Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1454 Scott Adams： Trump is in Trouble. Again. Virus Stupidity Rages. And More Fun

00:00:00.000 All right. Here we are. Good morning, everybody. It's the best time of the day again.

00:00:06.780 Yeah. Sometimes you think to yourself, well, I don't know if it's going to be the best time,

00:00:11.460 but today, totally. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank gel,

00:00:15.920 a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid,

00:00:21.380 not your second favorite liquid. That would be insanity. And join me now for the unparalleled

00:00:27.260 pleasure. The dopamine of the day, nay, the week. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens

00:00:33.740 now. Go. Yes, Jostdorf, this is the Dilbert guy. But don't hold that against me. You say

00:00:46.000 contrast is good, but pointing out hypocrisy isn't pointing out... Yeah, you can point out

00:00:52.520 somebody asked me a question about hypocrisy versus contrast. Hypocrisy never convinces

00:00:57.880 anybody. Because if you say to somebody, hey, you blamed me for doing X, but you did X last

00:01:06.080 year. Are they going to stop blaming you? It's never worked in the history of the world.

00:01:11.260 But contrast works. They're just different things. To answer your question. Well, the New York

00:01:17.980 Times is in the news twice today, both for fake news. Now, I'm not saying it's fake news.

00:01:27.500 I'll let you judge. But if you're the New York Times and you yourself are in the news twice,

00:01:34.520 and both times it's for spreading potentially fake news, that's not a good day. Washington Post

00:01:42.260 is getting a little pushback, too. I'll tell you about that. So the New York Times had this

00:01:47.620 headline. Breaking news. I think this was yesterday. The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox

00:01:54.360 and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal CDC report said.

00:02:02.680 So that's pretty bad. New York Times paper of record telling us this new variant is as contagious

00:02:09.940 as chickenpox and may spread just as easily if you're vaccinated. Wow. Pretty bad, isn't

00:02:16.040 it? All right. Here's what a spokesperson for the Biden administration, who's a spokesperson

00:02:22.560 on the the COVID stuff, I guess. Ben Wakana, not from Wakanda, but Wakana. He said vaccinated

00:02:31.720 people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people. And if you fail to

00:02:38.100 include that context, you're doing it wrong. That's right. The Biden administration just

00:02:45.020 called out the New York Times for fake news. And really, really big fake news. This is the

00:02:51.220 kind of fake news that kills people. Let me say that again. This is the kind of fake news

00:02:56.360 that kills people. Because it's reporting that whether you get vaccinated or not, the difference

00:03:02.980 is less than you thought it would be. Because you can still get it and still transmit it. Now,

00:03:09.500 it turns out that that's just not true. The what does seem to be true is that you could have

00:03:15.080 the same amount of virus in you, in your nose and your mouth. But apparently, the rate of actually

00:03:22.060 transmitting it to other people is not even close. If you're vaccinated, you don't transmit it.

00:03:26.580 But how is that possible? How is it possible that you could be vaccinated, have the same

00:03:33.220 amount of virus in your nose and your mouth, which is presumably where it gets out, and you

00:03:39.060 don't spread it? But the person right next to you who's unvaccinated with exactly the same

00:03:45.220 amount of virus is spreading it? How do you explain any of that? Well, I asked this question

00:03:52.800 on Twitter just moments ago. I haven't seen the answer yet. But I asked this. One of the things

00:03:58.440 we know about people who have COVID symptoms is that they don't know their lungs are degrading.

00:04:06.240 And so people just breathe deeper and harder to compensate for the fact that their lungs are

00:04:11.820 as efficient. But they don't necessarily know they're doing it. So here's the question. If you're

00:04:17.340 vaccinated, you've got a bunch of virus in you, but it's giving you no symptoms,

00:04:21.680 presumably your breathing would be the same as normal. But the person right next to you who

00:04:27.500 has no vaccination, they have the same amount of virus. But presumably, if their if their lungs

00:04:33.660 are affected, they might be breathing 40% harder than you are, and not even know it. Because

00:04:40.320 apparently that's a real thing. People don't know they're compensating. So I would think that how

00:04:45.300 hard you breathe has some effect. I don't know if that's the whole story or any of the story. But

00:04:51.100 we do need to know why a vaccinated person wouldn't spread it as much as a vaccine as unvaccinated.

00:05:01.800 Retracted study from India using a vaccine we don't permit. Yeah. So then one part of the study

00:05:09.620 was from India, looking at an Indian vaccination that we don't even allow in the United States.

00:05:15.920 So that doesn't count. And then I guess in the one cluster and where was it province town or

00:05:22.660 something? Zero people died. Which is pretty important, right? Zero people died. That should

00:05:32.240 be the story. The story should be there was a mass breakout and nobody died. That seems pretty

00:05:39.580 important. All right. So that's the first thing that the New York Times reported in a way that's

00:05:46.600 misleading. I'm not going to say they get a fact wrong. I'll say that they reported it in in a way

00:05:51.720 that's so misleading. It's basically fake news, according to the Biden administration. Now, I don't

00:05:57.000 think the Biden administration calls out the New York Times unless they really mean it, right? Because

00:06:03.120 it's sort of a friendly publication. So they must be pretty serious about it. Well, the other news is

00:06:09.300 that there's some handwritten notes from the time of the January 6th event in which Trump allegedly told

00:06:16.900 Attorney General Rosen, quote, according to some handwritten notes at the time, just say the

00:06:23.780 election was corrupt and leave the rest to me. So the interpretation is that Trump was trying to

00:06:30.440 get his Department of Justice to claim without the benefit of any evidence that the election was

00:06:36.900 corrupt and that, quote, he would do the rest. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? It's right here in the New

00:06:44.540 York Times. Sounds pretty bad. But as Margot Cleveland and I think other people, this is just somebody I saw

00:06:53.480 on Twitter, have noted that there's some ambiguity about what he meant. Surprise! Somebody talking about

00:07:04.160 a conversation with Trump and there's some ambiguity about what he said or what he meant. Surprise! Right?

00:07:10.980 And what is the ambiguity? The ambiguity is it looks like what Trump was saying was conditional,

00:07:18.680 meaning look into the allegations. If you believe the allegations are credible, then call the election

00:07:27.620 corrupt and that's all you need to do. Now, is that illegal? Is it illegal for the president to say,

00:07:37.140 if you find a problem, say it publicly? What's the problem with that? If you see a problem,

00:07:45.000 say it publicly and then I'll handle the rest. But the fake news leaves out the conditional part

00:07:52.840 because that's a little ambiguous from the notes. Was it conditional on them finding something or do

00:07:59.680 you think, just ask yourself how likely this is. Do you think it's likely that Trump asked somebody who

00:08:07.940 could clearly talk to the press, somebody who would write their own memoir someday, somebody who was

00:08:13.720 connected to tons of people who would talk, do you think that Trump said to somebody who would

00:08:19.600 clearly leak it someday, I'd like you to lie about the election and say it was corrupt? Do you think he

00:08:27.060 did that? To me, that sounds insanely unlikely. You know, Trump got this far not by telling people

00:08:37.000 who could talk about it later to do illegal shit. I just don't think he does that. There's no history 0.99

00:08:44.460 of that. Now, there might be history of people doing things sketchily. There may be, you know, God knows

00:08:50.680 what has ever happened or whoever's done what. But is there any history of Trump telling somebody to do

00:08:58.340 something illegal? I think no. I think no. And to imagine that a sitting president would tell somebody

00:09:07.600 who definitely is going to tell other people to do something that illegal or, I don't know, maybe it's

00:09:14.140 more unethical than illegal. I don't know what law would specifically be broken by that. But it's just so

00:09:20.460 unlikely. You would have to start with the assumption that Trump is, you know, reckless and crazy and lost his 0.99

00:09:29.340 mind for him to have said that. So I'm going to say that in all likelihood, that's fake news. And I guess the 0.98

00:09:36.860 Washington Post was part of that fake news triad, too. So, or duo. Yes, and now apparently Congress is going to

00:09:50.160 get Trump's tax returns. You want to make a prediction about what's in Trump's tax returns?

00:09:57.840 In the comments, let's see your predictions. Give me your predictions for Trump's tax returns.

00:10:07.520 And I want to see, I'm seeing, I'll just read your predictions. Nothing, nothing, nothing of

00:10:13.220 consequence. Nothing illegal. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nope. There we go. One of you got it

00:10:23.600 right. It's going to be two movies on one screen. Guaranteed. It doesn't matter what's actually in

00:10:30.360 the taxes. I think we all know that that's not going to make a difference. What will matter is what

00:10:36.120 the people say is in the taxes. And most of the public won't read the taxes themselves, because they

00:10:41.380 wouldn't know what they're seeing anyway. So some part of the press will say, we found

00:10:46.140 the smoking gun of horrible, horrible behavior. Who knows what that is? But they're going to

00:10:52.020 say they found it. The people on the right, people who would support Trump, are going to

00:10:56.960 say, no, you didn't. We're looking at the same tax returns. There's nothing there. Or there's

00:11:02.720 nothing clear. There might be something that's ambiguous. But there's no clear indication of

00:11:07.920 anything that's a problem. Do you want to bet against me? Does anybody want to take the

00:11:14.480 opposite bet and bet that we'll have a clear outcome? No. There isn't the slightest chance

00:11:23.720 we'll have a clear outcome. Here's how you can predict this. You can predict it because it's

00:11:29.020 a complicated subject. That's it. If it's complicated, you know the public can't check it themselves.

00:11:35.600 So the press can just say any freaking thing they want about it. And people will say, well,

00:11:41.080 I'm not going to check the tax returns myself. But the Daily Beast said there's something bad

00:11:46.840 in there. So what are you going to do? Yes, as James is saying here, the appearance of

00:11:54.840 impropriety. You're going to get all kinds of stories about what if. But what if this indication

00:12:03.940 of revenue is connected to something bad? There's no evidence of it. But what if? What if this

00:12:12.080 is telling us something bad? Or how about this raises a red flag? There's no evidence of anything

00:12:19.620 bad. But it raised the flag. There's a flag. So I feel like it's going to be endless options

00:12:28.000 for the anti-Trumpers to just run stories of generalities and vagueness and innuendo and

00:12:36.300 accusation. So if the IRS hasn't found a problem yet, an illegal problem, and apparently there's

00:12:44.680 no suggestion that they have, what are the odds there is a problem? What are the odds? And if there

00:12:51.380 is a problem, it's usually something that the accounting firm takes care of. What if Trump

00:13:01.980 paid little or no taxes? Isn't that baked in? Would you want a president who did not take

00:13:09.500 advantage of the tax laws the way they're written? Not really, right? Would you want a president

00:13:16.060 who paid millions of dollars extra in taxes that were not necessary if that president had

00:13:22.740 simply followed the existing laws of taxes and took the advice of accountants? So if he

00:13:29.920 paid no taxes, it's just going to look like he knows what he's doing and he has good accountants.

00:13:35.200 I just don't think that's going to hurt him. I mean, they'll make something of it, but it

00:13:38.720 won't. It won't be a difference. All right, let's talk about hospital risk. Why are we not

00:13:45.360 seeing evening reporting on how impacted our hospitals are and where they're headed? Why

00:13:52.540 is that? Is it because it's hard to gather? It would be hard, but not without, you know,

00:13:59.200 I think you could check the top 10, you know, hospitals and top 10 metropolitan areas and you'd

00:14:05.380 have a pretty good idea what's going on. So why don't we see that reported? Is it because

00:14:11.620 that's no longer a goal? Do we not have a worry about the hospitals? Because I feel as if once

00:14:20.820 you have half the country vaccinated and it's mostly the people who get the sickest are the 1.00

00:14:25.380 vaccinated ones. Do we have any risk? Is there any risk going forward that the coronavirus will

00:14:32.120 crash our hospitals for more than, you know, say a week or something? I feel like there's no risk.

00:14:38.080 Is there? Or it's so small that it's just not a national problem. So I don't know the answer

00:14:45.280 to that, but if there's anybody who could put some numbers on that and tell me where we're

00:14:51.380 headed, because I feel like the public should know that. It's a pretty important thing.

00:14:55.420 Just skipping topics here for a moment. I guess Iran used a drone to attack some Israeli billionaires

00:15:04.840 tanker in the Gulf. And it's a retaliation for something that Israel did militarily against

00:15:12.460 Iranian assets. And I'm thinking to myself, they really pick just the right targets, don't they? 1.00

00:15:19.100 Because it wasn't an Israeli flagship, but it belonged to an Israeli billionaire. So how much

00:15:28.180 is Israel going to retaliate for something that wasn't really against Israel's country? And

00:15:34.000 there weren't any Israeli citizens on the ship, probably, or certainly none got killed. So

00:15:40.800 it's just the right amount of provocation. And Iran must be running out of things they can attack 0.90

00:15:50.060 that will not invite full-scale retaliation. It's like they have to do something. We've got

00:15:55.920 to do something. Not that it would make any difference. Do you think Israel is going to 0.97

00:16:00.900 change their policies because a tanker got hit with a drone? No. So is it just for show?

00:16:08.840 Or is it just for internal politics? Or I don't know why they're bothering to do it. It doesn't

00:16:13.580 seem to be helping. Well, there's an ER doctor. Alex Busco wrote an article. I think this was in CNN.

00:16:23.040 And he notes that, you know, he works in the ER. And he says 40% of Americans still remain

00:16:31.260 unvaccinated. But 99.2% of deaths are among the unvaccinated. 99.2% are unvaccinated.

00:16:44.040 So, and apparently people in ER, when they're, you know, close to death's door, because I've heard

00:16:52.700 this in another story. So this is two anecdotal reports. Don't put too much weight on anecdotal stuff.

00:16:59.640 But I've seen two reports of doctors who say that dying patients ask for the vaccine. And they

00:17:08.200 don't understand that the vaccine is to prevent it, not to fix it. Although I think it's being

00:17:14.800 tested to fix it, isn't it? But that seems like it wouldn't work. I don't know, just guessing.

00:17:22.300 So do you think it's true that there are people who think they can wait until they're at death's

00:17:28.560 door to get the vaccine? And that that's why they're waiting? Is there anybody out there who

00:17:34.040 says, you know, I don't want to get the vaccination just in case, but I'll get the vaccination after

00:17:40.140 I'm sick, and then I'll be fine. I doubt it. I mean, but so this doctor says, quote, basically

00:17:52.300 he's complaining about the massive ignorance of his own patients. He actually used that word

00:17:58.380 ignorance. He goes, many of my patients exhibit stunning levels of ignorance when it comes to

00:18:04.780 this disease and the vaccine. If you looked at a chart of people who say they don't want to get

00:18:12.400 the vaccine, even if it's proven to be safe. What percentage of the public doesn't want to get

00:18:21.400 the vaccine? Well, if you look at Republicans, at least back in December, so this is several months

00:18:27.420 old now. But back in December, 42% of Republicans said they wouldn't get the vaccination, even if

00:18:34.200 everything looked good. Rural Americans, 35% said no. Black adults said 35% said no. But among

00:18:45.620 vast other groups, white and Hispanic, adult males, etc., it's about 25% of the country.

00:18:55.200 So if you take out Republicans and black adults and rural, about 25% of what's left don't want 0.93

00:19:06.820 the vaccination. Now, is that the way to measure this? Do you think it's fair to try to figure

00:19:16.800 out how many black people don't want the vaccination versus how many Republicans versus how many anything

00:19:23.640 else? Does that seem fair? That that's the way we're slicing this? Because the way you decide to

00:19:30.000 categorize things is going to help you with your decision making, right? So if you categorize things

00:19:35.580 wrong, maybe you don't make the right decisions. Here's how I do it. By education level.

00:19:45.100 Yeah, think about it. Suppose instead of saying how many Republicans or black people got vaccinated or

00:19:51.440 wanted to, you simply reported it by education level, what do you think would happen? Do you think

00:19:59.120 you would find, somebody says that, do IQ? Trouble with IQ is that you can't get to it. You know,

00:20:06.760 people don't know their IQs, etc. So you could use education level as a rough proxy for IQ,

00:20:13.540 which it is. It's a rough proxy. So suppose the only reporting was how informed you are or how

00:20:24.000 educated you are. Suppose, let me ask this of those of you who decide to get unvaccinated.

00:20:31.980 First of all, while I'm doing this, could you tell me in the comments how many of you watching this

00:20:36.940 have decided to not get vaccinated? So I just want to see, you know, how many people who are

00:20:43.900 watching this now are in that category. Okay, so watch, watch the comments go by. You'll see quite

00:20:49.220 a few people who are not getting vaccinated. So this is a question to you.

00:20:56.420 Question to you. If you knew that the most educated and high IQ people were getting vaccinated,

00:21:04.300 would it change your opinion? If you knew the smartest, most informed people were getting

00:21:12.100 vaccinated? Now, most of you are saying no. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

00:21:18.880 So why is that? Can you explain? I know it's hard in the comments because the comments are short, but

00:21:24.240 could you explain why you would not be influenced by all the smartest people getting the vaccination?

00:21:31.140 I'm not saying you should. I'm just looking, I'm just wondering about your thinking. So I'm not

00:21:36.360 trying to influence you. I'm curious. That's not how we make decisions, right? You don't want to

00:21:43.560 look at the smart people to make your decisions. Now, can you give me an example in history where the

00:21:50.200 least smart people made the best decisions? All right. And that's a, by the way, that's a serious

00:21:59.560 question. I don't even know the answer to it. Usually I ask questions where I kind of know the

00:22:04.420 answer, but I'm not leading the witness this time. Give me an example. Let's say in the United States

00:22:11.360 and the past 20 years. So United States, past 20 years. How many decisions did the smartest people

00:22:23.580 get wrong while the dumbest people got it right? Can you give me some examples? Somebody says Iraq. I don't know 0.97

00:22:32.660 that the data would show that. Would it? I don't know. About Hunter Biden selling art. I don't know. The war in

00:22:42.160 Iraq. I don't know that that's ever been studied. Have we ever looked at the difference between education level and

00:22:50.000 support for the war in Iraq? I doubt we've seen that. War on drugs. Huh. That would be interesting. 0.60

00:23:01.020 Are you saying that the dumb people, not the dumb people, but you're saying that the most educated 0.99

00:23:08.220 people thought the war on drugs was good? I don't know that the evidence would suggest that. 0.98

00:23:14.220 Climate change? Well, climate change is a tricky one because it assumes that you know the right

00:23:22.440 answer. We don't. You know, I think with climate change you still have to play the odds. You know,

00:23:29.780 it's not a yes-no situation. You have to play the odds on that one. So I don't think you can use

00:23:34.260 that one. Wokeness? Oh, that's a pretty good example. Yeah, the wokeness would be an example 1.00

00:23:41.180 where the high education people think it's a good idea, and it's obviously not. But I

00:23:50.520 don't know if research would back that up. But anyway, if Rasmussen or somebody wants to

00:23:57.000 do a poll to show us if the most educated and informed people are getting vaccinated more

00:24:04.140 than other people, I would be interested to know. Now, I'm not saying you should make your

00:24:07.980 decision based on that. But wouldn't you want to know? I'd want to know. Food pyramid

00:24:14.180 and trans fats. No, that's just an example of smart people being wrong. That's not an example 0.85

00:24:21.360 of all the dumb people knew that the pyramid was wrong. Teachers unions? I don't see that 0.99

00:24:28.280 point. Yeah. All right. So that's just my point. I just put that out there. When do you believe

00:24:34.740 the experts? And when do you believe the smart people who are well-informed? And when do you

00:24:40.040 side with the dumb people? You know, do you ever feel exposed and maybe a little bit? 1.00

00:24:50.600 Well, let's put it this way. If you take the same side as the most educated and well-informed

00:24:55.700 people and you're wrong, because, you know, you could be wrong, at least you don't look

00:25:02.000 dumb, because at least you're on the side of all the smart people and, you know, you

00:25:05.700 don't get them all right. So that's not the most embarrassing thing. But suppose the smart 0.99

00:25:10.300 people were on one side and the dumb people were on another side of whatever the issue 0.99

00:25:15.160 is. And you sided with the dumb people and you knew it. You knew it. And then it turns 1.00

00:25:21.520 out that the dumb people were wrong, as you might expect dumb people to be, you know, 1.00

00:25:26.860 more often than not. So how would you feel about that? If you sided with the dumb people, 0.99

00:25:32.060 you knew you were doing it, and then they turned out to be wrong. Yeah, I'm seeing lots 1.00

00:25:38.420 of, lots of examples encounter. Somebody says religion. Yeah. Again, you're assuming you

00:25:45.860 know the right answer. I guess the problem is that a lot of these issues we don't know for

00:25:49.920 sure or agree on what was the right issue. So you'd have to have a topic where somehow

00:25:56.200 we all agreed what was the right issue in the end. I don't know if there are any. So

00:26:00.820 there are two lawsuits very similar happening now in Hollywood. So Gerard Butler is suing

00:26:06.940 his producers for his movies Olympia, Olympus has fallen for $10 million because he had a

00:26:12.660 deal where he would get money at the, based on the profits of the movie on top of his pay

00:26:18.820 for being in it. And they, allegedly, the Hollywood accounting is making it look like he has no

00:26:26.200 profits, when in fact there are lots of profits, but they're giving him none. So he's suing them.

00:26:32.020 At the same time, Black Widow star Johansson is doing something similar because her movie would give

00:26:40.060 her lots of money from the box office. But because of COVID, they streamed it instead. And the streaming

00:26:47.100 revenue was not in her contract in the same way. So because it got streamed, she got cut

00:26:53.240 out of, she says, a whole bunch of money that would have come her way. Now, here's my take

00:26:59.660 on both of them. They have really bad lawyers. Because what kind of a bad lawyer lets a contract

00:27:09.480 go out that says that the producers of the studio could make money in some way, and then she doesn't, 1.00

00:27:17.120 the star. If the whole point was that she's going to share in the profits, you've got to have a bad

00:27:23.040 lawyer to say, my star will share in the profits, but only certain ones. That's crazy. That's like the

00:27:32.700 worst lawyering I've ever heard. The lawyer should say that my client will share in the profits no 0.71

00:27:40.240 matter how they are generated. That's it. No matter how they're generated. If he didn't put that in

00:27:45.660 there, yeah, or agents, right? The agents and the lawyers are sort of the same thing in a sense.

00:27:53.140 And then with Gerard Butler, let me tell you how this went when I negotiated my Dilbert TV

00:28:01.440 contract. So I was working with one of the top lawyers in the industry. Very experienced top

00:28:08.300 lawyer who knows how everything works. And when I got to the point where I was negotiating the money I

00:28:13.820 would make on the extra profits, my lawyer basically said, it doesn't matter what you put

00:28:20.100 in there, you're not getting a penny. That's what my lawyer told me. Doesn't matter what you write

00:28:25.460 there. They're going to game the accounting so you don't get anything. So you should make your

00:28:32.280 deal with the assumption that there's no money at the end, even if your contract says there's money

00:28:37.120 at the end. Because they will find a way to rig the accounting to make it look like there was no

00:28:44.800 profit when in fact there was lots. Now that's exactly what's happening. The Dilbert

00:28:49.520 animated show from years ago still runs on a number of platforms. And how much profit do I

00:28:55.780 get? Zero. Zero. Do you think that it really has made zero money? No, of course not. It's making

00:29:02.620 tons of money. You know, I mean not tons, but it's making money. So the difference between my lawyer

00:29:09.220 and their lawyers is my lawyer told me. My lawyer said, you're not going to get any of this money,

00:29:14.120 even though your contract clearly says so. It's never going to happen because they're crooks.

00:29:17.920 He didn't use those words, but he made it very clear that you're dealing with a criminal

00:29:23.980 enterprise, basically. Again, those were not my lawyer's words, but he made it very clear

00:29:30.140 that it's basically a criminal enterprise and don't go into it unless you understand that.

00:29:35.860 You will get an initial check and that's your money. Basically, you're done. The rest is just

00:29:42.920 a con game, basically. So, but there are people like Robert Downey Jr. who did make lots of money

00:29:50.260 on the profits of the movie. So how do you explain the fact that Robert Downey Jr. makes

00:29:55.120 it work, but Gerard Butler and Scarlett Johansson did not? And the answer is, maybe better lawyer.

00:30:03.240 Number one, maybe better lawyer. But number two, they can't make Iron Man movies without Iron Man.

00:30:12.580 They could make movies without Scarlett Johansson. If they wanted to replace Gerard Butler in the

00:30:19.460 Olympus has fallen franchise or make something like it with a different name or something,

00:30:25.100 I feel like you could make those movies without Gerard Butler. Just put somebody else there.

00:30:30.820 And I think you could make movies without Scarlett Johansson in, you know, Black Widow type 0.97

00:30:36.220 movies. But you can't really make Iron Man without Robert Downey Jr., can you?

00:30:43.040 I like the comment. Somebody's saying Doctor Who. If you watch the series Doctor Who, British

00:30:49.820 series, they replace the star every year or two so that the star never has any power, which

00:30:56.480 is pretty clever. It's a fucked up thing to do. Right? I don't know if that's the reason 0.98

00:31:01.860 they do it. There may be some other reason. But the Doctor Who series that's been on forever,

00:31:07.500 they replace the main star every year or every two or something. And that way the star is never

00:31:14.800 powerful enough to take too much of the profits. Pretty clever. All right. So Dave Rubin, who got,

00:31:29.060 I guess, limited on Twitter, they limit the account, for saying that the, I think essentially for saying

00:31:38.540 that the vaccinations weren't quite what we hoped they would be. And therefore we should rethink our

00:31:45.000 strategy because we have new information. Now, does that sound provocative? Because it's not.

00:31:52.500 It's pretty much what the CDC says. Hey, we got new information. Darn it. The vaccinations are not

00:31:59.880 as good as we'd hoped. People can still get it and spread it and you might need a booster and all that.

00:32:06.060 But so basically what Dave Rubin says was exactly what the CDC says. Just use different words.

00:32:13.100 And so he got suspended. But here's the good news. Twitter, Twitter reviewed it and said it was a

00:32:20.660 mistake. Twitter said they made a mistake and they reversed the suspension. Now, how do you feel

00:32:27.420 about that? Do you feel, and I think Dave may have had this feeling, it's like, why does it always

00:32:34.260 happen to the people who have one set of views? Is it happening to anybody else? Or is it always

00:32:41.460 people with a certain perspective who are the ones who get even the temporary accidental mistake

00:32:48.320 stuff? Well, it probably has to do with who's talking about what topic more than anything else.

00:32:54.720 But I'm going to say I give Twitter a, I don't want to give it a grade, but I would say Twitter

00:33:03.720 did the right thing. I don't think I can get mad about somebody who makes a mistake, corrects

00:33:10.560 it, tells you they made a mistake. It's just a different thing. To me, I'm never going to

00:33:16.760 treat those the same as, you know, some real big problem that lasts. But you do have to wonder

00:33:23.900 about why it seems to happen to the same people all the time. All right. Here's a tricky persuasion

00:33:31.660 thing that's happening to us all that just grates me. When I feel myself being manipulated by

00:33:39.640 the powers that be, it's just a bad feeling. Here's what I mean. The news treats everything

00:33:47.720 that Trump did around January 6th and everything he said about the election, they treat it as

00:33:54.020 him causing a certain set of problems and, you know, did he want to overthrow the government

00:34:02.160 and everything? And there's a whole bunch of assumptions you make that are all based on

00:34:07.300 one fact. The assumption that he's wrong. Right? All of the reporting about January 6th and Trump's

00:34:18.720 claims, they sort of start with the assumption that he's wrong. Has that been demonstrated? Because

00:34:26.820 while it is completely true that no court has found any widespread fraud, and I'm not aware of any

00:34:35.280 reporting from any credible source that would say there was any widespread fraud. But that has to do

00:34:42.680 with the quality of the reporting and what kinds of cases would make it to the court and what do courts

00:34:48.440 do in the first place? You know, like, what kind of things do they rule on? And so the only thing we know

00:34:54.040 for sure is we don't know, because it's an unauditable election, apparently. Even the auditors

00:35:00.140 can't get, you know, record, the electronic records. And so they can't get access to the routers,

00:35:06.260 I think, in Arizona. So there's a bunch of stuff they can't check. And we don't have any evidence

00:35:11.860 that the audit produced or did not produce any, you know, great surprises. So it feels very manipulative

00:35:22.000 that the assumption is Trump is wrong, as opposed to the assumption is that he can't prove his case.

00:35:30.660 Those are really, really different, aren't they? An assumption that there was no fraud is really

00:35:37.780 different from an assumption that we don't know how to check for it. Because guess what? We don't know

00:35:43.260 how to check for it. If you can't get access to the routers, and apparently that matters to find out if there was

00:35:49.660 any access to any access to them, I guess. If you don't have access to the routers, you don't have

00:35:54.720 access to, say, chain of custody, because they don't exist or something, you can't really audit,

00:36:00.360 can you? So it just bugs the shit out of me that Trump is assumed to be wrong, as opposed to has gone

00:36:11.500 too far in making his case because he can't know one way or the other. Very different. 0.83

00:36:20.060 I saw some pushback on Fox News, because they reported this, that in Washington, D.C., I think

00:36:28.180 it might have been, I don't know, this week or yesterday or something, there were four COVID deaths,

00:36:32.760 but 11 homicides. Now, Fox News was being mocked by a Twitter user for reporting it that

00:36:40.820 way. Is that unfair? To me, that just feels like useful context. How is it? And I guess

00:36:50.360 this is, you know, mind-boggling. So Fox News adds context to a story that is true, like it's

00:37:02.040 true context. And I would like to know the relative size of things. I feel like this is

00:37:09.140 a plus. I mean, it's not the whole story. And obviously, you have to look at the rates

00:37:15.160 of increase, right? If the rate of increase of homicide is 20% or 40%, it's pretty alarming.

00:37:22.120 But it's not like a virus, right? A virus can go to the moon, whereas homicide up 20% is

00:37:29.840 horrible. But looking at it today, Snapchat can be misleading. So I think if they wanted

00:37:38.140 to add a little extra context, they would have to say, very much like when we were afraid

00:37:44.120 of AIDS in the early days, it wasn't how many people had it. It was how many people you were

00:37:49.000 afraid were going to get it. Whereas with homicide, it's really about how many happened. It's not

00:37:54.560 so much about where you think the rate is going to go in the future. So it's a little bit apples

00:37:59.960 to oranges, but still that context was good. So I think Fox was completely justified in showing

00:38:07.140 that. All right. So here's some numbers so that you can evaluate your vaccination decision. Here's

00:38:16.760 some things that I think we know. And give me a fact check on this, okay? So whenever I give you

00:38:23.120 COVID numbers, there should be a little recording that plays in your head that says, but these numbers

00:38:29.480 could be completely off. Everything from God knows what. So according to this ER doctor, Alex Busco in

00:38:38.440 CNN, I assume CNN would have fact checked this and not let it in an opinion article if it's wrong.

00:38:44.920 But it said that the vaccinations have saved an estimated 275,000 lives in the U.S. alone.

00:38:53.560 Does that sound about right? Let's just take the range. Let's say it was 100,000, might have been

00:39:00.780 500,000, you know, whatever. But do you think, do you think that that's a responsible estimate given,

00:39:07.940 you know, it doesn't have to be exact, but is that a responsible estimate? Do you think it's in that

00:39:12.640 range? 275,000 American lives saved? What do you think? Because that would be less than 1% of the public.

00:39:23.560 And that's where the death rate is. All right. So I see a lot of yeses. A lot of yeses. But I do see

00:39:30.680 some noes. It feels right. I would say, you know, if you told me the real number was 100,000, I would

00:39:37.560 say, yeah, you know, 100,000, 300,000. I don't think we're good at estimating things. But that might be,

00:39:46.700 you know, order of magnitude, somewhere in that range. Now, how many people died from the shot itself?

00:39:52.860 The vaccination itself? Well, we don't know, because it's hard to get those numbers. But the

00:39:58.360 VAERS database has 6,200 people who seem to have died soon after getting the vaccination,

00:40:06.920 which doesn't mean it caused it. It just means there's a vaccination, and then somebody died

00:40:12.040 soon after, and there's a question. Maybe it caused it. You don't know. So 6,200 maybes.

00:40:18.980 But how many of the maybes do you think you could actually count? Maybe half? What's your

00:40:27.060 guess? Of the people who simply coincidentally died after the vaccination, do you think maybe

00:40:32.140 half of them would have died anyway? What's your guess? It was 12,000. They knocked it down

00:40:40.120 to 6,200 with different estimates, et cetera. So let's say it's, you know, somewhere under 10,000.

00:40:49.980 Would you buy the fact that there are 10 times as many people who were saved by the vaccination

00:40:55.740 as they were killed by the shot? Would anybody buy that? There are at least 10 times more people

00:41:04.640 saved than might have been killed, and we don't even know if there are any. It could have been

00:41:10.240 zero because of the way that you measure this. Okay. So I'm seeing some people say correct,

00:41:16.940 right? So I'm not telling you to get a vaccination, right? Because everybody's, your risks are

00:41:23.600 different. You know, if you're 15, it's different than if you're 60, right? So there's nothing I'm

00:41:28.800 going to say here that goes to your personal risk or your decision. Can we be clear on that? Because

00:41:34.800 I know you keep thinking I'm trying to secretly persuade you. If giving you accurate information

00:41:40.480 or updated information has the effect of persuading you, that's on you. I'm just telling you the

00:41:47.680 information. And information generally is not persuasive in the manipulative way, if you do it

00:41:53.860 right, if you keep it in context. So that's what we know. But that's not the only variable,

00:41:58.200 right? If the only variable was how many people died, then it's 10 to 1. Would you agree with

00:42:05.520 that? Would you agree that if there was no other consideration, there's a 10 to 1 advantage

00:42:12.620 statistically, at least? I mean, it could be 40 to 1, right? The range is anywhere from like 10 to 1

00:42:20.120 to 100 to 1, but at least 10 to 1 advantage of getting the vaccination based on what we know,

00:42:26.320 right? Now that's not about complications. It's not about what happens down the road. That's the

00:42:32.020 next question. Now, how many people who don't get vaccinated but do get the virus, how many of them

00:42:40.260 get long haul COVID? Well, I've seen estimates of 25%, which I don't believe, but I think it's at least

00:42:47.380 10 to 20% probably. And we don't know if any of that's permanent. So of the long hauls, the people

00:42:56.060 who don't get vaccinated, maybe 10 to 20% of them have some problems. But how many people would have

00:43:01.700 long haul problem from the vaccination? What if you do get vaccinated? And although you didn't die or

00:43:08.640 have a long term problem, how many of those people do get some problem down the line? And the answer is

00:43:15.920 you don't know. You don't know. That's a complete unknown. If you believe that that unknown is a big

00:43:22.980 number, well, then you have a reason not to get vaccinated. But you would have to believe it's a

00:43:28.600 pretty big number. Because if 10 to 20% are getting long haul problems without the vaccination,

00:43:36.900 that vaccination would have to be just a bastard to make it worth, not worth the risk. Can you agree? 0.87

00:43:44.880 That the long haul risk is really pretty frickin' big in the context of these kinds of things?

00:43:52.120 10 to 20%? That's a really big number for people with long haul that you don't know if it's permanent

00:43:57.640 for some of them. But do you think that you're ever going to get to the point where you'd get

00:44:03.300 10 to 20% of the people who were vaccinated who will have some kind of a bad outcome

00:44:10.020 somewhere down the line? What do you think?

00:44:14.360 It's completely unestimatable, isn't it?

00:44:17.400 But let's use your life experience.

00:44:21.660 This is very dangerous, right?

00:44:23.360 What I'm doing now is completely irresponsible.

00:44:25.660 But I'm telling you that, so you can put it in context.

00:44:29.420 Use your life experience and just focus on one question.

00:44:35.060 Which one is more risk?

00:44:38.400 The vaccination, far down the line, doesn't kill you right away, for sure.

00:44:43.200 But far down the line versus the unvaccinated COVID itself.

00:44:49.880 You don't know, because there's no data.

00:44:54.040 But just feel it.

00:44:55.660 What's it feel like?

00:44:57.460 Which one feels like the bigger risk?

00:45:01.720 Boy, you got quiet.

00:45:03.940 There's lots of comments, but they're suddenly not on point, are they?

00:45:10.320 All right, I'm looking at your...

00:45:11.440 So people saying the vaccine is more risk.

00:45:15.860 There's no data, no idea.

00:45:17.860 Hands down, the jab is more risk.

00:45:22.980 More risk than...

00:45:24.540 And how do you determine that?

00:45:26.300 Well, I'll ask you that in a second.

00:45:28.220 All right, so you see a lot of people who are quite certain of the risk with no...

00:45:35.940 I saw something in the comments there.

00:45:42.220 You know who you are. 1.00

00:45:44.860 Clever bastard. 1.00

00:45:47.860 Sorry, that was funny. 0.99

00:45:55.340 So, here we are.

00:45:58.320 What do you think of the fact that people with no data have certainty about something?

00:46:04.900 What does that tell you?

00:46:06.720 People with no data, because you don't know if the vaccination will cause a problem in the future.

00:46:11.200 No data.

00:46:11.680 And you also don't know if long COVID is a real long-term problem or really just a short-term one.

00:46:18.940 Don't know.

00:46:20.160 But how...

00:46:21.320 But explain this to me.

00:46:23.540 Explain what would cause your sense of certainty when you quite...

00:46:28.680 I think you would all readily admit that there's no data.

00:46:32.340 So, there's no information by which to make a decision.

00:46:35.820 None whatsoever.

00:46:37.660 And yet you have achieved certainty among two choices of which you have zero information.

00:46:44.660 Explain that.

00:46:46.080 Now, I'm not saying that you're wrong.

00:46:47.640 I'm only questioning what got you to a point of confidence and certainty with no information.

00:46:55.420 Because there's something in your life experience that got you there, right?

00:46:59.320 Right?

00:47:00.420 Examine your own reasons.

00:47:03.900 Somebody said intuition, and I think you're close to it.

00:47:07.220 There's a feeling.

00:47:08.340 You have a feeling, right?

00:47:11.700 And it's based on your life experience.

00:47:14.260 You might call that feeling intuition.

00:47:17.160 Right?

00:47:17.400 It might be a question of trust.

00:47:19.820 Your life experience gives you a certain amount of trust in the experts, the medical experts.

00:47:25.300 And your life experience gives you a certain amount of instinct, let's say, about what having a virus would do to you in the long run.

00:47:33.920 This particular virus.

00:47:35.340 Yeah, I'm saying Dunning-Kruger, and you're not wrong. 0.81

00:47:42.980 If you knew educated people believe in critical race theory, would you believe it?

00:47:48.940 Well, I think critical race theory has way more to do with how it's being taught than whether it's a good idea or not.

00:47:54.740 But I see your point.

00:47:56.200 That's a pretty good example of what we talked about earlier.

00:48:01.220 How do people override failure from life experience?

00:48:05.340 Read my book, kind of failed almost everything, and still went big.

00:48:09.860 Back stabbed Scott.

00:48:13.180 Well, who stabbed you in the back?

00:48:16.520 So, did you see what happened in the comments as soon as I asked the question,

00:48:24.140 how did you achieve certainty in your vaccination decision when you had zero, there's zero data?

00:48:31.920 How did you do that?

00:48:33.020 And everybody just changed the subject.

00:48:36.480 How many of you had an epiphany? 1.00

00:48:39.980 Typically, in a conversation like this, something like 5% to 10% of you just said, oh, shit. 0.99

00:48:45.380 Did anybody have that experience? 0.98

00:48:47.780 Has anybody, just in the last, like, five minutes, did anybody say, oh, shit, I just made, I arrived at a certainty with no information whatsoever?

00:48:59.000 Anybody? 0.75

00:48:59.280 Anybody?

00:49:00.000 Now, I'd expect that the vast majority, you were just hardening your current decisions.

00:49:09.180 So I'm seeing all no's so far.

00:49:14.880 There's no certainty.

00:49:16.020 It looks like there's nobody here who would say that they're, somebody says, the big FU says, poor Scott, just doesn't get it.

00:49:28.380 Get what?

00:49:29.200 I guarantee that whoever said that, that Scott doesn't get it, I guarantee that whatever you would say after that to explain that is something that everybody gets. 0.99

00:49:41.400 You're going to say some dumb fuck thing like, it's about freedom, Scott. 1.00

00:49:46.100 No, you fucking idiot. 1.00

00:49:47.440 Everybody knows it's about freedom and choice. 1.00

00:49:49.960 You fucking jerk. 1.00

00:49:51.700 Right? 1.00

00:49:51.960 Let me just insult one of my watchers here. 1.00

00:49:56.840 You're a fucking idiot if you think I don't get it. 1.00

00:49:59.680 Right? 1.00

00:50:00.020 Put a reason, tell me something I don't know in the comments.

00:50:04.120 But if you're thinking, well, hold on, hold on, I've got a request.

00:50:11.500 I've been getting quite a few requests for somebody that you call Dale.

00:50:17.220 And I'd like Dale to come on and explain to me what I don't understand.

00:50:24.880 Scott, you don't get it.

00:50:27.460 You don't get it.

00:50:28.860 You don't understand.

00:50:30.420 It's about personal choice.

00:50:33.740 Yeah, I understand that.

00:50:34.740 I say it all the time.

00:50:35.980 In fact, every single day, I've said it's about personal choice. 0.99

00:50:39.600 Every single fucking day.

00:50:41.720 Well, what you don't understand is that these have not been FDA approved. 0.99

00:50:49.160 You don't understand.

00:50:49.940 You don't get it.

00:50:50.720 They haven't been FDA approved.

00:50:53.540 I know that.

00:50:54.900 And I know what it implies.

00:50:56.740 I know what it implies for risk.

00:50:58.820 I incorporate that in all of my decision making.

00:51:03.200 Well, but you don't get that the VAERS database says people are dying from the vaccination.

00:51:09.920 You don't get it.

00:51:10.440 You just don't get it.

00:51:12.720 I just talked about it.

00:51:14.780 I gave you the number.

00:51:16.860 And I compared it to the estimate, which I don't believe, of how many people were saved by it.

00:51:22.160 But it's in that range somewhere, probably.

00:51:25.600 You just don't get it.

00:51:27.080 You just don't get it.

00:51:28.660 Okay, but what?

00:51:29.740 What exactly don't I get?

00:51:31.860 Is there some fact I don't know?

00:51:34.160 You don't get it.

00:51:35.080 You just don't get it.

00:51:36.760 You're trying to manipulate us.

00:51:38.320 You don't get it.

00:51:38.980 All right.

00:51:41.720 Now, I don't know how many of you wanted Dale to come back.

00:51:45.440 But there you go.

00:51:47.940 So I remind you again that I love disagreements.

00:51:55.360 If I've got a fact wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just tell me.

00:51:59.400 This show is not about being right all the time.

00:52:01.680 You know, even though I arrogantly act like I'm right all the time, that's just part of the show.

00:52:07.100 And you should understand that, right?

00:52:09.400 It just makes it more fun if I show more certainty than I deserve.

00:52:14.100 But I try to tell you when I'm doing that.

00:52:20.200 Scott can never be wrong.

00:52:21.960 I'll tell you, there are two things that I spend a lot of time on.

00:52:26.020 Number one is telling you how wrong I was.

00:52:29.220 I spent a lot of time talking in public about how wrong I was and mistakes I made.

00:52:34.700 I wrote a whole book about my mistakes. 0.86

00:52:38.620 Probably nobody has ever talked more about the things they've fucked up than I have.

00:52:45.840 So I spend half of my time talking about all the mistakes I've made and where I was wrong. 0.95

00:52:52.300 And I spend the other half of my time dealing with trolls who say,

00:52:56.800 why can't you ever admit you're wrong?

00:52:59.940 I live in this absurd world where my critics accuse me of exactly the opposite of whatever is happening.

00:53:08.840 There's no correlation between what I'm being criticized for.

00:53:12.380 I said this on Twitter the other day.

00:53:14.180 Oh, I've got to run.

00:53:16.600 Sorry.

00:53:17.060 I've got to go.

00:53:19.240 Oops.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 31, 2021

Episode 1454 Scott Adams： Trump is in Trouble. Again. Virus Stupidity Rages. And More Fun

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