Episode 1354 Scott Adams： Is This a Golden Age？ Yes it is, But in Disguise. Let's Simultaneously Sip to That
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
149.92151
Summary
Join me as I walk you through the headlines and give you a sense of how misleading things are right now, and explain why things are better than ever, and why we have entered the golden age. Today's hit of the day: The simultaneous sip.
Transcript
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um hello everybody what a great day this is unbelievable i'm coming to you unshaved
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unshowered and dressed poorly it's just the way you like me yeah you do it's uh it's true the
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more comfortable you are the happier you are and suppose just hypothetically you wanted to enjoy
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this experience which is the doorway to the golden age which i'll be developing as a thesis in a
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moment but to get ready to be absolutely ready all you need is a cup or mug or glass a tanker gel
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stein a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee
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join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the domo bean hit of the day the thing that makes
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everything better it's the beginning of the golden age and it happens now it's called the
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oh yeah so here is the thesis i'm about to develop that we have entered the golden age or a golden
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maybe we don't have just one but that the amazingness of our time is completely concealed
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by what what you know fake news that's right the fake news if we did not have a fake news industry
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assigning people opinions we'd be in really good shape right now and i'm going to walk through the
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headlines and i'm going to give you a sense of how misleading things are right now things are way
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better than ever i think i i would bet that this moment is the best moment in human history
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i think so let's look at the headlines and find out what kind of horrible problems the news is reporting
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that was weird um one of the big headlines that's trending is that uh apparently elon musk used
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somebody's meme without permission yeah that's one of the big stories today just just try to hold that
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in your head one of the biggest stories trending on twitter right now is that elon musk used
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somebody's meme without giving them credit that's real that's one of our big problems today
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all right other news three different agencies put together they're launching some astronauts into the
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international space station other news a device just created oxygen on mars a little bit but it's a
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start we just flew we we the civilization let's say just put a helicopter on mars that just happened
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all right so there's some of the good news now you're worried about biden's climate plan
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destroying the economy and taking away your hamburgers and you're worried about his tax plan
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robbing your robbing your robbing your wallet but i don't know if either of those things are going
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to happen and if some version of them does happen people are really good at adjusting you know i remember
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when taxes were higher under uh who was it clinton the economy was great right now i don't like higher
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taxes i'm not a fan but it is true that we're not terribly good at predicting what happens
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when taxes go up and down we're just not good at it uh warren buffett famously said that he's never
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made an investment decision because of the tax rates think about that the most successful investor
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buys and sells companies uh he's never made a decision based on the tax rate it's either a good deal
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or it's not and even the taxes doesn't seem to change things because he's looking for really
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good deals so that you know taxes won't make the difference so you might not see a gigantic difference
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uh right now the stock market's looking pretty strong looking pretty good uh actually uh warren buffett
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does sell somebody says he doesn't sell he holds for the long term but he does sell companies that's a
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real thing he does fairly frequently actually he reduces his stake and stuff um so i'm going to count
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on the republicans in congress to do what they need to do to uh stop or modify biden's climate and tax
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plans and if something happens in that realm we're not going to die we're not we're just not going to
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die if any of those things happen we'll adjust we always do here's a little news from alternate
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juror on the floyd case i didn't realize this but apparently the alternate jurors don't know their
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alternates until you get right i guess really close to deliberation did you know that i don't know why
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i didn't know that but it makes sense because if if you think you're an alternate the whole time
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then you feel like you're wasting your time and maybe you don't pay attention so much so it's actually
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kind of smart that they don't tell you who are the alternates until they're ready to deliberate
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so one of the alternates who was released before deliberation um said the following and it needs to
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be read in its exact quote so you can understand it and this woman said i had mixed feelings uh oh the
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question was did you want to be a juror and this released alternate said i had mixed feelings
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there was a question on the questionnaire about it and uh i put i did not know the reason at the
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time was that i did not know what the outcome was going to be so i felt like either way you're going
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to disappoint one group or the other i did not want to go through rioting and destruction again
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and i was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict
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uh sounds like we don't really have a verdict here does it in the sense that is there any chance
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this won't be reversed on appeal i think dershowitz says this is sort of a fairly obvious one that will
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be reversed i don't know if you can predict those things that well but to me it looks obvious and i'm
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not a lawyer so what's that mean it means nothing if it's obvious to me but do you believe this is
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the one the one juror and how lucky we are that she was released and she was only an alternate
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do you believe for a second that the rest of the jurors were completely free of this thinking
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because if they were thinking what would happen to them based on the decision that is not a fair trial
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but here's the weirdest thing about this whole uh george floyd thing uh as most of you have noted
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it should have been the most and i think it will be actually in the long run uh should have been the
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most healing and unifying thing that ever happened in this country tragedy of course we had no no
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disrespect to the floyd family but it's because it's tragedy but sometimes tragedies can have a perverse
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you know good impact if it causes you to fix something later and i think this was a perfect
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example this was this is one example where white people and black people looked at the video
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largely had the same opinion largely you know there's always somebody 25 of the public will disagree with
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everything but largely white people black people people of color of all sorts looked at the video and
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said that ain't right whatever that is that's not right
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but because the fake news uh forces us to take sides it looked like it was more disagreement than it
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really was but rasmussen has some uh polling numbers about how people feel about the verdict
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and here you go democrats if you add together the agree and somewhat somewhat agree you could argue
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whether it's fair to do that but i'm going to do it in this case so i'm adding together the people
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who are leaning toward agreeing and agreeing and democrats 87 of them said they um they agree with
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the verdict 87 pretty good now what typically happens when most of the democrats are on one side of
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anything typically republicans are going to be on the other side but not this time 58 of republicans also
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agreed or somewhat agreed with it and that's a pretty strong majority it's not 87 but it is two sides that
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are both strongly on the same side when was the last time right really when was the last time
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that both republicans and democrats were strongly on the same side now imagine if you had scrubbed out
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the effect of the fake news it's probably just about the same if you took the fake news uh effect out
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where it sort of drives people to a to a team instead of looking at the facts this is probably pretty
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close pretty close to something everybody agrees on somebody in the comments is saying 9-11 was the last
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time i don't know if that's true but might be uh let's look at some more uh will the question
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rasmussen asked also is will the floyd verdict make race relations better 21 of everybody uh this is
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likely voters not everybody in the world but likely american voters 21 said it would make race relations
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better 31 thought it would be make things worse that feels like also a difference in what what news
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you're consuming that doesn't feel like a real opinion does it it feels like an assigned opinion a
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little bit but there's not much difference they're both way less than half they're both down in that
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you know quarter third range um and here's another one how much did politics influence the outcome of
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the uh chauvin floyd trial uh so i added together the people who said it politics influenced it a lot
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and the people who said it influenced it somewhat so these are people you know sort of leading in a
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direction or in that direction gop said this 71 percent with 71 percent of uh republicans or yeah
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conservatives i don't know it's about the same i'm speaking in messy terms gop conservatives etc but
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that world 71 percent of them said politics influenced the outcome and democrats also said 48 percent of them
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said that so a little less than half of democrats but 71 percent of the uh conservatives republicans
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said that uh in politics was in it so i would say in this case both sides are strongly 48 percent is a lot
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of people so even the democrats are kind of strongly accepting that politics was a big part of it now
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the people who said that politics was not part of the decision did they mean it this is the kind of
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question where people kind of answer the way they want the poll to turn out i don't know if it's exactly
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what they're feeling or if they want the public to think that politics did not influence the outcome
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because i can't really believe you could get more than one in four people because the one in four will
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say anything but i can't believe that three out of four people would disagree on the question of
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whether politics had an influence i feel like anybody who acted like it wasn't the case was probably
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acting that's just speculation all right so my point is that the country is fairly fairly unified
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the george floyd floyd floyd thing did something to uh white minds that was invaluable i would say for
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the benefit of the country certainly invaluable if you were a black uh american and you've been trying
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to make this point and and the point is do you understand you know what it feels like what what the life
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is like you know what daily life is like what kind of fear there is and how real this is do you
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understand it white america and the answer before george floyd was not really not really i mean we could
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hear it we could hear you talking about it but you know that's not really persuasive you can look at
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some data and data isn't really persuasive but when you see it on the video and you see it over and
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over again even though to and i know you're going to say this in the comments even though the video
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might have been a little misleading might have been a lot misleading but it exists so i'm not going to
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talk about the the factual element of it i'm going to talk about how it makes you feel and i think that
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this was the best um if if george floyd and his family was let's say his family wants to feel that
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his death had meaning it really did in a positive way you know you hate to celebrate somebody who
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might have had a criminal past and was on drugs etc um i'm not condemning him for that stuff either
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i'm just saying normally you don't want to celebrate somebody who's got a checkered past
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but the truth is that his life for whatever reason became the the the most the most accurate
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communication of how one group americans were feeling and the other group couldn't couldn't feel it
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couldn't see it and then that gap was closed by this process is that good for the country i'd say yes
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because anything that increases understanding at such a fundamental level and on something that's
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so important to the the psychology and the experience of life that's a really big deal and i would say
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that it supports the golden age hypothesis that um the the news won't let us believe this but this was
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in fact probably the most unifying experience this country has ever had
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doesn't feel like it doesn't because the news just wants it to be you know a constant uh fight
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but this was the most unifying thing i've ever experienced you know you could say landing on the moon
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in 1969 it was unifying but not in the political sense let's talk about lebron james
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um you know a lot of conservatives are beating up on lebron especially since he uh made uh i think he
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would admit it's a mistake he tweeted when the uh the young lady was shot recently by police when she
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was in the act of trying to stab another young woman um and lebron was incensed by that and tweeted
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that that that that police officer who did the shooting was next as if you know he's going to be
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targeted but when people looked at the video they said uh that looks like he just did a good job and
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saved somebody's life that doesn't look exactly like anything like the floyd thing it looked like good
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police work not bad police work so lebron deleted his tweet i think you probably realized you know it
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was a little bit too much of a claim on that one but here's my here's my take on lebron
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when you're a sports superstar you're kind of pushed to be a leader and that's not necessarily what you
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signed up for i mean you know it comes with a job but i don't know that he equipped himself or has the
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right talent stack shall we say for political conversation now does he have the right talent
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stack for basketball oh yeah i mean ridiculous he has every talent you could ever have you know
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psychologically mentally mental strength uh you know physicality training dedication i mean he has
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he has the whole freaking package but what do we know about what he has learned or what education
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he's had in communicating leading understanding the world it feels like it's a little short
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doesn't it now not being unkind this should not be seen as a criticism because i have great
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appreciation for lebron not only that he's um i think he's genuine meaning i don't think he's trying
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to fool anybody right he's completely transparent there's no clever trick or anything to it he's
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telling you exactly what he feels you can disagree with it you could think he's you know maybe not
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quite as sophisticated in his opinion as it could or should be but i don't think you should doubt his
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intentions have you ever seen anything from him that would suggest his intentions are bad
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and i feel like that has to matter right i just don't think you can judge people who may do things
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differently than you would do them if they have the same intention you have which is to make things
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better right now okay i'm seeing people criticizing lebron for being dumb blah blah blah blah but let me ask
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you this is he so much different and i'm going to make an argument here he has the same problem that
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trump had and i use that analogy knowingly provocatively what was the biggest problem
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that trump had as president it was the fake news wasn't it if if the fake news didn't exist what would
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trump's uh term have looked like completely differently you know you would interpret everything
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you did in a different light if fake news didn't exist but fake news does exist and it's affecting all
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of us it's not just affecting you know ex-presidents lebron is a victim he's a victim i mean it seems weird
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because he's you know a zillionaire famous athlete top of his game but on this specific thing i believe
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that the fake news created in him a set of feelings and emotions and beliefs that made it easy for him to
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misinterpret this next event the shooting of the young woman i i think his filter was just off a little
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bit and he knows it i mean he knows it now but his filter was a little off but was that his fault
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was it is that lebron's fault that the entire news industry is feeding fake news and he believed
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or he sort of bought into the emotional package is that really his fault
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i don't know i don't know i feel as though um i think we should give him a break in this he's got
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skin in the game he's trying to help he pulled back his tweet when people complained he's being
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responsive he's fully transparent i say give lebron a break i feel he's one of the good ones
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even if you would have played it differently now i i see some complaints about him supporting china
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blah blah blah that's a different story and i feel like you can treat them separately you know we'll
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talk about that someday but um you know that that's a tough one all right but it's a different story
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let me ask you this uh if we're trying to figure out if this is the golden age and by the way
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keep in mind that my larger theme for today is that we have achieved the we're in the golden age
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but we just can't see it clearly because of the fake news this lebron story is all positive
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but somehow it turned negative because of the way we like to argue about stuff having a famous sports star
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who is very concerned about an issue of great concern is not a problem the fact that he didn't
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play it the way you would have played it maybe he made a mistake in public looks like he's doing
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what he can to correct it that's not bad this is the sort of conflict you want you don't want no
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conflict you want productive conflict and this is it all right um can both of these statements be true
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here is me screwing people's uh psychology up to try to in a productive way i'm trying to
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i'm trying to shake up people's thinking and i asked these this question on twitter and man you should
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look at the comments talk about uh yeah somebody says that lebron should apologize to the officer
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or he should wait until there's an official ruling right um yeah i think an apology would be
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called for but um that's a small problem at this point all right so can both of these statements be
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true number one systemic and direct racism are serious problems in america now i'm not saying
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that you believe that necessarily some of you don't i happen to believe it's true um as i define it
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right everybody defines these things a little differently but as i would define these terms definitely true
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um that there's systemic and direct racism and it's a serious problem in america number two can this
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also be true at the same time that being black in america in 2021 which is important to the point
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is an economic advantage if and if is important here if you approach it strategically
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can both of those statements be true that there is lots of racism in a serious problem but being
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black in america is an economic advantage if you approach it strategically now what that means i'll
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just give you one example a strategic way to approach it would be uh to become try to become let's say you
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got a background in communication and i don't know uh political theory or something uh what would be the
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most strategic thing you could do if you were black in america in 2021 and you wanted to find uh your
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advantage become a republican right have you noticed it's hard to notice that a hundred percent of black
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republicans are doing well has anybody noticed that i mean obviously i'm lying when i say a hundred percent
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because nothing's a hundred percent but whenever whenever i see anybody who has a republican point of
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view and is also black how well are they accepted by republicans a hundred percent tim scott is you know
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going to give some big speech uh if he ran for president could tim scott a black republican could
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he become elected president in this party of all these racist republicans of course he could totally
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he just has to have the philosophy republicans don't give a rat's ass about anything but are you
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following the same set of rules do you like our constitution are you going to take it seriously
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we're done you know a little religion on top bonus bonus didn't need it wasn't necessary i don't bring
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you any religious beliefs and you accept me most of you are conservative or republicans if i know my
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audience so it's really easy to be you know not a hundred percent compatible with the republican thought
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but if you buy into the constitution part and the you know self-determination and some of the just
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basics of of you know taking responsibility republicans love you there's no problem at all
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and it's just the fake news that would make you think this would ever be a problem now let's say that
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you're black in america but you don't want to become a republican you know there's some issues there
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what would be another strategic thing you could do get your education as best you can our school
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system is terrible but as best you can and then find out that corporate america prefers you
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every time because corporate america is under diversified they know they have to fix it
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qualified black candidate walks in the door gets a job every time it is first in line for promotion
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all right now that doesn't change the fact that maybe there are infinite small businesses that
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would discriminate and you know if you go into the i'll just pick one random example if a black man
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walks into a korean uh grocery store in an urban area can the black guy get a job in the korean grocery
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store sometimes yes but there might be a little extra racism involved in the hiring i don't so nobody would
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doubt that but then just use your strategy and go where it's the opposite where you would be picked
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first strategic advantage so i put this out here because it's the fake news that wants to hide this
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important point which i believe is a good indicator of the golden age somebody says that's why you didn't
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get promoted scott yeah if you're white in america and you're in a corporation you do have a disadvantage
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that's just a fact it's a disadvantage um but if you were anywhere outside of the corporate world
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maybe it's an advantage because maybe racism works in your favor somehow it's not obvious how but i could
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imagine there's an argument there um so there's that all right what would happen just just put out
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this idea what would happen if the people who don't believe in hoaxes in in both the left and the right
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got together now it's not going to happen because the fake news will keep us apart but
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both parties are trying to paint uh the moderates in the party as belonging to the extremists who are
00:28:04.800
crazy and believe in hoaxes all right so there there's some crazy hoaxes on the right there are some
00:28:10.140
crazy hoaxes on the left and both sides would like you to believe that their opponent is all the
00:28:16.500
believers of hoaxes when in fact it's probably just some now what would happen if the people who don't
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believe in any hoaxes left or right decided to get together could they move the needle now i don't
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know if it'll ever happen but uh we are seeing as i'm seeing this in the comments too we're seeing that
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the fake news business is losing a lot of its power because people like me people like tim pool glenn
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greenwald you know anybody who would be more independent is becoming a growing force and as
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those into point independent voices get bigger the power of the fake news will just it will start to
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look increasingly ridiculous i mean it looks pretty ridiculous now yeah bill maher a free thinker so i
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think the free thinkers are maybe starting to organize you know i have to tell you there's this thing
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going on under the hood you know the thing that you don't see in which the independent thinkers are
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self-organizing meaning that people like me are being introduced to other people like me and there's
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a sort of network forming an informal network of people who just know other people who are not hoax
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believers and it's a thing now how powerful that becomes i don't know but i can tell you that if i see
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another independent voice whether it's a matt taibbi uh whoever it is that i will amplify it you know if
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it's a good point and it's an independent voice i'll amplify it likewise a lot of those people will
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amplify me and so you're seeing you're seeing a growth of the reasonable middle that you don't
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notice yet because what you can't see is how networked we are and as that networking increases
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it's all under the hood you can't see any of it because it's just one-to-one you know some person
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introducing somebody etc somebody follows somebody on twitter you don't see it forming but there is a big
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reasonable uh non-hoax believing center i don't want to say intellectual that's too smarmy sounding
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but there's something forming and it's a good thing all right uh bonsai sharma uh in his tweet he's a
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that's twitter name is bonsai sharma uh talks about a new pew research in which the
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bonsai says this this survey tells you a lot about how democrats think now i would add to that
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because of the opinions that have been assigned to them by the media um and bonsai goes on says they
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are terribly concerned about gun violence so the the survey shows that gun violence is at the top
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of uh concerns for democrats so they're very concerned about gun violence but they're not much
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concerned about violent crime so this is a the democrats came out in the poll right at the top
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gun violence yet the the issue of violent crime very low and a bunch of stuff in between that they
00:31:44.740
care about more now is this not an obvious case where you can see that these opinions are manufactured
00:31:52.940
by the fake news because the fake news has told them to care about guns but it didn't tell them to
00:31:58.800
care about violent crime if it had those two things would be at the top but because of the way the coverage
00:32:06.540
works these two things which really should have been they should have moved exactly together
00:32:11.820
they got separated one's at the top and one's at the bottom it's actually laughably absurd
00:32:18.460
to imagine that democrats are forming their own opinions on these topics it's obvious they're not
00:32:24.100
the the the the press coverage completely you know made two things which are the same the top and the
00:32:32.040
bottom of the survey and you can see it as clearly as day so i feel as if the people on the left
00:32:40.100
can't ignore forever that this is happening and you know the people on the right it's happening too but
00:32:46.860
you know since i don't have an example to show you today um actually i will show you an example later
00:32:51.720
believe it or not i do have one so jake tapper tweeted today uh that it was a year ago
00:32:57.460
uh that he and then he showed the video that is rupard rupard meaning that is edited to reverse
00:33:05.180
or change its meaning and the rupard video uh seemed to show president trump suggesting you know drinking or
00:33:13.440
ingesting disinfectants for covet that of course never happened what happened was that trump knew
00:33:21.120
about a new experimental technology involving uvc light in which it would be injected by trachea
00:33:28.300
into your um into your trachea by a ventilator like device and there was talk about maybe you could
00:33:36.120
extend it into the lungs but that wasn't what was being worked on at the moment so trump actually knew
00:33:41.400
more than dr burks about this new experimental thing that's just a fact because he talked about
00:33:49.160
it very specifically you know could he use a type of light injected into the body it was in the news
00:33:55.980
that month i tweeted it i know it was in the news because i discussed it on periscope and i tweeted it a few
00:34:03.900
times so it was a real thing trump knew about it dr burks did not and so the news treated it as though
00:34:12.120
burks who did not know about it was the smart one and the trump who actually knew about it was the dumb
00:34:19.500
one they totally rupard it they reversed the meaning and the way that they did that is they edit out the
00:34:27.480
beginning of what trump said where he clarifies he's talking about light says it directly and then he
00:34:33.040
makes a bunch of comments blah blah blah and then at the end he bookends it by making sure you knew he
00:34:38.880
was talking about light if you take off the end and the beginning where he clarified he was talking
00:34:45.060
about light all you have is the middle in which he uses the word disinfectant and then that became the
00:34:51.180
fake news all right if you didn't know that um so here's what gets interesting so i of course tweeted
00:35:02.100
this to correct it and i included the article showing that researchers at cedars-sinai
00:35:06.960
uh were actually testing it it has a name it's called heal light platform they were inserting it into
00:35:14.780
the trachea exactly as i said and but here's the just mind-boggling amazing thing when i went to look
00:35:22.080
for a link to include in this story because it was a twitter exchange um i found the usa today fact
00:35:29.160
check on it and i'm still shaking my head because it's like this is amazing all right here's how usa today
00:35:39.760
no friend of the president president trump i mean um here's how they handled this do you think that
00:35:47.500
they said oh president trump was completely right there is a technology that exists do you think they did
00:35:55.540
that let me tell you how they handled the fact check and if this doesn't make your head explode
00:36:03.180
i don't know what will all right you ready for this this is mind-boggling all right um so here's the
00:36:12.040
claim so usa today sets it up this way the claim that researchers are exploring a medical device that
00:36:18.980
would use uv-a as a potential tool for treatment treatment in covet 19 patients is true according to
00:36:28.060
uh statements from cedars-sinai medical center so they start by saying that it's true that this
00:36:35.280
technology exists the one that president trump was referring to uh but the presentation of that news
00:36:43.400
includes includes a false headline uh because it's premature to say at this point that the technology
00:36:51.400
is quote to be used um as a treatment so apparently there was a hollywood la news headline that said the
00:37:02.340
that it was to be used as a treatment but it was only being tested so they fact checked it as false
00:37:10.340
because some headlines which had nothing to do with what trump said just somebody wrote a headline
00:37:17.220
somewhere so the headline had the wrong use of words for a true story which president trump was right
00:37:27.500
about in the context of his own advisors and the entire news industry being completely wrong about
00:37:34.580
here's how that fact check should have run the president made a claim about some technology or
00:37:42.460
asked some questions about it it exists here it is interestingly his advisors the experts were unaware
00:37:50.960
of this thing that trump knew about accurately that's what that's what the fact check should have said
00:37:58.640
but they found some way to turn it false and the way they did was launder it through an obscure
00:38:06.620
publication called the hollywood la news never heard of it to say that their headline was slightly wrong
00:38:13.240
and therefore the fact checking says it was a false claim
00:38:19.140
what it was the most true claim ever and they found some weird way
00:38:27.320
to make some element of it that had nothing to do with trump
00:38:31.140
untrue when you see how much torture they have to do to themselves
00:38:36.560
to make trump look bad uh i'll tell you history will not be kind
00:38:41.580
to the fake news all right here's another one uh there's a this this is another rupar
00:38:47.460
so there's a video in which bill gates is talking about
00:38:51.060
the economic uh profit from vaccinations whoa that's trouble right because bill gates is pro
00:39:01.140
vaccinations and he's talking about the 20 to 1 economic profit oh this is bad right because this
00:39:11.100
indicates that he's in it for the money and so then safety is not important that's what it says
00:39:17.500
right so that's what somebody sent to me and said well scott you keep defending bill gates in effect
00:39:23.420
uh but here he is in his own words saying he's in it for the money
00:39:30.260
no he didn't this is a rupar the video in which he's talking about the 20 to 1 economic benefit
00:39:40.000
is for society not for bill gates he's saying that there's a 20 to 1 economic advantage for any
00:39:48.200
country or society that vaccinates it's obvious that's the context you don't even have to go
00:39:55.020
research it anybody should know that's the obvious well not anybody here's where it helps to have a
00:40:01.540
background in economics he couldn't have been talking about himself it's just ridiculous to
00:40:08.420
imagine that that was the context so i don't even have to research it to know the context was society
00:40:13.260
um and i tweeted it if you want to look for yourself so here's somebody who got totally rupard
00:40:18.940
they saw a video and a context and believed bill gates was saying in his own words he was in this
00:40:24.660
vaccine thing for the money let me say something as clearly as i can if you think bill gates is in
00:40:31.460
any of this anything anything anything he's doing right now if you think any of it is for his own
00:40:39.200
personal profit you're really misled i mean you're seriously you're on the wrong planet because he
00:40:48.600
doesn't need money that's the one thing he doesn't need he's trying to give it away he's giving away 90
00:40:57.340
percent of his wealth and he's talking other rich people into doing the same thing nothing could be
00:41:02.960
more opposite than bill gates is in it for the money there is no more false claim that has ever been
00:41:09.580
made in the history of the world than bill gates is in it for the money in 2021 obviously when he made
00:41:17.300
his money he was in it for the money here we see uh uh craig hell no he's a eugenicist
00:41:25.900
there is no evidence of that and if you think that he's a eugenicist
00:41:32.300
in in light of zero evidence of that and lots of evidence that he's sort of left leading and wants
00:41:41.460
everybody to do great it's amazing that you could have that opinion just amazing and i would say that
00:41:48.960
you're not in the group of reasonable people who don't believe hoaxes if you believe q anon is true
00:41:55.440
if you believe that uh bill gates is in it for the money and he's a eugenicist um and i'm seeing people
00:42:03.560
yelling in all caps open your eyes look at my track record of calling out hoaxes and then look at your
00:42:13.660
own compare all right if i'm wrong about this and this one's easy this one's not hard bill gates is
00:42:24.360
not in it because he's a eugenicist he might like birth control that's pretty far from being a eugenicist
00:42:32.740
right a lot of people think birth control is a good thing and they don't believe they're eugenicists
00:42:40.300
somebody says abortion is eugenics well you can disagree all you want with abortion uh but you're
00:42:47.900
making crazy arguments about bill gates anyway so bill gates is helping the world but half half of
00:42:54.540
republicans think he's got some evil plan uh here's some more good news david boxenhorn is
00:43:02.600
reporting on this a lot on twitter that mrna vaccination the the platform the and the the
00:43:09.540
technology looks like uh there's a new vaccination that looks promising 77 effective against malaria
00:43:18.060
wow so one of the things that's going to come out of this um pandemic is that this mrna
00:43:26.660
technology might cure a bunch of other stuff and malaria is right at the top so malaria kills 400
00:43:34.960
000 people a year so if you take a 77 bite out of that that's a pretty good deal um
00:43:41.660
let's see the other thing that's good is i believe the public is finally coming around to understanding
00:43:49.000
the news is not real and that's a big deal because if we keep believing the news is even intended to be
00:43:56.880
real um as an accurate and unbiased you're going to be real confused in life you have to you have to
00:44:05.400
achieve that level of understanding that the news is not even intended to be real
00:44:10.180
before you can make any progress really i mean you'll just be locked in your in a weird little fake
00:44:17.320
world if you think that's the case but uh technologies or services like substack where
00:44:23.120
independents can say what they want locals uh i'm an investor in that locals is another
00:44:29.300
subscription service where i can say what i want you wouldn't believe the things i can say on locals
00:44:34.380
that have never gotten into the wild i was complimenting the people who follow me on locals the
00:44:39.840
other day because i've i've said and done some pretty provocative things that you just couldn't do on
00:44:45.800
twitter without getting canceled but that group has not released any of that to the wild
00:44:51.980
somehow they've they've been and there are thousands of them right those 64 6500 followers on locals and
00:45:01.720
none of them have copied my content from there and put it in twitter where i would get canceled
00:45:08.280
now i don't know how that's gone so long without that happening it feels like
00:45:12.340
you know some bad apple will get in there somehow just to do that but so far it's completely worked
00:45:19.740
and i'm surprised um so the economy is doing great we were worried about uh the deficit but i just don't
00:45:30.560
know how much to worry about that we've got doctors on video now we didn't have that a year ago
00:45:35.420
so you know medical advice at least is is going to be more universal uh we've got remote work
00:45:42.240
i don't think people are going back i think remote work is a thing it's going to have a good effect on
00:45:48.000
traffic i think that the school choice thing just hit a it's starting to come into its own you know
00:45:55.480
cory deangelis especially doing a great job persuading on that i do what i can but it does look like both
00:46:02.540
the left and the right are saying uh we need more school options or better schools schools a mess
00:46:09.320
there's even an lgbtq uh activists who say that the current public schools are are no good because
00:46:16.680
they get bullied etc i agree with all of that i think the lgbtq community as well as conservatives
00:46:23.920
as well as lots of people need more options they need more options now i'm not saying that you want
00:46:30.900
separate schools for lgbtq that seems like a very bad idea but wouldn't it be a good idea for some
00:46:37.880
people to have the option right and um there does seem to be some movement on this um the teachers
00:46:47.760
unions so we'll see a lot of work to be done um there don't seem to be any wars on the horizon
00:46:55.360
am i wrong about that you know the news is is sort of working hard to find to find us a war
00:47:02.220
but they're failing they they can't they can't get us into war in afghanistan we're done with it
00:47:08.360
the middle east it's a flare-up now and then but even iran it looks like that's going to be israel's
00:47:15.020
problem maybe and it'll be it'll be a short process if they decide to to take out their nuclear
00:47:20.980
facilities i feel as if we have never been safer um i think that russia and ukraine will not turn
00:47:29.700
into a world war i think that china and the south pacific sea will not turn into a world war
00:47:35.780
because the the superpowers with nukes just don't want to fight each other i just don't see it's going
00:47:42.400
to happen so yeah you know israel drop some bombs on some syrian uh missile batteries that that'll
00:47:50.060
happen forever but um yeah even if you look at the the hottest of the hot spots you know taiwan
00:47:57.200
ukraine none of them look like they're going to become a world war and none of them look like
00:48:03.500
they're necessarily going to bring drag america into it we'll see i mean anything could happen right
00:48:10.280
but i feel as if we're in the most peaceful time maybe of my life let's hope it holds um
00:48:19.620
you know you've got the abraham accords in the middle east we're probably one ayatollah away from
00:48:24.720
a better situation with iran the ayatollah isn't going to live forever now whoever replaces them might
00:48:30.800
be just as bad or worse but at least that's an opening something might happen and i would argue that
00:48:37.400
uh people are starting to understand the subjective nature of reality do you remember five years ago
00:48:44.080
the first time you heard of the idea of the simulation it seemed ridiculous and it's already
00:48:50.080
entering the mainstream of thought do you remember when you first heard that the news is fake
00:48:55.560
you probably didn't believe it but now you know it's true um how many times have you thought something
00:49:03.640
was true and then had your mind completely changed you know a day or a week later a bunch of times and i
00:49:10.060
would i would argue that our understanding of our reality as being subjective is more so than it's
00:49:18.340
ever been which is a good thing nextly not a word but let's say it is nextly um i'm going to claim
00:49:27.740
that the idea of systems versus goals is really big and it has changed america does anybody want to argue
00:49:37.540
with that i want to see some pushback on that it's a big claim so i'm saying that my book had failed
00:49:43.080
almost everything and still win big has changed so much in america that it's a major force that it
00:49:53.280
actually is something that you can talk about as being a big deal and a trend i think if you saw how
00:50:00.140
many books it influenced and how many people talk this way now that didn't used to five years ago if
00:50:07.900
you said passion was the most important thing for success what would people say they'd say yeah that's
00:50:13.800
true you need your passion what do they say now now they say passion is bullshit right if anybody talks
00:50:20.560
about it at all there's about a 50 chance they're going to talk about it negatively five years ago
00:50:25.920
it would have only been positive it's a big big change now i'm only part of that but i am part of it
00:50:32.460
part of the passion being overrated what about the fact that persuasion is more important than facts
00:50:39.020
what was the most important five years ago you everything was uh uh facts don't care about your
00:50:47.100
feelings right let's get the facts the facts are important five years ago how do people feel today
00:50:53.720
today pretty much everyone knows that the facts don't matter when we talked about the george floyd
00:51:00.320
case the chauvin case didn't everybody agree that the facts would not be the determinant of the outcome
00:51:07.160
when have you ever seen that before the left the right everybody we all agreed that people would
00:51:14.840
ignore the facts even though this was one of those case with cases with more facts than just about
00:51:20.480
anything yeah micro also talks about uh passion being bs etc right yeah so i would say the you know
00:51:29.620
not taking you know some kind of universal credit for any of this i'm saying that i'm part of
00:51:35.440
a larger trend of systems being more important than goals habits being more important than objective
00:51:42.700
um subjectivity of our experience passion being bullshit these are all things that really weren't
00:51:51.300
big five years ago but they're big now and i think i'm uh one of the larger reasons for that
00:51:59.180
um let me see what you said the fact that he didn't die of an overdose got a chauvin convicted
00:52:08.700
good well i don't understand that comment all right sorry about that
00:52:14.340
uh okay my devices are all talking to me today all right so that's what's going on and i would say
00:52:24.200
that we are entering the golden age we're putting stuff on the moon we don't have a war happening
00:52:30.760
um my my stocks are higher than they've ever been and i would say that our understanding of the world
00:52:38.740
is better than it's ever been and i believe that our uh our our racism level in this country is the
00:52:47.720
lowest it's ever been and going lower i would say it's trending lower now you could argue but no
00:52:53.880
they've just replaced it with racism against white people that's true that's true there's way more
00:53:01.060
racism against white people but we can handle it right we can handle it it's not it's not the worst
00:53:07.640
problem in the world it's it's annoying it's inconvenient and probably some people are going
00:53:13.600
to go to jail that didn't need to so you know but it's not the biggest thing that's that's happening
00:53:19.160
all right uh somebody say it's the golden age until i love this comment uh brian says it's the
00:53:29.500
golden age until franz ferdinand gets assassinated you are totally right things can change in a moment
00:53:37.500
just like that but um i believe that the pandemic was absolutely necessary to get us here what did the
00:53:47.640
pandemic give us a whole bunch of new technologies for handling pandemics that's pretty big a whole
00:53:55.320
bunch of new technology for vaccinations from malaria to god knows aids what's next that's gigantic
00:54:03.140
remote work as now a standard as opposed to an exception that's really big that is so so big i mean
00:54:13.540
i've been writing about cubicles for 30 years a lot of people got out of their cubicle recently that's
00:54:20.180
big and like i said the floyd trial put people on the same side it's the first time white people
00:54:25.780
really really got to to feel the emotional part of the argument you know not just statistics
00:54:35.300
um yeah and the economy is doing well and i think we've never been better school choice would we have
00:54:45.380
would we have as much school choice if the pandemic hadn't messed up the school habit no if you and would
00:54:55.720
we have uh would we have doctors available by video across state lines nope these are all things that
00:55:04.900
happened in the last year because of the pandemic the pandemic is a crisis which created amazing
00:55:14.660
opportunities which are permanent this is the best time we've ever been in
00:55:19.700
now unfortunately like everything it is not distributed evenly it is not distributed evenly
00:55:28.340
tj says wow delusional talk what part is wrong tj see i would argue that anybody who thinks things are bad
00:55:41.300
is being hypnotized by their new source the news only exists by telling you bad news the news could not
00:55:49.700
make money telling you good news and i have also a hypothesis that every time a new video camera is added to
00:55:56.740
the world you think the world is worse because what is the video camera going to show you good news
00:56:03.860
never video shows you bad news that's what's interesting good news isn't as interesting oh
00:56:11.700
sure we see some puppies and stuff but mostly bad news so every time uh there's a new camera that
00:56:18.340
enters the world there's a new possibility that people will see more bad news so your impression of the
00:56:24.420
the world might be at the all-time worst the world itself is at an all-time best so those of you are
00:56:33.220
saying my god this guy's crazy everything's falling apart can't he see it no i can't i can't see it because
00:56:42.020
it's not there the world is by far better than it's ever been not even close and this year the one we're
00:56:51.540
entering we hate the masks we you know we honor the the dead if you will the the people who did not
00:56:58.660
make it through the pandemic but the fact is this this shook the box it exactly the way the box needed
00:57:06.340
to be shaken and we've never been in a better situation all right yeah if you're not looking for the golden
00:57:16.420
age you won't see it if if you're believing the the news you'll never see it um where the where china
00:57:24.980
has the most power on earth this is your paradise well tj did you say that about japan in the 60s
00:57:33.380
i did was it the 60s 70s 80s whatever it was when when it was obvious that japan was going to be the
00:57:40.980
world power because they were they were growing fast and you know you could just look at the
00:57:45.380
curves and say uh-oh japan's going to eat our lunch they'll have all of our technology
00:57:50.500
what happened didn't happen did it didn't happen at all why is china doing so well
00:57:58.420
stealing our technology they're doing so well because we're letting them what happens if we stop
00:58:04.260
letting them meaning stop letting them steal our technology stop import exporting our jobs stop
00:58:10.660
buying their cheap stuff stop letting them abuse our industries what happens if we stop because
00:58:18.020
even biden's you know going to be cautious about china yeah if you straight line any problem oh china's
00:58:27.060
getting bigger if nothing ever changed pretty big problem but something always changes so don't worry
00:58:36.100
about a straight line trend it always changes um and i would argue uh that if you're worried about one
00:58:46.900
of those problems you're probably consuming too much news from one side although the china thing is real
00:58:52.500
uh it's it's it's easily handleable in my opinion uh japan does not want to kill us and somebody says
00:59:02.660
that china does not true china doesn't want to kill anybody where did where did you even get that china
00:59:10.660
wants to dominate and china wants to control its own fate but do you think china wants to own denmark
00:59:18.660
i don't think so i don't think china wants to own denmark i i think their ambitions are really about
00:59:35.060
bobo says oh is this a racist comment let me read it first what is your opinion on hypothetical oh this is
00:59:42.340
so provocative free therapy for black people sounds a little racist hold on
00:59:55.380
well you're making a big assumption there you're making a big assumption that uh a that somehow black
01:00:03.300
people will be extra benefited from therapy i don't know that that's the case i would guess that everybody
01:00:10.100
needs therapy lately but i don't think therapy is the right word or the right way to frame it
01:00:16.500
uh could could black americans be happier if their situation were presented to them in a strategic
01:00:25.140
framework which gives them all the opportunity in the world it's just there's a bunch of things that
01:00:30.180
that are still bad or a victim framework in which everybody's doomed so we should certainly go from victim to strategy
01:00:39.460
but i don't think therapy is the right approach that's just insulting and and uh racist feeling even if you didn't mean it that way
01:00:56.340
well fentanyl is a big problem yeah so the country is not free of problems
01:01:03.620
you know i think we'll we'll figure a way around all of it
01:01:09.140
do you believe china is trying to kill us with fentanyl oh that's true
01:01:13.860
yes but i would say that that has more to do with uh harming us economically
01:01:18.500
i don't think china wants us dead i think they don't care
01:01:22.980
but they want us less powerful and fentanyl is part of that
01:01:26.100
so yes they they are they are the cause of death in america that's true
01:01:32.580
and it has to be dealt with all right that's all i got for now and i will talk to you tomorrow