Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1362 Scott Adams： Basecamp Gets Rid of its Worst Employees, Florida Bans Racism, Fake News Sightings, More

00:00:00.000 Hey Tim, I will challenge you today. I'll challenge you hard. And if you'd like to be up for the

00:00:09.220 challenge, well, I wouldn't want to do it under hydrated. That'd be dangerous. So all you need

00:00:16.660 is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen drink, a flask or a vessel of any

00:00:20.640 kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled

00:00:24.340 pleasure, the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better, much better. It's

00:00:30.180 called the simultaneous sip. Have you heard of it? Yeah, it's quite famous now. And it's

00:00:36.180 going to happen right now. Go. Oh yes, I feel us all coming together over that. Why can't

00:00:50.000 we all get along and simultaneously sip? Well, let's, let's talk about the news and I'll tell

00:00:56.160 you why. It turns out there's lots of reasons. All right. Here's my question to you. Do we

00:01:06.680 have a whole bunch of crises or do we just have one? You know, if I asked you what's the, what

00:01:14.240 are the problems in the world? You'd say, well, racism is pulling us apart. And you might say

00:01:20.400 climate change is either a disagreement or a, or a problem, whatever you, whatever you think. You

00:01:26.940 got, uh, you got people who don't want to get vaccinated. Uh, that might be a problem. You got

00:01:33.140 fentanyl and, uh, coming from China. We've got lots of problems, right? Or do we only have

00:01:40.720 one? Let me, let me make a case. Tim, this is for you. You said to challenge you. You

00:01:47.680 wanted to be challenged this morning. Here is your reframing challenge. Do we have lots

00:01:54.260 of problems or is our only problem the fake news? Here's my argument. The news tells us

00:02:02.920 what to think. We used to think we made up our own opinions and we just gathered data from

00:02:08.260 new sources. But now I think in 2021, we've all sort of, you know, risen the level in awareness.

00:02:16.520 Wouldn't you say? At least the people who are paying attention. I would say that our awareness

00:02:21.020 has gone up a level. And now we know that our opinions are assigned to us. Well, not, not you,

00:02:27.420 of course. I mean, not me. I'm talking about everybody else in the world, but you know, you and

00:02:34.140 I are, we're immune. And if you think that you don't get to go to the next level, but, uh, it does

00:02:42.560 seem that all of these problems have the same sort of root cause, which is, wait for it. If the

00:02:51.620 situation were framed properly, we could solve it easily, but it's not framed properly because of the

00:03:00.940 the way the news business and the social media business work, their incentive is to keep us at

00:03:07.200 each other's throats. So they get more clicks. But if their incentive, hypothetically, and I don't know

00:03:15.320 how you could ever make this true, but if they had the incentive to, let's say, bring this together and

00:03:20.260 solve problems, could they do it? Well, let me give you some examples.

00:03:25.860 Um, if you don't know this, um, you're going to have to do some research on your own to make sure

00:03:33.420 that I'm not lying to you, but all of the smart people know that the only way you could get close

00:03:40.160 to solving climate change, even if it's not a problem, you're still going to need massive amounts

00:03:46.880 of clean power and not polluting the world, et cetera. So no matter what you think about climate

00:03:52.480 change in terms of its risk, all the smart people in the world at this point are pretty sure we're

00:03:58.820 going to need massive, more nuclear energy. What is the, what is the media telling you about that?

00:04:07.020 Is the media saying, Hey, it looks at, looks like even, even Joe Biden, lots of people in the right,

00:04:14.300 pretty much everybody's on the same side from, from Bill Gates to who knows who, pretty much,

00:04:20.280 we're going to have to go massively hard at nuclear, not only so we can control space,

00:04:25.840 because if we don't control space eventually, we're going to lose to whoever does. So where is

00:04:32.320 the news and social media telling us all to get on the same side because we're sort of already there

00:04:39.180 and put a lot of energy into the only thing that can save us if the climate is the problem,

00:04:44.680 the experts say, and the only thing that can save us if space is going to be colonized and it looks

00:04:51.720 like it will be. So I would say that the climate change is almost entirely a news and media problem

00:04:58.980 because it's solvable if they could train us to think properly about the right solutions.

00:05:05.260 How about racism? Do you think that what we perceive to be plus what actually is, so racism is not just

00:05:15.920 perceptual, it's real plus perceptual, how would we feel about race and the race problems in this country

00:05:24.600 if the news simply gave us facts without taking a side, without being a narrative? I don't think it

00:05:32.800 would be nearly as big. My guess is that, I don't know, 80% of at least how our emotions are whipped

00:05:41.600 up about racism, at least 80% about how we feel about it in any given day is just the media.

00:05:48.980 They've created, you know, this conflict, which is not in any way to say there's no racism. I'm not

00:05:55.100 on that team. I'm not on the team that's saying that America is not a racist country. It's clearly

00:06:01.160 a racist country. I get what people are saying about the rules are the same. Yeah, the rules are

00:06:08.620 the same. The Constitution is completely even. But no, there are lots of problems with the country

00:06:18.160 in terms of race. Now, when I talk, let me, I have to divert a little bit because once I said that,

00:06:24.480 I can't just leave it hanging. In my opinion, systemic racism exists primarily in the teachers'

00:06:33.280 unions. They're the ones who keep schools from competing. And if schools can't compete,

00:06:38.880 they won't get better. We know that for sure. And if they don't get better, and you're a, let's say

00:06:45.260 you're a black kid in a, you know, black area that doesn't have a good school, how are you ever 0.65

00:06:50.820 going to, how are you ever going to get an even opportunity? You can't. I would call that systemic 0.98

00:06:58.420 racism. If you wanted to call it something else, it's still the same problem, right? And it affects

00:07:04.940 white people and black people, but maybe at different percentages. So that's what, that's the

00:07:09.560 part that brings the race in. But I think we're a racist country in terms of the teachers' unions

00:07:14.980 and the fact that we're not moving against them. And if you look in the news, do you find the news

00:07:20.980 pushing back against the teachers' unions? Well, not the mainstream news. The mainstream news does not

00:07:27.220 push back. But imagine if they did. Imagine if the news every day was, gosh, we've got a horrible

00:07:34.360 problem, and it's caused again by the teachers' unions. Where's that news? Imagine if that had been

00:07:41.900 the narrative. If that had been the narrative, probably the teachers' unions' power would have

00:07:48.600 been diminished, one way or another. And probably we would be a lot happier and heading in the right

00:07:55.560 direction in terms of some of these, you know, structural, historical inequities. How about people

00:08:05.060 not wanting to get vaccinated? So depending on your point of view, you might say, hey, more people

00:08:12.700 should get vaccinated. Now I'm going to give you a little bit later, I'm going to give you the argument

00:08:17.760 for getting vaccinated. Damn it, I'm going to have to do it now, aren't I? Because if I just say this, 0.98

00:08:24.080 you all get mad. I can't, I can't just work this into my other point. So I'm going to have to diverge

00:08:29.220 again. I was going to do this anyway. Here's an argument that, this is on CNN, which was actually

00:08:37.520 kind of useful. And they were trying to work out, they were trying to debunk the arguments against

00:08:45.140 vaccinations. So let me, let me tell you how you should look at the vaccination question. And if you

00:08:51.920 didn't know already, I plan to get vaccinated on Monday. And I want to tell you how that decision gets

00:08:58.220 made. Now, let me be really, really direct with you. I'm not telling you, you should get vaccinated.

00:09:06.860 And I'm not telling you, you should not. You don't want to get that advice from me, right?

00:09:12.840 Wouldn't I be sort of the worst person in the world to give you medical advice?

00:09:18.820 But I can give you advice on how to analyze things and how to calculate your risks. So let's just talk

00:09:26.240 about that. So what are the components you should look at? And again, you're going to make your own

00:09:31.080 decisions, right? So nothing I say now should change the fact that you're in charge of your own

00:09:37.960 decisions. That's it. It's your body, do whatever you want. But here's how I would break it down if I

00:09:44.160 were you. I'd say to myself, what are the odds of getting COVID? And let's say, what would you say

00:09:52.620 are your odds of getting COVID? Let's say vaccinations were to slow down, and we don't get many more

00:10:02.660 people vaccinated after maybe a month. What would be your odds of getting it if you were unvaccinated?

00:10:11.320 I'm seeing people with really high numbers, like 100%, and then other people saying 0.0005.

00:10:17.080 Now, how good are your news sources if some people are saying there's 100% chance, and some people are

00:10:24.160 saying it's less than 1%? Are you watching the same news? How can you say 100% and some people say

00:10:32.120 under 1%? Here's what I think it is. Now, you need to fact check my estimate, and I don't know if

00:10:40.200 anybody can really make this estimate, but I'm going to go low because I think there will be enough

00:10:45.740 people vaccinated that probably your odds are 20%, right? So I'm going to use 20% just to show you 0.92

00:10:54.700 how to do the calculation. If you later say, I think it's 40%, just recalculate it, right? And if you

00:11:01.000 think it's 1%, recalculate it. But I think you'd have a 20% chance of getting it if you don't get

00:11:07.920 vaccinated, but we go back to something like normal. Let's say that if masks go away and social

00:11:14.680 distancing relaxes. Now, again, so put in your own number there, but I'll use 20% just for example.

00:11:21.620 If you had a 20% chance of getting it, what are the odds that once you got it, you're going to have

00:11:28.520 a problem with it? Like what are the odds you're actually going to die? Well, it's like way less

00:11:35.060 than 1%, right? So you only got a 20% chance you'd get it at all. Again, put your own estimate in

00:11:42.520 there. And then if you get it, you got like 0.00 whatever chance that you're going to die.

00:11:49.920 But you also have more like a 15 or 20% chance, I think, of long haul problems. Long haul problems

00:12:01.120 are shortness of breath, fuzzy brain, chest pains, shortness of breath, brain fog. They could last

00:12:09.280 months. And a recent study found that 30% of the people who had COVID still had symptoms up to nine

00:12:19.500 months after the infection. Are you confident that a disease that gives you continued symptoms nine

00:12:27.660 months after you have it? Are you confident that those all go away? Because it feels like

00:12:33.900 they might not go away. And we're talking 30% of the people who have it. So if you're saying there's

00:12:41.580 a 20% chance of getting it, if you don't get the vaccination, and you think there's a 0.0001

00:12:48.040 tiny chance of dying, you're looking at the wrong number. Do you get that? If you're looking at your

00:12:55.040 odds of dying from getting COVID, you're looking at the wrong number. That's not the one you should

00:13:00.880 look at. The one you should look at is this 30% of the people who get it have nine months of problems.

00:13:07.220 We don't know if it ends after nine months. Right? Now, there's an uncertainty here. And maybe,

00:13:13.720 you know, who knows? Maybe we find out that the data is all whack and, you know, these are coincidences

00:13:19.360 or something. But I don't think so. I think we do know at this point that there are long term

00:13:25.400 problems. So you take your 20% chance of getting it, you multiply it by, you know, a 30% chance of

00:13:33.100 long haul problems. And whatever numbers you put in there, what is your net? It depends what numbers

00:13:41.220 you use. But here's what I think it's going to add out to. Something like, if you don't get

00:13:47.780 vaccinated, something like a 5% chance of pretty long haul problems. If your chance of dying is,

00:13:57.200 you know, 0.00 or whatever, it's small, especially if you're healthy. But your chance of long haul,

00:14:02.620 maybe 5%. Now, what are your chances of having a complication from the vaccination itself?

00:14:08.960 What are your odds? In the comments, I'd like to see you give me an estimate of what do you think

00:14:16.960 are the odds that the vaccination itself would cause you either long term problems or death?

00:14:26.960 Really, really small, certainly less than 5%. Now, my 5% might be high too. But my sense of it without

00:14:36.120 doing the math and doing a deep dive, my sense of it is that your risk with the vaccination,

00:14:42.900 given that, and by the way, I don't know if you knew this, but adverse side effects from vaccinations,

00:14:48.480 according to one expert, show up within the first two weeks. So adverse effects are going to show up

00:14:57.240 in two weeks, or at least a month, right? Now, we've been giving these vaccinations for so many

00:15:02.660 months, and the initial 40,000, whatever people who are tested now have many months. So we have

00:15:11.320 pretty good visibility, and we're not seeing risks that are outside the realm you'd expect.

00:15:17.320 So at this point, I'd say the risk from getting the shot is well under 1%. The risk of not getting

00:15:25.560 the shot, not in terms of death, but in long-haul symptoms, maybe, this is my personal estimate,

00:15:33.080 maybe 5%. All right? Now, your numbers might differ, but only because you put in different assumptions,

00:15:40.960 right? The way I'm thinking about it is the way you should think about it. If you're concentrating

00:15:46.420 on death rate, you're thinking about the wrong thing, because that really is so small, you could

00:15:51.380 pretty much ignore it if you're healthy. But that's not the part you need to worry about. It's the long

00:15:55.980 haul. All right. So getting back to my earlier point, let's say that some of you just learned

00:16:03.240 this for the first time. By the way, is there anybody listening to this who just had their mind

00:16:09.720 changed? Because I wasn't trying to change your mind. Like, I would do that differently. But did

00:16:16.100 anybody's mind just change? When I laid out the odds of getting it versus not getting it? Because

00:16:21.800 I don't think that would have changed any minds. I'm looking at the comments. I'm seeing only no's.

00:16:27.840 Oh, I saw one maybe, but I don't think that's going to be yes. Yeah, it's all no's, right?

00:16:35.060 One yes, two yeses. Oh, weirdly, some yeses. Interesting. But overwhelmingly, no. Now, you should

00:16:44.060 know, you should know that, you know, new data doesn't change anybody's minds. If you ever wanted

00:16:52.940 to see the perfect example of that, here it is. So anyway, if the news were telling you how to

00:17:00.540 calculate your risks properly, I think maybe you would have different decisions. Imagine if you

00:17:06.160 would, that you turned on your news and said, look, here's our whiteboard, and we'll tell you how to

00:17:11.800 make the decision. Multiply a 20% chance of this times a 30% chance of this. Boom. There you go.

00:17:20.400 There's your number. Then compare it to this. So the news, if it were trying to be useful,

00:17:25.100 would tell you how to compare things. By the way, the Dilbert NFT, the auction expires in like an hour

00:17:32.240 or something. So I think it was $12,600 for the Dilbert NFT. Whoever sneaks in at the last minute is

00:17:40.380 going to be the owner of that. And only a little bit of time left. And it's the only Dilbert comic

00:17:47.180 with the F word, in case you wondered. I need to say this again, because I said it once, but I think

00:17:54.900 it's important. I don't think the United States should ever raise taxes on anybody over 50.

00:18:04.920 So that's my, that's my, it's a moral ethical reason. Because if you get to 50,

00:18:13.420 after 50, you're really serious about your retirement, and you should be. And you've played

00:18:20.280 by a set of rules up to that point, which sort of assumed that those rules would continue,

00:18:26.020 and that, and that, that you wouldn't have more taxes. I don't think it's fair, or even moral,

00:18:36.480 or ethical, to take somebody who lived their whole life under a set of rules, and then you change the

00:18:43.060 rules right when they're close to retirement. That just doesn't sit right with me. But if you told me,

00:18:48.920 all right, Scott, you're 35, you know, you haven't made much money yet. But when you do,

00:18:55.120 your tax rate will be higher than it used to be. It doesn't bother me as much, right? Because I have

00:19:00.800 my whole life to, to figure it out. But once you're, once you're approaching retirement age,

00:19:05.980 that just doesn't seem right. And I think that the Republicans, if they're looking to negotiate

00:19:11.520 anything on this, who knows how much negotiation even happens. But if Republicans at least said,

00:19:18.800 we'll give you your tax increase, if we have to, you know, as part of the negotiations,

00:19:24.320 but you got to cut it off, you know, age 50, it's just not fair. I think they could get away with that.

00:19:30.220 Maybe. So Governor Ron DeSantis, apparently, he's looking to ban race, race based versions of

00:19:41.520 Marxist ideology. It's what he's calling critical, critical race theory. But I like the way he's

00:19:47.500 framing it. He's framing it that in Florida, there will be no state sanctioned racism.

00:19:52.920 So instead of saying that critical race theory is inaccurate, or saying that critical race theory

00:20:02.340 isn't useful, or any of the other things that you could say about it, he just says it's racist,

00:20:10.240 and our state doesn't do racist stuff. That's really good. Really good. So Ron DeSantis keeps

00:20:17.760 surprising me. Because, you know, he has that sort of wonkish nerd kind of vibe to him, you know,

00:20:28.160 whatever is the opposite of Trump. But he does perform, right? He performs. So what do you want?

00:20:35.620 Do you want the sizzle or the steak? So good for him. Here's your fake news spottings of the day.

00:20:43.900 I'm seeing reports that we heard that John Kerry told Iran's foreign minister Sharif about these 200

00:20:53.020 Israeli attacks that happened in Israel on Iranian proxies or assets or something. And the story is

00:21:00.520 that Kerry told Sharif some secrets that Sharif didn't know. And we know Sharif didn't know it,

00:21:07.860 because we have a secret recording. Well, it was secretly released, a recording in which he sent it

00:21:14.160 directly. So Sharif said he heard it from Kerry for the first time. Now, the update is that

00:21:22.740 Kerry, I guess part of the defense had been it was public information. And that had already been

00:21:28.340 published. And that Kerry was just repeating public information. So there would be no secrets told.

00:21:34.560 But new information shows that there was no public information. Is that true? I don't know.

00:21:41.580 We're into murky fact checking territory here. However, I'm going to call this whole thing fake news,

00:21:47.380 because there is no chance that the Iranian military did not know about it. 200 attacks on Iranian

00:21:58.300 resources. I'm pretty sure the military of Iran knew about it. This story is about Sharif being out of

00:22:07.440 the decision making loop. It has nothing to do with any secrets. There's no way that Iranian military

00:22:14.200 leaders were unaware of 200 attacks. That didn't happen. And it's still being reported as if that's

00:22:21.640 like a thing. It's ridiculous. All right. So that story is stupid. Here's the next probable fake news. 0.96

00:22:28.500 This one is clever. Let's see if you fell for this one. So according to the New York Post,

00:22:37.760 a source has told them that Saturday Night Live's boss, Lorne Michaels, in responding to the fact that

00:22:43.980 Elon Musk is going to be the guest host on the 8th, I guess, that the performers have been told

00:22:51.520 that they don't have to work that day if they don't want to. Wow. So that's the news. SNL performers

00:22:59.900 don't have to work with Elon Musk when he appears. Wow. And some of them have made some statements that

00:23:09.020 make them look like maybe they're not so happy about him. Do you think any of that's true?

00:23:16.240 This whole story is bullshit. Every part of the story is bullshit. Now, I could be wrong, 1.00

00:23:22.800 and maybe I'll find out. But when you read the actual comments that the cast members made,

00:23:28.800 they're completely non-critical. No cast member, at least reportedly, who knows what anybody said

00:23:36.420 privately. But there's no report of any cast member who actually said anything even mean about

00:23:41.860 about him. And nobody has asked not to work with him. It simply hasn't happened. But Lorne Michaels,

00:23:52.040 apparently, maybe he was asked about it or something, and just made a generic statement that nobody's

00:23:56.780 ever forced to do anything. So this story is that Lorne Michaels doesn't force people to do stuff.

00:24:04.380 That's the story. He doesn't force people to do stuff they don't want to do.

00:24:10.620 And somehow that turned into there's an internal revolt about Elon Musk. There's no evidence of that.

00:24:17.640 There's not a single bit of evidence that anybody is concerned or angry or disappointed,

00:24:24.660 mad, quitting, boycotting. Nothing. There's nothing in the story to support any part of the story.

00:24:30.120 Now, could it be true? Sure. But there's no evidence for it whatsoever. It just looks like

00:24:37.600 fake news to me. All right. Did you hear the great story about the Basecamp CEO? So Basecamp is a

00:24:49.740 software tools making company. They had about 56 employees, a very successful company,

00:24:57.020 company, and 20 of them, about a third of their employees just quit because, among other things,

00:25:03.580 the CEO put out a statement saying that they were not allowed to discuss politics on the company

00:25:10.260 platforms. And now that wasn't the only thing. So he had some other things. So in addition to not being

00:25:18.500 allowed to discuss politics internally, he would have, quote, no more paternalistic benefits.

00:25:26.980 In other words, they had stuff like fitness benefits and wellness allowance, a farmer's market

00:25:34.380 share, what? Continuing education allowances. A lot of companies have that. But they decided to just

00:25:41.780 give people cash instead. Now, do you think people quit because instead of giving them benefits that

00:25:49.580 they may or may not use, he decided to give them way more money and then they could just buy whatever

00:25:55.820 they want? I don't think anybody quit about that. Did they? I mean, we haven't heard, but I don't think so.

00:26:02.520 So that just seemed like, you know, a change that people could probably live with. The other thing was no

00:26:08.640 more committees. He didn't want any more committees. Do you think anybody resigned because he said we

00:26:14.820 don't want more committees? Probably not. I don't think it was that. No more lingering or dwelling on

00:26:21.980 past decisions. Did people quit about that? I don't know. Probably not. No more 360 degree reviews. I don't

00:26:31.500 think anybody quit over that. I feel as if it was the political part that motivated people, but I can't tell

00:26:38.140 for sure from the outside. So you have to be a little careful what you do or do not know in this.

00:26:43.800 However, this looks to be one of the greatest management moves of all time. If this is what

00:26:51.740 it looks like, and you have to be really careful, I mean, this story could be completely different in

00:26:56.540 24 hours, that this is the sort of story where, you know, maybe there's something missing. You have to

00:27:03.140 be a little careful. But if it's true, this CEO, and I guess maybe a co-founder were in on it,

00:27:10.920 they made all the decisions on this, and they may have gotten rid of their 20 worst employees.

00:27:18.380 Now, as somebody on social media just said, what is it like when one of those 20 employees who quit

00:27:26.900 base camp? And now everybody in the tech world has heard that story. It's a big story. What happens

00:27:33.000 when they go for their next job? How does that interview go? And why did you leave your last job?

00:27:41.360 Well, I left my last job because the CEO said that we were not allowed to discuss divisive political

00:27:49.360 things on company time and company assets. Would you hire that person? Would you hire anybody who

00:27:58.420 quit over this? How in the world did they ever get hired? I mean, I suppose there are always enough

00:28:04.640 people who can agree with anybody. But it seems like shooting yourself in the foot. Anyway, if I

00:28:10.540 could buy stock in base camp, I'd be doing it today. Because I'm pretty sure he got rid of the 20

00:28:15.900 most grindingly annoying employees. You know, one-third of all employees don't have a sense of

00:28:22.480 humor. Have I ever mentioned that? One-third of employees are just horrible. It's probably closer

00:28:29.220 to two-thirds, but at least one-third are really, really bad. And they're probably bad because of

00:28:35.200 stuff like this, inability to see priorities. Because what this did was it identified all the people

00:28:42.680 who don't understand what's important. And they all left. I tell you, honestly, if I could buy stock

00:28:50.060 of this company when they got rid of all their annoying, unproductive employees, in my opinion,

00:28:57.520 just my opinion, then I would. So this story about Giuliani getting raided by the feds and they got his

00:29:07.080 electronic devices and stuff. I guess the law they're going after is the FARA law, the foreign

00:29:12.860 registration of foreign agents. But I was reading Greg Jarrett's page, gregjarrett.com, and he was

00:29:21.600 explaining that Giuliani was working in an official capacity as a lawyer for the president. And he was

00:29:31.480 doing his job as a lawyer exactly the way he should have to protect his client. That's not exactly

00:29:38.160 lobbying. But there's more to it. There's some diplomat who was fired, etc. So I'm not sure where

00:29:45.780 this is going. It's a little bit of fog of war at the moment. But I'm really, really uncomfortable

00:29:52.320 with our government having this much power and using it in this way. And I've got a feeling Giuliani

00:30:01.520 did not break any laws, at least anything that he's being accused of that we know about. It just

00:30:07.380 doesn't look like any law was broken. Or at least one law that's credible. The FARA law is not really

00:30:14.220 a credible law. All right. I know you hate it when I talk about masks. So I'm going to do just one

00:30:20.940 quick thing about them, which is, if you're trying to describe why you can't compare two different

00:30:27.480 places on mask policy, I've been trying to do this, and it gets complicated, and people don't get it.

00:30:34.380 So I'm going to try on a simplification. If somebody says to you, and it happens to me every single day,

00:30:41.380 look at the people, look at the infections of this place, compare it to this other place somewhere else.

00:30:47.180 These guys had mask mandates, but their infections went high. These ones did not have mask mandates,

00:30:55.100 and their infections went down. So therefore, masks don't work. Okay, that comparison never works.

00:31:03.020 It can't work. It never will work. And no matter how carefully you pick your two things to compare,

00:31:10.300 you're not doing anything rational. There are too many variables involved. But here, I came up with a

00:31:16.460 fast way to describe it in case you want to use this, if you're having an argument with somebody

00:31:21.240 about this. The reason that you can't compare them is because the causation is bi-directional.

00:31:27.100 So that's the whole thing. Causation works in two directions in this situation. If causation only

00:31:34.640 works in one direction, you could probably isolate it if you do things right. But when causation is

00:31:41.740 working in two directions, I don't think they have a way to figure that out. Meaning that the reason

00:31:50.820 that you have mask mandates is that infections are already out of control. So you should see more

00:31:58.020 masks where the infections are greatest, especially if they're just picking up, you know, at the early

00:32:04.700 phase. So you should see masks being required just before a large uptick in infections. But people

00:32:12.340 are saying, wait, masks were required and then there was a big uptick in infections. So therefore,

00:32:17.340 they don't work. No, there was reason to think there was a big uptick in infections. So there's a

00:32:24.380 mask mandate. So it's a little bit in both directions. So anything that you compare isn't going to be able

00:32:30.420 to sort that out. So that is all I have to say for today. I'm going to keep it short and I will talk

00:32:35.960 to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 01, 2021

Episode 1362 Scott Adams： Basecamp Gets Rid of its Worst Employees, Florida Bans Racism, Fake News Sightings, More

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