

01:00:21.260 made any number of investments that would have been wildly profitable. Do you think that talking

01:00:26.420 about the pandemic or the Green New Deal, he's doing for money? Let me say this as clearly as I can. 0.81

01:00:38.960 If you think that what Bill Gates is doing in Africa with helping them get toilets,

01:00:44.060 curing malaria, turning 90%, I think, of his fortune toward charity, trying to get other

01:00:51.580 billionaires to do the same, if you think that his interest is making money, I want to say this

01:00:57.480 as clearly as possible. You're fucking stupid. Sorry. You're really stupid if you think Bill Gates 1.00

01:01:07.460 is in it for the money. I mean, that's really stupid. Super stupid. I can't even come up with 1.00

01:01:15.540 like an argument why that would make any sense. So here's my bottom line.

01:01:25.560 If you can't tell the difference between these two things... Now, by the way, it doesn't mean that

01:01:30.780 Bill Gates would always be right. I'm just saying that if you had to bet, you know, since you don't

01:01:35.320 know who's always right, anybody could be wrong. But if you had to bet, I would bet on Bill Gates

01:01:40.920 every single time. Every time. It's not even close. These two are not close. These are worlds apart

01:01:51.340 in credibility. Worlds apart. So that doesn't mean Bill Gates is right about everything, right?

01:01:58.040 Everybody could be wrong.

01:02:04.200 I saw somebody complaining about maybe it's risky to visit China, like for business or for tourism,

01:02:11.700 I guess. Jeff Wasserstrom, he's a China specialist. He was saying that he used to go there all the

01:02:18.180 time, but he's worried about going there and being detained. To which I say, who would go to China?

01:02:25.040 Unless you work for the government and you kind of have to, why would you ever go to China in 2021?

01:02:36.600 Seriously. I would never go to China. Now, in my case, since I talk about anti-Chinese stuff all the

01:02:43.960 time, and I know that they know everybody is there and wherever they are, going to China would be the

01:02:50.020 most dangerous thing I could ever do. I would never go to China because I would assume they would 1.00

01:02:55.020 target me. Why wouldn't they? But more generally, I am more prominent, maybe, because I talk about

01:03:03.260 China in public. But why would any of you ever go to China for anything? I mean, rethink that.

01:03:13.540 China is planning, of course, to be technologically dominant and try to develop a whole new technology

01:03:21.420 that competes with the United States technology so that they can control smaller countries in the

01:03:27.160 future, etc., through their technology. And here's the question I ask. Why isn't China already

01:03:32.880 technologically dominant? What is it about the United States that allows us to be so inventive

01:03:42.800 successfully for everything from cars and smartphones and computers and aircraft? It feels like America

01:03:51.540 invents all the big commercial stuff. Now, we have lost control of the chip business. Apparently,

01:03:58.240 Asia just owns microchips, and if we don't get that back, we're in real trouble in the long run.

01:04:03.620 But I guess I'm curious why China hasn't already dominated. Is it just that our system is better?

01:04:13.660 Is that it? Is it just that we have better ways to get capital and there's less corruption or

01:04:20.440 something? Is that what's happening? So I guess I don't fully understand why we've had this long a

01:04:26.780 dominance for so long in the first place. Oh, and of course, the big story is Harry and Meghan.

01:04:33.280 We must talk about them. So Pierce Morgan, he quit because everybody got mad because he didn't believe

01:04:39.780 Meghan Markle. Apparently, he once had a lunch date with her that didn't go well. She ghosted him.

01:04:46.840 It's reported. And so maybe he has some personal feelings about her.

01:04:50.560 But I would like to point out the following thing. I believe that Harry, who looks like a good person,

01:05:01.600 wouldn't you say? Doesn't Harry look like sort of a good soul? Like you'd want to know him?

01:05:08.120 You'd be kind of a cool dude to hang out with? Everybody says so. I think Harry's a good person.

01:05:14.200 There's something he may not know, though. You can't really make a woman happy. 1.00

01:05:20.560 And it looks like he's trying really hard to make his wife happy. Now, I think he has to try.

01:05:28.500 But he's still at that age where he thinks it's possible.

01:05:32.940 I've never seen it done. Have you? Have you ever seen a man make a woman happy? 0.51

01:05:39.040 That's not a thing. The best you can do is, you know, you can give people what they ask for.

01:05:44.500 You can give people, oh, sorry, what they want.

01:05:49.520 But I've never seen anybody make anybody else happy.

01:05:55.660 Have you? Let me ask you.

01:05:59.260 Have any of you made your wife happier than she was when you met her?

01:06:05.000 You know, if you asked them, they'd say, well, I'm happy I have a family, or I'm happy I'm mad, I'm happy we got married.

01:06:14.620 So people would answer that. But if you had like a happiness meter, you could just put it on people and measure their happiness.

01:06:22.060 Do you think that your spouse is happier just in general than when you met them?

01:06:31.360 It's not a thing.

01:06:33.040 People's happiness pretty much just stays the same.

01:06:36.020 And when I was younger, when I was Harry's age, I didn't know that.

01:06:41.280 I didn't know that.

01:06:44.580 And I believed that if I met a woman who had a specific set of complaints, and I could solve those specific set of complaints, 0.95

01:06:54.880 I would turn somebody from unhappy into happy.

01:06:59.860 That makes sense, right?

01:07:02.020 Somebody's unhappy because of a specific problem.

01:07:05.120 You solve it.

01:07:07.180 Now they're happy, right?

01:07:08.380 Nope. Not in the history of humankind has that ever happened once.

01:07:14.080 Not once. Not once.

01:07:16.360 People will be glad their problems are solved.

01:07:18.620 You should definitely solve problems.

01:07:20.680 But it won't make them go from unhappy to happy.

01:07:24.320 So when you see the, you know, people were teasing Meghan Markle for being a princess.

01:07:30.240 You know, she's a wealthy princess actress talking to Oprah. 1.00

01:07:33.840 And she's got complaints. 1.00

01:07:35.140 And people are saying, uh, you have the smallest problems I've ever seen.

01:07:41.740 And you're pretty unhappy.

01:07:44.120 And here's where we learn that it doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter what is happening in Meghan Markle's life. 0.64

01:07:53.780 She will be exactly this person in every scenario.

01:07:57.840 It has nothing to do with the royal family.

01:08:00.040 They just happen to be the ones in the barrel this time, right?

01:08:05.880 So poor Harry, he's on the treadmill trying to make Meghan Markle happy.

01:08:11.960 He just doesn't know it's not a thing.

01:08:14.460 It's just not a thing.

01:08:15.320 Um, I can't decide if I'm happy that Piers Morgan quit over having his opinion, um, so, so attacked.

01:08:27.660 Because it isn't an opinion show, right?

01:08:30.740 Wasn't he giving an opinion on a show about opinions?

01:08:34.900 So, uh, kind of weird that it led to this.

01:08:38.260 Unless they all always agreed with each other until this point.

01:08:41.480 But, um, I don't mind that he's making a statement about this.

01:08:45.620 And I think he's entitled to his opinion.

01:08:48.860 Um, here's a question for you.

01:08:55.720 Uh, I think there's a new form of racism.

01:08:59.840 And I want to run this by you and see if any of you have encountered this.

01:09:02.940 I had a situation recently in which I could hire, hire somebody to do a job temporarily.

01:09:12.660 And, um, because of the unique nature of this, I knew that I could pick somebody who was either black or non-black, right? 0.89

01:09:21.820 So you don't need to know the details.

01:09:23.740 Just know that there was a job and I had a choice. 0.81

01:09:26.220 And I could either probably hire somebody black or probably hire somebody who wasn't. 0.99

01:09:30.760 So, now, if I'm judging my own racism, I'm indifferent, right?

01:09:37.240 So I don't have a personal preference.

01:09:39.460 I had no reason to think there was any, you know, any difference in any of the people.

01:09:45.040 So, on that level, how do I feel about it?

01:09:48.060 No difference.

01:09:49.840 But, we just went through the age of Trump.

01:09:54.140 And I ask you this question.

01:09:55.400 What should I assume about the general sentiment of the average black citizen in the United States in the year 2021 about me?

01:10:09.120 Forget about my opinion about them, which is just fine.

01:10:13.560 Is it fair to assume, statistically speaking, all things being equal, is it fair to assume that if I'm working with a black citizen of the United States and they come to understand who I am and that I said good things about Trump, is that a problem?

01:10:32.960 And, here's the better part.

01:10:38.320 Would I be doing them a favor by putting them in that awkward situation?

01:10:43.860 Would you want, let me switch around so you can get an example of it. 0.82

01:10:48.760 Suppose you are being asked to do a job, you take the job, and then you find out the person who hired you is a pedophile.

01:10:54.300 Well, after you take the job, are you happy that you got a job, or are you unhappy that you accidentally ended up working for a monster? 0.88

01:11:06.940 All right?

01:11:07.580 So, same situation.

01:11:09.640 If I were to hire somebody who would be, you know, by the nature of the hiring, would be working with me for a while, would I want them to be uncomfortable?

01:11:17.580 Because I feel that most black Americans would be uncomfortable spending time with me.

01:11:28.240 Is that unfair?

01:11:30.760 And have we created a whole new type of discrimination that didn't even exist two years ago?

01:11:38.640 Where you're discriminating against people under the reasonable assumption that they don't like you.

01:11:47.580 And is that unfair to do somebody a favor by not exposing them to you?

01:11:58.260 It's a little confusing, isn't it?

01:12:00.520 Because I can't quite wrap my head around if this is a new form of racism, and I'm participating in it, which would be horrible.

01:12:10.200 Or if it's just a bad thing that happened.

01:12:12.180 I don't know.

01:12:13.300 All right, let me leave you with one useful thing.

01:12:17.580 The first politician who can consistently and clearly articulate the argument on the opposing side will become president in a landslide.

01:12:28.460 Never had one.

01:12:30.400 We've never had a president who could give you a full accounting of the opposite opinion.

01:12:37.120 Somebody who could say, look, I'll tell you what I'm going to do is X.

01:12:40.780 But a lot of people are against X, and I want to fully explain their opinion.

01:12:47.240 And now after having fully explained their opinion, I'll tell you why I don't agree with it.

01:12:52.280 That person wins every presidential race in a landslide.

01:12:58.300 Landslide.

01:12:59.180 Won't even be close.

01:13:01.140 Because what do people want to know if you're not going to do things their way?

01:13:05.680 They want to know you heard them.

01:13:08.440 They want to know that you heard their argument.

01:13:11.920 Because you can go the other way if you give full respect to the way you didn't go.

01:13:18.420 You never see that.

01:13:19.300 You just see the politicians say their way is bad.

01:13:22.540 My way is all good.

01:13:24.660 My way worked.

01:13:26.340 Blah, blah, blah.

01:13:27.440 Somebody said Bill Clinton.

01:13:28.520 And I think that's actually, you might be on to that.

01:13:32.580 Right.

01:13:33.100 I think Bill Clinton came close.

01:13:35.400 He came the closest to somebody who could give respect to the other opinion.

01:13:39.800 You're right.

01:13:40.400 And how did Bill Clinton win re-election?

01:13:44.380 Landslide.

01:13:45.600 Landslide.

01:13:48.220 So I think that proves the point.

01:13:49.680 But imagine you could take that to the extreme.

01:13:52.980 The first person who does that, take somebody like a, I'll just pick a name.

01:13:59.200 Matt Gaetz.

01:14:00.620 So if you don't know, Matt Gaetz was a champion debater in high school, I think, or college.

01:14:06.200 I can't remember.

01:14:07.120 But he has a background as like a state champion debater.

01:14:11.300 And when you see him debate, you see that debate talent come out.

01:14:16.820 But debate is still advocacy.

01:14:20.860 It's still trying to be on one side.

01:14:22.440 It's not really trying to represent the other side.

01:14:24.880 But he's an individual who is, I would say, intellectually agile, meaning that he can make corrections, like he can tweak things.

01:14:37.560 Not everybody can.

01:14:38.300 Some people are just locked into whoever they are.

01:14:42.320 But I think he could adjust.

01:14:44.480 He could do things.

01:14:46.160 Somebody like him could say, look, here's the other side's argument, and I'll explain it completely.

01:14:54.180 Now I'll tell you why we want to go the other way.

01:14:57.880 Landslide.

01:14:59.600 Landslide.

01:15:00.080 And it's weird that nobody's tried it, right?

01:15:06.000 Somebody said Yang tried to do that.

01:15:09.280 Yeah, maybe on some level Andrew Yang would be a good example of that.

01:15:15.160 But I think you would agree that they just brushed.

01:15:17.940 They sort of brushed against it, right?

01:15:20.340 There are certainly times when some people were more forthcoming.

01:15:23.400 But it's just sort of a little bit brushing the topic, I think.

01:15:28.580 Somebody says, you're wrong as hell on this one, Scott.

01:15:32.520 I'm wrong that somebody who explained the other side's argument would not win in the landslide.

01:15:40.100 Well, I think that you have to account for skill.

01:15:43.920 If you took an average person with not much skill, that might be a way to end your career.

01:15:50.660 Because you gave too much attention to the other side.

01:15:54.740 But if you were good at it, and maybe I should have said this more clearly.

01:15:58.740 If you were a trained persuader, telling the other side's full story won't hurt you at all.

01:16:07.040 Not even a little bit.

01:16:09.060 If you're bad at it, telling the other side's argument just puts it out there.

01:16:14.120 And then it competes with your argument.

01:16:15.940 That's not good.

01:16:16.660 But if you're a trained persuader, you can pull that off, and it's a dunk.

01:16:25.460 I've said before that except for my shady personal personality,

01:16:33.520 I could become president easily.

01:16:37.380 I would just do that.

01:16:39.220 And I would just tell them what system I would use to give you transparency.

01:16:43.420 See, I could easily become president if I were a different person.

01:16:48.640 But I'm just saying my skill set would make me president easily if I were starting with a different person.

01:16:55.220 I'd have to be taller, have hair, maybe have voted recently, something like that.

01:17:00.160 That would help too.

01:17:02.040 All right.

01:17:03.360 Somebody says voters don't care about that.

01:17:05.380 You don't have to get many to care about it.

01:17:11.520 You only have to keep some people who might have gone either way to feel that you're the most transparent of the options.

01:17:20.760 So you're only looking at that 2% slice of people who can be moved, and that's all it takes for a landslide.

01:17:27.520 And that's all for now.

01:17:28.820 I'll talk to you later.

01:17:30.180 Yes, I would need more hair to become president.

01:17:40.400 Am I the puppet master?

01:17:42.700 How would you know?

01:17:46.900 Somebody says Bill Gates is a college dropout who bought DOS.

01:17:50.920 Well, if you think that Bill Gates became the richest person in the country because he got lucky, you really need to examine that.

01:18:04.000 All right.

01:18:07.540 That's all for now, everybody.

01:18:09.480 I'll talk to you later.

01:18:10.260 Thank you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 10, 2021

Episode 1309 Scott Adams： Cuomo, Coronavirus, Crisis, Corpulence, China and Coffee

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