Episode 1415 Scott Adams： Learn to Spot Your Own Cognitive Dissonance While Hating me at the Same Time. Fun!
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
148.87958
Summary
Coffee is better than bleach, and that's because it's made by you, the listener. Plus, an anti-white movie that's bad, racist, and makes you want to kick your own ass.
Transcript
00:00:13.860
And if you don't believe it, well, let me prove it to you.
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And all you need is a copper mug, a glass of tank of chalice, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Filled with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine here of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:00:32.480
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and boy, do I feel bad for the people who didn't make it here on time.
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You're going to have to take up your game a little bit more to come in on time.
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So yesterday, after being out of the country for eight days or so, I went to the grocery store.
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I was walking around the grocery store, and I saw somebody without a mask.
00:01:06.760
And I thought, my God, how long will it be before this poor bastard is kicked out of the grocery store?
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And I thought, two people without a mask in a grocery store?
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And then I noticed that basically almost everybody didn't have a mask.
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So I took off my mask because I'm fully vaccinated.
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And apparently this store does not have any rules that would override the state's suggestion that you don't need a mask if you're vaccinated.
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And for the first time, the first time for me, I know most of you have already experienced this.
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But for me, the first time at a grocery store in over a year without a mask, it felt really good.
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Now, I know I'm way behind all of you because not only am I in California, which is behind, but I personally was a week behind even California.
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So you're already there, but I've got to tell you, it felt great.
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I understand there are still a few places that might require one, like a healthcare organization.
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I think if I go to my HMO, I need a mask still.
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So, but I'll give them that, you know, it's, you don't go to the healthcare place that often.
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So, you know, you could see why they would be last to make a change.
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Number one, it turns out there's a new study that says coffee is good for your liver.
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You thought that the simultaneous sip was only about an introduction to this amazing content?
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It is not only connecting you to all the people in the world, probably boosting your oxytocin.
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I don't have a scientific study to prove that, but it just feels like it.
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But also, it's making your liver healthier, if you don't overdo it.
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Three or four cups a day, and your liver will be, well, as good as new.
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And for that, a few cups of coffee might help you, allegedly.
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So there's a new racist movie, probably the racist thing I've seen in my adult life, so bad that it's just a head shaker.
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I mean, I don't know how you can call it anything else.
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With a star who is named Karen, and she plays a Karen.
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And the setup for this movie is that a black family moves in next to a woman named Karen.
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And then this Karen person becomes a monster version of Karen and does everything she can to get the black family to move out
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because she's a big old racist, and she does every, like, legal trick to get them in trouble and accusations and that sort of thing.
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Number one, the marketing for this movie is really brilliant.
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If you could find any movie idea that would more make people want to watch it than this thing, good luck.
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You know, it's not a superhero movie, and those do well.
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But if you're trying to make somebody see a smaller budget movie, oh, my God, this is clever.
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Like, every one of your emotional buttons is like, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh.
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So, I hate this movie, and the people who made it should be deeply condemned.
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I mean, this is really, like, bad for society, bad for people.
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So, and honestly, I can't think of anything that's been more racist than this.
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Because essentially, it's just, if you wanted to summarize the movie, it's white people are awful.
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So, here's a chance for black Americans to improve their brand, which I think everybody
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Because how you're thought about, in whatever group you are, or even as an individual, it
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If people like you and respect you, you'll have a better life.
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So, any chance you get to improve your brand, you should take it.
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Take, for example, you've seen a number of clips of black Americans speaking out against
00:06:38.580
critical race theory at, let's say, meetings of, you know, school boards and stuff.
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Now, what does that do to the brand, if you can call it that, the reputation of black Americans?
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Because when you see black Americans being on both sides of an issue that has some racial
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component, you say to yourself, oh, there's some people who are thinking it through, coming
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to different opinions, but they're not just saying, I'm black, so I'm on this side.
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You know, you have all the nuance and the disagreement.
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So, when you look at that as a non-black person, how do you feel about black Americans?
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And it doesn't matter that there are more people on one side than the other.
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You're just seeing a good, healthy, I think, completely helpful disagreement among adults
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You know, I don't know if it's offensive to talk in terms of brands, but I don't think
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If all that comes out of this is people go to it and talk about it and like it, well,
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Because I'd love to see some black Americans say, look, if this were reversed, it would be
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If all they did is reverse sort of the theme of the movie, no way this gets into the theaters.
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I'd love to see some black Americans say, look, let's, you know, we got plenty of real
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You know, there's a new story, let's see, what was it, Google app.
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Hat tip to David Smith, who pointed this out on Twitter.
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And the app will identify a skin lesion and tell you if it's a problem.
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I assume that means cancerous or non-cancerous.
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And, weirdly, it got approved in Europe, but not by the FDA.
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So, in Europe, they'll be able to use the app, but in the United States, they will not.
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They got different answers from exactly the same data.
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So, was the FDA following science, or is Europe following science?
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Because you'd like to follow science, wouldn't you?
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The biggest con ever perpetrated on the public in the modern day,
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and I'll put the modern in there because, you know,
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but the biggest con is that you can follow the science.
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because then you'd be following the most rational path.
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but you'd always be rational in taking that set of odds, right?
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then both Europe and the FDA would be on the same side.
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But beware that when anybody in the leadership position says follow the science,
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they might have control over what you think is the science.
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So, what they're really saying is do what I'm telling you,
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but they're disguising do what I tell you to do,
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because they're saying, well, it's backed by science.
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When you can have different opinions about what the science is?
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No, it's just an opinion supported by, you know,
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an interpretation of science that just happens to go your way.
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It's not much different than the way religion is used.
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Who gets to define where the religion is going?
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And at the same time, you should follow the science.
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It's both ridiculous and common sense at the same time.
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I don't know if there's anything quite like it.
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Because I'm not going to tell you not to follow the science.
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I'm just telling you, you can't do it reliably.
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And you should probably learn to know the difference.
00:12:02.860
I just told you earlier that coffee is good for your liver.
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because this one study says it's good for your liver?
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But following the science just isn't something people can do.
00:12:41.700
There was a tweet in which there's a claim, some kind of ONS survey.
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I don't think any of this is credible, by the way.
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So, the context which I'm giving this to you is a claim which I do not find credible.
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But, I tweeted it because I'd like you to pour through it and see if you can figure out, you know, how credible you think it is.
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And the claim is this, that a survey showed that 87% of adults in the UK had antibodies to the coronavirus by June 7th from vaccination or infection prior to mid-May.
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So, if you added infections, prior infections plus vaccinations, 87% had antibodies.
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Given vaccination rates, this tweet goes on to say,
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simple math determines that 70 to 80% of total UK population had been infected by mid-May,
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which means that vaccinations and everything else were a waste if that interpretation held up.
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I'm going to look at the comments and I want to see what your reaction is.
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This outcome, this 87% thing, and then even taking it down to how much natural immunity there must have been,
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is so far outside expectation that the odds of this being true are really low.
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Meaning that if you're learning about it in this tweet,
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and nobody in any industrial country had noticed that somehow their entire country,
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because if it's true in the UK, it would obviously be true in some other number of countries that there would be massive amount of immunity.
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I feel like the odds that this wouldn't be a story in every country and just be so obvious that everybody knew it by now,
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This doesn't sound, it doesn't even sound in the universe of things that you should take seriously.
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And it's a little too far on, it's a little too on the nose, right?
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It's what so many of you wanted to believe is exactly true.
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I would rule this out, based on it just being too far out the mainstream, we would have known this way before now.
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And there's another claim in here that infections dropped after January 1st, before there were many vaccinations.
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So if the curve was already plummeting after January, before there were many vaccinations,
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logically, this information suggests that maybe we had way more natural immunity from infections.
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But don't you all know that infections always drop after January?
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Because it's not the holiday season, and the travel patterns change.
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So we all expect it to go down after the holidays.
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So that doesn't mean that there was herd immunity.
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It just means you stopped going on holiday and infecting your aunt.
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So their interpretation here, I think, is ridiculous.
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But I put it on Twitter if somebody wants to argue that it's more credible than I think.
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All right, I'm going to do something that's going to be painful for a lot of you.
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You've heard me make some opinions that you don't like.
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And don't turn this off yet, all right, because this won't be the normal conversation.
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We're going to get into something a little deeper.
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You've heard my opinions on trans athletes, and you said, God, I hate that.
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I'm not sure I told you my exact accurate opinion on this topic.
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I may have been enjoying myself stimulating cognitive dissonance in people because it teaches me how to spot it.
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In other words, if you trigger it, you get to see how people respond, and then you see the pattern.
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You go, oh, these are cognitive dissonance responses, and then these are good ones.
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I'm going to tell you for the first time something close to my real opinion.
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This will be the first time you've heard it, okay?
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And I'm going to couch it in a discussion of which people who responded to my tweet today have a tell for cognitive dissonance,
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and which ones simply have a good argument, okay?
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So let me start with the people who have a good argument because I feel that they will be the ones who are on your side for the most part.
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I'm going to start by agreeing with the things that I know we can agree on.
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And if I get you to agree on a bunch of things, you're going to be a little bit better primed for me to take you someplace that might be a little uncomfortable.
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So here's the first part of my opinion that you'll hear for the first time.
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I don't have a daughter or stepdaughter who's involved.
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I think there are probably a million ways that you can handle it no matter what you do.
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You know, ways to mitigate things, ways to fix it.
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But I do love what you learn about the argument.
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All right, so let me start with the good arguments for why transgender athletes should not be allowed to play on traditional women's teams.
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Now, this part would agree with most of you, I think.
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Before I get to the bad ones, the ones that are cognitive dissonance.
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Here are the non-cognitive dissonance arguments for why transgender athletes should not be allowed to play on traditional women's teams.
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Here's one from Zabi's other mower sold, question mark.
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So Zabi's mower says, maybe think of it another way.
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And he argues to me, he says, you've said you don't like Biden's tax plan because it's changing the rules after they were established.
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I lived my life building a certain kind of life and financial situation under the old set of tax laws.
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And if I run into a wall and suddenly they change, well, that doesn't feel fair because I planned my whole life on a certain basis and then it changed.
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The same may be said for the females that committed and trained for the Olympics, only for the rules to be changed later on.
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Now, do you detect any cognitive dissonance in this response?
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Now, you could agree with it, or you could disagree with it.
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But is there anything in it that signals that there's some cognitive dissonance going on?
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I'm not sure it settles it one way or another, but as a point, I have nothing to say about that.
00:21:10.100
A perfectly valid statement that the rules changed, and people don't like it.
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We all register that, that it feels unfair when rules change.
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The counter is that when the topic is bigotry and discrimination, you still change the rules, right?
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If you had been born in a system in which slavery had been the expectations, and you'd built your life based on owning slaves, and then somebody came along and suddenly changed the system, well, that's so unfair for you because you made your life based on benefiting from slavery.
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The point is, when bigotry is the issue, as is the case with transgender athletes, when bigotry is the issue, you can change the rules the moment you can.
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The moment you can change the rules, go ahead and do it.
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Now, but let me say that while I have a counter to this argument that the rules changed, it's still a good point.
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The way you feel about it is it feels unfair because of this very thing.
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women's and girls' sports was something nice that men did for their daughters, wives, and sisters to allow biological men, this would be his description of a trans athlete, into the sport is to take away that gift.
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Now, you could disagree with it, and you could agree with it, but there's no cognitive dissonance in this.
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The good point is that it was a gift, in a sense, or let's say people thought of it that way.
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And if something is given to you, no matter what it is, and that it's taken away, can that ever feel fair?
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Well, as I've often said, famously, fairness, it was invented so that idiots could participate in debates.
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There's no, you can't grab a handful of fairness.
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In fact, any change to anything causes unfairness to somebody.
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So we don't live in a world in which you can manage to fairness.
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Is it reasonable to say that the men who thought they wanted to build a better world for their daughters and sisters and whatever,
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would it be fair to say that they thought they were giving a gift and women thought they were receiving one?
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But it doesn't feel right to have anything taken away from anybody.
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And a totally legitimate variable to put in there that somebody would feel bad, especially if they trained their whole life.
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My, you know, there are counters for it, but it's a perfectly fair opinion.
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That these are actually pretty good opinions, even if you disagree with them.
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And that they don't signal any kind of cognitive dissonance.
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Cheryl Corey on Twitter says, in a reasonable question, says, if we don't separate sports by sex, then what are the implications for women's sports?
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Now, this would be similar related to the points of something that we liked was in existence, and we don't want to lose it.
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If you have daughters who are playing on a team, and they like it, and you like watching it, why would you want to lose that, or have it diminished in some way according to you?
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Here's how you know if you are experiencing cognitive dissonance.
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The arguments I've given you, so far, do not have that quality.
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There's nothing about them that a trained hypnotist or a psychologist would say, oh, there's something wrong with that.
00:26:09.920
And by the way, here was my tweet that caused people to respond.
00:26:15.880
And I'm not going to argue that this tweet makes sense.
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So, this is my confession, that I'm not trolling per se just to get a random result.
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I'm kind of fascinated at how people process this topic.
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And so, I tweeted something that I knew would get a response.
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This is just a tweet that was intended to get a response and make people think about it differently.
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It was to teach you something and maybe learn something myself.
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I said this morning, it is unfair for trans athletes to compete on women's teams because of the strength difference, primarily.
00:27:10.240
Now, some of you have said, oh, there are some mental differences, etc.
00:27:13.240
But primarily, it's a strength difference, wouldn't you say?
00:27:21.240
So, if we agree on that, here's the second part.
00:27:24.960
It is fair for LeBron James to compete against me for a spot in an NBA team because the only thing that's holding me back is my poor work ethic.
00:27:35.420
But otherwise, LeBron James is a man, and I'm a man, so the fact that he gets on the team sort of denies me a spot on an NBA team, doesn't it?
00:27:57.380
And I'm trying to make the point that we live in a world in which nothing is fair.
00:28:05.940
Is it fair that LeBron can play in the NBA, and I don't have a chance?
00:28:13.900
Is it fair that I was born with, apparently, some kind of wiring that allows me to be a cartoonist?
00:28:20.640
But I'll bet, I mean, just statistically speaking, I'll bet if LeBron tried to become a professional cartoonist, he'd have some trouble.
00:28:30.760
Is it fair that I was born with this talent that gives me a great life?
00:28:42.000
So if the problem is somebody losing a spot, which is the argument you often hear,
00:28:50.960
It would have gone to a woman who had trained all her life for it and then got knocked out of the spot.
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If the problem is that somebody is losing a spot, you have to take that argument further, don't you?
00:29:03.020
And say, every smallish man is losing a spot in the NBA.
00:29:08.860
To say that I'm a man and LeBron James is a man is ridiculous.
00:29:21.740
Most people can't compete with a professional athlete.
00:29:27.400
It's ridiculous to say that men have it fair because we can fairly compete against LeBron James.
00:29:37.200
I can't compete against LeBron James any more than somebody who was born biologically female
00:29:44.240
can compete against a weightlifter who had been identifying male until yesterday.
00:29:51.340
So you've got to be consistent in your argument.
00:29:53.680
Anyway, so that's what would have triggered the cognitive dissonance if it worked.
00:29:58.880
In other words, I set the reader up to trigger cognitive dissonance.
00:30:07.620
And my view, and this is just speculation, is that the real problem that people have with
00:30:15.160
the transgender athletes probably is an uncanny valley problem, which is, if you've heard
00:30:21.680
of the uncanny valley idea, it's the idea that if you built a robot and it didn't look
00:30:27.140
anything like a human, it just looked like a robot, that would be cool.
00:30:31.060
But if you made your robot almost look like a human, but just a little bit different so
00:30:36.980
you could detect the difference, it would be creepy.
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You'd be like, ugh, it's not really human, but it's so close.
00:30:47.360
So that theory is that you have revulsion about things that are almost human, but not
00:30:54.060
And by analogy, I'm not saying that anybody's non-human in this example, so don't take that
00:31:01.180
By analogy, if your worldview is men and women stereotypical, and then you see somebody who
00:31:08.300
doesn't fit the stereotype, your brain is going to say, that's almost like what I'm expecting
00:31:14.280
people to act like, but it's not quite there because I can't resolve the gender.
00:31:21.000
And then it becomes this uncomfortable thing for the viewer.
00:31:23.640
But is that fair to the people who are triggering that in you, or is that a problem in you?
00:31:30.940
I say it's a problem in you, because I would say that if you look at the, let's say, the
00:31:35.800
history of LGBTQ people in this country, simple exposure to more people in that community makes
00:31:45.180
whatever feelings you had about what is right and typical and stereotypical just go away.
00:31:49.620
And that if you live in California for, I don't know, a month, whatever uncomfortable feeling
00:31:56.180
you had about people not fitting your model of exactly sexuality being binary, you just
00:32:07.300
It just feels like it's about the topic, but it's really something that's happening inside
00:32:12.660
It's just your experience of not being able to resolve things the way you want them to
00:32:19.620
So I think that drives a lot of the feelings, but people don't want to admit that they just
00:32:26.440
People want to argue with their data and their logic and their reasons, because that looks
00:32:35.780
Nobody says that, so they don't argue that way.
00:32:40.500
Yes, Sean, the brain is a pattern recognition machine.
00:32:47.320
And I think also, as some of the commenters said, that a lot of the motivation is that
00:32:54.020
a lot of men just want to be supportive of women in their life.
00:32:58.840
They want to support their daughter, their friends, their sister, their mom, whatever.
00:33:03.380
And that if women don't like this idea, let's say the majority of women don't like the idea
00:33:09.540
of their daughter missing the spot, then I think men, we're just sort of designed to want
00:33:18.080
I don't think anything is more basic to our biological nature as men than sort of wanting
00:33:28.800
So that's part of it, which has nothing to do with logic and nothing to do with facts.
00:33:34.420
People just want to support other people sometimes, and they'll take whatever argument gets that
00:33:42.940
And then I would say that you need to break the argument into two parts, because youth sports
00:33:50.020
is really about the athletes themselves more than the entertainment value, right?
00:33:55.100
If you've got a high schooler in a sport, it's more about the student.
00:34:01.340
But if it's professional sports, it's really not about the athlete.
00:34:08.060
So treating the student athlete and the professional athlete as if it's the same conversation won't
00:34:14.740
make sense, because you're not pursuing even the same objective with either of those.
00:34:18.980
So given those two different objectives, one being about the athlete for the younger people
00:34:23.580
and one being about the audience for the professionals, let's look at it through that lens.
00:34:28.220
And don't conflate those two things, because you'll see a lot of arguments that act like
00:34:40.200
So here are some people that I would say are exhibiting cognitive dissonance.
00:34:47.040
So now you've heard me agree with you on what feels fair and what doesn't.
00:34:55.400
Does anybody have a grossly different opinion than mine in the comments?
00:35:02.080
Because I'd be interested if so far you're disagreeing with me.
00:35:18.360
You always say we can't see our own blind spots.
00:35:22.760
So in this instance, I will help point it out to you.
00:35:32.720
Cognitive dissonance is when you go after one of the tells.
00:35:37.760
One of the clear tells is that they go after the messenger and completely ignore the argument.
00:35:44.060
And second of all, what would make Mike think I have a blind spot for sports?
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I've watched every professional sport I can think of.
00:36:06.660
I've been immersed in sports as much as anybody.
00:36:10.280
So what would make Mike think I have a blind spot?
00:36:12.720
Does he think I don't understand what a transgender on a woman's team would do to the audience?
00:36:22.020
We all understand how that would affect the entertainment value.
00:36:25.880
Do I not understand that it would feel unfair for a woman or all the women who got, you know, knocked down a level?
00:36:39.880
There's nothing even slightly confusing about this situation.
00:36:47.000
So Mike's belief that the reason that he and I disagree is that I have a blind spot in sports,
00:36:53.680
which is almost a ridiculous statement for any adult human.
00:37:00.560
In fact, there are very few things that you could say everybody understands so well.
00:37:05.640
It would be hard to think of any topic that was not so universally well understood as sports.
00:37:14.900
So this is cognitive dissonance because there's no fact challenged.
00:37:26.780
There are plenty of things you could say about me.
00:37:29.220
Maybe if you wanted to go after something about me, maybe point out a time I was wrong in the past.
00:37:38.820
So if you found the way that you want to respond is about the person as opposed to the argument,
00:37:50.900
So Arachno Kimono QC, that's the Twitter handle, says,
00:37:59.300
My view, though genuinely unsure if it holds up,
00:38:04.180
It is fair for LeBron James to compete against me for a spot in the NBA team because we're both male.
00:38:10.300
But it is unfair for trans athletes to compete on women's teams because they're not female.
00:38:21.880
Is that a good argument or is that cognitive dissonance?
00:38:31.140
Because Arachno has confused facts for arguments.
00:38:39.360
He's acting like a fact is an argument and that he's the keeper of facts.
00:38:46.440
Because he doesn't get to make something a fact just because he put a word on it.
00:38:52.440
So he's saying it's a fact that trans athletes are not female.
00:39:04.020
And if you were going to argue it, I'd come down.
00:39:06.960
Well, I don't know where I'd come down on that.
00:39:09.520
The point is that just saying it's a fact that one is a man and it's a fact that the other is a woman,
00:39:17.560
Even if you agree with the fact, you get that it's not an argument.
00:39:30.720
So if you can't tell the difference between a fact that might be true and it might not be,
00:39:35.360
but it's irrelevant because it's not an argument either way.
00:39:46.640
So if you agree with this, that's how you know it's cognitive dissonance.
00:39:52.040
And just saying somebody's a woman, somebody's a man, that's either a fact or not a fact,
00:40:03.560
If that's confusing to you, you're experiencing cognitive dissonance in all likelihood.
00:40:15.340
Society set up competitive groups of physical men and women athletics
00:40:20.820
so that how athletes have strategically trained to compete.
00:40:26.020
So that's how athletes have strategically trained to compete.
00:40:29.480
Since the changes being proposed have the biggest impact on physical women,
00:40:34.240
why not defer to their opinion similar to your stance on abortion?
00:40:38.140
Is that a reason or is that cognitive dissonance?
00:40:45.380
First of all, it says that we set things up with men and women as different teams
00:40:51.180
so that athletes have strategically trained to compete.
00:41:00.020
Do athletes strategically train to compete differently
00:41:04.000
if they think a transgender athlete will be part of the mix?
00:41:10.080
How would they train differently if they thought someday in the future
00:41:18.500
Everybody would train in the best way they could train,
00:41:24.040
Are you going to train differently because one is extra strong?
00:41:31.600
who are competing against women who are less strong,
00:41:34.660
but I don't think they necessarily train differently.
00:41:40.380
Maybe in some slight way you train differently,
00:41:42.680
but I can't imagine that would be enough to move this argument.
00:41:46.420
And then the second part of the argument is an analogy.
00:41:49.260
So I've said that men, such as me, and again, this is just personal,
00:41:58.360
I prefer to keep my opinions on abortion to myself
00:42:05.400
Meaning that in abortion, you've got a decision that no matter which way it goes,
00:42:11.640
half of the country, or some number, is going to hate it.
00:42:16.660
And so in that world, in which you can't come to agreement,
00:42:24.660
is to have a decision that even the people who disagree with it say,
00:42:50.220
who doesn't have any special insight into the topic,
00:42:55.200
doesn't increase the credibility of the end point.
00:42:59.320
Whereas, if I knew that the laws about abortion
00:43:06.480
or are confused with people who could have babies,
00:43:25.940
It has nothing to do with a life-or-death decision
00:43:56.380
It's the one thing where if 20% of the world said,
00:44:01.820
and somehow we had the power to make it happen,
00:44:17.420
it is unfair for adults to compete on children's teams
00:47:15.180
And that's what cognitive dissonance looks like.
00:47:45.760
How much effort would a person put into an argument
00:47:55.600
if they believe there's a low chance you'll see it?