Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1334 Scott Adams： I'll Change Some of Your Lives For the Better Today. Come Have Coffee and Talk About the News

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody. Come on in. Yeah, it's time. That's right. It's time for coffee with Scott Adams.

00:00:13.640 The best time of the day, even on holiday. And if you'd like to enjoy this to the maximum potential,

00:00:21.440 and I know you do, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tankard chalice or stye and a

00:00:25.520 scanty jug or flask, a vessel of any kind without a hole. Put your beverage in it. I like coffee.

00:00:34.380 Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day that makes everything better.

00:00:39.340 It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to happen right now all over the world. Ready? Go.

00:00:46.660 Oh, excuse me for a moment while I savor it. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good.

00:01:02.300 Well, we've got all kinds of news today. Let's start with the bad news and the good news.

00:01:07.840 The bad news is that rapper DMX is on life support for some kind of an overdose.

00:01:14.040 The good news is I didn't know he was alive. So it turns out that rapper DMX

00:01:21.540 was alive. I was pretty sure he was already dead. But he's on life support from an overdose.

00:01:29.840 Apparently, I just saw the future. But we wish him well and his family.

00:01:34.900 I feel as if this Georgia voting law stuff somehow captured everything in one story. Have you noticed

00:01:46.400 that? You know, you have lots of different stories about politics. But every now and then,

00:01:50.920 there'll just be one story that just sort of combines everything bad into one thing. And it

00:01:56.560 turns out to be the Georgia voting laws. Let's talk about that. So as you know, some corporations are

00:02:02.240 giving them a hard time for changing their voting laws, allegedly, according to the Major League

00:02:07.400 Baseball and Coca-Cola and Delta. These changes in the laws will make it more racist and harder for

00:02:15.960 black people especially to vote and people of color, low income people in particular. Now, this is an 0.95

00:02:23.640 interesting take because the biggest issue is about the requirement for legitimate identification.

00:02:31.360 You would think maybe a basic thing to ask for in an election? Can you identify yourself as a citizen?

00:02:37.000 But no, big companies say that's kind of racist. Yet, the Major League Baseball, as James

00:02:43.680 Hurston pointed out in a tweet, Major League Baseball requires a photo ID to pick up your tickets from

00:02:51.020 Wilcox, but boycotts Georgia for voter ID laws. Now, why does the Major League Baseball require ID to pick

00:03:01.300 up tickets? Why do they do that? Why? What's the point of it? Because if you can just have somebody

00:03:14.220 sign a piece of paper that says, I am who I say I am, why is that not good enough? And

00:03:20.800 who exactly would cheat on Wilcox picking up tickets? Because wouldn't the real person just

00:03:27.540 come in behind them and say, where are my tickets? And then they check and they say, oh,

00:03:33.360 somebody's sitting in your seat. We'll send somebody to get them out of your seat because

00:03:38.000 it's obviously you. So I can't think of literally anything, any process in the world

00:03:45.080 in which you need a photo ID less than picking up tickets where they can check immediately if you're

00:03:53.420 the wrong person. Because for the next three hours, you're sitting in the wrong seat and it's got a

00:03:58.460 number on it and you can just go look and say, hey, you're in the wrong seat. Literally,

00:04:06.540 nothing requires an ID less than picking up Wilcox tickets. Now, of course, you always have to ask

00:04:16.240 yourself, maybe the real reason is just it's easier, right? It might just be easier. You hand them your

00:04:21.580 ID and then they're looking at the name. But if you were to say your name, you'd go up and say,

00:04:27.080 hi, my name is Mr. What? My name is Bob. Can you spell that? Yeah. B-O-B.

00:04:44.460 And every transaction would take 10 minutes. Can you spell that again? I'm looking in the wrong

00:04:52.660 place. Versus here's my ID. You go, ah, Scott Adams. Scott Adams. Here you go. So the point is funny,

00:05:02.460 but I would imagine it has less to do with identification and maybe more to do with it's

00:05:07.820 just faster. That's just a guess. But it's a good point. We have a world in which you need ID for

00:05:13.380 all kinds of things. And they're all less important than voter ID. All right. Do we want

00:05:21.800 a political system in which the corporations run the government directly? Because that's what's

00:05:28.960 happening? It's bad enough that the big corporations have influence. They've got money and donations and

00:05:35.600 they've got lobbyists and stuff. And we're already concerned that big corporations are too involved

00:05:41.240 in making government decisions. But now they're doing it somewhat directly. Just saying we won't do

00:05:48.220 business. We'll boycott if you don't change your laws, et cetera. And you have to ask this question.

00:05:56.280 It's one thing for a company to pursue its own self-interest with donations and lobbying and

00:06:02.900 stuff like that. We kind of accept that. We complain about it, but we kind of accept it. If there's

00:06:07.420 a little bit of transparency, it's better. But do you want them directly to boycott somebody

00:06:13.900 to change a law? I'm not sure we want that government, but we're sliding into it.

00:06:22.280 However, it looks like the corporations may have picked the wrong state to take a stand.

00:06:29.000 And I tweeted this this morning. Out of our 50 states, there are lots of states where you can just

00:06:37.820 kick Republicans all day long. It's like, hey, there's a Republican. Let's go kick him.

00:06:43.000 Anybody want to join me? Yeah, let's go kick the Republican. We'll do it all day long. 1.00

00:06:49.020 I'm not entirely sure Georgia is one of those states, because they seem to be having an attitude

00:06:56.060 about it. They don't like to get kicked. So what we're seeing is a response in which they want to

00:07:03.580 remove the, what is it, the monopoly, I guess there's some special legal rights that the

00:07:11.040 Major League Baseball has. And then the state is saying, well, let's take those away. If you want

00:07:17.300 to play hardball, it works both ways. So the state is actually just going after Major League Baseball.

00:07:23.840 Just take them down. Trump is after them. Of course, Republicans are after them. I have a real

00:07:30.920 question about how many Republicans are going to be drinking Cokes and Diet Cokes this week. 0.98

00:07:37.380 But I think less. I think there will be fewer Republicans drinking Diet Coke. I don't know

00:07:43.700 if that makes a difference to somebody as big as that. But by the way, would you like to know how to

00:07:49.160 quit your Diet Coke or Coke habit? I can tell you how. I did it. And it's easy and hard at the same

00:07:56.660 time. It's easy to know how, but it's about two months that are kind of hard. All you do is only do

00:08:03.980 that one thing. Just stop drinking Diet Coke. Don't try to quit anything else at the same time.

00:08:10.980 Just the one thing. Because if there's only one thing missing in your life, you can distract yourself

00:08:16.360 with other stuff. But you don't want to be going on a diet at the same time you're trying to quit

00:08:21.740 your Diet Coke habit. It's just too much. Just pick that one thing and say, for two months,

00:08:27.040 I won't have a Diet Coke. And what's going to happen? Let me tell you what's going to happen.

00:08:33.000 Yeah, you might drink more coffee. I did that and it helped. Here's what's going to happen.

00:08:38.600 For the first week, you're going to crave that Coke or Diet Coke if you have a habit. I had a really

00:08:44.780 bad habit, 12 a day. But if you wait two months, this is my promise to you. If you wait two months

00:08:57.040 soda will feel disgusting to you in two months. And you'll never want one again. So the hard part

00:09:04.380 is two months. But it's not like cigarettes, I hear. I've never quit cigarettes. But I hear that

00:09:09.100 when you quit cigarettes, you go a long time still wanting one. Is that true? Can anybody confirm

00:09:14.580 that? Whereas the Diet Coke, it actually turns disgusting. The thought of putting what looks like 1.00

00:09:21.840 a science experiment in your mouth? Because it doesn't register even in your mind as food or

00:09:30.040 beverage exactly. It's almost like a lubricant or a chemistry experiment. But boy, when you're hooked

00:09:36.700 on it, it's just the best thing in the world, as I was. So if Coca-Cola would like to play hardball with

00:09:43.820 Georgia, I would like to tell you how to drink less of their product. And it's pretty easy. And by the

00:09:49.860 way, I'm not an expert on the health, the health impact of soda. But I don't think it's going to be

00:09:57.600 positive. Right? I don't have, you know, the data to say that it's negative. A lot of people say that.

00:10:05.300 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

00:10:11.520 saying that. All right. So and then I think Mike Cernovich was pointing out that the county that

00:10:20.040 was going to get a hundred million dollars of, you know, economic benefit from the major league game

00:10:24.660 voted for Biden. So the the county that's hit hardest by the major league baseball pulling out

00:10:31.300 of the all-star game is Democrats and Biden voters. So got what they voted for.

00:10:37.720 Um, I would like to say that this is a weird issue that we're all concerned about, because 0.60

00:10:44.800 in my opinion, baseball is the most useless of all sports. Now, I know, I know some of you love

00:10:52.160 your baseball. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. We're all different, right? So you

00:10:56.940 can like one thing, I could like another. But I would point out that there's a saying in America,

00:11:02.660 I think it's an American saying, that something is so boring, it's like watching grass grow. Have you

00:11:10.140 ever heard that? It's so boring, it's like watching grass grow. Baseball is the only spectator

00:11:17.900 sport in which 99% of the time, that's all you're doing. You're actually just watching a big field

00:11:25.920 where the only thing that's happening is the grass is growing. Now, you can't see it, but it's the

00:11:32.180 only thing happening. So I don't know why people like baseball. I've never understood it. I like

00:11:37.140 playing it. But watching it? Um, it's mostly statistics with uniforms. So the governor of Georgia

00:11:46.660 Georgia, um, points out to, uh, he points out that, uh, New York, he was responding to Schumer,

00:11:57.080 who was giving him a hard time about their voting laws in Georgia. So governor of Georgia,

00:12:01.720 Kemp says New York has nine days of early voting. Georgia has a minimum of 17.

00:12:07.320 It's like, with an additional two Sundays as an option for every county. New York requires an excuse

00:12:15.880 to vote absentee. Georgia's does not. They're lying and they know it, talking about Schumer. Um,

00:12:24.840 now, what does it mean? What does it mean when we're all fighting over a topic where, as far as I can

00:12:33.780 tell, literally none of us understand it? And let me be in the top of that pile. I don't understand

00:12:40.600 the Georgia voting thing. Do you really? Do you really? I mean, we understand the top line of it,

00:12:47.560 right? We understand that, uh, the Democrats are calling it racist because the change will make them

00:12:54.000 less likely to win. So they're lying and saying it's racist, but really they care about winning.

00:12:58.720 The Republicans are saying, no, we're making it fair and secure, but of course they're lying. It's

00:13:04.760 true. It's true. But that's not why they're doing it. They're doing it to win. Now, can the Republicans

00:13:10.880 make rules changes just to win? Well, the Democrats did. It's legal. It's completely legal to change the

00:13:19.520 rules within the laws of the state just to win. The Democrats did it and won the presidency.

00:13:27.040 So the Republicans learned, they learned the rules. Oh, wait, we can just change the rules to give

00:13:34.760 ourselves an advantage and then we can argue some bullshit about why we did it. So let me be really 0.93

00:13:41.840 clear about what's going on. It's Democrats and Republicans lying and then we're acting like that's

00:13:48.980 not happening. They're just both lying. They're both changing the laws to get an advantage for their

00:13:56.120 side. There's no good team here. They're completely disreputable. Both sides, completely

00:14:03.840 non-credible. Now, that said, the Republicans have the stronger argument because security and making

00:14:15.020 Georgia's rules comparable to other states in the same way that they handle security, they have the

00:14:23.600 strongest argument. But they're still lying. You can still be lying and also have the strongest

00:14:30.020 argument. There's no conflict. So they're lying about why they're doing it, but they do have a good

00:14:36.920 argument. So here we are in the public trying to understand these things. And we don't. We don't

00:14:46.380 know the details. Really kind of none of us do. We know we think we do. We know one or two things and

00:14:52.680 we're making our decisions based on that. But we don't really know what's going on there. None of us

00:14:56.740 have read the law or hardly any of us. So we're mostly fighting for things we don't understand and

00:15:03.680 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

00:15:11.820 laws is to obey them. But obey them aggressively. Like just really obey them. Because if you obey a

00:15:20.940 bad law, it breaks the system. And here's an example. I tweeted this morning that I'm coming

00:15:29.500 around to the point of view that requiring identification to do anything in this country

00:15:34.740 is racist for the reason that the voter ID people were arguing against it, give, which is there

00:15:42.240 are more black citizens who have no ID. So that's the claim. I don't have data on that, but that's the

00:15:48.060 claim. But why doesn't that apply to just everything? Why are we limiting that to voter ID? So one of the

00:15:56.520 things that Georgia could do would be to flow some legislation which would require that no company 0.82

00:16:05.820 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

00:16:13.540 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

00:16:19.420 have to have some exceptions if there's some federal thing, right? But you could, but where the state has

00:16:26.860 control, couldn't they say you're not allowed to ask for ID in the bank? And just let the banks

00:16:34.160 argue about it. And you just play it straight. You act like you really mean it and say, no, I think

00:16:42.560 it's kind of racist if you're asking for ID in the bank, because that closes down all the people with no

00:16:47.820 ID. Now, the bank would say, well, but they don't have much money anyway. And I'd say, ho, ho, ho,

00:16:53.120 racist. That's not the point. The point is not how much money they have. The point is you're being a

00:17:00.520 racist. That's the only point. So yeah, forget about the fact that people with no ID don't have 0.79

00:17:06.580 any money to put in the bank. That is beside the point. We're just playing the same rule.

00:17:14.180 Take the same set of rules and say, if it's racist, you just can't do it. It doesn't matter

00:17:20.220 why you're doing it. It doesn't matter that you've got your good reasons. Racist is racist.

00:17:27.400 And that's the beginning and the end of the conversation, right? You can't have a reason.

00:17:33.300 It's just racist. So what would happen if all the banks and Coca-Cola and everybody else

00:17:40.660 just couldn't ask for ID in any context, not even their own employees getting into the building.

00:17:47.960 So let's say that you said it would be illegal for anybody to show an ID, even to get into the

00:17:54.160 building as a visitor. They'd be a little concerned about that. All right. Here's what I'd like to see

00:18:01.380 to fix this whole states having different laws. Of course, the Constitution, I understand, requires

00:18:08.360 that the states are in charge of the elections. So they can kind of do whatever they want,

00:18:14.780 as long as the state itself wants to do it that way. But here's what we should do. We should have

00:18:22.280 a national standard, a federal standard for states that is non-binding. It would do only one thing.

00:18:32.740 It would tell you and I whether any individual state is either below the standard or above it.

00:18:39.860 That's it. So in this case, if Georgia was above the national standard in terms of doing it right,

00:18:47.480 right, you'd say, well, there's nothing to see here. The national standard says do it at least this

00:18:52.680 well. And they did it that well. It's the end of the story. So it would just simplify for the public

00:18:59.060 so that we don't have to look into every state and figure, oh, this one does this way and this one

00:19:04.140 does this way. You just have a national standard and you say, are they above it or below it? And that's

00:19:10.780 it. If they're below it, then everybody gets to criticize it. If they're above it, shut up.

00:19:17.480 But we shouldn't be asked as citizens to analyze every state and figure out, is it more about 0.97

00:19:25.120 security or more about racism? We don't have that capability. Just give us a standard. Make it

00:19:31.040 non-binding. It's just information. And then we wouldn't have this problem. We'd know what we're

00:19:36.060 talking about. If we had a functioning press, and we really don't, I mean, that's not hyperbole,

00:19:43.280 right? At one point that sounded like hyperbole. We don't have a functioning press. But now it's just

00:19:50.140 flat out true. You look at this story and you know. Because the whole country is arguing about

00:19:57.280 these Georgia voting laws, but the press is worthless. They just don't even treat it like

00:20:02.980 it's a factual question. You're not seeing a bunch of analyses of if this change, you know,

00:20:09.980 helps or hurts. Nothing like that. You're just seeing somebody yelling racist and somebody yelling

00:20:15.320 we need voter security. That's it. And none of that is even on point because they're both just

00:20:20.700 trying to win the election. So having no functioning press, it really hurts in these situations. This

00:20:26.440 kind of highlights it. There's a study that declared that AOC is one of the least effective

00:20:32.620 members of Congress, which is interesting. Because the way they measured it was on how much legislation

00:20:39.240 they can all get through. But I don't know if that's the way to measure an AOC. Because I think

00:20:46.920 that her, I think her influence is, you know, the influence on the whole body. It's not a legislative

00:20:54.380 specifics. So I guess she got basically nothing made into law. So she was one of the least effective 0.88

00:21:02.020 in actually changing laws. But I would say one of the most effective in the world, or the country

00:21:08.100 anyway, in getting her message across. So certainly she pushed the Green New Deal and all that stuff. 0.74

00:21:16.060 I've told you before that I now self-identify as a black citizen of America. Now,

00:21:23.840 and I have to say this every time I mention it, it's not a joke. Not a joke. As long as we have

00:21:31.940 the right to self-identify, and I've always agreed with it. I've never disagreed with anybody

00:21:37.140 self-identifying any way they want. I've always been in favor of it. So I'm going to take that same

00:21:42.840 right, if you will. Is it right? Or at least it's an option. And say that I'm a black American,

00:21:50.480 and it has several benefits. Number one is that, you know, I have an affinity for that group for

00:21:56.460 reasons I've described before. But I can also be more useful. Sometimes it's easier to fix things

00:22:03.140 from the inside, right? So what would be the single hardest thing for black America to get done that

00:22:10.440 they also want to get done? Reparations, right? Reparations would be the hardest thing

00:22:16.760 to get done, because there'd be so much resistance. But I think I can help. And the way I'm going to

00:22:25.060 help is by saying, tax the major corporations. But tax them intelligently. Here's why you tax the

00:22:33.180 corporations for reparations. You tax the corporations because they put themselves in a situation

00:22:39.020 where they can't say no. They can't say no. They're trapped being woke. Once they realize that they

00:22:48.920 have to be woke, or their own employees will chew them to death, and the customers will chew them to

00:22:54.100 death, then you just have to propose it, and they're going to have to say yes. If you say, I'm sorry,

00:23:01.580 Amazon.com, did I hear you right? That you're not in favor of reparations? You know, hypothetically,

00:23:07.920 if let's say they decided to oppose it. They can't oppose it. But do you know who can oppose it?

00:23:14.620 You can. I can. Individuals can oppose it all day long, because they're just saying, why should I pay

00:23:21.400 money for your problem? And then you're done. That's a good argument. Why should I pay money for

00:23:28.100 your problem? Are you paying money for my problem? Right? You know, so you have an argument at least.

00:23:33.660 But corporations have no argument. And here's how I would do it. I would say, corporations,

00:23:39.060 you will be required to train anybody black who wants to be trained. That's it. Just, you know, 1.00

00:23:46.720 if you're a big enough company, you'd probably have to limit it to maybe Fortune 500 or something.

00:23:51.580 You just say this. If a black citizen comes in and says, I'd like to be trained for a job in your 0.97

00:23:58.120 company, you have to do it. That's it. That's the whole thing. So every single black person can go 0.99

00:24:03.960 to any corporation and say, you know, I think I'd be good in the warehouse or learning to code or

00:24:10.200 whatever it is that I think I can do. And you have to train me. Reparations. Now, here's the beauty of

00:24:17.440 it. I believe you can make an argument that it pays for itself. I think you could. You couldn't make

00:24:23.960 that argument as easily if individual citizens are paying the taxes for the reparations. Because

00:24:29.300 it's just a harder argument to make. But a corporation training people to work in its own

00:24:35.180 industry might actually pay for itself. And certainly for the economy as a whole, because it would employ

00:24:42.900 more people, blah, blah, blah, blah. So on behalf of my new self-identified group, Black America, I give you

00:24:52.580 this piece of productive work, which is, if you want reparations, tax corporations and do it that way. Make

00:25:01.840 sure that they have to train anybody who asks for it. All right. Here's how to solve the voter

00:25:09.560 identification problem just for the in-person stuff. There might be a way to do it for not in-person

00:25:14.340 too, but it'd be harder. Use the facial recognition app when you're there. But if somebody doesn't have

00:25:24.920 ID, you ask them to sign a document that says they can use the app to determine their ID. So a person

00:25:33.300 comes in, they have no ID. The person working there says, show me your ID. They say, I don't have one.

00:25:38.100 They say, well, you've signed this form that gives me permission to hold up my camera and go,

00:25:43.520 because that's all it takes. It's actually that fast. If you haven't seen, if you've never seen a

00:25:49.000 facial recognition app work, it'll scare the shit out of you. It'll scare the shit out of you. 0.97

00:25:56.980 The first time you see it, I saw one, I saw the app work on me once just as a demo,

00:26:03.280 and it's instant. It's this fast. Click. Oh, you're Scott. It's that fast. You could do that

00:26:14.000 easily without even holding up the line. It's actually faster than showing your ID. The time

00:26:18.800 it takes you to reach in your pocket and take out your wallet and fiddle with it and show your ID

00:26:23.060 ability is about 10 times longer than click. Oh, Scott. So just looking at a comment there that

00:26:37.180 was weird. Okay. So we have the technology that at least in person, you still have the mail and vote

00:26:43.000 issue and let's treat that separate at the moment, but you could solve all of the ID problems just by

00:26:48.460 having people say, yeah, I'll, I'll let you use the facial recognition app on me. Now, everybody who

00:26:54.520 has ID has no risk of the facial recognition. It wouldn't be on all the time. You'd have to agree

00:27:01.180 to it and you wouldn't because you have ID. Now, seriously, tell me what that doesn't solve.

00:27:09.580 Anybody? Normally when I'm reading the comments, as soon as I present an idea, there's all the,

00:27:16.520 all the objections just sort of flowing in. There are no objections. Think about that. Think about

00:27:24.260 the fact the most critical group in the world. I mean, you guys are pretty skeptical, which I like.

00:27:31.420 I like it when you challenge me on the ideas and the facts, but I'm not even seeing a counter

00:27:37.580 argument. I'm just, I'm monitoring the comments as they're going by.

00:27:40.660 Yeah. There, there's literally, literally no argument against that because the technology

00:27:48.740 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. 0.99

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. 0.96

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 0.96

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 0.88

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. 1.00

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. 1.00

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.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 04, 2021

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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