Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1335 Scott Adams： I Fact-Check Politifact, Talk About a Banned Thing, and Maybe Get Cancelled

00:00:00.760 Hey everybody, come on in, come on in, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.

00:00:07.600 Is it the second best part of your day? No, never. It's the first best part of your day.

00:00:14.820 I know, I know, you're probably, some of you are having your first child, getting married,

00:00:20.440 having incredible lovemaking with your spouse. That's almost as good as what you're going to

00:00:26.800 experience now. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tecker, chalice, a stein,

00:00:31.340 a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.

00:00:39.060 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine, you know, the day thing that makes

00:00:42.760 everything better. It's called the simultaneous hip and it's going to happen now. Go.

00:00:48.140 Oh, that was good. I hope yours was as good as mine. You know what I need is a pen. That's what

00:01:00.860 I need. You know, is it just me or, or do you start with good intentions with your pen holder

00:01:08.300 and you say, you know, the kind of pen I need is, is this kind pretty much all the time. And if you

00:01:15.420 wait like a month, pretty soon you've got a back scratcher, you got scissors and 15 of these.

00:01:26.280 Why? How does this happen? I need a better system. And then you start getting mad because

00:01:32.280 there are all jams in there. All right. All set now. Shall we begin? Uh, no, there's no screwjob

00:01:42.340 but I do have a, I do have pliers in my one downstairs. All right. So the good news on

00:01:47.740 vaccinations. Listen to this. More than 54% of Americans 65 and older have been vaccinated,

00:01:55.980 fully vaccinated. So that means two vaccinations. And according to the CDC and more than 75% of that

00:02:04.700 same age group, I've gotten at least one. Those are pretty good, pretty, pretty good numbers.

00:02:13.540 Yes. We're all afraid of the fourth wave. You know, I want to be afraid of that. I want to be,

00:02:22.620 but I just can't believe the news or the science enough to get worried. Are any of you worried?

00:02:29.520 I mean, I, I know the story. I know there's a variant out there. It's affecting children more.

00:02:37.160 It's super spready. Maybe the vaccine doesn't work. Maybe it does. I just can't get worried about it.

00:02:47.200 And I think it's because nothing's credible anymore, right? Doesn't it feel that way? Because,

00:02:52.880 because it's a little too on the nose. I think that's why you're all, you're all feeling that,

00:02:57.240 right? Because when you heard that, you know, we're really getting on top of the,

00:03:02.460 on top of the pandemic and we're beating it back and, you know, maybe the social distancing and the

00:03:07.840 masks and the vaccinations are working, it's working. Wasn't it a little bit predictable

00:03:14.260 that there would be a variant that we have to worry about? Kind of like right on time,

00:03:21.620 exactly when you thought it would happen. Now, that doesn't mean it's not real.

00:03:26.080 I mean, this could be the worst thing in the world for all I know, but we just don't trust it

00:03:33.220 anymore. So I just don't trust it. That's all. If I had to guess, if you said, Scott, make a

00:03:41.280 monetary bet, is the variant going to be like an extra bad thing? Or one of those things we'd look

00:03:48.980 back at and say, well, I guess we thought that would be worse, but it wasn't so bad. I would bet on

00:03:54.660 no big deal. But I hate to say that in public because then people will take fewer precautions.

00:04:01.560 So it's very dangerous. You can see the danger of the fake news. Suppose it's real. What if it's

00:04:09.660 real? And the fake news has primed us to not believe it because we think all the rest of the

00:04:16.420 news is fake? Why wouldn't this be? That would kill a million people. The fake news would kill

00:04:24.440 a million people because they made us all not believe the news. And then when something was

00:04:30.260 real, we didn't believe it. You know, I have a fascinating sort of mental hobby, which is

00:04:36.800 collecting examples of information which cannot be communicated. And there are all different

00:04:43.180 reasons for that. One of the reasons something couldn't be communicated would be, let's say

00:04:47.940 it's a state secret. Let's say it's complicated, so you can explain it, but nobody would understand

00:04:54.540 it. So it's the same as you can't explain it. Right? And there are lots of these weird little

00:05:00.280 examples. Let me give you another one. Suppose you were known as the biggest liar in town,

00:05:07.620 but you happen to notice a real UFO alien visitation. They got out of the ship, they shook hands with

00:05:17.580 you, they gave you a ride in their ship, and you're the only one who saw it. Can you communicate

00:05:24.140 that? No, you can't. It's uncommunicatable because you have no credibility, and nobody else saw it.

00:05:32.400 It just can't be told. I told you the other day, there's a story that I know that I can't tell,

00:05:37.620 it's a different reason. But there are all these weird little categories of things which make

00:05:43.980 information untransmissible. It's just a weird little thing I track. All right.

00:05:54.000 I'm wondering how many of the deaths that are happening now are the real kind. Here's an assumption

00:05:59.700 I make. You know that from the beginning of the pandemic, people were saying, I don't think these

00:06:05.320 deaths are real. I think there's just old people dying who just happen to also have a virus. A lot

00:06:12.140 of people said that. Now, I didn't say that. So I've never been on that team. I've always thought

00:06:17.500 the virus was real. And that, you know, really lots of hundreds of thousands of people are actually

00:06:24.460 legitimately dying with the comorbidity. But I have also been sensitive to the argument that there are

00:06:33.640 financial incentives, or maybe just people are wrong. Maybe there's tests that are wrong, etc. So you would

00:06:40.000 have to assume that even if you took the position, as I do, that it's a real pandemic, really killing

00:06:46.160 people, that there's some portion of this large ball of death that isn't real. Would everybody agree

00:06:54.980 with that? That even if you thought it's a real pandemic, real virus, really killing people,

00:07:00.300 that there's some portion of it. And I won't say what portion. Maybe it's tiny. Maybe it's a little

00:07:07.620 bigger than tiny. That's not real. How many of you would agree with that statement so far? That

00:07:13.900 whatever is real, there's got to be some sliver that's not real, all right? Now, here's the question.

00:07:24.880 How do you know when the big ball of deaths starts decreasing, and it becomes this smaller baseline that

00:07:33.520 just doesn't seem to go down? Is that real? Like, at what point do we get down to just the fake ones?

00:07:42.960 Because the ones you can't get rid of are the fake ones. You could stop all the people dying from the real

00:07:48.880 virus, hypothetically, right? I'm not, we're not near that yet, right? But hypothetically, you could stop all the

00:07:54.840 real people from dying, and you would still report some thin band of deaths permanently that were never

00:08:03.360 real. But what I don't know, is that, you know, three people in the whole country, or is that 500 per

00:08:11.720 day in the whole country? I don't know. I don't think we have a way to know. I would just say keep an eye on

00:08:17.220 that, because I don't know that the deaths need to reach zero for it to be done. Maybe the deaths go from

00:08:25.020 1,000 to, you know, 500, and then we just can't figure out why they never go to zero. You know what I

00:08:31.620 mean? Hey, they just don't seem to go to zero. What's up? What's up with this? And maybe those are

00:08:37.440 the ones that aren't real. Maybe. Just speculating here. Don't take me too seriously on anything

00:08:43.080 medical. That's a good general statement. All right. I see people continually making the following

00:08:52.220 analytical mistake. That in places where they took the mask mandates away, infections kept falling.

00:09:02.080 Now, that's not everywhere. But there are places where definitely they took the mask mandate away,

00:09:08.040 and infections kept falling. What do you conclude from that? That masks made no difference? Because

00:09:15.800 once they were taken away, the infections didn't go up. Would you assume that? Don't assume that. That

00:09:23.680 would be bad analysis, because there are too many variables. There are two times that people would

00:09:29.540 put masks on and take them off. If things were really bad, and you weren't positive that masks help,

00:09:37.980 but you think they probably do, you'd say, add the masks. So you'd be adding masks in an environment

00:09:44.280 when infections are going up. When do you take them away? Well, you don't take them away until

00:09:51.720 infections are going down, probably for other reasons. Vaccinations, summer, herd immunity,

00:09:59.200 the magic thing that makes viruses sometimes burn out that we don't quite understand. But that's when

00:10:04.680 you take the masks away. So what you should see every time is that when you require masks,

00:10:11.820 infections go up. That would be normal. That's why you required them. And when infections are going

00:10:19.340 down so fast, and you're confident that it'll keep going, that's when you say stop wearing masks.

00:10:26.340 Because the other factors are now so big that the masks alone are just not worth the extra,

00:10:32.480 you know, that you don't get enough. What's the saying? The juice isn't worth the squeeze for the

00:10:38.820 extra bit that the masks will get you. So it doesn't mean anything that adding or decreasing masks

00:10:46.740 doesn't show up immediately the way you think it would be in the data. You all get that, right?

00:10:52.940 Because one of the things that I hope is that the people who watch these live streams are just a

00:10:58.060 little bit more analytically clever than the masses, who are not too analytically clever.

00:11:04.000 All right. Rasmussen is reporting. They asked, or in the poll, they asked the question,

00:11:13.100 have race relations gotten better or worse under Biden? What do you think the answers were?

00:11:19.320 Do you think people said that race relations are better or worse under Biden? Remember,

00:11:24.140 that's what he promised us. It was one of the biggest things he promised us was to improve this

00:11:28.520 very thing. Maybe the biggest thing. I would say the biggest thing he promised was this. Well,

00:11:35.080 40% of the country think it's worse, and 22% think things got better. You would not be surprised that

00:11:42.160 things, you know, are by party lines, obviously. But what do you think? What do you think?

00:11:53.080 Yeah, I think it depends how you define it, right? Because I think there are some people saying,

00:11:57.860 well, it got worse for me. I don't know if it got better for somebody else, but it seems like it

00:12:03.220 got worse for me. So I'm not sure you can measure such a thing. But if people believe it got worse,

00:12:10.600 that makes it worse, right? If you think you're unhappy, you're unhappy, aren't you?

00:12:18.700 There's no argument to that, right? If you think you're unhappy, well, nobody can argue against it.

00:12:24.960 You know, I can't tell you, no, you're thinking wrong. You're actually happy, you just don't know

00:12:30.540 it. That's not a thing. So if you think things are worse, I feel like that makes it worse, right?

00:12:37.780 Your mind forms your subjective reality, and for these people, it's worse. So they're living in a

00:12:45.100 world, 40% of the country is living in a world that their subjective view of this world is,

00:12:51.820 it got worse. So that's not so good. And of course, Rasmussen also asked if people thought that Floyd

00:13:01.520 was, the Floyd trial would end with a murder conviction. You would not be surprised that

00:13:07.760 liberals think that Floyd was murdered and that it's clearly going to go that way, and that far

00:13:14.800 fewer conservatives think that. We'll talk about that a little bit, a little bit more on Floyd in a

00:13:20.740 bit. And now it's time to get canceled. In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, I take it to the

00:13:31.100 edge. Yeah, yeah. Taking off the training wheels. I need one more sip. Hold on.

00:13:39.080 And we're going to be flying close to the sun. Are you ready? Are you with me? Who's with me?

00:13:47.280 If I get canceled, you can find me on Locals. But we'll try not to. The topic is Sidney Powell.

00:13:58.020 Sidney Powell. Okay. And the topic is, I saw Dinesh D'Souza did an interview with her on Rumble.

00:14:07.760 Because you know why he did it on Rumble? Because that's where you can do it.

00:14:15.160 They're not going to cancel you on Rumble. So, and why is it that Dinesh, who is himself

00:14:22.600 a controversial character, why is it that he was interviewing Sidney Powell instead of,

00:14:30.160 let's say, you? Or let's say, a podcaster who was subject to less controversy himself.

00:14:37.760 Why is that? Because they'll get canceled. People are afraid. Do you think I would have

00:14:46.100 Sidney Powell on here, on YouTube, and just do an interview with her on YouTube? Nope.

00:14:53.420 Not unless I wanted that to be my last day on YouTube. I think that would be pretty dangerous.

00:14:57.500 So we get our information the only way we can. And I saw an interview with her. And it turns out

00:15:05.600 there's this gigantic piece of fake news about her, according to Sidney Powell. So when you're

00:15:12.720 dealing with lawyers, everything is according to. You can't say what's true or false. You can only say

00:15:18.420 what they're saying. And what she says is that the news that says that her defense in the Dominion

00:15:24.620 lawsuit against her for allegedly saying things untrue. And it was reported everywhere that her 0.99

00:15:32.960 defense would be that nobody should have believed her, that nobody should have taken it seriously.

00:15:39.760 It was just an opinion. And do you know what Sidney Powell says about that? It never happened.

00:15:46.080 It never happened. Nothing like that happened, according to Sidney Powell. She says, that's not

00:15:53.820 my defense. She says, no, I'm absolutely asserting these things to be true. Unambiguously, no doubt

00:16:02.380 about it. I'm telling you. And of course, yep, this is what she's asserting. I'm hoping I don't get

00:16:08.940 canceled because I'm just quoting somebody else. Just quoting somebody else. And she's

00:16:16.060 says, no, there's nothing to that. It's just fake news. Holy cow. Are you kidding me? If somebody

00:16:25.680 hadn't sent that little clip to me, I wouldn't believe that. Because it was, you know, it's a

00:16:31.760 common defense, right? It's just an opinion defense. I kind of thought it was true. But I feel as if,

00:16:39.780 you know, again, you have to be careful when you're, you know, if lawyers are telling you something's

00:16:44.620 true, you have to, you know, use your judgment. Are they just defending themselves? But I don't feel

00:16:50.020 like she would say that so directly if that were not true. I do believe the news would lie. But it's

00:16:58.220 hard to imagine she would say this so directly if she didn't, you know, really know that it's true

00:17:03.660 and believe it's true that she never made that defense. So, yeah, Anne-Marie is, is, Anne-Marie is

00:17:13.080 correctly calling me out for, for pushing that hoax. You are correct, Anne-Marie. I am guilty of

00:17:20.700 believing the fake news. Now, that's happened before. And I, I would apply the same standard to

00:17:27.580 myself that I would apply to you. Same standard, which is, we're all going to get fooled by the

00:17:33.500 fake news. You know, don't beat yourself up over it, right? The best you can do is try to expose

00:17:40.860 yourself to, you know, counter, counter arguments and do the best you can. But none of us are not

00:17:46.060 going to be, none of us are not going to be taken in by fake news. I got taken in by the,

00:17:52.440 the Covington Kids news. That one got me. And I also believe the, the overfeeding the koi fish in

00:18:02.300 Japan one for, you know, 10 minutes until somebody told me the truth. So, yeah, there's nobody who's,

00:18:08.860 nobody who's immune from believing fake news. So, I'm never going to make that claim about myself.

00:18:16.680 That would be ridiculous. And I won't hold you to it either. I just think we should try.

00:18:20.780 You know, we should just try harder. All right. So, here's what I say about the Sidney Powell defense.

00:18:30.760 Knowing now that she is going full out, I'm going to basically prove my claims. This is getting

00:18:39.220 interesting. And now here's the thing you have to ask yourself. Here's the thing to ask yourself.

00:18:44.520 And I've been very curious about this up until now. Sidney Powell, one year ago, was one of the

00:18:54.440 smartest, most capable attorneys in Washington, D.C., according to everybody, right? Am I wrong?

00:19:06.300 Was there anybody saying when she was, when she was defending Flynn, did anybody say, ah, Flynn,

00:19:12.340 poor bastard, you couldn't get a good lawyer? Nobody said that, right? Am I wrong? Fact check me on this,

00:19:19.540 please. But I don't believe anybody said anything except she's the highest level, capable, maybe even

00:19:28.820 a superstar, like even above normal good lawyers. Universally, right? And now a year later,

00:19:37.640 the news has told us that she's a crackpot. She's a big old crackpot. Now, there are two 1.00

00:19:48.960 possibilities. Number one, we've all been wrong for decades. And she only pretended to be really smart 1.00

00:19:58.720 incapable. And I guess it was luck that she keeps winning cases and keeps getting good outcomes and 0.94

00:20:06.320 is able to charge exorbitant amounts, I'm just guessing, for her services. And she's highly in

00:20:12.520 demand. But just in this one case, suddenly, she lost her mind. She became a crazy person. I mean,

00:20:25.260 really just a Q believer, if you will. Did that happen? Which one seems more likely, right? Let's 1.00

00:20:35.760 say, is it more likely that we never understood that all of her career successes were luck? Just

00:20:43.400 luck, right? And I guess we just didn't know it. And she just kept getting lucky for decade after

00:20:49.880 decade. Lucky, lucky, lucky. And we thought it was skill. Maybe. Maybe. And there are also people who

00:21:00.180 were capable that reach a certain age and are no longer capable. That's a thing. Right? That's a

00:21:06.860 thing. JD is saying, you are gullible. Do you think there's somebody who isn't? The moment you think

00:21:16.160 that other people are gullible but you're not, that's where you lose the plot, my friend. So am I

00:21:24.220 gullible? Yes. We don't have the option of not being. That's how your brain is wired. Your brain is

00:21:32.560 wired as a pattern recognition machine that's not very good at it. That's who you are. You don't have

00:21:39.700 the option of not being gullible. We're all gullible. Yeah, you don't get the hall pass to

00:21:46.920 be the not gullible one. Anyway, so do we believe that she suddenly became less competent? Do we

00:21:55.700 believe that she never was, but she was lucky for decades? Or, and I'll just put out another

00:22:02.380 alternative speculative possibility. And I don't know how likely you think this is, but

00:22:10.800 what are the odds that the news is biased? Is that possible? Have you ever seen any evidence

00:22:20.940 of that? Any time the news seemed like it was creating more of a narrative or something? Is

00:22:27.120 that possible? Now, I don't know how this is going to turn out. I've told you that I myself am greatly

00:22:33.420 skeptical, as in really, really skeptical, about the, let's say the Venezuela connection and Chavez and

00:22:41.840 all that. I'm pretty sure that stuff's not real. But there's a lot of other claims which I don't know

00:22:51.200 one way or the other are real. The Chavez stuff, I'm pretty sure that's going to not turn out the

00:22:58.200 way Sidney Powell wants. I also suspect, and I think I said this early, that that might have been

00:23:05.400 intentionally ceded to ruin her argument. In other words, there might be somebody who might have

00:23:12.420 pushed that into the argument to spoil the rest of the argument. Because if there's one part that

00:23:19.740 looks completely garbage, it's easy to say, well, if this part's garbage, why would I believe the

00:23:25.620 rest of it? So one of the ways that you can destroy somebody's credibility is to get them to believe

00:23:30.460 just one thing that's clearly not true. And then once it's part of the larger argument, you're like,

00:23:35.620 well, you know, this one thing wasn't true. Do we believe the rest? So my guess, and this is

00:23:43.800 just speculation, right? You know the difference, just speculation, is that she will prove her case,

00:23:51.720 but not the Venezuela part. That part looks like maybe somebody played a fast one. So that's my

00:23:59.620 prediction. All right. And I will tell you again, my opinion on the election security. I have no

00:24:09.200 evidence that the election was subject to widespread fraud. No evidence. If you're asking me, Scott,

00:24:17.660 do you have evidence that would stand up in court of any kind of widespread fraud? I do not.

00:24:23.880 Nor am I aware of where it would be found. That said, I have also said the following,

00:24:30.140 that I will stand by forever. Because our system is not 100% secure, it might have good hardware,

00:24:40.600 software security. I don't know. It might. But there are humans involved. And wherever you have a lot

00:24:46.540 of humans involved, whether it's Dominion or any other system, you have the possibility that they will

00:24:53.840 be corrupted, either because they're, you know, they have a personal mission or some intelligence

00:25:00.500 agency gets to them, somebody bribes them, lots of different ways. So here's the point. In the short

00:25:06.220 run, it is possible for an election system with all these moving parts, all these entities, all these

00:25:12.460 things that are not transparent. In the short run, it's entirely possible for it to be a fair and free

00:25:17.820 election. Totally possible. In the long run, it's impossible. It's impossible in the long run.

00:25:26.900 Here's why. It's just math, right? Just check the math. Day one, somebody says, I think I'd like to

00:25:34.880 corrupt that system. But what do they do on day one? Day one, there's not much you can do. Day two,

00:25:42.320 I really like to corrupt that system. But what can you do? What do you do? Day two, not much.

00:25:50.960 So day two is pretty safe. Fast forward 15 years. Do you think that intelligence agencies can't get

00:25:59.480 an employee placed in a tech company in 15 years? Do you think that in 15 years, you couldn't find one

00:26:07.440 person to bribe who worked for some company? I'm not talking about Dominion. I'm talking about any

00:26:12.860 company. So in the long run, widespread fraud is guaranteed in a system that looks like ours,

00:26:24.260 just sort of generally. Lots of non-transparency, as somebody's saying. So if you have non-transparency,

00:26:30.120 you have technology involved, and human beings who can be corrupted, who have control of that

00:26:37.440 technology, in the long run, it's guaranteed to be rigged. Guaranteed. Does anybody doubt that

00:26:44.280 statement? That you might have to wait, you know, maybe you wait 100 years, or maybe it's in five

00:26:50.500 years. But in the long run, it's guaranteed. Disagree with me. But give a reason. I'm saying no.

00:27:00.800 I'm saying somebody says there's no doubt. Somebody says no. For the people saying no,

00:27:07.320 what would be the argument? Given that people would have the highest incentive to corrupt it,

00:27:12.600 foreign countries would, Democrats would, Republicans would, the bad operatives would,

00:27:17.960 and human beings can be bought, and every system is corrupted eventually, if it can be.

00:27:23.740 Think about it. Just sort of let that sink in for a while, the ones who are saying no.

00:27:32.380 Just think about that. In the long term, it has to be corrupted. Now, it's the same with our

00:27:37.060 financial system. Our financial system, of course, will be corrupted in the long run,

00:27:43.420 because you'll always have enough people going through the system who are willing to try.

00:27:46.940 Hundreds of people try to corrupt it. They all get caught and go to jail. Somebody's going to get

00:27:52.840 away with it. You only need one. So eventually somebody gets away with everything. They just

00:27:59.040 keep trying until they get it. So this is very much like the slot machine example. Suppose I said to

00:28:07.880 you, here's your situation. You can go play the slot machines for as long as it takes.

00:28:16.940 We'll give you infinity to play the slot machine. Just pull the lever as much as you want.

00:28:21.620 You're going to have to put your own money into it, but you can play it as long as you want. What

00:28:26.200 are your odds of winning? Zero, right? Because in the long run, the machine is designed to take

00:28:33.840 your money. It's only the short run that you could get a jackpot, but the long run, you're always broke.

00:28:39.740 Now, suppose I changed one thing. I'm only going to change one thing. You can still pull the slot

00:28:45.820 machine forever, but you don't have to put any money in. The only thing that can happen is you'll

00:28:51.920 lose or you'll win, but you'll never put any of your own money in. Now, what are the odds that you'll

00:28:56.960 win in the long run? 100%. What are the odds that you'll win on your first poll? Closer to zero.

00:29:06.240 You know, 1%, 5%, whatever it is. But in the long run, it's 100%. The election system with

00:29:14.260 non-transparency and with human beings who can be corrupted, populating it all, is the slot machine

00:29:21.700 that you can pull forever if you're a bad guy and you never have to put your own money into it.

00:29:28.000 You can just keep pulling it forever. If you can pull it forever, the chance of an eventual jackpot

00:29:35.960 is 100%. It's not 99. It's 100%. Right? So once you get the math of this, you realize that Sidney

00:29:44.060 Powell might not be right, but she's right eventually. If she's not right today, she'll be right later.

00:29:51.900 Just wait. Yeah, that'll get me canceled. I guess the Biden administration is offering half a

00:30:00.600 million dollars to improve face mask design. Some are worried that that's a signal that we're going

00:30:07.680 to be wearing face masks for a long time. I'd like to think it's because we're getting ready for the

00:30:12.940 next one. But who knows? I have a face mask design that I would like to suggest. I would like a hose

00:30:25.640 that comes from my face mask, could come out the bottom, such that no air is escaping from my mask

00:30:32.780 area, but rather my breathing is going down the hose. And then the hose, let's say, goes down my pants

00:30:40.040 and it just points to the ground. You know, maybe like a foot off the ground. So that when I'm exhaling,

00:30:49.660 I'm exhaling my virus directly onto the ground, not on a surface above. Now, I'm sure they'll still

00:30:57.420 fly up a little bit. But wouldn't you like to be able to breathe freely through a tube and exhale onto

00:31:05.280 the ground as opposed to exhaling directly into somebody's face? I feel like there's something

00:31:11.720 there. I don't know what it is. I feel like there's something. Now, this would only be for people who

00:31:16.920 are going to wear it all day, right? You know, because you'd have to hook yourself up and stuff.

00:31:20.740 It'd be a pain in the ass. It wouldn't be for casual stuff. But I feel like there's a design there that

00:31:25.740 could be had fairly cheaply. Let's talk about the Floyd trial. So the video evidence of the VOID trial

00:31:37.220 of the Floyd death is obviously the main piece of evidence, or at least is the main thing that will

00:31:43.900 influence people. People said to me, Scott, but there were also witnesses. Well, witnesses talk to you,

00:31:51.780 and then sound goes into your ear, and so you're hearing something from people that you don't know

00:31:58.100 are biased or not. It's evidence, and it could convict you, but it's not the strongest kind.

00:32:05.160 If you had a choice of listening to an eyewitness or looking at the video yourself so that you feel

00:32:11.100 like you're the eyewitness, which of those is stronger? I heard somebody say it, or I saw it on

00:32:17.060 video myself. Well, the video shouldn't be that much stronger, because video can lie. But it does

00:32:25.220 have that effect. You would be way more convinced by seeing a video than just hearing somebody talk

00:32:31.200 about it, because that's how persuasion works. If you see it, you believe it. If you hear about it,

00:32:37.740 you might believe it. Maybe not. So the first thing you need to know is that video will be

00:32:43.800 really the only thing that matters. And so if you think video tells you the truth,

00:32:51.100 you'll probably convict. But here's what I would do if I were the defense, and I'm not sure if this

00:32:58.340 would be allowed, but I'll just put it out there as a persuasion argument, not necessarily a legal one.

00:33:05.080 I would say, you know that video gave you the fine people hoax, the drinking bleach hoax,

00:33:10.540 the Covington kid hoax, and the Trump overfeeding the koi fish in Japan hoax.

00:33:16.520 Every one of them looked exactly like those things were happening, until we learned there was extra

00:33:22.720 context, etc. So I would put video evidence on trial. I would put video evidence on trial.

00:33:31.680 And I would say, if your only evidence is that you saw it with your own eyes on video,

00:33:36.400 video, that's reasonable doubt. Because you know that video can't do that. Video doesn't have the

00:33:43.940 capability of giving you certainty. We know that, because of all these other examples where people

00:33:50.960 thought they were sure, but they were completely wrong. So as long as that's the case, that's just

00:33:56.820 something you know about video evidence. Do you know why lie detectors are not allowed in court as

00:34:03.700 evidence? Because they're unreliable. You want to hear the most controversial thing that you'll ever

00:34:12.000 hear today? If lie detectors are not allowed because they're not dependable, now that doesn't mean

00:34:21.540 they're always wrong, right? The lie detector isn't always wrong. It's just not dependable enough

00:34:27.720 to be in court. Video is the same thing. Video, you could argue, should be banned from court,

00:34:39.680 because it's so unreliable. In fact, I'll bet if you put lie detector up against video, at least the

00:34:48.000 video that, say, is in the political realm, I don't know that the lie detector would perform worse.

00:34:54.300 Do you? Because when you say the lie detector doesn't work, I think that means it doesn't work

00:35:01.860 10 to 20 percent of the time. And we watched right in front of us that the news has served up

00:35:09.680 something like 80 percent hoaxes with nothing but video, right? Now, yeah, I see in the comments

00:35:17.640 somebody saying that this argument wouldn't work in court, and I agree with you. You really can't put

00:35:23.320 video on trial, but it's intellectually, you have to wonder, why not? Why not? I think you could put

00:35:32.340 it on, if logic is all that counted, you could put it on trial. But let's talk about, and so here's what

00:35:45.800 a CNN article says about this. All right, so CNN is talking about there's the Floyd family attorney,

00:35:53.680 this guy named Crump. So he's the attorney for the family, not for Floyd, of course, who is deceased.

00:35:59.880 But this is what CNN reports Crump says, and they don't do a fact check on it, right? They just sort of

00:36:07.520 report. He says this. And he says this. It's going to antagonize them over and over when defense

00:36:15.340 attorneys try to tell them, tell the jury, that is, that Floyd's cause of death was not what they saw

00:36:23.320 on this video, but some trace amount of drugs that was found in his system, Crump said.

00:36:29.240 And to which I said, trace amounts. Now this is CNN. They're a news organization. And here they are

00:36:41.240 quoting the lawyer saying that there were only trace amounts of drugs found in his system. Do you think

00:36:46.940 that CNN had a responsibility to put parenthetically that there might be another argument that there was

00:36:56.100 more than trace, right? In fact, the chief medical examiner said that he had more in his system than

00:37:04.160 you would use for pain management. And indeed, the county's chief medical examiner told prosecutors,

00:37:16.480 so this is a guy who was in charge of the autopsy, the official government person in charge.

00:37:21.760 He told prosecutors that Floyd's fentanyl use was higher than what a chronic pain patient would be

00:37:28.440 on. And then, quote, if he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes,

00:37:36.640 this could be acceptable to call an OD.

00:37:42.780 So according to the medical examiner, the amount in his system would be indicative of an overdose amount

00:37:49.740 if there were no other circumstances. And yet, CNN allows this Crump guy to say, without fact-checking it,

00:37:59.200 that he had trace amounts in his system. You see what's happening here, right? CNN wants,

00:38:07.380 they want the riot. Because it would be so easy to just say, you know, and by the way,

00:38:13.900 here's a link to PolitiFact, and you can see that, you know, there was more than trace amounts.

00:38:21.640 Because this trace amount argument is now what everybody on the left believes is true.

00:38:28.780 And it's not. And if they riot, it'll be because they think, well, it's not because of the drugs in

00:38:36.800 the system that he died, because there were only trace amounts. I watched CNN, and on CNN,

00:38:43.680 they're saying trace amounts. So what am I supposed to believe? Obviously, the cop killed.

00:38:49.340 Right? So CNN is really setting up the country for pretty expensive stuff. Now, I wonder, could you

00:38:57.540 sue a news organization if your business got destroyed in a, based on a hoax from your news

00:39:07.880 organization? If the news reports a hoax, and they know it's a hoax? Because this would be a case

00:39:15.080 where clearly CNN, as an organization, knows that it was not true, that it wasn't trace amounts.

00:39:22.480 They know that. That's facts and record. Or at least they know that the chief examiner said it,

00:39:30.220 which would be also news. So if they go ahead and they create this riot, the way apparently they're

00:39:38.180 doing, quite intentionally, how are they not liable for that? Because it seems, I mean, it's so

00:39:45.900 intentional. I don't know how you can imagine it's not intentional. So let's talk about PolitiFact.

00:39:55.900 So how much do they have in there? So PolitiFact was fact-checking the fact that Floyd had enough

00:40:04.580 fentanyl in his system to have died from it. And they say, no, the autopsy doesn't say George Floyd

00:40:12.700 died of overdose. All right, so we're going to fact-check PolitiFact. So PolitiFact's view is

00:40:19.220 that the autopsy doesn't say Floyd died of overdose. Is that true or false? True. It's true. So, so far,

00:40:28.100 PolitiFact is true. And they did report the exact words from this Baker guy. So, so far,

00:40:37.880 they're good, right? So far, they're good. They did show the counterpoint that this guy said there

00:40:43.680 was more than trace amounts. And it's true that the coroner labeled it as a homicide. Do you know

00:40:52.460 what a homicide is? Do you know the definition of a homicide? Homicide is intentionally killing

00:40:58.480 somebody. So the, the intentionally part is built into the definition. That's not optional.

00:41:04.280 Homicide is intentionally killing people. So the, the medical examiner ruled that it was homicide.

00:41:13.360 How do you interpret that? Why are we having a trial? If, if the coroner has ruled it homicide,

00:41:21.840 what's the point of a trial? It's homicide. We just give him the penalty. Because there's ruled a

00:41:28.760 homicide, right? You all understand that, right? It's this, these are, this is the most scientific,

00:41:35.140 credible, exactly the group that should be looking into it. And they've said it's a homicide.

00:41:40.440 Why do you even have the trial? Well, I'm no expert on this stuff, but I'll tell you what I think.

00:41:47.280 I think that the way the system works is that the medical examiners give you a preliminary opinion,

00:41:54.240 but it's an opinion. And that it's the trial that digs in and finds out if that opinion holds or

00:42:02.140 doesn't hold and, and who it was that killed them, not just that they were killed. Right? Does that

00:42:08.120 sound right? Fact check me on this. If there's some lawyers out there, maybe I'm missing a nuance or

00:42:13.040 two. But how amazingly prejudicial is it if you're on the jury and you hear the evidence that the

00:42:21.380 examiner called it homicide? You're kind of done, aren't you? Do you think that the average person in

00:42:28.760 the jury understands this distinction? That when the coroner calls it homicide, that doesn't mean it's

00:42:34.900 homicide. That's just their best opinion at the moment before you've looked into it. That's a big

00:42:40.720 difference. Right? So, but let me read again what Baker said. He was the chief examiner, right?

00:42:51.620 He said, if you were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable

00:42:59.040 to be called an OD. So what he's saying is that if there are other apparent causes that would mitigate

00:43:06.660 your opinion or, you know, that would soften your opinion that it was an OD and you would look to those

00:43:12.180 other circumstances. So what are they? What are the, what are the other circumstances that the coroner's

00:43:17.920 looking at? So he's looking at the body and he's saying that the body, if that's the only thing you

00:43:25.580 looked at, he would have ruled it an OD. Right? That's what he's saying. But he's saying, but there's other

00:43:32.480 evidence. So I'm looking at the whole story, which he should, right? There's nothing about that. He

00:43:37.980 should look at the whole story. But then what is the other stuff? It's really just the video, isn't it?

00:43:43.900 It's the video. So did the coroner look at the body and determine that it was homicide because of

00:43:51.140 the body or because of the video. Well, it's hard to know. But as I read what PolitiFact says,

00:44:03.420 quoting Baker, the way I read it, and again, this is an interpretation, is that he based the result

00:44:11.000 of the autopsy on the video. I think he's saying that. I mean, I would ask him for clarification.

00:44:21.140 If it were me. But that's what it looks like. It looks like the body alone would have said it's

00:44:26.940 an OD. It's the video that makes it not an OD. He kind of did an autopsy on the video. And the video

00:44:36.520 isn't reliable. So did we even get a medical opinion? I don't believe this is a medical opinion.

00:44:44.760 I believe this is an opinion of a guy who saw a video, just like you and I. What, what,

00:44:51.040 what advantage did the doctor have when he looked at the video that you and I don't have after,

00:44:56.520 you know, hearing some things about neck compression and stuff like that? Now, keep in mind that they

00:45:00.700 didn't find any bruises on the neck. So that's part of it too. All right. So here's the part.

00:45:08.120 The, um, in order for the examiners to say it's homicide, they have to say it's deliberate.

00:45:14.780 And somebody on Twitter said to me, it's reasonably good question. They said, Scott,

00:45:21.840 he had his neck, his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes while people were saying, you know,

00:45:32.260 hey, he's not breathing. And people were complaining and stuff. How much more obvious could it be?

00:45:37.280 Nine minutes. How much more obvious could it be that he deliberately killed him? Well, here's my

00:45:45.700 counterpoint. If you were a police officer and you were in, let's say, uh, a decision where you had to

00:45:53.520 make a quick decision, like just a second to make a decision and you, and you kill somebody, would you 0.65

00:46:01.000 say, um, that you deliberately murdered them? Or maybe it was just the heat of the moment. It's hard

00:46:06.040 to tell them it might've been a mistake. But if you go nine minutes, would we all agree that whatever

00:46:13.340 the police officer was thinking, that it was deliberate? In other words, he wasn't doing

00:46:19.720 anything quite in the heat of the moment. Nine minutes is a really long time. So there was no

00:46:25.300 heat of the moment involved. Whatever he was doing, he thought about and he employed and he kept

00:46:32.420 looking at it and thinking about it and employing it. So it was definitely deliberate. Would you all

00:46:37.900 agree with that? That whatever he was trying to do was a result of thinking about it and then doing

00:46:44.040 it. It wasn't something he found out later he had accidentally done, right? Now, if you were a

00:46:50.340 police officer and there were a crowd of spectators watching you in a public place, of course, they have

00:46:56.520 their phones out and they seem quite concerned about the way you're treating him. Do you think

00:47:01.800 that the police officer said to himself, you know, you know, what would be a good thing to do here

00:47:06.560 would be to deliberately kill this man for no good reason over nine minutes, really, really make it

00:47:15.900 last in front of witnesses who have video. Does that sound right? Is that something that somebody

00:47:25.300 deliberately does? Would you? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are Derek Chauvin, Chauvin, whatever.

00:47:34.240 You're watching the crowd. You kill a man over nine minutes, slowly. You slowly murder a man in front

00:47:43.380 of a crowd of witnesses who are filming you. You did that intentionally? I would argue that the

00:47:51.640 existence of the crowd and Chauvin being very aware of it because they're right there interacting with

00:47:56.460 him, I would say that guarantees it wasn't deliberate. It guarantees he wasn't thinking

00:48:02.320 that because there's no evidence he's an irrational person, right? Nobody say he's crazy. There wasn't any

00:48:09.620 evidence that he was so mad he was doing something out of, you know, some irrational reason. He looked

00:48:14.720 like he was a police officer doing a police thing. I don't think you could have better evidence that it

00:48:21.020 wasn't deliberate. What could be more evidence than the fact that Hugh Chauvin would have been

00:48:27.440 destroying his own life slowly over nine minutes in front of a bunch of witnesses? Who does that?

00:48:36.040 In the history of the world, will any rational person destroy their own life in front of a crowd,

00:48:42.600 slowly, even while the crowd is telling them they're doing it, and they're filming it? No.

00:48:49.980 So somebody at the comments is saying that I'm mind reading. What I'm doing is saying that

00:48:56.260 there's a more likely explanation, right? So the least likely explanation, so leaving the mind reading,

00:49:05.800 because mind reading would say I'm sure of it, right? Let's bring it back to statistical likelihood

00:49:11.040 to get down the mind reading. Statistically, if he had to guess, and there are two theories.

00:49:17.940 One theory is that he intentionally slowly murdered somebody for no apparent reason, no motive,

00:49:25.500 right in front of a crowd of witnesses. That's one possibility. Or he simply wasn't aware that the

00:49:32.800 danger was this high, and it fooled him just like everybody else, which is more likely. Again,

00:49:41.040 can't read his mind. But if you're the coroner, or the examiner, if you're the medical examiner,

00:49:48.780 what would cause you to think that he did that intentionally? That's only one of the two

00:49:53.860 possibilities, and it's the fucking stupid one, isn't it? It's the stupid one. The other one makes

00:50:01.480 perfect sense. They didn't know it was happening. Of course you do it in front of a crowd. You don't even

00:50:06.240 know you're doing it. He probably thought he was doing a great job. He probably thought this crowd

00:50:10.700 thinks I'm really handling this situation. What would you think? If you were in that situation,

00:50:17.000 you'd probably think you were doing okay. All right.

00:50:25.860 So one of the comments that I get a lot, especially since I've been talking about politics more often

00:50:31.140 than in my earlier career, is a comment I got today. Somebody said, I don't know what happened

00:50:38.000 to him talking about me on Twitter. Dilbert made my work life at the cubicle farm more bearable

00:50:45.040 with his sympathy for workers over management. Then something happened, and he's been losing ground

00:50:53.000 intellectually ever since. Now, I get this comment a lot. People say, Scott, you used to be smart,

00:51:00.060 but now you lost it. Something going on. Something made you all dumb. Seriously, who calls me at this time

00:51:09.260 of day? Now, I would give you the Sidney Powell defense. Is it more likely that I suddenly became dumb,

00:51:22.140 or is there maybe something else going on here? And of course, I told you that the ground news people

00:51:30.100 have an app where you can see if somebody has brain damage. They don't call it that. They just say it's

00:51:36.360 an app that shows you what kind of news you consume, if you consume mostly the left or mostly news on the

00:51:42.760 right or something balanced. And a user named Ask Amy S ran, the person who said this about me ran

00:51:53.060 their account through the ground news app and found out that they consume 77% left-leaning news. And

00:52:01.300 the funny thing is that it shows the top three influencers of this account. And one of the top

00:52:05.960 three is Aaron Rupar. Now, what's funny about that is that Rupar's last name has actually literally

00:52:13.200 become synonymous with fake news. To get Rupar'd is to have somebody give you a video that's misleading

00:52:21.380 because it's out of context. So one of her biggest three influencers is literally somebody

00:52:26.820 synonymous with fake news by definition. Um, and so I offered this, uh, this explanation. I tweeted

00:52:37.680 back and I said, what happened is you got dumber. The fake news did that. Uh, so I don't blame you

00:52:43.360 personally. And then I said, I'm completely serious by the way. That's literally what happened. Science

00:52:48.080 supports it. The silo news people get dumber. That's literally what happened. Somebody was

00:52:55.060 so badly Rupar'd by listening to left-leaning news that they got brain damage. According to science,

00:53:03.380 I'm using the word brain damage because scientists used it. I didn't make that up. And that, you know,

00:53:09.460 consuming the news, the fake news on either side exclusively, doesn't matter if it's just the

00:53:14.540 right or just the left, makes you stupid. So the science, the science actually indicates it makes

00:53:20.620 you stupid. So that's what happened. So consider the two possibilities. I was smart for about 55 years

00:53:30.820 and then I got dumb all of a sudden, but yet I still do smart things in other realms. So it's weird

00:53:38.780 that I just got this weird little stupidity just in this right time. Maybe, maybe it's like pocket

00:53:46.800 stupidity that only just affects this one thing. Maybe. Can't rule it out. Or science says if you

00:53:55.060 consume too much of one type of news, you just can't see the world clearly anymore. Maybe that's

00:54:00.460 what's happening. All right. Some fact checking. Two claims that I've made that got fact checked.

00:54:09.200 Number one, I said that nobody intentionally takes fentanyl, that it ends up in counterfeit drugs and

00:54:16.980 you take it accidentally. That was hyperbole, meaning that I was aware that there are people

00:54:24.160 who are high-end addicts, very experienced, who will get fentanyl. It's cheap, but they also,

00:54:30.340 I'm told, learn how to take it without dying. The really, you know, serious addicts with the needles.

00:54:38.260 My reference, my hyperbolic reference, and of course they know they're getting it and they

00:54:43.800 have a risk. My reference was people take pills. Now I should have, I should have specified I meant

00:54:49.980 pills. I was talking about the Floyd situation. He had pills apparently. And there's some indication

00:54:55.960 unconfirmed that he may have popped some of pills in his mouth so they didn't get caught with him.

00:55:02.080 Now, if you knew that the pills in your possession had fentanyl in them, would you throw the last two or

00:55:08.200 three in your mouth? I don't know if he did that. I'm just asking you hypothetically. Would you throw

00:55:12.200 any more of it in your mouth if you knew it were fentanyl? Well, maybe. People will do anything.

00:55:18.800 But, and especially if you're already high, you're not making good decisions. But what I do know about it

00:55:25.620 is that a lot of people who think they're getting Xanax or bars or something end up with fentanyl.

00:55:30.540 It's more dangerous than they think they die. Now, so some experts were getting on me by saying

00:55:39.220 that, you idiot, don't you know that people do know they're buying fentanyl in many cases? To 0.77

00:55:47.240 which I say, you're completely correct. You're completely correct. They do know that. And I

00:55:53.100 also do that. Because I'd heard long explanations about people who inject it will sit in a chair

00:56:01.460 with their head back because the real danger from fentanyl is that you pass out and your head goes

00:56:07.300 forward and you cut off your own air supply without waking up. So that's one of the main ways that

00:56:13.820 people die. And then if you're an addict, you know to avoid that specific danger. And so you're much

00:56:19.740 safer than the average person. Now, the other thing that the, by the way, the coroner said is

00:56:24.400 that Floyd had a heart problem. That seems pretty important. Yeah, and of course, if you're, if it's

00:56:36.660 prescribed to you, of course, of course. So that's my first fact check. The second one is that I've

00:56:47.100 claimed a number of times that overweight people are super spreaders. Now, I base that on some science

00:56:54.200 I saw, but I've been fact checked on that by Andres Backhouse, who is my data conscience. And he says

00:57:04.640 that that's not, I don't know the details, but apparently he's not, he's not convinced that the

00:57:09.640 science says that overweight people are super spreaders, or more likely to be. To which I say,

00:57:16.060 I'm always willing to believe that the data, that the data is wrong, or that the science isn't

00:57:21.720 confirmed. So that part, that part's fine. But here's the question. Is there any way that they

00:57:27.260 couldn't be super spreaders? I mean, really? Now, I would certainly believe that some thin people

00:57:34.380 could also be super spreaders. I'm not saying they're off the conversation. But just imagine holding

00:57:42.260 your head, Andre the Giant, I'll just do the extremes, right? Andre the Giant weighs, I don't

00:57:48.620 know, 350 pounds when he was alive, versus a 100 pound person. They both get COVID. Which one becomes

00:57:58.580 more of a spreader? Well, I would say that if the 100 pound person and the 350 pound person, let's say

00:58:07.520 he's not an athlete. I won't use Andre the Giant, because he was actually an athlete. So, but let's

00:58:12.300 say it's just an average overweight person. And they both walk up the stairs. Which one is exhaling

00:58:19.800 more air? Just walking up the stairs. Do we need science to know that? I feel like if you're

00:58:28.140 overweight, you're going to be breathing heavier, aren't you? All things being equal.

00:58:31.960 Then what about the real estate of your actual lungs? If you're a giant person versus a tiny

00:58:42.060 person, don't your lungs just have more real estate to be infected? Do you need science

00:58:49.120 to know that there would be more viral concentration if there's just more stuff to get infected?

00:58:55.400 You know, obviously science could find out that our common sense isn't telling us the

00:59:01.640 right thing. It happens all the time. But I feel it just feels sort of obvious when you

00:59:08.940 look at all the elements that the larger you are, the more of a super spreader you're going

00:59:13.760 to be. And if that largeness is largely overweight largeness, not just physical largeness, I don't

00:59:21.520 know how they could not be putting out more stuff. Now, as Andres pointed out, we don't

00:59:27.900 see a lot of overweight people at super spreader events. But there aren't that many super spreader

00:59:33.500 events. I was thinking that the spread had more to do with people who come into your house,

00:59:39.240 actually. So I don't know what your house looks like. But I'll bet there's not a lot of

00:59:45.600 mask wearing inside your house, is there? Even when your friends and family come, you

00:59:51.520 are you? Are you all wearing your mask inside your house when your friends stop by? You

00:59:58.100 know, even these days? I don't know. I think most infections are happening in homes. I saw

01:00:03.300 there was a statistic about that at one point that suggested it. So I don't think that they

01:00:09.140 have to go to a rave to be super spreaders. I think the super spreader in this case would

01:00:13.840 be one here, one here, one here, one here. So they might have infected 10 people, but one

01:00:19.040 at a time. Who knows? And then the other counter argument is that if you are overweight, maybe

01:00:25.580 your symptoms hospitalize you faster and take you out of the mix, so you're not mingling

01:00:31.000 with the public. Maybe that's part of it, too. But somebody says that's not a super spreader.

01:00:38.240 Right. So if using the word super spreader would be technically incorrect, but it could be a person

01:00:44.820 who spread it to a whole bunch of people. If you don't want to call that a super spreader,

01:00:49.980 that's fine. But if one person gives it to a bunch of people... Oh, Andre the Giant was

01:00:57.480 520 pounds, somebody says. All right. Somebody says more to do with fats and lipids. Does it?

01:01:08.760 Somebody says, I don't have ulcers, but I'm a carrier. All right. Yeah, the one with the

01:01:21.880 bigger lung capacity, who also is the sickest, would be spreading the most, you would think.

01:01:29.140 But I'm open to the fact that that's not fully demonstrated by science. So that's all for today.

01:01:35.940 And I will talk to you tomorrow if I don't get canceled today. If I don't, we'll see. See you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 05, 2021

Episode 1335 Scott Adams： I Fact-Check Politifact, Talk About a Banned Thing, and Maybe Get Cancelled

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