Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1326 Scott Adams： Georgia Voting Laws, North Korea Persuasion, China Persuasion, Cults, Vitamin D

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. Just in time. I like that some of you are so punctual. You know, punctuality

00:00:09.280 is a sign of character. And how many of you were taught by one of your parents, or maybe

00:00:17.640 both, that on time is late? How many of you were taught that if you can't show up on time,

00:00:27.520 you can't do anything. You better show up on time. That was drilled into me. We had a tradition

00:00:35.900 that my family, my mother said, you have to be home at five o'clock to eat dinner every

00:00:41.520 night. No exceptions. So wherever you were, you know, if you didn't have a cell phone or

00:00:46.020 whatever, no excuses. You had to find your way back to the house at five o'clock every

00:00:51.240 night, seven days a week, no exceptions. It was a great rule. Doesn't work in 2021, though.

00:00:57.880 Well, if you'd like to enjoy this program to its maximum potential, and I know you do,

00:01:02.700 all you need is a cup of mugging glass, a tank of chalice, a canteen jug of glass, a vessel

00:01:06.220 of any kind, filled with favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now, if you will,

00:01:12.640 for the dopamine hit of the day, the unparalleled pleasure. It's called the simultaneous sip,

00:01:17.360 and I don't think anything's ever been better. It's going to make your whole day. Are you

00:01:22.900 ready for this? This is going to be one of the best. One of the best. Here it comes. Go.

00:01:27.520 Ah. Did you hear the millions of coffee cups and vessels being, quenching people's thirst

00:01:40.520 at the same time all around the world? Well, no, because there weren't millions of them,

00:01:45.000 but someday there will be. Someday. We have mere hundreds of thousands today.

00:01:53.920 Well, Georgia passed some new voting rules, including a requirement for ID, even for voting

00:02:02.940 by mail. And of course, Democrats are calling this a Jim Crow law, which works really well, 1.00

00:02:09.660 because most people don't know anything about history, and they say to themselves,

00:02:13.360 I've heard that phrase, Jim Crow. Pretty sure it's bad. Oh, this is one of those? Well, that must be bad.

00:02:21.740 But if you actually knew your history, you would not see a lot in common with Jim Crow laws,

00:02:28.580 which were pretty aggressive and racist, and people who just want ID for voting. Now, here's the question.

00:02:41.440 Watch the dog that wasn't barking. You ready? One of the things I like to do when I talk about the news,

00:02:49.320 because nobody else does this, is to tell you what you didn't hear that's important. So the story is

00:02:56.860 sort of incomplete, wouldn't you say, if this piece of information is missing. And it goes like this.

00:03:06.960 There's an assumption here that your poor, uneducated people, the ones who would have the most difficulty

00:03:13.240 getting identification, because it actually costs something to get identification. You've got to get

00:03:18.320 your birth certificate that might be like $175. You've got to travel somewhere. You've got to maybe

00:03:23.980 take a day off of work, whatever, if you're working. But the assumption is that if these people

00:03:32.180 voted, instead of being shut out from the system, they'd be better off. Isn't that kind of a big

00:03:41.180 assumption? That if these people who don't have identification voted, that they themselves would be

00:03:50.340 better off? Do you believe that? Because I think I'd like to see some evidence of that. Isn't the entire

00:04:00.380 reason that the United States is not a democratic system? You know, we're, we're, we have a democratic

00:04:08.140 elements within a republic. Isn't the whole point of a republic that giving the, the masses full

00:04:16.080 control and let, let the, you know, majority just win every time? Well, there are more of you, so you

00:04:22.200 win. Wasn't that the whole point that the, that the masses can't be trusted? You want the smarter

00:04:30.080 people who actually care about them to be the ones making the decisions? So there is that concept.

00:04:37.940 And so I would say we should at least test the assumption that even if all these extra people got

00:04:43.980 to vote, let's say we helped them get IDs or whatever it took, that they would be happier, that they would

00:04:50.680 get what they wanted. Do you think that's true? Do you think if you let uneducated people,

00:04:57.260 because by and large, these are the least educated part of the population? Now you don't have to be

00:05:04.580 uneducated to be poor, but you know, on average, that's where it's, that's where it's going.

00:05:10.700 So I don't know. I think there's some basic assumptions in here that need to be challenged.

00:05:17.720 We, we like the concept that, you know, everybody gets to vote. There's nobody who's against that.

00:05:23.920 But shouldn't we at least challenge whether there's any purpose of it? What do we get out of it?

00:05:31.560 Yeah, we want everybody to vote. Everybody agrees on that. And why, why do we want everybody to vote?

00:05:40.360 To get a better outcome, right? Or at least get an outcome that the public says is credible,

00:05:47.180 because the right people voted and everybody could did. So I think we should test our assumptions about

00:05:53.840 why we care about anybody voting. You know, why can't children vote? Is there a reason that we don't

00:05:59.640 let children, you know, let's say toddlers, is there a reason we don't let them vote? And what is it?

00:06:07.000 What is that reason? Can you think of any reason that school children should not vote? What would be the

00:06:15.840 thinking? Well, I believe the thinking is that they're not, they're not as capable, right? Is there

00:06:22.140 any other reason that you can think of? Why would we deny the vote to an 11 year old? Now, I'm in favor of 0.94

00:06:31.960 denying the vote to an 11 year old. But I'm asking you, what's the reason? Isn't the reason that we

00:06:38.280 think the quality of the decisions would not be helped by letting 11 year olds vote? Right? 0.98

00:06:47.940 And don't we believe that the 11 year old, here's the key point, right? So here's the key point.

00:06:53.880 Don't we believe that if the 11 year old were allowed to pursue, you know, their own interests,

00:07:02.580 that they wouldn't do it right? Isn't that the assumption? Because otherwise, we'd let them

00:07:08.160 vote. We'd say, oh, you know what's good for you. And we want what's good for you, too. So go ahead and

00:07:13.440 vote. And you'll have a greater chance of getting what's good for you. Nobody thinks that. Because

00:07:19.480 you know, an 11 year old isn't good. And knowing what's good for them, they're not going to understand

00:07:24.360 the topics. They would be easily misled. Let me ask you this. Are people who are, let's say,

00:07:31.800 11 year old kids, or, and this is, I realize this is offensive, but I'm going to do it anyway,

00:07:37.460 I'm going to lump the uneducated adult population in and say, are they better off? Could you make the

00:07:45.840 case that making sure more of that group voted, and again, this has nothing to do with race.

00:07:52.420 I'm going to talk about race in a moment. But for now, we're just talking about people

00:07:56.440 who are uneducated and poor. And there are lots of them of all types. Do we get a better 1.00

00:08:02.020 result? Because people who are the most easily duped got to vote. And I don't think you would

00:08:12.440 doubt that, would you? Well, no, that's not true. Maybe senior citizens are as easily duped, 0.81

00:08:17.600 and they do vote. So that's, I guess that's a problem, too. All right. So I think we should

00:08:26.180 at least test the theory that the republic form of government is better than the other

00:08:31.340 kind. Because letting everybody vote, even if they weren't really that interested and not

00:08:37.220 that informed, it's not really the republic model as much as it is a straight democracy

00:08:42.660 model. And we should decide which one we like better. Let me ask you this. Do you think that

00:08:50.200 poor, and I guess the poor part is irrelevant to the question, but let's say undereducated

00:08:55.780 people. Do you think undereducated people should make their own legal and medical decisions?

00:09:03.940 Now, of course they can. That's their right. And there's some advantages to that, right?

00:09:09.300 Okay. But do you think that the uneducated person who goes into their doctor, and the doctor says,

00:09:16.740 well, you've got a bad case of X, and here are the pills that will take care of it. Two weeks,

00:09:22.280 you'll be all set. Definitely you have X. Definitely these pills are going to make you better. Here you

00:09:27.460 go. Should the poor person just say, you know, I don't know medicine. I think I'll just take your

00:09:33.060 advice. Would they be better off with that? Because the doctor doesn't necessarily have your

00:09:39.220 best interests in mind, right? It's still sort of up to you to make your decisions. That's the way

00:09:44.240 the system works. But I think a uneducated person who is uneducated about, let's say, medical science

00:09:51.740 might want to just take the advice of the person who has their interests in mind, at least enough of

00:09:58.020 their interests in mind. How about should an uneducated person make their own complicated legal

00:10:05.780 decisions? Why not? Why not? Just because they don't know how. Why would that stop them? It's

00:10:12.980 their right. And the answer is, no, they shouldn't. They should wait for a real lawyer to give them

00:10:19.160 some advice. And then they might make some decisions about whether they want to take the advice. But you

00:10:24.560 want somebody smart to help you with the hard stuff, right? That's why we have a republic, to send the

00:10:31.320 smart people up to do the things that we're not going to get into the details on ourselves.

00:10:37.580 All right. That's enough on that.

00:10:43.580 Then let's talk about the racial part. Here's the part that's missing that I wonder why it is.

00:10:50.260 So the assumption here is that the Georgia voting rules will disenfranchise and or reduce the,

00:10:55.740 at least the percentage of black voters. And that could change the entire outcome of the election.

00:11:02.420 So it's important. And I ask you this, do we win or lose elections based on the percentage

00:11:12.540 of a racial group that voted for you? Is that how our system works? Oh, you got elected because you got 0.85

00:11:19.860 you got the greatest percentage of a specific racial group. Like that's not the system. The system is

00:11:26.400 just the greatest number, right? Whoever gets the most votes. It's not a percentage. It's whoever gets

00:11:34.180 the most. We just compare two sets of votes. Which one's bigger? That's the whole system.

00:11:40.340 But we're talking about like percentages of this group and percentages that we should check ourselves

00:11:45.820 every once in a while. And here's a question I haven't seen answered. Are there more poor white 0.96

00:11:52.860 people who don't have IDs or poor black people? Now, as a percentage, it's not even close.

00:12:02.440 Percentage wise, I think it was like 25% of black American citizens don't have regular ID. Now,

00:12:10.060 I don't believe that's true, but it is a statistic I saw. I have trouble believing it's 25%.

00:12:15.100 I can't believe it's even close to that. Actually, if I had to guess, but put it closer to 10 or 15,

00:12:21.640 just, it just feels like it couldn't possibly be 25. But again, uh, if you're, if you're not close

00:12:29.200 to that population, maybe you just don't see it. It could be just invisible to people like me.

00:12:34.480 So here's the question. Why are we talking about the percentage of black people that aren't voting?

00:12:41.040 Shouldn't we talk about the number of people who are not voting, no matter what they are?

00:12:49.300 Does that, is that really the important part? The, you know, the percentage of a racial group?

00:12:56.120 Now I get, I get the point, right? You'd want every group to be represented, but we don't have a

00:13:01.980 constitution that requires that. Where in the constitution does it say that among ethnic groups

00:13:08.040 there should be similar rates of voting? The reason it's not part of the constitution is it

00:13:13.440 wouldn't be a good idea. Even if you could do it easily, I just don't know that that would be a good

00:13:20.600 idea. Maybe the people who vote should be the ones who care and are well-informed and as well as they can

00:13:27.900 be. Um, here's, here's an interesting comment. All right. So Andrew, uh, on YouTube, he has this

00:13:36.320 comment. He says, I'm a black immigrant and know plenty of poor black people. And he says,

00:13:42.280 I've never met anyone who doesn't have an ID. So there's a, you know, a black adult immigrant in

00:13:50.580 the United States who knows lots of poor black people doesn't know anybody who doesn't have an

00:13:55.760 ID. Have you ever met anybody who doesn't have an ID? Now, part of the problem is maybe you just

00:14:01.620 don't meet the people who don't have IDs. Like the people who don't have IDs probably meet each other 0.99

00:14:07.540 and the people who do have IDs probably meet each other. But I can't tell you the last time I had a

00:14:13.980 conversation with somebody who even might not have an ID, you know, somebody whose situation is so,

00:14:21.020 so bad in society that you could reasonably think, I'm not even sure this person has an ID.

00:14:27.700 When was the last time you had a conversation with anybody like that? Right? Probably not.

00:14:35.040 Um, and so I'm not sure that just cause you haven't met any that that's telling you much. However,

00:14:42.260 to the point that there was a stat that said that something like 25% of black Americans don't have

00:14:48.000 ID that couldn't possibly be true. Could it? Could it? I mean, I'd really like to know if it's true

00:14:55.220 because if it's that high, that does change my opinion on the whole topic, right? It's one thing

00:15:01.940 to say, um, which I am saying, I don't think there's a constitutional reason that percentages of

00:15:08.120 voting need to be equal. It's just not in the constitution. But at the same time, if 25% of

00:15:15.760 black Americans can't vote because they don't have IDs, that's way too big. That's so big, 1.00

00:15:21.180 you got to do something about it, right? Like if it were a small problem, you'd just say, ah,

00:15:25.640 you know, but a big problem if it's true. So I guess we don't have the fact check on that in a way that I

00:15:32.140 believe it. But what I would like to see in the number that's missing is the number of white people, 0.51

00:15:39.940 just the number, the raw number, compared to the raw number of black Americans who don't have ID

00:15:47.600 and therefore can't vote. Which one is bigger? Which number is bigger? Because I don't believe

00:15:54.160 the 25% number. But do you think there are more raw numbers of white people who are poor and can't

00:16:01.900 vote because of ID or more, um, somebody says, you're a racist. You don't understand. So somebody's

00:16:11.040 calling me a racist in the comments, a typical thing. First of all, you may have missed the story

00:16:15.460 that I self-identify as black now. I am allowed to do that. And I take that right as my own. So first

00:16:21.640 of all, I can't be racist because I self-identify as black. So that's the first thing. Second thing

00:16:26.880 is, uh, I'm not only not racist, I'm pro-black, super pro-black. In fact, I've spent quite a bit

00:16:36.140 of time and my own money trying to make the world better for specifically for black people. And you've

00:16:42.580 seen me do it. I've done quite a bit of work even in public. Now, um, so, so first of all,

00:16:52.020 it's not possible, right? So by definition, you can't be a racist in this country if you're black.

00:16:57.580 And that's one of the reasons that I self-identify as black so that I don't have that problem.

00:17:01.300 And some of you are, I know what some of you are saying right now. Some of you are saying,

00:17:08.640 I think this is a gag, right? You're not really self-identifying as black, are you? That's just a 1.00

00:17:14.320 joke, right? Nope. Nope. It's not a joke. I'm literally self-identifying as black. I do have black

00:17:21.520 DNA. So I don't know how much you need, but the rules say that you can self-identify.

00:17:27.240 I don't make the rules. I'm just, and I've told you before, one of the most persuasive things you

00:17:33.840 can do is follow the rules exactly as they're written. I am following the rules exactly as

00:17:40.460 they're written. Exactly. And if that changes the rules, well, maybe the rules weren't good.

00:17:49.080 But don't blame me for following the rules. I'm going to follow them sincerely. If that makes

00:17:55.320 anything bad for you, well, you'll have to deal with that. Let's talk about North Korea, 0.67

00:18:01.940 bad persuasion. So here is the position of the Biden administration, and they're not the first

00:18:07.340 ones to have this position, but think about how stupid this is. These are actually elected politicians

00:18:15.800 politicians who are, theoretically, they're capable of doing stuff like this. And here's the American

00:18:24.380 position, that before we are willing to negotiate with North Korea, their leader has to agree in

00:18:31.840 advance to a humiliating defeat in the negotiations. In advance. We won't negotiate to you until you agree

00:18:41.060 to lose the negotiations. In this context, it means agree in advance to give up nuclear weapons.

00:18:49.360 Now, is that a reasonable thing to ask? Is that a reasonable position? Because who is it that wants

00:18:57.700 to nuke you in the first place? I'll tell you who wants to nuke us. People who insist that they lose

00:19:05.600 before we're willing to fucking talk to them. Yeah, they should nuke us, maybe, because we're acting

00:19:12.700 like we deserve to get nuked. If anybody ever deserved to get nuked, it would be a country that

00:19:19.140 says, yeah, we'll only talk to you if you agree to a humiliating defeat before the first word is spoken.

00:19:24.900 That's not smart. What did Trump do instead? Trump said, if you make a move in our direction,

00:19:38.780 we will wipe you out. But we'd love to talk. How'd you like to get together? Compare those two.

00:19:47.180 They are not even close in terms of the right approach persuasion-wise. One of them is obviously

00:19:57.620 the dumbest fucking thing you've ever seen in your life. We'd love to negotiate with you because it's

00:20:02.440 very important to both of us. And if we don't negotiate with you, there could be a nuclear war.

00:20:07.640 That's how important it is to negotiate with you. Now, having established that it's of vital

00:20:13.260 planetary importance, here's how we're going to approach it. We're not even going to talk to you

00:20:19.260 until you agree to lose. And not only lose, you have to lose the most important thing in a visible,

00:20:26.880 very high visible, humiliating way. So that's our opening position. Are you serious? Can we get any

00:20:37.320 dumber? How could that possibly work? Now, I heard a hypothesis this morning that I kind of liked.

00:20:46.560 I'm going to toss it down here and see what you say. Speaking of tossing, it's the username on Twitter

00:20:52.360 who suggested this. I don't know if I want to read his name in public, but it's on Twitter, so I'll just

00:21:01.120 read it. So his user named Fudge Tosser. And he tweets this about our opening position of negotiations

00:21:11.000 with North Korea. And when I point out that it's an impossible, ridiculous, failing in advanced 0.74

00:21:17.600 position to say you have to lose before we start, this user says, and listen to this, this is actually

00:21:23.720 a good hypothesis. He says it's intentional. In other words, we're intentionally with North Korea 0.95

00:21:30.940 is not strategically desirable. Huh. And then he goes on, he says, it gives us an excuse to keep

00:21:40.900 forces in the neighborhood. Huh. That's not a bad, that's not a bad hypothesis, is it? Because it would

00:21:50.060 explain why we would be doing something so stupid in public. Usually you try to hide your stupid stuff,

00:21:56.360 right? But why would we be so stupid in public for so long? This is not a bad hypothesis, that we're

00:22:03.800 literally not trying to have peace with North Korea, because if we did, we wouldn't have an excuse to keep 0.72

00:22:09.280 forces there on the border of China, basically, or near it. And then this user went on to say,

00:22:20.060 that's why John Bolton sabotaged Trump's peace summit by going on TV just before it and saying the

00:22:26.060 Libya model was one way of dealing with the North, which did sort of sabotage things. And maybe John 0.96

00:22:34.480 Bolton was just thinking, the last thing we want is to take forces out of South Korea at a time when

00:22:41.400 China is militarizing the area. And I said to myself, that's not bad, as a hypothesis is it. That's not 0.86

00:22:51.580 bad. Because we probably do want some kind of military presence in that area as China is rising and 0.96

00:22:59.120 you know, very military, let's say, they seem to be indicating a high military interest in controlling

00:23:07.960 the whole area. Interesting. I'll just put that out there. What do you think? Somebody says good,

00:23:15.540 it's a good strategic move. It's a good strategic move under the, under the assumption that they don't

00:23:24.340 nuke us, accidentally nuke us, or sell the nukes to somebody who would or sell the technology

00:23:31.560 to somebody who would. So it's not only dangerous. But maybe there is a strategic reason. You never know.

00:23:43.060 I keep asking this question, and maybe this is also something that somebody smarter can explain.

00:23:49.940 Wouldn't you think, given that China is by far our biggest, you know, future challenge, wouldn't you think

00:23:57.100 that we should be working on a military alliance with Russia? Instead of having a military alliance,

00:24:04.980 NATO, against Russia, shouldn't we be looking to have a military alliance with Russia? Because how else 0.63

00:24:14.780 would China be, you know, kept in check? Because just their pure size would suggest that if you fast 1.00

00:24:23.560 forward 50 years, China owns everything. So it seems to me that we should be smarter. Because the one 0.99

00:24:33.020 thing I like about Putin, are you allowed to say that? You know, I guess I'll have to say he's a

00:24:39.260 murderous dictator, and he's all bad. But there is one thing that makes him useful from the perspective of

00:24:48.220 the United States, which is he's a pragmatist. You kind of know exactly what Putin wants all the time,

00:24:57.360 right? You know, when he does something provocative with Syria or whatever, we don't wonder why he's

00:25:05.220 doing it. It's like, oh, you want warm water parts and blah, blah. So he's completely transparent and

00:25:13.040 operates more like a crime family boss, meaning you can make a deal with him. And so he's not

00:25:22.720 based on, you know, some religious or dogmatic thing. He's just doing what's good for him, doing

00:25:28.560 what's good for Russia. So I feel like that's exactly the guy you can work with, right? Now, 0.84

00:25:34.560 that doesn't mean he wouldn't try to put one over on us, even if we were on the same side, etc. But

00:25:40.680 every now and then you have to check your assumption. You know, you wake up in the morning

00:25:45.780 and you realize that Russia and the United States have nuclear weapons pointed at each other. Why?

00:25:53.800 Why? Why? Well, we have ours pointed at them because theirs are pointed at us. And theirs are pointed

00:26:02.440 at us because ours are pointed at them. But neither of us have a real reason, do we? I think there might

00:26:09.360 have been in the past. But I don't think there is one now. And indeed, the biggest, I would think

00:26:16.560 the biggest threat for both Russia and the United States would be a rise in China. To me, it seems 0.98

00:26:22.040 like obvious we have to go this way. Like necessity will push us together in the future. So why not just

00:26:29.300 do it now? Like, let's skip 10 years of being enemies, because we're going to end up on the same

00:26:35.700 team. I just feel like there's no way around it. Just like World War Two, right? In World War Two,

00:26:42.580 there wasn't any question we're going to be sort of on the Russian team against the Nazis.

00:26:48.280 And it looks to me, I'm not comparing China to the Nazis. They both had concentration camps in which

00:26:55.900 they put ethnic minorities to eradicate them in genocide. But I'm not comparing them. 0.86

00:27:02.080 I'm not comparing them. They do have a little similarity, but I'm not comparing them.

00:27:09.060 All right. So here's something I'd like to point out. There was a survey, if you can call it that,

00:27:19.820 that the Chicago Council on Global Affairs published. And they were asking Americans about their attitudes

00:27:27.340 about China. And the way they do it, they ask the question is they have this thing they call the

00:27:33.140 feeling thermometer question, allowing responses on 100 point scale ranging from very warm,

00:27:41.020 and that would be a favorable feeling about China, of 100, to very cold, which would be zero.

00:27:47.200 Nearly 1200 Americans came back with an average response that was, well, according to this article,

00:27:53.120 freezing at 32. So in terms of, and it looks like that's at an all-time low, or at least, I don't know,

00:28:02.400 but it looks pretty low. And here's the thing I'd like to point out. Do you remember back in 2016,

00:28:11.800 I was telling you that Trump was very persuasive? Do you remember that? And people said to me,

00:28:18.040 well, where's all his persuasion? You're saying he's so persuasive, but show it to me. Where's his

00:28:24.200 persuasion? Where is it? Let's see him persuade me. He's not persuading me. I don't see any persuasion.

00:28:31.300 He spends four years telling you that China is the biggest problem in the world. And then a survey

00:28:37.220 comes out that suggests that Americans think China is the biggest problem in the world.

00:28:41.200 That was Trump. Now, I've said this before. Now, that's not to say there aren't plenty of

00:28:51.360 China hawks. You got your Tom Cartons, your Changs, your Gordon Changs, etc. So there are plenty of 1.00

00:28:58.560 high-profile people who are also railing against China. But they don't have the same skills.

00:29:05.620 And I believe that they wouldn't have moved the needle. You know, a Gordon Chang, a Tom Cotton are

00:29:13.840 excellent in terms of command of the facts and being smart about how they think of it in a practical

00:29:21.140 way. You know, highest level thinking and knowledge. But I don't see in either one of them

00:29:27.380 specifically persuasion skills the way I see it in Trump. Trump is a persuader. He will change your

00:29:35.480 mind. Tom Cotton might tell you something you didn't know. Gordon Chang will tell you something

00:29:42.240 you didn't know, maybe frame it a new way. But I don't know if he has the persuasive specific skills

00:29:49.860 like Trump does. Now, I told you before that there's a weird thing that I've been tracking

00:29:55.420 for a long time, which is that whenever I'm involved in persuading anything, it always goes

00:30:02.640 my way. And I can't tell if I just am good at picking the right topic. So maybe I'm just good

00:30:09.760 at picking the right side. And then my team wins. But it's only because I was on the right side. It

00:30:15.960 wasn't because I made any difference. But I don't think there are too many regular citizens who have

00:30:21.560 persuaded with actual persuasion tools against China more than I have since 2018. I'll bet you if you 0.98

00:30:31.820 looked at a graph of feelings about China, you would see that in 2018, when my stepson died of fentanyl

00:30:38.620 overdose, which I blame on China, I think you would see that around 2018, there's a fairly sharp 0.98

00:30:44.240 change in the opinion of China. I don't know that. But I'll bet you'd find it. And it wouldn't be an

00:30:51.980 accident. Just putting it out there. Let's talk about that big old ship that's stuck in the Suez Canal,

00:30:58.420 which is weirdly interesting. It's way more interesting than I think. And here's the

00:31:05.140 question I would ask you, because I'm a little bit obsessed about the engineering to get that thing

00:31:11.460 out of there. Can you string tugboats together? How many tugboats could you string together?

00:31:19.360 Because it seems to me... Let's see if I can do this with you. Let's see. Let's say this phone

00:31:28.860 here is the boat, the ship. And it's going... Let's say it's going forward, which will be up in my

00:31:36.440 example. And then it gets turned sideways and it gets wedged. Now, the front part of the wedge

00:31:42.560 presumably would be deep into the sand. And it looks like they're trying to dig out the front.

00:31:49.580 The back is also on the bank. But I would think that the bank maybe isn't dug in so much on the

00:31:56.080 back. I would think the front, because it like dug in, is probably way in there. So getting the front

00:32:02.960 out seems hard. Getting the back out seems easier. And I feel like they're working on the front. So

00:32:09.580 that's the first thing I'd ask, is are they working on the right side? The second thing I'd ask is how

00:32:15.520 many ships and or tugboats can you string together to increase the power of them all? Is there a

00:32:24.280 limit? Because the limit might be, you know, that the, I don't know, the chain at the end would break

00:32:30.900 or something because there wouldn't be enough. But it seems to me that you could chain enough

00:32:37.300 boats and maybe you could throw in a, you know, throw in another freighter in there to get the 0.53

00:32:42.600 weight, right? And just pull on that thing from the back. I wouldn't try to get the front out.

00:32:49.160 I think that's a mistake. I would pull on the back because that's probably wedged in the least.

00:32:54.180 And if you get the back out, I think you can, the front will come out. That's my guess. So I'm just

00:32:59.840 going to put that out there. It's just an engineering question. Why can't you just string a bunch of

00:33:04.340 tugboats together until you have enough of them? Like how many would it take? Because presumably

00:33:10.000 you would have unlimited resources to do this, right? And there must be, you know, ton of tugboats

00:33:15.640 in there. Get a hundred of them. Somebody said, blow it up. I think the problem is that the cleanup

00:33:22.660 would take as long as getting it out of there. All right. Rutgers University is going to require

00:33:32.640 vaccinations to go back to in-person classes. We will expect a lot more of that. I would expect

00:33:38.820 that traveling will require vaccinations, at least some kinds of traveling. I'm thinking schools will

00:33:45.700 require it because the teachers unions will just say, got to do it or else we won't go to work.

00:33:51.980 I feel as if society will have enough places that you have to be vaccinated that a lot of people who 0.82

00:33:58.440 wouldn't have gotten it are going to say, ah, I still want to function in society. I want to go to

00:34:03.960 my gym. So might as well do it. I think that's the way it's heading. Now, as I mentioned earlier,

00:34:14.360 I identify as black now and Dr. Interracial on Twitter, who's probably watching this right now,

00:34:21.900 hello, doctor, uh, held up a copy of my, and by the way, Dr. Interracial is exactly what it sounds

00:34:27.940 like. It's an interracial marriage. One of them is a doctor, apparently. Uh, I don't know which one 0.90

00:34:33.300 is the doctor, but, um, there's a Dr. Interracial and let's say that it's the, the husband. I'm not 0.96

00:34:40.460 sure that's the case, but he held up my, uh, my book, had to fail in almost everything. And he tweeted, uh,

00:34:46.420 my, my new favorite self-identified black author. Now it's, as I said, it's a black man who's doing 0.83

00:34:54.320 this tweet and, uh, I think it's working. Now, part of that tweet thread asked why I can't be,

00:35:04.160 um, or should I be on the New York Times bestselling black authors list? Now, I didn't know such a thing

00:35:09.980 existed, but apparently the New York Times has a, a special carve out a little, uh, bestselling

00:35:16.300 list just for black authors. And, uh, Dr. Interracial and his wife are asking, why am I not

00:35:23.240 on it? Shouldn't, shouldn't my books be on that list? Well, maybe at the moment they're not selling

00:35:28.860 enough, but in theory, you know, what would make me ineligible for that list? Would the New York

00:35:35.280 Times get to, um, would they be the ones who get to identify my race? Because that's not their rule,

00:35:41.600 right? If you ask the New York Times, how does it work? Is it you, the New York Times, who gets to

00:35:47.140 say what ethnicity I am or racial makeup? Or do I get to say that? I think they would agree that I

00:35:54.160 get to say it, right? I'm not joking. If you ask the New York Times, would they not agree with me

00:36:01.000 that the individual gets to identify the way they want to be? That's right. I'm not making that up.

00:36:09.080 So by their own rule, would I not be eligible for the New York Times bestselling black authors list?

00:36:16.160 And if I'm not, how do they explain that? Now, if they explain it because they think I'm just joking,

00:36:22.940 let me say again, I'm not, I'm not. I'm following a real rule because it advantages me.

00:36:31.300 If you live in the United States and there's a real rule, you know, that everybody agrees with,

00:36:36.740 it doesn't have to be the law per se, but everybody agrees with it, you can use the rule. It's

00:36:42.020 available to everybody. There's no rule that says I can't use the rule because then it would be

00:36:46.760 useless if you can't use it. Right. They'd be racist for omitting me based on their own definition of

00:36:59.660 things. Now, as I told you before, one of the best ways to change rules you don't like is to use them

00:37:09.000 and adhere to them strictly. So here you're watching me do it. I've given you examples before where I've

00:37:16.440 broken systems. This is a good hypnosis persuasion trick. You can break any system by following its

00:37:24.080 rules. The only way any system works is if people are bending the rules all the time because there's

00:37:30.860 very rarely can you make a system that works for all situations. So the only way you can make it work

00:37:36.740 at all is to be doing a lot of bending the rules and all the strange situations. Nothing, almost nothing

00:37:42.900 is the exception to that. So if you want to break a societal rule, follow it and don't make the

00:37:51.100 exception. Just follow it and it will break on its own. Yeah, you know, there's interesting news on the

00:38:02.700 DNA part about the Neanderthal genes. Apparently the Neanderthal genes can tell you a lot about your

00:38:09.940 likelihood of a bad COVID response. But it's not as clean as if you have it or don't. I guess there's

00:38:17.020 some subcategories within the category that could make you good or bad based on that. All right,

00:38:23.640 let's talk about vitamin D. There's a new meta study with 50 different studies that overwhelmingly show

00:38:31.560 overwhelmingly, like overwhelmingly, the studies are all on the same side, that if your vitamin D level is

00:38:39.600 good, you'll have better outcomes with the coronavirus and by a lot. Now, most of the studies are just

00:38:47.900 showing the correlation. So you got to be careful. Correlation doesn't mean causation. And it also doesn't

00:38:55.000 mean that if you just took more vitamins, you would necessarily be better off. But I think it's a good bet.

00:39:00.800 So I do take D3. So I take vitamin D. Just because the risk is zero, but the upside might

00:39:12.200 be life and death. So of course I take it. But I don't know if the thing I get over the counter makes

00:39:16.880 any difference. There's some suggestion that maybe it's, you know, could be good, but it's not a big,

00:39:23.900 big thing. The thing I'd worry about here is that the correlation is fooling us. Because it is true

00:39:32.200 that people who are unhealthy in general, for whatever reason, if they're unhealthy for any

00:39:38.760 reason, they almost always have low vitamin D. So since unhealthy people are the people who die of

00:39:45.760 COVID, it could be just a coincidence that they also have low vitamin D. But it's a strong enough

00:39:54.040 correlation. And the risk of taking it is so low that I think you'd be literally just stupid not to

00:40:02.580 try to supplement your vitamin D, given that it has other benefits that are more, more obviously true

00:40:08.920 according to science. So get your vitamin D. But I don't know that that's, you know, like the magic

00:40:14.700 bullet or anything like that. All right. How many of you? Oh, let me get a, I'll give you a lead into

00:40:23.180 this one. There was a user named Peter online, who in one of the Twitter conversations mentioned

00:40:32.460 two bad things about President Trump, the fine people hoax, and the drinking bleach hoax. Except

00:40:40.220 poor Peter didn't know both of them are hoaxes. And then poor Peter had the bad luck of running into

00:40:47.600 user magician. And magician quite courteously showed him the transcript of the fine people hoax

00:40:57.520 to know that it was a hoax. And then the transcript of the the drinking bleach hoax to see that he never

00:41:03.880 said drinking bleach. He always talked about light. And that's all hoax. Now, what do you think Peter did

00:41:11.680 when he realized, because it's not, you can just read it, right? He doesn't have to wonder if he was wrong.

00:41:18.040 You can just read it. It's obvious he was wrong. What do you think he did? Did he say, whoa, whoa, I was not

00:41:25.860 aware of these facts. And now that you have informed me, and I can see the transcripts, I changed my

00:41:32.340 mind. Those are no, those are no true stories at all. Those are hoaxes. Do you think that happened

00:41:39.220 with Peter? No, because it never works. Facts are completely unpersuasive, and always will be. Once

00:41:49.580 you learn that, you understand the world. If you think that facts can change somebody's mind on politics,

00:41:55.240 you haven't been paying attention, because it doesn't. So after that, I weighed in myself, and I noted

00:42:07.700 in my tweet that poor Peter, and I used narrator voice, narrator, this was the moment that Peter realized

00:42:16.440 he had been double Rupard. Double Rupard. Now, you all know that being a Rupard is based on Vox writer

00:42:25.060 Aaron Rupard. I think that's his first name. R-U-P-A-R. And it became an actual word in the urban

00:42:31.360 dictionary. It may have been removed by now. But it was in there as someone who passes around

00:42:38.360 edited videos that are misleading and does it intentionally. And so I said that poor Peter had

00:42:46.880 been double Rupard. Two hoaxes. Now, I'm going to reemphasize something I said before, because I

00:42:54.600 didn't think I said it well enough as I thought about it. And it goes like this. Words carry

00:43:01.660 persuasion. Now, you kind of knew that, but I'm going to add a little to it, which is that

00:43:08.880 every word is like a little unit of logic or persuasion, I guess you could say. Better

00:43:15.560 to say persuasion. They're not necessarily logical. But words carry their own logic and reasons

00:43:21.700 and explanations just by being a word. And so if you can create a word, like being Rupard,

00:43:29.060 you can imbue it with a credibility that it never earned. Because words do that. They just

00:43:35.520 absorb things like credibility. They absorb lack of credibility, a different word. They absorb

00:43:42.640 things that they don't earn and there's no logic to it. They just absorb them. So by creating

00:43:48.700 an official word for this, you let the word absorb the credibility that it doesn't earn.

00:43:54.660 And it makes your persuasion better simply because there's a word that you and the person

00:44:01.320 you're talking to have both heard to describe this thing. So that's why I'm pushing the Rupard

00:44:07.220 thing so much. Not because it's funny and it makes fun of this one individual, but because

00:44:13.660 you actually are creating a packet of persuasion that can just sort of live there forever after I

00:44:19.360 leave. If the Rupard thing stayed as a general reference, I could walk away and it would just stay

00:44:27.660 there as being persuasive forever. So words are packets of persuasion. Think of them that way.

00:44:34.220 Here's another hoax. How many of you have followed the NXIVM sex cult story? Most of you know what

00:44:48.520 that is, right? Keith Ranieri is in jail right now for unrelated things that had nothing to do with

00:44:54.640 being a cult specifically, but just things he was accused of and convicted of. But how many of you

00:45:03.160 think it's true that there was such a thing as a sex cult? Now some of you know that there was a

00:45:09.560 subgroup associated with NXIVM, but wasn't NXIVM per se, but some of the same people. And they had a

00:45:17.000 subgroup called DOS, doesn't matter what it means. And that that subgroup had up to a hundred women, 0.99

00:45:24.160 I think only, who, um, some of them agreed to get a brand. Now, when you hear that, you say,

00:45:33.380 oh, well, that's a cult. And some number of them had a personal, uh, physical relationship with the

00:45:39.160 leader, Keith Ranieri. But it was a consensual, well-understood relation set of relationships.

00:45:47.320 Nobody was forced to do anything. Now you say to yourself, well, what about the, what about the

00:45:54.900 brands? If somebody is in a group that is Scott, Scott, Scott, I know you're not calling them a cult,

00:46:02.040 but if they're getting branded, they're in a cult. Well, let me give you some details. When you heard

00:46:10.900 that they got branded, what did you think of? You thought of a branding iron, didn't you? And you

00:46:17.080 thought it was like, like cattle. And then somebody put it over the hot coals and it was glowing for a

00:46:24.020 while. And then somebody held down the person and they were like, and there's like the smell of

00:46:33.100 burning flesh. Might be a little fire coming up off of it. Like in your mind, it's pretty, it's pretty

00:46:39.560 bad, right? Well, it wasn't exactly a branding iron. It was a cauterizing pen.

00:46:48.600 It was a cauterizing pen, which apparently is not that uncommon for people who get tattoos to get this

00:46:59.600 treatment. Because it's actually closer to a tattoo than it is to branding a cow. It's closer to a

00:47:10.120 tattoo. And it ends up with a little bit of a scar tissue that you can barely see. That's it. Now,

00:47:18.180 is that the way you heard it? When you heard that the women were being branded? And do you remember

00:47:24.420 seeing pictures of the brand? How big were the pictures of the brand? Well, if you look at the

00:47:31.860 picture, this looks pretty scary. That's a pretty big brand. But you never saw the whole person,

00:47:40.200 did you? You only saw close-ups of the brand, did you? You never saw the person so you could see the

00:47:46.940 size of the brand. Little thing. It was just a little thing. So just know that you've been

00:47:56.060 manipulated to think that they were branded like cattle. No. They had the option of having a little

00:48:04.700 tattoo-like brand. You could call it a brand because it disturbs the skin in a semi-permanent way. 0.94

00:48:12.120 Or you could call it permanent. That would be a better description. And they did it because they

00:48:19.260 wanted to. It was just part of the things that were offered. Some said yes. Some said no. That's

00:48:25.940 it. Now, does that sound like a cult? A hundred people, they had this option. Some said yes. Some

00:48:33.320 said no. Does that sound like a cult? But that's not the only definition of a cult. One of the

00:48:40.080 definitions would be that you're not allowed to leave. Did that apply to anything in NXIVM or in

00:48:46.760 DOS, the subgroup? Nope. No. People did leave. People joined. People left. The definition of a cult

00:48:57.080 is that you can't leave. And the people left, were they punished? No. They just left because it's

00:49:06.500 voluntary. You could join or you could leave. And by the way, there's no evidence that they

00:49:12.700 couldn't leave. Nor was there any court case about them being a cult. In other words, the courts

00:49:19.780 didn't deal with the question of, are you a cult or not? Because that's not a law.

00:49:25.360 It's not illegal to have a cult if they had been one. Now, what is the other definition of a cult?

00:49:30.820 The other definition is that the cult members are cut off from the rest of the world. They can't have

00:49:37.240 contact. Don't want them to get any bad ideas in their head. Was that the case with either the NXIVM

00:49:44.100 or the DOS? Not really. They did have a secrecy agreement that you had to agree to before you

00:49:53.160 joined. And part of that was this collateral thing where you had to give them something embarrassing

00:49:58.160 to prove that you weren't going to be talking about the group. Because if you were talking about the

00:50:04.080 group, it wouldn't sound good to other people. And it's just not good. So you want to have a private

00:50:09.600 group. And part of the mechanism for that, as they say, give us some embarrassing things about you

00:50:15.280 that if you talked, you know, would be dangerous. Now, they never released any of it. And people did in

00:50:21.660 fact leave. But there was never any intention of releasing any of it, because it wasn't a blackmail

00:50:29.140 operation. It was part of the psychological buy-in process. Now, when you say to me, Scott, I think

00:50:36.680 you're being a little facile here. If somebody gives you blackmail material, and you're supposed to do

00:50:43.540 something or else it'll be used, that's just blackmail, isn't it? Aren't you trying to spin

00:50:51.340 this a little too hard? Well, no. No. Because it was just a bunch of people doing what they wanted

00:51:00.940 to do. Nobody was ever punished for anything. If anybody had ever been punished for anything,

00:51:09.040 then you'd have a pretty good case. Oh, yeah. If they tried to talk to the outside world,

00:51:14.580 they got punished. That never happened. If they tried to talk to the outside world,

00:51:19.540 they'd be ostracized. Well, the only secrecy was about, you know, the group itself.

00:51:27.460 What other group has secrecy? Well, how about Alcoholics Anonymous? The anonymous is right in the name.

00:51:36.480 It's not unusual for groups that are voluntary groups to want to stay anonymous. It's probably,

00:51:44.460 I don't know, hundreds, thousands of them, right? How about the Masons? Do the Masons have some

00:51:51.780 secret things that they tell you you can't tell the outside world? Yeah. But it's all a voluntary

00:51:59.060 group, and they can be there or not be there. They can leave or come. So here's my point.

00:52:05.160 In fact, there's no evidence that's ever been presented that NXIVM or the subgroup DOS met any of the

00:52:14.180 qualifications of a cult. And yet, probably every one of you believed that that was a cult.

00:52:22.420 It didn't meet any of the definitions, nor did any court rule on it. It wasn't even a question.

00:52:27.780 There were just some specific allegations that might have been true, and they might have been

00:52:33.080 false. But that was the subject of the court case. So when you say it was a cult, it's a hoax. It's

00:52:44.040 just another hoax. Somebody says AA is not a cult. No, I'm not saying that AA is a cult. I'm saying

00:52:51.240 the opposite of that. I'm saying that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult, but they do have that

00:52:59.740 secrecy thing, because it just has a function. There's a purpose to secrecy. It's useful, right?

00:53:05.920 So that's my whole point, is that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult just because they have

00:53:11.820 secrecy. Nor would the DOS be a cult just because they have secrecy. That's a fairly common thing.

00:53:18.840 Right? Businesses have secrecy, right? Businesses say don't tell anybody our intellectual property

00:53:26.320 secrets. Secrets is nothing. That's not anything about a cult. All right. Somebody's saying the

00:53:38.860 DNC is a cult? Well, I've written that the Democratic and Republican Party are evolving to become

00:53:48.740 a cult. Because, you know, remember the definition of a cult is that you can't leave without being

00:53:55.300 ostracized. If you were a Republican and you left to join the Democrats, would you have a penalty?

00:54:03.420 Yeah, you would. You would have a penalty if you left your political party. The people you left

00:54:10.140 would be pretty, pretty bad, pretty mad, and they would probably make you pay. So that meets the

00:54:17.200 definition of a cult, right? The definition of a cult is you'll be punished if you leave the group.

00:54:22.620 How about being cut off from the rest of the world? CNN. Yeah. The Democrats have created a media

00:54:32.320 enterprise that effectively cuts them off. And if they watched, imagine being a Democrat,

00:54:39.120 and your family, they're all Democrats. And you're the only one home at the moment. You turn on the TV

00:54:45.060 and you say, I think I'll give this Fox News a try. I think I'll just give it a try. Nobody's

00:54:50.920 looking. I'm a Democrat. I'll just give this Fox News a little try. I'll just sample it. And then you

00:54:57.380 start watching it. You say, wow, the production values are pretty good. Oh, I kind of like this

00:55:03.400 host. Oh, these are some facts I hadn't heard before. This is a point of view I had never seen.

00:55:09.200 And you're happily, you're a Democrat, and you're happily noticed that you could get something out

00:55:14.500 of Fox News, and you're watching. And then your family comes home. And they see you sitting there

00:55:21.620 watching Fox News. And you're all super Democrats. But you're sitting there, and you got caught.

00:55:28.300 Fox News, it's on right in front of you. How's that go? How's that go? Do you have a good day

00:55:35.660 after that? Or do they mock you until you will never look at that channel again? They will mock

00:55:43.460 you until you never watch that channel again. You won't even watch it when you're alone. Yeah.

00:55:50.040 Does that meet the definition of a cult? It's exactly the definition of a cult. That they keep

00:55:56.300 you from other information aggressively. They punish you if you leave. True. Right? And they create a

00:56:08.720 narrative that is disconnected from reality. Do they do that? Yes, they do. The definition of a cult

00:56:21.260 cult is met exactly by the two political parties. Not one more than the other. Not one more than the

00:56:29.160 other. Hear that clearly. In this one way, just in this one way, they are identical. You can't leave

00:56:37.640 them easily without some kind of penalty. They keep you from the other information. And they have a

00:56:45.340 narrative of the world that is disconnected, in some ways, from the real world. Now, I know that

00:56:51.820 the Republicans are saying, well, but the Republican narrative is closer to truth. And the Democratic is

00:56:58.680 closer to crazy. So that's not the same. And I feel that too. Right? Like, I do feel that the

00:57:08.700 Republican conservative, let's say, systems are more complete. They consider human motivation,

00:57:16.720 especially. So they seem more realistic. But I would argue that they're only more functional.

00:57:24.000 They're not necessarily a better picture of reality. And that both of them are probably a little

00:57:29.580 disconnected from reality, because humans can't see reality. We're not designed to see reality.

00:57:36.100 We're designed to create a subjective picture of reality that we treat as reality. That's what

00:57:42.380 we're designed for. So to say that the Republicans are the ones who get it right, and the Democrats are

00:57:49.660 the ones that get it wrong, is to misunderstand the nature of reality. Because you don't know what's

00:57:55.440 right and wrong. And you don't know what's reality. But you can tell what works. And I do believe

00:58:02.740 that the Republican slash conservative set of ideas are far more functional, and that they work. And

00:58:11.320 you can implement them over and over again, and then observe that they work. For example,

00:58:16.380 competition. It's hard to think of any situation where you introduced real competition, and it didn't

00:58:22.940 make the thing better. Right? It's pretty consistent. So in that way, the Republicans are more,

00:58:29.560 let's say, they have more of a passing association with reality than Democrats, because they have a

00:58:37.520 narrative that isn't real. I would say that Republicans, like all humans, have narratives

00:58:43.480 that are not real. But one of them works. Like one of them consistently is repeatable. And one of

00:58:50.380 them consistently fails every time you do it. That's the difference. All right. But just in case

00:58:58.920 anybody's new to my new to my broadcast here, I'm left to Bernie, but better at math, meaning that I'm

00:59:08.220 not, I'm not wed to any policies of either group. I look at them individually and look for what's

00:59:15.980 practical. And a lot of the Democratic stuff is just great ideas that are not practical. All right.

00:59:24.140 That, I believe, represents the totality of the magic and majesty of coffee with Scott Adams.

00:59:35.440 I don't think it could have been better. I think you'd agree. Maybe it gets better every single

00:59:41.480 time. I don't want to say that. I don't want to jinx it. But it feels like it gets better every time.

00:59:46.060 And if you learn something today, oh my goodness, somebody says Mike Lindell is starting a new web

00:59:54.980 platform. Wouldn't that be interesting? Do you know what Mike Lindell should call his new web

01:00:00.960 platform? I don't know if it's like a social media platform or whatever. He should call it

01:00:05.680 Pillow. Am I right? Am I right? Now, maybe it's taken so he can't use it. But if he started a social

01:00:15.560 media platform, Mike Lindell, it should be named just one word. Because you don't want to be like

01:00:22.320 the Facebook. You just want to be Facebook. You don't want to be the Twitter. You just want to be

01:00:29.800 Twitter. And you don't want to be my pillow. You just want to be pillow. You see, you're trying to

01:00:38.620 dress it up with pillow talk. I get it. Pillow talk is clever. It's catchy. But here's my... Well,

01:00:47.600 let me ask you. Let's do a branding survey. Here we're helping Mike Lindell. I don't know if he needs

01:00:54.920 any help. But if you had a choice of just pillow for the name of your social network or anything with

01:01:06.920 pillow extra, like pillow talk, pillow case, my pillow, which one's better? The pillow?

01:01:14.820 All right. Let me give you a lesson on branding. Here's the first lesson. Almost everybody is bad

01:01:25.520 at it. That's what you need to know. Almost everybody, probably 99% of the world, is really,

01:01:35.680 really bad at this kind of a decision. So I'm looking at your answers. And you can see they're

01:01:41.760 all over the place. Yeah, they're all over the place. But there are quite a few people

01:01:46.880 who are saying that pillow by itself. I think I may have led the witness here. I may have

01:01:51.140 influenced you. But yeah, pillow is right. And you'll see lots... And the reason that pillow

01:01:56.700 is right is that it fits the form better. If you're an experienced internet user and you hear

01:02:04.960 that there's a network called Pillow Talk, or you hear that there's a network called Pillow,

01:02:12.980 which one do you assume is more competently built? Pillow. I mean, you might not be right,

01:02:21.880 but your subjective feeling, if you're an experienced internet user, you would recognize the name

01:02:29.340 just Pillow to be put together by people who knew what they were doing. Am I right? That you would

01:02:37.500 reckon... And how about this? Just the people who are really, really part of the internet. Like you're

01:02:45.720 a real digital native. You know, you really spend some time, maybe you've worked on a startup,

01:02:51.620 maybe you've even been involved with technology. If you're really in that world,

01:02:55.740 and you hear that it's the one word, Pillow, you will think that more capable people are working

01:03:02.140 on that. That's my hypothesis. All right. Sounds like Zillow. Yeah. And it's, like I said,

01:03:12.800 it's probably already trademarked. There's probably enough things named Pillow that you couldn't use

01:03:17.260 it, but it would be great. It'd be great if you could. Oh, Red Pillow. Oh, damn it. That's good.

01:03:23.460 Red Pillow. Red Pillow is pretty darn clever. But I would still call it Pillow. And then I might

01:03:34.180 have, like, features within it or subcategories or groups, and maybe one of them could be Red Pillow.

01:03:41.480 That would be pretty great. All right. That's all for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

01:03:46.000 All right, YouTubers. You got me for another minute. Today, I posted on my locals channel

01:03:57.100 how to deal with imposter syndrome. I think it just posted. I had a schedule. Imposter syndrome

01:04:04.180 and how to have better self-esteem. And the day before, I had posted some tips on dealing

01:04:12.700 with criticism that people are telling me is the best thing I've ever done. I don't know

01:04:18.040 if that's true, but people are really, really happy about it. A lot of people saying it's

01:04:22.860 life-changing. How do you make a billion dollars? It's easy. Start with two billion and buy a boat.

01:04:35.280 You see, I combined two old jokes there.

01:04:37.180 Why are you so infatuated with NXIVM? I think it's interesting on every level. Because NXIVM

01:04:44.740 is a... I connect to it on a whole bunch of levels. One is that it's a persuasion story. So that's

01:04:53.920 my sweet spot. The other part is that it's a fake news story. My other sweet spot. And the

01:05:02.740 other part of it is maybe the thing that interests me the most, which is, I've told you that I spend,

01:05:10.200 and always have, since I was young. If I find somebody who has accomplished somebody, or has

01:05:16.200 success... I can't talk for a second. If I see somebody who is very successful, or very capable,

01:05:23.800 I love to dig in and find out why. Like, what are you doing? What's your technique? What are you

01:05:29.800 doing that works? And then the Keith Ranieri situation, at least looking from the outside,

01:05:35.940 because we can't know too much about what happened there. But from the outside, it appears that he had

01:05:41.740 an unusual skill set. And I'm very interested to know, could I learn anything from that?

01:05:49.360 Right? You don't have to use your powers for evil, right? If you think that's what happened.

01:05:54.360 Um, but having power is power. So I would say that, uh, and I'll tell you something that sounds

01:06:01.060 horrible, but I do know people who have studied, uh, Mein Kampf and, uh, various, you know, Nazi stuff

01:06:09.560 just to learn technique, persuasion technique. In fact, it's fairly common. Uh, I would guess that

01:06:15.660 intelligence people who were involved in persuasion, they've probably all read,

01:06:19.600 you know, the Nazi propaganda. So it's, it's, uh, it's very useful to just find out what people's

01:06:29.200 technique is, no matter what you think about what they did with their technique. It's useful to know.

01:06:34.020 So there are many, many points of, uh, interest there. And then some of you know that I, um,

01:06:40.400 all right, sorry, my cat's making things hard here. Um, did I defend the indefensible and clubhouse?

01:06:52.840 No, I think I'm going to reschedule all that for next week. I'm just having a scheduling issue.

01:06:58.240 Best color for persuasion, somebody says. What's the best color for persuasion? Well,

01:07:03.580 it depends on the topic. So you want to match your color to the topic and to the mood. Um,

01:07:09.700 that that's the answer. So there's no such thing as one color. That's the right color for all of the

01:07:17.140 different purposes at the moment. If you were going to put a button on a website and you wanted more

01:07:22.620 people to click that button, uh, I think burnt umber like winds whenever you compete. So if you

01:07:30.680 do a rapid test where you say, uh, I'm going to give people a bunch of different looks of the same

01:07:35.980 website, you know, the, everything will be the same except the color of one button, you will

01:07:41.200 consistently find that people will push the burnt or burnt umber, you know, kind of the, the, the bad

01:07:48.420 orange before they will press other, other colors. So there are some that you can just test that get

01:07:54.900 more clicks and it has more to do with, uh, uh, yeah, burnt umber. It has more to do with, uh,

01:08:01.020 just testing it to find out. All right, that's all for now. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 27, 2021

Episode 1326 Scott Adams： Georgia Voting Laws, North Korea Persuasion, China Persuasion, Cults, Vitamin D

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