Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1385 Scott Adams： Come Sip!

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody. Well, you may have noticed my aborted attempt to do a live stream this

00:00:09.280 morning. I was trying to have a guest, Dr. Nicole Sapphire. I'm going to try to reschedule

00:00:15.940 her. I tried to use the HAPS TV app, but it never gave me an option to add a guest. So

00:00:26.580 we'll talk to the people who make that app and see if they can tell me how is it that I would

00:00:35.440 find an option to add a guest, which is the entire point of the app. Imagine having an app whose main

00:00:42.100 point is to add a guest and nowhere you can find any kind of button that would do that. So that

00:00:49.240 would be your interface recommendation for the day. If you make an app that only does one thing

00:00:54.500 or mainly is for one thing, you should have some kind of a button to do that thing. But how would

00:01:02.260 you like to enjoy the simultaneous sip? To its maximum extent, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:01:08.180 a tank or a chelsea, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite

00:01:12.980 liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the

00:01:18.340 day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. What's it called?

00:01:24.900 The simultaneous sip. Yeah. And it happens now. Go.

00:01:28.060 So the interview that I'll try to do as soon as I get my technology to work, not today apparently,

00:01:41.180 would be with Dr. Nicole Sapphire. You all know her from Fox News. You've seen her. And her new book is

00:01:47.780 called Panic Tech, Playing Politics with Science and the Fight Against COVID-19. And it's available

00:01:55.080 tomorrow, meaning you can order it today. But it's, I think tomorrow's the official date, but you can

00:02:01.860 order it today. And you should. Get yourself a copy. All right. Let's talk about some other stuff.

00:02:10.720 You heard the story about the, apparently there's some intelligence reporting now.

00:02:15.360 Now, this says that in November of 2019, there were a few employees of the Wuhan lab who were

00:02:23.440 sickened in a way reminiscent of COVID. And if that's true, then it would suggest that China knew

00:02:31.300 there was a virus getting out a little earlier than they told us. Now, is it true? Well, let's look at

00:02:40.180 the source. The source. The source is an undisclosed foreign intelligence agency. And let me tell you, if

00:02:49.400 there's one thing you can trust in this world, it's an undisclosed foreign source. Uh-huh. Yeah, those

00:02:58.160 undisclosed foreign sources, they're right every time. For example, there was the Steele dossier,

00:03:05.460 foreign source. Pretty good information, right? Um, there was, uh, the World Health Organization got a

00:03:15.520 lot of information from China. I guess that was pretty good, wasn't it? Yeah, those foreign sources

00:03:21.680 you can really trust. So what are the odds that this story is true? I'm going to say low.

00:03:30.540 Low. I'm going to say low. Now, that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. It doesn't mean that

00:03:37.320 maybe there were some infections before we knew about it. But what are the odds that an undisclosed

00:03:45.280 foreign intelligence agency is telling us something true? Really? I would just put zero credibility on

00:03:55.780 it. Now, be careful when you hear me say zero credibility. Credibility doesn't mean something

00:04:02.580 is true or false. It's just by its nature and the way the information came to you, is it something you

00:04:09.640 should give serious consideration to? And I would say, well, you have to pay attention to it. I mean,

00:04:17.760 it's a big enough story. You can't ignore it. But the odds of it being true? I don't know. Coin flip at

00:04:26.460 best, I think. All right. Um, apparently, uh, New York City is going to open up all of its schools

00:04:36.500 to, uh, in the fall for in-person and they're not going to have these, uh, Zoom schools anymore in

00:04:42.780 New York City. Mayor de Blasio says that. And I think it's notable, not only because it's New

00:04:48.120 York City, but de Blasio is kind of a masking lockdown kind of a guy. So if he's saying schools

00:04:55.820 are open in the fall, I feel like, I feel like we, we did it. We meaning the world. I think we're on

00:05:06.840 the, we're getting a handle on this thing. I think we're going to be on the other side of it pretty

00:05:11.480 soon. So that's all good news. President Biden finally issued a strong tweet. He said the recent

00:05:20.180 attacks on the Jewish community are despicable and they must stop. I condemn this hateful behavior

00:05:26.200 at home and abroad. It's, uh, up to all of us to give hate, no safe harbor, which I liked that last

00:05:32.080 part, the last part of the sentence where he puts the responsibility on the citizens.

00:05:36.840 Right where it should be in this case. So I liked that he framed it that way. But here's the

00:05:43.020 question. If president Trump had waited this long to condemn violence against Jewish Americans,

00:05:53.520 don't you think, or really Jewish people around the world, don't you think that there would be a

00:05:59.540 gigantic uproar and they would say, it's obvious why you waited so long. Why did you

00:06:06.680 why did you wait so long? And here I saw this tweet. And then I look for the news where the news would

00:06:15.460 say, Biden waited so long. It's proof he's anti-Semitic. But I didn't see that story.

00:06:22.580 So are you telling me that you can't read somebody's mind based on how long it took them to say

00:06:30.900 something that's mundane and ordinary and expected and does nothing whatsoever? I mean, it doesn't

00:06:37.020 really make the world a better place. It's better that the president says that than being silent on

00:06:42.480 it. I mean, it's definitely better than saying nothing. But it's not going to make a difference,

00:06:47.360 right? Is there anybody out in the street who said, Oh, wait a minute, I was just going to hit

00:06:52.880 this Jewish person with a brick. But now I see this tweet from President Biden. And well, now I see

00:06:58.800 it's my responsibility not to do that. It's not going to make any difference. But you still have to do it.

00:07:05.660 That's how leadership works. But what took him so long is the question we must ask.

00:07:12.580 So it turns out that our greatest fears about Biden may be overblown, just as the greatest fears about

00:07:21.460 Trump from the other side, we're a little overblown. And it turns out that the Republicans are probably

00:07:30.280 going to do a pretty good job of blocking the biggest changes. And apparently even infrastructure

00:07:37.820 isn't really making its way through Congress the way you think it might have, partly because there's

00:07:43.420 a difference in opinion about what qualifies as infrastructure. For some reason, Republicans are

00:07:50.780 hung up on the definition of the word. If you want to know what incompetent government looks like,

00:07:59.220 it would be the government arguing over what a word means.

00:08:02.580 How is that good? Now, some of the things that I think we're talking about as to whether or not

00:08:11.540 they're part of infrastructure or not, I know stuff like Wi-Fi and things like that. But isn't the real

00:08:19.820 question whether the individual things are worth doing? The question is not whether it's called

00:08:25.820 infrastructure. Is it? Here's a question that doesn't help anybody. Which one is labeled

00:08:32.440 infrastructure? And which one should be called different words? That means nothing. Nothing's

00:08:39.680 changed because of the words you put on it. Either the things in the infrastructure bill are individually

00:08:46.620 worth doing, or they're not worth doing. Why does it matter if we call them infrastructure?

00:08:53.240 Now, I'm usually opposed to these big omnibus bills where you throw in all the pork,

00:08:59.740 but I don't think that's what this is. This seems to be a whole bunch of ideas which if you looked at

00:09:06.780 them individually, you might say that's a pretty good idea. That's different from pork. Pork would be

00:09:14.800 let's build a bridge where we don't need it. Pork would be let's put a military base maybe where we

00:09:22.340 don't need it. You know, that's pork, because it's not really helping everybody. It's helping

00:09:27.460 one state or even one politician in one state. But if you've got a grab bag of different things,

00:09:36.380 you know, Wi-Fi and I don't know, whatever the other things are in there, I feel as if those are not

00:09:42.460 pork. Those are just things which people think are good, and we could debate them. So why not just

00:09:50.400 debate them one by one? The argument, it's not infrastructure, it's just stupid. That's just

00:09:58.040 stupid. I mean, I get that it might be a shorthand way of saying, you know, these are not justified

00:10:05.120 expenditures, but none of it is really. I mean, you don't have to fix the potholes. You don't have to.

00:10:12.920 You do have to fix the bridges, make sure they don't fall down. So it's a whole bunch of things

00:10:19.940 that we should be looking at individually and not arguing about whether they fit the definition

00:10:24.540 of infrastructure, because that's just dumb. So I guess Republicans are also blocking some minor

00:10:31.840 gun control things. It looks like they'll probably stop the committee to look into the Capitol protests.

00:10:38.720 So those are the three examples CNN pointed out in which the GOP is actually having more success

00:10:47.340 than you might have imagined in stopping things. Now, I think it all depends on Joe Manchin

00:10:52.100 being willing to oppose changing the filibuster rule. So it ends up, you know, the Republicans can

00:11:01.340 filibuster to delay things, but, you know, as long as they have that, they have a little more power than

00:11:07.620 they should for the number of people they have elected. All right. Do you remember I was telling

00:11:15.880 you yesterday, and I hadn't heard anybody else say this out loud, which is that Israel has no reason

00:11:22.760 to make peace. And in fact, the Hamas leadership also has no reason to make peace. They have lots of

00:11:32.780 reasons to make war, but they don't have any reason to make peace. Now, the Palestinian people have

00:11:39.940 reason to make peace, definitely. And there are probably lots of individual citizens in Israel

00:11:46.080 that would like to make some peace. But it's not good for the country of Israel, because they have

00:11:52.240 all the power, and they can gobble up land and just dominate the region. And they're so superior to

00:11:59.220 militarily and economically, but they can just kind of do what they want. And it's hard to criticize

00:12:05.940 another country for pursuing its legal and obviously justifiable self-interest. Well,

00:12:15.560 self-interest is a little too far. But pursuing their, let's say, strategic safety is, of course,

00:12:23.120 is perfectly acceptable. Now, Fareed Zakaria, who I've noted, I think, is one of the more useful and

00:12:32.800 productive voices on CNN, says the same, largely the same thing, not exactly the same thing. But he

00:12:41.480 said that Israel has no practical reason for making deals with the Palestinians economically or defense-wise,

00:12:48.940 because they're just not a risk. But also, there's sort of no one to negotiate with, right? Because

00:12:58.620 there's no one who really wants this peace. Hamas doesn't want it, at least leadership. So who are you

00:13:05.780 going to negotiate with? So there's certainly no point to it. But I didn't expect to see CNN's, you know,

00:13:13.960 an important voice on CNN. I didn't expect them to say it directly, that Israel has no practical reason

00:13:19.560 for peace. Now, Fareed does make the ethical and moral argument that there's a moral and ethical

00:13:26.780 reason to make peace in terms of Israel. But since when do countries care about that? Never.

00:13:35.240 I can't think of a time. Can you? Maybe we can. Let's think optimistically here. Can you think of a

00:13:45.880 time that any country acted against its own best interest for economics and security, because there

00:13:54.960 was a moral imperative to do it? And it also was a big thing. In small ways, yes. Certainly in lots of

00:14:03.320 small ways, Israel does moral and ethical things, such as warning people before they blow up a

00:14:09.640 building, right? So in small ways, yes. Plenty of moral and ethical behavior, and some is not. But

00:14:18.520 I've never... Can you think of an example where a country... Somebody says the Marshall Plan. Now,

00:14:25.540 I would say the Marshall Plan was self-interest. USA during World War I, be more specific. Panama.

00:14:32.800 Panama. Panama. I'd need specifics on that. We got into Vietnam, and then we got out for moral

00:14:42.260 reasons. I don't think so. I don't think we got out for moral reasons. I think we got out because

00:14:48.020 we didn't have any benefit to be there. And on top of that, there were moral reasons. Civil War,

00:14:54.100 somebody says. The Civil War. No. Paris Accords? I guess this one's kind of a head-scratcher, right?

00:15:04.960 I'd love to see an opinion from some historians whether any country has done something that was in a

00:15:11.400 big way, and it's the big way that matters. In small ways, of course, we make moral decisions. But in big

00:15:18.620 ways, I don't know that we do, or anybody does. All right. Well, we'll wait for some real historians

00:15:25.320 to tell us about that. So here's more on using the rules against them. So I've told you a number

00:15:39.180 of times that if there's some kind of standard or rule that the Democrats want to impose on society,

00:15:45.060 that the best way to make it go away, if you don't like it, is to fully embrace it. Don't try

00:15:52.040 to argue against it, because that just hardens people asking for it. But instead, just do what

00:15:57.660 they do. Just fully embrace it and watch it fall apart. And in an accidental way, that's what

00:16:03.960 Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did. Now, I haven't talked much about Marjorie Taylor

00:16:11.720 Greene because I'm less interested in individual personalities and their little dramas than I am

00:16:20.280 than I am about, you know, the bigger picture stuff. So talking about people isn't so interesting to

00:16:26.400 me. But she did something that got a little attention. So here's the story. So she's quoted

00:16:34.920 as saying, Marjorie Taylor Greene is, that we can look back at a time in history where people were

00:16:40.860 told to wear a gold star. And they were definitely treated like second class citizens. So much so

00:16:47.780 that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. Then she added, and this

00:16:54.060 is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about. Now, I think the context is masks and

00:17:00.760 maybe, I don't know, vaccine passports or something. But here, Marjorie Taylor Greene is likening our

00:17:08.700 pandemic response to Nazi Germany. Now, if someone, if a Democrat had said something like this,

00:17:22.420 that something, something Republicans are doing is just like Nazi Germany, what would be your

00:17:28.520 impression? Well, your impression would be, no, it's not. Do you know what compares well with the

00:17:36.080 Holocaust? Almost nothing, right? Almost nothing. So anytime anybody makes any kind of comparison to

00:17:44.520 the Holocaust, it's going to be dumb 99.9% of the time. I mean, maybe if you're talking about Pol Pot,

00:17:54.180 maybe if you're talking about, you know, yeah, Chinese Holocaust, etc., maybe you're in the right

00:18:01.140 ballpark. The Uyghurs. The Uyghurs, if you're talking about that as a Holocaust, they're not quite

00:18:08.640 executing them in mass, but it's certainly a genocide of some kind. So do I care that Marjorie

00:18:19.680 Taylor Greene used a Holocaust comparison to wearing masks during a pandemic? And the answer is,

00:18:28.700 it's so ridiculous that I think it's wonderful. It's so ridiculous. Because using the democratic

00:18:37.400 theory that you can just compare everything to the Holocaust, no matter how trivial,

00:18:44.100 you know, I've been mocking it for years. But when I see a Republican do it exactly the way it's been

00:18:50.240 done to Republicans for years, it's just funny. And, you know, if there's a way to make this whole

00:18:57.700 everything is Nazi, everything is Hitler, everything is the Holocaust, if there's a way to make it go

00:19:03.800 away, it would be for Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene to use it all the time. Just use it on

00:19:10.920 every speech. You know, well, this, I think this infrastructure bill is clearly it's like the

00:19:18.500 Holocaust, because it'll make our debt go up. Or how about if we don't open school in the fall,

00:19:28.220 it's going to be the Holocaust for children. Just just make everything the Holocaust. Let's just do it.

00:19:35.680 No, that's a bad idea. We got to keep the Holocaust in its own little category. Let's let's not make it

00:19:41.620 trivial. All right. Here's a question, which ironically, I was thinking about the question

00:19:48.500 just when it got answered, which I which I love. And I was thinking, there's a lot of talk about

00:19:55.040 critical race theory. There's a lot of talk about the 1619 project. And I know that just about every

00:20:02.780 conservative is opposed to both of those things. Fair statement so far? Would everybody agree with

00:20:10.320 those statements? The Republicans and conservatives are pretty much universally opposed to critical

00:20:17.360 race theory being taught in schools, and the 1619 project being taught in schools? Wouldn't you say? Yeah,

00:20:23.760 in the comments, people are agreeing. But then I asked myself, what are those things? What is critical

00:20:32.880 race theory? You kind of know in general, right? Like you've got a general sense of it, what it's about.

00:20:38.760 But do you know the details? I don't. So I went looking for them this morning. I thought to

00:20:46.400 myself, well, somebody's going to have a little, a little bullet point summary. I just want to get

00:20:52.360 the high level, you know, get the general idea. Couldn't find it. Couldn't find it. One of the

00:20:58.620 biggest topics in the world, and I'm googling away, and you know, you have to sort it through all the

00:21:03.420 garbage returns. Maybe it's there, you know, somewhere down in the searches. I don't know.

00:21:09.480 But I couldn't find just a good summary of what critical race theory says, you know, this point,

00:21:17.200 this point, this point, so I could just have an opinion on it. And then same with the 1619

00:21:23.940 project. I was trying to think, okay, but what are the specific complaints? I did get one. There was

00:21:31.320 one specific complaint about the 1619 project, which I guess there's a claim there that part of

00:21:37.980 the justification for the Civil War was to maintain slavery, which you don't have to be a historian

00:21:45.940 to know that's not true. Because there were a whole lot of people fighting the war that had

00:21:52.300 nothing to do with slavery. You know, there were just people in the South, only some of them had

00:21:57.460 slaves. And yeah, maybe that meant something to them. But it wasn't the reason for the for the

00:22:04.700 revolution. So there are factual differences between what historians say is true and what the 1619

00:22:13.600 project said. But I'm not sure that's the big deal. You know, people get stuff wrong. I don't know if

00:22:19.700 that's what's the big deal. So let me tell you my take on this. And I was looking at a tweet from

00:22:26.720 I have no idea how to pronounce this name. UJU. I'm going to say Yuhu. I don't mean to make fun of

00:22:37.100 the name because I think it's respectful to pronounce people's names correctly. But I have no idea how to

00:22:43.260 pronounce this. I'm going to say Yuhu Anya. And I hope I got that close. Did a tweet thread and part

00:22:52.040 of that tweet said tweet thread said, Now you're thinking people want to ban somebody's type of

00:22:58.520 legal analysis. Now that's what is talking about the critical race theory. Well, yes, but they don't

00:23:07.140 even know what critical race theory is. So now this is characterizing the people who are against

00:23:14.340 critical race theory, mostly Republicans, conservatives. And as this tweet says, they're

00:23:20.040 racists and white supremacists who don't want public discussion and legal consideration of systemic

00:23:26.800 racism and white people's unfair advantages. Well, I talked to a lot of Republicans. And I talked to a

00:23:36.140 lot of conservatives. And I've never gotten the feeling that there was somebody who didn't want

00:23:43.300 to discuss systemic racism and white people's unfair advantages. Let me tell you what I think

00:23:54.300 Republicans and conservatives believe. And in the comments, do me a fact check. I would say the

00:24:01.220 majority of you watching are probably on the right side of the political aisle. So I'm going

00:24:06.120 to characterize you now. All right. So when other people characterize you, it's always a problem,

00:24:11.980 right? But let me let me characterize you. I believe that you, my audience, would say the

00:24:19.360 following. And then you can tell me how close I am. I think you would say that you would like to see

00:24:24.860 black Americans thrive, not just do okay, but thrive for the obvious reason that it's good for

00:24:33.780 everybody. Right? If everybody has a job, everybody's doing well, crime goes down, you're not paying as

00:24:41.040 much for social services, economy goes up. Look at the comments. You know, I don't know how many

00:24:49.260 left leading people are on this live stream. But check your view of the world. Look at the comments.

00:24:58.060 It's just thoroughly. Yes. It's just yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Every single person here, literally

00:25:03.980 everyone. It's hard to come up with something that people would agree on completely. But every person

00:25:11.120 in the comments, just hundreds of them going by right now, they're all saying yes. Every one of them

00:25:16.500 want black Americans to not just do okay, but to thrive. It's pure self-interest, right? Even if you

00:25:25.400 think people are just bastards, you know, maybe that's not too far off, right? We human beings have

00:25:33.380 some rough edges. But even if we're all bastards, it's better for me if black people thrive, like

00:25:41.940 personally. It's like, I've been living in a better world. Less complaints, less racism, less

00:25:48.640 everything. It's all good. So why is it that this presumably left-leaning person, Yuzu, or I hope

00:26:00.120 I'm even somewhere in the neighborhood of the right name here, why is it that he or she, I don't even

00:26:06.900 know if it's he or she, why is it that they believe that there's all these white supremacists

00:26:13.280 who just don't want anything to get better? That is a viewpoint of exactly nobody. Like,

00:26:21.020 I don't think anybody in the world. I think if you even went into, like, the center of a,

00:26:27.700 like, a Ku Klux Klan rally, like, literally, if you could find one, I don't even know where they

00:26:35.280 are, but if you could find one and attend a meeting and then ask this question, hey, hey, guys,

00:26:41.320 everybody, I know you're all a bunch of white supremacists and I know you're racist, but I just

00:26:46.000 have this point of clarification. If it didn't cost you any money and it didn't hurt you in any way,

00:26:53.080 would you be okay if black Americans thrived, got good jobs, had good lives, good educations,

00:27:02.000 would you be okay with that? I'm not positive, but I think the Klan would say yes. Am I wrong about

00:27:09.820 that? I think they would say yes. Wouldn't they? Now, I'm not supporting the Klan, obviously. You know,

00:27:20.420 they have lots to explain, but I don't think there's anybody who doesn't want black Americans

00:27:27.920 to thrive. And I'm using the word thrive because I'm not talking about equity. I'm not talking about,

00:27:35.100 oh, let's all be equal. I'm saying thrive, do great, exceed. How many white Americans,

00:27:42.540 even white supremacists, how many of them are bitching about Asian Americans doing especially

00:27:50.020 well? I've never heard it. I've never heard one person bitch about it. Do you know why? Because

00:27:57.660 Asian Americans are working hard, following the rules, doing the strategy that everybody knows works,

00:28:05.100 stay in school, stay in jail, don't do drugs. Guess what? It works. Is there some Klan rally right now?

00:28:15.440 Oh, we have to stop the Asian Americans from thriving? No. No. People are just happy that we have

00:28:23.500 more technologists, more lawyers, more doctors, more scientists. I've never heard anybody complain about

00:28:30.840 it. So here's what I would suggest. That when you're talking about critical race theory and

00:28:39.220 the 1619 project, here's what I think the proponents want. And you see how dangerous this is? Because when

00:28:49.340 I say, here's what I think they want, am I going to be any more accurate than Uju Anya is in imagining what

00:28:59.100 white people want? Because Uju is completely wrong, like complete wrong planet. Not even any people think

00:29:06.880 this, much less most of them. But do we make the same mistake? We being, let's say, do white people make

00:29:14.940 exactly the same mistake in a different way, which is imagining what the other people are thinking, but we're

00:29:20.700 imagining it wrong? Here's what I think. I think that if you're black and you're in favor of, or it doesn't matter if

00:29:28.500 you're black. But if you're in favor of critical race theory in 1619, here's what I think you want.

00:29:36.380 That the truth is clarified. That the truth of the founding of the country is clarified and focused on,

00:29:48.220 and that nobody who is a victim is ignored, and that the legacy of slavery and all the way through

00:29:56.620 systemic racism are fully known to everybody involved as a key foundational part of who we are and why

00:30:06.420 things are the way they are. Would that be fair? That the proponents of these things just want us to

00:30:13.360 really understand it. I feel like that. Like they just want the truth. You know, let's just be honest

00:30:20.660 about what happened. Now, do you have any problem with the truth? In the comments, tell me how many of

00:30:28.620 you have any objection to better understanding of what the actual situation was historically in America.

00:30:37.260 Is there anybody who objects to better knowledge? Now, it's a separate question about whether some of

00:30:46.040 the facts are right. You have to deal with that separately. Yeah, no objection. Right. But I do.

00:30:55.380 I've got an objection. Not to be accurate. That's all good. But focus. Here's where everything went off

00:31:06.900 the rails. Here's the important point. Right. Critical race theory and 1619 are like your asshole friend.

00:31:14.540 Do you have a friend who's an asshole? What does your asshole friend always say to you when they say

00:31:23.320 something really cruel to you and they insult you? What do they say to you? They always say the same

00:31:29.240 thing, right? Just being honest. Just being honest. So is it good to have a friend who's just being

00:31:39.360 honest? It's good to have a friend like that, right? Don't you want your friend to be honest?

00:31:45.100 You don't want a friend who's lying to you, do you? Yeah, you do. Because the alternative is an

00:31:51.880 asshole. You do want to be lied to. You do want your friend not to tell you your haircut looks like

00:31:58.440 shit. You do want that. You do want him to ignore something that's not going to help you. You do want

00:32:06.860 your friend not to tell you it looks like you gained weight. You probably knew it, right? So

00:32:12.620 the 1619 project and critical race theory, as the analogy isn't perfect, right? So don't get hung up

00:32:20.400 on the analogy. I believe that they are well-intentioned and they come from a place that we would all agree

00:32:26.700 on, which is that better information is just better. But here's the problem. Focus and framing

00:32:36.840 the way you operate in life. The way you operate in life and the decisions you make don't have to do

00:32:42.880 just with what you know. It has to do with how you interpret it and how you frame it. And if you frame

00:32:50.060 things wrong, you will be strategically disadvantaged. If you frame things correctly, you will be

00:32:57.420 advantaged and have a strategic path that's like really superior, right? Now, what happens if you're

00:33:06.600 trying to balance these two things? On one hand, you want the truth, as clear as it could be. On the other

00:33:14.240 hand, you want to win. You want to thrive. You're going to have to find a balance. And here's the balance I

00:33:21.700 would suggest. Certainly, we want as much, you know, stark truth and honesty about slavery and all that has become

00:33:31.360 of it. Yes, we want that. But if you frame history that way, you're telling people that victimhood is

00:33:40.880 their primary frame. If you take victimhood as your primary view of life, you will not do well. But if you

00:33:51.320 take strategy as your preferred frame, you will almost always do well unless you have terrible luck,

00:33:57.660 right? Here's what strategy would look like. Okay, kids, boys and girls, some of you are white,

00:34:04.400 some of you are black. Tell me what strategies you would use, and they might be different,

00:34:09.360 to succeed. White kid says, well, I'll go work for my dad. And if that doesn't work out, I'll go work

00:34:16.300 for my uncle. And if that doesn't work out, I'll go work for my mom's brother. And if that doesn't work

00:34:21.820 out, I'll go work for my mom's cousin. Because they all have companies, and they all hire people.

00:34:28.440 Then you say to the black kid, all right, what's your strategy? And the black kid says, well, I don't

00:34:33.880 have any family members who could hire me. So I need a different strategy. Here's what it is. I'm going

00:34:40.860 to get a good education, stay out of jail, don't do drugs. And when I go to a Fortune 500 company with

00:34:46.800 my college degree, which I will get financial aid, because of my poor, my economic situation.

00:34:54.580 And I'm going to take my college degree into a Fortune 500 company, and I'm going to get any job

00:35:00.840 I want. Because they're dying for diversity. The big companies have to do it. There's a lot of

00:35:08.060 eyeballs on them. They have to diversify. They have to promote, you know, black and brown and women and

00:35:14.620 LGBTQ. They have to. They don't have a choice. So if you're black, it's just a free ride,

00:35:21.460 you know, in a corporate world. And you're not only, not only will you not be underpaid,

00:35:28.480 compared to white people, you'll do better in the corporate world. Now, I'm sorry.

00:35:37.900 You are still a shill and a half. We'll be talking about you later. I've got a segment about you.

00:35:47.860 Narcissist trolls. So I think you could fix the CRT thing and the 1619 by not going into their frame.

00:35:56.900 If you fall into the question of, is it accurate or not accurate, you have fallen into their frame.

00:36:03.220 Don't do that. That's the wrong argument. That makes you think past the sale. The sale is whether

00:36:09.580 this should be taught and focused on and part of the main frame of history. If you're arguing about

00:36:16.300 the details being accurate or inaccurate, you've accepted the frame. Don't do that. You should say,

00:36:22.640 instead of this, which will make you fail, how about we teach you strategy, which guarantees success.

00:36:31.800 There's no contest. One is smart. One is dumb. 1619 and critical race theory, I believe,

00:36:37.540 are well-intentioned. And I love accurate information. And I think students should have it.

00:36:42.660 But if you make it your major frame, the way of viewing things, you've lost your strategic

00:36:48.520 advantage. And then you've moved backwards. So as someone who wants black Americans to thrive,

00:36:56.800 thrive, not get equity, not be equal, thrive. Just everybody does as good as they can possibly do.

00:37:06.840 That's what I want. And I hate that they're being held back by this framing of how to look at history.

00:37:13.860 That's my opinion. Did you know, I didn't know this till today, interesting factoid, Matthew

00:37:21.580 Sheffield tweeted this, I think there was a Bloomberg article, that if you actually looked at all the

00:37:26.660 different kinds of taxes between California and Texas, that Texas has higher taxes on the middle

00:37:33.160 class. If you include all the different types of taxes, the middle class is actually burdened in

00:37:39.840 Texas. But the rich get absolutely creamed in California. But the rich actually do well tax-wise

00:37:50.940 in Texas. Now, I didn't look at the details, but I'm just guessing, because I have enough experience

00:37:57.920 with this question, that I'm guessing that rich people don't spend a big percentage of their income

00:38:04.940 for like sales tax, maybe not as big a percentage of their income for property tax or whatever the

00:38:10.960 other taxes are. So that Texas ends up being a good place for rich Californians to move to.

00:38:19.360 When I read this, I said to myself, you know, maybe it's not just if I move to Texas, maybe I have to.

00:38:27.780 I mean, the difference is pretty stark. All right. Let's talk about narcissist trolls. Just an update.

00:38:42.200 If you were to find a narcissist individual, they would have often a set of traits which are very

00:38:50.280 predictable and common. And it goes way beyond, oh, I think I'm great. That's what you think of

00:38:56.460 narcissists. But beyond telling you that they're great, narcissists have these weird, very specific

00:39:03.720 behaviors which you can predict. And if you see them from trolls, it will help you to know that

00:39:11.240 you're not dealing with a normal person. You're dealing with somebody who's very unique and very

00:39:17.620 damaged, literally a narcissist. And here are the ways which you can tell that your troll is a narcissist

00:39:24.660 versus just somebody who disagrees with you, right? There are plenty of people disagreeing with you

00:39:30.680 on Twitter and social media, but they're not all being narcissists and trolls, right? Some people are

00:39:37.340 just respectfully disagreeing. Some of them just giving you different information. But here are the

00:39:42.600 tells for a narcissist. Number one, they attack the messenger or the way something was said.

00:39:49.580 So you'll see me get these kind of comments, and you'll even see the narcissist pop up in the

00:39:56.440 comments. They're the ones who say something like this. Well, you can't believe anything Adam said.

00:40:04.120 And no details. We don't even know what the topic is. It's just attacking the messenger. So that's

00:40:09.560 standard narcissist behavior. There's also what I call the over laugh at nothing specific,

00:40:15.940 usually with lots of emojis, like, ha, ha, ha, ha, Adam says, ha, ha, ha, ha, can you believe,

00:40:25.200 ha, ha, ha, ha, that he would talk, ha, ha, ha, ha, then there's not even a point. That's a narcissist.

00:40:31.560 Because a narcissist just wants to put you down and show that they're like superior. So that's

00:40:37.800 classic narcissist behavior, the over laugh. The other narcissist behavior, and this is,

00:40:43.940 I'm not making this up. This is going to look, this is going to look as if I made these things up.

00:40:50.840 I swear to God, I didn't make any of this up. These are specific behaviors that are so predictably

00:40:57.780 common to one type of person that you can just laugh at it and walk away. It's like watching a show.

00:41:04.680 And here's another one that you won't believe is common until you start watching for it,

00:41:09.920 which is the narcissist will bring up something that the messenger did years ago.

00:41:16.820 How often have you seen that happen to me? I'll say something like, I don't know, something about

00:41:23.860 COVID. And somebody will say, well, I don't know if we can listen to you because what about that thing

00:41:30.920 you said 10 years ago? What? That has nothing to do with what I said today. Why would you even bring

00:41:39.400 that up? Yes, I said something wrong or didn't 10 years ago, but it's not relevant. I mean, only in the

00:41:48.360 most indirect way. So that's a narcissist approach. A narcissist will bring up what you did years ago

00:41:56.440 consistently. And other people just don't do that. Other people will just talk about the thing you're

00:42:02.600 talking about. Because if you can't argue about the thing you're talking about, and you have to bring

00:42:07.900 up some unrelated thing from 10 years ago, you don't really have an argument. Michael says, I don't have

00:42:16.140 any asshole friends, but my friends do. Well, that was worth $5. Here's another thing that narcissists

00:42:25.300 trolls do. They will misinterpret what you said, no matter how many times you clarify it.

00:42:33.880 Have you seen that? Have you seen somebody will say, you know, for example, I'll say the sky is blue.

00:42:40.040 And the critic will come in and say, you keep saying the sky is red. And I'll say, oh, no, I'm sorry,

00:42:46.400 you must be mistaken. I've consistently said the sky is blue. I'm saying it again. The sky is blue.

00:42:52.740 Blue. Only blue. Never said anything else. Blue, blue, blue. And the narcissist troll will say,

00:42:59.720 I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I think you're saying the sky is red.

00:43:09.080 And it's something that only the narcissists do. They won't take yes for an answer.

00:43:12.980 Okay. You believe the sky is blue. I believe the sky is blue. Can we agree? Can we just agree? And

00:43:21.340 the narcissist won't. The narcissist will say, you're not saying the sky is blue. No, you're not. And

00:43:27.540 you're an idiot because you're not. No, please let me agree with you. I'm agreeing as hard as I can.

00:43:33.400 I can't agree harder. I'm trying. I'm trying. Only the narcissist will not let you agree with

00:43:39.860 them. The other thing they'll do is, and this is freaky. If you don't, if you haven't seen it,

00:43:46.120 it's freaky. They will misremember what they said five minutes ago. So they will deny what they just

00:43:53.720 said, even if it's written right there, like in the last tweet or post. They'll act like it didn't

00:44:00.780 just happen. And you'll say to yourself, they know they just said this, right? Are they just

00:44:08.660 lying? And here's the weird part. They're not lying. That's the freaky part. They're not lying.

00:44:17.820 They actually have a legitimate rewrite of memory that happens in real time. That's a real thing.

00:44:26.280 And it's consistent. It's instant. And you can observe it. And you can even trigger it. Like

00:44:34.580 if you know you're talking to a narcissist, you can actually just trigger a loss of memory

00:44:39.740 within the last five minutes. You can make them say they did not say what they just said. And you can

00:44:47.360 do it over and over again. And if you think that the person is lying to you, which I always used to

00:44:53.480 believe, you'll be so mad and confused. What you have to understand is they don't know what's

00:45:01.060 happening to them. They don't know they're narcissists. They don't know they're lying

00:45:05.220 because they're not. They're just misremembering. And they're completely oblivious to any of it.

00:45:11.940 They're just acting like they think they need to act. All right, here's another one.

00:45:15.760 And then ultimately, if you were, let's say it's an online argument and you just crush your opponent,

00:45:23.240 you show some data that's, you know, unambiguous, you've just won the argument. You have just

00:45:30.700 crushed your troll. What happens next? You know what happens next? They tell you that the argument was

00:45:39.760 over something different. How many times have you seen it? Again, you'll say the sky is blue

00:45:47.780 after they've argued that you've really said it was red. And then finally, if you can nail them down to,

00:45:54.440 yes, it was only about the sky and the sky was blue, they'll say, we were talking about humidity.

00:46:00.820 And you'll say, what is happening? That wasn't even in the conversation. And they will go to their grave

00:46:11.420 saying, no, no, you're moving the goalposts. You're doing it again. You're changing the subject.

00:46:19.620 I always said it was about humidity. And it wasn't. It wasn't. So when you see those things,

00:46:27.760 don't defend yourself. Yeah. So the effect of that is gaslighting. One of the definitions of

00:46:34.560 gaslighting, but not the common one. The common one is that you're intentionally trying to make

00:46:39.400 somebody think they're crazy. The more modern uses, just that people do think they're crazy.

00:46:46.700 Not that you're trying to make them that way. How do you deal with it? The way you deal with it is

00:46:53.100 knowing what you're dealing with. Let me, let me say this. If a robot came up to you and insulted

00:46:59.080 you, what would you say? A robot. Let's say someday, not too long from now, there's a robot that can talk

00:47:06.580 to people. And the robot walks up to you and says something that's offensive to you. Do you get angry?

00:47:15.160 Probably not. Because you're like, well, it's just a robot. It's just programming, right?

00:47:19.840 When you see a narcissist troll or in person, just think of them as robots. If they had the option of

00:47:28.760 not doing this, maybe they would. But the specificity of how they act, the going down,

00:47:35.900 what you could call the narcissist well, once you prove them wrong, there's a very predictable path

00:47:42.340 they take into some kind of illusion. And once you realize it's just programmed and they can't help

00:47:50.020 it, and they can never help it, and it can never change, it just is amusing. And then you just move

00:47:55.960 on with your life. On locals a little bit later today, I'm going to do a special micro lesson on

00:48:02.180 how to make friends. It turns out that's a big problem. How many of you have problems making

00:48:08.360 friends? Or maybe lately, because of the pandemic? Any of you have problems making friends?

00:48:15.860 I would love to see in your comments. Yep, yep, yep. People are saying yes. Somebody says no.

00:48:24.060 Good extrovert there. Never. Nope. Nope. Yes. Nope. Yeah, I think it's maybe 50% of people or something

00:48:31.760 like that. Yeah. So you'll get a lesson on that, how to make friends. I'll tell you some specific

00:48:44.940 things to do that are not creepy, and they're easy, and anybody can do them. I've got a reframe for you

00:48:54.600 that is going to change something for your lives. Like, actually, literally, within the next five

00:49:04.360 minutes, at least one person, and maybe more watching this, will have their life completely

00:49:13.280 transformed by this. And this is a brain hack. It's a trick. And I call it reframing.

00:49:21.980 And the reframing is simply taking something you already know, and just reframing it to look at it

00:49:29.800 differently, but you're not adding any new information, right? So I won't be telling you

00:49:34.400 anything new. I'll just tell you how to look at a thing differently. Some of you completely changed

00:49:40.780 your life. And here it goes. Do you ever have any problems with your self-esteem and taking criticism

00:49:48.380 in particular? When people criticize you, how do you feel? It's pretty bad, isn't it? It makes you feel

00:49:56.460 like you're just nothing. It makes your self-esteem in danger. It makes your blood boil. It makes your

00:50:03.280 you can't sleep. It's just the worst thing in the world, isn't it? Because when somebody criticizes you,

00:50:08.800 it's personal. It's you. Now that's your normal frame, isn't it? The normal frame is somebody

00:50:17.040 criticizes you personally, you take it personally. Because how could you not? Like, what's the alternative?

00:50:25.200 Taking it personally, right? Well, I'll give you the alternative. Won't work for every person every time.

00:50:32.480 But like I said, some of you, your whole life will change in the next minute. Here's the new frame.

00:50:38.800 Ask yourself this. What options did this remove for me? Instead of, how does that insult make me feel?

00:50:48.440 What did it do to my self-esteem? You say to yourself, what options did that remove from my life?

00:50:54.160 Let me give you an example. Somebody walks up to me and says, Scott, you're bald and you're short.

00:51:03.480 Now, the old frame says, oh my God, I feel terrible. People not only say bad things about me, but

00:51:12.760 I'm short and I'm bald. That's the way I used to think about it. Here's the way I think about it now.

00:51:19.760 What option did that remove from me? Did it stop me from getting rich? Nope.

00:51:28.400 Did it stop me from marrying the most beautiful woman in any dimension in our reality? Nope. Nope.

00:51:37.620 Did it stop me from playing in the NBA? Well, it turns out my talent is what stopped me from playing in

00:51:43.840 the NBA. My height? Not so much. I could be pretty tall and still not make it in the NBA.

00:51:52.240 So, name one thing in my life that's different because of the criticism. No options have been

00:51:59.240 removed. Everything is intact. Right? Now, you say to yourself, how is this going to work?

00:52:08.160 Just answering that little question, how is that going to work? Because it's still a personal insult.

00:52:12.640 How am I going to ignore the personal insult? This is how reframing works. Reframing is not about

00:52:19.540 what's true. It's about what you're focusing on. What you focus on is your reality. If you take a

00:52:28.520 frame that says, what options did this change for me? And the answer is almost always none.

00:52:34.380 Then you're taking a utility frame on life. The utility frame says, what's useful? What's not useful?

00:52:40.680 What's useful? What's not useful? And then you take the utility frame and that part of your brain

00:52:46.580 is not the part that gets embarrassed and shamed and self-esteem. It's just the utility part of your

00:52:51.600 brain. Just spend some time on the utility part, right? There is physically a part of your brain

00:52:57.220 that's working on all the negative thoughts. You know, the shame and everything else. Just don't spend time

00:53:02.660 there. The less time you spend activating that part of your brain feeling bad, the less you're there,

00:53:10.060 the better. And the more you spend thinking, well, what difference did it make? Somebody said, I wore a bad

00:53:16.160 shirt today. I don't like your shirt. And did that make my grades go down? Did that, is there somebody who

00:53:24.620 won't ask me for a date because I had a pimple on my forehead? Probably not. Let's say you're in high

00:53:30.400 school and the bully says, oh, you get a, you get a pimple on your forehead. Ha ha ha. Well, the old way

00:53:38.240 is like, oh no, I'm ugly. I've got a pimple on my forehead. The new way is, did the pimple on your

00:53:46.140 forehead lower your grade point average? No. Did the pimple on your forehead cause somebody who might have

00:53:53.500 liked you otherwise to not ask you on a date? Nope. Not a single person ever turned anybody down because of

00:54:01.020 a pimple on the forehead. It's never happened. Never will, probably. So, this won't solve every person's

00:54:08.820 problem all the time. Some of you, your life just changed. And these little reframes are so powerful that until

00:54:20.920 one of them gets you, and one of them will get you. They don't all work for everybody, right? Everybody's

00:54:26.940 got their own little reframe that works for them. But once a reframe changes your life instantly,

00:54:32.640 you're going to understand how these work. They are immensely powerful. Immensely powerful. So that's

00:54:39.760 your question. Next time you get a criticism from an online troll, here are the two things you say.

00:54:46.760 Number one, that person, I have empathy for them. The troll. The critic. Because they're broken.

00:54:54.280 Whatever it is that makes them need to criticize you so cruelly is a flaw in them, and you should

00:55:00.680 have empathy for them. You should feel bad that somebody is so broken that the only way they can

00:55:06.260 feel better is through your pain. The pain they're trying to give you, but you're rejecting. So that's

00:55:12.180 the first thing you think. I'm sorry for that person. They're so broken. Second thing you think is, what

00:55:17.560 option did any of this remove from me? And the answer is always going to be zero. And then you move

00:55:23.740 on. So that is your advice for today. And we'll try to see if we can get an actual interview with

00:55:33.220 Dr. Nicole Sapphire about her book called Panic Attack, just coming out tomorrow. I think it's

00:55:41.360 officially out. Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. So I'll see if I can get

00:55:46.980 that to work. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 24, 2021

Episode 1385 Scott Adams： Come Sip!

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