Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 17, 2021


Episode 1409 Scott Adams： International Simultaneous Sipping is Coming to Your Device. Be Prepared!


Episode Stats

Length

52 minutes

Words per Minute

145.65291

Word Count

7,574

Sentence Count

538

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 But it was. It was time. No, I wasn't lubing the tubing, but thanks for asking.
00:00:09.860 Yes, it's time for the best part of the day. The part that makes all the other parts of the day look, well, shabby.
00:00:19.320 Shabby, I'd say. And if you'd like to enjoy, to the maximum extent, the simultaneous sip that's coming at you,
00:00:27.840 it's coming at you hard. All you need is a cover of my glasses, a tanker, chalice, and a canteen,
00:00:34.960 a glass of vessel of any kind. Join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes
00:00:39.500 everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and watch it clear up your skin. It happens now.
00:00:46.540 Go. Do you feel that? I think a pimple just went away. It doesn't work all the time,
00:00:56.640 but when it does, wow. So in the news, a Spanish man, according to CNN, a Spanish man has been
00:01:06.000 jailed for 15 years and five months for killing and eating his mother at the apartment they shared
00:01:12.260 in Madrid. When I read that story, I remembered something my mother taught me when I was young,
00:01:19.200 which is, if you can't say something nice about somebody, don't say anything at all. And since
00:01:26.000 I'd like to talk about this, I'd like to say something nice about this man who killed and
00:01:31.260 ate his mother. I mean, it's not much. You have to dig kind of deep to find something nice to say,
00:01:37.160 but I feel like we should be balanced. On one hand, he's a horrible murderer who ate his mother.
00:01:44.360 Well, I think we can all agree that's very bad. But is that everything about him? No. He has some
00:01:51.720 redeeming characteristics, some qualities that I think need to be called out. He was resourceful.
00:01:59.520 I'm seeing this in the comments exactly. I like to say that he doesn't waste food. That's not
00:02:07.460 nothing. So that's that. Ron DeSantis continues to be the most clever politician that I've seen in
00:02:18.440 quite a while. You know, he's been killing it as a governor by doing things that are just wildly
00:02:25.000 popular for Republicans and apparently weren't that hard to do, which is the weird part. There's a list
00:02:32.460 of things that all Republicans want. And then he just took the list. And he's just like checking
00:02:38.820 the boxes. Okay, we'll get rid of, you know, critical race theory in schools. Bang, you know,
00:02:45.620 we'll do this. But everything he's done so far had the quality of being local. He was doing stuff for
00:02:53.680 Florida. And he just came out with one of the most genius things I've seen a politician do in a long
00:03:02.920 time, at least since Trump was thrilling us with his moves, both good and bad. And what he did was he
00:03:11.080 decided to answer the call to help Florida, I'm sorry, to answer the call for Texas and Arizona,
00:03:19.620 who both need some help on their borders because of the influx of people coming over the border.
00:03:27.000 And so Ron DeSantis just went national. He used Florida resources. And I think it's mostly a
00:03:35.140 personnel thing. He's going to let them borrow some personnel. And I don't know how much extra
00:03:42.740 personnel of this type Florida has. But it looks like they haven't cut their police budget. So they
00:03:49.600 they had something to spare. Now, who knows how much it is, right? It's a state. It's not the
00:03:55.600 government. It's not the federal government. So who knows how much he can share with them. But he's
00:04:00.240 making an announcement. He's making news. And he looks like a national leader. And so he did something
00:04:08.900 I don't know, can you think of the last time a governor did something that was clearly a national
00:04:15.340 thing? Because their job doesn't really let them do that. You have to be pretty clever to figure out
00:04:21.380 how to be a national leader when you're just a governor, just a governor. I mean, it's a pretty
00:04:26.720 important state. So I would say whoever is advising him, or maybe these are his own ideas, but in either
00:04:34.740 case, he hired the advisor and decided what advice to take. So you have to give him credit and
00:04:40.400 criticism if things don't work. He's just killing it. I mean, it's actually, it's starting to become
00:04:48.400 actually humorous. Because DeSantis is making leadership look like it's easy. Right? He's making
00:04:59.060 it look easy. And we know it's not. Because if it were easy, everybody'd be doing it, right? But I swear
00:05:05.060 to God, he's making it look easy. And so Starr Helms says he's a brilliant guy on his own. I would say
00:05:11.820 based on just what we're observing, it's pretty darn brilliant, I would have to say. And by the way,
00:05:18.500 I would say this if you were a Democrat. The way he's playing the politics of it, separate from,
00:05:24.360 you know, are these good ideas, etc., it's just brilliant. And I don't think you can overlook that.
00:05:30.500 He's really, he's just killing it. And there's a, he's even doing things on such a regular basis
00:05:36.520 that you can't quite get him out of your head. You know, you wait a few days, boom, DeSantis does
00:05:42.660 something. Wait a few days, boom, DeSantis does something. Who else is doing something?
00:05:49.800 Oh, Learalong says Trump is advising him. Well, I don't know, because Trump is probably competing with
00:05:57.520 them for the primaries, don't you think? So I don't know how much advising he's doing, unless,
00:06:03.480 unless they maybe have talked about DeSantis being vice president. Maybe. I mean, he's young enough
00:06:11.920 that he could make the leap to president after being vice president. So maybe, maybe that's in
00:06:17.000 the offing. But I would think DeSantis would like to jump directly to the top job. I mean, would.
00:06:22.900 So Biden continues to amuse. And he said that he gave Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructures
00:06:34.340 that he doesn't want Russia to hack. Now, let me tell you, when I heard that,
00:06:42.040 I had so many jokes that just rushed into my head that I was paralyzed. I tried to write one down,
00:06:50.760 but there were so many other jokes that were just like burying it. I was like, oh, no, no, no,
00:06:55.960 I got to, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I turned into like this monkey in a room full
00:07:03.520 of bananas. And I'm like, ah, it's an embarrassment of riches. But I did manage to make a joke out of
00:07:11.540 it with Robots Read News, my alternative comic, if you've seen it. And the robot in Robots Read News
00:07:19.440 talks about Biden giving Putin 16 infrastructure targets. And the robot said the experts expect
00:07:28.580 Biden to give Putin a list of cities we don't want nuked as sort of a follow-up. Bad news,
00:07:37.500 Portland didn't make the list. You didn't make the list. Now, here is your humor writing tip for the
00:07:46.420 day. Somebody on Twitter said, hey, I beat you to it. And I said something similar about Detroit.
00:07:54.000 Now, which is funnier? Okay, you ready? So in the comments, and I know you're biased toward me,
00:08:00.840 or you wouldn't be watching this, but try to be unbiased, right? I won't, it won't hurt my feelings.
00:08:05.820 What is funnier? Detroit or Portland? Go.
00:08:16.340 I'm looking at the comments. I'll read them out. So I'm saying Portland, for sure. Portland,
00:08:20.240 Portland, Portland by a mile. Portland, Portland, Portland, San Francisco. Portland, Portland,
00:08:25.200 Portland, Portland, Portland, Portland. All right. So we might all be biased here. No one's more biased
00:08:30.640 than I am on this particular point. But the point is that there are words that are funnier. And it's
00:08:38.980 not just that the word Portland is funnier. At least it sounds funnier to my ear. But because it's
00:08:46.320 more recent and it's silly, and it's a place that should have been a successful city, but turned to
00:08:53.880 crap recently. So you got that recency stuff. Detroit's kind of an old story. So it doesn't
00:09:00.620 have that recency thing to give it a little extra juice. So Portland was the right answer.
00:09:07.540 All right. I'm going to give you a little quiz here. Are you ready? I'm going to read a tweet.
00:09:12.520 And you have to guess which news organization wrote this tweet. Okay. You ready? So I won't tell you
00:09:21.120 the news organization. You have to guess it. Here it is. The tweet said, after five months,
00:09:27.280 focused almost exclusively on pressing domestic concerns, it was evident at nearly every stop
00:09:34.240 during Biden's travels across Europe, that the president was at last in his comfort zone
00:09:39.340 on his first international trip. What network? You all got it right. CNN, CNN, CNN, CNN, CNN. Now,
00:09:50.220 maybe some of you saw it on Twitter, but it was sort of easy to guess, wasn't it? Now, if you can guess
00:09:57.240 which network wrote the tweet with just the context of the tweet, there's something wrong with our news.
00:10:05.500 Because if it weren't news, you wouldn't be able to tell. All right? It's the fact that it's
00:10:12.160 propaganda. If it were news, it would sound like Biden took his first overseas trip and talked to
00:10:20.960 Putin. That's news. But whatever this is, it's not even trying to be news. So CNN has become a parody
00:10:30.580 of itself, really. And it just continues getting funnier.
00:10:37.640 So as you know, Biden did not cover America in glory at the G7, and especially with his
00:10:45.080 conversations with Putin, not much happened there. But I have to ask you this question,
00:10:52.880 because I saw a meme that was very funny, showing Putin being large and Biden being old and in a
00:11:00.260 chair, basically picked from the meme that showed, remember the Carters, Jimmy Carter and his wife,
00:11:09.560 and they looked tiny in a picture, and somebody else looked big. Who was in the picture? I forget.
00:11:13.840 It doesn't matter. But they used that meme, and it was, you know, Putin was big, and then Biden was a
00:11:19.040 little guy in the chair. And I saw that, and I thought to myself, that's too far. Isn't it? It was
00:11:27.500 very funny. You know, I don't begrudge anybody from doing a meme. But just from my personal taste,
00:11:34.060 it feels too far. Oh, yes, right. It was Biden with the Carters. Thank you. And here's why it feels too
00:11:43.880 far, because that's the power of the visual image. Have I criticized Biden when he was meeting with
00:11:52.100 international leaders? Yes, I have. Do I feel comfortable with that? Well, you know, should you
00:11:59.420 ever criticize your president when your president is doing a foreign trip? It's a little bit on the
00:12:07.200 edge, wouldn't you say? You know, and I'm kind of in that weird gray area. I'm not CNN, but I'm also
00:12:15.040 not a, you know, just an individual, because I do this. So I have a platform, and so I've got, you know,
00:12:21.580 a little higher standard for good behavior, right, that I impose on myself, because I think it's just
00:12:27.300 reasonable. And I ask you this, at what point is mocking your own leader in the context of
00:12:35.500 something like a Cold War? Not exactly, but you know what I mean. And what, at what point do you go
00:12:41.720 too far? And I guess my, you know, my limit was the visual, the meme, because the meme didn't have
00:12:50.720 a reason, right? When I'm criticizing Biden, I say, this is what he did, you know, and it's pretty
00:12:58.040 obvious what I'm criticizing. I'm criticizing a specific behavior, for example, or something about,
00:13:04.140 you know, he said wrong, something like that. But a meme doesn't have any of that. A meme is just
00:13:09.660 demeaning. And if you're demeaning your own president and promoting Putin,
00:13:16.700 and you're using a visual element, which is, you know, just more sticky than anything that's
00:13:23.040 conceptual, it feels too far. So I saw it, and I laughed, and I appreciated it, but I couldn't
00:13:29.980 retweet it. And I don't think I would necessarily try to impose that standard on anybody else,
00:13:37.160 but you have to ask yourself that question. You know, we do have a president who, frankly,
00:13:42.280 everybody is aware that he's at a certain age, and we all expect some hiccups because of his age.
00:13:49.820 It would be naive to think there wouldn't be any. Even Democrats have to expect that.
00:13:55.120 So it's fair to call that out. It matters. But just think about it. Think about when you've
00:14:03.220 gone too far on that. Ken says, dementia. Say it, Scott. Well, I can't give him a medical diagnosis,
00:14:13.440 but if I did, I might think there's a little of that going on. So did you see the news clip of
00:14:20.540 Biden angrily ripping into CNN's Caitlin Collins? Because she asked him a question
00:14:26.880 and said, why was he confident that he could get Putin to do whatever it is that he wanted him to
00:14:34.420 do? And Biden gets all angry, and he says, basically, he accused her of putting words in his mouth
00:14:42.980 because he had never used the word confident, which he was quite strident in pointing out. I never used
00:14:49.740 that word. Look what you're doing. Blah, blah, blah. And it reminded me of something. Maybe you can
00:14:57.240 help me because it's reminding me of something. And what is it like when CNN makes up something
00:15:08.040 and assigns it to you as if you said it? What's that called? It starts with an F, right? Like a F.
00:15:18.840 Fake news. Fake news. Fake news. Yeah. So Biden is actually accusing CNN of fake news.
00:15:28.220 fake news. And I feel as if Biden's this close to turning orange and demanding a border wall.
00:15:40.040 Just saying. Just wait a few more days, and the transition of Biden into Trump may be complete.
00:15:47.920 I've given him another 90 days for the full transition.
00:15:50.960 You all remember Hawk Newsom, famously of New York City Black Lives Matter. And I blocked him a while
00:16:02.240 ago. And he tweeted when he saw that the Biden administration has said that white supremacy is
00:16:10.260 the biggest domestic hoax. Hawk tweeted at me, and he said in a tweet, or he tweeted at the world,
00:16:17.920 but included me. He said, when I said this two years ago, Scott Adams blocked me. I demand an
00:16:23.780 apology. In other words, he believes that I said that white supremacy was not the big problem and
00:16:33.260 that that's why I blocked him. But I did not block him for that reason. The question of whether white
00:16:39.260 supremacy is the big problem is worthy of discussion and people can disagree. But that's not why I blocked
00:16:44.820 him. I blocked him for being racist and for saying that white people were the problem. Not white
00:16:50.880 supremacists. Did he think I was supporting white supremacists? No, I blocked him because he said
00:16:58.160 white people were bad. Not white supremacists. White people. Now, I don't think I remember it wrong. I
00:17:04.760 believe he said something right on point with what I just described. He might see it differently. So,
00:17:11.980 you know, be aware that there's some subjectivity in this account. You're hearing my version of it.
00:17:18.560 So, to be fair, you should hear his version of it, too. But here's the thing about his data.
00:17:28.360 One way to look at the future of terrorism is that there's a lot of rumbling and, you know, it looks
00:17:40.900 like the white supremacists are making a lot of noise. And so, I guess the government has decided
00:17:47.140 that based on, you know, recent tragedies, plus the noise that they're making, if you put those two
00:17:53.700 together and apply a little law enforcement logic, that it tells you that white supremacists
00:18:00.320 and that kind of thinking is the main driver of future domestic terrorism. Okay. You know,
00:18:09.360 when experts tell you something like that, it doesn't mean they're wrong, but it also doesn't
00:18:16.480 mean they're right. Let me ask you this. What have they been right about before when predicting the future?
00:18:24.520 Now, it doesn't count that you might say, well, defunding the police caused a rise in crime
00:18:32.240 because everybody saw that one, right? You didn't need an expert for that. But if your experts
00:18:38.620 predict a specific thing will be the big problem in the future, how often are they right?
00:18:44.840 How many times have they gotten it right? Did they see 9-11 coming? Right? So, you're talking
00:18:53.880 about a group of people who have no ability to predict. Certainly not any better than you do,
00:18:59.840 which would basically be guessing. So, the first thing about the data is it's coming from a group
00:19:05.540 of people who don't have any track record of being good at predicting things that sort of come out of
00:19:11.600 nowhere, right? And if they're so deeply embedded into the, I guess, the militias and various white supremacist
00:19:19.780 groups, because you know they've penetrated all of them, right? At least electronically. So,
00:19:25.980 they either have human assets or they have complete digital control of their little white supremacist
00:19:34.900 world. How much trouble can they cause? It's probably the most deeply penetrated terrorist group of all
00:19:46.460 time. I'll bet there isn't one substantial group of white supremacist or anybody who has that kind of
00:19:54.860 ideology. I'll bet there's not one of them that doesn't have an FBI asset and digital, complete
00:20:01.960 digital penetration. So, I would think, if I were to guess, I would say the FBI is going to do a hell
00:20:09.540 of a good job of tamping down things there, because they're just all up in their underpants. So, it just
00:20:14.780 feels like stopping Al-Qaeda is hard. It's hard to get an FBI informant in Al-Qaeda, but all over the place
00:20:24.680 domestically, because you can fit in and you can get their digital signals and everything else. So, that's the
00:20:30.880 first point. Here's the second point. We think that data is objective, right? Here's the data. Well, now you have
00:20:40.400 the facts. Data equals facts. But I feel like in 2021, you should be on to that. You should realize
00:20:49.300 that the way things are framed is what matters. And because the data you collect is the data that will
00:20:56.500 populate the frame you've chosen. So, if you choose the wrong frame, you can populate it with accurate
00:21:02.780 data, but it won't help you, because you got the wrong way of looking at the world. Here's another way of
00:21:08.020 looking at this white supremacist problem. And I tweeted back to Hawk about this. By the way,
00:21:16.740 I like Hawk. As a human being, because I interacted with him a number of times, as a human being,
00:21:23.620 he's delightful. I could hang out with him. He's a fun guy. He's very substantial. I think he's very
00:21:31.160 serious about making the world better, etc. But we do disagree on some stuff.
00:21:39.340 So, I tweeted back at him, and I said, but about your data. I said, black violence is mostly a
00:21:48.000 teacher's union and economic opportunity problem played out. White racist violence is mostly a
00:21:56.080 mental health problem played out. That's my frame. That instead of saying, hey, black people shoot a
00:22:04.880 lot of black people, or black people shoot a lot of white people. How does that help you? So? And then
00:22:13.680 what? You hire the extra special black police to stop the black crime? What did you get from that? It's
00:22:22.980 a frame that doesn't help. So, if you put good data into a bad frame, what the hell are you going to do with it?
00:22:29.500 Well, no policy is going to come out of that. That's useful. But suppose you said, black violence is
00:22:37.520 driven by a certain economic, you know, situation. And that economic situation is primarily perpetuated
00:22:44.660 by bad schools. Because if every black kid had a chance for a quality education, nothing would look
00:22:51.860 the same. It just wouldn't look the same, right? So, if we treat black violence as its root cause,
00:22:59.580 the teachers' unions, then you know exactly what to do. Problem, solution. Let's work on this
00:23:06.920 teachers' union blockade of competition in schools, because that's why they're so bad. There's no
00:23:12.320 competition. Suppose you took white supremacy, and say to yourself, instead of a racism problem,
00:23:20.800 it's a mental health problem. Because it is, right? You know, you could be, at least in terms
00:23:28.520 of how we judge these things, you could have good mental health and be racist, unfortunately. You
00:23:35.080 know, it's so common that you'd have to say it's in the norm. But by the time you pick up a weapon and
00:23:41.060 decide to kill a bunch of people over it, that's not racism. Not really. That's mental health that just
00:23:49.200 has racism as a trigger. And how would you treat things if you said it's a mental health problem?
00:23:55.920 Well, maybe you would put more assets into mental health. Maybe you'd find the people who are
00:24:01.420 loners who have no friends. Maybe you'd make sure that nobody spends too much time alone.
00:24:07.740 Do you think that many of the people who became mass shooters, do you think they spent a lot of time
00:24:13.080 around people, friends? Let's say friends. They might have a few. Might have had a family member
00:24:18.640 or two. But I don't feel like they had a lot of friends contact, right? Now, I'm not sure that's
00:24:24.500 the solution. But what I'm saying is, if you define it as a mental health problem, you still have to do
00:24:29.780 all the FBI law enforcement stuff, of course. But you'd go at it differently. That's all I'm saying.
00:24:35.080 So Hawke's framing that there's something like a white people problem with violence is no more useful
00:24:43.340 than saying there's a black citizen violence problem. They might both be true, right? Does it
00:24:53.640 matter? Because it doesn't help you. It just makes things worse. Pick a frame that's useful,
00:24:59.220 and then the data might help you. Rasmussen has a poll on critical race theory, asking people if
00:25:08.440 they thought race relations would be better or worse if critical race theory is taught in schools.
00:25:15.420 How do you think that came out? Well, of course, it lined up, as you might expect, by political party.
00:25:22.620 But the sum of it is that 24% said it would make things better. That's right. Only 24% of likely voters,
00:25:36.580 including all parties, and including independents, only 24% of them think it would make things better.
00:25:44.680 43% say it would make things worse, and 17% it wouldn't make much difference, which also tells
00:25:54.380 you not to do it, right? Because you don't want to put time and resources into something that doesn't
00:25:58.500 make a difference. So if you add together the ones who say it's worse and the ones who say it's not
00:26:03.740 much difference, and presumably they would all want it not to happen, you get 60% saying don't do it.
00:26:12.720 Why are we doing things where 60% of the public, including all the parties, 60% of the public
00:26:22.420 say it's the worst thing ever? Or they don't say it's the worst thing ever. But 60% of the public
00:26:29.880 say don't do it, basically. In effect, they say that. Now, when I look at a poll like this, I don't care
00:26:37.720 too much about what Republicans said versus what Democrats said, because they're so predictably,
00:26:43.260 you know, on their sides, that the only people who matter in terms of finding out where things are
00:26:48.460 going or how things might lean are the independents, right? The people who are not aligned with either
00:26:53.400 party, or the moderates. Let's say the moderates that are between the extremes. And the moderates say
00:27:01.100 only 20% of them think it would be better for race relations. 33% say worse, and 27% say no
00:27:09.460 difference. So you get exactly the same. 60% of the moderates say it's either worse or it doesn't
00:27:18.220 help. Which is also don't do it. I don't know if I've seen, can you think of an example where
00:27:27.640 something was this unpopular, and also pretty well understood? You know, I guess you could argue that
00:27:34.560 the public doesn't know exactly what critical race theory is all about. And I'm in that category as
00:27:39.700 well. I mean, I haven't looked at the details of the syllabus or anything. But I think we know the
00:27:44.220 basic idea, right? That it's framing things as a race and white people are, you know, the enemy in
00:27:53.460 this framing. I think we know that. So when you have an issue that people sort of understand, as
00:28:00.780 opposed to like trade deals, we don't understand that stuff, right? The economy, we don't really
00:28:07.180 understand that stuff. How does debt work? I'm not so sure when it's a country, because it's not like
00:28:12.360 our personal debt. So there are a lot of political things where the public doesn't even understand
00:28:18.940 the concept of what's going on. So their opinions are just meaningless, you know, political jibber
00:28:25.400 jabber. But what happens when people do understand the topic? And 60% of them are against it.
00:28:32.780 Rustic says, Scott is playing dumb on critical race theory. No, I am dumb. I'm not being modest.
00:28:44.000 I have not looked into the details. But I understand the big point, right? That it frames things on
00:28:50.800 racial grounds. And that's all you need to know about it. I don't need to dig deeper to know this is a
00:28:57.960 toxic idea. So anyway, I can't think if you can think of a any example where something this unpopular
00:29:09.420 and this well understood. Somebody says the border. You might have Yeah, that might be right. Is it about
00:29:19.600 the same? Yeah, about the same number of people want the border to be more controlled, right?
00:29:24.880 Voter ID. It's a good example. You know what I'd love to see? Maybe Rasmussen can pull this together.
00:29:33.880 I'd love to see the list of things where the government's policy opposes the will of 60% or more
00:29:43.840 of the public. Or maybe let's say 50%. How often does that happen? Because I'm okay with it when the
00:29:52.500 government is overriding stupidity. Oh, marijuana might be another example. You're right.
00:29:59.440 Those are good examples. Prohibition is, you know, ancient history.
00:30:07.500 All right. Here's my take on masks. I understand there's some people who turn off this,
00:30:18.080 this live stream. The moment I mentioned the pandemic. I'm not going to change that because
00:30:25.240 it's sort of the biggest thing happening and it has all kinds of meaty stories. So I saw the feedback,
00:30:33.760 but no, that's not going to change. Here's my take. Yeah. As you know, I thought masks were
00:30:40.340 certainly a good risk reward thing to try out early in the pandemic. Didn't mean masks should be worn
00:30:48.700 when you're jogging. I just thought there are places that make sense, places that doesn't make
00:30:53.680 sense, et cetera. And we're at the end of the pandemic. People are vaccinated and this would be
00:31:00.620 the time to get rid of the masks, at least in America. And so I've suggested that July 4th will be
00:31:07.980 the last time I wear a mask. And if somebody, no, I realize that the government has, the California
00:31:16.620 governor has said that, you know, masks are not required, but still businesses require them in
00:31:22.240 some cases. And so my take is that I'm not going to frequent any business that requires a mask
00:31:27.140 after July 4th. So I think it's good to just pick a date because then that just adds a little clarity
00:31:33.720 to a point. That's the main reason to do it. And, you know, it's symbolic because it's Independence
00:31:39.440 Day. Now, I get it. Lots of you have already thrown away your masks. Lots of you are already on
00:31:45.340 that side. And depending on the state you're in, that certainly makes sense that you're already ahead
00:31:50.980 of everybody. But in California, we're sort of laggers in the opening up. And I give my government
00:32:01.440 actually pretty much leeway, like to be wrong, because it's a lot of guessing involved. And
00:32:08.220 some of it's going to be wrong. There are going to be mistakes. People are going to die. It's like
00:32:12.440 any war, right? You could have the best general in the world, but people are going to die and they're
00:32:17.620 going to make mistakes. So I'm kind of, I'm an easy grader on the governments. And I told you I would
00:32:23.720 be at the beginning of the pandemic. I told you many times over a year ago that after we were done
00:32:30.520 with this, I was going to be grading our government, all the governments, easily because they were
00:32:35.840 guessing. And they were doing the best they could. Everybody had experts advising them. Mistakes were
00:32:41.100 made. They're not bad people necessarily. Governor Cuomo may be a special case because of the nursing
00:32:48.260 homes. But even that probably had some, you know, mitigating circumstances if you dug into it.
00:32:53.920 I doubt there was anybody in New York who was quite aware of what they were doing. Like there had to be
00:33:00.880 something there about the bureaucracy or something. So there was a horrible mistake, but I don't think
00:33:06.280 we know exactly the nature of the mistake. Like it wasn't just a communication or bureaucracy.
00:33:11.600 Could have been a lot of things. Anyway. And so July 4th, I think is generous because as, as you're already
00:33:20.780 thinking, well, why are you waiting so long? Right. And I am giving them a nice, a nice, generous
00:33:28.340 kind of cushion. But after July 4th, I'm done. I'm done. So you may have noticed
00:33:40.020 that when I tweeted that, a cult leader named Andrew Tate came after me on Twitter for changing my
00:33:52.020 mask view. And in his view, I went from a dumb, dumb guy who thought masks would help to an enlightened
00:34:00.900 person who agrees with what Andrew Tate apparently has thought since the beginning, that masks were a bad
00:34:08.400 idea. And of course, nothing like that happened. Right. So he was just wrong. And we're at that point
00:34:17.740 in the pandemic where people will be misinterpreting or misremembering what opinions I have expressed
00:34:26.360 and then viciously attacking me for their imaginary opinion of what I said that I'd never said.
00:34:32.220 Now, let me ask you this. Did I ever change my opinion? Because I feel like my opinion was always
00:34:39.800 masks are a good idea and in situations where it's obvious they're a good idea. And it's not a good
00:34:47.220 idea for, say, taking a walk in the woods by yourself. Have I ever been inconsistent about that?
00:34:55.700 I've always said there's a place that they make sense. And then the whole bunch of places where they
00:35:00.780 probably don't. And I'm saying now that conditions have changed and we're achieving a situation where
00:35:07.820 it doesn't make sense. Completely consistent. You just look at the risk-reward as you move
00:35:13.440 and adjust accordingly based on facts and changes and things. But according to this cult leader who
00:35:21.260 has a manly man cult that involves smoking cigars and bragging and saying manly things,
00:35:27.800 and he and his supporters, I think there are some of them here, came at me today saying that I was a
00:35:36.300 coward. A coward. And that I was justifying my cowardice with all of my, you know, talking and stuff.
00:35:45.980 To which I say, what the hell's wrong with you? Since when is doing a risk management assessment
00:35:55.060 and acting according to risk management, you know, data, as best you can surmise when, you know,
00:36:02.300 we're not all right about the risks. But when did that become cowardice? When did it become
00:36:08.220 really manly to do things that could get you killed with no particular benefit? When did it become more
00:36:17.540 manly to ignore a risk which could be completely eliminated without, you know, killing you?
00:36:29.460 So anyway, the cult came after me. And a lot of, I think this is another example. And see how many
00:36:39.020 times you see this. When somebody says that they were in favor of masks or that masks work,
00:36:46.240 what do the critics say? Do they say, sometimes they say, oh, I saw some studies that say they
00:36:54.420 don't work. But why is it that every major medical group in every industrial country hasn't seen what
00:37:02.820 you've seen? Because all the people who really know this field and are in it and the experts everywhere,
00:37:09.960 the whole world, the whole world, every country. So the politics is different everywhere. But all of
00:37:15.420 them said masks are a good idea. Right? So, or at least that they would have an effect. Now, in the case,
00:37:25.500 let's say, Sweden, they may have thought, well, it might make a difference, but not enough for us,
00:37:30.700 given all things considered, which is a different decision. But I think that people conflate it with
00:37:37.980 the lockdowns. Now, help me with my own memory, will you? Tell me in the comments what you believe
00:37:47.740 my opinion has been since the beginning about the value of lockdowns. Tell me what you thought,
00:37:54.760 just from your memory of what I said. What do you think? What do you think I said about lockdowns?
00:38:00.980 Because I think we're going to see. I said they were necessary for time. Probably don't work. I'm
00:38:13.560 just reading your comments. You honored it. Overreaction flattens the curve. Necessary at first.
00:38:20.040 Don't work. Not good. Good in the beginning. Yeah, I think most of you are pretty close,
00:38:25.400 right? So you've been paying attention. Which is, in the fog of war, when it was originally going to
00:38:32.240 be something like a few weeks, I thought, well, maybe, right? How could social distancing not work?
00:38:40.780 I mean, it seems like it was worth a shot. But I think we fairly quickly reached a point
00:38:46.280 where it wasn't flattening the curve, but it was killing us, it was flattening our economy.
00:38:52.300 And then that was different. And of course, I was never against businesses operating outdoors or
00:39:00.080 having some kind of mitigation, one person in the store at a time, whatever, but not lockdowns.
00:39:06.720 So I think when people criticize me about masks and say masks don't work, they're usually saying
00:39:12.680 lockdowns didn't work, but they're conflating it with masks. That feels like what happens every
00:39:18.640 time I get into this conversation. So look for that. So in censorship news, you've heard this
00:39:28.420 story. You know, Brett Weinstein was talking to a doctor who was saying some positive things about
00:39:34.840 ivermectin, which has caused Brett Weinstein's Dark Horse podcast to get two strikes so far and one more
00:39:43.840 strike and he's off the platform and there goes his family income. So the stakes are high, right?
00:39:52.100 And when I saw that, I thought to myself, what kind of terms of service did he violate?
00:40:00.200 I mean, I'm just thinking of it sort of as a logical person without knowing the details of
00:40:05.180 the terms of service. I thought, well, what rule do you violate by just talking to a medical expert
00:40:11.660 who has an opinion that's very different from the mainstream? Isn't that almost the purpose of
00:40:18.840 communication? The purpose of communication is not just to give the standard view. The purpose of
00:40:26.300 communication is to give the non-standard view and make it compete with the standard view, right?
00:40:32.260 That's all point. Is there anything that social media should be doing that's more important than what
00:40:38.680 I just said? Show us the standard view. Now show us the competition and let them fight it out.
00:40:45.700 Now, when the new one loses, let's see another one. Fight it out. Okay, the standard keeps winning.
00:40:51.800 Show us another one. All right, fight it out. Ooh, whoa. This time, the new one's a little bit stronger.
00:40:58.600 Didn't see that coming, right? Now the standard one maybe drops away. That's how all progress is made.
00:41:03.960 If you get rid of the non-standard opinion, civilization just stops. Nothing happens.
00:41:13.400 It's the problematic conversation that's the only thing that can drive you forward,
00:41:20.580 the non-standard stuff. So I asked Andres Backhouse. We had an exchange privately on Twitter,
00:41:30.420 and I was just questioning what terms of service could possibly be broad enough to cover this
00:41:38.220 description of a doctor promoting a therapy that is not mainstream. Like what? How could that be?
00:41:47.460 I mean, these are serious people, right? Brett Weinstein, you know, he didn't just like walk out of the
00:41:52.540 pumpkin patch, right? He's got some serious academic credentials, and he was talking to somebody who was an
00:41:58.960 expert in the field. You know, it's not like crazy people, right? So Andres sends me the terms of
00:42:08.400 service, you know, just a screenshot of the terms of service, and I swear to God, I did not know this.
00:42:17.040 It specifically blocks ivermectin conversation. Specifically. I thought it was going to be
00:42:24.420 something general. Like, don't say things that will get people hurt, or, you know, don't promote a cure
00:42:31.500 that'll kill somebody. Okay. But it's actually named by name. You know, don't promote ivermectin,
00:42:40.600 or you'll be kicked off the platform. So here's my thought experiment. Suppose someday, and it's my
00:42:50.300 understanding, Andres said this, that there are at least two high quality studies in the pipeline for
00:42:59.340 ivermectin. What would happen, and this is just a hypothetical, what would happen if they showed it
00:43:07.040 worked? You couldn't say that on YouTube, because the World Health Organization presumably would not
00:43:17.300 immediately change things. They might look at it, and they might change things eventually.
00:43:21.460 But between the time that a study came out, and the time that, you know, the organizations that
00:43:27.380 control our medical knowledge decided to bless it, would you get kicked off the platform? Because
00:43:34.820 that's what the terms of service say. They say, even if this, you know, high quality study comes out,
00:43:40.660 until the World Health Organization says, yes, you're out of luck. You're off the platform. So
00:43:48.440 this is pretty chilling. You know, I felt a whole different level of badness when I saw it was
00:43:57.880 called that one specifically. Yeah, and I see what you're saying. The World Health Organization,
00:44:02.740 presumably in the pocket of China, what would happen if a cheap therapeutic, doesn't matter what it is,
00:44:10.660 turned out to just be a killer therapy, according to a really high quality study? Do you think that
00:44:17.880 the World Health Organization would say, well, there you go? Okay, we favor that now. Or would it depend
00:44:26.680 what China wanted them to do? And China might not want everybody else to think there's a cheap therapy,
00:44:32.920 although they might use it themselves, but they might not want everybody else to use it.
00:44:37.180 So these are some big questions. Will there be a moment when a critical mass of Democrats
00:44:47.240 come out in favor of free speech? Could Jon Stewart help break the dam? Yeah, you also have the Jon
00:44:53.160 Stewart joking about the fact that the Wuhan lab, actually, the name of it is something like the
00:45:00.060 coronavirus study lab. What are the odds that it wasn't from that lab and really came from a bat
00:45:07.860 kissing a turtle, as Jon Stewart quite cleverly said? Well, I don't think he can move the needle that
00:45:15.420 much. But he's definitely a big contributor. And it made me miss him, right? I mean, we could use more
00:45:25.180 Jon Stewart. How does this end? Well, it's a good question. How does it end? You know, the Locals
00:45:38.340 platform that I'm on, and I'm a small investor in it as well, and it's a subscription service, and all
00:45:46.380 of the things that I can't say here, I can say on there. So that's one way it might end. It might end
00:45:55.600 with more subscription services, because when you've got that going, you can just do more.
00:46:02.880 How do you convert someone from their current religion, I'm asked. I've thought about that a lot. I'm not
00:46:11.020 sure it's a good idea, though, unless you're talking about, let's say, extremists who are going to kill you.
00:46:17.100 Here's how I would approach it. Let's say, let's imagine it's ethical. It's not. But if you're just
00:46:24.440 going to talk about what would work, you know, we'll talk about the tool, the ethics of it completely
00:46:29.220 unethical, which is changing somebody's religion just because you can. I would start with a, if you
00:46:35.980 get people to pay attention, a lesson about world religions, so that they can see that there are lots
00:46:42.980 of religions, and they have a commonality to them, yet they're all different, and people believe them
00:46:48.420 just as strongly as, you know, everybody believes them. Because until you see that everybody can
00:46:52.880 believe anything, anybody can believe anything, until you know that, you can't really get over the
00:47:00.540 the fact that maybe yours isn't the real one. So you have to understand that even if your religion
00:47:07.580 is right, how do you explain 75% of the world, or whatever, depending on which religion is yours,
00:47:16.260 how do you explain 75% of the world looking at the same information you are but getting a different
00:47:20.960 answer? It should give you a little bit of humility, all right? But that's not enough to change
00:47:25.820 in his mind. So you'd have to do a lot of work to explain how religions occur, and how people believe
00:47:37.080 them, and how easily people believe things that aren't true. So I think you'd have to start with a
00:47:43.040 whole education about how people believe things that aren't true, and that would probably go a long
00:47:49.100 way. But like I said, I'm pro-religion. I'm not a believer myself, but I'm very pro-religion.
00:47:56.520 And I think it clearly has utility and helps, and people get benefit from it, makes people, you know,
00:48:03.380 have some purpose in their life, gives them sort of a program of what to do. It has all kinds of good
00:48:10.520 stuff. You meet people, it's a social thing, etc. Yes, you can see into my bathroom from here.
00:48:20.440 You believe the simulation? Somebody says, I do.
00:48:28.260 Conversion is a capital offense. Yeah, you don't want to be converting anybody from Islam.
00:48:33.020 That would be kind of a dangerous thing. That's a death sentence, depending where you are, of course.
00:48:38.140 Any developments in housing and the tiny house story? Well, I don't like the way you asked that
00:48:50.020 question, because it assumes that an inexpensive house would be tiny. And I resist that vigorously.
00:48:57.220 I think we have the ability to make very low-cost housing that's as good as any other housing.
00:49:05.880 All right. And so I have to tell you one story about the service here at the hotel. So the service is
00:49:19.180 tremendous. It's like, it's so good that it's actually almost funny. But I think I told you this
00:49:25.380 story how we have a butler assigned just to us. He probably has some other people he works for. But
00:49:34.620 he just seems to appear weirdly. Like, even when we're not calling him, right now they have this
00:49:44.940 cool system where there's an iPhone that they leave in the room, and you just text the butler using their
00:49:50.840 iPhone. And he gets back to you in like, you know, 30 seconds and does pretty much anything you need
00:49:56.500 him to do. And so it's amazing. It's like, it's just the best experience. But he has this weird way
00:50:03.040 of showing up exactly where he needs to be. So I went to the lobby yesterday, and I was just, I was
00:50:10.140 there. So instead of asking the butler, which would normally be the single point of contact, I'm standing
00:50:16.360 by the lobby. So I asked a question. And I swear to God, this happened. The woman stands up, and
00:50:24.820 there's a wall that's just sort of a decorative wall. But there was a fake door built into the
00:50:29.920 wall. She opens the fake door, and the butler walked down. What? This was in the lobby. It wasn't
00:50:40.040 like my room, or it wasn't where the butler lives, I don't think. He was behind that false door.
00:50:47.580 Today, I went for a walk and then wanted to grab some food at the little place you get food.
00:50:58.540 What would you call it? A little bar area that they sort of food by the pool. And so, you know,
00:51:05.260 this is like the one time that I'm not going through the butler to order food. And I'm like,
00:51:11.800 oh, I guess I'm talking to other people now. So the server comes over, and I'm like, oh,
00:51:16.540 can I have the menu? I'd like to order some food. She turns around, and the butler walked down to the
00:51:24.660 kitchen. He was there. Now, I randomly picked a place to eat. Just randomly. It's like, oh,
00:51:33.720 this is open. I think I'll go over there. And the butler was there. How? I don't know.
00:51:40.660 But, uh, damn, they have good service here. That was, that was the butler just confirming something
00:51:46.960 for me. Um, yeah, maybe I'm being tracked. Okay, what time is it? Oh, I've got to run. Shoot. Talk to you