Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1421 Scott Adams： The Most Delicious Coffee Sipping in the Solar System

00:00:00.000 Well, well, well, look who it is. It's you, and you, and you, and you. Thanks for coming on time.

00:00:13.820 Those of you who are ahead of the system, you're basically the high achievers,

00:00:19.360 the people who get in here early. And that bodes well for your future. It really does.

00:00:23.640 So, would you like to enjoy this live stream even more than you are already? And I know it's

00:00:32.680 probably the thrill of your life so far. Well, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass,

00:00:37.120 a tank or Chelsea, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite

00:00:40.940 liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the

00:00:47.740 day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to

00:00:53.980 happen right now. Do you want a little writing tip before we get going? Listen to this sentence,

00:01:06.660 the dopamine hit of the day, and the unparalleled pleasure. Those sentences have percussion in

00:01:18.360 them, meaning that you can almost feel them like they're a drum. Like the dopamine hit of

00:01:23.580 the day, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. The unparalleled pleasure, the unparalleled

00:01:29.220 pleasure. That makes your writing a little bit more interesting if you have the percussion element.

00:01:36.660 So apparently there was a 3.9 magnitude earthquake where I live yesterday at 6.40 p.m.

00:01:46.140 Did not feel it. Now, my house is actually designed for maximum earthquake protection,

00:01:53.800 and I guess it did a good job because my county was rocking and rolling yesterday, but I never felt

00:02:00.440 it. So, so much for that. And I have to admit, I feel a little bit robbed because when there's an

00:02:09.920 earthquake where you live and you don't feel it and everybody's talking about it and you don't get

00:02:15.020 to say anything, well, I felt nothing. It really ruins a good story. Joshua Lysak, a ghostwriter

00:02:25.040 extraordinaire, on Twitter, asked this question. He says, tell me about the moment you realized

00:02:30.960 we're all living in a simulation. And I was reading some of the comments because I wondered,

00:02:37.720 huh, I know I think I'm living in a simulation, but I wonder, I wonder what it was that convinced

00:02:44.380 other people that we're living in a simulation. It turns out that for a number of you,

00:02:49.980 the answer was me. So apparently I have convinced a number of people that we live in a simulation,

00:02:57.280 which is interesting because in effect, I changed your religion. In effect, because I remember it 0.91

00:03:09.620 wasn't long ago when if you said that you believed in intelligent design, you were considered a nut.

00:03:16.900 Now, that was usually intelligent design in the traditional Christian god kind of a way.

00:03:25.680 Typically, that's the way people talked about it. But if we're a simulation, there is an intelligent

00:03:30.800 designer. It just happens to be some alien or pre-human programmer, just somebody who can program.

00:03:37.680 So is it my imagination or has the debate about intelligent design disappeared? Right? Because

00:03:49.860 was it maybe 15 years ago? It's all anybody could talk about whether intelligent design should be taught

00:03:57.140 in schools and if it's true and blah, blah, blah. And now that there are plenty of legitimate smart

00:04:04.100 people. Nick Bostrom being sort of the godfather of the simulation idea. A legitimate credentialed

00:04:13.100 person. Elon Musk taking us to Mars. And he likes it. Oh, I'm just looking at some of your comments here.

00:04:25.700 So it's sort of interesting. It seems to me that intelligent design died. Now, for those of you who

00:04:33.620 have not heard this, this is one of the most interesting stories of my life. But I don't know

00:04:40.440 if it'll mean anything at all to you. And I've had a pretty interesting life. But years ago, I did

00:04:47.720 something really reckless. Maybe not the first time. I made a prediction that would guarantee I would

00:04:55.940 be mocked for decades. But if it was right, it would be a big win. I would just have to wait 20 years

00:05:03.920 or something like that and be mocked and have my reputation destroyed for about 20 years just to be

00:05:11.960 right. Now, if that doesn't tell you a little bit about my warped personality, I don't think anything

00:05:19.880 will. I literally signed up for 20 years of pain just to be right about something. And I think I am.

00:05:29.780 And the thing I predicted was 20 years ago or so, something like that, that in our lifetime,

00:05:35.920 while I'm still alive, I predicted that the theory of evolution would be debunked within scientific

00:05:45.480 terms, not within religious terms. So I never predicted that we would find out that there was

00:05:52.540 a genesis, etc. But I did predict that you could pick almost any popular theory in science and just

00:06:00.800 look forward 20 years and it would be debunked. You could almost pick anything. And the reason for

00:06:07.420 that is that you just go back 20 years and find out what did we think about pretty much anything.

00:06:14.120 And it's almost all wrong. You could just go back 20 years at any time in history, rewind 20 years

00:06:21.540 from there and find out that, you know, gigantic things we thought were true were all debunked.

00:06:28.320 So, my problem with evolution was, there was just something about it that wasn't working for me,

00:06:35.960 even though I understand, you know, the millions of years and the gradual change. I understand the

00:06:41.680 mechanism behind it. I understand the mountains of evidence for it. And because there's so much

00:06:48.720 evidence for it, evolution, the most reckless thing anybody could ever predict is that it would be

00:06:55.960 overturned within your lifetime. Now, how stupid was that prediction? Pretty stupid. Because I got 1.00

00:07:06.640 mocked for 20 years, exactly as I imagined I would be, because people said, you idiot, you don't believe 1.00

00:07:12.680 science. Don't you know that science is smart and you are dumb? So if science disagrees with you, 1.00

00:07:19.800 guess who's right? Is it you? Or is it science, Scott? Because science is always right. And you,

00:07:28.820 well, you're kind of a fucking moron, if we can be honest. Science is up here. You, oh, you're like 1.00

00:07:36.600 a little chipmunk eating a peanut. You're down here. Scott, don't you understand the gigantic difference 0.98

00:07:44.800 between where you are, a fucking idiot, and science. Science. It's almost a god-like divine concept, 1.00

00:07:53.980 the science. And so, Scott, if you were to question the divine perfection of science, well, you little

00:08:02.640 moron. 20 years of my life. Fast forward, and the simulation is now widely accepted by smart people. 1.00

00:08:12.520 Not all of them, but lots of smart people would say that the evolutionary model is maybe just a

00:08:20.900 programmed thing that we perceive. All right. So enough of that gloating. But I've always wondered

00:08:32.140 if you could change somebody's religion, and then I found out that I did it, apparently. Apparently,

00:08:37.000 I've changed a bunch of people's religion in some sense. Senator John Cornyn. I guess he was one of

00:08:44.940 the people, or maybe the main guy, who promoted this U.S. semiconductor manufacturing bill called

00:08:53.080 Chips for America. Do you remember when you found out that the United States can't make microchips

00:09:01.700 anymore, and that they're pretty much all made in China or Taiwan? Do you remember finding that out?

00:09:09.200 I think I found out this year. When did chip manufacturing completely leave the United States,

00:09:16.460 or mostly? I don't know if it's completely. But didn't that scare the hell out of you?

00:09:22.160 The moment you found out that the United States isn't a main producer of microchips?

00:09:28.060 So I don't know the details of this bill. But it apparently got passed. So it must have been

00:09:35.880 at least good enough to get passed. And it says it's going to fix this critical issue. I don't know

00:09:41.960 what that means. But I assume it means some kind of government benefits if you start a chip manufacturing

00:09:48.180 plant, I guess. But we definitely need this. You know, this type of technology dominance

00:09:57.220 is military. I mean, you can't not have this industry if you want to remain a superpower.

00:10:05.660 So congratulations to John Cornyn for doing a solid thing for the country. It looks like good work.

00:10:14.400 You know, most of the time I'm criticizing the government for one thing or another, right?

00:10:18.400 And if somebody does something that is clearly and unambiguously in the right direction,

00:10:23.200 I think that needs to be called out. So good job, Senator Cornyn.

00:10:30.740 So remember, I've been telling you that over time, Joe Biden will have to morph into Trump

00:10:36.660 in order to just do his job. And the theory was that Trump did so many things right,

00:10:43.040 yet because he was Trump, he was criticized for being wrong, that if you tried to do the opposite

00:10:49.200 of Trump, you would you would come to regret it, because Trump was doing the right thing in the

00:10:54.860 first place. And you'd have to become him over time just to keep your job as president.

00:11:00.960 Here we have another example. Apparently, Joe Biden said that Iran will, quote,

00:11:06.900 never get a nuclear weapon on his watch. Now, I don't know if he's ever said it so clearly before.

00:11:14.240 But his plan of giving them everything they need to make a nuclear weapon seems a little bit off

00:11:21.460 target with his goal of having them never get a nuclear weapon. So I feel as though and now we

00:11:30.380 also see Biden is is bombing some Iranian assets in Syria and Iraq. So did Biden, has he already

00:11:40.360 become Trump on this topic? Because he kind of has to, right? I mean, that seems like that's where

00:11:46.680 it's got to go. So keep an eye on that. I don't see any chance that Iran is going to, I don't know, 0.99

00:12:00.300 they're not going to say, hey, we're done with all this nuclear stuff and prove it. So I feel like

00:12:05.860 Biden just has to complete the circuit and just become Trump. Are you watching the drama with

00:12:14.320 poor Brian Stelter on CNN? So you might know that that Brian Stelter is like the attack dog of CNN,

00:12:24.040 one of them, I guess they got a lot of attack dogs. And he's often more prominent in criticizing Fox

00:12:30.780 News, etc. But his own ratings have collapsed, according to, I think, the Daily Wire said that

00:12:38.980 his ratings have collapsed over 72% since January. 72% reduction in his audience since January.

00:12:52.180 Now, here's the funny part. He's still on the air. Now, I don't have any bad feelings toward Brian

00:12:58.440 Stelter. And I'm not the person who calls for people to be taken off the air, because I don't

00:13:04.040 like it to happen to me. But there's something funny about this story, which is, if any normal

00:13:12.920 show lost 72% of its audience in this news realm, wouldn't they be fairly quickly replaced?

00:13:21.560 But CNN is kind of in a trap here. Because the person who would be replaced in this scenario

00:13:30.020 is the main attack dog for Fox News, the person who attacks Fox News the most. And if the guy who

00:13:38.360 attacks Fox News gets canceled, Fox News won, because they want him canceled. You know, if you listen to

00:13:47.520 Fox News, you'll hear Greg Gutfeld often taking a run at Stelter, and vice versa. You'll see now

00:13:56.060 Tucker Carlson's taking a run at him. I guess Joe Rogan, not in Fox News, of course, but Joe Rogan on his

00:14:02.540 own show railed against Stelter. So he's got all these people railing against him. But CNN can't get

00:14:09.940 rid of him, can they? Because the moment they get rid of him, it would be like, it would be like

00:14:16.720 surrender. It would basically be say, okay, Fox News, you have better content, your shows are doing

00:14:23.900 well, we had to cancel our show that makes fun of your show. Imagine having to cancel the show that

00:14:30.240 makes fun of the competition, because that show doesn't get enough ratings. I feel as if they want

00:14:37.640 to cancel him for monetary reasons, but they can't do it because of the reputation. It would just be

00:14:42.920 too much of an admission of defeat. Yeah, I'd like to see Jeffrey Toobin take that position.

00:14:53.160 He'd be good at it, actually. No joke. Jeffrey Toobin is good at his job. Yeah, he's got a little

00:15:02.020 reputational thing to clean up, so to speak. But it's funny, anything you say about the Jeffrey

00:15:09.880 Toobin story sounds naughty. Like no matter what you're actually talking about, your brain

00:15:16.880 immediately goes there. And when I said he has to clean up his reputation, where did your brain go?

00:15:24.280 Tissues, yes. Tissues. All right, that's because you're awful. So I've decided that Brian Stelter is 0.96

00:15:33.540 essentially the piñata of CNN. Everybody likes to. Wow, getting weird messages this morning. All right,

00:15:45.000 let's talk about Trump and his legal problems. So the news is that Trump will not be prosecuted

00:15:53.660 for now. For now, Trump is not being prosecuted for the, in the Manhattan DA's first indictment.

00:16:02.700 So we don't know how many more there might be, if any. But in the first indictment,

00:16:08.280 they're likely to announce charges. So again, so here's a leak, right? I assume that we know more

00:16:14.580 than we're supposed to know. Must be a leak. So they're likely to announce charges against Ellen

00:16:19.720 Weisselberg, CFO, sometime soon. And he is under scrutiny, we're told, for benefits he received,

00:16:28.960 including a company-funded apartment and car. Now, how big a deal is it?

00:16:37.380 How big a deal is it that there's some, maybe taxes weren't paid properly on benefits to employees?

00:16:45.720 Well, it's sort of a standard corporate problem. And people don't really go to jail for that.

00:16:54.140 I feel like this is one of those things where the corporation might pay a fine or something like

00:16:59.440 that. But Trump isn't even named. Now, of course, the danger here is that the CFO being named might be

00:17:07.740 simply a ploy to put pressure on the CFO so he can flip and give the prosecutors some dirt on Trump.

00:17:15.720 But, first of all, is this lifetime employee likely to flip on Trump? I don't know he will, right?

00:17:29.060 You know, you can expect a lot of people to do flipping, but I don't know that he will. And I

00:17:34.700 don't even know if he really would have any jail time, because it's sort of a corporate crime. And it

00:17:41.700 probably wouldn't be a ton if he did, but nobody wants to go to jail. So here's the question. Do

00:17:49.120 we think that the real play is to squeeze the CFO until he gives something up on Trump? And here's

00:17:56.060 my question. And for the lawyers who are watching, I always have lawyers watching. For some reason,

00:18:01.620 this live stream gets a lot of lawyers. For the lawyers, can you answer me this question?

00:18:07.320 I'm aware that if you were trying to take down a mafia boss, you could try to squeeze people and get

00:18:15.460 them to give up some stuff about the mafia boss. But if you're not talking about a mafia boss,

00:18:21.600 can you just fish for a crime for somebody who's just the CEO or owner of a company? Can you just

00:18:29.520 grab some lower employee and say, we don't have any specific crime we're investigating for the CEO,

00:18:36.240 but if you give us something, we'll reduce your sentence or drop your charges? Is that even a

00:18:43.200 thing? I mean, if you're not actually like a mafia boss, you can... I'm seeing some yeses. I don't

00:18:51.000 know if you're attorneys. But tell me if you're an attorney, if you're going to give an answer to

00:18:55.980 this in the comments. But I don't know that you can just fish for a crime, can you? Wouldn't you have

00:19:03.020 to have a specific crime that you at least have some indication of before you can dig into it?

00:19:11.340 I'm seeing most of you saying that this can be done and it's completely legal. 0.91

00:19:16.900 Well, if it's legal, it's pretty crappy. Thomas is an attorney and says yes. All right. So there's

00:19:25.540 one attorney and probably some of you are also attorneys saying yes. All right. So let's take

00:19:31.040 that as a yes that they can do that, which is pretty shitty. I mean, I feel like you could almost 0.71

00:19:38.380 take anybody down with those rules. Yeah, it seems deeply unethical. But let's say that's happening.

00:19:45.960 All right. Here's another take on it. So Ross Garber on Twitter, who's got legal background and

00:19:56.800 expertise, was pointing out the fact that maybe this is a squeeze on the CFO, but also points out

00:20:04.600 that approving financial crimes, I'm just reading Ross's tweet, beyond a reasonable doubt and unanimously

00:20:10.780 under New York state law can be a challenge. And he goes on, Ross does, there are issues,

00:20:17.140 these issues are normally investigated, prosecuted by the feds who have expansive mail and wire fraud

00:20:23.620 statutes. So basically, if you thought there was some financial crimes going on, you would expect the

00:20:31.820 feds to be involved because they would be more effective at prosecuting. But we have no indication

00:20:38.440 that the feds are involved, which means, which could mean, and I don't want to like over interpret

00:20:46.460 this because this is well outside my expertise. I'm just trying to draft off of what Ross Garber is

00:20:52.420 saying. But it could mean, because we haven't heard any leaks that the feds are involved,

00:20:59.700 that they don't have anything. That there may not be enough for the feds to say, yeah,

00:21:04.840 let us in on this. Maybe the feds say, well, we would get involved, but you need a crime.

00:21:11.080 We don't have any. I feel as if the fact that the feds are not at least, there's no leak to say

00:21:18.260 that the feds are involved, that probably means something. And the fact that Trump is not named

00:21:24.080 probably means something. And I would think that all the Stormy Daniel stuff will probably turn into

00:21:31.160 nothing, at least in terms of, you know, Trump going to jail or something like that. That's just

00:21:35.880 not going to happen. At worst, some of this stuff will be fines, I think. So my prediction all along

00:21:42.880 is that Trump will not have a, you know, any kind of a jail sentence or even be prosecuted or even,

00:21:50.020 yeah, I don't think he'll even go to court for anything that would be a jailable offense.

00:21:54.080 So that's still my prediction. Some of you, as someone pointed out on Twitter recently,

00:21:59.780 are still waiting for Hillary Clinton to go to jail. And I think at some level, just people don't

00:22:05.760 go to jail. I think it just doesn't happen. Now, one of the things that Trump has done correctly for

00:22:11.800 his entire career is not use email. So it's really hard to prosecute someone who doesn't write things

00:22:21.100 down. Doesn't text. At least, at least he didn't use the text. I don't know if he does now. But he

00:22:28.180 didn't use email and he didn't text. So even if somebody said, I did this because Trump told me to,

00:22:35.620 how do you prove it? You can't prove it. Trump can just say, I didn't tell you to do that.

00:22:42.140 And that's it. That's the end of the case. No, no paper trail. You're done. So the odds of Trump

00:22:49.040 going to jail, I think, are really small. And I've been predicting this from the start.

00:22:55.020 And so far, it's looking good. But with that caveat that maybe there's a squeeze on the CFO,

00:23:00.900 and maybe that produces something. But I think we'd know by now if there was any smoking gun.

00:23:07.820 So this is something Mike Cernovich tweeted about the Trump legal stuff. He said,

00:23:21.220 prosecutors who leaked to New York Times make it seem like this is a fringe benefits not taxed

00:23:27.980 properly case. And Mike says, if this is it, Trump ran the most honest real estate company in New York's

00:23:35.260 history. Exactly. Do you think that you could do a deep investigation of any major real estate

00:23:44.740 company in New York City, and they would come out clean? Any of them? And I'm talking about people

00:23:52.560 who don't even know they're committing any crimes. Probably any big real estate company is going to

00:23:58.660 have a lot of subjectivity in their, let's say, valuations. A lot of subjectivity in whether they

00:24:06.860 handled the taxes correctly. Right? These are, there's a lot of gray area when it comes to real

00:24:13.300 estate. All right. Apparently, Bill Barr is quoted as saying that he didn't believe any of the election

00:24:21.980 fraud claims by Trump, at least he didn't believe that any of it would be big enough to overturn the

00:24:27.180 election. And has referred to it as it was all bullshit. So Bill Barr is not a believer that the 0.99

00:24:37.040 election will turn up anything. There are two parallel stories here that I think are weirdly paired,

00:24:45.280 which also makes you think there's a simulation going on. Because remember, I predicted

00:24:51.300 that 95% of anything you heard about election fraud would be bullshit. Can anybody confirm in the 0.97

00:25:00.760 comments, anybody who heard me say it a bunch of times, that before we even looked into the election

00:25:06.980 through audits and anything else, I told you that on the surface, 95% chance any specific thing.

00:25:15.020 Now here I'm talking about a specific claim. I said there was a 95% chance that any specific claim

00:25:20.880 was bullshit. So now Bill Barr and I are, you know, within 5%, right? So I was still allowing, 0.98

00:25:27.660 okay, well, maybe. Now my take from the beginning, and I think you can confirm this as well,

00:25:34.020 is that we don't have overwhelming evidence of election fraud. We probably are not going to be

00:25:40.680 looking in the right places to find it if it exists, because I don't know that they're going to do an

00:25:45.480 audit of the software, the databases, etc. But my take was that if there was not fraud already,

00:25:52.100 you can guarantee there will be in the future. Because it's the type of system that is guaranteed

00:25:56.980 to be corrupted by state, you know, intelligence agencies, either domestic or foreign, eventually.

00:26:03.560 So it's only a matter of time. It's either already happened, and we haven't detected it,

00:26:10.240 or it'll happen in the future, for sure. Because it's a system that's vulnerable,

00:26:16.080 and people will just keep, you know, hacking on it until something gets it. It's kind of like saying,

00:26:21.580 we're going to start a virology lab, and we're going to be looking at deadly pathogens,

00:26:26.540 and we're going to do a really, really good job of containing them. Isn't it really just a matter

00:26:32.680 of time? If you wait long enough, do you have to wonder if anything is going to get out of the lab?

00:26:41.080 No, not in the long run. In the long run, it's guaranteed, right? It's just in the short run,

00:26:47.600 you're not sure. Did it happen this year? Did it already happen, or is it something that's going to

00:26:51.640 happen? Take nuclear energy. You've got lots of older nuclear plants around the world. The newer

00:27:00.400 ones, the Generation 3, have had no problems, at least no notable problems. But the earlier

00:27:07.760 generation, could you predict that there'll be, say, another problem with one of the older ones?

00:27:13.800 Yeah, probably, probably, right? So there's some things that you know are a problem.

00:27:20.180 It's just guaranteed. You just don't know when it happens. That's the only thing you don't know.

00:27:25.560 So the things that are kind of paired are Trump's legal problems, which a lot of people who are

00:27:35.180 anti-Trump said, there is so much smoke there, there is definitely a fire there. We just have

00:27:41.320 to clear out the smoke, and we're going to find all these financial crimes. We're going to find stuff

00:27:46.620 with Russia, you know, bribes, you know, tax cheating. Oh, it's going to be glorious. There'll 1.00

00:27:53.900 be so many crimes. And I said, probably nothing that's going to be a problem. Probably a whole

00:28:02.680 bunch of smoke that gets cleared away, and that's just steam. Right? That was my prediction. So far,

00:28:09.220 we're so good. And on the election, oh, there's so many, so many specific proven cases of fraud,

00:28:17.080 to which I said, no, there aren't. No, there aren't. There's lots of suspicion. There's lots of smoke.

00:28:25.500 But clear that smoke out. There's maybe nothing you're going to find there, because you're not

00:28:30.660 looking in the right place for one reason.

00:28:32.220 So anybody who expected that Trump would go down for his legal problems will probably be

00:28:39.140 disappointed. And anybody who's expecting that the Maricopa County audit has got the goods,

00:28:45.800 I think you're going to be disappointed. Do you think there's any chance we wouldn't know by now

00:28:51.940 from a leak, or at least somebody announcing it, that the Maricopa audit had the goods?

00:28:58.100 You would know by now, right? Do you think there's any chance that all of those people involved in

00:29:06.760 the Maricopa audit, do you think that all of them shut up, and they've really got it, and it's going

00:29:13.100 to be like a, it's going to be a kill shot when that gets released, and we do, and we haven't heard

00:29:18.460 a hint about it? If that's true, it would be the most amazing story of the year, simply that the

00:29:26.040 secret was kept. So even forget about, you know, forget about the question of what's actually in

00:29:34.360 there. The fact that they kept it a secret would be amazing, and inexplicable, really.

00:29:41.700 So, yes, Matt Brainerd has lots of statistical evidence of things that look amiss. But that's not

00:29:50.320 what the audit's going to prove, right? I think that you could have lots and lots of statistical

00:29:56.360 oddities that might actually even indicate there's a real problem, but it doesn't get you to the finish

00:30:02.700 line, right? If you can't translate the statistical oddities into a physical ballot and a whole bunch

00:30:10.400 of them that caused a problem, you're going to need the physical part. The statistical stuff

00:30:16.100 is a real red flag, and genuinely it's a red flag. I mean, and there's enough of it that you've got

00:30:23.200 all kinds of questions. That's true. But you've got to have, you've got to have, like, the physical

00:30:29.180 proof, or else it's nothing. And I don't think that connection's been made yet. Which does not mean

00:30:34.940 that Matt Brainerd is wrong. It just means they might not be looking in the right place to find the

00:30:40.360 kinds of things that the statistics are suggesting is there. Here is the most disturbing, no, well,

00:30:49.540 two very disturbing stories. Writer Andy Ngo, spelled N-G-O, you've probably seen him on Twitter,

00:30:56.720 et cetera. He says that SoundCloud, which is the platform his podcast was on, they dropped him

00:31:03.460 permanently. He's permanently banned. Now, here's somebody who's an editor-at-large for the Post

00:31:10.460 Millennial, a legitimate, serious publication. And he's a high-profile journalist, I guess would be

00:31:20.020 the best description. Has made a huge impact, right? Very important, substantial person doing good work

00:31:30.480 that the public appreciates. And he gets kicked off the platform. Do you know what the reason was?

00:31:36.400 Can anybody guess the reason that Andy Ngo got kicked off the SoundCloud platform? Well, if you could

00:31:43.540 guess the reason, you'd be the first one to know. Because they didn't tell him.

00:31:51.480 Somebody says, cussing. Yes, cursing is called for in this situation. I'm trying to hold back,

00:31:58.960 but I don't know if I'll succeed. So, he didn't get taken down for cursing. I think you were talking

00:32:07.160 about me cursing. So, here's the scary part. The scary part is not that somebody was taken off a

00:32:13.400 platform. The scary part is they didn't tell him why. Right? They just, I think they just sent their

00:32:20.300 terms of service and said, you were bad. You're taken off. That's not cool. These platforms

00:32:28.460 are big enough that they become quasi-governmental accidentally. Right? You kind of can't exist in

00:32:38.440 the real world and make an impact unless you can use social media. And if you're getting kicked off

00:32:43.740 of these platforms without pretty specific reasons, and apparently there's no process for

00:32:51.380 appeal. So, basically his platform is just removed. No reason given. Now, do you think this was done

00:33:01.860 for political reasons or for business reasons? I'm pretty sure it was for political reasons,

00:33:08.580 maybe dressed up as legal reasons, as business reasons, but it looks political to me. And if

00:33:14.440 it looks political and they don't give you a reason for doing it, you have a right to assume it was

00:33:19.360 political. Right? The SoundCloud has a responsibility to tell us specifically why he was banned, or at least

00:33:27.780 to tell him. And if they don't do it, you have every right to assume it's illegitimate. That should be

00:33:34.820 your default assumption that this is illegitimate. It might not be, but it should be your default

00:33:41.140 assumption under these conditions. So, this is deeply disturbing. Deeply disturbing. And it looks

00:33:50.180 like it's part of a larger effort to just de-platform people who have a certain point of view. How many

00:33:56.200 people who were prominent Trump supporters no longer have a platform in 2021? If you start counting

00:34:04.840 up the number of people who have been de-platformed, it gets kind of scary, doesn't it? Now, you can

00:34:11.480 start and say, well, you know, this one had a good reason, and this one went too far, and now this one

00:34:17.280 maybe broke a rule. But, I don't know, is this happening to the left? Or is it only happening to the

00:34:23.620 right? Yeah, it's a pretty long list of people who have been banned. But, it gets worse. Tucker Carlson

00:34:31.240 reports that a whistleblower has told him that the NSA is spying on Tucker Carlson's private

00:34:38.840 communications, private meaning business, I think, emails and text messages, apparently, and proved it

00:34:46.580 by telling him something that was in his private communications. How would you like that to happen?

00:34:53.080 How would you like a whistleblower from the NSA, a government entity, how would you like a whistleblower 1.00

00:35:00.540 to come tell you what your fucking email says? Think about that. Just put yourself in that position 1.00

00:35:08.220 for a moment. Just imagine you're Tucker Carlson, and somebody says, hey, I'm a whistleblower,

00:35:14.140 and they've been looking at your communication, and I'm going to prove it by telling you something

00:35:19.640 that's in your email that nobody else would know. Holy fuck. Holy fuck. 1.00

00:35:30.740 This isn't cool. And according to the whistleblower, the purpose of it was to de-platform him. 0.99

00:35:38.660 The purpose of it was to de-platform him, according to the whistleblower.

00:35:42.620 This might be one of the worst stories in American history, I would say. One of the most

00:35:53.360 horrible examples of government abuse I've ever seen. I mean, you'd have to go to something

00:36:03.660 like the Tuskegee experiments or something, where you're doing human experiments on people 1.00

00:36:09.720 to get down to this level of fuck you. This is pretty deep. Now, I'm still open-minded that 0.99

00:36:18.900 there's something we don't know about the story. Maybe, you know, maybe the whistleblower is not

00:36:23.620 exactly what we think it is. But, and it's also possible that, you know, an email could be hacked

00:36:30.140 from some other entity, you know. So there are other possibilities. But man, you don't want this to

00:36:35.640 be true, do you? But you kind of feel it is, don't you? Don't you kind of feel it's true?

00:36:41.800 Imagine, if you will, the chessboard for, you know, Republicans versus Democrats. Imagine which

00:36:49.800 pieces on the chessboard are the powerful pieces. You know, which ones are the real chess pieces that

00:36:55.880 can make a difference. Where is Tucker Carlson on that chessboard? Right? He's basically the queen.

00:37:07.280 He's the fucking queen. Now, I mean, in terms of the queen being the most powerful part of the 1.00

00:37:13.240 chessboard. Because his show is so impactful, so highly watched, and he does such a good job of

00:37:20.620 the communication and the packaging of the points, etc. Tucker's not like the rest of us.

00:37:26.920 You could take me off the field, and I don't know if you'd notice. You could take, you know, name,

00:37:32.980 name three other people on Fox News, right? You can name three other people, take them off the

00:37:39.000 network. You'd notice. You might miss their show. But I don't know that politics would be different.

00:37:46.040 But Tucker's not like the rest. Tucker changes the news. Tucker decides, in effect, what a lot of

00:37:55.440 people are going to think. Tucker decides what's important. You know, if it's on his show, that's

00:38:02.220 important. If he decides to ignore it, then you know it's not. So the horribleness of this story is

00:38:12.320 hard to understate. This is not a free country, if this is true. If chess pieces are being taken off

00:38:19.940 the board, where am I in this process? You want to get a little bit more scared? It's my understanding

00:38:28.120 that if you're looking at a target for whatever you're investigating, and you're checking out a

00:38:34.800 specific target, and let's say it's the NSA that's snooping on their communication, do they have a right,

00:38:41.040 then, to look at the communication of the other people who are communicating with the target?

00:38:48.420 Yes. Because at the very least, they can see the communication from the other person.

00:38:55.300 I'm going to go a little further now. I have personally communicated with Tucker Carlson

00:39:00.760 in electronic form. So in a trivial way, it wasn't any special. I complimented him on the show or

00:39:10.960 something, got a text from Tucker thanking me, blah, blah, blah. But I've actually had digital

00:39:18.120 communications with somebody who is being snooped on by the NSA. If my communication with him

00:39:25.840 had been of substance, they would be fucking spying on me. 0.99

00:39:33.480 Now, as I tell you the story, you're probably plenty mad just being an observer. I'm in this 0.98

00:39:40.620 fucking story. I'm in the fucking story. Right? I'm a subject who could potentially... Now, in my case, 1.00

00:39:48.840 there's nothing of importance. It was a few years ago, haven't had a contact since then. So there's

00:39:54.560 nothing of mine that actually matters in this. But this is a little too fucking close to home. 0.78

00:39:59.640 Right? The NSA is fucking spying on people like me now. In the sense that anybody who had 0.99

00:40:07.460 communicated in a digital form with Tucker got spied on. Do you know how much I hate that?

00:40:15.720 A lot. A lot. A lot. And I don't know if this puts me on any enemy's list, but I have long imagined

00:40:29.220 that my communications are being monitored one way or another. What do you think? Do you think my

00:40:37.540 communications are being monitored by anybody, foreign or domestic? What do you think?

00:40:42.840 Yeah. Almost certainly. And I'm a private citizen. I didn't run for any office. Right? I just go on

00:40:53.220 here and I talk about politics. But if I had to guess, I mean, I live my life. I live my life as if my

00:41:01.600 communications are all being monitored. Which, by the way, I recommend. I do recommend that. That if you're

00:41:08.580 using a private app like Signal or WhatsApp or something, and you say to yourself, ah, I've got

00:41:13.760 an encrypted app. Nope. No, you don't. If anybody's logging your keystrokes on your device,

00:41:22.120 they catch it before it gets into the encryption. Or they catch it on the other side. But no, you don't

00:41:28.580 have private communications. That's not a thing. So that's your scary thought for the day.

00:41:36.140 Rasmussen reports that 52% of likely U.S. voters believe America needs to spend more on police.

00:41:44.580 But 23% say the current amount of funding for police is about right. What do I tell you about

00:41:51.120 the 25% rule? That 25% of the public will have a wacky opinion on any poll. It doesn't matter what

00:42:01.600 the topic is. 25% of American voters will have whatever is the dumbest opinion. And in this case, 0.99

00:42:10.260 that the current amount of funding is about right. Now, I'm not saying it's not about right.

00:42:14.920 But how would you know that? How would anybody know if it's about right? It's just like sort of

00:42:22.600 a dumb opinion. You could certainly say you need more. And you could, you know, people do say you 0.99

00:42:28.820 need less. I don't understand that opinion. But people do. But who are the people who say it's

00:42:33.500 about the right amount? They don't have any information. Is this somebody who's looked at the

00:42:38.900 budget? Anyway, 66% of voters, according to Rasmussen, agree with the following statement.

00:42:47.520 The radical and reckless decisions by some jurisdictions to defund their police forces have

00:42:53.000 had a real and devastating effect on American communities. So two thirds of the public say that

00:42:59.420 the pressure on the police is devastating American communities. Has there ever been an issue

00:43:05.660 where we were so unified? I mean, if you think about it, this is probably the most unifying

00:43:14.020 topic there is, right? Can you think of another one? Where's maybe immigration, where 66% of the

00:43:22.000 people are on the same side? It's kind of rare. But here's what I was going to say about that.

00:43:35.660 AOC got in a little bit of trouble for saying something like this. She said, this is actually

00:43:44.900 a quote from AOC. Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable. So she's talking

00:43:49.700 about police and funding. Any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much. Now, of course,

00:43:56.900 when she's quoted, they take that out of the context. So she's being taken out of context.

00:44:02.020 But I want you to hear the whole context. But I also want to make sure that this hysteria,

00:44:08.500 you know, that this doesn't drive a hysteria, and that we look at these numbers in context,

00:44:14.220 so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context. Now,

00:44:19.680 it's a bunch of word salad here. But what she's trying to say is that we shouldn't look at the

00:44:24.760 percentages, because that would be misleading. Is she right? Here are some of the percentages

00:44:31.820 that she thinks we should not take too seriously, but to rather keep them in context in terms of

00:44:38.900 their size. Shootings have increased more than 60% in New York City compared to last year.

00:44:44.580 So that's a percentage. Should you ignore a 60% change in one year in shootings? AOC says keep that in

00:44:55.540 context. Well, let's say the number of shootings went from, I don't know, 100 to 200. Would you notice?

00:45:04.860 If you weren't the police, would you even notice? If shootings doubled in a major metropolitan area,

00:45:14.580 how would you even know? Because very few people are actually the subject of a shooting.

00:45:22.340 So her point that you barely would even notice it if you look at the raw numbers. But if you look

00:45:30.240 at the percentages, of course, your hair is on fire. So that's where the hysteria comes from. Oh, no,

00:45:34.960 the hysteria, the percentages are high. So I would say she is right on the math.

00:45:41.200 But I feel as if a 60% increase in one year is something you ought to be pretty hysterical about.

00:45:50.480 I feel as if a little bit of hysteria about a 60% increase in shootings. Yeah. Even though that

00:45:58.740 number is still smallish compared to the total number alive, 60%? What happens next year? Is next

00:46:08.620 year it's going to level off? Or does next year it goes up 100%? You have to worry about the direction

00:46:15.360 of things. So this is what AOC is getting wrong. That 60% doesn't suggest that we're done. That might

00:46:23.380 be the start. If it's the start, it's the worst problem in the world. If we're done, why would that

00:46:32.440 be? Like, why would it top off? There's nothing that would stop it. Here's some more statistics

00:46:38.620 that we're not supposed to worry about. The number of shootings has spiked 126% in Portland in the last

00:46:44.880 year and 51% in Los Angeles. Those seem like pretty big numbers percentage-wise. Homicides in New York

00:46:54.620 surged 12% compared to last year and other cities have, you know, huge percentage increases. So AOC is

00:47:02.740 in a tough spot right now. And she reminds me of, I may have told this story before. This is a very dark

00:47:09.160 story, but it's kind of funny, but very dark. Years ago, when I worked in a bank, there was a human

00:47:19.180 resources person who told me the following story. We were at lunch and he said, you know, I was

00:47:25.380 counseling one of your coworkers who had lots of personal problems and was very distressed,

00:47:31.620 but I thought I did a good job. You know, they were, they were really having a bad place in their

00:47:35.460 life, but I feel like I counseled them up and really made some progress. He finishes the counseling

00:47:42.160 with this employee, feels pretty good about it. Things went about the way he expected, goes back down to

00:47:48.100 his office. And as he's in his office, feeling pretty good about how he helped this employee

00:47:53.880 through a tough time, he watched the employee's body fall past his window in the high rise.

00:48:01.640 Immediately after he was done counseling this person, he thought successfully, that person climbed

00:48:07.700 up on the roof and jumped off right past his window as he was standing in front of it. True story.

00:48:14.580 I think of that story when AOC defends defunding the police. Whoa, what the hell is that?

00:48:27.300 Loco Valdez, Richard says, if I have been unfair or misunderstood you, sorry, thanks for everything.

00:48:34.080 Well, I don't know what you're talking about or why you just gave me $100, but thank you.

00:48:38.980 Did I block you or something? I'm not sure what that's about. But let me know if I blocked you. Let

00:48:45.740 me know. I shouldn't allow people to buy their way back from being blocked.

00:48:55.200 But if you really paid $100, I would do it. I don't want to make that a business to unblock people.

00:49:04.160 But if it meant that much to you, then I would do it. So let me know if you were blocked.

00:49:14.420 So about AOC. So she became the, I would say, the face for defunding the police. She was not the

00:49:22.200 only one who said it, right? Lots of people were on that side. But wouldn't you say that AOC, 0.71

00:49:27.180 just because of her prominence, etc., became the face of defunding the police? So how would you like

00:49:33.420 to be the person who's became the face of defunding the police when shootings are up 60% in your city?

00:49:41.120 And that's kind of on you, isn't it? Doesn't it feel like AOC killed a bunch of people this year?

00:49:46.920 Like actually? If you took AOC's influence out of this topic, would there be as much, you know,

00:49:54.920 juice toward defunding the police? I feel like she killed a lot of people. Like actually, literally,

00:50:03.520 literally, her approach to this topic, literally, no exaggeration, it appears, killed a lot of citizens.

00:50:15.680 Right? And a lot of innocent citizens. People who weren't necessarily committing any crimes,

00:50:22.000 although I suspect a lot of criminals were shot by other criminals. So that's as bad as the HR person

00:50:30.520 watching the person they counsel just go past the window. Every time AOC picks up a paper or looks

00:50:36.660 at the news, I doubt she looks at a physical newspaper, but looks at the news, she has to see

00:50:42.440 how many extra people were killed because of her preferred policy. How do you go on? Like,

00:50:50.960 wouldn't you quit politics if you did that? If you had been like the face of a cause that just killed

00:50:58.560 a bunch of people and destroyed a bunch of cities, wouldn't you quit and say, well, I guess politics

00:51:04.680 isn't for me. I just killed hundreds of people personally, like my own actions killed hundreds

00:51:11.780 of people legally, apparently. So let's talk about Gwen Berry, the flag snubbing hammer thrower. 1.00

00:51:25.440 Number one, don't you love that there's somebody who is a woman in a sport that involves throwing a 0.99

00:51:34.040 hammer a long distance? Why is that even a sport? That's the most useless random sport.

00:51:42.880 You know, who can throw a heavy object the longest distance? Oh, for a woman. Now, if you were saying 1.00

00:51:49.460 who could throw at the farthest distance just in general, which I imagine would be mostly men,

00:51:56.580 then I would say, well, that's cool, because I would like to see what's the furthest distance

00:52:01.160 any human being can throw a hammer. It would be kind of interesting, actually. It'd probably be

00:52:05.280 impressive. But the longest thrown hammer by a woman, presumably not that far compared to the top 0.99

00:52:15.640 male hammer thrower, I don't know that that's worth anything. I don't know that that has any

00:52:21.720 entertainment value. Now, I get the whole, you know, women and men should have equal access,

00:52:26.760 no argument. But really, you're going to make up a sport that only depends on how big you are,

00:52:34.700 basically, and how strong you are. And then you're going to say, you know, we're going to watch the

00:52:39.740 group of humans we know don't do this well, because they're biologically not capable of lifting as heavy

00:52:47.140 objects. You know, no, it's not an insult. It's just a fact. It's just the most random thing to care

00:52:54.940 about. And then I guess Biden said, quote, according to Jen Psaki, Biden said, pride in our country means

00:53:03.140 recognizing that we haven't lived up to our highest ideals. Okay. Okay, I get that. And freedom of speech

00:53:13.440 is important. There's somebody named Ronnie Hunt who needs to get blocked here, Patrick says. I'll

00:53:25.500 look for that. I haven't seen him. So anyway, I don't have really, I don't really care about hammer

00:53:34.400 throwers. And I don't care about the Olympics. And I also don't care if somebody disrespects the flag.

00:53:39.520 My personal opinion on disrespecting the flag is that's what makes it stronger. Right?

00:53:47.600 Now, I seem to be completely alone in that opinion. Not many people agree with me. But if you can't

00:53:54.560 burn your flag, and actually you don't observe people doing it, it's no good. Right? The power of

00:54:02.340 the flag, all of its power, 100% of its value, is that you can fucking burn it. You can piss on it. 1.00

00:54:12.560 It's annoying. That's very offensive, isn't it? Right? That's like one of the most offensive things

00:54:17.480 you could think if you're a patriot. But that's why it has value. The moment you take that away from the

00:54:23.540 flag, I don't give a shit. Then it's just a piece of fabric. But the flag is imbued with this, 0.99

00:54:31.540 this power that you can burn it, and it gets more, more powerful, gets stronger. The more you hurt it,

00:54:40.680 the more you disrespect it, the stronger it gets. That's what makes it cool. Right? I don't want to

00:54:48.040 lose that. So I don't care that somebody disrespected it. That's sort of on them. That's

00:54:53.300 for their reputation, their career. It cost her a lot of money. But she got what she wanted. Right?

00:54:59.020 She got her free speech. She got her free speech. She made her point. Cost her some sponsors, I guess. 0.99

00:55:08.300 So she paid a price. But that was her decision. So I don't really have a problem with any of this story,

00:55:14.260 or anybody's opinion on it. That's the country we live in. That's the one we prefer. Now, have I told

00:55:20.240 you that one of the ways I know I live in a simulation is that the news is always about me?

00:55:26.820 One way or another. I feel like every day there's at least one news story that has some connection to

00:55:32.860 me personally. And it's the weirdest thing. Now, some of it is because, you know, I'm famous, and I

00:55:38.400 operate in this realm of the news. So I just meet more people and, you know, connect more topics and

00:55:45.200 stuff. So some of it's just that, right? Just chance. But here's another one. I like to point

00:55:50.700 them out because they're fun. So are you following the Britney Spears situation? And if you are,

00:55:59.060 and you're watching the gossipy stuff in the news, Britney Spears and her boyfriend are vacationing

00:56:05.040 in Maui. And she's doing a bunch of videos of them having fun on their vacation, because she's in

00:56:10.680 the news about the conservatorship stuff. And I'm looking at the videos. And I think she's in the

00:56:17.400 room that Christina and I recently stayed in. So she's definitely in the hotel we stayed in. And

00:56:24.460 she's definitely, you know, within one room of where we stayed, because the view from our room was

00:56:29.860 identical. And you and we can tell it's the same same hotel. So you know, so I was just talking to

00:56:37.460 Christina, that it's our favorite place. And we, you know, we've been there a number of times. And so

00:56:42.940 I was just saying we should make plans to go back to that place, literally to that room, or might be

00:56:49.980 one right next to it, I don't know, but it's the same view. And, and then I that I look at a video,

00:56:57.920 and there's, there's Britney Spears dancing around in her bathing suit in that room, or the one next

00:57:03.860 to it. I, the number of times that the news reaches out and taps me on the shoulder, it's just freaking

00:57:11.240 weird. It's just weird. But anyway, that's what makes me think we're living in a simulation. Let's

00:57:19.080 see if I talked about everything I needed to, because I think you did. Yes, all of the interesting

00:57:24.320 news has been discussed. There's nothing else to say. So not only do we have summer, which is always

00:57:33.600 slow news, we don't have Trump in the news much. That makes everything boring. We've got Joe Biden,

00:57:41.040 who is barely sentient. That's boring. We've got, it looks like the end of the pandemic. I don't want

00:57:48.400 to say it too soon. But it's looking good. I feel like we're hitting a boredom patch that's

00:57:56.020 unprecedented. Now, question for you. Will we see lots of summer riots for, let's say, defunding

00:58:05.600 the police and violence by the police against citizens? Or were those protests? Well, let me

00:58:16.960 ask you this. Were the protests from last year, especially the ones about the police, did they

00:58:22.560 accomplish what they wanted? And now the problem is fixed? Or are we going to see exactly the same

00:58:30.160 amount of problem in the world, but no protesting? How do we fight the nonstop Kafka traps the left

00:58:41.500 uses? You're going to have to be a little less obtuse, because I don't quite understand that

00:58:45.640 question. For $4.99, you did not get your questions value worth on that one. But at least I read it.

00:58:52.680 So, anyway, I don't need to go any further on that point. Here's a thing to expect. In a context of

00:59:04.740 super slow news, how long will that last? If we live in a simulation, there's something coming.

00:59:13.680 There's something coming. Might not be something you like, but you don't have slow news for this long.

00:59:21.020 Something's coming. We just don't know what it is. And I want to ask you this question. Have any of you

00:59:28.200 decided to not fly long distance because of masks? Because this week alone, I decided to not do a long

00:59:40.100 distance trip because of masks. And it's the only reason, right? Or it's the tipping point reason. I had other

00:59:46.820 reasons. But the tipping point reason was that I'm not going to get on an 11 hour flight and wear a

00:59:53.980 mask. I did that. And I've done that twice during the pandemic. And it is awful. Now, I've got a little

01:00:02.420 asthma. So I get like a whole different feeling with a mask on if I wear it too long. So the feeling

01:00:09.620 that I get is like being waterboarded. Like I feel like I can't breathe, etc. If I fall asleep,

01:00:15.680 I wake right up feeling like I'm gasping for air. And I think it's mostly psychological,

01:00:20.880 maybe a little bit real. I don't know. But I'm not going to fly anymore. That's it. I'm done flying

01:00:27.840 until the masks are gone. I might fly an hour, but I'm not going to fly six hours. So

01:00:34.100 as I've told you before, economics is all that's going to matter. Right? Economics is the only thing

01:00:42.700 that's going to matter to getting rid of masks. It won't be the government. And the airline business

01:00:48.040 is hopping right now. So as long as they got plenty of business, they can keep the masks.

01:00:53.100 But if they feel enough of us are waiting until masks are taken off, imagine if you will, they said,

01:01:01.180 I think they do say that we're going to wear masks until September. Would you book a flight

01:01:07.060 one month before and actually fly one month before masks go away? If you could just wait one more month

01:01:16.300 and know you could have the same, let's say a vacation trip, or even business trip, but you didn't

01:01:22.220 have to wear a mask, would anybody book a flight in that one month period before the masks are scheduled

01:01:28.900 to go away? Right? You wouldn't. A basic understanding of economics is that the long haul flights should

01:01:39.180 just be destroyed a month before the mask mandate goes. So how do you fix that? People probably are

01:01:48.160 going to do the same number of flights if it's three months before the mask mandate ends. But when you get

01:01:53.620 that last month, people are really going to postpone because it makes such a difference. I think they're

01:01:59.340 going to drop it early because that month will destroy the airline industry for the long haul stuff

01:02:05.720 unless they say, okay, we're going to, we're going to say get rid of masks a month early. So here's your

01:02:11.160 prediction. Prediction is that the mask requirement will be dropped early and not in September. And it

01:02:19.520 will be because they have to, the business will just fall off a ledge if they don't do it.

01:02:25.680 All right. That's all I got for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 29, 2021

Episode 1421 Scott Adams： The Most Delicious Coffee Sipping in the Solar System

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