Episode 1324 Scott Adams： Voter ID Law Arguments Dissected, Biden Press Conference Reviews in Advance, and More Fun
Episode Stats
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Summary
When you get famous, you can get a mascot. But what happens when you don t have a mascot? What about when you do have one? Alex thinks of a way to make a mascot out of something that s already a problem, and reframes it from a problem to a problem.
Transcript
00:00:08.860
I know you're scrambling to get your beverage ready.
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You should have been up a little bit earlier. Now you know, don't you?
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Well, there are a lot of things that could go wrong today.
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once you've had the simultaneous sip. Oh yeah, the problems will still be
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there, but you won't care about them nearly as much. In fact,
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Do you have problems, or do you have insufficient
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coffee? Yeah, you see where I'm heading with this, right?
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I don't think you have problems. I think you have insufficient
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coffee. And we're going to fix that right now, although you don't need coffee.
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Could be anything. But you need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tango, a chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug,
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a glass, a vessel of any kind, filled with a fairy of liquid. I like coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes
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everything better. Except the elections, for some reason. It's called the simultaneous sip,
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Ah, just as good as I was hoping. Maybe better.
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Well, have you seen my mascot on Twitter? A lot of you are not famous,
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famous, but when you get famous, you can get a mascot. Now, he doesn't think he's a mascot,
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but I don't think that's up to him. He thinks he's my critic, who spends all of his days researching
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old tweets I've made to put them into the comment section of anything I tweet to criticize me. Now,
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of course, everything's out of context, and his criticisms are nonsensible. But rather than
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blocking him, which would be too easy, because he seems to have dedicated a good part of his day,
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every day, to just trying to say bad things about me on my Twitter feed. So I decided to reframe him
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as my mascot. Because mascots are silly, and you don't really care what they do. They just draw
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attention to you. So he's my mascot from now on. And I refer to him as my mascot, and he tried to
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respond to that with a clever rejoinder. Now, here's the problem. I'm a professional humorist.
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He's a guy who spends most of his day criticizing a stranger. He can't really compete in this reframing
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stuff. But he tried. And he's a very entertaining mascot. Now, I've used this reframe before, and it's
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one that you can use. I've told you this before. Back when I owned a restaurant, one of the employees
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decided to do a protest. So he staged his own protest every day with a little sign just by himself in
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front of the restaurant. And day after day, he'd be there. And my manager at the time said, you know,
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what do we do about this? And I said, do about it. Why would you want to fix anything? Not everybody
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gets a mascot. And so we redefined the protester as a mascot. And as soon as we did, it just was fun.
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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.
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Took a break. So you can reframe things from problems to mascots. And watch how it stops
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bothering you. Twitter user Roly Poly had a good suggestion for your job, right? If you have a
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boss, here's a good suggestion. You can employ this. And he says in a tweet, he goes, anytime you need to
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admit a mistake to a boss or a client, bring up this Suez Canal ship disaster. Talk to them about it
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for two to four minutes. Get them thinking about how many billions of dollars one person's mistake
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costs. Then tell them about your mistake. It'll look smaller. Completely. It's just completely true.
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Now it's funny, but it's completely true. That would literally work. So Roly Poly has been paying
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attention. So Joe Biden put Kamala Harris in charge of the migrant crisis. So now she has a portfolio.
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What do you make of that? Is it because the migrant crisis is a big problem? So you need to put,
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you know, your highest firepower on that job. Is that why? Maybe. Somebody suggested it's so that he
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won't, that Biden won't have to answer questions about immigration. He'll just refer the questions to
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Harris. Maybe. Maybe a little bit. That's certainly a benefit, side benefit. But I have a hypothesis that he
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hates her. Because can you think of anything that would be a worse job than to be a Democrat and an
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ex-prosecutor and being put in charge of immigration? I literally can't think of a worse penalty
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because she's been so nice to him. I mean, other than calling him a giant racist during the primaries.
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If you don't count that, she's been really nice to him. And he rewards her by giving her the one job
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she can't possibly succeed at. It's like an impossible to succeed situation because the
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Democrat philosophy makes it impossible to do anything practical. So I feel like Joe Biden hates
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Kabbalah Harris. And he's just, you know, he's showing us in a very, very beta way. All right.
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Or it could be just the vice presidents get portfolios. And that was hers. That's the other
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possibility. When Biden was asked about the press conference that he will be having today,
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we're all waiting for that. That'll be interesting. I'll be watching that.
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And Biden, when, when he was asked if he was preparing for the press conference,
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Biden said, what? And then the question was repeated. And he said, what press conference?
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Now, my interpretation of this is that he was joking. Because it is very much like the dad jokes he
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likes to do. You know, he just, when the, what is it, when Peter Doocy would ask him, you know,
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who are you going to appoint to do whatever? He likes to quip, you, I'm going to appoint you.
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It's just sort of his dad joke, brushing something aside. So I'm pretty sure he was joking
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about saying what press conference, given that it was such a big story and everything,
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it was funny. Well, or he thought it was funny. But here's my professional humorist advice
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on self-deprecating humor. Now, self-deprecating humor is not something that everybody should try.
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There's a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it. A good self-deprecating humor would be,
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oh, I have to do whatever my spouse tells me to do. Or my secretary is really the one who's in
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charge. Or, well, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so dumb. But you don't really take those
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as being too serious, right? The person doing the self-deprecating humor is clearly not really
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insulting themselves. They're so much in power that they can insult themselves without really any risk.
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But here's what you don't want to do if you've got some accusations or suspicions that you might
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have dementia. You don't want to play a joke where it looks like you have dementia.
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I'm just saying, in the world of self-deprecating humor, don't do the one that actually looks true,
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right? You want to do the self-deprecating on the things that people think is not true. So,
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for example, if they think you're very smart and capable, and they're not going to change their
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mind about that, because you have a whole history of being smart and capable, you can do a little
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self-deprecating humor about the time you messed up. But if they think you have dementia,
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you don't want to do self-deprecating humor about maybe you do, because that makes you look like
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you have dementia, because it's not very smart. All right. So what's going to happen at this Biden
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press conference? How do you think it's going to go? What's your prediction? Do you think he will
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gaff out? Do you think he'll make such a mistake that it'll be a giant disaster? What do you think?
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My prediction is he'll do fine. He'll do fine. Because I think the press will be very kind to
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him. I think they'll ask softball questions. The few people who don't, let's say the Fox News people,
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he'll brush them aside and joke about them and say the canned thing that's written down in front of
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him, whatever. Yeah, he'll do fine. I think he'll get through it. It would be surprising if he didn't.
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It won't be great. But don't you wonder how the press will treat it? Well, wonder no more. Because
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even though it hasn't happened, I'm going to read you some of the reviews of his press conference
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before they even happen. You ready? Let me find here. So I asked people to write glowing reviews of
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Biden's performance today before it even happens. Because you know, you could write them before they
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happen. All right. Let's see what some of the... My priming joke was that CNN will report after his
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press conference, orange man bad, but dementia man good. World rejoices. Let's see what other people
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said. Christopher Hill says, in review of President Biden's first presser, join us as we discuss what
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Donald Trump was doing while it was televised. So nice to have President who, that doesn't lie,
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Biden returns civility to press conference. Doesn't shy away from the tough questions.
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President's favorite food is, yeah, it's going to be that kind of stuff.
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Let's see some more. In a refreshing change of pace. This is Matt Fitzgerald. In a refreshing change
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pace from the previous administration, Biden's press conference was a free-flowing exchange of ideas
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based in confident, mature leadership. I came, and perhaps we all did, at least just a little bit.
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I should have read that to myself before I read it to you.
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Country unites around president as he fixes everything. Not the mean spirit answers we've
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been accustomed to from the previous administration. He showed an empathy we haven't seen in four years.
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He really cares. So anyway, that was fun. You should read the rest of them on my Twitter feed.
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Somebody asked on Twitter today, and I wondered the same thing.
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How long before you can get banned from social media for saying that Biden has dementia?
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It's coming, isn't it? I feel like that's coming.
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Although this seems a little bit more like an opinion, so maybe it'll last longer.
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Now, my defense, I've prepared my defense in advance, is that no reasonable person would
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believe anything I say. I think that's a pretty good defense. So no reasonable person would
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believe anything I say, so I'm safe. According to Rasmussen, Rasmussen polls, Biden's handling of
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the COVID-19 situation wins a majority approval. I'm starting to think that averages don't make
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any sense in 2021, if you're looking at political polling. Because if you dig down a little bit,
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it says 30% of conservatives think Biden is doing a good job on COVID, but 88% of liberals.
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Does it make sense to average them? I mean, I guess it does, to find out if you're over 50%.
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It's useful. But I feel like the concept of an average for the country doesn't make any sense.
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Because it's just two different groups. It's like averaging an orange and an apple.
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Well, the average of an orange and an apple is a, I don't know, what? It's a nothing. There's nothing
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that's the average of an orange and an apple. So I guess we still have to know what's more than 50%
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for lots of reasons. All right. So there's more. I feel as if every week is a new Governor Cuomo scandal.
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And you think they're going to be done. But no, there's another one. Turns out that maybe
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the governor's, Governor of New York's brother, Chris Cuomo of CNN, may have had some special access
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access to testing and stuff when he had his coronavirus infection. Now, how much do you care
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about that? Do you care too much that the governor's family gets a little extra resources during the
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pandemic? I get the point. You know, the point is crystal clear that, you know, people shouldn't
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be jumping to the front of the line. But I got to tell you, of all the things I could be bothered
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about in the entire world, I don't really care about a politician taking care of their family.
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Do you? Is that the thing you're going to bother, worry about? Now, if it had been a lobbyist,
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I think I'd care a little bit more if a lobbyist did it. But are we really going to get down on people
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for taking care of their family? Really? I get it. I get it. He shouldn't have gone to the front
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of the line, slapping the hand. But I feel as if you could even make an argument for it, that the,
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you know, the reason we have security for our leaders, but you don't get security, the reason that they
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get a private plane if they're leaders, but you don't get a private plane, right? So we do say that our
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leaders should have some special, I wouldn't say rights, but special treatment, because their
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influence, you know, is leveraged, you know, on all of us. So you want to make sure that the leaders
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are the most effective they can be in a way that doesn't apply to the rest of us. And I think if a
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leader has some problem in the family, and he's got a brother that's maybe in his ear, that making that
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problem go away is worth something. Hey, hey, I'm your brother, give me some testing. I'm trying
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to run the state here, but I'm your brother, give me some testing. Seriously, I'm trying to run a
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state, but I'm your brother, give me some testing. All right, just give him some testing. Just give
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him some testing. We'll be done with this. Now I'm going to go run the state. Honestly, I don't care
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about this at all. I realize it's part of the bigger story, but I wouldn't care if Trump did it,
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I wouldn't care if a Democrat did it. Let him take care of their family. I'm okay with that.
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But I get the argument against it. It's not mysterious. Let's talk about voter ID laws.
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You ready? All right, here's the meaty part of my show today. All right. So something like half of
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the country is against voter ID laws. I don't know what the exact percentage is, but it's usually half
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when we're talking about politics. But what's the argument? And I keep waiting to hear the argument
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in favor of not requiring ID to vote. And I assumed that there was an argument, but I just wasn't aware
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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
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the country thinks that the republic would be better off if the people without IDs do get to vote.
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What's the argument for that? Have you ever heard it? Is the argument... Now, it seems to me that the
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argument for having no voter IDs either has to be something that's good for the republic, you know,
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good for the country, or it's good for the individuals who are doing the voting. Ideally,
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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
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two groups, or else why are we talking about it, right? So is it good for the republic, let's say,
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would better decisions be made if we threw into the mix the population that does not have
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identification? Is there anybody arguing that it would be? That we would pick a more qualified
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leader, or that we would have better decisions or policies if the people who can't get identification,
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or don't have it for whatever reason, vote? If you throw them in the mix, do you get better decisions?
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Because I've never heard anybody argue that, and it seems counterintuitive, right? So if it's not that,
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what's the point? If you're not getting better decisions, what's the point? Well, here's another
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possibility. The other possibility is you don't want to disenfranchise American citizens. You don't
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want people to feel that they're not part of the system, because then they won't, you know, be
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cooperative and beneficial and, you know, buying into the whole process. And I think we would all agree
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that if citizens buy into the system, whether it's jury duty or voting or anything with the
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constitution, the more you can get people to participate and buy in, that's better. Do we all
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agree? The more participation, the better. But here's the thing. Do these people who don't have
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identification? Is voting in their top 100 priorities? If you went to them, and you didn't
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tell them that the topic was voting, you just say, look, I'm a researcher, and I want to ask this
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question. Write me a list of all the things you care about. Your top priorities, from top to bottom,
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I want to see a list and make 100 of them. You know, it might take you all day, but I want 100
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priorities for you. And they probably start out with, you know, health and money and, you know,
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freedom from crime and get my kid an education and, you know, and, you know, not have racism in my life
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and no gun violence, maybe, whatever. And after you got through the top 100, how low would you have
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to be? Now, remember, these are unprompted. These are people you just say, tell me your problems.
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Don't answer a question about voting. Just tell me your problems. Where would this be?
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It would not be in the top 100, would it? Because it seems to me that the people who don't have ID,
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certainly their poverty is, you know, maybe the, almost certainly the top reason for that.
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But I don't think they care. Do they? Is there, or let me put it this way. Rather than reading their
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minds, let me say this. Is there any evidence that they care? Because I've never seen any. So if it's
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not, if voting without ID is not beneficial to the Republic, there's no argument that gives you
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better decisions. And it's not necessarily good for the people who don't have IDs because they don't
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probably care. And I haven't, or I haven't seen the evidence that they do. You know, if somebody did
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a survey of it, that would be different, I suppose. Now, so what's the point of it? So somebody pointed
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me to an ACLU argument. So now we don't have to wonder, right? So I was just guessing what's the point
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of it. But now we're going to read the ACLU's argument, why we should not have voter ID laws.
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You ready? Now the ACLU argues in public. So you got lawyers involved, right? Expert arguers,
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people who are good at making their points. So if the ACLU can't give me a good argument for this,
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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?
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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?
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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
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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
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
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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
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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
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,
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
00:35:24.260
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,
00:36:25.380
but we won't have any. And then we could just, since the women will still be fully functional,
00:36:31.940
apparently, we can just get them impregnated with some of that sperm from China. And there you go.
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
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
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.
00:43:04.800
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
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
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
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
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.
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.