Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1324 Scott Adams： Voter ID Law Arguments Dissected, Biden Press Conference Reviews in Advance, and More Fun

00:00:00.000 La-da-da-do, bum-bum-bum-bum. 0.98

00:00:04.920 Come on in here. Come on. Get in here. 1.00

00:00:08.860 I know you're scrambling to get your beverage ready.

00:00:12.380 You should have been up a little bit earlier. Now you know, don't you?

00:00:17.640 Well, there are a lot of things that could go wrong today.

00:00:21.820 It's possible, but none of them will matter

00:00:25.720 once you've had the simultaneous sip. Oh yeah, the problems will still be

00:00:29.820 there, but you won't care about them nearly as much. In fact,

00:00:34.000 I often like to look at the world this way.

00:00:37.680 Do you have problems, or do you have insufficient

00:00:41.720 coffee? Yeah, you see where I'm heading with this, right?

00:00:45.620 I don't think you have problems. I think you have insufficient

00:00:49.700 coffee. And we're going to fix that right now, although you don't need coffee.

00:00:53.520 Could be anything. But you need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tango, a chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug,

00:00:57.540 a glass, a vessel of any kind, filled with a fairy of liquid. I like coffee.

00:01:01.120 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes

00:01:04.680 everything better. Except the elections, for some reason. It's called the simultaneous sip,

00:01:11.500 and it happens now. Go!

00:01:16.640 Ah, just as good as I was hoping. Maybe better.

00:01:23.220 Well, have you seen my mascot on Twitter? A lot of you are not famous,

00:01:28.900 famous, but when you get famous, you can get a mascot. Now, he doesn't think he's a mascot,

00:01:38.860 but I don't think that's up to him. He thinks he's my critic, who spends all of his days researching

00:01:45.560 old tweets I've made to put them into the comment section of anything I tweet to criticize me. Now,

00:01:52.600 of course, everything's out of context, and his criticisms are nonsensible. But rather than

00:01:58.940 blocking him, which would be too easy, because he seems to have dedicated a good part of his day,

00:02:05.440 every day, to just trying to say bad things about me on my Twitter feed. So I decided to reframe him

00:02:15.020 as my mascot. Because mascots are silly, and you don't really care what they do. They just draw 0.94

00:02:21.220 attention to you. So he's my mascot from now on. And I refer to him as my mascot, and he tried to

00:02:28.200 respond to that with a clever rejoinder. Now, here's the problem. I'm a professional humorist.

00:02:38.660 He's a guy who spends most of his day criticizing a stranger. He can't really compete in this reframing

00:02:45.740 stuff. But he tried. And he's a very entertaining mascot. Now, I've used this reframe before, and it's

00:02:54.320 one that you can use. I've told you this before. Back when I owned a restaurant, one of the employees

00:02:59.960 decided to do a protest. So he staged his own protest every day with a little sign just by himself in

00:03:08.360 front of the restaurant. And day after day, he'd be there. And my manager at the time said, you know,

00:03:14.920 what do we do about this? And I said, do about it. Why would you want to fix anything? Not everybody

00:03:20.660 gets a mascot. And so we redefined the protester as a mascot. And as soon as we did, it just was fun.

00:03:29.560 And I'd come by, he's like, hey, where's the mascot? Oh, he was just here. He'll be back in a while.

00:03:34.280 Took a break. So you can reframe things from problems to mascots. And watch how it stops

00:03:42.780 bothering you. Twitter user Roly Poly had a good suggestion for your job, right? If you have a

00:03:50.420 boss, here's a good suggestion. You can employ this. And he says in a tweet, he goes, anytime you need to

00:03:57.920 admit a mistake to a boss or a client, bring up this Suez Canal ship disaster. Talk to them about it

00:04:05.560 for two to four minutes. Get them thinking about how many billions of dollars one person's mistake

00:04:10.860 costs. Then tell them about your mistake. It'll look smaller. Completely. It's just completely true.

00:04:20.980 Now it's funny, but it's completely true. That would literally work. So Roly Poly has been paying

00:04:29.580 attention. So Joe Biden put Kamala Harris in charge of the migrant crisis. So now she has a portfolio.

00:04:40.320 What do you make of that? Is it because the migrant crisis is a big problem? So you need to put,

00:04:49.420 you know, your highest firepower on that job. Is that why? Maybe. Somebody suggested it's so that he

00:04:59.680 won't, that Biden won't have to answer questions about immigration. He'll just refer the questions to

00:05:05.820 Harris. Maybe. Maybe a little bit. That's certainly a benefit, side benefit. But I have a hypothesis that he

00:05:14.920 hates her. Because can you think of anything that would be a worse job than to be a Democrat and an

00:05:25.580 ex-prosecutor and being put in charge of immigration? I literally can't think of a worse penalty

00:05:32.380 because she's been so nice to him. I mean, other than calling him a giant racist during the primaries.

00:05:38.280 If you don't count that, she's been really nice to him. And he rewards her by giving her the one job

00:05:44.400 she can't possibly succeed at. It's like an impossible to succeed situation because the

00:05:51.420 Democrat philosophy makes it impossible to do anything practical. So I feel like Joe Biden hates

00:06:00.840 Kabbalah Harris. And he's just, you know, he's showing us in a very, very beta way. All right.

00:06:10.760 Or it could be just the vice presidents get portfolios. And that was hers. That's the other

00:06:15.500 possibility. When Biden was asked about the press conference that he will be having today,

00:06:21.540 we're all waiting for that. That'll be interesting. I'll be watching that.

00:06:24.300 And Biden, when, when he was asked if he was preparing for the press conference,

00:06:30.340 Biden said, what? And then the question was repeated. And he said, what press conference?

00:06:38.060 Are you worried yet?

00:06:42.460 Now, my interpretation of this is that he was joking. Because it is very much like the dad jokes he

00:06:50.460 likes to do. You know, he just, when the, what is it, when Peter Doocy would ask him, you know,

00:06:55.840 who are you going to appoint to do whatever? He likes to quip, you, I'm going to appoint you.

00:07:03.220 It's just sort of his dad joke, brushing something aside. So I'm pretty sure he was joking

00:07:08.520 about saying what press conference, given that it was such a big story and everything,

00:07:14.240 it was funny. Well, or he thought it was funny. But here's my professional humorist advice

00:07:21.820 on self-deprecating humor. Now, self-deprecating humor is not something that everybody should try.

00:07:31.680 There's a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it. A good self-deprecating humor would be,

00:07:39.320 oh, I have to do whatever my spouse tells me to do. Or my secretary is really the one who's in 1.00

00:07:48.240 charge. Or, well, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so dumb. But you don't really take those

00:07:54.420 as being too serious, right? The person doing the self-deprecating humor is clearly not really

00:08:02.020 insulting themselves. They're so much in power that they can insult themselves without really any risk.

00:08:09.320 But here's what you don't want to do if you've got some accusations or suspicions that you might

00:08:19.340 have dementia. You don't want to play a joke where it looks like you have dementia.

00:08:28.900 I'm just saying, in the world of self-deprecating humor, don't do the one that actually looks true,

00:08:36.140 right? You want to do the self-deprecating on the things that people think is not true. So,

00:08:43.360 for example, if they think you're very smart and capable, and they're not going to change their

00:08:47.840 mind about that, because you have a whole history of being smart and capable, you can do a little

00:08:52.480 self-deprecating humor about the time you messed up. But if they think you have dementia,

00:08:58.240 you don't want to do self-deprecating humor about maybe you do, because that makes you look like

00:09:05.540 you have dementia, because it's not very smart. All right. So what's going to happen at this Biden

00:09:15.920 press conference? How do you think it's going to go? What's your prediction? Do you think he will

00:09:22.240 gaff out? Do you think he'll make such a mistake that it'll be a giant disaster? What do you think?

00:09:31.040 My prediction is he'll do fine. He'll do fine. Because I think the press will be very kind to

00:09:37.940 him. I think they'll ask softball questions. The few people who don't, let's say the Fox News people,

00:09:45.520 he'll brush them aside and joke about them and say the canned thing that's written down in front of

00:09:50.980 him, whatever. Yeah, he'll do fine. I think he'll get through it. It would be surprising if he didn't.

00:09:57.100 It won't be great. But don't you wonder how the press will treat it? Well, wonder no more. Because

00:10:04.660 even though it hasn't happened, I'm going to read you some of the reviews of his press conference

00:10:12.040 before they even happen. You ready? Let me find here. So I asked people to write glowing reviews of

00:10:27.000 Biden's performance today before it even happens. Because you know, you could write them before they

00:10:33.040 happen. All right. Let's see what some of the... My priming joke was that CNN will report after his

00:10:46.460 press conference, orange man bad, but dementia man good. World rejoices. Let's see what other people

00:10:53.380 said. Christopher Hill says, in review of President Biden's first presser, join us as we discuss what

00:11:01.780 Donald Trump was doing while it was televised. So nice to have President who, that doesn't lie,

00:11:12.560 Biden returns civility to press conference. Doesn't shy away from the tough questions.

00:11:19.900 President's favorite food is, yeah, it's going to be that kind of stuff.

00:11:25.720 Let's see some more. In a refreshing change of pace. This is Matt Fitzgerald. In a refreshing change

00:11:31.220 pace from the previous administration, Biden's press conference was a free-flowing exchange of ideas

00:11:37.680 based in confident, mature leadership. I came, and perhaps we all did, at least just a little bit.

00:11:46.520 I should have read that to myself before I read it to you.

00:11:51.000 Biden stumbles, Russia suspected, MSNBC.

00:11:54.760 Country unites around president as he fixes everything. Not the mean spirit answers we've

00:12:01.500 been accustomed to from the previous administration. He showed an empathy we haven't seen in four years.

00:12:08.160 He really cares. So anyway, that was fun. You should read the rest of them on my Twitter feed.

00:12:14.760 Somebody asked on Twitter today, and I wondered the same thing.

00:12:20.840 How long before you can get banned from social media for saying that Biden has dementia?

00:12:28.260 It's coming, isn't it? I feel like that's coming.

00:12:32.200 Although this seems a little bit more like an opinion, so maybe it'll last longer.

00:12:35.660 Now, my defense, I've prepared my defense in advance, is that no reasonable person would

00:12:44.180 believe anything I say. I think that's a pretty good defense. So no reasonable person would

00:12:52.080 believe anything I say, so I'm safe. According to Rasmussen, Rasmussen polls, Biden's handling of

00:13:00.780 the COVID-19 situation wins a majority approval. I'm starting to think that averages don't make

00:13:08.680 any sense in 2021, if you're looking at political polling. Because if you dig down a little bit,

00:13:14.520 it says 30% of conservatives think Biden is doing a good job on COVID, but 88% of liberals.

00:13:22.260 Does it make sense to average them? I mean, I guess it does, to find out if you're over 50%.

00:13:28.760 It's useful. But I feel like the concept of an average for the country doesn't make any sense.

00:13:35.980 Because it's just two different groups. It's like averaging an orange and an apple.

00:13:42.020 Well, the average of an orange and an apple is a, I don't know, what? It's a nothing. There's nothing

00:13:49.080 that's the average of an orange and an apple. So I guess we still have to know what's more than 50%

00:13:55.400 for lots of reasons. All right. So there's more. I feel as if every week is a new Governor Cuomo scandal.

00:14:04.600 And you think they're going to be done. But no, there's another one. Turns out that maybe

00:14:11.140 the governor's, Governor of New York's brother, Chris Cuomo of CNN, may have had some special access

00:14:18.660 access to testing and stuff when he had his coronavirus infection. Now, how much do you care

00:14:25.540 about that? Do you care too much that the governor's family gets a little extra resources during the

00:14:34.440 pandemic? I get the point. You know, the point is crystal clear that, you know, people shouldn't

00:14:41.880 be jumping to the front of the line. But I got to tell you, of all the things I could be bothered

00:14:47.480 about in the entire world, I don't really care about a politician taking care of their family.

00:14:54.020 Do you? Is that the thing you're going to bother, worry about? Now, if it had been a lobbyist,

00:15:01.240 I think I'd care a little bit more if a lobbyist did it. But are we really going to get down on people

00:15:08.120 for taking care of their family? Really? I get it. I get it. He shouldn't have gone to the front

00:15:13.760 of the line, slapping the hand. But I feel as if you could even make an argument for it, that the,

00:15:21.600 you know, the reason we have security for our leaders, but you don't get security, the reason that they

00:15:26.820 get a private plane if they're leaders, but you don't get a private plane, right? So we do say that our

00:15:33.820 leaders should have some special, I wouldn't say rights, but special treatment, because their

00:15:40.600 influence, you know, is leveraged, you know, on all of us. So you want to make sure that the leaders

00:15:46.460 are the most effective they can be in a way that doesn't apply to the rest of us. And I think if a

00:15:52.700 leader has some problem in the family, and he's got a brother that's maybe in his ear, that making that

00:15:59.680 problem go away is worth something. Hey, hey, I'm your brother, give me some testing. I'm trying

00:16:05.820 to run the state here, but I'm your brother, give me some testing. Seriously, I'm trying to run a

00:16:10.740 state, but I'm your brother, give me some testing. All right, just give him some testing. Just give

00:16:15.860 him some testing. We'll be done with this. Now I'm going to go run the state. Honestly, I don't care

00:16:20.460 about this at all. I realize it's part of the bigger story, but I wouldn't care if Trump did it,

00:16:26.680 I wouldn't care if a Democrat did it. Let him take care of their family. I'm okay with that.

00:16:33.040 But I get the argument against it. It's not mysterious. Let's talk about voter ID laws.

00:16:39.920 You ready? All right, here's the meaty part of my show today. All right. So something like half of

00:16:49.140 the country is against voter ID laws. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but it's usually half

00:16:54.620 when we're talking about politics. But what's the argument? And I keep waiting to hear the argument

00:17:02.720 in favor of not requiring ID to vote. And I assumed that there was an argument, but I just wasn't aware

00:17:10.760 of it. So I did a little bit of research, a little bit today, and I'll tell you what I found. So half of

00:17:18.040 the country thinks that the republic would be better off if the people without IDs do get to vote. 0.99

00:17:26.300 What's the argument for that? Have you ever heard it? Is the argument... Now, it seems to me that the

00:17:33.920 argument for having no voter IDs either has to be something that's good for the republic, you know,

00:17:41.960 good for the country, or it's good for the individuals who are doing the voting. Ideally,

00:17:48.560 it's good for both, right? That would be the win-win. But it's got to be good for at least one of those

00:17:54.420 two groups, or else why are we talking about it, right? So is it good for the republic, let's say,

00:18:02.360 would better decisions be made if we threw into the mix the population that does not have 0.85

00:18:09.100 identification? Is there anybody arguing that it would be? That we would pick a more qualified

00:18:15.460 leader, or that we would have better decisions or policies if the people who can't get identification,

00:18:22.920 or don't have it for whatever reason, vote? If you throw them in the mix, do you get better decisions?

00:18:30.080 Because I've never heard anybody argue that, and it seems counterintuitive, right? So if it's not that,

00:18:36.820 what's the point? If you're not getting better decisions, what's the point? Well, here's another

00:18:44.640 possibility. The other possibility is you don't want to disenfranchise American citizens. You don't

00:18:52.780 want people to feel that they're not part of the system, because then they won't, you know, be

00:18:58.220 cooperative and beneficial and, you know, buying into the whole process. And I think we would all agree

00:19:04.040 that if citizens buy into the system, whether it's jury duty or voting or anything with the

00:19:11.960 constitution, the more you can get people to participate and buy in, that's better. Do we all

00:19:18.120 agree? The more participation, the better. But here's the thing. Do these people who don't have

00:19:27.040 identification? Is voting in their top 100 priorities? If you went to them, and you didn't

00:19:36.040 tell them that the topic was voting, you just say, look, I'm a researcher, and I want to ask this

00:19:42.900 question. Write me a list of all the things you care about. Your top priorities, from top to bottom,

00:19:50.760 I want to see a list and make 100 of them. You know, it might take you all day, but I want 100

00:19:56.560 priorities for you. And they probably start out with, you know, health and money and, you know,

00:20:02.560 freedom from crime and get my kid an education and, you know, and, you know, not have racism in my life

00:20:10.300 and no gun violence, maybe, whatever. And after you got through the top 100, how low would you have

00:20:18.860 to be? Now, remember, these are unprompted. These are people you just say, tell me your problems.

00:20:25.180 Don't answer a question about voting. Just tell me your problems. Where would this be?

00:20:32.340 It would not be in the top 100, would it? Because it seems to me that the people who don't have ID, 1.00

00:20:39.920 certainly their poverty is, you know, maybe the, almost certainly the top reason for that.

00:20:44.820 But I don't think they care. Do they? Is there, or let me put it this way. Rather than reading their

00:20:51.860 minds, let me say this. Is there any evidence that they care? Because I've never seen any. So if it's

00:21:01.860 not, if voting without ID is not beneficial to the Republic, there's no argument that gives you

00:21:09.600 better decisions. And it's not necessarily good for the people who don't have IDs because they don't

00:21:15.920 probably care. And I haven't, or I haven't seen the evidence that they do. You know, if somebody did

00:21:22.120 a survey of it, that would be different, I suppose. Now, so what's the point of it? So somebody pointed

00:21:28.920 me to an ACLU argument. So now we don't have to wonder, right? So I was just guessing what's the point

00:21:34.720 of it. But now we're going to read the ACLU's argument, why we should not have voter ID laws.

00:21:41.780 You ready? Now the ACLU argues in public. So you got lawyers involved, right? Expert arguers,

00:21:51.960 people who are good at making their points. So if the ACLU can't give me a good argument for this,

00:21:58.360 does it exist? Well, let's find out if they have one first. So here's what one of their articles

00:22:04.520 says. Number one, voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote. It deprives them

00:22:12.680 of their right to vote. That's the first statement they make. Is that true? What do you think of that?

00:22:18.400 Does it deprive people of their right to vote? Well, I'm no constitutional scholar. But does the

00:22:27.760 constitution specify that your right to vote includes any way you want to do it? Does it?

00:22:36.840 Is that in there somewhere? Because I'm no expert. But does the constitution say you have a right to

00:22:41.920 vote, and by the way, any way you want to? No restrictions. Now, I would like to vote the

00:22:49.800 following way. I would like to write my vote on a napkin. Then I'd like to wrap it around a brick

00:22:56.980 and throw it through a window of Congress. Why can't I do that? Are you going to restrict my right

00:23:06.580 to vote? That's the way I want to do it. Now, some people want to do it without ID,

00:23:11.280 or maybe they don't have a choice, because they don't have ID. But does the constitution guarantee

00:23:18.780 me a way to vote that I want to vote? Because I don't remember that language in the constitution.

00:23:25.580 All right, let's go on. Let's see what else the ACLU says. It would reduce participation.

00:23:32.660 True or false? True or false? It would reduce participation. Yes. So that's a good point, right?

00:23:41.280 No, it's not. It's not a point. It's a fact. A fact is not an argument, right? It's just a fact.

00:23:52.920 You need an argument, a reason. A fact doesn't tell you anything. So if it reduces the number of

00:23:59.840 people who votes, or even if it doesn't, it's still just a fact. It's not a reason. So, so far,

00:24:07.620 I haven't seen a reason that makes any sense. Have you? Let's keep reading. I'm sure they're

00:24:12.820 getting to the good stuff. Oh, here, here we go. Here's the kill shot. I thought there were no good

00:24:18.800 reasons, but then the ACLU gets to the, the meat of it. All right. So the other ones were sort of weak,

00:24:26.760 but this one, I think this takes it home. All right. So here's the strong argument for why we don't want

00:24:33.600 voter ID laws, because it stands in direct opposition to our country's trend of including 0.83

00:24:40.460 more Americans in the democratic process. What? That's not a reason. Is there a reason that we,

00:24:50.300 we can't stand in direct opposition to a trend? Was that in the constitution?

00:24:56.020 Oh, hold on, people. Hold on. Oh, stop what you're doing. Stop what you're doing right now.

00:25:03.640 I feel this. Some of you are doing things. I don't know exactly what you're doing,

00:25:08.060 but I feel this. Some of you are doing things that are in opposition to a trend.

00:25:14.360 Well, that's no good. Stop it. Don't be, don't be opposing a trend.

00:25:19.640 What the, what the hell kind of reason is that? And if you think that I'm getting to the good reason

00:25:28.180 next, that was it. That was the argument. It opposes a trend. Uh, that's not a reason.

00:25:41.900 Uh, there's some implication that people have a constitutional right to vote in any way they

00:25:49.340 want with no restrictions. I don't believe that's in the constitution and it reduces the number of

00:25:57.640 participants. That's just the fact. Do you know what else reduces the number of participants?

00:26:05.480 Not letting, uh, let's say Russian citizens vote in our election. I don't think that's fair 1.00

00:26:13.380 because if you don't let Russian citizens vote in your election, aren't you reducing the

00:26:20.300 participation? So these aren't even reasons. And here's the persuasion lesson I'll put on top of

00:26:28.980 this. Do you see how easily you can be fooled into thinking that there are reasons because there

00:26:36.260 are words, but there aren't any. There are literally no reasons. I'm not saying, and I want to be careful

00:26:42.900 here. I'm not telling you that I've looked at the reasons that I disagree with them. There are

00:26:48.180 literally no reasons offered. You get that, right? They're not saying we disagree with you. Here's my

00:26:55.260 reason. They're not offering any reasons. Why is that? Well, obviously the reason is that your

00:27:02.640 Democrats want to win elections, but they can't say that out loud. So here's my question. What do you

00:27:09.640 think is a bigger problem for people who don't have identification? That they didn't get to vote

00:27:16.260 in an election in which they don't understand any of the issues? Let me make, let me make a statement

00:27:22.780 that I feel is fair to make. That the people who can't get it together to get identification

00:27:29.140 in the United States, now it does cost something. It could cost you a couple hundred dollars.

00:27:33.640 Got to get your birth certificate, etc. So poverty is a real reason not to have identification.

00:27:41.920 That's real. But I don't feel like these people are adding a lot to the process. That's what I'm

00:27:50.080 saying. And it has nothing to do with race. As soon as you think it's about race, you're in a

00:27:56.220 different conversation because I'm not in that conversation. Now, here's another reason. I don't

00:28:01.240 think it's specifically on the ACLU thing, but that there's a gigantic difference in what people

00:28:09.600 have identification or not. So did you know that 11% of U.S. citizens don't have identification?

00:28:16.900 Did you have any idea it was that high? 11% of U.S. citizens don't have any identification.

00:28:25.060 Did you know that? I didn't know that. I actually thought that the number who didn't have identification

00:28:32.800 was trivial. I thought it'd be more like 1%, 2% tops, 10%, or I'm sorry, 11%. But it's even worse

00:28:42.460 than that if you go down to the racial component here because I think black Americans are way less 0.92

00:28:50.380 likely to have identification than white Americans. So what you would end up doing... Oh, here it is.

00:28:57.280 Minority voters are disproportionately lacking ID. This is also from the ACLU site. Nationally,

00:29:04.000 up to 25% of African Americans of voting age lack government-issued photo ID. Are you kidding me?

00:29:13.560 Are you kidding me? 25% of black Americans who are a voting age don't have photo ID? Did you have

00:29:24.560 any idea that it was that high? I had no idea. Again, I would have guessed 2%. But 25%? I'm off by,

00:29:33.740 you know, 10 times? Somebody says they're called children. No, specifically they're saying

00:29:42.160 it's the number of people who are of voting age. So specifically 25% of voting age. If you throw

00:29:50.360 the children in there, it's like 50%, right? So the first thing we have to realize is we've got a real

00:29:56.340 big problem with identification. So which party is it who is saying, let's fix this problem with no

00:30:04.480 identification? Because how are these people with no identification going to function in society and, 1.00

00:30:09.820 you know, move to the next level? What the hell can you do without identification? How do you get a

00:30:16.560 reasonable job without identification? So I would say that we should have a national movement to get

00:30:25.700 everybody identified. And if it costs $200 to get identification, it should be free. Why doesn't the

00:30:33.480 government just, you know, in fact, here's something the Republicans should do. If Republicans are going to

00:30:38.980 be on the side of you have to have ID to vote, they need to put some money in it. Put some money in it

00:30:45.300 and say, look, we're going to make it free to get your birth certificate so you can go through the

00:30:50.540 process. Or we're going to take all the birth certificates and we're going to digitize them

00:30:55.880 so that you can just ask the central, the federal government for your ID and we'll just give it to

00:31:01.220 you for free. Because I assume that the reason you pay for your birth certificate is a hospital does it

00:31:07.220 or the state or the state or somebody. It must be somebody who incurs some costs to do that.

00:31:11.720 Take them away. So I would say that the Republican argument without a plan to get people IDs is

00:31:21.560 bankrupt. It's a bankrupt plan. So the Republicans, if they're not trying to fix the problem of ID,

00:31:29.540 you can't give them any credit. No credit at all. And the Democrats,

00:31:37.620 if they don't have an argument for their side, you can't give them any credit at all. So you have

00:31:42.640 two sides of this argument, neither of which are doing the minimum to serve the public in my case.

00:31:50.100 In my opinion, neither the Republican or the Democrat side is doing the minimum

00:31:55.640 problem to serve the public on this question. Because both of them should be saying, at the very

00:32:01.900 least, let's get everybody ID. Separately, we can talk about needing ID to vote, but why aren't we

00:32:10.900 solving this problem? Why do we talk about this year after year? You know, they should be free to get

00:32:16.580 identification in this country because the government requires it. Let me put it another way. If the

00:32:23.220 government is going to charge you to vote, the government is broken, right? You've got to fix

00:32:30.960 that. Why are people being charged to vote indirectly? Because you would have to pay money to get ID and

00:32:37.240 you need ID to vote. So now the other, the argument is that the current situation, if you don't have

00:32:47.920 voter ID, it would cause fewer black people to vote, it would disenfranchise more of black voters than

00:32:54.380 other kinds of voters, and therefore is racist. But here's the problem with that. It's a racist outcome.

00:33:03.720 It's not necessarily racist by intention, although clearly there are racists in the world who do have

00:33:10.240 those intentions. But everything is racist by outcome, isn't it? Can you think of any government

00:33:18.480 anything that doesn't have a racial outcome that some group gets more or less than the percentage of

00:33:26.200 them in the country? There's nothing like that. So to say that this is a problem because it gives you

00:33:32.200 an uneven racial outcome, that's not a reason. Because everything has that quality, literally

00:33:39.840 everything. There's nothing that's big that affects everybody that doesn't affect them

00:33:44.600 disproportionately, if only because of difference in economic situation. So it's not an argument,

00:33:50.780 it's just a fact that people would be disproportionately affected. And I don't agree with that. I don't think

00:33:57.740 we, you know, I would like to have more representative government, but we're not really, we're not

00:34:03.220 going at it in any kind of responsible way. The responsible way would be to get everybody some

00:34:07.720 ID for free. That would be the way to do it. All right. I saw an article in publication called

00:34:16.340 The Insider. And I don't know what to trust here. But I'm going to give you something they said,

00:34:23.380 and give me a fact check on this. It says the number of mass shootings in the U.S.

00:34:27.740 this year has already reached 103 as of March 22nd. Do you believe that? Do you believe that

00:34:37.480 there have been 103 mass shootings this year already? Now, I suppose it depends what you

00:34:46.600 call a mass shooting. I think it means if somebody opens up, you know, at a party and two people get

00:34:53.700 killed, or there's, let's say, a drive-by shooting in which two people get killed by the drive-by

00:35:00.140 shooting. I don't know how many people have to die before it's mass. Is there a definition of that?

00:35:06.140 What makes it mass? If it's two, is that mass? Is it three? Four or more, is somebody saying?

00:35:13.220 Somebody says it's greater than one. But if anybody knows what it, what that number is.

00:35:17.080 Anyway, I don't believe this at all. And in order to believe it, I'd have to see a lot more

00:35:22.700 information on it.

00:35:24.260 Here's some shocking news. This is set of Sky News. So there's a 2017 study that found that sperm

00:35:36.620 levels among men in Western countries has dropped by more than 50% over the past four decades.

00:35:43.280 And they examined 185 studies involving close to 45,000 healthy men. So remember, they're all

00:35:51.320 healthy. And somebody named Dr. Swan believes that at this rate, men will be unable to produce

00:36:00.320 viable sperm by 2045. What do you think of that? So basically, it's the end of civilization.

00:36:10.460 Now, of course, there will always be some people who can. In China, for example, we could have

00:36:17.380 Chinese babies. So we could get sperm from China in 2045, because they'll have plenty of it, 1.00

00:36:25.380 but we won't have any. And then we could just, since the women will still be fully functional, 0.97

00:36:31.940 apparently, we can just get them impregnated with some of that sperm from China. And there you go. 0.95

00:36:39.540 So there's your future. China wins. Now, the first thing is, is this study true? Do you believe

00:36:47.120 that it's true that men's sperm levels have dropped? I think so. I would think so. Because I would also

00:36:58.220 think the drop in testosterone is probably related, or at least have the same cause. Am I going too far

00:37:09.600 into the medical unknown where I should not even be talking? Nobody here should believe anything I say

00:37:15.960 about medicine or health. But I don't know. I don't know if I should worry about this or not.

00:37:25.960 Well, I won't be here, probably. I'll be, by then I will have evolved into pure software. So it's not going to be a

00:37:33.720 problem for me. Yeah, I would say observationally, this is one of the filters that you should use.

00:37:40.140 If you see a scientific study that doesn't match your observation, you should be skeptical. Now,

00:37:47.720 that doesn't mean your observations are reliable. That's why we do science. But if they don't match

00:37:52.540 in a very obvious way, you should ask some questions. But if you hear that people's, let's say,

00:37:58.780 men's testosterone level has decreased greatly in recent years, that matches observation,

00:38:05.820 doesn't it? If I had to ask you, I'm not going to show you any studies, but what do you think?

00:38:12.900 You know, just sort of look around. What do you think? Do you think the testosterone level is a

00:38:17.500 little lower? I think most people would say, yeah, it looks like it. And so the science and the

00:38:23.220 observation match. Doesn't mean it's true, but it's better than not matching. Well, there's always a new

00:38:29.780 scare when it comes to the coronavirus. And here's my favorite in the news. India has discovered 1.00

00:38:35.480 a new, quote, double mutant variety of COVID-19. That's right. No longer will we be simply dealing

00:38:47.160 with a single COVID problem. We're going to have a double special mutants. And when the double special

00:38:57.820 mutants come after you, well, you're in trouble. Now, how worried should you be about all these

00:39:05.620 double mutant monster COVID things? Well, I wouldn't be unworried. It seems like a reasonable thing to be

00:39:16.120 worried about. I would expect that most of these will be susceptible to the virus and to the

00:39:21.640 vaccinations, etc. But I will just add this to the story. The only thing I want to add to the story is

00:39:29.640 this story would have happened no matter what. So if you say to yourself, uh-oh, there's a story

00:39:39.020 about a double mutant variant, do you say to yourself that now I should worry about it? Well,

00:39:46.760 maybe. But I would submit to you that there always was going to be this story. And maybe not with the

00:39:53.760 same words, but there's a guarantee because of the nature of the press and the media that they needed

00:40:00.360 to find the extra scary thing when the scary thing was starting to diminish. So that the nature of the

00:40:07.140 press guaranteed this story would exist. But what is not guaranteed is that there's any substance to

00:40:13.040 it or that you really need to worry about it. So to make yourself feel better about these double 0.98

00:40:19.320 mutant variants, which sound pretty scary, just know that the story would have been here whether

00:40:26.840 there was any danger or not. All right. Um, and that is just about what I want to talk about.

00:40:37.200 Okay. Um, I'm going to look at your comments for a moment here.

00:40:47.900 Uh, just looking at some of your comments here. How is 1984 coming? So I told you I was going to

00:40:54.960 read the book in 1984, which amazingly I'd grown to this age without having read yet. And I bailed out.

00:41:03.380 So I'm not going to finish the book because it's unfinishable. And here's the reason why I do not

00:41:10.440 consume media. That is a bummer. That makes me feel bad. I got the, I got the sense of it. I could

00:41:19.420 read the cliff notes. I don't need to like live in the world of this guy who's suffering for an entire

00:41:26.160 book. And anybody who does that, I don't understand why you do that. Are you reading the book for

00:41:31.980 entertainment? So when it stops entertaining and it just starts hurting, like it actually just hurts

00:41:39.400 to read that book because it makes me feel bad. So why would you read a book that makes you feel bad?

00:41:47.360 Why would you watch a movie with sad things in it? It's just bad strategy. Why would you listen to

00:41:54.180 music that makes you feel bad thinking about your, your mate who cheated on you or whatever?

00:42:02.180 Just don't do it. Just stay away from all the media that is filling you with bad thoughts.

00:42:08.700 You're not going to, you're not going to miss anything because it isn't too hard to know what

00:42:13.360 1984 is about. Just read the Wikipedia page. You're done. You know, give yourself 15 seconds of pain

00:42:20.260 to learn something. You don't need four hours of pain to learn 15 seconds of useful stuff.

00:42:28.460 So stop watching crappy movies. Stop watching, reading bad books. If they don't teach you or make

00:42:34.940 you happy, skip it. Because bad news should be condensed, not expanded. The last thing I want to do is read

00:42:44.500 about somebody's fictional problems. I got plenty of problems. The world has plenty of problems.

00:42:52.400 I'm not going to read fiction with problems. That's the last thing I want. All right.

00:43:02.500 You can't take it too seriously. Yeah.

00:43:04.800 What are your best systems? Well, you can see some of my best systems in my book. I had to fail almost

00:43:17.140 everything and still win big. But diet and fitness are probably the top of the pile. If you get your

00:43:25.440 diet and fitness right, pretty much everything else is going to work out better than it would have.

00:43:30.740 your happiness, your quality of life, your ability to get jobs, your ability to just physically feel

00:43:38.820 good, your ability to attract a mate. If you get diet and fitness right, there's a whole cascade of

00:43:44.840 good things that happen after that. So those are my two most important systems. I will do a micro

00:43:49.740 lesson on both of those. They're both individual chapters in my book. Now, the difference between

00:43:56.640 a diet and a system is pretty big, right? A diet, you usually just try to, you know, eat differently

00:44:05.600 and use your willpower and stuff like that. Whereas a system is something that you do every day that

00:44:11.440 just makes it easy to lose weight or to maintain the right weight. So if you have a system, you're not

00:44:17.040 really working. The system does all the work for you. If you have a diet, you're doing all the work, which is

00:44:23.540 why it doesn't work. You know, people are not successful with diets, but you can be successful

00:44:28.300 with a system. I'll give you the, I gave you the simple example, but if you haven't heard it,

00:44:33.600 one of my, one of the systems I use for diet is I don't keep bad food in my house.

00:44:39.340 So I take advantage of my own laziness that when I'm hungry, I'm going to eat something that's already

00:44:45.180 in the house and none of it's bad. Now that's just one thing. It's not the whole system, right? You need,

00:44:51.940 you need a number of these little systems to add up to a bigger system, but it's not easy. How hard

00:44:58.720 is it to eat something that's already in the house? There's no effort. I just pick it up and eat it and

00:45:04.440 that's it. And then I've, I've participated in a diet, but I didn't do anything. I just picked up

00:45:11.100 what was in the house and ate it. That's it. Somebody says it is easy for you. You don't care about food.

00:45:20.940 That's exactly right. Yeah. The most important thing you need to know about diet is that we have

00:45:27.080 different cravings and desires for food and it will be much easier for people like me because I don't

00:45:34.280 have those cravings as much as other people. It is however true that everybody, no matter what your

00:45:39.600 level of craving is, can greatly reduce the pain of dieting by having good systems. So yeah, some people

00:45:46.840 will be better than others, but the systems work for everybody. They're universal.

00:45:53.140 Somebody says the willpower starts at the grocery store. I disagree. I disagree. The willpower starts

00:45:59.640 before you go to the grocery store because if you went there hungry, you did it wrong. That's a bad

00:46:05.880 system, right? Shopping while you're hungry is a bad system. So just don't do that.

00:46:12.920 Somebody says I have the extreme opposite. I like food so little it's a discipline to eat. I do know

00:46:22.620 people like that. I know actually several people like that who for them eating is just a chore.

00:46:28.720 They'd rather not do it at all. You can go all day without eating.

00:46:31.300 Hungry and stoned. Not a good combo. Yeah. So here's a system if you are a marijuana user.

00:46:46.680 Marijuana users know that they get the munchies and they eat a lot. So what would be a system

00:46:51.220 to reduce that? And I'll tell you my system and it works every time. Just use mouthwash immediately

00:46:59.580 after you smoke if you're smoking actual smoke. I forget which one I use. It's Colgate or

00:47:09.440 something. I think that's the one that works the best. But if you just do mouthwash immediately

00:47:14.080 after, it gets rid of your cotton mouth. It just gets rid of it. And you don't get hungry 0.99

00:47:20.060 because there's something about the mouth feeling that triggers your hunger. It doesn't seem to be

00:47:26.700 entirely a mental thing. So brush your teeth. Use mouthwash. You won't even think of eating.

00:47:35.020 It just won't even be fun. Somebody says Joe uses Listerine. I don't know if it's for the same

00:47:41.040 purpose. Paws smokers have low tea. I don't know about that. Financial literacy tips. Financial literacy

00:47:56.940 tips. Have I not done a micro lesson on personal finance? I think I did that within the locals

00:48:03.200 platforms. That's $7 a month to subscribe. And by the way, my goal with the locals stuff,

00:48:11.940 that's a platform for people who want to subscribe to my extra content. I try to make sure that if

00:48:18.700 you're paying $7 a month for my content, that you always get way more than $7 worth of useful life

00:48:27.480 benefit. So that's what I'm trying to do. It's not just going to be for some laughs. You're going to get

00:48:34.340 some practical stuff every month that when you say to yourself, was that worth $7? You'll just laugh

00:48:40.120 because you say, seven? I would have paid thousands for that, but I got it for $7. So that's what I'm

00:48:47.120 shooting for. Most people who are subscribers, and there are thousands of them now, are saying

00:48:53.940 it's worth it. They're saying it's worth it. All right. Somebody says, you've lost me, Scott. Maybe

00:48:59.680 I have. I don't know that somebody's asking about Periscope going away. My understanding is that

00:49:06.480 something's getting folded into Twitter itself. I don't know if it's going to be Periscope-like.

00:49:13.900 I don't know. So I don't know any details of that. Someday, if this isn't here, just go to YouTube

00:49:19.900 and Google me, and I'll pop right up. So you can find me on YouTube. And by the way, also on Rumble.

00:49:27.700 So every time YouTube demonetizes me, I do a commercial for Rumble on Twitter. I've only done

00:49:34.880 it once yet, but that's my new system. So if I get demonetized for reasons that I think are

00:49:41.700 unreasonable, which I think all of them are, then I'll just do a commercial for Rumble every time,

00:49:47.720 and you can find my stuff there. All right. That's all for now. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

00:49:57.100 All right, YouTubers. I usually give you a little extra. Want a little extra?

00:50:05.840 Talk about the sim. I think I talk about that too much. How should we develop people's financial

00:50:13.060 literacy? Well, some of you know, some years ago, I created a, I think it was nine points,

00:50:20.120 just nine bullet points of what you needed for personal finance. And those nine bullet points

00:50:25.540 are the whole show. Because every one of those bullet points, you could kind of easily just Google

00:50:31.920 to find out more about it. You just need to know what the order is and what the priority is.

00:50:37.300 So for example, among the nine tips, I would tell people to, if they have extra money beyond their

00:50:44.920 expenses, to open an account at, say, Charles Schwab or a discount broker. Now, if I don't

00:50:51.800 give the details about how to open an account at Charles Schwab or a discount broker, you can just

00:50:57.960 Google it. So just knowing that you should do that, it's kind of all you need. Because you just

00:51:03.840 Google it, it very easily will tell you how to sign up. Likewise, if I tell you how to,

00:51:09.700 that you should have a, let's say I tell you, you should have a 401k. And you don't know what that

00:51:15.840 is. Just Google it. And you'll say, oh, it's one of these, something from my employer. Ask your

00:51:23.560 employer if they have one of those, you probably already know. But you could ask them, they say,

00:51:27.780 no, we don't have that. Or yes, we do. Here's how to sign up. So it's very easy to have financial

00:51:32.880 literacy. You need about nine bullet points and you're done. Because the way I organize them is

00:51:39.940 you do them in order. So you wouldn't have to work on all nine. You work on the top one. The top one

00:51:46.260 says, pay off your credit card. What else do you need to know? That's it. Pay off your credit card.

00:51:54.240 Don't buy stocks until you pay off your credit card. Don't do anything financially until you pay off

00:52:01.340 your credit card. And it's really easy because that's your highest interest rate. You couldn't

00:52:05.300 possibly make that much money in the stock market reliably. You could, but not reliably.

00:52:11.640 So somebody's saying, where is it? Google my name and personal finance list or something.

00:52:23.260 It should pop up. It's all over the internet. It's in a number of my books as well.

00:52:31.340 Oh, I see somebody's listing the list in the comments here. So believe it or not, it's actually

00:52:39.580 easy to teach people personal finance. It's literally one page and they just have to, you know, tack it to

00:52:45.720 their wall and work on the top one and just work their way down. Very easy. None of it is complicated

00:52:52.000 in the least. Did I check out Decentraland yet? I did not. I figure I can tell from the name of it

00:53:04.160 what that's all about, but maybe I'll look into that. Are the WEN tokens any good anymore? They're

00:53:09.900 still trading. Their value is low because the underlying company doesn't exist, but they live

00:53:15.780 forever. They can't go away because they're part of the blockchain. And there is a new app under

00:53:21.340 development that would use them as its token. So anything that creates a demand for that token

00:53:27.380 can increase its value. So in fact, anybody out there who wants to start an app and just use a

00:53:33.520 token that already exists could do that. Struggling to understand financial jargon? Question mark. Yeah,

00:53:43.760 that's a good point. But everything that's financial jargon is easy to Google, right? When you come into

00:53:52.980 the word, just look it up. Next word, just look it up. You'll get there pretty quickly. There's really

00:53:58.500 not a lot of complexity to it. The reason that finance seems so complicated is that the number of

00:54:05.460 things you could know is gigantic. The things you could know is just huge. The things you need to

00:54:12.820 know to have 100% of everything you need to know is just like this pinpoint of all the things you

00:54:19.760 need to know. Because if you understand diversity, or I'm sorry, diversification, if you understand how

00:54:27.140 to diversify your portfolio, and you know how to open a Charles Schwab account, and you know that you

00:54:34.300 want to pay off your debts that are higher interest rates first, you're almost completely done. You're

00:54:40.900 almost done. I mean, that's, that got you to 90% of everything you need to know. And it took me three

00:54:47.500 sentences. Sunk costs is a good thing to know about. Yeah, there are a lot of psychological, let's say

00:54:59.460 obstacles to being a good investor that you should learn about as well. But if you get an index fund,

00:55:05.520 you don't have to worry about that either. Do I own guns? There's a question I would never answer.

00:55:13.320 Would you answer that question? If somebody asked you in public if you own guns, would you answer that

00:55:20.140 question? You shouldn't. Never answer that question. That would be the worst question you could ever answer.

00:55:26.160 answer. Here's my answer. I'm very pro Second Amendment. So if you want to mess with my house,

00:55:34.580 that's all you know. Right? The rest you're going to have to guess. I'm pro Second Amendment. And if

00:55:42.820 you're in my house, and you mean no good, I could kill you in a heartbeat. I mean, just I'm just telling 1.00

00:55:49.600 you my mindset. If you came in my house to do harm to me in any in any sense, I could kill you in 1.00

00:55:56.140 a heartbeat. I wouldn't hesitate for a second. And I'm pro Second Amendment. So do you want to know 1.00

00:56:02.520 if I own a gun? You don't get that information. So with your hands. I could easily kill somebody with

00:56:13.700 my bare hands. If I had to, right? If I didn't have a reason. Of course not. 1.00

00:56:25.040 Let's talk about NFTs. I'm seeing a lot of questions there. So you all know what NFTs are.

00:56:29.900 They're a it's a digital art that because it's attached to the blockchain, you can you can show

00:56:37.580 that you have an original or one of the originals. So that creates value and allows people to trade

00:56:43.920 them. And it's like it's like any other art that can go up in value. But the the Dilbert NFT is it's

00:56:51.300 already created, but it hasn't been published yet for you to buy. We're working on some technical

00:56:57.360 stuff behind the scenes because it turns out when you actually get ready to publish your NFT,

00:57:02.200 either a whole bunch of technical decisions and technical things you need to set up. One of them

00:57:07.900 is to allow you to buy it with US dollars, as opposed to having to have, let's say, a Bitcoin

00:57:15.020 to even buy the NFT. So part of the reason it's taken me a few weeks is we we just got things set up

00:57:23.340 so that you'll be able to buy it with just regular money. You don't have to have crypto to do it.

00:57:29.560 Do I own a gun safe? I'm not going to tell you if I own a gun safe, if I'm not going to tell you

00:57:36.800 if I own guns. Do I own swords? All right, that's all for now. And I will talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 25, 2021

Episode 1324 Scott Adams： Voter ID Law Arguments Dissected, Biden Press Conference Reviews in Advance, and More Fun

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