Episode 1334 Scott Adams： I'll Change Some of Your Lives For the Better Today. Come Have Coffee and Talk About the News
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Summary
Rapper DMX is on life support, but he's not dead. And why does the NFL require identification to pick up tickets? And why is that better than voter ID? Plus, a look at why some corporations are boycotting Georgia voting laws.
Transcript
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Hello everybody. Come on in. Yeah, it's time. That's right. It's time for coffee with Scott Adams.
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The best time of the day, even on holiday. And if you'd like to enjoy this to the maximum potential,
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and I know you do, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tankard chalice or stye and a
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scanty jug or flask, a vessel of any kind without a hole. Put your beverage in it. I like coffee.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day that makes everything better.
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It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to happen right now all over the world. Ready? Go.
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Oh, excuse me for a moment while I savor it. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good.
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Well, we've got all kinds of news today. Let's start with the bad news and the good news.
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The bad news is that rapper DMX is on life support for some kind of an overdose.
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The good news is I didn't know he was alive. So it turns out that rapper DMX
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was alive. I was pretty sure he was already dead. But he's on life support from an overdose.
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Apparently, I just saw the future. But we wish him well and his family.
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I feel as if this Georgia voting law stuff somehow captured everything in one story. Have you noticed
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that? You know, you have lots of different stories about politics. But every now and then,
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there'll just be one story that just sort of combines everything bad into one thing. And it
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turns out to be the Georgia voting laws. Let's talk about that. So as you know, some corporations are
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giving them a hard time for changing their voting laws, allegedly, according to the Major League
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Baseball and Coca-Cola and Delta. These changes in the laws will make it more racist and harder for
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black people especially to vote and people of color, low income people in particular. Now, this is an
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interesting take because the biggest issue is about the requirement for legitimate identification.
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You would think maybe a basic thing to ask for in an election? Can you identify yourself as a citizen?
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But no, big companies say that's kind of racist. Yet, the Major League Baseball, as James
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Hurston pointed out in a tweet, Major League Baseball requires a photo ID to pick up your tickets from
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Wilcox, but boycotts Georgia for voter ID laws. Now, why does the Major League Baseball require ID to pick
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up tickets? Why do they do that? Why? What's the point of it? Because if you can just have somebody
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sign a piece of paper that says, I am who I say I am, why is that not good enough? And
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who exactly would cheat on Wilcox picking up tickets? Because wouldn't the real person just
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come in behind them and say, where are my tickets? And then they check and they say, oh,
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somebody's sitting in your seat. We'll send somebody to get them out of your seat because
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it's obviously you. So I can't think of literally anything, any process in the world
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in which you need a photo ID less than picking up tickets where they can check immediately if you're
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the wrong person. Because for the next three hours, you're sitting in the wrong seat and it's got a
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number on it and you can just go look and say, hey, you're in the wrong seat. Literally,
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nothing requires an ID less than picking up Wilcox tickets. Now, of course, you always have to ask
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yourself, maybe the real reason is just it's easier, right? It might just be easier. You hand them your
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ID and then they're looking at the name. But if you were to say your name, you'd go up and say,
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hi, my name is Mr. What? My name is Bob. Can you spell that? Yeah. B-O-B.
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And every transaction would take 10 minutes. Can you spell that again? I'm looking in the wrong
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place. Versus here's my ID. You go, ah, Scott Adams. Scott Adams. Here you go. So the point is funny,
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but I would imagine it has less to do with identification and maybe more to do with it's
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just faster. That's just a guess. But it's a good point. We have a world in which you need ID for
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all kinds of things. And they're all less important than voter ID. All right. Do we want
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a political system in which the corporations run the government directly? Because that's what's
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happening? It's bad enough that the big corporations have influence. They've got money and donations and
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they've got lobbyists and stuff. And we're already concerned that big corporations are too involved
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in making government decisions. But now they're doing it somewhat directly. Just saying we won't do
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business. We'll boycott if you don't change your laws, et cetera. And you have to ask this question.
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It's one thing for a company to pursue its own self-interest with donations and lobbying and
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stuff like that. We kind of accept that. We complain about it, but we kind of accept it. If there's
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a little bit of transparency, it's better. But do you want them directly to boycott somebody
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to change a law? I'm not sure we want that government, but we're sliding into it.
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However, it looks like the corporations may have picked the wrong state to take a stand.
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And I tweeted this this morning. Out of our 50 states, there are lots of states where you can just
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kick Republicans all day long. It's like, hey, there's a Republican. Let's go kick him.
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Anybody want to join me? Yeah, let's go kick the Republican. We'll do it all day long.
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I'm not entirely sure Georgia is one of those states, because they seem to be having an attitude
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about it. They don't like to get kicked. So what we're seeing is a response in which they want to
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remove the, what is it, the monopoly, I guess there's some special legal rights that the
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Major League Baseball has. And then the state is saying, well, let's take those away. If you want
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to play hardball, it works both ways. So the state is actually just going after Major League Baseball.
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Just take them down. Trump is after them. Of course, Republicans are after them. I have a real
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question about how many Republicans are going to be drinking Cokes and Diet Cokes this week.
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But I think less. I think there will be fewer Republicans drinking Diet Coke. I don't know
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if that makes a difference to somebody as big as that. But by the way, would you like to know how to
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quit your Diet Coke or Coke habit? I can tell you how. I did it. And it's easy and hard at the same
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time. It's easy to know how, but it's about two months that are kind of hard. All you do is only do
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that one thing. Just stop drinking Diet Coke. Don't try to quit anything else at the same time.
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Just the one thing. Because if there's only one thing missing in your life, you can distract yourself
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with other stuff. But you don't want to be going on a diet at the same time you're trying to quit
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your Diet Coke habit. It's just too much. Just pick that one thing and say, for two months,
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I won't have a Diet Coke. And what's going to happen? Let me tell you what's going to happen.
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Yeah, you might drink more coffee. I did that and it helped. Here's what's going to happen.
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For the first week, you're going to crave that Coke or Diet Coke if you have a habit. I had a really
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bad habit, 12 a day. But if you wait two months, this is my promise to you. If you wait two months
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soda will feel disgusting to you in two months. And you'll never want one again. So the hard part
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is two months. But it's not like cigarettes, I hear. I've never quit cigarettes. But I hear that
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when you quit cigarettes, you go a long time still wanting one. Is that true? Can anybody confirm
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that? Whereas the Diet Coke, it actually turns disgusting. The thought of putting what looks like
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a science experiment in your mouth? Because it doesn't register even in your mind as food or
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beverage exactly. It's almost like a lubricant or a chemistry experiment. But boy, when you're hooked
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on it, it's just the best thing in the world, as I was. So if Coca-Cola would like to play hardball with
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Georgia, I would like to tell you how to drink less of their product. And it's pretty easy. And by the
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way, I'm not an expert on the health, the health impact of soda. But I don't think it's going to be
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positive. Right? I don't have, you know, the data to say that it's negative. A lot of people say that.
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I don't have that data. But I'm sure it's not helping you. I'm sure it's not a health food. I feel safe in
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saying that. All right. So and then I think Mike Cernovich was pointing out that the county that
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was going to get a hundred million dollars of, you know, economic benefit from the major league game
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voted for Biden. So the the county that's hit hardest by the major league baseball pulling out
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of the all-star game is Democrats and Biden voters. So got what they voted for.
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Um, I would like to say that this is a weird issue that we're all concerned about, because
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in my opinion, baseball is the most useless of all sports. Now, I know, I know some of you love
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your baseball. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. We're all different, right? So you
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can like one thing, I could like another. But I would point out that there's a saying in America,
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I think it's an American saying, that something is so boring, it's like watching grass grow. Have you
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ever heard that? It's so boring, it's like watching grass grow. Baseball is the only spectator
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sport in which 99% of the time, that's all you're doing. You're actually just watching a big field
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where the only thing that's happening is the grass is growing. Now, you can't see it, but it's the
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only thing happening. So I don't know why people like baseball. I've never understood it. I like
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playing it. But watching it? Um, it's mostly statistics with uniforms. So the governor of Georgia
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Georgia, um, points out to, uh, he points out that, uh, New York, he was responding to Schumer,
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who was giving him a hard time about their voting laws in Georgia. So governor of Georgia,
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Kemp says New York has nine days of early voting. Georgia has a minimum of 17.
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It's like, with an additional two Sundays as an option for every county. New York requires an excuse
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to vote absentee. Georgia's does not. They're lying and they know it, talking about Schumer. Um,
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now, what does it mean? What does it mean when we're all fighting over a topic where, as far as I can
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tell, literally none of us understand it? And let me be in the top of that pile. I don't understand
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the Georgia voting thing. Do you really? Do you really? I mean, we understand the top line of it,
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right? We understand that, uh, the Democrats are calling it racist because the change will make them
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less likely to win. So they're lying and saying it's racist, but really they care about winning.
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The Republicans are saying, no, we're making it fair and secure, but of course they're lying. It's
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true. It's true. But that's not why they're doing it. They're doing it to win. Now, can the Republicans
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make rules changes just to win? Well, the Democrats did. It's legal. It's completely legal to change the
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rules within the laws of the state just to win. The Democrats did it and won the presidency.
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So the Republicans learned, they learned the rules. Oh, wait, we can just change the rules to give
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ourselves an advantage and then we can argue some bullshit about why we did it. So let me be really
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clear about what's going on. It's Democrats and Republicans lying and then we're acting like that's
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not happening. They're just both lying. They're both changing the laws to get an advantage for their
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side. There's no good team here. They're completely disreputable. Both sides, completely
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non-credible. Now, that said, the Republicans have the stronger argument because security and making
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Georgia's rules comparable to other states in the same way that they handle security, they have the
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strongest argument. But they're still lying. You can still be lying and also have the strongest
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argument. There's no conflict. So they're lying about why they're doing it, but they do have a good
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argument. So here we are in the public trying to understand these things. And we don't. We don't
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know the details. Really kind of none of us do. We know we think we do. We know one or two things and
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we're making our decisions based on that. But we don't really know what's going on there. None of us
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have read the law or hardly any of us. So we're mostly fighting for things we don't understand and
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don't know if we want. That's where we're at. I've told you before that the only way to get rid of bad
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laws is to obey them. But obey them aggressively. Like just really obey them. Because if you obey a
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bad law, it breaks the system. And here's an example. I tweeted this morning that I'm coming
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around to the point of view that requiring identification to do anything in this country
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is racist for the reason that the voter ID people were arguing against it, give, which is there
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are more black citizens who have no ID. So that's the claim. I don't have data on that, but that's the
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claim. But why doesn't that apply to just everything? Why are we limiting that to voter ID? So one of the
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things that Georgia could do would be to flow some legislation which would require that no company
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can ask for ID. They can ask for somebody to sign a paper to say, I am really who I say I am. But you
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can't ask for any ID in the state of Georgia. Just make it a law. Just make it a law. Now, I think you'd
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have to have some exceptions if there's some federal thing, right? But you could, but where the state has
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control, couldn't they say you're not allowed to ask for ID in the bank? And just let the banks
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argue about it. And you just play it straight. You act like you really mean it and say, no, I think
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it's kind of racist if you're asking for ID in the bank, because that closes down all the people with no
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ID. Now, the bank would say, well, but they don't have much money anyway. And I'd say, ho, ho, ho,
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racist. That's not the point. The point is not how much money they have. The point is you're being a
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racist. That's the only point. So yeah, forget about the fact that people with no ID don't have
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any money to put in the bank. That is beside the point. We're just playing the same rule.
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Take the same set of rules and say, if it's racist, you just can't do it. It doesn't matter
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why you're doing it. It doesn't matter that you've got your good reasons. Racist is racist.
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And that's the beginning and the end of the conversation, right? You can't have a reason.
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It's just racist. So what would happen if all the banks and Coca-Cola and everybody else
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just couldn't ask for ID in any context, not even their own employees getting into the building.
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So let's say that you said it would be illegal for anybody to show an ID, even to get into the
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building as a visitor. They'd be a little concerned about that. All right. Here's what I'd like to see
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to fix this whole states having different laws. Of course, the Constitution, I understand, requires
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that the states are in charge of the elections. So they can kind of do whatever they want,
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as long as the state itself wants to do it that way. But here's what we should do. We should have
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a national standard, a federal standard for states that is non-binding. It would do only one thing.
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It would tell you and I whether any individual state is either below the standard or above it.
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That's it. So in this case, if Georgia was above the national standard in terms of doing it right,
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right, you'd say, well, there's nothing to see here. The national standard says do it at least this
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well. And they did it that well. It's the end of the story. So it would just simplify for the public
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so that we don't have to look into every state and figure, oh, this one does this way and this one
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does this way. You just have a national standard and you say, are they above it or below it? And that's
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it. If they're below it, then everybody gets to criticize it. If they're above it, shut up.
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But we shouldn't be asked as citizens to analyze every state and figure out, is it more about
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security or more about racism? We don't have that capability. Just give us a standard. Make it
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non-binding. It's just information. And then we wouldn't have this problem. We'd know what we're
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talking about. If we had a functioning press, and we really don't, I mean, that's not hyperbole,
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right? At one point that sounded like hyperbole. We don't have a functioning press. But now it's just
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flat out true. You look at this story and you know. Because the whole country is arguing about
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these Georgia voting laws, but the press is worthless. They just don't even treat it like
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it's a factual question. You're not seeing a bunch of analyses of if this change, you know,
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helps or hurts. Nothing like that. You're just seeing somebody yelling racist and somebody yelling
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we need voter security. That's it. And none of that is even on point because they're both just
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trying to win the election. So having no functioning press, it really hurts in these situations. This
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kind of highlights it. There's a study that declared that AOC is one of the least effective
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members of Congress, which is interesting. Because the way they measured it was on how much legislation
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they can all get through. But I don't know if that's the way to measure an AOC. Because I think
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that her, I think her influence is, you know, the influence on the whole body. It's not a legislative
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specifics. So I guess she got basically nothing made into law. So she was one of the least effective
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in actually changing laws. But I would say one of the most effective in the world, or the country
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anyway, in getting her message across. So certainly she pushed the Green New Deal and all that stuff.
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I've told you before that I now self-identify as a black citizen of America. Now,
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and I have to say this every time I mention it, it's not a joke. Not a joke. As long as we have
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the right to self-identify, and I've always agreed with it. I've never disagreed with anybody
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self-identifying any way they want. I've always been in favor of it. So I'm going to take that same
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right, if you will. Is it right? Or at least it's an option. And say that I'm a black American,
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and it has several benefits. Number one is that, you know, I have an affinity for that group for
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reasons I've described before. But I can also be more useful. Sometimes it's easier to fix things
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from the inside, right? So what would be the single hardest thing for black America to get done that
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they also want to get done? Reparations, right? Reparations would be the hardest thing
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to get done, because there'd be so much resistance. But I think I can help. And the way I'm going to
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help is by saying, tax the major corporations. But tax them intelligently. Here's why you tax the
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corporations for reparations. You tax the corporations because they put themselves in a situation
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where they can't say no. They can't say no. They're trapped being woke. Once they realize that they
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have to be woke, or their own employees will chew them to death, and the customers will chew them to
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death, then you just have to propose it, and they're going to have to say yes. If you say, I'm sorry,
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Amazon.com, did I hear you right? That you're not in favor of reparations? You know, hypothetically,
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if let's say they decided to oppose it. They can't oppose it. But do you know who can oppose it?
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You can. I can. Individuals can oppose it all day long, because they're just saying, why should I pay
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money for your problem? And then you're done. That's a good argument. Why should I pay money for
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your problem? Are you paying money for my problem? Right? You know, so you have an argument at least.
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But corporations have no argument. And here's how I would do it. I would say, corporations,
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you will be required to train anybody black who wants to be trained. That's it. Just, you know,
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if you're a big enough company, you'd probably have to limit it to maybe Fortune 500 or something.
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You just say this. If a black citizen comes in and says, I'd like to be trained for a job in your
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company, you have to do it. That's it. That's the whole thing. So every single black person can go
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to any corporation and say, you know, I think I'd be good in the warehouse or learning to code or
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whatever it is that I think I can do. And you have to train me. Reparations. Now, here's the beauty of
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it. I believe you can make an argument that it pays for itself. I think you could. You couldn't make
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that argument as easily if individual citizens are paying the taxes for the reparations. Because
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it's just a harder argument to make. But a corporation training people to work in its own
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industry might actually pay for itself. And certainly for the economy as a whole, because it would employ
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more people, blah, blah, blah, blah. So on behalf of my new self-identified group, Black America, I give you
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this piece of productive work, which is, if you want reparations, tax corporations and do it that way. Make
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sure that they have to train anybody who asks for it. All right. Here's how to solve the voter
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identification problem just for the in-person stuff. There might be a way to do it for not in-person
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too, but it'd be harder. Use the facial recognition app when you're there. But if somebody doesn't have
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ID, you ask them to sign a document that says they can use the app to determine their ID. So a person
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comes in, they have no ID. The person working there says, show me your ID. They say, I don't have one.
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They say, well, you've signed this form that gives me permission to hold up my camera and go,
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because that's all it takes. It's actually that fast. If you haven't seen, if you've never seen a
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facial recognition app work, it'll scare the shit out of you. It'll scare the shit out of you.
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The first time you see it, I saw one, I saw the app work on me once just as a demo,
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and it's instant. It's this fast. Click. Oh, you're Scott. It's that fast. You could do that
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easily without even holding up the line. It's actually faster than showing your ID. The time
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it takes you to reach in your pocket and take out your wallet and fiddle with it and show your ID
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ability is about 10 times longer than click. Oh, Scott. So just looking at a comment there that
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was weird. Okay. So we have the technology that at least in person, you still have the mail and vote
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issue and let's treat that separate at the moment, but you could solve all of the ID problems just by
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having people say, yeah, I'll, I'll let you use the facial recognition app on me. Now, everybody who
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has ID has no risk of the facial recognition. It wouldn't be on all the time. You'd have to agree
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to it and you wouldn't because you have ID. Now, seriously, tell me what that doesn't solve.
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Anybody? Normally when I'm reading the comments, as soon as I present an idea, there's all the,
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all the objections just sort of flowing in. There are no objections. Think about that. Think about
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the fact the most critical group in the world. I mean, you guys are pretty skeptical, which I like.
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I like it when you challenge me on the ideas and the facts, but I'm not even seeing a counter
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argument. I'm just, I'm monitoring the comments as they're going by.
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Yeah. There, there's literally, literally no argument against that because the technology
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already exists. The entire price of it is trivial. Like the cost is almost nothing. I mean, it rounds
00:27:56.480
to nothing. It's so cheap. It's instant. It solves the problem. Why not? Well, I think the answer is
00:28:05.140
that this was never about solving the problem, right? As we started, if anybody cared about solving
00:28:11.040
the problem, the tools are right there, but it just shows you that that's not, that's not really
00:28:17.280
what's happening. What's happening is you've got two sides that are trying to game the rules to win
00:28:22.020
an election. That's all that's happening. Everything else about fairness and racism and it has nothing to
00:28:30.260
do with it. It's just about somebody trying to win the election. All right. I saw an article
00:28:35.800
about why Africa is not having such a problem with the coronavirus relative to the other, other
00:28:45.080
countries. And, uh, Andre, Andre's backhouse after I tweeted it, I thought it was pretty good and worth
00:28:52.760
reading. And Andre's just put a comment that, that the quality of it was in the data, I guess was
00:28:59.100
so low that you should just ignore the whole thing, which maybe you should, but here are the things
00:29:06.180
that Africa has going for it. Low obesity. Um, they have less air conditioning. I didn't see that
00:29:13.840
mentioned, but don't you think the air conditioning, just the, the forced circulating of air, wouldn't
00:29:20.440
that make a difference if it's an airborne virus? If you have less AC, wouldn't that give you less
00:29:27.020
problems? I don't know. Um, they're younger, of course, much younger. That makes a big difference.
00:29:33.100
Uh, as people pointed out, their, their record keeping might be flawed. So there might be a lot
00:29:38.660
more infections than we know. They don't test as much. There might be a lot more, but if they were
00:29:43.620
having bad outcomes, uh, we would at least see more excess deaths and apparently they're not.
00:29:50.140
But some of the other speculation is that blood type makes a difference. And apparently there are
00:29:56.320
some studies that say the blood type in Africa is advantageous. And some other indication that
00:30:03.260
if you had any Neanderthal DNA, you might have worse outcomes. I have got a good dose of Neanderthal
00:30:10.760
DNA. You could tell probably. Um, but Africa does not. So Africans have a little or no Neanderthal DNA.
00:30:22.360
So that might be part of it, but I would like, uh, and then somebody also threw in there that they're,
00:30:27.460
they're taking ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. I would like to call bullshit on that.
00:30:32.980
Uh, I don't know. So I'm going to say this without the benefit of data, but if I had to place a big
00:30:40.340
bet, I would bet that although it's true that Africa would use more hydroxychloroquine and more
00:30:47.320
ivermectin, that it's not the difference that, you know, if you see, you know, the, the pictures of
00:30:54.140
just, you know, Africans living their life. And I say to myself, what percentage of all the people in
00:30:59.100
that picture took a hydroxychloroquine today, just in case, I feel like it's not many. Do you think
00:31:06.300
the average village in Africa, there are many people in that village who are taking hydroxychloroquine
00:31:12.100
daily? I mean, you can do a fact check on me, but anybody who suspects that that's the big answer,
00:31:20.740
I don't think so. Yeah. I understand why for malaria. Yeah. Just to clarify the, the, the theory would
00:31:28.200
be that they're taking it anyway for malaria prevention and therefore it gives them some
00:31:34.060
protection against this hypothetically, but I don't think the percentage of people is very high. Is it
00:31:39.800
a typical village in Africa? What percentage are taking hydroxychloroquine? I would guess closer to
00:31:47.340
zero, but that's just a guess. So fact check me on that, but I don't think that's going to be,
00:31:52.560
turn out to be a factor in the long run, but here's something fun to do that you should actually do.
00:31:58.200
You should actually do this. Google these two terms and then compare. Google Africa people images,
00:32:09.060
just those three words, just Google that and you'll get a bunch of images of group pictures of people
00:32:15.500
in Africa. Now do the same thing, but pick an American city. I picked Houston. So I Googled then
00:32:23.200
Houston people images. Now you get a bunch of group shots of people in Houston. Compare.
00:32:32.780
I think almost every Houston group picture had at least one super spreader right in the picture.
00:32:39.380
If you look at African images all day long and I, and I spent some time doing it, I was just paging,
00:32:46.960
paging, paging, African images, African images. Do you know how many obese people I saw in all of my
00:32:53.340
looks? None. Zero. There are zero fat people in the pictures. Obviously there are fat people there,
00:33:03.560
but you can look all day long on the pictures and you don't find a fat person in Africa. I know
00:33:08.920
they're there, but they're not in the pictures. In Houston, every single picture had an obese person
00:33:15.220
in it or almost. Now, as I said before, we knew that obese people have worse outcomes,
00:33:23.840
but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the super spreaders. We know now that obese
00:33:29.200
people have more lung capacity. They get more infections and especially the older ones apparently
00:33:35.220
are the ones who spread. If you look at the Houston pictures, there's one of them in every picture.
00:33:43.120
The way you should count a obese person over a 50 is like five infections. In your head,
00:33:50.240
you're thinking one, right? You think, well, that's one guy who might get it and have a bad outcome.
00:33:56.080
So that's one. Don't count it as one. That's a super spreader. That one might be a thousand
00:34:03.320
people who get the infection, right? Somebody's asking about Polynesians. It's a good question.
00:34:11.840
That's a good question, how the Polynesians are doing. I'd like to know the answer to that.
00:34:16.220
All right. Over on the local subscription platform, one of the big questions were,
00:34:25.540
could I teach people how to view sleep as a skill? In other words, can I teach people how to get to sleep?
00:34:32.840
And the answer is yes. Yes, I can do that. That is well within my skill set. So next few days,
00:34:40.660
I will have a lesson on locals about how to view sleep as a skill. And I can tell you that the
00:34:48.660
people who do see it as a skill pretty much succeed, right? It is very susceptible to technique. A lot of
00:34:56.620
things are not. But sleep is very, very manageable by technique. You just have to know what technique
00:35:02.500
to use. And almost nobody does. For some reason, it's the easiest thing to do that people are not
00:35:09.260
aware of how to do it. It's weird, but I'll teach you. All right. Yesterday, I tweeted something and
00:35:15.100
it was a thread and it turned out to be so popular that I'm just going to talk about it here. I talked
00:35:23.540
about reframing. And I tweeted that here's a reframe, which is just a different way of looking at
00:35:29.580
something, that will change some people's lives forever. Does that seem like a big claim? Do you
00:35:35.300
think that in what follows in this tweet thread, do you think I'm going to accomplish this claim,
00:35:41.660
that this simple way of thinking about something differently will change people's lives forever?
00:35:48.360
Does that sound like too much? It's not. It's not. And this easily will change some people's lives
00:35:55.180
forever. Not most. Most people are not changed by most things. But some people will be changed forever
00:36:01.460
by this. And you might be one of them. So listen to the rest. And here it is. Here's the thing that
00:36:10.980
you should reframe. Your mind is the outcome of genetics, traumas, and hacks. And that's it.
00:36:18.060
That's the idea. That the thing you think of your mind is partly your genes, what you're starting with.
00:36:23.980
But after that, it's the traumas that happen to you that end up designing your brain
00:36:28.980
and then modified by what hacks you do. Now, I'll define hacks as just programming your own brain.
00:36:36.280
Now, a hack would be something you do intentionally to reprogram your brain. So I said, if you don't
00:36:42.060
learn to hack or program your brain, the default is that you're a little more than genes and trauma.
00:36:48.120
Now, is that an oversimplification? Of course. Yeah. So you'll see what I'm doing here is an
00:36:52.940
intentional oversimplification. Now, this is what you need to know about reframing the way you look at
00:36:58.540
things. A reframe is not necessarily, and doesn't need to be, about making something more accurate.
00:37:07.760
The weird thing about reality is that sometimes an inaccurate view of reality is more functional.
00:37:15.420
Sometimes an accurate view of reality is exactly what you need. But there are lots and lots of
00:37:20.920
situations where an inaccurate view of reality is better. Now, I won't give you examples. I'm just
00:37:26.760
going to make that claim for now. So don't worry if this seems like too much of a simplification
00:37:32.060
and you say to yourself, but you're leaving something out. It doesn't matter for a reframing.
00:37:37.900
You're trying to keep it simple so that people can hold it in their minds. So if I get this about 80%
00:37:43.480
right, that's all you need. So forget about, you know, being pedantic, the 20% where you're saying,
00:37:49.980
but is it really just genes and traumas? Isn't it also some positive? Forget about that. Just keep it
00:37:57.300
simple. Your brain is your genes, your traumas, the bad things that have happened to you, and the
00:38:04.060
things that you do intentionally to make it better. Let me give you some examples.
00:38:10.700
One example of a brain hack is education. So you get some education that physically changes your brain
00:38:16.340
to be more productive, and you did it intentionally. All right? So we all agree that's a simple thing
00:38:21.720
to do. And another hack is intelligent skill stacking, putting skills together in an intelligent
00:38:30.120
way that they become greater than the value of the individual skills. So those are some examples.
00:38:36.340
Here's some more. Associating self-rewards with habits you want to deepen is a hack. You're literally
00:38:41.940
programming your brain by rewarding yourself for this thing you want to do more often. Learning to put
00:38:47.940
things in context is a hack. Practicing optimism is a hack. If you make your system, your habit, to
00:38:56.500
routinely learn and test new hacks, you become the author of your own mind. And because your experience
00:39:04.940
of reality is subjective, you become the author of your own experience. Your experience of life is
00:39:13.260
subjective, right? Life itself might be objective, probably. There's probably something there. But the
00:39:20.560
way you experience life is purely subjective. And you can change that. And so I summarize by saying be the
00:39:27.980
hack, not the trauma. Now, when I say that your brain is formed by traumas, in part, what I'm talking
00:39:35.560
about is, let's say there was a bully who always teased you about your looks. Well, that could scar you
00:39:43.660
so that you would always be concerned about your looks. So that trauma of the bully just becomes part of
00:39:50.120
your permanent personality, because it actually rewires your brain. A hack does the same thing,
00:39:57.280
but you're doing it intentionally to create a good outcome, right? So if you learn to sort of
00:40:06.100
continually scour your environment for little psychology tricks, hypnosis tricks, affirmations
00:40:13.460
is an optimism hack, basically, and a focus hack. If you make it your sort of lifetime practice
00:40:21.260
to look for ways to hack your mind and then test them out, you will be the author of your own
00:40:27.980
experience. Otherwise, you're just going to be the recipient of the experience. Otherwise, the world
00:40:35.380
will program you. The world is going to program you if you don't do it yourself. So you will become
00:40:41.400
just your traumas. Be the hack, not the trauma. Now, that's the whole message, right?
00:40:50.280
Some number of you, not very large, or not half, but some number of you just heard that and said,
00:40:56.260
what? Because what this does, and this is the power of a reframe, if you reframe something correctly,
00:41:04.580
it changes behavior. You're not trying to just change how somebody thinks about it. You're trying
00:41:10.240
to make them think about it differently to change an outcome, a behavior. If I told you that, hey,
00:41:16.560
if you just scour your environment and test all these little hacks, you'll have a subjectively better
00:41:22.120
life, some number of people just heard that and said, huh, huh, I'll give it a try. And for those
00:41:31.500
people, they just became authors. They don't know yet, but they're going to find out. So this is one
00:41:40.380
of the things that keeps me interested, right? I got to tell you, almost every day, some, well, really
00:41:48.300
every day, I think, somebody contacts me that sometimes I know and sometimes I don't to tell me that
00:41:53.960
their entire life has been improved by some reframing that I presented. So they're tremendously
00:42:00.460
powerful, just tremendously powerful. All right. I was thinking of starting a new Twitter account,
00:42:07.000
a second one, just for artists, so that they can curse at me without knowing why. Because artists
00:42:14.040
are very, very mad at me. And people have asked, because I've been sort of playing around with this
00:42:20.760
thing. I guess the theme I've been playing with, that artists don't understand reasoned arguments.
00:42:26.700
So they just swear at you if you have one. And so every time somebody comes at me and is just
00:42:33.020
pure troll, you stupid cartoonist, you do everything wrong with no reasons. Then I checked the profile.
00:42:41.560
It's musician, visual artist, writer. It's always one of the arts, right? And I thought to myself
00:42:50.420
that my only comeback for that would be, I won't try to make art if you don't try to think rationally.
00:42:58.440
The trouble is, I have to give this to you, because I can't use it myself, because in a way,
00:43:04.540
I'm kind of an artist. Sort of. I mean, I don't even call myself an artist, because even I look at my
00:43:12.280
art and I say, well, I'm not sure that's art with a big A. It's sort of art with a small A.
00:43:17.600
So I can't really use my own comeback, but if you're not involved in art, use it yourself. I
00:43:24.980
won't try to make art if you don't try to think rationally. And without being unkind to artists,
00:43:32.580
I think that there is something like, it's almost like an autism spectrum thing, but different.
00:43:40.000
I saw somebody say that in the comments, but I was going to say that anyway. It's almost like
00:43:44.840
artists are on some kind of their own spectrum, where there's complete rationality and engineering
00:43:50.760
on the right, and then there's a complete lack of rationality, and it's more imagination and stuff
00:43:56.460
on the left. And I don't think that the people on the end of the spectrum who are dealing with
00:44:03.440
imagination, the same as if it's fact, I don't think they should even be in conversations with
00:44:08.460
engineers. What good does that do? What good does it do for an engineer who is strongly in the facts
00:44:18.180
to have a debate with somebody who uses imagination just like it's a fact, like there's no difference?
00:44:25.820
And I don't think they know it. I think they think they're using facts.
00:44:30.880
But yeah, arguing with artists is the least useful thing you can do, unless you're just doing it for fun.
00:44:38.460
All right. There is a story that I want to tell you so badly that I can't. And it's one of the
00:44:51.220
biggest stories I've ever seen, but I can't tell you about it. And I don't know if I ever will.
00:44:59.320
But so one of the strange things about my life is that I sort of got pulled behind the curtain.
00:45:05.560
So you get to see the stuff that's really happening that's not in the news. And once you get enough
00:45:11.700
exposure to the things that are really happening behind the curtain, you're never the same.
00:45:18.380
Like, it's really shocking how different the public's opinion of what has happened or will happen
00:45:24.400
is from any kind of reality. It's just completely separate. You know, most of our political
00:45:29.980
conversations are not even grounded in the base reality. We just don't know it. So behind the
00:45:38.000
curtain, there's some stuff that is just shocking. It's just shocking. Yeah. The reason I can't tell
00:45:46.560
you is part of the story. Right? And I saw some people in the comments trying to guess. You won't
00:45:56.420
be able to guess it. So it's not something you'd be aware of. The whole point of the story is it's
00:46:01.060
something that you don't have any awareness of. That's the story. If I told you, then you would
00:46:07.620
have awareness of it and bad things would happen to me. So I'm not going to tell you.
00:46:13.860
No, not because it's classified. No, it has nothing to do with any like state secrets or anything.
00:46:23.000
Well, I can give you an idea what it's related to. It's related to what you believe.
00:46:28.780
Or what information you have available to you. So let's say it's an information related phenomenon
00:46:34.920
that if you had told me that it was possible to witness what I've witnessed in the past week,
00:46:43.040
I would have said that is not possible. I would have thought that it was just the biggest conspiracy
00:46:49.720
theory until I watched it with my own eyes. Now, it's very rare that you can observe something and
00:46:57.120
know what's really happening. I just happened to be, by weird coincidence, I was put in a position
00:47:02.260
where I could see something clearly. But I don't think anybody else, well, a few people can.
00:47:08.200
There are probably, I don't know, a hundred people in the country who noticed, but they're not talking
00:47:15.020
either. And it's definitely one of the biggest stories in the country. You'll never hear it either.
00:47:22.380
And it probably won't matter. Like, it won't affect you. But it's definitely one of the biggest.
00:47:26.760
Yeah, I know what you're, I'm seeing your guesses in the comments, and I am reading them. And it's not
00:47:33.480
the one you think. So I know you're assuming it's that, but it's something else. It's just huge.
00:47:43.780
All right. No, nothing about angels. That's a good guess, though. I like that guess. Somebody said
00:47:49.880
maybe I saw angels. I love that guess. But that wasn't it. No, not aliens. No, it's just information.
00:47:59.800
Let's just say there's something you believe, not that you believe to be true. How do I say it?
00:48:07.400
So it's not a fake news thing. There's just an information, something disappeared. That's the
00:48:18.800
best I can tell you. It would be as if aliens had landed on Earth, and it didn't make the news.
00:48:27.640
That's how big it is. Literally, it's that big. It would be as if aliens landed on Earth,
00:48:34.060
actually landed on Earth. Yeah. And just so I can call you out, Alex B and some other people,
00:48:42.160
I see your guesses. Trust me, you can't guess it. All right. If it's in the news,
00:48:48.880
some of you have seen some news. If it's in the news, you're already wrong.
00:48:54.940
I'm talking about something that will never be in the news. It will never be in the news. So if you
00:49:01.540
think you know it because you saw a news item, then it's not that.
00:49:04.680
No. Anyway, I shouldn't have teased you about that. But the point is, I just want to give you
00:49:14.060
this general caution that just about everything you think is real in the news has another layer.
00:49:22.320
Doesn't mean that everything you know is wrong, but there's always another layer. And once you've
00:49:27.660
seen enough of those other layers, you're never the same. You're never the same. No, it's not Trump
00:49:32.540
related. All right. That's all I got for now. And I will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye for now.