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

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. 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.66

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 0.99

00:08:53.880 crap recently. So you got that recency stuff. Detroit's kind of an old story. So it doesn't 0.96

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 0.99

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 0.82

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.70

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 1.00

00:21:48.000 teacher's union and economic opportunity problem played out. White racist violence is mostly a 0.99

00:21:56.080 mental health problem played out. That's my frame. That instead of saying, hey, black people shoot a 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:22:51.860 the same. It just wouldn't look the same, right? So, if we treat black violence as its root cause, 0.97

00:22:59.580 the teachers' unions, then you know exactly what to do. Problem, solution. Let's work on this 0.96

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 0.95

00:23:28.520 of how we judge these things, you could have good mental health and be racist, unfortunately. You 0.87

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 0.83

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 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.62

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. 1.00

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 0.99

00:34:00.900 person who agrees with what Andrew Tate apparently has thought since the beginning, that masks were a bad 0.98

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 0.94

00:35:36.300 coward. A coward. And that I was justifying my cowardice with all of my, you know, talking and stuff. 0.99

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. 0.93

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 0.99

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 0.71

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. 1.00

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 0.98

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

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 17, 2021

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

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