Episode 1402 Scott Adams： Rainbows and Warm Summer Nights Are My Decoy Topics Today
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Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, I discuss a recent update on the quality of my broadcast, and talk about a new technology that could revolutionise the way we do audio and video, and the unique hand gestures used by politicians.
Transcript
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hey everybody it's time for coffee with scott adams and yeah the rumors are true what you've
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heard is true i'm afraid this will be the best coffee with scott adams of all time
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pretty sure i'm gonna nail it today and i want to give you an update on my quality of my broadcast
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get a lot of complaints about the quality of my sound fair enough but it turns out that there is
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a gigantic market opportunity because it turns out if i use my ipad which i'm using now i get
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really good uh video but you can't do much with the sound there's no microphone you can attach to it
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there's nothing you can do there's an internal problem with the ipad so with the ipad you can
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have good video but not good sound if i go to my mac laptop i can get better sound if i connect a good
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microphone but it's got a back camera that's not very good so i have two choices good sound
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or good video now you're saying to yourself scott there are lots of people in the world who have
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figured out both of those things they have somehow figured out how to have good video at the same
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time as good audio to which i say have they no they haven't i don't think so because uh if you're
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live streaming it's hard to do those things now if you're doing a recorded version you can you can do
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everything in high quality doesn't matter if your technology is a little uh little uh has some
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hitches in it because you just fix it and then record it you're fine but if you're live streaming
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everything has to work just has to work so i always make the decision to go for what is simple over what
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is complicated now the complicated solution would be to get an external camera an external microphone
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figure out the connections because nobody makes a good microphone that just plugs directly into your
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laptop apparently uh so you can get little toy microphones that plug into your laptop but if you
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get a nice professional one you gotta get a mixer or something to connect it so there's a gigantic
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market opportunity for someone to make a simple device that has good video and good audio
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and it works every time nobody makes that imagine what a big market that is given that everybody's
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zooming and and stuff nobody makes that product it's kind of fascinating right because it's literally
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the number one thing that people would want right now good video and good audio nobody makes one
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it's just astonishing that apple doesn't have a product for that anyway i know i could piece it
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together with various parts but when i do those things will start breaking so probably one in five
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live streams just wouldn't work something like that something like a 20 failure rate as soon as you
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add just a little bit of complication to what i'm doing here the failure rate would be about 20
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way above acceptable well if you'd like to enjoy the broadcast today in its maximum potential i think
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you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip and all you need is a cup of margarine glass i'll take your
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chalice time canteen jug of glass vessel of any kind filled with very liquid i like coffee and join me now
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for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better
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everything everything everything everything it's called the simultaneous sip it's going to happen now go
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did you see the videos of vice president kamala harris
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saying to the immigrants in central america in a speech she said and i quote do not come
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so that happened separately but related to the same trip she gave an interview in which she was
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talking to somebody and she has an interesting hand gesture have you noticed that you notice all
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the politicians have different hand gestures there's there's the trump the trump is the thumbs up
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closed fist well we're gonna do this we're gonna do this right with a with that motion then you've
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got the you know the hands open version that's one way of talking blah blah blah um kamala harris has
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the most unique hand gestures i've ever seen now i can't reproduce them because i don't want to become a
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meme so i'm going to describe it for my listeners without producing it visually imagine if you
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will that you are holding a fist in front of you roughly about the height of your own chin and
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let's say that your hand was in a slightly closed position as if you were holding a rake yeah say you
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were holding a rake and your hand was sort of about where your chin is now imagine that instead of
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just staying in one position your hand which is grasped grasping an imaginary rake sometimes goes up
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and sometimes goes down from that position in a rapid motion from up to down and then down to up
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now imagine if you will that the clip of that interview in which she made the emotion
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fairly a number of times with the hand going from low to up and up to low at the same time somebody took
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that and made a meme in which her quote do not come do not come was overlaid with the visual now i'm
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not saying that a meme maker should do that i'm just saying it'd be funny if they did that's all i'm
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saying i don't mean to encourage it but i'd certainly tweet it uh fake news alert fake news alert beep beep
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beep beep beep beep latest fake news you would be amazed to learn that the story about trump allegedly
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in his administration clearing lafayette park so he could hold a bible photo op never happened that's right
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the entire news cycle that talked about trump clearing this park just so he could have a
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clearing it of protesters just so he could have a fake photo op never happened
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so investigation looked into it and found out that the clearing did happen but it happened before the
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president decided about this photo op and it was going to happen anyway and it was just a general
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security thing and it was completely fake news from top to bottom reported as a fact for what a year
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and a half or however long it was a year maybe reported as a fact that never happened just wasn't a fact
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all right so keep that in mind once again another example of the news being absolutely made up just
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completely made up um in related news there's a uh poll new polling from morning consult and politico
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found that a third of republican voters believe trump will be reinstated by the end of this year
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that in the comments since i probably have more conservatives than anything else on here
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how many of you think that trump is going to be reinstated
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i see one yes sir i seen i do somebody says i mostly knows so if you listen to this is mostly knows
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99 percent knows it looks like but uh so do i just have a smarter audience
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because i'm pretty sure my audience skews pretty republican but uh you're overwhelmingly you're
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saying no i'm just seeing a sprinkling of yeses so my audience is nowhere near one-third
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think he's going to be reinstated you do know that there's no provision for that right
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the the constitution doesn't have a redo clause in it once it's certified it's just done there's
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nothing you can do so well for those of you who think it could happen i'll just say this there's
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no mechanism for it to happen so thinking that trump would be reinstated would be similar to thinking
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that a train might run across your front yard even though there are no tracks you can't say it's
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impossible i suppose but there are no train tracks in your front yard it's not really likely a train
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is going to go by likewise there's no system no process no law no rule that would reinstate a
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president who has been certified correctly or incorrectly has been certified to have won the
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election you can't get there from here there's no way to get there so that's not going to happen
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but a third of republicans believe that i guess um according to an article in the hill
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uh who would you think is more trusted the trump administration back in its time or
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the news media according to an emerson college uh study or poll and you would not be surprised that
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the trump administration was considered truthful by roughly half of uh registered voters now it's no
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surprise that that would be almost entirely republicans of course but half of the public
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uh well actually if it's 49 it's a lot more than republicans so half of the country thinks the
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trump administration was truthful which seems like a high number doesn't it for a politician
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you know i'm not saying anything about trump here just for a politician half of the country believing
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they're honest that feels high i don't know um but of course the numbers split along party lines nine
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out of ten republicans uh were saying that uh whereas three out of four democrats said the opposite of course
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the poll also found that 69 of democrats think the news media is truthful
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what how could 69 of democrats still believe the news is truthful even if they believed that their news
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was truthful and they believe that you know right-leaning news was not truthful how could they have not
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noticed that the news is not the truth how do you not notice that um whereas 91 of republicans consider the
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fourth estate untruthful that feels closer to being right doesn't it how do you if you were going to say
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hey let's see which group is the smart one the fact that 91 of republicans don't trust the news
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kind of suggest they might be the smart ones at least in this one question i'm not going to say
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they're always always on the right side but on this one question it's sort of obvious uh but this is
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amazing now i would imagine that cognitive dissonance is a lot of the reason for this democrats need the
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news to be true to support their version of reality so if they believe the news was fake then they
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wouldn't have any support for their version of reality so probably this is just a psychological phenomenon
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meanwhile independents think that both the trump administration when it was in power and the news
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media are untruthful um i wonder if this is this might have been an older survey i'm wondering if
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i saw the date wrong on this somebody tweeted this today but it's probably an older survey during the
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administration now that i think about it i i hate it when somebody tweets at me an old article
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because i have a bad habit of forgetting to look at the date when i retweet them i might have done that
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here but i doubt the numbers have changed much since then president biden signed an executive order
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reversing trump's uh trump tried to ban tick tock and wechat because they're chinese apps and biden is
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trying to be more of a thoughtful thoughtful careful systems guy i like i like the systems part but
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they're trying to come up with some criteria for any apps so sort of a a broad criteria so that it's not
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just about tick tock and wechat but it's just about any app i guess maybe any chinese app and some you know
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objective way to say whether it should be banned or not i would like to add to that conversation by saying
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i would like to give you a criteria for whether to ban these apps or not and it goes like this
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does china have any control of your data does any of your data go through chinese assets that's it
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that's that's the whole story if any of your data goes through chinese-owned infrastructure it's it's
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vulnerable is there really any argument about that do you think do you think because it's uh encrypted
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they can't get at it i don't know if it's their app i would think that they could encrypt it and
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unencrypt it they own the encryption so if you send encrypted data across a chinese internet when china
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owns the encrypting asset and also therefore logically they own the unencrypting access asset on the other
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end you don't think that they can unencrypt that in the middle you think it has to get all the way
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to the end and that's the only place you can unencrypt it if you have the technology to unencrypt it
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anywhere if you get the signal you can unencrypt it so yeah maybe there's a back door or whatever
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i got a feeling this whole tick tock wechat thing being uh reversed makes me wonder if the
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biden administration is competent in terms of technology now you have to assume that they got
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plenty of experts right but it does this reflect what the experts would have recommended because
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it's sort of this space that's half technical and half political right so it's a little bit of both
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but this doesn't look like a technical recommendation because i think the technical recommendation would be
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dead simple does it go through any chinese assets yes or no i mean i don't i just don't know how this
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can be a big question what am i missing are they going to come up with some kind of argument that says
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oh yeah the tic tac tick tock and wechat traffic it does go through all these chinese assets but it's so
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well encrypted then nothing would happen are we going to believe that right and is that the only uh
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issue let me let me tell you how they have completely ignored the big issue are you ready
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it's not about data privacy data privacy is a big deal and we should certainly hope that china is not
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stealing all our traffic but there's a much much bigger deal like much maybe 10 times as big just to
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put a size on it maybe a hundred times as big i don't think that would be out of the question a hundred
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times bigger problem than the data privacy is influence if they can turn a knob and turn some tic
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tic tac meme from a you know thing that nobody would notice into the major thing trending on tic
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then that jumps over to snapchat and jumps over to instagram jumps over to facebook they can control what
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we think through apps mostly tic tac wechat would stay and you know stay in the chinese language mostly
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i believe but tic tac is how china can actually control
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opinion in this country why do we let china control american opinions through this influence machine
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so i didn't see the biden administration even mention it like it's even an issue but in terms of sizing and
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risk it's probably ten to a hundred times the danger of just losing some you know data privacy
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i mean data privacy is real important but nowhere nearly as important as the influence it's not even in
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the same same universe well we've got some new uh interesting stuff on both hydroxychloroquine and
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ivermectin which i hasten to note are not approved uh medications in this country um at least not for
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the covet but they're approved for other stuff now hydroxychloroquine got a new observational study
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published by medrics whatever that is and it found that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine
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along with zinc could increase the coronavirus survival rate by as much as 200 percent if
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distributed at higher doses to ventilated patients who are severely ill now what do you make of that
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well if you look on the internet you see people dancing in the streets and saying i told you so
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i told you so i told you told you but uh do you think that they should really
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be so happy about this well first of all it's number one an observational study
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how do you rate the credibility of an observational study which basically is looking backwards versus
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a controlled study where you're you're designing a study in advance and then you do the then you get
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the data so which is more credible the one where you're just looking at what happened on its own
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or where you're setting up a controlled randomized study where you're looking at data in the future
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not even close right the the observational study will not be in the same same league with a
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controlled study do you think that the fda approves medicine based on observational studies
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i don't think so i'll take a fact check on that but i don't believe any drug has ever been
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approved in the united states i probably shouldn't say any drug but i don't think that's the process
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i don't believe the process says you can be approved with this kind of a study so how excited should you
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be about a study that i believe the fda would not even use secondly what do you make of the fact that it
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was published in medrics i think that's a preprint place isn't it i don't think that means it's been peer
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reviewed so this would be close to the the lower quality of study right so does this tell you something
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you didn't know not really because we had stuff like this before so i would say this is more of the same
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which is not saying that that this drug works or doesn't work i'm not telling you either one i'm
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just saying that it's just more low quality uh data that you need to be pretty skeptical about you should
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be pretty skeptical about it doesn't mean it's wrong it's just it's just not that credible
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but what about ivermectin well um if you're following the the brett weinstein um he's making
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an effort to sort of raise the the issues that the public can see that uh although the studies on
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ivermectin are not the gold standard type that is nailing it down with some near absolutes but there are
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lots of studies and if you did a meta-analysis of them most of them but not all of them suggest
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that it works now so keep in mind there are studies that show it doesn't work did you know that
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so they don't all show that it works but mostly they do but you know a majority
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solid majority say it worked now all the studies have a pretty wide degree of uncertainty
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so wide that it could go from it works to it doesn't work that's pretty it's a pretty big wide
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uncertainty and a number of them and of course the idea of using a meta-analysis has been criticized
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and let me give you some a specific idea of why a meta-analysis which is basically taking all the
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all the lower quality studies and looking them looking at them as if they were one big study
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and the idea is that any errors in one study would be sort of averaged out and canceled by the other
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studies so as long as they had different errors they might sort of cancel each other out but let me give
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you an idea of what kind of problems that runs into number one merck who actually makes ivermectin
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who you would normally expect would be very pro their own drug right but this is what merck says
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in february so it's just february not that long ago about their own drug i think there's probably
00:23:06.380
been more information coming out since february so this might be a little dated but they haven't updated
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it yet so they say about their own drug no scientific basis for it as a therapeutic against covid
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uh from what they call preclinical studies so they say there's no scientific basis from preclinical
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studies uh i guess that means the observational stuff so the people who are looking at those same
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studies say oh it totally works and merck the company that makes the drug is looking at the same
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studies at least the ones that were that were there up to february i think there have been some more
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after that but at that point they're saying now i'm looking at those and it doesn't work
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they also say there's no meaningful evidence for clinical efficacy which is really just saying the
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same thing and then number three uh concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies
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okay but you'd also think that probably they have a pretty good sense of the safety of their own
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drug because it's it's been used for years so do these do these reasons strike you as convincing
00:24:22.860
because there's a problem here with merck so they make ivermectin but they seem to be dumping on their
00:24:28.460
own drug but wait it turns out that they're coming up with this they're trying to promote a new drug
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called uh monuprovir monuprovir it would be a oral antiviral and they already have procurement
00:24:46.220
agreements with the government of the united states in other words it's pre-sold all they have to do is
00:24:52.860
show that it works and they get a big check a really big check like a god awfully big check from
00:25:00.860
the government and they just have to show that it works and wouldn't it be great if it worked better
00:25:07.820
than this ivermectin that might not be as profitable it's kind of sketchy isn't it so this is what
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brett weinstein pointed out that uh isn't this interesting that the company is trashing their own
00:25:22.620
drug which these these some of these studies would indicate it works at the same time they're pushing
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one that would be far more profitable if they could get this through the system huh so um now anatoly
00:25:40.220
lubarsky who is one of my favorite uh skeptics he's good good with the data and good with the logic
00:25:46.460
unusually good and uh he he noted that monuprovir was part of operation warp speed which means it had
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been contemplated for quite a while probably before we had a lot of information about ivermectin and uh
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and in it uh and meanwhile it failed the trial for hospitals hospitalized patients and i guess merck had
00:26:11.020
two vaccine candidate dates that failed imagine being merck when your other pharmacy pharmaceutical
00:26:17.980
companies are making a gazillion dollars during the pandemic and poor merck has two vaccine candidates
00:26:24.460
that failed it's the difference between like many billions of dollars and no dollars that's a really
00:26:32.380
big difference how much does merck need a win how much does merck their management need to get some
00:26:41.020
money out of this pandemic pretty much right i mean they got a lot riding on this because other their
00:26:47.100
competitors have made money uh but anatoly thinks that the uh the ivermectin decision by merck is unlikely
00:26:55.180
to be related to what they're doing with their new drug just because the the timing of it now i'm not sure
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that any of this is uh any of this you could take as a definitive but there's an open question whether
00:27:09.580
merck is being uh completely objective about this or if it's a money grab and you can't really tell
00:27:16.620
but it's terrible that we have to ask the question isn't it it's terrible that we have to ask the
00:27:21.980
question because that would be sort of putting merck in a bad light and have they ever done anything
00:27:29.260
that would suggest that they could do something this unethical well let me tell you about uh a drug
00:27:37.820
called vioxx that merck uh also had in which there were a number of doctors who were against it
00:27:45.100
but of course if uh if they could get this drug approved it would make lots and lots of money
00:27:51.420
and so merck drew up what they called a doctor hit list where they tried to discredit and criticize
00:27:58.540
anybody who said their drug was bad doctors they actually had a hit list of doctors that they were
00:28:07.020
going to discredit just for saying bad things about their drug so if you could do that could you do
00:28:17.260
the other thing there are different things but if if you believe that this is apparently there's good
00:28:24.380
evidence of this if you believe that they had a hit list of doctors to discredit just because they had
00:28:29.660
different opinions about the value of this drug do you think that they wouldn't push one drug over
00:28:37.900
another even if people died do you think they wouldn't do that i'm not saying they did i'm saying that
00:28:45.260
if you have people who act one way unethically you kind of have to assume that at least they're flexible in
00:28:51.740
this ethical domain so here's my uh and then i was looking at some comments by andres backhouse who
00:29:01.500
was looking at the meta analyses and i'm just going to read you his tweet because i think if i try to
00:29:07.980
summarize it myself i'll get it wrong but here's what he says about one meta review so this is a
00:29:13.900
review of the individual lower quality studies about ivermectin and andres points out that going
00:29:21.260
through the bryant et al meta review the mortality effects for patients with mild to moderate or
00:29:28.140
severe covid are insignificant in six and of eight checks much seems to hang on one rct randomized controlled
00:29:38.060
trial that bunches different patient types and isn't peer-reviewed so although it's a you're looking
00:29:45.900
at a bunch of different studies what happens if one of them is sort of bigger than the other
00:29:52.780
if there's one that's really big it's going to sway your your result right what if the big one's
00:29:59.100
the only one that's wrong that's a problem right now i'm not saying the big one is wrong i'm saying
00:30:05.340
what if it is what if it's the only one that's wrong it's the biggest one well there goes your whole
00:30:11.100
meta analysis and what if you said to yourself well i won't include that one because i think it's
00:30:16.380
wrong uh uh can't do that because then it's not a it's not a proper analysis as soon as you decide
00:30:23.740
what's in and what's out it's not a study anymore it's just you deciding what's in and what's out and
00:30:29.100
then that will give you the result you want so if you're deciding what's in and what's out i'm not
00:30:33.900
sure it's science or math or anything it's just you making some opinions but if you put it all in and
00:30:40.540
say okay i'll just dumbly put them all together then you've got this one big one that may have
00:30:46.700
made the whole thing irrelevant because what if the big one's wrong now i'm not saying it's wrong but
00:30:53.180
to uh andre's point the big one bunches different patient types which seems like something you should
00:31:02.140
be concerned about and it isn't peer-reviewed which also seems like something you should worry about
00:31:07.740
and also uh separately andre's was pointing out that the the margin of of error on these things
00:31:18.700
all right so bottom line uh do i think ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine work
00:31:25.500
and my answer is i don't know i don't know if you're positive that they work
00:31:31.420
that's not a good opinion could be right you might be right but it's not a good opinion because the
00:31:40.220
the science isn't there if you're positive it doesn't work that's not a good opinion
00:31:47.260
that's a terrible opinion because there's plenty of evidence they both work if they're just not quite
00:31:52.940
good enough evidence so anything that looks like certainty either direction seems like a bad play
00:31:59.820
but if you were to say to yourself should you take them well that's a different question because let's
00:32:06.620
say that you were 70 years old and didn't have access to vaccine for whatever reason you know would
00:32:14.700
you take it in that case let's say you had the covid you're 70 let's say there's some reason you can't
00:32:20.940
take the vaccine or can't get it whatever yeah yeah it might make sense as a risk risk management
00:32:27.340
thing all right biden is talking to putin i guess pretty soon and uh when asked what he would talk
00:32:34.220
about i believe that he said something along the lines of uh what was he going to do he was going to
00:32:41.100
tell him what he needs to know that's what biden said i'm going to tell him what he needs to know
00:32:45.020
so i guess we're okay with russia because biden's going to tell him what he needs to know
00:32:52.540
i've got a feeling that biden will not be moved by biden or that putin will not be too moved by
00:32:58.700
biden telling him what he needs to know what exactly is biden going to do threaten him
00:33:13.100
uh am i serious about what put put a topic in there all right
00:33:22.140
um so anyway i'm not expecting much out of the the biden putin meeting uh but we'll see now do you
00:33:30.700
think that biden will come out of that acting too friendly to russia because remember when trump
00:33:36.540
seemed too friendly to putin that was a lot of criticism so how is biden going to be biden
00:33:43.980
without being too friendly like what's that look like i feel as if you know if they have a joint
00:33:50.940
press conference at the end like trump and putin did it's probably a mistake you probably shouldn't
00:33:56.380
do that but if they do uh seeing putin and biden side by side how's that going to make you feel
00:34:03.980
are you going to feel like yeah my team's looking pretty strong look at that biden look at him go he's
00:34:10.460
sharp he's going to show uh show that putin what for if you're biden's handlers do you let him stand
00:34:17.980
side by side with putin and talk you know one after the other in front of people i don't think so
00:34:23.980
so we'll wait to see but i'm going to predict there is no side by side putin biden press conference
00:34:31.580
after it what do you say i say no we'll see well eight years after my book had filled almost
00:34:38.940
everything that still went big was published it's it's actually gaining in popularity eight years later
00:34:45.820
and when i wrote it i actually thought that would happen i thought that it would be a minor success
00:34:52.940
when it was published and that it would grow in power over time as people read it and tried to
00:34:58.780
tried the techniques and then recommended it and i swear every single day i'm seeing memes about it
00:35:06.060
and i don't see that about other books i've written a lot of books but this one is a meme almost every
00:35:14.540
day almost every day somebody's tweeting about eight years later and if you look a lot of a lot of other
00:35:20.860
self-help books you'll see its influence has gotten into a lot of other books at this point
00:35:25.420
i won't name names but you can figure out which ones they are so uh i would take a look at that if you
00:35:31.980
want to know what makes a book more popular eight years after it's written uh and growing in popularity
00:35:37.740
actually it's it may have its this is one of its biggest years um i was i told you i was having a uh this
00:35:46.620
weird i don't know if it's a debate but conversation about uh masks usefulness versus uh social distancing
00:35:55.900
and i was talking with uh donald luskin who i only know from twitter but apparently he has some data
00:36:01.660
analysis skills and he says that his analysis shows that masks definitely work the numbers seem to show
00:36:07.660
that i i don't know if i could get christina on here michael she she's not crazy about this kind of
00:36:16.460
stuff um and i was trying to figure out why donald was saying that according to his numbers it's very
00:36:23.980
clear that social distancing doesn't work now what do you do when your obvious common sense differs from
00:36:33.260
the data which would you which would you believe certainly there's no i don't think any of you
00:36:39.980
would argue that if you're standing on one side of the world and i'm standing on the other side of the
00:36:45.020
world and you've got the virus and i don't you can't really give it to me because the virus can't
00:36:50.780
travel now it probably can't travel too well more than six feet right maybe even just three but
00:36:57.740
uh how could it be possible that staying away from each other physically doesn't work
00:37:07.420
does that make sense to you is there anybody here who thinks it could make sense that social
00:37:13.820
distancing doesn't work and i was kind of going back and forth thinking am i crazy because it's obvious
00:37:20.940
it works it couldn't not work there's no mechanism by which this doesn't work now you might say you
00:37:29.020
tried to do social distancing and everybody cheated if that's what you're saying then oh okay that's not
00:37:34.060
really social distancing that's people pretending to social distance of course that doesn't work
00:37:39.580
but here's i believe i solved the mystery i believe that uh lockdowns and social distancing
00:37:46.940
were being used as a similar thing i don't believe there's evidence that lockdowns work
00:37:54.300
but i do believe that distance works because you can have lockdowns or no lockdowns and still do
00:37:59.980
plenty of social distancing so i think the problem is that uh donald was probably and i think this is
00:38:07.740
true he was looking at lockdowns not working which i totally understand if you told me lockdowns don't
00:38:14.060
work and the data proves it i would say oh okay i mean that makes sense to me because the the difference
00:38:20.300
between the lockdown and the no lockdown was not that big because even if you didn't lock down you
00:38:27.420
probably socially distanced within the store wore masks within the store uh did more curb pickup more take
00:38:34.460
out right so yeah lockdowns probably didn't work especially if you calculate in the economics
00:38:42.540
but social distancing has to work there's no way it cannot work you know i don't know how much data
00:38:52.220
you would have to show me to tell me social distancing doesn't work but i'm not going to believe any of it
00:38:58.700
i wouldn't believe any of it so all right here's uh cnn talking about the experts apparently they showed
00:39:05.740
a video that's amazing of some some medical doctor who is testifying in some place that the vaccinations
00:39:13.500
have some kind of metal in them and so much so that people are magnetized such that they could put a key
00:39:20.940
on their forehead and it would just stay there and i don't have to tell you that there apparently is no
00:39:29.260
way that the vaccinations actually magnetize you so uh but this was a doctor right do you know what
00:39:38.780
people tell me all the time scott you're not an expert in this field don't give us your stupid
00:39:45.900
cartoonist opinion because you're no expert why can't you be like a doctor if you were a doctor we'd listen
00:39:52.780
to you well the fucking doctor says you could be magnetized by a vaccination now this is obviously
00:39:59.420
not representative of doctors in general but you got to be careful about believing your experts
00:40:06.140
just saying if you're believing experts just sort of automatically because they're experts don't do
00:40:11.740
that another case in point two members of the fda uh have quit from uh from an advisory panel
00:40:21.740
because a drug got approved for alzheimer's that they think should not have been approved so
00:40:29.580
if you're believing the experts do you believe the experts who quit because they were so angry that
00:40:35.980
something got approved they called it a sham process like they they act their accusation is that it was
00:40:44.380
approved before it was even looked at in other words it was sort of pre-approved in people's minds
00:40:49.580
and they they basically just approved it without looking at the data or something
00:40:55.260
this is a pretty big claim from experts so now you've got one expert saying that vaccines will
00:41:00.780
magnetize you two experts saying and these are high level experts this this there's one of these guys
00:41:06.780
who's quit david nutman he's a neurologist at the mayo clinic he's a neurologist at the mayo clinic
00:41:15.100
they don't hire jerks right in the mayo clinic they probably look at your resume before they hire you
00:41:22.140
this is a qualified guy disagrees with the other experts
00:41:28.460
um have i told you before that uh once you understand how narcissism is not just feeling
00:41:35.020
you're great but narcissism is a constellation of specific behaviors
00:41:41.500
that apparently applies to entire news networks cnn has a personality now collectively which is
00:41:52.060
narcissism and let me let me uh give you an example so one of their analysts uh stefan collinson who's
00:42:00.540
one of my favorite to read i read almost everything he writes and it's only because it's such uh
00:42:06.060
uh blatant propaganda you know it's opinion piece so opinion pieces look like propaganda but uh he's
00:42:14.540
always humorously so far into the ridiculous that i read it for entertainment and that's not a joke
00:42:21.020
it always entertains me because it's just so over the top uh
00:42:27.580
let's see um here's what he says so collinson says the most extraordinary feature of biden's trip
00:42:34.700
is that he's not an american president going out to confront tyranny abroad that's happened
00:42:40.940
before he's huddling with u.s allies at a moment when the greatest threat to democracy comes from
00:42:47.740
within the united states what what the greatest threat to democracy comes from within the united states
00:42:58.940
from where now i assume he's talking about the you know the january 6th riot and the belief that white
00:43:08.940
supremacists are climbing everywhere but one of the characteristics of narcissism that's in this
00:43:16.380
constellation of behaviors is projection projection blaming somebody of the thing you're guilty of
00:43:23.580
what is the biggest threat to democracy in the united states in your opinion so so if you don't count
00:43:33.660
the external world and of course this is just crazy talk obviously china's the biggest threat but if you
00:43:39.340
take out the rest of the world uh and you're looking at the greatest threat to democracy that comes from
00:43:46.620
within what do you think it is i think it's the fake news isn't it i'm pretty sure it's the fake news
00:43:56.220
because if we had real news we'd make good decisions we'd keep our democracy we might even make it stronger
00:44:04.220
but if you have fake news you're doing the wrong stuff because you don't know what the problem is
00:44:07.900
this is projection cnn is the biggest threat and and other you know fake news the fake news is by far
00:44:17.580
the biggest threat to democracy there's nothing even close nothing even close so you see it right this
00:44:25.420
is the projection part where they are the biggest threat to democracy so they say you are that's how it
00:44:31.740
works that's how that's how narcissists work they always tell you that you are the thing they're doing
00:44:36.380
here's something else they do they act arrogant like they're better than you does cnn ever act like
00:44:42.700
it's better than republicans yeah that's their whole act their entire act is that cnn is better
00:44:49.820
than republicans not just different not just disagreeing they're better it's the whole act is that we're better
00:44:56.540
than you that's it that's narcissism how about misdirection when they get caught does does cnn uh directly
00:45:04.780
address criticisms when they don't run a story or they get something wrong well sometimes they
00:45:10.780
might run a correction but they don't really do that they kind of go after the other team and say
00:45:15.740
but you did worse look at what you did misdirection that's a narcissist trick how about uh blame the
00:45:22.700
messenger not the message do they go after the people or do they go after the ideas they go after the
00:45:29.260
people now the right does that too but the right almost always also goes after the idea right yeah
00:45:38.860
the idea that uh marxism works you know it doesn't have the right incentives for example so the right
00:45:45.660
does go after people as well but they always include the motivation the system you know that's the real
00:45:53.660
criticism the fun part is going after people but i believe on the left they just sort of go after
00:45:59.100
the people they never say the system would work better if they just go after people it feels like
00:46:08.300
all right and lots of lying lying is part of narcissism too um here's chris saliza
00:46:16.620
also opinion piece on cnn and he says today everywhere you look within the republican party these days
00:46:23.260
there is an effort to forget and to minimize what happened at the u.s capitol on january 6.
00:46:30.540
a senate report released this week and i guess must have been republicans behind this aimed at
00:46:35.500
examining the security blah blah about the riot and they left the word insurrection entirely out
00:46:43.340
except when quoting somebody talking about it the reason uh aids also steered clear of language
00:46:49.900
that could turn off some republicans including not referring to the attack as an insurrection
00:46:56.060
so cnn opinion guy saliza is saying that it's it's bad that republicans are leaving out the word
00:47:03.500
insurrection do you know why why would they leave out the word insurrection could it be because they know
00:47:11.420
that you can't conquer a country by occupying a room for a while that's not an insurrection
00:47:20.620
it's not even close to an insurrection that would be as close to an insurrection as mowing the lawn
00:47:27.580
is to a haircut right that's really not even in the general neighborhood of an insurrection that's not
00:47:35.340
in the solar system of an insurrection and cnn is actually criticizing them for not using the word
00:47:41.740
that is completely inappropriate and and the way they talk about it is like well you can see it too
00:47:48.460
right isn't it obvious to you that they they stop using this word insurrection so they don't even
00:47:54.780
make arguments anymore they just act like it's obvious it's obvious well yeah they should have
00:47:58.940
used the word insurrection it's obvious i don't need reasons don't ask me about the reason it's just
00:48:11.900
that is right i'm reading your comments and you're all right
00:48:14.700
my daughter thought we mowed the carpet when it got too long okay
00:48:23.180
uh the fake news is responsible for 2020 maybe maybe they were i feel as if the fake news
00:48:38.460
causes almost all of our activities really we just don't know at least in the the political domain
00:48:45.180
all right that is all i had to say today and i'm pretty sure this was one of the best
00:48:53.660
coffees with scott adams of all time until tomorrow wait until tomorrow it's going to be so good you
00:49:01.500
won't even believe it but for now that is all and i will talk to you tomorrow