Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1350 Scott Adams： Chauvin Persuasion, Social Media Tightens its Grip and More

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. Come on in. Come on in. It's all about to break loose. Yeah, there's stuff

00:00:09.660 coming at us. Let's see if we can get ready for it. Happy, what's the day today? April

00:00:17.160 20th. Happy April 20th, which has no significance whatsoever. I say that so I can remain on

00:00:26.120 social media. Now, would you like to enjoy this experience to the best possible extent?

00:00:34.180 Well, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen,

00:00:39.800 a jar, a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.

00:00:43.560 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that

00:00:48.980 makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, but it's going to happen right now. Get

00:00:55.440 ready, get ready, get ready, go. Savor it. Savor it. Okay. Well, the most important news of the day,

00:01:14.300 and I don't say this lightly. If you haven't heard this news report, let me be the first

00:01:22.600 one to tell you. There's a new documentary that investigates whether Bigfoot murdered some

00:01:29.000 North, Northern California pot farmers. No, I'm not making that up. There's an actual documentary

00:01:37.280 looking into whether Bigfoot murdered some Northern California pot farmers.

00:01:45.180 And the investigative journalist heard a story that still haunts him about a savage Bigfoot attack.

00:01:52.600 So that seems credible enough. It's in the news. In related news, CNN will host a special of its own

00:02:01.260 to determine if racism is the cause of Bigfoot's attack. No, that's not true. No, just the CNN part's not

00:02:11.820 true. The other part's true. There's a documentary about Bigfoot killing people in my state.

00:02:19.200 I don't know how far away this happened, but I am in the same state as a murderous Bigfoot.

00:02:27.860 And if you think I'm happy about that, one more thing to worry about. I wake up this morning and I'm like,

00:02:34.780 oh, what do I have to worry about? Let's see.

00:02:42.900 Well, it's climate change. It could be some riots. What? Murderous Bigfoot somewhere on the loose in my

00:02:53.520 state? And how many of them are there? And did the Bigfoot have any accomplices? Right? These are the

00:03:01.440 things we need to know on 420. All right. In other news, Ron DeSantis just became president in 2024.

00:03:10.820 You need some details on that? Yeah, Ron DeSantis just became president in 2024. He's not, you know,

00:03:18.460 we're not there yet. But he did something, he did something this week that if this doesn't guarantee

00:03:25.160 it, just guarantee he'll be president. Let me tell you what it is. And in the comments, I want to see

00:03:32.340 if you get it. It's not a headline, but it will be. It will be a headline. It goes like this. This is

00:03:41.460 actually so clever that it's funny. You ever see somebody just does something that's so smart

00:03:50.320 that it actually just makes you laugh because you didn't think of it? Here you go. So there's a new

00:03:57.020 law. I guess he just signed it in Florida, DeSantis Estate, and that grants civil legal immunity to

00:04:04.840 people who drive through protesters blocking a road. You see it? It's over. It's freaking over.

00:04:20.380 Talk about picking up free money.

00:04:25.220 Are you not laughing? Seriously, how many of you are laughing out loud? Because why did he think of this?

00:04:35.380 Nobody else thought of this? Oh, somebody says a few states have that now. But even so, the fact that

00:04:42.440 he would make this change, or at least sign it, who knows who was behind it. But he signs this thing

00:04:47.700 just at the perfect time. I can't think of anything that would be more on point than this.

00:04:58.160 I'll tell you, he just won the presidency. It's over now.

00:05:00.940 Let's see. Meanwhile, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, or Frey, I don't know. He said this in

00:05:13.000 public. Compare these two political actions. All right. The Ron DeSantis one, one of the smartest

00:05:21.800 things you'll ever see politically. Now, here's the dumbest thing you'll ever see from Mayor Jacob 0.99

00:05:27.640 Frey. He said yesterday, in public, he said this. That's the funny part, isn't it? He said it in 0.99

00:05:34.260 public. Regardless of the decision made by the jury. Regardless of the decision made by the jury,

00:05:43.500 there is one true reality, which is that George Floyd was killed at the hands of police. 0.97

00:05:51.200 Now, that's like the dumbest thing a politician ever said in public. Now, I happen to think he's 0.95

00:06:01.660 right, right? So, from a purely factual standpoint, I think he's probably right. I think it would be

00:06:10.100 fair to say that he died at the hands of police, which is not funny. Just the way this idiot is 1.00

00:06:15.640 treating it is funny. So, let me give you my final opinion on Chauvin and George Floyd. Now, 1.00

00:06:26.860 of course, we've all had preliminary opinions, which maybe in some cases we've revised as the

00:06:31.800 trial goes on. Just the way things should work, right? The trial should change your mind or solidify

00:06:37.640 your opinion. That's why we have them. And I would say that my opinion has drifted from the beginning.

00:06:43.340 So, here's my final opinion, having seen, I think, enough of, I haven't watched every minute,

00:06:50.240 but I feel like I saw enough of the defense and the prosecution. My final opinion is this.

00:06:56.880 Chauvin's actions probably were a deciding factor in Floyd's death. Probably. In other words,

00:07:07.820 in my opinion, probably, Chauvin's actions killed Floyd. Now, I think that there's a good likelihood

00:07:16.460 that there are other factors, which would add to the reasonable doubt question. But on the question

00:07:23.020 of what's most likely, most likely what he did had some effect, probably an important effect,

00:07:29.880 on the end of Floyd's life. Did he know it? Well, that's a separate question. We'll talk about

00:07:36.460 that in a minute, whether he knew it. But certainly the thing he did, in my opinion, and again, we have

00:07:43.680 to have only an opinion here, because we're not doctors, and there's some difference of expert

00:07:49.480 opinion, right? But in my opinion, it's more likely that Chauvin did end the guy's life.

00:07:55.740 I won't say the guy, because we'll treat him with more respect. Let's say George Floyd's life

00:08:01.580 was ended, probably had something to do with Chauvin. However, do you go to jail because you

00:08:12.200 probably were part of it? Well, that's where it gets a little tricky, right? So I do agree that

00:08:19.540 Jacob Freyer Fry, the mayor, is probably right that it was homicide. I think that part is sort of

00:08:31.160 tactically true. But to say that out loud when things are so sensitive is just dumb. This is just 0.99

00:08:37.660 dumb politics. All right. We're going to talk more about the trial. Have you noticed that the trolls 0.99

00:08:46.540 are out? Sometime this week, and yesterday I noticed it when I was talking with Ari Cohn,

00:08:54.600 a bunch of somewhat obvious trolls, the ones who have zero followers, and they don't have a profile

00:09:00.940 picture, and they just signed up, that sort of thing. So a bunch of trolls that I'd not seen for

00:09:06.900 quite a while in the political process. They'd gone quiet for a while. But they came out recently,

00:09:11.760 and I just got hammered on some tweets about the Chauvin-Floyd case, and it looks like most of 0.89

00:09:22.140 them are paid trolls. Who's paying them? Who are paying all the trolls who are talking about my

00:09:31.340 comments about the case and saying that no matter what I say about it, that therefore it's proof I'm a

00:09:38.040 racist? What kind of troll would do that? And who would pay them? Would they be independently operated?

00:09:47.460 It could be. Could they be democratic operatives? Maybe. Could be. I mean, that would be consistent

00:09:56.300 with what we've seen. And we have a history of that, Democrats hiring trolls. We know that's a thing. 0.76

00:10:01.820 That's a genuine, confirmed, no doubt about it thing. Democrats have hired trolls for social media

00:10:08.740 purposes. But is this what's happening? Here's another hypothesis. And it's just a hypothesis.

00:10:21.080 China already controls our media, both news and social media, via artificial intelligence. 0.89

00:10:29.300 So this is the hypothesis. So this is the hypothesis. Now, how could you prove it? Well, I don't know of a

00:10:35.780 way directly. So, you know, short of some kind of cyber magic where we can actually determine what's

00:10:42.000 happening. Don't know if that's going to happen. But here's what to watch for. How often will our news

00:10:48.580 media and social media create a narrative which is exactly what China would want us to create?

00:10:54.620 If it happens over and over again, that our narrative corresponds exactly to what China wants

00:11:02.440 it to be, at some point you have to ask yourself if that's a coincidence. Now, let's take the Floyd

00:11:08.860 trial. We'll take this as one data point, which does not prove the hypothesis, right? So understand

00:11:15.940 that anecdotal stuff. Any one situation doesn't prove anything. But it's what to watch for, right?

00:11:24.420 To see if this was repeated enough where the pattern becomes, you know, hard to ignore. So what would

00:11:32.000 China's, if you can imagine, what would be their best interpretation or narrative that they would want

00:11:37.820 the United States to adopt as its main one? Well, they definitely would not want us to say

00:11:43.480 that fentanyl was a big cause. Do we all agree? China is intentionally sending fentanyl in large

00:11:50.940 amounts to the United States to kill our citizens. We know this to be true. This is not in any kind of

00:11:56.660 doubt. Do they want us to get really, really mad and understand this is what's happening? China sending 0.96

00:12:04.320 fentanyl and killing tens of thousands of people a year? Do they want us to think that and really

00:12:09.140 focus on that? No. What would China like us to focus on instead of focusing on China sending us

00:12:17.520 fentanyl? Racism. The number one thing, and there's no doubt about this, right? The number one thing China 1.00

00:12:24.060 wants is for the United States to think racism is the dominant theme in America, and that's what we

00:12:29.800 should be focusing on because it'll tear us apart. And it also makes it easier for them to put Uyghurs 1.00

00:12:35.220 in prison camps, right? If you're China, you want the United States to have a whole bunch of 1.00

00:12:42.020 racism problems so that they can do anything they want with their Uyghurs and say, look, hey, 0.99

00:12:48.040 you know, you can't talk. You know, we're not going to even address what you're talking about,

00:12:52.580 but you can't say anything. Right? So when you see that the official narrative of both the news and

00:13:00.320 social media, at least the left-leaning portions, are solidly, solidly identical to what the Chinese 0.99

00:13:07.140 narrative would be for us if they wanted to give us a narrative, it's exactly what's happening.

00:13:13.540 Is it the reason it's happening? What do you think? Do you think that China already has the ability 0.55

00:13:22.740 to do what I just described, use AI, maybe TikTok, social media, trolls, etc., maybe direct payments

00:13:31.240 to some people, maybe some people are just agents working for our media. Do they have the power

00:13:37.520 to create this narrative, and did they do it? Are we watching it happen right now?

00:13:43.540 There's no way to know, is there? But if I had to bet without knowing, but somebody said,

00:13:56.180 you know, gun to head, you just gotta, you gotta bet, I would bet probably, I would bet probably

00:14:04.000 what we're seeing is Chinese, China the country, not the people. Every once in a while, I like to stop 1.00

00:14:12.060 and pause. Chinese people, I love. Like, I love Chinese people. Americans in China, wherever

00:14:20.480 they are. But the Chinese government, we've got a problem with. So just to be clear that we're

00:14:25.480 always talking about the government when we talk about China in a negative light.

00:14:29.180 And you can see that I riled up the obvious trolls today. So look at my Twitter feed, and look at the

00:14:39.600 troll activity, and ask yourself if those trolls look to be speaking proper English. So the first

00:14:48.020 question to ask is, is the way they phrase things, does that look like it came from an American? They

00:14:54.700 have to be careful, because there are lots of Americans who don't have English as a primary

00:14:58.940 first language. But just ask yourself. You know, it's just part of the fact pattern. All right.

00:15:06.940 Here's a little rule I would like to put out there, just to play with it. Whoever tries to control

00:15:15.860 the narrative wins, if nobody else is trying. Okay? In a situation where there's only one entity

00:15:26.020 that even cares how the narrative goes, that they always win. If they're, if let's say they're a 0.88

00:15:32.940 superpower, or they have some power. That anybody powerful who cares enough can change the narrative,

00:15:38.640 so long as there's nobody else trying to change it in a different way.

00:15:44.120 In the Floyd case, it feels that, to me, that if there were some entity that wanted to control this

00:15:52.200 narrative, that there's not really in some kind of organized pushback. It's just a bunch of us trying

00:15:58.440 to figure out what's going on. Really. I mean, I feel as if, even though we politicize everything

00:16:05.720 in this country, I feel like at the bottom of it all, the real most important thing that Americans

00:16:12.800 are feeling is they want the, they want the court to come to be right. Right? There's probably nothing

00:16:18.080 we want more than for the decision to be right, whatever that is. And I feel as if China might have a

00:16:27.420 different opinion of what they want to happen. So they might have the only one, the only narrative

00:16:33.920 preference that is strong enough, and they have the power to make it happen, that there's no counter

00:16:40.200 narrative that anybody's doing in any organized, big, hire trolls, use AI kind of way. Right? I think

00:16:47.620 they're just fighting alone. If it were something that had more to do with, let's say, national integrity or

00:16:54.580 defense, I would suspect that we have spooks who could push back on the narrative. Right? And then maybe

00:17:02.620 there's something like, you know, an even tension there. All right, let's talk about the Chauvin trial. We now

00:17:09.160 have both the defense and the prosecution have done their final arguments. And I told you where I come out on

00:17:17.900 this is that I think Chauvin is guilty. Well, guilty, let's say not in a legal sense. But I do believe

00:17:24.120 that he is likely a cause, at least, at least a major cause of Floyd's death. The question of whether

00:17:33.300 there are other factors, whether he knew about it, those are all go to his, go to his defense or guilt.

00:17:40.260 But in my opinion, he did something. Now, I heard from Robert Barnes yesterday, I was watching,

00:17:47.060 you know, Frey and Barnes on their podcast, which is tremendous, by the way. It's the best. It's the

00:17:52.800 best. I hate to say it, because I do a live stream too. But if you're not watching Frey and Barnes,

00:18:00.800 F-R-E-Y, and Barnes talk about this case, you're really missing the best analysis of it. And I've

00:18:10.800 seen some different analyses. They do the best job, I'd say. And here's where I come in on all this.

00:18:21.740 My verdict is that I don't believe Chauvin was completely aware that what he was doing was

00:18:27.100 dangerous. Now, does it matter? I'm sorry, I spelled it. I confused the mayor with Frey and

00:18:37.580 Barnes. F-R-E-Y. So the correct spelling is Viva, V-I-V-A. F-R-E-I. And I apologize for

00:18:47.960 getting that wrong, because I just did the story about the guy with the other spelling.

00:18:51.400 All right. So the... Here's my take. I don't think Chauvin was aware that he was doing it. And the

00:19:01.760 reason is that he did it right in front of everybody in slow motion. It was compatible enough

00:19:08.140 with common police procedure. The other police officers didn't seem to be alarmed or look to

00:19:15.920 stop him. There was, you know, there was some distraction from the, um, from the crowd. So

00:19:22.960 it's not clear that Chauvin was either smart enough or aware enough to do, you know, CPR when it was

00:19:30.160 called for. So my verdict, if it were me, is that reasonable doubt has been clearly established.

00:19:37.140 At the same time, I think he's probably a big part of what killed Floyd and probably didn't do what he

00:19:47.200 should have done. Can we allow that? Can anybody have a, uh, is it possible to have a reasoned opinion

00:19:55.700 that the guy is sort of guilty of something at the same time that reasonable doubt might allow him to

00:20:03.820 go free? Can both be true? I think they can, right? So let's talk about where this is likely to go by, um,

00:20:12.380 now keep in mind that I don't have a legal background. So anything I say on this, you know, grain is, grain

00:20:18.260 of salt, and maybe we can see how dumb I am at the end. So we'll see how it actually turns out. Then you'll, 0.86

00:20:24.280 you'll have a better idea how dumb I am about legal stuff. But my take is this. I believe that the jury 0.96

00:20:29.880 has now heard three separate jury instructions. I don't think you'll hear this analysis anywhere

00:20:39.160 else. All right. But this is my take. The jury has heard three different jury instructions. And the jury

00:20:49.320 instructions are everything in this case. It's everything. For example, if the jury was instructed

00:20:55.880 that it doesn't matter what was Chauvin was thinking, it didn't matter if he knew it was

00:21:01.560 dangerous or not, well, that gives you one outcome. If the jury thinks it does matter what

00:21:07.880 Chauvin was thinking and that he didn't know he was doing anything wrong, well, you might get a

00:21:12.360 different outcome, right? Now that my examples might not be perfect, but, um, these are the things which

00:21:20.060 are known. We know that the defense was accused of misstating what the jury instructions were.

00:21:29.900 So that's two versions. One is what the judge gave, the actual jury instructions. One is what the defense

00:21:37.180 claimed they were, which was, you know, debunked. And then there was what the prosecution claimed it was,

00:21:45.740 which I believe also was misinterpreted. Now the judge went to solve that by agreeing that he would

00:21:55.100 reread the instructions and make sure the jury knew that the lawyers could not introduce new evidence,

00:22:00.780 etc., and that they had to listen to the real instructions from the judge, and they should ignore

00:22:06.860 anything that a lawyer says about the instructions. I think I got that right, roughly. What do you do if

00:22:14.140 you're the jury? Keep in mind that now they've heard three sets of jury instructions, and the jury

00:22:21.500 instructions will completely determine how they vote, to the extent that they even follow the instructions.

00:22:28.940 All right, so now you've got three sets of instructions, and you've got 12 jurors who are normal Americans.

00:22:36.780 Give me 12 normal Americans. Give them three different sets of instructions. 1.00

00:22:43.100 What's happening during deliberations, right? Have you ever worked at any big company or been

00:22:50.460 in a business meeting with 12 ordinary people who have three completely different sets of

00:22:57.180 really pretty confusing instructions, and it's a complicated freaking thing.

00:23:04.300 Whatever is happening in that jury room has nothing to do with the data. It has nothing to do with

00:23:11.980 reason. It has nothing to do with justice, right? It's just a bunch of people who could not possibly be

00:23:19.980 asked to make good decisions under these circumstances. And somebody's life, actually lots of lives if you

00:23:27.020 think of, you know, the outcome. There are lots of lives on the line, and they don't have a chance.

00:23:34.300 The jurors just don't have a chance. It's way too complicated, and three sets of instructions.

00:23:42.700 There's no way they can unwind that stuff and come to some smart conclusion. If you put,

00:23:49.980 if you put, uh, if you replace the entire trial with the best lawyer in the world, you know, whoever

00:23:56.700 it is, let's, let's put in Alan Dershowitz just for our example, and just say, all right, we won't

00:24:01.580 even have a jury. We'll just have Alan Dershowitz decide, because at least he knows the law. He can,

00:24:08.460 he can sort out the complications, and you know, he can at least handle the argument.

00:24:12.140 I don't even think he can handle this. I think, I think even somebody as qualified as the best lawyer

00:24:19.260 in the world would say, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of a gray area, I gotta admit. Now, all of

00:24:26.940 that suggests that the result should be that the burden of proof to a reasonable doubt, beyond a

00:24:34.460 reasonable doubt, has not been met. In my opinion, that standard hasn't, it's not even close, right?

00:24:42.300 My subjective opinion, not being a lawyer and not being on the jury, so I didn't get to see

00:24:46.940 everything they saw. So from a different perspective, bias though it may be, I'm imagining I have the

00:24:54.220 same kinds of biases as everybody else. But to my mind, reasonable doubt is easily met. But again,

00:25:04.140 I'm not qualified, nor informed. It's just my opinion. At the same time, I think probably Chauvin is guilty

00:25:13.420 of doing the final acts that killed Mr. Floyd. The prosecution started with an emotional appeal in

00:25:23.500 which he talked about the humanity of Mr. Floyd, Mr. Floyd and, you know, how he loved his mother,

00:25:30.380 etc., and he was popular within his family. How much of that has anything to do with the case?

00:25:35.180 How much of the emotional appeal has anything to do with the facts of the case? None of it, right?

00:25:43.740 So when you watch the prosecution play obviously to emotion and not even really talk about the facts of

00:25:51.500 the case for a big portion of the closing, how do you feel about that? Because I would like to know

00:25:57.820 that the system didn't allow that. I would prefer a system in which the judge said everybody understands

00:26:07.340 that human beings shouldn't be killed. You don't need to make us feel worse about it.

00:26:13.100 Just deal with the facts. You know, did it happen? Is there guilt under the law? How is it even legal?

00:26:21.500 This is a real question. How is it even legal to spend a bunch of time making people just feel

00:26:30.540 especially bad when you know the point of that is to overcome their understanding and their dealing

00:26:37.020 with the facts? How is that even legal? Seriously. Now, I get that you need to do a little bit of it.

00:26:46.860 You know, you do need to establish that we should care about everybody, right? He's not a criminal

00:26:52.780 that you just say, well, we don't care if he's guilty or not. It wouldn't matter. He must be a bad

00:26:57.500 person. So you don't want that. But it's one thing to establish that your person is a real person,

00:27:05.260 you know, worthy of all the protections of the Constitution. And it's another thing to just use gross

00:27:11.580 emotional blackmail, basically, or manipulation on the jury while we're all watching.

00:27:19.900 So if you're going to say to me, what does a travesty of justice look like? It looks like any of the

00:27:26.060 lawyers trying to convince a jury to use their emotions over the facts. And we saw that right in

00:27:32.620 front of us. We watched that happen. How is that cool? I'm sure it's legal. But it's not cool.

00:27:42.700 And I got to tell you, if I were in the in the jury, and I had to sit through, you know, one more

00:27:49.340 minute of George Floyd was an awesome guy, which I believe is actually true. You know, it sounds like

00:27:55.900 he was pretty awesome. He had some drug problems. And people have drug problems. And you know, if he

00:28:01.900 did other crimes, those are other crimes. But so I don't know why that's legal. All right. The other

00:28:10.140 thing is the jury, of course, will be influenced by, you know, Maxine Waters claiming that there should be

00:28:18.380 more confrontational stuff, which even the judge pointed out is probably grounds for dismissal,

00:28:24.300 or what do you call it? Grounds for appeal. So here we have a situation where this is how

00:28:31.820 ridiculous this is. Chauvin apparently is probably going to go to jail for a different crime. Did you 0.53

00:28:37.500 know that? I heard this on Frey and Barnes too, that that apparently Chauvin has a whole separate

00:28:44.700 legal problem with allegedly not paying his taxes for years. So he's going to go to jail for 10 years

00:28:50.460 or something anyway. Beyond that, we have an emotional case, not a factual case. We have three

00:28:57.900 different sets of jury instructions. We have 12 people who couldn't possibly, at least collectively,

00:29:04.220 all of them couldn't possibly understand the complexity of even what the charges mean or how

00:29:09.260 to sort them out. We don't, there's no such thing as 12 people who can do that. It isn't even a thing.

00:29:14.380 And let's see what else is wrong with this.

00:29:23.500 Yeah, I guess that's the main thing. All right. And we know that it'll be overturned on appeal,

00:29:28.380 or at least the appeal would be pretty solid. So you've got jurors who are worried about their own

00:29:33.740 life if they're smart. You know, somebody said on social media, well, they were instructed not to

00:29:40.300 watch the news so that they don't really know that they're in danger. They know they're in danger.

00:29:46.140 Come on. Of course they know. They knew before they took, they got on the jury. Everybody knew

00:29:52.540 that if you're on this jury, there was a little bit of extra danger.

00:29:58.540 So here are the charges. Now that you've heard the whole case, let me describe what the charges mean

00:30:04.060 and see if these apply. There's second degree unintentional murder. So that would allege that

00:30:09.820 Chauvin caused Floyd's death without intent. So there's no intention is required while committing

00:30:18.060 or attempting to commit felony third degree assault, meaning that the third degree is default. The third

00:30:25.260 degree assault was intentional infliction of substantial bodily harm. So was Chauvin in intentionally

00:30:33.100 inflicting substantially bodily harm in a way that a reasonable person could have known, you know,

00:30:39.260 death was a possibility? And I would say no, because he was doing something that has worked lots of times

00:30:46.940 without killing anybody and is actually part of police procedure described as the least dangerous

00:30:53.180 thing you can do under some circumstances. So I would say at least in terms of reasonable doubt,

00:30:58.620 there's so much of it here that, uh, I don't think a reasonable jury, if they were basing it on the

00:31:04.940 facts, second degree unintentional murder, I don't see any chance. Now there is a chance in the political

00:31:10.860 sense, he'll be guilty of that, but not on a factual basis. I don't think it's even close. Then there's the

00:31:16.860 third degree murder charge that says, uh, that the death was caused by Chauvin perpetrating an act

00:31:23.420 eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind without regard to human life.

00:31:29.500 So an example that I understand would be shooting into a crowd. You weren't trying to kill some

00:31:34.860 specific person, but you were certainly not caring if anybody died and your actions caused it. Did,

00:31:42.540 is that what happened? Do you think that, um, he would, that Chauvin was perpetrating an act

00:31:49.020 eminently dangerous to others. Now this is where it gets complicated. He was doing something that

00:31:55.420 only was a danger to the person he was dealing with. And he had a specific reason to do it,

00:32:01.100 which could be a good reason or a bad reason, but he had a specific reason

00:32:05.660 that was within the realm of police work. So I don't see how this could possibly apply,

00:32:11.500 but I guess you'd have to really be a lawyer to know. But how is the jury going to even deal with

00:32:16.540 this question? Like I read this question and I don't even know how to deal with it. Do you think

00:32:21.100 the jury does all to all people? They're, they're all more capable than I am at dealing with the

00:32:27.100 complexity of this question. What exactly are they determining? Are they determining Chauvin's guilt

00:32:34.460 or is the jury trying to figure out if their own reading comprehension sucks?

00:32:39.660 Because that's really what will determine whether he goes to jail, whether the jury has good reading

00:32:47.500 comprehension. There's your system for you. All right. Then how about second degree manslaughter?

00:32:52.620 Now here we get into something that at least has a chance of being, um, factually proven. And that,

00:32:59.500 that charge alleges that Chauvin causes Floyd's death by quote,

00:33:03.900 culpable negligence, whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk and consciously takes chances

00:33:10.940 of causing death or great bodily harm. So do you think that what Chauvin was doing

00:33:18.140 was consciously here, because here's the mind reading part. You have to know that Chauvin was

00:33:24.620 consciously doing something that was obviously dangerous. But again, it was police procedure.

00:33:31.420 It was considered the least harmful way to do this situation. Floyd was kicking. There's reasonable

00:33:40.060 doubt all over this thing, because in order to say he's guilty of this, you have to know his state of

00:33:45.900 mind. He didn't even testify. How in the world are you going to read Chauvin's mind to come up with

00:33:53.580 he consciously knew he was doing this, when he did it in slow motion in front of witnesses with cameras?

00:34:00.140 There's so much reasonable doubt here. This would be the easiest, if it were not political, it would be

00:34:07.660 the easiest case in the world to win. But because it's political, who knows? All right. Um, now I heard

00:34:15.100 some people say to me that their interpretation of the, uh, the jury instructions were that Chauvin's

00:34:23.820 state of mind, and I think the prosecution said this too, that what Chauvin was thinking or intending

00:34:29.820 doesn't matter. It's just what he did. But do you think the jury will ignore, will take the prosecution's

00:34:38.780 interpretation, and just ignore what Chauvin was thinking? Would you do that? Would you ignore

00:34:45.820 that Chauvin might not have known he was doing anything that could have been dangerous? How do

00:34:52.380 you ignore that? Because even if it's technically illegal and you should go to jail for your actions,

00:35:01.340 would you on a jury actually put somebody in jail if you knew they didn't even know they were doing it?

00:35:07.900 Really? Because I'm not sure I would. Even if I understood the law had nothing to do with intention,

00:35:17.820 I would still include it in my decision, because I'm a human being, and it does matter.

00:35:23.020 I don't care that it doesn't matter under the law. I'm a human. I'm a juror. See, one of the things that

00:35:31.180 many of you don't understand is that the law is very specific about what the jury is supposed to do.

00:35:38.540 But once it's your responsibility as a human being, and an American, and you've been put on a jury,

00:35:44.620 what is your responsibility? Is your responsibility to protect the law? No, it's not. Your responsibility

00:35:54.140 is to be responsible. That's it. Your responsibility is to do the right thing.

00:36:00.860 Okay. As you would want it done to you, you know, or as you would like the system to be. So if you

00:36:07.740 think the law is not an appropriate law, and maybe the law does say, it doesn't matter if you knew you

00:36:14.140 were doing it or not, you're still going to put that in there. I would. I wouldn't even consider

00:36:21.260 following the law if I considered the law unjust. Would you? And why? Why would you do that?

00:36:30.860 So I certainly would ignore any instructions that said that I couldn't consider my own feelings

00:36:38.060 about whether the law should even be a law. Speaking of that, well, let me tell you what

00:36:45.500 I would do if I were in the jury. And I got a lot of pushback from trolls, maybe Chinese trolls on 0.97

00:36:55.820 on social media. Here's what I do. On the first day of deliberations, I'd say, 0.97

00:37:00.460 mind reading isn't a thing. And if you don't know what he was thinking, we're done here.

00:37:05.740 That's it. That would be my entire deliberation. And no matter what they said, you know, what arguments

00:37:13.340 or what topics when they got to me, I'd say, well, you know, mind reading, still not real. It's still

00:37:21.820 only imaginary. And while we can be right quite often about people's intentions, we're not often

00:37:29.020 right enough that I'm going to send somebody to jail because you think you could do it this time.

00:37:34.460 Mind reading, not real. And then when somebody says, but we're supposed to ignore what he was

00:37:40.460 thinking, I would say, sure, you can do that. I'm done. And unless you could convince me that mind

00:37:48.380 reading is real, there's nothing to talk about. Right? I'm just done. But I would also vote guilty on

00:37:55.500 all counts to protect my family. But I would tell the public I did that. So after the trial,

00:38:03.580 I would go to the public and say, I didn't really consider any of the evidence in this case.

00:38:08.460 I just voted guilty to protect my family. Now, what happened to me when I said that on Twitter?

00:38:18.300 Coward, people said. Coward. See, it's happening in the comments here. Nice. A moral coward. 0.99

00:38:26.460 Would you do it for money? That's not the topic. So who else thinks that that would be cowardly? 0.99

00:38:31.180 Let me break this down for you. If you would put the outcome of this trial over your family,

00:38:44.700 I applaud your braveness. Your bravery is impressive. You would actually kill your own family

00:38:51.660 family to protect a system which is not doing anything useful whatsoever. And you would be 0.98

00:38:59.820 very, very brave for that. So congratulations for all of you. I applaud you. You're a better person

00:39:06.860 than me. Those of you who would kill your own families to support a verdict which has no bearing 0.91

00:39:13.420 on anything and will just be political. Congratulations. You're very brave and I wish

00:39:18.140 I could be more like you. Now, what I would do, as opposed to that impressive bravery which all of

00:39:27.020 you seem to have, killing your families to gain nothing, nothing at all. But you did kill your 0.98

00:39:33.900 family, maybe. So very brave of you. Here's how I would have played it. I would have broken the entire 0.98

00:39:42.140 system. In other words, the moment I went to the press and said I didn't use the facts to vote,

00:39:47.820 because I was afraid for my family. The appeal wins, right? That's the end of the system. So I

00:39:54.860 would break the entire system because it's all bad. It's based on emotions and politics. It's not based

00:40:02.700 on the facts. If you want to protect the system, you have to break it. The only way to protect our

00:40:08.700 system, in this case, is to just break it. Now, I do think that if they tried it again,

00:40:14.380 in, if they could find some circumstance to get, you know, to get the emotion out of it,

00:40:22.300 and he's guilty, that's fine. I mean, I'm not, I'm not defending Chauvin. He looks like a bad,

00:40:28.740 good, bad dude to me. I don't feel any love for him. And for those of you who think,

00:40:34.500 hey, Scott, you must be defending Chauvin because he's white. You don't know white people very well. 0.52

00:40:42.460 White people don't defend guilty white people. It's sort of a strategic superpower. 0.84

00:40:53.380 Take two cultures, and you don't know anything else about them, except one of them punishes their 1.00

00:40:59.280 guilty people and rewards the people who are not guilty, and the other one doesn't do that.

00:41:05.460 Who comes out of the head in the long run? Well, I think popularizing your criminals, and

00:41:13.060 that's probably a bad strategy for the long run. All right, speaking of injustice,

00:41:20.760 there's a YouTube star named James Charles. Do you all know him? So James Charles is a young man who does

00:41:29.100 makeup videos. So he does, I guess, how would, what would be the most non-offensive 2021 way to say

00:41:41.320 this? I don't know what his sexual orientation is. It's at least bisexual, but I don't want to 0.98

00:41:50.520 characterize him. So it's at least bisexual. That's all I know. Or gay, or he doesn't, non-binary. Who

00:41:59.740 knows what it is? But that's not important. What's important is he does makeup videos in which he has

00:42:05.800 over 25 million subscribers. He's enormous. If you've ever watched his show, he's really good.

00:42:13.840 I've watched his content a number of times. Christina is a fan. And apparently he's really

00:42:22.160 good with makeup. So, you know, he's just sort of quite gifted in makeup and explaining it.

00:42:31.320 So in terms of talent, he is very talented. And in my view, he's earned everything he got. He's just

00:42:37.960 really good at it. But here is what he is accused of, and apparently has admitted in part, that he

00:42:46.340 did some sexy texting with some people. He says, claimed they were 18, but now we know they might

00:42:54.540 have been 16. Now he admits doing it, but he also, and admits it was a mistake, but he also says that

00:43:01.760 he asked them and they said they were 18, or he assumed they were 18. Now keep in mind, he's a young

00:43:06.860 man. So he's not like, you know, some old creeper. So had they been 18, they would have been, you know,

00:43:15.340 not too grossly in of the range of, you know, people get together. Not like my situation, which has you

00:43:23.240 all upset. So here, now here's the kicker. YouTube demonetized him. All right. Now keep in mind,

00:43:35.980 the facts that we all understand, and I don't know that there's much difference in how we interpret

00:43:41.380 the facts, is that he admits what happened. He says he was not aware any crime was being committed

00:43:48.460 because he wasn't aware of their age, right? And how old is he? Somebody says he's 21.

00:43:57.980 Can somebody confirm that? Because it does matter. If he's close to 18, that matters, right?

00:44:09.140 So he's admitted it, and he said he wouldn't have done it if he had been aware that they were the age

00:44:16.460 they were. Now he got demonetized. Do you know how much money is involved if you have 25 million

00:44:21.840 subscribers? We're talking about millions, tens of millions of dollars that YouTube took from him

00:44:28.740 based on a crime he has not been committed for. So he's not, he's not been, he's not been convicted

00:44:35.780 of any crime. Not only has he not been convicted of a crime, but his telling of it is at least as

00:44:44.560 plausible as the alternative teller. It's not like he has an implausible story, right? It's not implausible.

00:44:54.140 It's actually quite plausible. Do you believe that had he known there were 16, he would have left

00:45:00.300 permanent records on text or messaging that could be discovered later? Obviously, he could be blackmailed

00:45:09.200 by anybody that he had said this to. So I'm seeing people saying that he's 21, almost 22. All right,

00:45:14.700 that matters. So here's my problem. Again, I don't want to be the guy who is, who, you know, I know the

00:45:20.680 trolls will come and say, Scott, you're, you're defending, um, people trying to do things with underage

00:45:29.000 kids. No, I'm not doing that. I'm just saying if somebody doesn't know they're committing a crime, 0.54

00:45:35.860 very much like the Chauvin case, right? If they don't know, how can, how can YouTube demonetize

00:45:42.880 this guy? So, uh, apparently this is YouTube's response. And if this is not chilling, I don't

00:45:50.720 know what is. So this is a quote from YouTube. If we see that a creator's on and or off platform

00:45:59.200 behavior. So things they did not on, on YouTube harms our users, community, employees, or ecosystem,

00:46:06.840 we may take action to protect the community. So in other words, YouTube can demonetize you

00:46:12.380 if there's something you did in your private life that you have not been convicted for,

00:46:18.220 not been convicted for, innocent until proven guilty, but YouTube doesn't like it because they're

00:46:26.640 going to say it harms them. They can kick you off. How many of us are vulnerable to that?

00:46:34.500 Well, I am. So apparently this, this rule gives YouTube all they need to kick me off right now

00:46:42.060 for, for things I've done outside of YouTube. So in other words, if you look at my Twitter feed,

00:46:50.680 you could see that countless people are accusing me of being a racist because I think probable cause 0.55

00:46:56.660 should be important in a, in a, in a legal trial. Of course, I would have the same opinion if the

00:47:02.480 races were reversed in the case. Of course I would because reasonable doubt is more important than

00:47:08.780 all of that stuff. Right? But YouTube can now quite reasonably look at my Twitter feed and say,

00:47:16.960 hey, hundreds of people are accusing you of a horrible thing, being a racist. We don't want

00:47:22.860 any of that. So even though you've never done anything on our platform, which would cause us

00:47:27.780 a problem, we have a rule which would allow us to kick you off based on you not being quite the

00:47:33.440 kind of person that we think, um, is good. And we think you might be dangerous to people on our platform.

00:47:38.920 Just think about the power that that has. They have the power to control your, your economic life and

00:47:50.120 also the power to take it away based on them not liking what you did outside of your dealings with

00:47:56.200 them that were not even illegal or had not been convicted for. That's pretty bad.

00:48:02.880 Um, there's a CNN, some CNN propaganda happening right now in which they're running a story about

00:48:13.360 two friends. Uh, I think it was a white woman and a young black guy. And they were talking about how

00:48:19.820 they were treated differently by cops at a traffic stop. Now, when you hear that story, you say to

00:48:25.160 yourself, well, I know where this is going to go. The, the police will treat the young black man very

00:48:30.680 roughly. They'll treat the white person in this case, a woman. Uh, I think, um, they would treat 0.98

00:48:37.080 her less likely. And now we'd see another evidence that the police are brutal against black people, 0.97

00:48:41.940 which is exactly what you want to see when the Floyd, uh, verdict is coming, right? So if this looks

00:48:49.280 like they're throwing matches into gasoline, they are, but then you listen to the, the actual story

00:48:56.360 and it turns out that the police handcuffed and briefly detained the young black man they,

00:49:02.720 they found because there was a warrant out by somebody with his exact name. And I think it was

00:49:09.140 an unusual name. You can tell from the recording that the police realized they have the wrong guy.

00:49:16.260 And then later they found out that somebody else had used this fellow's name when stopped and didn't

00:49:22.900 have ID, I guess. So there was somebody unrelated to this story, some other person at a different

00:49:29.620 time who would use this perp's not perp's. I'm sorry. He was an innocent guy. This perp had used

00:49:36.520 the innocent guy's name. And so when the innocent guy was stopped by the police for whatever normal

00:49:42.400 thing, they briefly detained them, determined fairly quickly that he was the wrong guy, probably just

00:49:49.560 from photos. And then released him with something that sounded sort of like an apology. Now, is this a

00:50:00.120 case of the police treating this guy poorly? I don't think so. Don't you imagine that if the white person

00:50:08.300 had had an unusual name and an arrest warrant under that name, they would have at least held the other

00:50:16.340 person until they found out if they had the right person and then released them when they found out

00:50:20.980 they didn't? How in the world would those two cases be treated differently? You know, one is speeding and

00:50:26.900 one has got an arrest warrant. It turns out wrong. It's a wrong arrest warrant. But one has an arrest

00:50:32.560 warrant. These are not equal.

00:50:34.620 So here's a comment that's happening right now. And you want to ask, is this a Chinese bot? So look at

00:50:48.100 this one. So somebody named Sheena345M, we don't know if this is a real person or troll, says,

00:50:54.640 why is Scott so obsessed with supporting a knee on a neck for nine minutes?

00:50:58.660 Exactly the opposite of what's happening. But you can see that the trolls are trying to gin up

00:51:07.920 an imaginary situation in which I was supporting a knee on a neck for nine minutes. After I just told

00:51:14.780 you, it looked to me like the officer probably killed him, meaning that it was the proximate cause,

00:51:22.580 the last part of the cause. We don't know if there was anything before that. We don't know if the

00:51:28.020 fentanyl was enough. We don't know if anything else was a cause. We just don't know that it wasn't.

00:51:35.540 So is that defending it? Or are you possibly not a real person, and rather a troll, who has come here 0.77

00:51:44.880 to create as much racial animosity as possible? Because if all you're doing is trying to create 0.96

00:51:50.620 racial animosity, I'm going to assume you're a troll. And I'm going to assume you don't work for this 0.88

00:51:57.680 country, because I can't believe an American would do something so bad to America. I'm sure they would,

00:52:06.160 but I'd like to assume that you're a foreign entity, if you're trying to make something out of nothing.

00:52:16.580 All right. So watch for the Chinese trolls. There will be a lot of them. 1.00

00:52:20.080 Oh, and here's another one. Steve Cortez. You all know Steve Cortez from Twitter and TV,

00:52:29.000 etc. Twitter has suspended him. Apparently he... Oh, I just realized I'm going to get suspended if I

00:52:37.480 tell you this story. Oh, how can I tell you this story without getting suspended for the same reason

00:52:45.620 that Steve Cortez got suspended? In this case, I'd be getting suspended from YouTube. How can I tell

00:52:53.240 you? I don't know if I can. Can I? Well, I'll give it to you in broad strokes. I guess you'll have to

00:53:02.300 Google it yourself, because I don't have freedom of speech in any practical way. I mean, legally I do,

00:53:08.220 but not in any practical way on this topic. So let's say that Steve Cortez, he cited a Stanford

00:53:16.260 study, and I won't even tell you what the topic is, because if I told you the topic, I would get

00:53:22.560 kicked off of social media. But it's a legitimate study on a Stanford, and it disagreed with the

00:53:30.520 narrative. And because he cited a legitimate, at least we know, at least a legitimate organization,

00:53:39.220 Stanford, just because he mentioned a study, he was kicked off of social media. And I can't even

00:53:46.800 tell you what it was about. Because if I were to suggest that a study exists on this topic that

00:53:54.280 violates the narrative, I would get kicked off of social media according to what I understand are

00:54:01.280 the rules now. Right? It was about masks. It was about masks. So it was a study that alleges

00:54:14.380 that masks don't work, and that the study showed that. Now, you know my opinion, which is I don't

00:54:22.200 think there are any studies, this one or any else, that tells you anything. I believe all the studies

00:54:27.440 are pretty close to worthless. So I would not have been on the same page with Steve Cortez on this,

00:54:36.480 but I certainly would have retweeted it. Because if a legitimate organization does a study on an

00:54:43.520 important topic, I would retweet that even if it didn't agree with my preconceived notions. This is

00:54:48.620 pretty important. So let me give you my opinion on masks. If you're anti-mask, and I know most of you

00:55:01.280 are, I'm certainly anti-mask for people who've been vaccinated. But if you're anti-mask, and certainly

00:55:09.720 young people and outdoors people, so I'm more anti-mask than mask for most of our situations. But I still

00:55:17.140 think on a risk management situation, you still want to take them seriously. Here's my take on why

00:55:25.540 I still think masks are important, depending on the situation. Fact check me on this. There are no

00:55:33.840 major industrialized countries who believe masks don't work in this context. Am I right? If we were

00:55:42.200 being fed a scientific lie, or even if this country was bad at reading scientific data,

00:55:51.040 and we had gotten the wrong answer on masks, you would expect that the other countries would be

00:55:57.900 all over the map. You'd expect that there would be more countries that just said masks don't work,

00:56:03.600 like Germany. Wouldn't you expect to see Great Britain or France or Germany, South Korea,

00:56:12.200 Canada, Japan, Australia, Canada? Wouldn't you expect one of those countries to say masks don't work?

00:56:24.040 I know what you're saying, Sweden, but Sweden is not the case. I'm pretty sure Sweden says masks work.

00:56:31.400 They just would have a different opinion about, you know, when to use them, etc. I think. Check me on

00:56:36.520 that. So I don't believe there is any country, you know, there may be some smaller countries and

00:56:43.200 third world countries, but I don't believe there's any major industrial country with a robust scientific

00:56:49.560 community who is, has a different opinion. Right? Can anybody fact check me on that? And I don't think

00:56:59.080 Sweden counts and states don't count. I'm talking about entire countries.

00:57:07.160 Now, there may be places where they're playing it differently. Sweden's a case where they're

00:57:12.700 playing it differently. It's not a case where they say masks don't work. So just fact check me on this.

00:57:21.300 So this is where I come down on it. I'm no expert on masks. But in any case where there is ambiguity,

00:57:28.660 you would expect that at least countries would disagree. You can certainly see that people within

00:57:34.500 countries would disagree, and that wouldn't tell you what you need to know. But there's no entire

00:57:39.140 country that has a robust scientific community that's on the other side.

00:57:45.100 Ask yourself why. Are they all wrong? All of them? I don't know. So where I am on masks is if it turns

00:57:58.760 out that masks made no difference, I would be surprised, but I would not be wrong. Does everybody

00:58:07.540 understand that? So I'm pro-mask, but later if we were to learn that they made no difference at all,

00:58:14.600 and they actually were bad for us, I would still be right. Do you understand that? Because it's a

00:58:21.760 risk management decision. And if you see all of the best experts in every country are on the same

00:58:28.160 team, the risk management says to go with that team, right? Even if it's wrong. If it turns out

00:58:37.100 you're right, and you're right all along that masks don't work, that would have been a good guess.

00:58:42.660 You could be right by guessing. But let's be honest, it wasn't based on your scientific

00:58:49.960 knowledge, because we don't have any. All right. Should be an individual decision,

00:58:57.660 somebody says. Oh, somebody says Steve is back. Good.

00:59:02.260 Somebody says, are you left of Bernie the same way you identify as black? That's a longer discussion.

00:59:14.220 But how you identify determines how people receive your message. So from a pure communication

00:59:21.480 standpoint, sometimes it's good to be on the same team you're trying to convince.

00:59:26.400 Let's see. At least one person liked my show today. I saw a lot of griping today.

00:59:39.920 I'm just looking at your comments here for a moment.

00:59:50.360 Life is risky. Yeah, separate from the science, there's a decision of whether

00:59:54.920 your individual rights should let you be maskless if you want.

00:59:59.760 Oh, okay. Well, some of you like the show. Thanks for that. And let's go watch the rest

01:00:09.700 of our day. Happy 420. I plan to enjoy it quite a bit. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

01:00:15.760 See you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 20, 2021

Episode 1350 Scott Adams： Chauvin Persuasion, Social Media Tightens its Grip and More

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