Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1349 Scott Adams： I Use Ari Cohn's Tweets to Teach You How to Spot Bad Thinking, Vaccine Misinformation Wars, More

00:00:00.000 hey everybody good morning all of you it's great to see you you know I have to say that although

00:00:13.800 I do monetize my channel I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it sort of

00:00:19.660 at that point in my life where I don't really have to do anything if I don't want to and I look

00:00:25.300 forward to this every day it's actually literally if you don't count the time I spend with my wife

00:00:31.800 this is the best thing I do all day I actually enjoy this more than anything else that I've done

00:00:38.200 for a long time but if you'd like to enjoy it to your maximum ability all you need is a cup or a

00:00:43.540 mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein a canteen jug or flask of a vessel of any kind fill it with

00:00:47.760 your favorite liquid I like coffee join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine hit

00:00:55.180 of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip and if you haven't

00:01:00.880 tried it oh I feel sorry for you today's the day go

00:01:04.520 well I'd like to start with the good news the good news is America has achieved air superiority

00:01:19.040 on Mars oh yeah on Mars so we actually we I'm taking credit for anything that America does right

00:01:29.220 well we just put a drone on Mars the drone's been there but they did a test flight short test flight

00:01:36.360 and for the first time in the history of the universe human beings flew a spacecraft in the atmosphere of

00:01:47.160 Mars now do you think it's a big deal that America is first to get air superiority I mean not really

00:01:55.740 but we're heading in that direction where we would control the skies over Mars it's probably a big deal

00:02:04.020 whoever has control of you know of the airspace and Mars someday 50 years 75 years from now whenever it

00:02:14.640 really comes to matter it's gonna matter a lot it's gonna matter a lot so I think we're this is

00:02:21.640 probably one of the most if you add this plus what you know Elon Musk is doing these are the most

00:02:28.180 important things for the future of the country if you're looking at the the 50 year mark it's not

00:02:35.520 climate change as big a deal as climate change is or is not controlling space and being dominant in

00:02:43.520 space in the long run is everything because whoever controls that will control the wealth

00:02:49.160 because there are trillions of dollars of you know rare rare minerals up there and asteroids and stuff

00:02:54.580 but whoever has the the superior airspace just controls the ground if we don't get if we don't get a 50 year

00:03:02.740 head start on that it's gonna be trouble China's gonna own space all right but we're doing a good job on

00:03:08.740 that so good work American technology people

00:03:13.660 Rasmussen will be reporting a little later this morning that 48% of likely voters say withdrawing US troops

00:03:22.660 from Afghanistan is a good idea how would we know how does the public know anything about whether it's a good

00:03:33.420 idea to remove troops from Afghanistan now I certainly favorite so if you ask me you know

00:03:40.220 what do I think we should do I say yes let's let's get rid of our troops but how confident am I that

00:03:47.480 that's the right decision and what would I base that on do I base that on all my secret intel about what

00:03:54.900 the Taliban are up to I don't really have any secret stuff so you end up defaulting to really a

00:04:04.240 a reasonable but knowledge free opinion because if you don't really know what's going on over there

00:04:13.000 and how many of us do really do you understand what is the current feeling of Pakistan's leadership

00:04:19.460 about the Taliban and you know is the Taliban changed over time any of that we don't know any

00:04:25.740 of that but I think it's a fairly good rule that if you can't articulate a good reason for being there

00:04:34.000 you kind of have to get out right so we can't articulate anymore any reason to be there at least

00:04:40.940 not one that seems convincing so yes I would say that America is um wise to do this and I do give

00:04:49.380 Biden credit I would have given Trump credit he would have done the same thing I think um so yeah

00:04:55.760 good job um Biden getting us out of there and by the way maybe it takes a Joe Biden to get this done

00:05:03.120 right have I told you a million times that there's no such thing as a good president

00:05:08.180 and there's no such thing as a bad president there are only presidents who are suited for the

00:05:15.780 challenges that happen to be going on at the moment so a good war president would be useless during

00:05:20.980 peacetime and vice versa so it could be that just because Biden is less controversial that he could

00:05:30.980 get the last of the troops out a little bit easier than Trump could because it's just automatic

00:05:35.600 you know automatic against him for that so it's possible Biden was exactly the right person for

00:05:41.000 this specific task don't know um in the same way that I believe Trump was exactly the right president

00:05:48.160 for the Middle East for North Korea just certain people fit in certain situations um Chris Cuomo

00:05:56.900 uh I don't know why it's so fun to talk about Chris Cuomo there's something about him where he projects

00:06:07.940 maximum sincerity while a lot of observers are observing minimum sincerity so there's something about

00:06:18.500 the disconnect between the sincerity that he projects I mean it looks real on screen if he were just a judge

00:06:26.460 you know he how he operates uh in his job he's good at his job I think he's very good at his job actually

00:06:34.720 that's why he still has his job but uh there is something that triggers people about him I get it

00:06:42.420 I know I know what it is but I can't put my finger on it uh but he said that uh the only way there'll be

00:06:47.880 fewer police shootings of the or police killings of the uh Chauvin Floyd kind I suppose that's what we're talking

00:06:56.280 about uh even though that wasn't a shooting uh he says that only will happen when white people uh when more

00:07:04.500 white people are killed by police so Chris Cuomo thinks that more white people killed by police would

00:07:11.980 get white people more interested in solving this problem well as many people pointed out twice as

00:07:19.500 many white people are killed by police but not a but it's a smaller percentage of the population

00:07:25.080 so fewer as a percentage of white people get shot but twice as many of them um so I'm not sure that

00:07:33.220 the data is going to give us a solution to this but I would like to point out this I've never met a

00:07:41.420 white person who celebrated a criminal who resisted arrest and got killed by police have you I mean maybe

00:07:52.580 there is one but I can't think of one is there any case you've ever heard of in which white people

00:07:58.100 rallied around the victim when the victim caused his own demise by resisting arrest

00:08:05.300 do you know what I say about white people who get killed by the police resisting arrest

00:08:11.500 good for police all right does anybody even disagree with that is it is there anybody here who identifies

00:08:21.500 as white who says uh who says we really want to celebrate the victim the person who caused the

00:08:28.600 problem in the first place I don't think I've ever seen that in my whole life and so as Candace Owens

00:08:36.880 has wisely pointed out trying to be helpful to the black community and I genuinely think she's

00:08:43.860 trying to be helpful and says really helpful things it's just hard to get the message across

00:08:48.460 and the message is if you have bad strategy you're gonna get a bad result do you know what's a bad

00:08:56.320 strategy listen to Candace Owens she says it as clearly as you can it's a bad strategy to try to you know

00:09:03.500 raise the situation for whatever group of people you're talking about in this case black americans if

00:09:09.960 you're trying to improve their situation don't make heroes out of criminals that's never going to work

00:09:17.200 so you should adopt a strategy that you observe working and I observe that white people of course

00:09:26.180 nobody everybody's different right when you say white people it doesn't mean everybody's acting

00:09:30.220 the same with every group um and I think you're smart enough to know that I don't have to say it every

00:09:35.280 time but I feel like it's just a better strategy to demonize your criminals and to celebrate your

00:09:43.440 police who kill them am I wrong isn't that obviously a better strategy for improving the lot of whatever

00:09:52.600 people you want to improve I mean to me that's so glaringly obvious that I'm surprised anybody would

00:10:00.400 disagree well we have Maxine Waters going the full hypocrite and calling for more protesting slash

00:10:08.020 wink wink violence um especially if the Chauvin case has an acquittal now of course uh Kevin McCarthy

00:10:19.500 and other Republicans Ted Cruz etc lots of people are quite rightly pushing back on Maxine Waters and

00:10:25.780 saying hey that's the same thing you blamed President Trump for you said Trump was getting

00:10:32.180 people all riled up to go protest and obviously it turned into violence and therefore if you're going

00:10:38.980 to blame Trump you're going to have to blame yourself Maxine Waters so I don't know if there's ever

00:10:45.840 been a clearer case of bad behavior than whatever it is that Maxine Waters is doing right now

00:10:52.100 I think she needs to lose her job if there's any way that Congress can can get rid of her because

00:11:00.440 anybody who's an elected official who's calling for unrest um I feel like maybe they're just not in the

00:11:11.960 right job right and should she call for unrest and then there is unrest and I guess there was a you know

00:11:19.200 a shooting like right after that I feel as if the the phrase blood on your hands is pretty pretty

00:11:26.640 accurate in this case now keep in mind that I'm being consistent because I criticized Trump for not

00:11:33.240 doing enough to stop the uh stop the rioting at the Capitol and I'm criticizing Maxine Waters for

00:11:40.500 effectively you know blundering into the same space so at least I'm being consistent right I could be

00:11:47.780 right or I could be wrong but at least I'm on the same side in both cases doesn't matter what your

00:11:52.840 what your uh party is um but here's where this is heading so take this story about Maxine Waters who

00:12:03.380 says basically there's going to be rioting if Chauvin is acquitted if you're the jury and you know that

00:12:12.020 acquitting acquitting means you cause riots does that affect your judgment it should right because

00:12:21.740 you're a human being the whole point of a a jury trial is that the idea is that American citizens

00:12:28.980 can use their judgment on top of the law but it's always on top of the law right there's the law and we

00:12:38.780 all revere it but the reason it's humans who make the final decisions is that we all agree that we'd

00:12:46.400 rather have a human make the decision or a group of them who are reasonable right so if I'm a reasonable

00:12:53.760 human I am definitely affected by the the possibility that I could spark a riot by my decision in the trial

00:13:01.860 how would I not be affected by that I'd have to be an idiot not to be affected by that

00:13:06.580 so let's keep that in mind that's just one thing now apparently we heard that an expert witness

00:13:13.700 for the defense a place he used to live and people thought he still lived there

00:13:19.300 was assaulted by people who put pig blood and a pig's head I guess on the porch or something

00:13:25.640 so some poor person who bought that house became the victim of a mob and they had nothing to do with

00:13:31.760 anything right they just found a dead pig head on their on their porch and pig blood on their house

00:13:37.880 which is pretty nasty now again I don't know if the jury has a way to hear news do you can somebody

00:13:45.680 tell me uh what level of um sequestering the jury is is experiencing I keep looking for that I thought

00:13:56.040 it would be like an or maybe we don't know that yet because they're not sequestered or yeah they would

00:14:01.100 have to be sequestered already right so somebody clear me up on that I don't have either the legal

00:14:07.600 knowledge or the background of the case they are not sequestered somebody says they go home

00:14:12.740 so all right let's let's say that uh oh there was no sequestration until today

00:14:20.540 it was denied sequestered over the weekend people are telling me all right so there's some some question

00:14:29.060 about what kind of sequestering there is but it seems to me as long as they have electronic devices

00:14:35.820 it's not really a thing is it do you think the courts are monitoring their digital access

00:14:41.620 that's not a thing is it can somebody tell me if that is a thing because I don't think it is

00:14:48.380 it seems like that would be illegal if so if the jurors have their digital devices it doesn't matter

00:14:54.680 where they are it doesn't how can you sequester somebody unless you take away their access and

00:15:01.380 there's no way that would be legal it couldn't possibly be legal to take somebody's phone away

00:15:07.200 from them for weeks could it or digital access so can we all agree that there's no such thing as

00:15:15.320 sequestering in the modern world does anybody disagree with that because I don't want to make

00:15:20.840 that assumption yet but I'm gonna let me start with us I don't think there's any such thing as

00:15:26.540 keeping the information from the jury so let's assume that whatever sequestration happens it's porous

00:15:33.460 and stuff is getting through that's fair right are we all on the same page that the jury definitely

00:15:39.800 knows what's going on everybody I think we're all on the same page right so if you knew about the

00:15:47.500 pig head for the guy who was just an expert he was just an expert doing his job and he gets a pig head

00:15:54.880 and then Max Whedon Waters is calling for violence and then you're seeing all manner of

00:15:59.680 you know suggestion that there would be violence and threats and how would you handle this if you were

00:16:06.320 the jury what would you do could you vote to acquit him I don't think you could because if you're the

00:16:16.760 jury and you vote 12 to nothing to acquit let's say on all charges very unlikely but let's say you did

00:16:23.340 well that would cause violence so one thing that's out of the question if you want to avoid violence it's

00:16:30.920 out of the question to acquit him of everything it's just out of the question at least three powerful

00:16:37.800 lawyers who actually know criminal defense have said in public out loud with no pushback this case

00:16:46.540 will probably not be decided on the facts or the law it will probably be decided on public opinion and

00:16:55.760 influence and just how we feel about the whole situation maybe politics and all that stuff but

00:17:01.780 there's probably an 80 chance that this cop is being tried for being white and being a cop

00:17:07.200 hear that clearly officer chauvin may or may not be guilty of crimes for which he should be punished

00:17:18.040 it's hard for me to tell as a layperson but separate from what he did or did not do that would be

00:17:23.660 illegal or illegal that's not what the trial is about according to lawyers this is not even my

00:17:29.980 own opinion this is people who know way more than I do they say he's on trial for being a white cop

00:17:36.220 in 2021 and we're okay with that are you okay with that he's on trial for his fucking race

00:17:45.220 for all practical purposes like on paper it's about a crime and there's a process but in reality

00:17:53.340 according to the people who know again this is not some some whack idea I came up with on my own

00:17:59.260 people who understand this space like Alan Dershowitz types you know Robert Barnes people really know this

00:18:06.780 stuff they say it's not going to be decided on the facts well what's left if it's not going to be

00:18:13.480 decided on the facts it's not going to be decided on the law what the fuck is left his race and his

00:18:22.240 occupation right so he's not exactly being tried for being white he's not exactly being tried for

00:18:29.340 being a cop but he is being tried for being a white cop in in 2021 that's really what it's about

00:18:36.380 and we're just sitting here watching this like that's fucking okay it's not it's not okay it's

00:18:45.380 not okay at all and of course can I say that without a bunch of idiots coming in and saying

00:18:51.220 oh well you're supporting a racist killer of course not somebody will come in and say Scott how can you

00:18:58.760 support a racist killer I'm not I'm supporting a system which should be giving all people a

00:19:06.800 presumption of innocence and a fair trial and nothing like that's happening it's happening right in front

00:19:12.720 of us we all see it we all see it and we're letting it happen right in front of us we should be ashamed

00:19:21.980 you should actually be ashamed we're like really ashamed that you're letting this happen right in

00:19:30.100 front of you with no no pushback at all well here's an idea from twitter user happy hammer and she suggested

00:19:39.860 this by tweet she said the jury should vote guilty and send a note to the judge explaining that they

00:19:46.160 are not following the law or the facts but protecting their families from a violent mob

00:19:51.600 the judge should affirm the verdict and say he's doing so only to protect himself and his family from

00:19:58.560 the mob now I don't quite buy into this exact suggestion but I'm going to modify it a little bit so

00:20:05.820 I'm going to take this as a have you ever heard me use the phrase the bad idea is always useful

00:20:12.420 because it suggests the good idea right so I would call this a really productive bad idea

00:20:17.760 because it makes you think differently and then maybe you can come up with a good idea here's what

00:20:23.480 I consider a good idea if I were on this jury and none of this is a joke none of this is slightly

00:20:29.820 hyperbole this is literally absolutely positively 100% what I would do if I were on this jury

00:20:38.200 I would convince the rest of the jurors and it wouldn't be hard that we would vote guilty on all points

00:20:45.340 with no deliberation and we would include a note that said we did it for our own our own safety with no

00:20:53.540 regard to the facts of the case and I would give the judge and the public you have to give it to

00:20:59.500 the media or else nobody knows you say yeah we voted guilty on all counts without deliberation

00:21:05.060 and we did it to protect our families there you go and do you know what I would add to the end of

00:21:11.940 the note fuck you judge fuck you for putting us in this situation fuck you judge for risking our lives

00:21:22.220 for fucking nothing because at the end of this are we going to have a trial which people trust

00:21:30.360 and a system that we we we value no it's going to be worse the result of this judge

00:21:41.020 is to make the system worse if if this goes through to some kind of a you know normal result

00:21:48.880 the system will be worse the credibility of the system will be worse there will be a tremendous

00:21:55.300 violation of justice independent of whether Chauvin did something that should be punished

00:22:03.200 not even talking about that I'm talking about the fact that if you punish him for being a white cop in

00:22:08.540 2021 which is what's happening you haven't even talked about whether you committed a crime

00:22:14.080 I'd like to talk about that right we should all be talking about whether that was a crime

00:22:19.740 really important but that's not what he's being tried for in any practical sense

00:22:24.980 so yes if I were on that jury uh there's no way in hell that I would let them convict or not

00:22:33.400 convict in any like normal way I would tear the room apart before I let that happen I mean mentally

00:22:40.520 tear it apart not physically and um and I I could get the 11 other 11 jurors to go with that and by

00:22:49.380 the way how hard would it be how hard would it be for me specifically me to convince 11 jurors

00:22:57.000 to to go with this plan do you think I could do it

00:23:02.680 yeah of course I could yeah because people will vote for their own self-interest

00:23:09.440 and then I would just reframe it and saying forget about the trial

00:23:13.680 the judge just absolutely fucked you and your family if you want the judge to fuck you

00:23:21.800 and your family and you don't want to protect your family do whatever the fuck you want

00:23:27.740 but it's not going to happen to me so uh you know join the side of the people protecting their families

00:23:35.000 and don't be part of a corrupt system that makes everything worse

00:23:38.580 right they can retry this in a smarter way and you can force them to do it now keep in mind

00:23:45.720 uh it's about the system right it's so it's got to be about the system you got to protect the system

00:23:54.200 if it's a good system and I am so in favor of our laws being decided by a jury of our peers

00:24:01.380 and I would hope that my peers the jury in this trial would try to figure out what's right

00:24:09.780 not what the law says because if the only thing they're looking at is the law

00:24:16.280 first of all we don't believe it you know we don't believe that that's what they would do

00:24:21.000 but they need to they need to look at what's good for the public and what's good for their families

00:24:26.020 and I support the jury for walking out even you know I I would even consider walking out

00:24:32.180 if you put me on that jury the day that I heard that the expert witness got a dead pig on his

00:24:38.020 on his uh porch here here's what would happen your honor for you know the court would open up

00:24:44.880 and I'd raise my hand and the jury and the judge would say this isn't the time for talking to the jury

00:24:50.380 and then I would say well if you don't talk to me I'll be leaving right now because I can't be

00:24:57.200 physically constrained so the judge is going to say okay okay say what you need to say and I would say

00:25:03.060 look people are already being attacked for their opinions on this case today's my last day

00:25:09.140 what do we need to do to make this civilized because today is my last day as a juror

00:25:15.140 what would happen that would be the end of the case wouldn't it I mean maybe they replace me

00:25:21.500 but the next person should be smart and say um if he if he got away with that and this guy just said

00:25:28.520 I'm done today and I'm going home I'm going to do it too I'm pretty sure I could take down the

00:25:34.460 whole trial I don't think it would be hard and it should happen remember I told you yesterday that

00:25:42.140 I was a little bit suspicious this is not an allegation all right so I don't want to get sued

00:25:47.460 so I'm making no allegations in this next piece I'm simply saying speculatively and hypothetically

00:25:55.500 based on the things you know from your own experience do big companies ever lie about

00:26:02.060 their competition to get an edge has that ever happened in the real world yes yes big companies

00:26:10.600 do lie about other companies and sometimes you don't know where that lie came from because it

00:26:17.100 might have worked its way through the media and then you think a reporter said something bad about

00:26:22.100 the competition but it really came from the other company who was trying to kill their competition

00:26:27.520 now you get that that's the real world right and I suggested that maybe and again this is not an

00:26:34.720 accusation I'm just saying we live in a world where you have to consider this that when the j&j

00:26:40.300 of vaccination the one that was uh if it did not have dangerous side effects that we don't know yet

00:26:47.240 but if it did not have it was clearly the best one because you only needed one of them and it was

00:26:53.240 based on the established technology that we'd feel a little safer with because we've used it before

00:26:58.400 all right so coincidentally this news comes out about these exotic blood clots that only affect the best

00:27:07.740 one and i said what are the odds that it legitimately the best one the one you only need one of and

00:27:17.260 standard technology and also i guess it's easy it's stable so it's easier to ship and it's been just

00:27:23.420 better in every way what are the odds that the best one is the only one that had these exotic side

00:27:28.160 effects and i said you have to at least be open to the possibility that there's something bad happening

00:27:35.100 in the background some competitor or maybe even an investor doesn't even have to be one of the

00:27:40.680 companies could be just an investor trying to change things up get an advantage and if you thought to

00:27:47.340 yourself when you heard that i don't think big established companies would do something like that

00:27:52.520 right and then big company wouldn't do that would they well here's the news today apparently j&j

00:28:00.360 has said in public that the their competitors also have uh blood clot problems except that

00:28:10.300 there's no evidence of that

00:28:12.700 so j&j a big pharmaceutical company just said in public right with no ambiguity they said it in public

00:28:23.320 that their competitors have these these problems that there is no data to support that that actually

00:28:30.260 exists so if you're wondering could it be that the competitors just hypothetically i don't

00:28:36.260 have any evidence of this but could they be the type of people who would be in a situation to say

00:28:42.660 something bad and untrue about j&j well we just watched j&j say something in public clearly

00:28:52.100 untrue bad about their competitors so yes this happens um let me tell you my current thinking about

00:29:03.120 vaccines if i can i'm going to hold out for the j&j vaccination so the one that's getting the most heat

00:29:11.820 is the one i'm most interested in right now because number one i don't trust the criticisms

00:29:18.060 i think they could be economically motivated don't know right there's no evidence of it

00:29:23.780 let me be clear i've seen no fact to support that suspicion it's just an industry in which

00:29:30.780 this just happens all the time and we're watching it we're watching it right in front of us

00:29:35.540 happening right now so you don't even have to wonder if it's a thing it's happening

00:29:40.960 so um if we get to the point where the j&j thing becomes uh back on the market even if it's only

00:29:49.740 for you know men because maybe it's safer for men uh we don't know yet i i think i would take that one

00:29:56.260 i feel like that's the one i want if only because it's one shot as and i think it doesn't knock you

00:30:02.180 out like the other ones do after the second shot all right here's an interesting story and i don't know

00:30:08.220 what to make of it yet and i'm gonna i'm gonna hold my opinion gavin newsom is uh bragging and maybe

00:30:16.100 he's right maybe he's right now context here i live in california i've been fairly brutal in my

00:30:23.240 um in my criticism of our governor but if he did something right i would like to call it out i just

00:30:31.500 don't know so let me run it by you so um the reporting is that the governor in the state of

00:30:38.320 new york used the pandemic as an excuse to do something really fast for the homeless

00:30:46.060 and what they did now and i know when you first hear this this sounds like the worst idea you've ever

00:30:52.880 heard so just um suspend your criticism until until i finish because when i get to the end it's going

00:31:01.480 to look like a better idea than when i start because at the beginning it looks like the dumbest idea

00:31:06.260 you've ever heard which is they bought up a bunch of hotels and moved all the the homeless people into

00:31:12.380 hotels now part of it was for a covid separation but part of it was they wanted to put the homeless

00:31:19.280 somewhere now many of you are uh more trained in understanding the news than the general public

00:31:27.440 how many of you are thinking right now scott you're solving the wrong problem with california's

00:31:33.520 it's not a homeless problem it's a mental health and addiction problem and even if you give everybody

00:31:39.880 a home they're not going to want to be in it because they got mental health problems or whatever

00:31:44.920 and addictions and who knows and they couldn't take care of it and blah blah blah whatever you think

00:31:50.160 but um these are paired with the social services so you're putting a bunch of homeless people in one

00:31:58.180 place and of course environments do affect people we're very programmed by the physical environment

00:32:05.360 so could people who are in the worst situation mentally let's say could they be helped by simply

00:32:12.060 having a cleaner safer physical environment i'd say yes i mean if they could stay there and you know if

00:32:18.860 they can work with it yes it helps your uh it helps your mental situation but the real the real key to

00:32:26.440 this is the quality i think of these social services that would be paired with the facilities that have a

00:32:33.480 lot of homeless now i don't know how much this costs you know it was like pushing a billion dollars to

00:32:40.220 buy the hotels then how many billions is it going to cost every year for the social services etc

00:32:45.060 but i'm going to suspend my criticism of this because when you add the fact that they're adding the

00:32:52.500 social services to the combining them in one place you might have something so i'm going to say let's find out

00:33:01.720 right uh who is it who's uh how did i get out of nexium that's a strange question okay i was never in

00:33:12.440 it um let's find out let's find out if this experiment works um i mean i'm skeptical but let's find out if

00:33:21.080 it works if it does credit him if it doesn't well not surprised all right um i made a tweet yesterday

00:33:29.260 that caused a little problem with uh one person in particular uh re cohn you might know him as a

00:33:36.780 first amendment and defamation lawyer that you see on msnbc and i don't know cnn or wherever i'm not

00:33:43.040 sure he's on one of those left-leading networks and i'll tell you the tweet i made i talked about this

00:33:49.520 yesterday and then i'll tell you his uh his response to it and see if we can find the cognitive dissonance

00:33:56.140 all right now most of you if you've been following me for a while have been trained in

00:34:02.220 identifying fake news and trained in critical thinking far more than the average of the public

00:34:09.260 so i think you'll be able to spot this pretty quickly all right so starting with my tweets so

00:34:15.280 here's my tweet one way to eliminate police shootings during traffic stops is to allow only

00:34:21.960 and only is important here uh uber-like self-driving cars and no other cars in urban areas if a perp is

00:34:31.380 uh in one of those police can override its controls lock in the perp and make it drive to police

00:34:38.040 headquarters for safe handling all right now first of all let me put on your reading comprehension hats

00:34:45.720 all right reading comprehension forget about the quality of the ideas there reading comprehension

00:34:53.440 um do both of these ideas because there's sort of two ideas in there do they seem similarly serious

00:35:03.340 to you so the first idea is that if you had self-driving cars only and they were not owned by

00:35:09.840 individuals rather they were owned by say an uber-like company that you would eliminate all traffic stops

00:35:16.500 and therefore no problems could happen because nobody would ever be stopped there would never be a

00:35:22.820 reason to stop a car in which the car's movement is controlled by a company so you might give a ticket

00:35:31.000 to the company but you would never have a reason to stop an individual in a uber-like self-driving car

00:35:37.520 so the first part of it is serious which is self-driving cars are coming if you did it right

00:35:43.360 you could eliminate a whole bunch of potential problems does anybody disagree with that now

00:35:49.340 you might disagree whether it will ever be practical to have self-driving cars all right i think if you

00:35:56.280 got rid of the other cars on the road it becomes a lot easier right it's only self-driving cars they can

00:36:01.720 be networked to each other even if one goes bad the other cars will know it because they're networked and

00:36:06.880 they would know to avoid it and stuff so so i think it's inevitable that there will be self-driving

00:36:13.560 cars it's not inevitable that they'll be owned by one company and networked together but that's that's

00:36:21.240 what i'm saying could be a solution all right so the first part of the tweet i think is you should

00:36:26.240 have taken it as completely serious saying that we have a self-solving problem the problem of police

00:36:33.740 stops will solve itself if we did nothing it would just take 20 years or whatever it is and we could

00:36:40.520 we could probably accelerate that the second part of the tweet is that if a purpose is is in one of

00:36:47.960 those self-driving cars the police can override its controls lock in the perp and make it drive to

00:36:53.920 police headquarters for safe handling all right reading comprehension was that a serious suggestion

00:37:02.160 in the comments did you take that as a serious suggestion or or tell me how you did take it i won't

00:37:09.760 leave the witness tell me how your reading comprehension took that now somebody says satire

00:37:16.100 no it's not satire um but by nowhere you're basically trying to say it's not serious but i wouldn't use

00:37:23.940 the word satire somebody says it's a joke well i wouldn't call it a joke i would say it's whimsical

00:37:30.980 meaning that it is kind of funny but that wasn't the purpose so i didn't write it because i had a good

00:37:39.240 punchline um somebody said a thought experiment you're getting close all right i already primed

00:37:48.000 you early so i i wondered if the priming would help it's the bad idea i just told you that

00:37:55.460 on another topic right and i've told you a number of times uh these broadcasts there's nothing more

00:38:01.860 useful than a creative bad idea because the bad idea makes you think well well that won't work sure

00:38:10.600 that's a bad idea but what if you modified it a little bit are you ready let's take the bad idea

00:38:16.260 and see if we can modify it so it actually work here's a modification instead of driving it

00:38:26.100 automatically to the police suppose uh there's facial recognition which there probably would be

00:38:33.560 you get into your your car and the car knows who you are and it knows you have an arrest warrant

00:38:38.020 and a little message comes on it says you have two choices you can go nowhere or you can drive to the

00:38:46.160 police department uh to a secure area that's got concrete walls and the door closes behind you

00:38:52.480 and the police will just keep you in there as long as you want you'd like to stay in there a couple

00:38:57.100 days and not surrender that's okay just stay there we don't care it's completely safe you can't get out

00:39:04.160 and it's concrete walls so you could certainly wait until you could get the person down safely

00:39:10.920 so there's certainly no possibility that is more dangerous than a traffic stop if if they drove to a

00:39:18.400 secure place with concrete walls and blah blah so the first thing is don't assume it's being

00:39:23.120 implemented in the worst possible way that's the dumbest way to read anything is okay let's assume

00:39:30.660 that the idea has as a base assumption that we'll implement it in the worst possible way there's no such

00:39:38.060 thing as a good idea that still works if you implement it in the worst possible way so how about assuming

00:39:44.300 you don't do that how about assuming that you work through the problems and you figure out what works

00:39:49.920 and what doesn't so um certainly if you gave the person the the option of driving to the police uh and

00:39:58.900 and essentially uh surrendering or it doesn't go anywhere is that more dangerous than our current

00:40:06.860 situation it feels like it's less dangerous right and it's just a little bit of modification

00:40:12.700 to the bad idea the bad idea is that the car just takes you to the police station whether you like

00:40:17.920 it or not right that would be the bad idea but it's easy to take that and then tweak it a little bit

00:40:23.500 and say all right well what if you just got one option it's the only place it'll take you

00:40:27.900 otherwise you're gonna have to work out your problems all right but let's let's see how uh

00:40:33.820 re cone uh dealt with this so after reading my tweet this is what re said and keep in mind he's the

00:40:40.240 lawyer he says sure what kind of legal problem could there possibly be with an automatic arrest for

00:40:47.740 traffic stops if the cop feels like it and then parenthetically read you're not white

00:40:54.800 and then he goes on but on a more fundamental level just what kind of traffic stop are cops going to be

00:41:02.280 doing on self-driving cars

00:41:04.800 and then he ended by characterizing me as and i quote fucking dumb

00:41:12.240 well let's pull apart re's uh analysis so first of all he says what kind of legal problems could

00:41:21.480 there be with an automatic arrest for traffic stops the idea is there are no traffic stops

00:41:29.920 so re's criticism of huh how about we eliminate the possibility of any traffic stops because there

00:41:39.580 wouldn't be any reason to stop a self-driving car that was owned by an uber-like company because who

00:41:44.980 are you going to give the ticket to uber the programmer the person in the car is completely innocent they

00:41:51.440 didn't have any choice so re first of all doesn't understand that there would be no scenario in which you

00:41:58.820 would give a ticket to the driver because there is no driver of a self-driving car all right so first of all

00:42:07.860 complete lack of understanding of a simple concept and then he takes this to the cops in rereading this

00:42:17.500 what could possibly go wrong if the cops you know arrest you because they feel like it read you're not white

00:42:23.780 to which i said how did this become racial

00:42:28.480 what what part of my idea even suggested in any way that there would be a racial component but

00:42:38.100 re's problem is that the cops would be sitting there with their remote control and they'd see like

00:42:43.160 white white people go by in cars and remember every car is obeying the law because they're self-driving

00:42:50.580 cars none of them are breaking the law but in ari's reading the cop would be sitting there

00:42:57.060 white driver good white driver white driver white driver black driver bump black driver got him and

00:43:04.960 then the car would be taken over by the police but only the black drivers because you know police are

00:43:10.340 racist and then they would make only the black drivers drive to the police department and surrender

00:43:14.940 themselves now what would they be surrendering for well apparently no crime they would be

00:43:21.660 surrendering for being black in a self-driving car according to ari cone that was his interpretation

00:43:29.980 of where this would go

00:43:31.420 ari you do understand that the problem we're trying to fix is that there's a concern that the police are

00:43:42.460 targeting people of color that's the current situation that's the part we're trying to not do

00:43:50.220 that's the part that goes away that the police wouldn't have any reason to target anybody they wouldn't even

00:43:57.260 be there they wouldn't even have a reason all right so that was his insightful uh and and keep in mind that he

00:44:08.300 he he capped it off by calling me fucking dumb all right um so how was i going to respond to this

00:44:17.420 now keep in mind that uh yesterday i told you before before anybody was even blowing this up on twitter

00:44:24.220 i told you that i wasn't completely serious or i said you shouldn't take me that too seriously

00:44:30.940 the part about the car drives to the police department you heard that right yesterday i said before any of this

00:44:37.740 happened i said don't take that part too seriously that's more just a thought experiment right now

00:44:43.260 somebody pointed out and this is a good point what if there's an armed person in one of these cars

00:44:48.620 and what if they try to escape the car by shooting the window out that'd be pretty bad for people around

00:44:53.980 there yeah that's a problem yeah if you if you actually forced the person not to be able to get out of

00:45:01.500 the car under any circumstance and drove them to the police department that would be a problem so

00:45:07.100 just don't do that just give them a choice of going to the police department or i can't go anywhere

00:45:13.260 that's all and you're done now it wouldn't be more dangerous than police stopping somebody who has a

00:45:19.820 at least who is close to being able to pull a trigger i mean you don't want the police to be

00:45:24.860 stopping them so it's better almost anything is better than what's happening now

00:45:28.380 all right but here's the trap suppose i had responded to ari and saying ari you're taking

00:45:35.340 seriously part of a tweet you should not take that seriously i don't do i don't design products on twitter

00:45:44.060 twitter is just sort of you know top of that idea see where it goes and but here's the trap do you see

00:45:52.620 the trap because he asked me to defend myself but what would happen if i had what would happen if my

00:46:00.860 response to him saying my idea is fucking dumb what if i'd said oh you took the tweet seriously it wasn't

00:46:07.820 meant to be taken at that level of seriousness what would have happened do you see the trap

00:46:13.500 the trap is yeah the trap is i lose it was a trap so the trap was that if i'd said ari you're taking

00:46:23.980 me seriously when this shouldn't be taken as like a product design everybody would have jumped in and

00:46:32.140 said oh nice try scott you got caught you said something stupid and now you're trying to defend

00:46:39.500 it as not that serious oh it's just a joke i get it it's just satire ha ha ha ha ha gotcha we gotcha

00:46:48.620 we gotcha backpedaling and we gotcha being stupid two that's two crimes one is being stupid and the

00:46:54.940 other is lying about it and saying you were just joking gotcha gotcha so i knew that so having lots of

00:47:02.700 experience in uh media stuff i could see the trap forming so what do you do how do you avoid the trap

00:47:13.500 so here's how i tried to do it not so sure i uh did it well um

00:47:20.460 i uh i just retweeted him and i said uh that uh i'd let the commenters go first and and let the

00:47:27.420 commenters clear him up so my best play was to let the other people who were watching the conversation

00:47:36.380 come in and say that they understood without me telling them that that wasn't to be taken seriously

00:47:43.100 which it did so lots of people poured in and said uh i don't think you're supposed to take that part too

00:47:48.220 seriously which was the correct interpretation so once other people had said they read it differently

00:47:57.500 then finally i can come in but if i came in first it would look like i primed the other people and

00:48:02.780 they were just agreeing with me so i had to have other people go first and then i could go in you

00:48:07.180 do you get that this is you know living in the in the media and in the public as i do you learn these

00:48:15.740 to see these traps before they form all right so here's how it went so um i let other people uh

00:48:22.860 comment and then re commented this he said uh uh so what you're saying is you can't defend your own idea

00:48:29.900 lol uh have i ever taught you how to spot cognitive dissonance it's in that book right behind me win

00:48:39.660 bigly i think i also put it in loser think but it's definitely in win bigly and the trick is

00:48:45.580 this when somebody starts a sentence with so and then they mischaracterize your opinion after that

00:48:54.780 um that's cognitive dissonance pretty much every time now i can't say it's a hundred percent but i

00:49:02.540 haven't seen an exception every time you see a sentence in this form starts with the word so

00:49:09.260 and is followed by some weird absolute that's a person who's been triggered literally into a

00:49:14.700 condition of cognitive dissonance now you have to look for the trigger all right there's no

00:49:19.580 cognitive dissonance without a trigger there has to be something that causes it it doesn't just sort

00:49:23.900 of happen and here the trigger is very obvious the trigger is that he had committed to calling me

00:49:29.980 fucking dumb in public and then when people poured into the comments and told them that they read it

00:49:36.460 properly and that a proper reading would remove the objections what's he going to do what do you do

00:49:45.260 if you're a public lawyer and your job is to be smart in public that's his job he's on tv being smart in

00:49:53.820 public that's why he's hired and then you find out that you are really really dumb in public that's the trigger

00:50:01.420 so the trigger is he can't um and this would be any person like you put any normal person in the same

00:50:08.300 situation they would be triggered exactly the same way so this is not a comment about uh re cone

00:50:16.060 this is a universal comment anybody in this situation would have his exact experience which is you can't

00:50:22.620 integrate that my entire job and identity is being smart in public but i just did something so amazingly

00:50:30.540 dumb in public like like really dumb those can't be reconciled so when that happens cognitive dissonance

00:50:38.300 comes in to explain how two opposites i'm very smart but i just did something very dumb how that can be

00:50:45.100 integrated and the integration is lol you can't defend yourself can you scott well he didn't see part

00:50:53.820 two which is first i have to let the commenters show him that a a wiser reading of the words

00:51:00.380 gives you a different uh outcome all right so just to show that other people saw it uh differently

00:51:07.580 than ari here are some other replies david uh gilly replied he said to ari where did scott say anything

00:51:14.540 about an automatic arrest waiting waiting we'll we'll be waiting for through infinity for this answer yes

00:51:22.140 correct there was uh there was a little too much red into that then uh an engineer jd christione

00:51:31.340 says i'd imagine they would need a warrant for an automatic arrest still and to be honest i'd much

00:51:36.540 prefer having a self-driving car take me to a police station compared to having my door kicked in

00:51:41.580 and my house trashed all while my neighbors are watching now what did this this commenter who is an

00:51:49.020 engineer and maybe he watches my content what did he do correctly what he did correctly was compare it

00:51:57.660 to the alternative what do i talk about all the time you can't judge anything until you've compared

00:52:04.300 it to an alternative so he did he compared it to the alternative right that's good thinking now you

00:52:12.700 could disagree with this conclusion but not the fact that he compared it to an alternative so that's just

00:52:17.340 smart um then somebody else said uh i guess uh j sinsa texts whoever that is they pretty much can do

00:52:25.900 the former now meaning just you know stop anybody they want for any reason and the whole point is that

00:52:32.460 there wouldn't be a cause for any traffic traffic stops so another another people are agreeing that they

00:52:37.420 they see it the same way um blah blah blah and uh okay so the other thing that people do when they see this

00:52:48.940 kind of thing is that they imagine it would be designed in the worst possible way i think i mentioned that

00:52:54.300 and uh that would be a case of uh joe utchill i think he's a he's a reporter and he commented he said uh

00:53:04.060 just to make me look extra stupid he put some dots in this he goes the dot dot dot dot the driver still

00:53:12.860 needs to exit the car at some point scott i mean the driver still has to exit the car

00:53:23.340 but this is an example of assuming you would design the dumbest possible system you would make sure if

00:53:29.980 you did this at all you'd make sure that it went to a safe place so that when the person exited the

00:53:34.380 car it's the safest possible way to exit the car but yeah they have to exit the car one is a dumb way

00:53:41.980 one is a smart way why would you assume you design it the dumb way all right um here's another uh

00:53:50.700 criticism since less than one percent of traffic stops result in harm it's a needless policy

00:53:57.500 policy so a notorious legal somebody who has some kind of legal background believes that it's a waste

00:54:05.580 of time trying to fix this you know problem of police stopping people because uh less than one

00:54:13.500 percent of traffic stops result in harm to which i say well that might be true i mean somewhere in that

00:54:19.980 neighborhood less than one percent probably but those are the ones that cause the riots the one

00:54:27.100 percent that cause the harm are a hundred percent of the riots it's a hundred percent of the racist

00:54:34.780 animosity so how bad could you be a math to look at this traffic stops and ignore the riots that are

00:54:44.060 destroying the country together anyway um and i'm pretty sure that um because i agree black lives matter

00:54:54.620 i'm pretty sure that stopping one percent of the problematic traffic stops to stop a hundred percent

00:55:01.180 of the riots is a positive thing all right um and then here's my favorite have i told you that

00:55:08.700 uh about half of the news is based on imaginary people all right here's another one that's just

00:55:14.300 based on an imaginary person so some user called uh uh sir food a lot is weighing in with this

00:55:23.020 conversation that says on twitter um uh why are these uh f nuts he swears perfectly fine with the

00:55:32.700 government taking control of your car but won't wear an effing mask so here this twitter user believes

00:55:40.300 there's a person who is perfectly fine with the government controlling your self-driving car

00:55:46.140 but they won't wear a mask who is that he's really mad about the imaginary people it's not me

00:55:55.180 that doesn't describe me uh all right the uh and the kyle rittenhouse case you all know kyle

00:56:02.060 shot two people in what looked like self-defense but he's gonna be on trial for murder and um there

00:56:08.620 was a gofundme and the news came out that i guess the the list of donors leaked and one of them was a

00:56:16.700 utah paramedic so he donated to the defense fund for kyle rittenhouse and it was like 10 bucks

00:56:23.340 right just small donation and the guardian wrote about it and the next thing you know

00:56:28.460 um a reporter shows up at his house this utah paramedic to try to shame him i guess i mean

00:56:38.940 on the surface it was news but why are you going to this guy's house he gave ten dollars he gave ten

00:56:46.620 dollars to something that he thought was supporting justice and this guy needs to be dragged through the

00:56:54.300 news we're going to make a victim out of this utah paramedic paramedics save lives he's this guy's not

00:57:04.380 a jerk he's a guy who looked at the video just like all of us did he reached an opinion made a free

00:57:12.380 person's decision to put some of his money behind his opinion and then the news is going to take him

00:57:17.660 down for that this is the most disgusting uh unethical immoral thing you'll ever see in the news

00:57:26.380 i mean really truly disgusting all right here's something that made me laugh a lot uh especially

00:57:32.220 lately uh james lindsey uh also known as conceptual james sometimes on uh on twitter um i believe he has

00:57:42.220 done some or said some controversial things which i'm not fully informed on so i'm not i'm not buying

00:57:48.780 into any controversial ideas that he may or may not have said because i don't even know what they are

00:57:52.780 but i know that he's provocative so i'm just telling you i'm not aligning with all of his opinions i'm

00:57:57.980 just giving you this one's kind of brilliant two tweets and he says i don't think a lot of people

00:58:03.820 realize how much resentment gets boiled up in people who are smart but too impractical to know how to make

00:58:10.460 money especially when they see quote dumb people making more money over producing these bourgeois

00:58:16.860 types is very dangerous to any society and then he goes on i suspect a lot of the reason so many

00:58:23.660 academic temperament types turn to marxism and other marxian ideologies is that they're simultaneously

00:58:30.860 not good at making money smarter than average and suckers for theoretical constructs that

00:58:37.580 would work if only people were smarter oh my god that hits that hits exactly home doesn't it

00:58:47.820 you know when you see people complaining about anything you always have to ask okay are they

00:58:52.700 really complaining about that or is it just political or is it just some personal problem they're having

00:58:57.660 at home and this just hits this this feels right doesn't it it feels that the academics

00:59:05.020 are working off some kind of anger or guilt or feelings of low self-esteem and that uh the way

00:59:13.980 they do it is this way and and uh maybe that's all that's going on now of course i doubt it's all

00:59:20.860 that's going on but uh this is definitely part of it there there's definitely a jealousy arrogance

00:59:29.340 element and all of this all right um here's a prediction for you this is my prediction before

00:59:36.700 long i said the consumers of ad-based news which is most of it right most of the news is supported

00:59:42.860 by advertising that the consumers of that will be seen as mental slaves to ridiculous narratives that's

00:59:49.980 largely the situation now right people who are consuming cnn and msnbc especially um are they're

00:59:58.540 basically victims they're the mental slaves to ridiculous narratives now are you going to jump

01:00:05.020 on me and say but what about fox news yeah fox news too fox news too the only difference and i feel

01:00:12.060 strongly about this is that um the people who consume news on the right fox news etc tend to also

01:00:20.060 be exposed to the news on the left they might prefer the narratives on the right but at least they see

01:00:25.820 both of them more likely than the people on the left i think that's anecdotally that's so obvious that i

01:00:32.780 feel like uh science would support it um but then i'm going to go on and say that uh uh the consumers of

01:00:41.900 subscription-based news let's say substack is one locals is another platform with subscription that's the

01:00:49.020 one i'm on and that they're that they will be the only three free thinkers and that the world is actually

01:00:55.660 going to bifurcate into people who are mental slaves to narratives they've been fed that will be

01:01:02.620 all the ad-based advertising-based news but people who have moved to at least including some of the

01:01:08.460 subscription-based stuff and i'm going to call out as i often do glenn grainwald as he's in substack

01:01:15.660 um matt taibi also in substack i'm in locals you know greg gotfeld is in locals um lots of people are

01:01:25.180 in locals as well so i think that's where it's going the future will be two types of people mental

01:01:32.220 slaves and free thinkers and if you don't have a subscription so that you can get the free

01:01:39.180 thinkers you will be just a slave to the narrative and that's where it's going

01:01:46.220 um all right that

01:01:50.860 is my show for the day and um pretty soon can anybody tell me when the closing arguments

01:01:59.260 for the defense happened in the chauvin trial does anybody know when that happens it's this week

01:02:05.100 right um so here's my other prediction no matter what the evidence seems to show in this case with

01:02:14.300 chauvin and floyd no matter what the evidence showed i do believe that the closing arguments and

01:02:20.300 especially this attorney he appears to be quite qualified i believe that he can in his closing comments

01:02:26.780 absolutely destroy the prosecution he couldn't do it with experts because they they kind of fell a

01:02:34.860 little bit short but i think that it would be easy to demonstrate demonstrate probable cause and the

01:02:41.500 way i do it is what i've told you before i would just say imagine you're this police officer that the

01:02:47.740 whole case depends on him knowing he's causing this danger to floyd the whole case depends on his mental

01:02:55.020 knowledge that he knew he was doing it and preferred to do it maybe didn't know he was going to kill

01:03:00.140 him but knew he could put him in the situation where he you might have a tragic outcome how does that

01:03:06.460 make sense with the fact that he did it slowly in front of people filming him that's the end of the case

01:03:14.460 nobody you can't even imagine it in your mind that somebody did it intentionally but they also did it

01:03:22.060 in front of a crowd of spectators filming it it's unimaginable that that happened and so

01:03:29.100 that's a lot of reasonable doubt and it wouldn't matter what the evidence said as soon as you framed

01:03:33.660 it like that i'd say oh okay i just know in my own mind he he couldn't have been thinking that that's

01:03:39.580 the end of it you don't need any evidence for that now i don't know if you can say that in a closing

01:03:44.540 argument can you can the closing argument depart from the facts presented in the trial i think they

01:03:53.740 can a little bit right there must be some limit to what you can do but i feel like you could ask people

01:03:59.260 to to judge the case using common sense and that you can encourage them what that looks like i think

01:04:07.820 that's okay right all right yeah somebody says ask uh ari uh but you've already said facts won't matter

01:04:16.860 in the verdict correct what i just said was that uh the argument wouldn't be based on so much the

01:04:24.540 facts that were presented but the facts that are already in people's heads putting putting a fact into

01:04:30.860 a head and making it matter is really really hard but telling people to use the facts that they

01:04:37.180 already accept as facts and just reframe it that's really easy so that's why this looks easy to me

01:04:44.380 you don't have to introduce any facts you just reframe it and anybody who hears the reframe is

01:04:49.660 going to say well that at least gives me some doubt gotta say gives me some doubt all right that's all

01:04:58.220 i got for today and i will talk to you tomorrow

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 19, 2021

Episode 1349 Scott Adams： I Use Ari Cohn's Tweets to Teach You How to Spot Bad Thinking, Vaccine Misinformation Wars, More

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