Episode 1362 Scott Adams： Basecamp Gets Rid of its Worst Employees, Florida Bans Racism, Fake News Sightings, More
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
153.36433
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I challenge Tim Cook to a hard question: Do we have a whole bunch of problems, or do we just have one? And if we do have a problem, it's not racism, is it?
Transcript
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
00:06:50.820
going to, how are you ever going to get an even opportunity? You can't. I would call that systemic
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,
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
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.
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,
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