Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1402 Scott Adams： Rainbows and Warm Summer Nights Are My Decoy Topics Today

00:00:00.000 hey everybody it's time for coffee with scott adams and yeah the rumors are true what you've

00:00:13.060 heard is true i'm afraid this will be the best coffee with scott adams of all time

00:00:19.920 pretty sure i'm gonna nail it today and i want to give you an update on my quality of my broadcast

00:00:30.000 get a lot of complaints about the quality of my sound fair enough but it turns out that there is

00:00:36.440 a gigantic market opportunity because it turns out if i use my ipad which i'm using now i get

00:00:44.040 really good uh video but you can't do much with the sound there's no microphone you can attach to it

00:00:52.440 there's nothing you can do there's an internal problem with the ipad so with the ipad you can

00:00:58.040 have good video but not good sound if i go to my mac laptop i can get better sound if i connect a good

00:01:08.160 microphone but it's got a back camera that's not very good so i have two choices good sound

00:01:16.000 or good video now you're saying to yourself scott there are lots of people in the world who have

00:01:23.620 figured out both of those things they have somehow figured out how to have good video at the same

00:01:30.420 time as good audio to which i say have they no they haven't i don't think so because uh if you're

00:01:41.720 live streaming it's hard to do those things now if you're doing a recorded version you can you can do

00:01:47.060 everything in high quality doesn't matter if your technology is a little uh little uh has some

00:01:54.240 hitches in it because you just fix it and then record it you're fine but if you're live streaming

00:01:59.200 everything has to work just has to work so i always make the decision to go for what is simple over what

00:02:08.500 is complicated now the complicated solution would be to get an external camera an external microphone

00:02:17.280 figure out the connections because nobody makes a good microphone that just plugs directly into your

00:02:24.060 laptop apparently uh so you can get little toy microphones that plug into your laptop but if you

00:02:30.840 get a nice professional one you gotta get a mixer or something to connect it so there's a gigantic

00:02:37.680 market opportunity for someone to make a simple device that has good video and good audio

00:02:46.220 and it works every time nobody makes that imagine what a big market that is given that everybody's

00:02:54.220 zooming and and stuff nobody makes that product it's kind of fascinating right because it's literally

00:03:01.540 the number one thing that people would want right now good video and good audio nobody makes one

00:03:07.240 it's just astonishing that apple doesn't have a product for that anyway i know i could piece it

00:03:15.400 together with various parts but when i do those things will start breaking so probably one in five

00:03:22.200 live streams just wouldn't work something like that something like a 20 failure rate as soon as you

00:03:29.000 add just a little bit of complication to what i'm doing here the failure rate would be about 20

00:03:34.620 way above acceptable well if you'd like to enjoy the broadcast today in its maximum potential i think

00:03:43.260 you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip and all you need is a cup of margarine glass i'll take your

00:03:46.620 chalice time canteen jug of glass vessel of any kind filled with very liquid i like coffee and join me now

00:03:53.020 for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better

00:03:57.020 everything everything everything everything it's called the simultaneous sip it's going to happen now go

00:04:06.700 ah savor it savor it good good

00:04:13.820 all right we got lots of uh fun news today um

00:04:20.060 did you see the videos of vice president kamala harris

00:04:23.660 saying to the immigrants in central america in a speech she said and i quote do not come

00:04:31.500 do not come

00:04:33.900 so that happened separately but related to the same trip she gave an interview in which she was

00:04:40.860 talking to somebody and she has an interesting hand gesture have you noticed that you notice all

00:04:46.460 the politicians have different hand gestures there's there's the trump the trump is the thumbs up

00:04:51.660 closed fist well we're gonna do this we're gonna do this right with a with that motion then you've

00:04:58.300 got the you know the hands open version that's one way of talking blah blah blah um kamala harris has 1.00

00:05:05.580 the most unique hand gestures i've ever seen now i can't reproduce them because i don't want to become a

00:05:13.100 meme so i'm going to describe it for my listeners without producing it visually imagine if you

00:05:21.580 will that you are holding a fist in front of you roughly about the height of your own chin and

00:05:27.980 let's say that your hand was in a slightly closed position as if you were holding a rake yeah say you

00:05:35.900 were holding a rake and your hand was sort of about where your chin is now imagine that instead of

00:05:42.140 just staying in one position your hand which is grasped grasping an imaginary rake sometimes goes up

00:05:50.620 and sometimes goes down from that position in a rapid motion from up to down and then down to up

00:05:58.780 now imagine if you will that the clip of that interview in which she made the emotion

00:06:03.580 fairly a number of times with the hand going from low to up and up to low at the same time somebody took

00:06:10.540 that and made a meme in which her quote do not come do not come was overlaid with the visual now i'm

00:06:22.220 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

00:06:27.820 saying i don't mean to encourage it but i'd certainly tweet it uh fake news alert fake news alert beep beep

00:06:36.540 beep beep beep beep latest fake news you would be amazed to learn that the story about trump allegedly

00:06:44.780 in his administration clearing lafayette park so he could hold a bible photo op never happened that's right

00:06:53.340 the entire news cycle that talked about trump clearing this park just so he could have a

00:06:59.820 clearing it of protesters just so he could have a fake photo op never happened

00:07:06.620 so investigation looked into it and found out that the clearing did happen but it happened before the

00:07:13.180 president decided about this photo op and it was going to happen anyway and it was just a general

00:07:18.220 security thing and it was completely fake news from top to bottom reported as a fact for what a year

00:07:28.540 and a half or however long it was a year maybe reported as a fact that never happened just wasn't a fact

00:07:37.420 all right so keep that in mind once again another example of the news being absolutely made up just

00:07:44.780 completely made up um in related news there's a uh poll new polling from morning consult and politico

00:07:56.940 found that a third of republican voters believe trump will be reinstated by the end of this year

00:08:04.460 what

00:08:07.260 are you serious how many of you think that

00:08:10.140 that in the comments since i probably have more conservatives than anything else on here

00:08:16.540 how many of you think that trump is going to be reinstated

00:08:21.020 i see one yes sir i seen i do somebody says i mostly knows so if you listen to this is mostly knows

00:08:31.260 99 percent knows it looks like but uh so do i just have a smarter audience

00:08:40.140 because i'm pretty sure my audience skews pretty republican but uh you're overwhelmingly you're

00:08:47.900 saying no i'm just seeing a sprinkling of yeses so my audience is nowhere near one-third

00:08:54.220 think he's going to be reinstated you do know that there's no provision for that right

00:09:00.380 the the constitution doesn't have a redo clause in it once it's certified it's just done there's

00:09:06.460 nothing you can do so well for those of you who think it could happen i'll just say this there's

00:09:16.300 no mechanism for it to happen so thinking that trump would be reinstated would be similar to thinking

00:09:23.580 that a train might run across your front yard even though there are no tracks you can't say it's

00:09:31.020 impossible i suppose but there are no train tracks in your front yard it's not really likely a train

00:09:37.820 is going to go by likewise there's no system no process no law no rule that would reinstate a

00:09:46.620 president who has been certified correctly or incorrectly has been certified to have won the

00:09:52.620 election you can't get there from here there's no way to get there so that's not going to happen

00:09:59.420 but a third of republicans believe that i guess um according to an article in the hill

00:10:08.220 uh who would you think is more trusted the trump administration back in its time or

00:10:14.780 the news media according to an emerson college uh study or poll and you would not be surprised that

00:10:23.900 the trump administration was considered truthful by roughly half of uh registered voters now it's no

00:10:31.500 surprise that that would be almost entirely republicans of course but half of the public

00:10:38.380 uh well actually if it's 49 it's a lot more than republicans so half of the country thinks the

00:10:45.340 trump administration was truthful which seems like a high number doesn't it for a politician

00:10:51.660 you know i'm not saying anything about trump here just for a politician half of the country believing

00:10:57.340 they're honest that feels high i don't know um but of course the numbers split along party lines nine

00:11:05.260 out of ten republicans uh were saying that uh whereas three out of four democrats said the opposite of course

00:11:13.180 the poll also found that 69 of democrats think the news media is truthful

00:11:23.580 what how could 69 of democrats still believe the news is truthful even if they believed that their news

00:11:34.220 was truthful and they believe that you know right-leaning news was not truthful how could they have not

00:11:40.940 noticed that the news is not the truth how do you not notice that um whereas 91 of republicans consider the

00:11:49.820 fourth estate untruthful that feels closer to being right doesn't it how do you if you were going to say

00:12:00.540 hey let's see which group is the smart one the fact that 91 of republicans don't trust the news

00:12:07.740 kind of suggest they might be the smart ones at least in this one question i'm not going to say

00:12:13.900 they're always always on the right side but on this one question it's sort of obvious uh but this is

00:12:22.140 amazing now i would imagine that cognitive dissonance is a lot of the reason for this democrats need the

00:12:28.140 news to be true to support their version of reality so if they believe the news was fake then they

00:12:37.740 wouldn't have any support for their version of reality so probably this is just a psychological phenomenon

00:12:46.620 meanwhile independents think that both the trump administration when it was in power and the news

00:12:52.700 media are untruthful um i wonder if this is this might have been an older survey i'm wondering if

00:12:59.740 i saw the date wrong on this somebody tweeted this today but it's probably an older survey during the

00:13:04.220 administration now that i think about it i i hate it when somebody tweets at me an old article

00:13:11.500 because i have a bad habit of forgetting to look at the date when i retweet them i might have done that

00:13:17.100 here but i doubt the numbers have changed much since then president biden signed an executive order

00:13:24.060 reversing trump's uh trump tried to ban tick tock and wechat because they're chinese apps and biden is

00:13:33.180 trying to be more of a thoughtful thoughtful careful systems guy i like i like the systems part but

00:13:43.180 they're trying to come up with some criteria for any apps so sort of a a broad criteria so that it's not

00:13:51.260 just about tick tock and wechat but it's just about any app i guess maybe any chinese app and some you know

00:13:58.380 objective way to say whether it should be banned or not i would like to add to that conversation by saying

00:14:04.940 i would like to give you a criteria for whether to ban these apps or not and it goes like this

00:14:11.020 does china have any control of your data does any of your data go through chinese assets that's it

00:14:20.700 that's that's the whole story if any of your data goes through chinese-owned infrastructure it's it's

00:14:29.580 vulnerable is there really any argument about that do you think do you think because it's uh encrypted

00:14:37.020 they can't get at it i don't know if it's their app i would think that they could encrypt it and

00:14:44.380 unencrypt it they own the encryption so if you send encrypted data across a chinese internet when china

00:14:54.460 owns the encrypting asset and also therefore logically they own the unencrypting access asset on the other

00:15:02.540 end you don't think that they can unencrypt that in the middle you think it has to get all the way

00:15:08.220 to the end and that's the only place you can unencrypt it if you have the technology to unencrypt it

00:15:13.980 anywhere if you get the signal you can unencrypt it so yeah maybe there's a back door or whatever

00:15:21.740 i got a feeling this whole tick tock wechat thing being uh reversed makes me wonder if the

00:15:29.180 biden administration is competent in terms of technology now you have to assume that they got

00:15:36.460 plenty of experts right but it does this reflect what the experts would have recommended because

00:15:42.540 it's sort of this space that's half technical and half political right so it's a little bit of both

00:15:48.620 but this doesn't look like a technical recommendation because i think the technical recommendation would be

00:15:54.220 dead simple does it go through any chinese assets yes or no i mean i don't i just don't know how this

00:16:00.940 can be a big question what am i missing are they going to come up with some kind of argument that says

00:16:08.220 oh yeah the tic tac tick tock and wechat traffic it does go through all these chinese assets but it's so

00:16:16.140 well encrypted then nothing would happen are we going to believe that right and is that the only uh

00:16:23.900 issue let me let me tell you how they have completely ignored the big issue are you ready

00:16:32.220 it's not about data privacy data privacy is a big deal and we should certainly hope that china is not 1.00

00:16:39.500 stealing all our traffic but there's a much much bigger deal like much maybe 10 times as big just to

00:16:49.820 put a size on it maybe a hundred times as big i don't think that would be out of the question a hundred

00:16:55.660 times bigger problem than the data privacy is influence if they can turn a knob and turn some tic

00:17:04.460 tic tac meme from a you know thing that nobody would notice into the major thing trending on tic

00:17:11.740 then that jumps over to snapchat and jumps over to instagram jumps over to facebook they can control what

00:17:18.460 we think through apps mostly tic tac wechat would stay and you know stay in the chinese language mostly

00:17:28.140 i believe but tic tac is how china can actually control 0.90

00:17:34.700 opinion in this country why do we let china control american opinions through this influence machine 0.99

00:17:43.420 so i didn't see the biden administration even mention it like it's even an issue but in terms of sizing and

00:17:50.220 risk it's probably ten to a hundred times the danger of just losing some you know data privacy

00:17:57.980 i mean data privacy is real important but nowhere nearly as important as the influence it's not even in

00:18:04.540 the same same universe well we've got some new uh interesting stuff on both hydroxychloroquine and

00:18:13.500 ivermectin which i hasten to note are not approved uh medications in this country um at least not for

00:18:23.420 the covet but they're approved for other stuff now hydroxychloroquine got a new observational study

00:18:29.340 published by medrics whatever that is and it found that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine

00:18:38.380 along with zinc could increase the coronavirus survival rate by as much as 200 percent if

00:18:44.300 distributed at higher doses to ventilated patients who are severely ill now what do you make of that

00:18:51.900 well if you look on the internet you see people dancing in the streets and saying i told you so

00:18:56.060 i told you so i told you told you but uh do you think that they should really

00:19:04.140 be so happy about this well first of all it's number one an observational study

00:19:10.940 how do you rate the credibility of an observational study which basically is looking backwards versus

00:19:18.380 a controlled study where you're you're designing a study in advance and then you do the then you get

00:19:25.020 the data so which is more credible the one where you're just looking at what happened on its own

00:19:30.860 or where you're setting up a controlled randomized study where you're looking at data in the future

00:19:38.860 not even close right the the observational study will not be in the same same league with a

00:19:45.420 controlled study do you think that the fda approves medicine based on observational studies

00:19:52.780 i don't think so i'll take a fact check on that but i don't believe any drug has ever been

00:19:58.860 approved in the united states i probably shouldn't say any drug but i don't think that's the process

00:20:04.380 i don't believe the process says you can be approved with this kind of a study so how excited should you

00:20:10.540 be about a study that i believe the fda would not even use secondly what do you make of the fact that it

00:20:19.100 was published in medrics i think that's a preprint place isn't it i don't think that means it's been peer

00:20:29.260 reviewed so this would be close to the the lower quality of study right so does this tell you something

00:20:39.100 you didn't know not really because we had stuff like this before so i would say this is more of the same

00:20:46.780 which is not saying that that this drug works or doesn't work i'm not telling you either one i'm

00:20:52.460 just saying that it's just more low quality uh data that you need to be pretty skeptical about you should

00:21:01.260 be pretty skeptical about it doesn't mean it's wrong it's just it's just not that credible

00:21:06.940 but what about ivermectin well um if you're following the the brett weinstein um he's making

00:21:19.100 an effort to sort of raise the the issues that the public can see that uh although the studies on

00:21:26.460 ivermectin are not the gold standard type that is nailing it down with some near absolutes but there are

00:21:35.580 lots of studies and if you did a meta-analysis of them most of them but not all of them suggest

00:21:41.900 that it works now so keep in mind there are studies that show it doesn't work did you know that

00:21:49.740 so they don't all show that it works but mostly they do but you know a majority

00:21:54.220 solid majority say it worked now all the studies have a pretty wide degree of uncertainty

00:21:59.660 so wide that it could go from it works to it doesn't work that's pretty it's a pretty big wide

00:22:07.420 uncertainty and a number of them and of course the idea of using a meta-analysis has been criticized

00:22:16.300 and let me give you some a specific idea of why a meta-analysis which is basically taking all the

00:22:23.580 all the lower quality studies and looking them looking at them as if they were one big study

00:22:29.260 and the idea is that any errors in one study would be sort of averaged out and canceled by the other

00:22:36.620 studies so as long as they had different errors they might sort of cancel each other out but let me give

00:22:44.060 you an idea of what kind of problems that runs into number one merck who actually makes ivermectin

00:22:52.060 who you would normally expect would be very pro their own drug right but this is what merck says

00:23:01.100 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

00:23:11.020 it yet so they say about their own drug no scientific basis for it as a therapeutic against covid

00:23:18.620 uh from what they call preclinical studies so they say there's no scientific basis from preclinical

00:23:27.180 studies uh i guess that means the observational stuff so the people who are looking at those same

00:23:35.180 studies say oh it totally works and merck the company that makes the drug is looking at the same

00:23:42.620 studies at least the ones that were that were there up to february i think there have been some more

00:23:47.500 after that but at that point they're saying now i'm looking at those and it doesn't work

00:23:53.100 they also say there's no meaningful evidence for clinical efficacy which is really just saying the

00:23:59.020 same thing and then number three uh concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies

00:24:04.540 okay but you'd also think that probably they have a pretty good sense of the safety of their own

00:24:13.100 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

00:24:36.780 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

00:25:15.420 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

00:25:29.900 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

00:25:54.940 been contemplated for quite a while probably before we had a lot of information about ivermectin and uh

00:26:02.300 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

00:27:02.380 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

00:31:15.500 it's pretty big

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

00:33:05.980 somebody says are you serious about what

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 0.96

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 0.97

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 0.99

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 0.99

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

00:48:03.660 obvious

00:48:06.860 all right

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

00:49:17.820 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 10, 2021

Episode 1402 Scott Adams： Rainbows and Warm Summer Nights Are My Decoy Topics Today

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