Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1428 Scott Adams： Fake News About Fake Science and Delicious Coffee Too

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody and good morning. Welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams, the best part of every

00:00:12.380 single day. And to make it even a little bit extra special, not only are we live streaming

00:00:18.260 from the locals platform at the same time, with an audio de-esser. That's right. If you're

00:00:25.820 listening on YouTube and it sounds like I'm a snake hissing, well you wouldn't be hearing that

00:00:31.240 so much on locals because I've got that solved electronically. Well all you need today to make

00:00:37.940 this a special day is a cup or mug or glass, a tanker, chelsea, and a canteen jug or flask, a vessel

00:00:42.840 of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled

00:00:48.420 pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the

00:00:55.000 simultaneous sip and watch it improve your life now. So I learned something yesterday about the

00:01:06.420 sound quality on YouTube. It turns out that no matter what equipment you use or how you broadcast,

00:01:15.000 YouTube has some kind of a weird bug that makes some people's audio low on some videos

00:01:22.120 and not on others. And apparently it doesn't matter how you make the video that the problem

00:01:28.800 happens within YouTube. So for all of those saying, I can't hear you, your sound is too low,

00:01:35.660 that's your problem with YouTube and not a problem necessarily with the content. Although I might,

00:01:42.340 I might do this without a microphone one of these days. All right.

00:01:51.240 So you know about that big hacking attack, another $70 million ransom being asked for

00:01:57.880 presumably Russian hackers who hacked into a whole bunch of companies. And I would like to say again

00:02:07.120 that we're not treating this hacking stuff seriously. This should be a death sentence

00:02:13.700 because the level of destruction that comes from these hacks needs to be discouraged at the risk of

00:02:22.820 death. And at the very least, we should consider it a terrorist attack. And at the very least,

00:02:28.680 we should be able to take action in any country we want. So if these guys live in Russia,

00:02:34.040 whether or not Putin is controlling them, we can take them out. We can just drop a drone right on

00:02:44.460 some Russian territory and just take them out. Because we're not even serious about this right now.

00:02:50.000 And I don't see why the hackers would stop. The business model seems pretty good. It's working

00:02:55.600 pretty well. So I would say we need to get serious about this. And we're not even close.

00:03:02.300 Once again, this is probably something Trump would do better. Because you need to ratchet up the

00:03:10.360 threat. You know, the response has to be much bigger than it is. This whole, oh, Putin, there will be

00:03:18.060 consequences. Will there? Will there be any consequences for Russia because of these hacks? No. Putin will just

00:03:27.280 say, I don't know where they're coming from. And we won't have proof. And we won't be able to go that

00:03:33.160 hard at Russia. So that's where President Trump could be a lot better in this situation.

00:03:42.340 On Twitter yesterday, I asked people in a little Twitter poll, very unscientific,

00:03:48.240 if I had ever changed anybody's opinion on any social or political topic. And the last I checked,

00:03:56.960 there were about 14,000, 15,000 people that answered the poll, and of my 630,000 followers. And

00:04:05.120 over half of them who answered, which would be about 8,000 people, said yes.

00:04:12.460 So apparently, I've changed, just on the people who answered the poll, more than half of them

00:04:20.300 have changed an opinion on something based on watching this content. Now, I'm wondering if

00:04:29.260 that's normal. Because I don't know how to judge that. Would you say that, you know, Ben Shapiro,

00:04:39.120 if you watch his show, and he did the same poll, would he find that people had changed their minds

00:04:46.480 because of watching his content? Because his content is terrific, right? Lots of reasons and

00:04:51.400 facts and, you know, good context and background and, you know. So intellectually, Ben Shapiro's show

00:04:59.740 would be superior to mine, I would say. Certainly on the factual and context kind of a basis, he's good

00:05:06.100 at that. But does he change minds? Let me ask in the comments. Has Ben Shapiro ever changed your mind

00:05:17.360 on a topic? Or do you find you agree with him, and all you're doing is just agreeing?

00:05:23.800 So I'm going to look at your comments as they go by. I see a yes. I see a bunch of no's.

00:05:30.240 Oh, I see a bunch of yeses. Okay. Lots of yeses come in. Some no's. Interesting. Okay. So I don't

00:05:39.900 know how to, how do we evaluate whether I'm being persuasive or it's just a function of talking in

00:05:47.020 public. So maybe if you talk in public and you, you say a lot of things, you're going to change

00:05:52.060 somebody's mind. All right. Rasmussen has a simple results. They asked, how likely is it that the US

00:06:01.800 government spies on critical journalists and political opponents? Now that's a pretty loaded

00:06:09.680 question, isn't it? Do you believe that the US government is spying on critical journalists?

00:06:17.740 Well, 36% of the public, the voting public, likely voters, think that the government is spying on

00:06:37.360 journalists. What do you think? Yeah, of course they are. Yeah. One way or another. I mean,

00:06:44.660 they might be spying on them. They might be monitoring them. They might be, you know, caught

00:06:50.780 in the indirect monitoring because they may have communicated with somebody who they do monitor

00:06:56.160 a foreign, foreign agent. Now, have I ever talked to somebody from a foreign country that our NSA

00:07:06.920 might want to be tracking? And the answer is, yes, I have. I have. Now, I haven't had any like deep,

00:07:16.520 you know, secrets or anything, but I have had conversations in digital means with people that

00:07:25.680 in retrospect, I could imagine would be tracked by the NSA for legitimate reasons. You know,

00:07:34.060 I didn't have any like secret, you know, nothing that I would worry about anybody knowing about.

00:07:41.120 But doesn't that put me on the list? If I have a conversation in any way with anybody who is on

00:07:48.240 the monitoring list, don't I get monitored automatically? So I don't know how anybody could

00:07:55.060 disagree with the idea that the government is spying on journalists. I guess you could question

00:08:01.340 the intent, but not the fact that it's happening. It's simply a fact that it's happening, isn't

00:08:07.860 it? Would anybody disagree with that statement that because we know the NSA checks anybody who's,

00:08:16.920 let's say, a foreign person who might have some importance to us, intelligence-wise, don't

00:08:23.680 you think many of them have contacts with journalists? Probably, right? So yeah, the NSA is probably

00:08:32.920 looking at all of them. And then the 23% said it's somewhat likely that the government is spying on

00:08:38.520 journalists. So you add them together, and you get 59% think it's either very likely or somewhat

00:08:45.280 likely that the government is spying on journalists. It's not even a story, is it? How in the world

00:08:54.340 is that not one of the biggest stories in the country? But it's not. I mean, it's a story,

00:09:00.140 but it just kind of comes and goes. I like your idea, Ken. All right. I am fascinated with the topic

00:09:14.920 of how people assess risk. Now, I know you don't like it when I talk about any COVID stuff, because

00:09:21.320 it seems like it's over for most of you. And I agree with that, by the way. Personally, I feel like the

00:09:26.960 pandemic is over for me, because I'm not going to take a long plane trip and a mask ever again.

00:09:33.660 I just won't do it. And I don't need to wear a mask locally for anything, because I'm vaccinated.

00:09:40.100 You know, I suppose if I visited an old folks home, I'd put one on. But so I'm not too interested

00:09:47.900 in the pandemic stuff, but I'm very interested in how minds work. And so that's the element I'm going

00:09:55.520 at here. And I'm really fascinated with a specific question, where people are trying to decide whether

00:10:01.920 to get vaccinated or not. You've got two unknown risks that people have to balance to make their

00:10:08.160 decision. And they're both completely unknown. One is, what is the long term risk of getting a

00:10:15.740 vaccination, especially an mRNA vaccination, the type of which is sort of new to the human experience?

00:10:24.060 We have a pretty good idea what the short term risks are, because of the trials, and also because

00:10:30.800 of the feedback. But how would you know if there's any risk five years from now, from the vaccines?

00:10:39.360 And the answer is, you wouldn't, right? So if you're trying to say, what is the long term, you know,

00:10:44.520 unknown risk of a vaccination? The answer is, who knows? Nobody. There's nobody who can even estimate it.

00:10:52.340 Not with any data. But also, what is the long term risk of getting this particular virus? Now, if it

00:11:00.960 were a normal flu virus, you'd say to yourself, well, five years from now, it's very unlikely, I'm still

00:11:07.780 going to have a problem from a normal flu virus I got five years ago. Very unlikely. But this is not

00:11:14.820 like a normal virus, right? It's engineered. Or it looks like it. You know, we don't have full

00:11:21.940 confirmation of that. But it appears to be weaponized. Can you tell me that the risk five

00:11:29.220 years from now, from a weaponized virus is zero? I have no idea what the risk is. So you've got a

00:11:39.080 risk from an unknown virus that's novel, and weaponized, in all likelihood, we don't know for

00:11:45.420 sure. But it looks like it. And we've got a vaccine of the type we've never seen before, pumped into

00:11:52.440 millions of people. Which one is the bigger risk? Now, here's what fascinates me. Most of you can

00:12:00.600 make this decision. I don't know how. Right? Because it's two complete unknowns. Complete.

00:12:11.760 Now, if you were to look at the short term risk, let's separate them. The short term risk of,

00:12:17.560 let's say, dying within two weeks of getting a vaccination, or the short term risk of getting

00:12:23.660 COVID and dying in the hospital. How big are those risks? Could you compare them? Well, let me tell

00:12:31.920 you how I do it. I round them both to zero. And then I ignore them. Right? Because the risk of me dying

00:12:39.420 from coronavirus is so close to zero, that I would treat it the same way I treat driving to the store to

00:12:47.280 buy a loaf of bread. I could die in the car, driving to the store to get a loaf of bread. But it's not

00:12:53.100 part of my decision making, because it's so close to zero. So while I think the vaccination is really

00:13:00.700 so close to zero, I can ignore that risk in the short term. And the risk of dying from the coronavirus

00:13:07.160 in the short term, so close to zero that I make both of them non-existent. So if the risk from both of

00:13:16.040 them rounds to zero, get a vaccination or don't get a vaccination, both zero risk, effectively,

00:13:23.200 you know, because it's so small. What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what I do. I defaulted toward

00:13:29.920 the decision that also had about zero risk, because both of them do. But I picked the one that gave me

00:13:36.760 more freedom. So I feel, and of course, freedom is largely a sensation, as much as a fact. My sensation

00:13:45.880 is that I'm more free. Because apparently, I survived the first few weeks of getting the

00:13:51.720 vaccination. So that the early risk is behind me. But I can I can go places without a mask. And that

00:14:00.680 means a lot to me. So that's how my decision was made. Short term, both risks are zero. Effectively.

00:14:10.040 Both are just zero. But one gives me more rights. So I took that one. Now the long term risk still

00:14:18.180 separate, but can't calculate it. Nobody can. Nobody can calculate that risk. I do, however,

00:14:27.600 know from personal anecdotes, several people who have had long haul risk with the virus. Now,

00:14:35.940 I don't know if those long haul risks are really permanent, or if they could be. But I've heard of

00:14:42.080 them. Right? I've heard real people say, it's been months, and I had the virus, and I still get

00:14:48.000 problems. I've never personally heard of anybody who had a problem with the vaccination.

00:14:53.340 Now, that's not science, right? Because the people I've personally heard of has no statistical

00:15:01.760 value. But still, it's hard to avoid the fact that I've heard of several people with

00:15:07.400 virus long haul problems. And I've heard of nobody that I know personally. And it's the personal part,

00:15:15.900 not news stories. But nobody personally who's had a problem with the vaccination.

00:15:20.040 That doesn't mean it's not happening. I'm just saying I'm influenced by, you know, my immediate

00:15:25.720 information. So I don't know how you make your decisions. But I round the vaccination and the

00:15:32.300 virus down to zero risk each. And then I take the one that gives me that I take the path that gives me

00:15:38.620 more options. So that's where I'm at. Now, I, I stress again, that if this sounds like I'm trying to

00:15:47.480 talk you into getting vaccinated, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't take that away from this.

00:15:54.660 Because do you see me with my doctor degree? No, no, cartoonist. Do you take medical advice

00:16:02.900 from cartoonists? No, no, don't do that. Don't do that. I'm only interested in the decision making

00:16:10.660 process. That's it. All right. Do you do your own medical decisions. All right. Let's talk about

00:16:18.200 billionaires in space. So I love the fact that Jeff Bezos plans to take his rocket company into space.

00:16:28.120 And he plans to be one of the first or the first, I guess, first crew among the first in the crew on

00:16:34.440 Blue Origins. So that's the name of Bezos's company. And by the way, I think he's stepping down

00:16:40.360 from running Amazon full time. Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic, run by Richard Branson, he's, he's

00:16:50.660 decided that he's going to get into space a little bit earlier. But apparently there's a, there's a

00:16:56.240 dispute about whether that's really in space, because there's sort of a dividing line between

00:17:02.860 space and not in space. And I guess the Virgin Galactic flight will just be below that line,

00:17:09.220 whereas the Amazon one will be above that line. So technically, Bezos will be in space.

00:17:17.720 Technically, Branson will be almost in space, but not quite. So maybe that matters if you're

00:17:22.880 keeping score. But both of these, both of these trips are deadly, meaning that Bezos could die.

00:17:32.940 He could die. He could die. And it's not the same risk as driving to the store for a loaf of bread.

00:17:41.780 I don't know, if I put odds on it, it's like 10%, isn't it? Maybe a 10% chance you'll die.

00:17:48.540 Would you take a rocket ship if you had a 10% chance of dying? He's a lot braver than I am.

00:17:55.060 Maybe that's why he has more money than anybody in the world. And it also makes sense for Richard

00:18:03.400 Branson to do this, because Branson's brand is adventurism and taking risks and doing sketchy

00:18:11.320 things. Not sketchy things, but dangerous things. And so it makes sense for Branson. He's always been

00:18:19.900 this person. But does it make sense for Bezos to risk his death going up in space? I mean, I do like

00:18:27.520 the fact that he's putting his skin in the game. That's not nothing. I mean, that's a lot. But I

00:18:34.600 just don't know if it's the right play if you're a billionaire. Because I have to think his life is

00:18:39.760 going pretty well so far. Why would he take a risk of dying in a preventable accident? Preventable in

00:18:48.520 a sense he doesn't need to be on it. But I guess you'd feel pretty bad if you send somebody else up

00:18:53.140 there and they died. So, you know, maybe he can't just can't live with the guilt of that if somebody

00:18:59.800 else died and he wasn't on the ship. But we wish him luck. And what would happen if all of our

00:19:08.340 billionaires just died in space? You know, because you know Elon Musk is going to be on one of those

00:19:13.880 rocket ships eventually, right? We could wipe out the entire like billionaire class in this country

00:19:20.440 just having them try to fly into space and not make it. And I hope that doesn't happen. Of course,

00:19:25.660 I wish them all well. But it's fun to watch. And it's really fun. And I feel as though we're going

00:19:32.800 to look back on these days and realize that because these billionaires were competitive with each other,

00:19:38.840 you know, because you had an Elon Musk at the same time as a Jeff Bezos, at the same time as a

00:19:44.420 Sir Richard Branson, the fact that they all existed in the same time in space is probably really

00:19:51.900 important. Because don't you think that the competitive element of that and what they're

00:19:57.020 learning from each other and probably at some point some employees might be cross-pollinating and

00:20:01.980 stuff. I feel like it's a little bit like the founding, I don't want to say founding fathers,

00:20:08.240 it's too sexist. It's a little like the founders of the United States. What were the odds that at the

00:20:14.700 same time in history, you'd have, you know, Monroe and Jefferson and Washington and, you know, John Adams

00:20:22.480 and Ben Franklin, you know, forgetting a few names, Hamilton. What are the odds that all of those people

00:20:30.480 would be alive at the same time and sort of in the same time in space and they created the United

00:20:36.400 States? I don't know that any other group of people could have pulled that off. There was something

00:20:42.320 about that group of geniuses being in the same place that made it all happen. And I think we're

00:20:48.180 going to look back on this space stuff and say how lucky we were that three of our most important,

00:20:55.820 you know, entrepreneurs were alive at the same time and could see each other's work. I mean,

00:21:00.820 it's going to be a big deal, I think. So CNN is reporting that it's quite obvious now that

00:21:08.780 climate change is what's causing our heat patterns. Is that true? How many of you would say that is a fact

00:21:18.740 the science agrees with? Is it a fact that the heat wave we're seeing now is unprecedented and also

00:21:27.540 clearly because of climate change? I'm seeing a lot of no's go by in the comments. I think the answer

00:21:36.500 is no, right? I believe that the high temperatures have not been much higher than they have been

00:21:43.660 historically. But here's the catch. I think the winter temperatures are more mild. So there's a

00:21:54.400 book and an argument that I can't remember right now. Let me tell you the name of the book because

00:21:59.220 it would be deeply unfair to refer to this and not mention the actual book that I haven't read yet.

00:22:05.460 So let me see it. This is a book recommendation. This came through Joel Pollack, who just read this

00:22:16.920 book by Stephen Koonin, K-O-O-N-I-N. It's called Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us,

00:22:26.040 What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. So he's trying to use the existing data. So my understanding is that

00:22:33.440 he uses the existing databases, he's not making up his own data, and just coming at it at a

00:22:39.240 different angle. And apparently part of the argument is that the winters are getting more mild,

00:22:44.220 but the summers are not getting hotter. If that were true, climate change would be more good than bad,

00:22:51.980 right? I don't know if it's true, but that's the claim. So I haven't read that book, but I hear it's

00:22:58.180 good. Um, but more to the point, isn't it just fake news when CNN reports, well, clearly here's

00:23:09.020 climate change. That's fake news, right? Because the data doesn't indicate it or doesn't. Because

00:23:16.420 what I don't see is a bunch of climate scientists coming on TV and, um, okay, you can stop mentioning

00:23:25.120 Tony Heller. I've spent a lot of time interacting with Tony Heller and he is not credible. Now that

00:23:33.660 doesn't mean he's wrong about everything he says, but in general, he is not credible. And if you're

00:23:40.140 following him and buying everything he says, you're in deep trouble. Don't go down that path. I went down,

00:23:47.400 I went down that path pretty far myself. And once I saw, you know, the critics weigh in about his

00:23:54.740 analyses, it kind of falls apart. So, um, don't go down the, that path. Um, so I guess I'm waiting

00:24:05.400 to see some scientists come on CNN and tell, tell us that the data shows that something different is

00:24:12.600 happening now. Maybe they can, by the way, just an update. I'm not a climate change doubter.

00:24:21.440 I am a doubter about how bad it will be because I say, um, humans are good at, you know, adjusting

00:24:28.800 and correcting. And even the projections are not that bad. If you really look at the projections

00:24:34.820 of how much bad is going to happen in the future, it's actually not that bad. It's like a 10% hit on GDP

00:24:41.520 over 80 years, which you literally wouldn't even notice. Um, uh, why don't you be specific about

00:24:50.360 Heller? Well, I'm not going to be because, um, he's not, he doesn't rise to the level of

00:24:56.500 conversation. Meaning there, there are some things that maybe yes, maybe no. Take, take the issue of

00:25:04.300 ivermectin. Ivermectin is one of those things that's worth discussing, whichever way you go on

00:25:10.720 it, worth discussing. The, the Tony Heller analysis has been debunked to the point where it's not worthy

00:25:18.780 of discussion. Now, if you're not there, maybe you need to do your own research, but don't ask me to go

00:25:25.960 there because it didn't rise to the level of being worthy of discussion. It did at one point until I

00:25:32.340 discussed it to death and couldn't find a value in it. All right. Um, so here's a terrible thing

00:25:40.380 that's about to happen that nobody's talking about. So you're following the story of, uh,

00:25:45.340 Shakari, Shakari Richardson, the female sprinter who, uh, got tested positive for marijuana and is going

00:25:54.400 to be kicked off the hundred, is it the hundred meter sprint, which is her best, uh, event. Now,

00:26:01.720 the talk is that because there's a one month suspension and there's a difference in timing for

00:26:06.840 the different events that it is possible for her to be on the relay team. So I guess the relay race

00:26:14.920 happens later and her suspension would be done by then. So the thinking is that although she was not

00:26:21.900 going to be on the relay team originally, maybe she could be on the relay team, help them win because

00:26:27.480 she's fastest woman in the world, apparently, and that would all be good. Do you see any problem with

00:26:36.020 that theory? Does anybody have a concern about her being on the relay team? Exactly. Somebody would get

00:26:48.080 booted from the relay team. And here's the important part. The person who will get booted from the relay

00:26:55.720 race team didn't break any fucking rules, right? Now I'm, I'm very, um, I'm very solidly on the side

00:27:06.680 that says that she should be allowed to compete and they should immediately change the rule and wipe

00:27:13.360 away this marijuana thing, et cetera. So, so I think she should be allowed to compete period.

00:27:19.960 But whatever mistake was made was hers, right? Whoever this other person is, presumably some

00:27:29.540 woman who thinks or had a good chance of being on the team is going to get bumped off because

00:27:36.620 somebody else fucked up. Come on. If you're talking about an injustice, it is an injustice in my opinion

00:27:48.380 that somebody who trained all their life for the, the hundred meters sprint or whatever gets bumped

00:27:55.120 for marijuana. That's a, that's a deep injustice, but you're just screwing some other athlete if you

00:28:01.560 put her on the relay team when she wasn't supposed to be there. So this looks worse to me, much worse.

00:28:11.100 I mean, not even close. This is deeply unfair because you would literally be punishing somebody

00:28:17.120 who didn't do anything wrong so that the person who did something wrong could compete. There is no

00:28:24.000 way in hell this is okay. Am I the only one who has mentioned this so far? I haven't heard anybody

00:28:29.500 mentioned it in public, but I imagine somebody's going to mention it. All right. Um, have you seen

00:28:38.400 today's Dilbert comics that I, that I just, uh, tweeted out? So the latest two Dilbert comics are on the

00:28:47.120 subject of the boss and the Dilbert comic, uh, hired a, uh, hired a racist just so they'd have somebody

00:28:54.880 to fire in case the woke crowds came after them. And then today in the comic, the woke gangs came

00:29:02.320 after them. I call them the wokies, which I think you should adopt the wokies, the people who are

00:29:08.360 woke. So they come after Dilbert's company. And then, uh, here's, here's the, uh, text of this one

00:29:14.360 in case you missed it. And there's a point why I'm going to be talking about this comic. I'll get to

00:29:18.500 it. Um, and it goes like this, uh, Dilbert says to his boss, there's a mob of woke people surrounding

00:29:25.880 our building. They demand a human sacrifice. And then the boss says, fetch the spare racist I hired

00:29:33.120 for that purpose. And then the last panel, you see there, they're dangling the, the racist down the

00:29:38.460 window on a, on a pole. And, uh, the, the alleged racist is saying, I'm not a racist. Really? I'm not.

00:29:45.920 And then from inside the building, you can hear, he can't prove that. Now, regardless of whether you

00:29:52.960 think that's funny, not very funny when they're just spoken and not read, um, there is a Dilbert

00:30:00.200 effect, which might be important. And it goes like this in the nineties, the early nineties, those of

00:30:09.620 you who were around, remember that business books were huge. It seemed like every day there was a new

00:30:15.240 business book with a new great theory about excellence and passion and, uh, re-engineering

00:30:22.100 and all these things. And, and, and the thought was in the early nineties that if only you read the

00:30:27.800 right book and use the right systems, your, your company would be, you know, taken off and very

00:30:34.600 successful. Now, almost none of that was true, but it was generally believed to be true in the early

00:30:43.020 nineties that if, yeah, if you just stopped people from moving your cheese and use your excellence and

00:30:49.480 all that stuff, everything would be great. Do you know what happened to that market for business

00:30:55.380 books? Well, that market, um, happened to coincide with the rise of Dilbert. So Dilbert as a comic hit

00:31:04.580 its, um, hit its most famous stride, I would say in the mid to late nineties and it destroyed the

00:31:11.760 business book, um, business because Dilbert was the first, um, sort of high visibility mocking of

00:31:21.720 things that people sort of suspected should be mocked, but they didn't want to be the ones to do

00:31:26.580 it, right? You don't want to go first in case you, you get caught looking foolish, but I never mind

00:31:31.880 going first and looking foolish. So I went first. The entire market for business books was destroyed.

00:31:39.720 I think largely because of Dilbert, because you, you, you know, for example, that Elon Musk has a rule

00:31:46.580 for Tesla. The rule at Tesla is, and this is Elon Musk's published rule for Tesla, that if, if there's any

00:31:56.200 kind of a policy at Tesla that they can imagine would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it.

00:32:04.700 It's a very useful rule. If you think it would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it. Cause that's a,

00:32:11.820 that's a pretty good indicator that this should be mocked and not taken seriously. So we do know that,

00:32:19.040 uh, and I've received lots of information that companies have, um, altered their practices because

00:32:25.840 they either something appeared in a Dilbert comic or they didn't want it to cause it would be too

00:32:30.140 embarrassing. And when you see wokeness and corporate wokeness become a recurring theme in

00:32:39.720 the Dilbert comic, it's probably an indicator of a turning point. Now, not necessarily because

00:32:46.780 I'm causing it, although that's not impossible, but more because it's more of a canary in the

00:32:53.700 coal mine, sort of an early indication of, of a, of a transition. And, and, uh, I feel as if

00:33:04.360 wokeness may be peaking. Does it feel like that to you? You know, everything good and everything bad

00:33:10.900 seems to, you know, peak at some point and then decrease. I feel like it's once it's in a Dilbert

00:33:17.140 comic and people just laugh and there's nobody reading the comic and say, well, you know, but

00:33:23.240 really the wokeness is good. Nobody's going to read these comics and say, yeah, I get that you're

00:33:29.680 making fun of it, but gosh, you know, there's a lot of good stuff here too. So don't go too far

00:33:34.100 with mocking it. That's not happening. I think people are just laughing at it. And if you're

00:33:41.300 laughing at the wokeness from the wokies, um, it may be the beginning of the end. So we'll see.

00:33:50.740 Um, let's talk about all the fake news. There was a story today about a man in Austria who was bitten

00:33:58.640 by a, uh, a five and a quarter foot Python that was in his toilet. So the story says that this,

00:34:07.680 uh, man just sat on his toilet and a Python that had somehow reached his toilet through the pipes

00:34:16.800 was in his toilet, a five and a half foot Python, and it bit him in the genitals.

00:34:21.600 This story is actually in the news. Now put on your fake news thinking cap.

00:34:32.480 Is this true? Do you really think that an escaped Python climbed all the, all through the pipes

00:34:41.280 from some other place, climb through the pipes and came out into his toilet and waited. And when he

00:34:50.160 opened the toilet to use it, he didn't notice a five and a quarter foot Python in his toilet.

00:35:00.240 Now imagine, you know, how thick a Python probably is. Now imagine five and a quarter

00:35:09.040 feet of that wrapped up in a toilet bowl. I have to think that the head was probably already sitting

00:35:15.920 up above the level of the toilet. So here's my advice to you. If you're approaching a toilet

00:35:23.360 and you're about to sit on it, if there's a Python head looking at you from the place you plan to sit,

00:35:32.800 don't sit on that toilet. That's your advice for today. Well, I'm going to call this fake news. I do

00:35:39.840 not believe there was a Python in the toilet. No, I don't. It's an excellent story. But between us,

00:35:50.320 there was no Python in the toilet. I feel pretty confident there was never a Python in the toilet.

00:35:57.440 Or at least if there was, it didn't get there by crawling through any pipes.

00:36:01.200 All right, here's some more fake news about fake news. Did you see the story? I think it was yesterday.

00:36:09.760 There was an executive who used to work for Fox News, who said some bad things about Fox News.

00:36:17.440 It was a big story. And then Richard Grinnell points out that this executive from Fox News

00:36:24.400 quit in 1997. So the executive who was in the news for saying that Fox News had problems left in 1997.

00:36:39.280 And that fact was not in the stories. It took Richard Grinnell's tweet to surface that. Are you

00:36:48.160 freaking kidding me? Somebody who hasn't worked there since 1997 had a strong opinion about what

00:36:55.200 it's like there now and wanted us all to know? Is there anything that this person could add that you

00:37:02.160 couldn't know yourself just by watching TV? This is the most bullshit fake news story I've seen since

00:37:09.200 the Python in the toilet. Um, how about some more, uh, some more news? So true story on the 4th of July,

00:37:23.200 Christina said to me, you know, if you were going to murder somebody, a great time to do it would be

00:37:29.200 the 4th of July because people would think the gunshots were just fireworks. To which I said,

00:37:36.240 I'm a little bit disturbed at how much time you put into murdering people and getting away with it.

00:37:42.160 Because I feel like I might be on that list if you know what I mean. Um, so aside from the fact

00:37:48.480 that it's disturbing that my wife is considering murder and watches every CSI and crime movie,

00:37:54.400 uh, that's ever been made, she's become quite an expert at killing people and getting away with it.

00:38:00.320 I don't know if she's ever done it, but if she does, she'll get away with it.

00:38:04.480 But, uh, here's my point. It turns out the CNN is reporting that, uh, over the 4th of July weekend,

00:38:13.440 150 people were killed by gun violence and more than 400 shootings across the country.

00:38:21.680 What? On one weekend? On one weekend? There were 400 shootings?

00:38:36.320 Now, I knew gun violence was a problem. Did you know it was this bad? Now, I don't know if anybody

00:38:45.920 got shot in my town, so it feels like it didn't affect me directly. But, really? 400 shootings?

00:38:55.120 Now, I ask you, how many of this was because the fireworks were happening?

00:38:59.840 How many of these 150 people who were killed were killed around the time the fireworks were going

00:39:06.560 off? You know, say, nine o'clock at night and after? I feel like there might be people who are

00:39:12.560 literally taking this, this technique and putting it in practice and literally killing people on 4th of

00:39:19.120 July. I'm going to hide on the 4th of July next year. So, Britney Spears, um, looks like she's going

00:39:27.200 to be retiring, uh, unless her conservatorship gets, uh, removed. Because she doesn't want to be working

00:39:35.440 and just having somebody else be able to manage the money, which makes perfect sense to me. Now,

00:39:41.680 I have a few questions. Number one, uh, we hear in the news today that her attorney until 2019

00:39:49.440 was named Andrew Wallet. His last name is spelled exactly like the wallet you have in your back pocket

00:39:58.080 that has money. Here's my advice to you. Never hire an attorney whose last name is wallet.

00:40:10.720 I'm just saying it's sort of a red flag, right? Just don't do it. If the name is a wallet, walk away.

00:40:18.880 All right. So here's my questions about Britney Spears. I like that she's starting to play hardball

00:40:26.080 because a number of people only get paid if she works and she's going to stop working to put some

00:40:33.040 pressure on the conservatorship. Probably a good strategy. But let me ask you this. I know there

00:40:39.680 are always lawyers watching this. Let's say I'm Britney Spears and let's say I'm subject to a conservatorship.

00:40:48.880 Can I, can I go to a promoter and say, Hey promoter, I'm in a conservatorship,

00:40:54.800 but if you don't mind and I don't mind, can we sign a deal? Can, can Britney Spears go sign a deal

00:41:03.120 with her name on it to do a performance with somebody who says, yeah, and I'll pay you any

00:41:08.640 way you want to be paid. You just tell me where the money goes and I'll give it to you. And then

00:41:13.680 Britney says, for example, Oh, I'd like it in crypto. Can the conservatorship get at it?

00:41:20.080 Because remember, Britney did not agree to the conservatorship. She's just a citizen.

00:41:29.040 Can that citizen make a private deal with another citizen?

00:41:35.380 I'm seeing Fred say her signature has no standing, but does that matter if the other person respects it?

00:41:43.660 So I hear what you're saying. And I don't know if that's legally true, but let's, let's take the assumption that

00:41:49.880 she's not allowed to do business deals because she's under a conservatorship, which feels like that's probably true.

00:41:57.380 Right. But that only matters if the person she makes the deal with recognizes the conservatorship and respects it.

00:42:06.500 So say she goes to somebody and says, look, you know, uh, I want to beat this conservatorship.

00:42:13.040 How about you and I do a deal? My signature won't mean anything, but yours does. So you're going to sign

00:42:20.320 something that says you'll pay me if I perform. I'll perform. You pay wherever I tell you to pay me.

00:42:27.780 In this case, I'm going to say, send crypto to my wallet. What happens if the conservatorship says,

00:42:35.500 Hey, Whitney, Hey, Brittany, that crypto money belongs in the conservatorship. And Brittany says,

00:42:42.820 yes, it does. It totally does. Good luck with that. Cause you don't know my wallet and you can't get

00:42:49.620 at it. What would happen? I don't know. All right. Let me give you another, um, another one. Let's say a,

00:43:01.780 let's say Brittany teams up with somebody she can trust. I'm going to put myself in the story

00:43:08.080 just cause it needs a third party. So let's say Brittany says, Scott, I trust you, but I don't

00:43:15.360 trust my conservatorship. So here's the thing. Why don't you make a deal with the venue that I'm going

00:43:21.520 to perform at? And they will pay you. I'll perform because nobody can stop me from driving

00:43:27.820 places and performing. So I'll perform and I won't even sign a contract. They'll just give the money

00:43:33.380 to you. I will trust you to give that money to me in some fashion. Is that legal? Could she do that?

00:43:42.980 That's a straw man. Yeah. And it would be, you know, quite explicitly to beat the conservatorship,

00:43:50.800 but would it work? How much power does the conservatorship have to, to claw back things

00:43:58.260 that maybe get out of their bounds? The conservatorship would sue.

00:44:05.680 Interesting. That sounds right. I don't know if it's right, but if the conservatorship sued her,

00:44:11.780 hmm, but would that work? What if they, what if they sued her and won? And they said, yeah,

00:44:20.180 you got to give us this crypto. And then she just doesn't. What would happen?

00:44:26.980 Yeah. So these are the questions. At the very least, she could push the question. Let me tell you

00:44:33.160 what I would do. If I, if I were Brittany, I would put every kind of pressure on the system that I could.

00:44:39.500 I would try to break it. I would try to go around it. I would try to get allies. I would hire lawyers

00:44:46.620 through the, through the wazoo. I mean, I would just attack it from every single angle in every

00:44:52.340 possible way. And I would try to beat it and challenge them to unbeat it. In other words,

00:44:58.740 in other words, I would find a way to get the money directly or indirectly. And then I would challenge

00:45:03.060 them to get it away from me, make them work for it. Because especially, especially if they get some

00:45:10.040 kind of a co-conservatorship and it's not just her dad, I don't know how hard anybody's going to work

00:45:14.800 to get that money. Would the co-conservatorship sue her? Let's say the, apparently the professional

00:45:22.900 conservators quit. So I think at this point it's only her dad, but if she had succeeded in having

00:45:30.700 a co-conservatorship with professionals, do you think those professionals would have sued Brittany

00:45:37.500 for making a side deal and making some money? I don't think so. They might quit, but I don't think

00:45:46.420 they would sue her for trying to beat the conservatorship that even they don't think is

00:45:51.720 valid because they quit. I would push everything. I would pull out all the stops. If I were Brittany,

00:46:01.820 I would destroy, I would just lay waste to everything and everybody. I wouldn't take any prisoners.

00:46:10.180 I would go on full, full offense and I would not stop. I would destroy the lives of any

00:46:16.400 who was keeping me in the conservatorship. Let me say that again. I would destroy the lives

00:46:22.760 of anybody who kept me in the conservatorship under those conditions, the same conditions that Brittany's

00:46:28.960 under. I would destroy anybody. I would be hiring people to, you know, dig into their lives, whatever's

00:46:35.880 legal. I mean, I wouldn't do anything illegal, but oh my God, I would go hard at those people.

00:46:41.620 I would make her father live the rest of his fucking life in court. I would just sue him for

00:46:48.640 everything. I would just start making up stuff and say, okay, gonna sue you for this. Gonna sue you for

00:46:54.060 this. Gonna sue you for this. Sue you for this. I would just sue the fuck out of him every goddamn day.

00:47:00.540 Sorry. I know you don't like that phrase. And she would have the whole world on her side. I mean,

00:47:08.000 the whole world is on her side. She needs to put the pressure on. And so we're, we're backing her

00:47:12.860 completely, I think. Another fake news. The, there was a story that the U.S. women's soccer team

00:47:21.020 turned their back on some veteran who was playing the harmonica for the, um, the pledge of, not the

00:47:28.600 pledge of allegiance, the national anthem. But it's fake news. Uh, there is video of the teammates,

00:47:35.920 some facing one way and some facing the other, but some of them had turned to face a flag and some of

00:47:42.700 them didn't know. And it had nothing to do with the guy with the harmonica. So that's just fake news,

00:47:48.540 fake news. Um, and that is your live stream for today. Probably the best one you've ever seen in

00:47:59.860 your whole life. We do need, uh, to get back to some really good stories because it seems the summer

00:48:06.600 is not when the good stuff happens. Um, here's a question. Have you considered reading, listening

00:48:15.860 to Norm MacDonald's wonderful novel? Well, I've been asked that a number of times. Now I'm a huge

00:48:21.920 Norm MacDonald fan. Uh, I watch all of his YouTube clips, probably at least once a week. I watch a bunch

00:48:29.700 of, uh, Norm MacDonald clips. Uh, so I would imagine that his book is very good, but I haven't, haven't

00:48:36.780 read it. Um, Dilbert represents, illustrates the Kafka trap. Yeah, we've been hearing a lot about that

00:48:45.260 lately. I forget what it is though. Have a Weinstein on please. Um, I know why you're asking,

00:48:54.560 but it wouldn't give you what you want. And I've said this before. The problem with the world

00:49:02.520 is one expert talking on TV or a podcast. That's not the solution. That's the problem. So I'm not

00:49:10.820 going to be part of the problem by bringing on the one expert and then you hear what they say

00:49:16.480 and it doesn't have to be an expert. It could be just bunded, whatever. Uh, and then you don't have

00:49:21.280 a counterpoint that's useless. It would make things worse, not better. Now, if I could host some kind

00:49:29.260 of content where there were people on opposing sides and I didn't have a time limit and I could

00:49:36.240 interrupt them and say, Hey, what about this? And you didn't answer that question. And you know,

00:49:40.540 how about this data? If I could do that, then any topic where there's controversy would be

00:49:46.200 great. In fact, I'd love to do that. Uh, I need a little better technology set up to be able to do

00:49:51.640 that. So sometime soon, I think I can, I can. Um, yeah, it would be awesome. And I would be

00:50:01.720 pretty good at it if I do say so myself. Uh, that used to be a TV show. Did it? I don't remember a TV

00:50:11.320 show like that. Um, Weinstein spent some time, I'm reading a locals comment here on his podcast last

00:50:21.900 week talking about Scott. Oh, I didn't know that. Um, I hope it was in a useful way. Uh,

00:50:32.860 Jerry Springer. Um, why is your audio so good today? Well, as I said earlier, um, the audio is random

00:50:43.060 on YouTube. So I'm using the same setup that I know works, but some people will experience low

00:50:50.080 audio and some people won't. And it has nothing to do with what I'm doing. Apparently it's a YouTube

00:50:54.640 bug of some sort. Um, no, I've, I threw away the, so the device that required batteries, I will never

00:51:02.480 use again because, uh, I was testing it, but I knew right away that if it required batteries,

00:51:08.560 I was going to run into trouble and I did. So that technology is dead to me. Um, it would be good

00:51:15.840 technology if you're just practicing and recording, because then if you have a bad battery, it's not

00:51:20.680 the worst thing in the world, but you can't do a live stream and depend on your batteries. Um,

00:51:27.080 all right. I love locals broadcast in the background. Um, do you hold the same animosity

00:51:37.920 toward police unions as you do toward teachers unions? Um, no, because they're different.

00:51:47.200 So the question is, do I rail against, uh, police unions the same as I rail against teachers unions?

00:51:54.320 Well, here's the difference. The, the police unions have some issues, right? They're protecting

00:51:59.880 police and maybe overprotecting them, but it is sort of their job. They are, they are a counterbalance

00:52:07.380 against, you know, uh, management abusing the employees. So, you know, it's a, it's a productive

00:52:14.400 kind of a tension, I would say, but I don't see the police being a gigantic problem in general.

00:52:23.400 Um, there are definitely police abuses and maybe the police unions are making it a little easier for

00:52:30.480 that to happen in a variety of ways. That could be an argument, but when you look at the teachers

00:52:35.800 unions, they're destroying generations of kids and they're the biggest form of institutional racism,

00:52:43.580 period, by far, not even close to anything else. So the teachers unions are destroying civilization.

00:52:51.760 The police unions are maybe protecting some bad cops sometimes in some situations. Those are not

00:52:58.320 comparable. One is destroying civilization and one gets a few people killed. That is tragic,

00:53:06.700 but it's not a civilization ending problem. Um, have I seen the John Hopkins war game? No, I haven't.

00:53:19.040 All right. Um, that's it for YouTube. I'm going to talk to the locals crowd for a little bit before I go

00:53:27.320 and I will see you YouTubers tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 06, 2021

Episode 1428 Scott Adams： Fake News About Fake Science and Delicious Coffee Too

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