Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1458 Scott Adams： Come Have Some Laughs About the News and Learn Some Persuasion Tricks Too

00:00:00.000 best part of your day. Yeah, sometimes you say to yourself, I don't know if it's going to be

00:00:04.420 the best part, then you're surprised because it is. And all you need to make this an exceptional

00:00:10.340 moment, you know, the real, the kind you remember for the rest of your life. Well, all you need is

00:00:15.320 a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of

00:00:19.040 any kind. It might be hyperbole, but if you don't try it yourself, how will you ever know? It's

00:00:25.940 called the simultaneous sip. Join me now with the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the

00:00:33.820 day, the thing that makes everything better. Yeah, simultaneous sip. Here it goes. Go.

00:00:46.300 I feel a little bit less COVID in my system, a little bit less. Now, for those of you who think,

00:00:53.640 I think everything's already been invented and I'd like to, I'd like to become rich, but I don't know

00:01:00.680 how. I'm going to give you a suggestion for at least one of you to get rich. Have you ever tried

00:01:08.040 to find a tripod to hold your, either your phone or your iPad? If you have, you may have had the

00:01:17.920 experience I've had, which is you buy one after another and they're all made by morons.

00:01:23.640 Here's my latest one. And I think I've purchased maybe 15 models over the years and they're all

00:01:32.600 terrible. They don't do even the most basic thing you'd want to do, which is, oh, I have an iPad.

00:01:39.560 I think I'll put it in here. And you, you know, you just pinch your finger and your brakes,

00:01:43.900 just, and I was just swearing at this thing. But, but look at this design. Just to give you an idea

00:01:52.260 of how many opportunities there are in the world, somebody actually sold me this. It's an iPad stand

00:01:59.180 for my other iPad. And you say to yourself, oh, it looks pretty good, right? Snaps right in there,

00:02:03.960 holds it. Okay. But if I turn it around this way, it just falls over. So, so you can't even,

00:02:17.640 you can't even turn the, the iPad in the other direction or it'll fall over. Worse yet, when you

00:02:24.280 want to type on your iPad, you don't want it facing you. You want it flat and it doesn't flatten and it

00:02:31.200 doesn't stay in position. All the things that you tighten become loose, just, just in the normal use

00:02:35.980 of it. So I say to you, if somebody can make a stand for either an iPhone or, uh, or for an iPad,

00:02:47.280 that actually, it doesn't even have to be great. It just has to be not terrible. That's it. It just

00:02:55.860 has to be not terrible. All right. So there are plenty of opportunities. Just look for something

00:03:03.600 that's bugging you and make a better one. Um, so this happened to me yesterday. Somebody sent me a

00:03:10.580 video in which, uh, I guess Elon Musk was doing an interview about SpaceX and he was talking about

00:03:17.900 the bureaucracy within his own company, I believe it was. And he mentioned that he felt like he was

00:03:23.200 living in a Dilbert comic and that it felt like he was in a simulation. Um, and just read the

00:03:33.060 fucking sign behind me. Okay. Uh, for those of you who've got a problem, uh, and I'm going to start

00:03:39.880 blocking anybody who talks about the sound again today. So, so I, so I looked at this video and sure

00:03:47.460 enough, uh, Elon Musk was, was joking that it feels like he's living in a Dilbert comic

00:03:52.360 and he's in a simulation. Now my comic yesterday was about Dilbert finding out he lives in a

00:03:58.360 simulation and it was created by a cartoonist. So I thought that was a coincidence, but I think

00:04:03.540 the timing of the interview and the comic was a coincidence. Anyway, so what do you do?

00:04:10.000 What do you do if somebody tells you, Hey, the richest man in the world just mentioned something

00:04:17.980 you do? What would be the normal thing you would do if you're sitting in a room with some people,

00:04:24.340 some people you like, maybe your family or whatever, and you find this out? Would you

00:04:30.340 share it with the people that you're with? Would you say, Hey, look, here's a video of Elon Musk.

00:04:36.620 He's talking about Dilbert and I make Dilbert. Would you share it? Because I made that mistake

00:04:43.840 and I was told that, uh, it was gross and that, uh, my lack of humility and my bragging,

00:04:55.960 my bragging was a really bad look. Now, what do you think? Do you think that if Elon Musk

00:05:06.280 mentions your work in some kind of a positive way that you could turn to somebody that you know

00:05:13.600 really well and say, look, Elon Musk's talking about me? Would that be too prideful? Would that

00:05:21.960 be bragging? Or is it just something that happened? And at what point is it okay to share, uh, something

00:05:31.480 that happened to you with somebody that's close to you? You know, friend, family member, right? And I

00:05:39.520 actually got into this absurd conversation about whether humble people are better than people who

00:05:47.080 are not humble. And I actually got somebody to, to argue that this person's humility made them

00:05:57.160 superior to me. And they were bragging about it. That's right. I actually convinced somebody to

00:06:03.920 brag about their humility without acting ironic. Anyway, I have a hypothesis that the biggest problem

00:06:14.240 in the world is that we think our egos are something they're not. You think your ego is who you are.

00:06:23.660 And you think you have to manage in a certain way and that, and that, uh, uh, looking, looking good

00:06:30.140 to other people requires humility. I don't think there's a more wrong idea in the world, honestly,

00:06:38.680 because we, first of all, we misinterpret what people are doing because if I'm showing somebody

00:06:45.340 close to me, something that happened to me, I'm not always bragging. It's just something that

00:06:52.780 happened to me. If you, if you're an author and your book becomes a number one bestseller,

00:06:59.600 do you mention it? Do you mention it? Is that fair? Can you, can you say, oh, my book's a number

00:07:09.640 one bestseller? Is it bragging? Or is it just what happened? How do you, uh, how do you deal with

00:07:16.140 it? There's a friend of mine who, uh, a few years ago came into a massive amount of money. He was part

00:07:22.560 of a startup. And so I think he's a billionaire now, but, uh, he made hundreds of millions of dollars

00:07:29.160 on one day when the company went public. And he immediately went from, you know, the average

00:07:36.800 person in the neighborhood with a job to one of the richest people you'll ever know. And

00:07:41.780 any, the couple asked me for some advice about becoming suddenly rich and how to, how to, how to

00:07:50.000 navigate that. And it was, it was fascinating to, to watch the, uh, the transition. And

00:07:58.380 I, I, I, I, I gave them some advice. I said, nobody's going to want to hear your good news

00:08:13.780 because it's going to sound like bragging and it's just going to be really gross to people.

00:08:18.660 So simply talking about your day is no longer fair because this is something I learned when,

00:08:26.560 when Dilbert took off and my life went from ordinary to not ordinary anymore. If I simply

00:08:32.960 talked about my day, it was kind of gross to people because it would be, you know, better

00:08:38.760 than an average day. And so I would, I would teach him and say, you're going to have to be

00:08:43.820 a huge phony so that people can put up with you. And the way you're going to have to be

00:08:49.520 a huge phony is by pretending that you're having bad luck all the time. Cause if you don't, nobody's

00:08:56.300 even going to want to spend a minute with you after a while. You're just going to be really

00:08:59.780 grossed out by your relative success. And so I said, keep track of anything bad that happens

00:09:06.340 to you during the day and make that your story. If you get together with people say, Oh my God,

00:09:11.040 I just got out of my car and stepped in a big pile of dog shit. And I had to walk into 0.90

00:09:16.720 a meeting and I had dog shit on my shoe and I couldn't get it off. That's the story. The

00:09:22.400 story you don't want to tell is how you were shopping for a private jet. Cause that happened

00:09:28.860 too. Same day. I've never shopped for a private jet. This is somebody else. Um, I thought you

00:09:35.500 can't talk about the private jets. You can't talk about that part, but that's just what you

00:09:39.520 did. It wasn't your fault. It's just what you did. Wasn't bragging. All right. So I think people

00:09:46.800 need to figure out that their ego is not who they are. Once you realize that your ego is your enemy

00:09:54.660 and not who you are, the thing to be protected, then you're free. If you can't learn to embarrass

00:10:02.520 yourself in front of other people, you are a prisoner. Forget about your COVID passport or your

00:10:11.240 vaccine passport. If the only things you can do in your life are the things you think will look

00:10:16.900 good to other people because you need to look humble and you need, you need to make sure other

00:10:22.820 people are having a good feeling about you all the time. If that's the world you live in, you're in a

00:10:28.100 prison. It's just a prison that you created yourself and your ego is what's keeping you there. You need

00:10:33.940 to break free of that. Your ego is your jailer. It's not your friend. It's your jailer. Get rid of it.

00:10:41.920 All right. Um, mask resistance for me started yesterday. Uh, for those of you who are new to me,

00:10:50.880 um, I thought masks work a little bit and I thought they were worth trying at various times during the

00:10:58.760 pandemic. It made sense, made sense to give it a try given that the massive scientists think they

00:11:05.200 make some difference, but we're well beyond that point. I'm fully vaccinated and yes, I know I can

00:11:10.540 still get it. Yes, I know I can still transmit it, but, um, I don't think masks make sense anymore

00:11:17.600 in a world where you can get vaccinated and drive your risk down to microscopic. Now I've told you

00:11:24.700 what I plan to do, which is I plan to go into California businesses without my mask and I plan

00:11:31.760 to make them ask me to put it on. And when they do, I'm going to be very polite and very compliant.

00:11:37.720 So I'm not going to, I'm not going to pick a fight with a person who's just trying to do a job,

00:11:42.780 right? It's not their fault that they have to do this. I'm just going to wear them down.

00:11:49.080 And if enough people do it, then we can return power to the people and take it away from the 0.99

00:11:55.440 government in this particular case, because they're making the wrong decision. Now, the reason the

00:11:59.960 government's making the wrong decision, in my opinion, is that they're the wrong entity to make

00:12:05.220 the decision. The government has to drive death down to zero if they can do it. Human beings have

00:12:12.420 to live. We have to live, and that means making choices about risks and stuff all the time. So the

00:12:18.460 government, unfortunately, for this specific decision, it's just the wrong entity, and we have to take that

00:12:25.760 back. And the way to do it is just by your actions. So I'll give you my experience yesterday.

00:12:30.120 First experience was a retail store, big chain, did not wear my mask, shopped as long as I wanted

00:12:39.800 around people who are fully masked, and paid for the goods, and nobody ever asked me to put a mask

00:12:46.960 on. Now, the retail store, you sort of, you're in the store before anybody notices. You're sort of

00:12:54.660 already in there. But then I went to a restaurant at night, a fine dining restaurant. And the,

00:13:03.520 yeah, I'm not going to give the name of the store, because I don't think that's fair at this point.

00:13:07.760 And I went to a fine dining restaurant, also without a mask. And the host reminded us that mask mandates

00:13:15.600 are back in place, and we had to wear a mask. And I, of course, complying, saying, oh, oh,

00:13:20.940 I have, I think I have one in the car. But they offered one at the host stand, so we just took

00:13:27.680 their masks. And I said, just a clarification, we don't need the masks at the table, right?

00:13:33.820 He said, that's correct. You don't need the masks at the table. And I said, I'm just going to put on

00:13:38.620 this mask, and I'm going to walk right over there, right? Like right over there. So I need the mask

00:13:44.500 just to walk over there and take it off. And he looked at me, and he said, yes. Yeah. I needed

00:13:51.240 the mask to walk 10 feet in the same space that I was going to take the mask off for the rest of the

00:13:57.640 meal. So I did that. I put on the mask for 10 feet, and then I took it off. Now, I think if enough

00:14:06.500 people do what I'm doing, which is being nice and polite to the people, because it's not their fault,

00:14:13.240 and just making it a little bit harder, they will give up. Wear them down. They will give up.

00:14:21.520 They will. Guaranteed. They will give up. You just have to keep on it. But be polite.

00:14:27.720 All right. Apparently, China's having a problem in Wuhan with the worst outbreak of COVID in a long

00:14:35.720 time. I guess the Delta variant is ripping through. Well, not ripping through, but they definitely are

00:14:41.000 worried. And they're closing travel, and they're getting really aggressive again. And I don't know

00:14:49.600 if I've mentioned to you that China's in big trouble. There's some really big problems coming.

00:14:56.320 Now, there are a lot of them. It's almost you can't even, it's hard to even think of all

00:15:02.360 the problems that are coming for China. China's got a big, big problem coming, a big set of 0.99

00:15:08.640 problems, let's say. But among those problems is this. It's beginning to look, as Peter Navarro

00:15:16.380 has been saying for a while, that China knew about the virus in September, but didn't tell us

00:15:24.300 until December-ish. Meaning that we had a few months we could have prepared, but we didn't.

00:15:30.840 And Peter Navarro thinks it may have saved or cost us hundreds of thousands of deaths.

00:15:37.820 That's just in this country. Now, suppose that's confirmed, or at least people come to believe

00:15:45.920 it. How are you going to feel about China? And what happens when your country, let's say

00:15:52.680 a, not an ally of China, let's say your country gets all vaccinated and it looks like there's 0.53

00:15:59.060 not much that can hurt you. You know, yes, people with vaccinations can go still get it and spread

00:16:04.180 it, but it's a different kind of problem in that case. But let's say, and let's say

00:16:11.340 that, here, I'm going to get rid of you. 0.86

00:16:18.180 Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Where are you? All right. Sorry. Can't find you to get rid of

00:16:26.060 you right now. So, so let's say that the world comes to hate China in a way that they've never

00:16:37.260 hated them before. It really comes to blame them for the flu and the virus. What happens

00:16:44.580 when China is not fully vaccinated and they're still very vulnerable and you have all these 1.00

00:16:50.320 other countries who really, really hate China? Do you think that there would be any intelligence

00:16:57.440 agency and or individual who would intentionally affect, infect China to pay them back? I bet 0.99

00:17:05.920 you've never heard that thought, have you? I bet you never heard that thought. It's a big

00:17:12.160 world. Billions of people. If I said to you, look around your room, is there anybody in the

00:17:18.380 room who would be willing to intentionally infect a country and cause, I don't know,

00:17:23.440 millions of deaths? You'd say, God, no. There's nobody in my room. I don't know anybody who would

00:17:29.000 do that. And if you asked 100 people, do you think you could find anybody who would say,

00:17:33.500 yeah, let's kill millions of people, innocent people, just for revenge against the wrong people

00:17:39.200 because it was the government who did it, not the people. So almost nobody would, would

00:17:44.220 make that choice, right? But it's a big world. Somebody's going to do it. Somebody is going

00:17:52.300 to reintroduce the Delta variant into China intentionally for payback because it's a big

00:17:59.480 world and there's somebody who would do that. Somebody is going to have the means to do it and

00:18:03.620 somebody's going to do it one way or another. So I don't think that China ever had a chance of 0.96

00:18:09.320 escaping something really, really bad. Could be karma. Could be something else. But

00:18:16.700 that's the situation. So I think that China has a gigantic COVID problem ahead of them at about the 0.55

00:18:27.080 same time other countries, such as the United States, will be getting things under control.

00:18:32.540 And that's just one problem. They're going to lose their manufacturing base as that gets moved

00:18:37.940 out. It's clear that they're not safe for business anymore. So people in the business world are no

00:18:44.740 longer going to make decisions to do business with China in the same way they did. Because if it goes 0.52

00:18:50.840 wrong now, you can't say you weren't warned. You know, 10 years ago, if you did business in China

00:18:56.600 and something didn't go well, you'd say, well, it was worth a shot. You know, nothing, nothing is 100%.

00:19:03.880 Didn't work out. But you wouldn't lose your job. You wouldn't look like an idiot. But today,

00:19:10.020 today, if you started business in China, let's say you weren't doing business there already and you

00:19:15.440 started to do business and it didn't go well, could you blame anybody else? Could you say you didn't

00:19:21.560 know? Could you say I didn't know China wasn't safe to do business in? Now you know. So I don't

00:19:28.320 think China has much of a good future ahead of them, at least for the near term. The funniest thing 0.99

00:19:36.120 in the news was, and of course, it's based on a horrible event, as all news is, but Governor Cuomo

00:19:44.720 denying the charges against him. The independent commission said that, and I quote, we, the

00:19:52.220 investigators appointed to conduct it, blah, blah, blah, conclude that the governor engaged

00:19:57.200 in conduct constituting sexual harassment under federal and New York state law. And then later,

00:20:05.480 I believe they said it was part of a clear pattern. So it wasn't a one off. Now, the funny part

00:20:14.340 about this, if there's any funny, anything funny about massive sexual harassment, which

00:20:19.560 isn't funny, but there is a funny part, which is that for Governor Cuomo to defend himself

00:20:29.180 against these charges, this is almost so delicious, it's not going to get out of my mouth. Because

00:20:37.020 it'll be so delicious, as I'm starting to say it, that I'll want to like suck it back into

00:20:42.440 my mouth to taste it again. So the first time I try to say this, it might not come out, I

00:20:48.200 might just have to absorb it back in and get a second taste, but I'll try. In order to defend

00:20:56.280 himself, Governor Cuomo is going to have to say that CNN is fake news. God, was that as good to hear

00:21:14.620 as it was to say? I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And indeed, he's doing that. Now, the way he

00:21:22.880 says it is that the facts are much different from what has been portrayed. The facts are much

00:21:28.200 different from what has been portrayed. Fake news. CNN. Now, to their credit, CNN is reporting this

00:21:39.780 straight. They're not ignoring it. Going right at it. So I give them credit where credit is due.

00:21:46.520 Right? They're going right at it. Now, you could argue they could do it a little differently or

00:21:51.080 whatever, but they're not ignoring it. And their pundits are going at it hard. And that's fine.

00:21:58.500 But who do we believe? Do we believe the Independent Commission with their fact pattern and all of their

00:22:05.400 testimonies and whatnot? Or do we believe Governor Cuomo, who says the facts are much different from what

00:22:12.580 has been portrayed? Well, as luck would have it, if you were a member of the locals community,

00:22:18.500 you saw a video recently in which a CIA, ex-CIA person, described their technique for determining

00:22:26.140 who's lying. It's an actual technique, a little checklist to determine who's lying. And let's look

00:22:35.980 at Governor Cuomo's denials and see if he hits anything on the checklist for the CIA to show

00:22:45.420 that you're lying. Well, it turns out there is. Here's exactly what Cuomo said. He said,

00:22:53.820 I want you to know, quote, I never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual

00:23:00.280 advances. Which rule does this violate and therefore show you that he is lying? It doesn't prove it by

00:23:08.940 itself. Part of what the CIA teaches is that you need a cluster of lies. So if you see one

00:23:15.300 independently or one tell for a lie independently, it doesn't mean it's necessarily a lie. So you look

00:23:20.780 for more of them. Thank you. Overspecificity. That is correct. It is an overspecific denial because

00:23:29.440 he's using the word inappropriate both for the advances and for the touching. Now that's a subjective

00:23:37.240 word, is it not? When you say that what is inappropriate to one person would be maybe appropriate to another

00:23:45.300 person. So he's, he's staying solidly in the opinion category, his own opinion, that it was

00:23:52.140 appropriate. But did he ever be, was he ever accused of, quote, inappropriate behavior? No, he was never

00:24:01.620 accused of inappropriate behavior. He was accused of illegal behavior. Illegal behavior, as in

00:24:10.700 one person, constituting sexual harassment under federal and New York state law. So the accusation

00:24:18.120 and the denial don't quite line up, do they? Here's what a denial should have been. An honest

00:24:27.060 denial would be, I've been accused of breaking the laws on sexual harassment under federal and New York

00:24:32.500 state laws. I did not do anything that violates the law. Then you, then you explain what you mean.

00:24:41.680 But when he comes at it with a different defense than the accusation, yeah, you could argue inappropriate

00:24:48.120 covers illegal. But I don't know, does it? Because one's an opinion and one's a legal standard. And even

00:25:00.480 though there's some subjectivity in the legal standard, doesn't feel like he addressed it, the

00:25:05.360 accusation doesn't. Right? So I would say that is lying like. Now, of course, he's a professional

00:25:13.040 politician. So he'd do a better job of covering up his other tells. But the one thing we know is that

00:25:18.800 there's one tell there that's glaring. But according to the CIA, in order to be judged a liar, you would

00:25:26.580 need more of them. So one is not conclusive. You just learned something today. As I watch

00:25:35.360 my number of subscribers on Locals, so people have to pay to be on the Locals platform where

00:25:42.160 they get extra stuff from me that is usually too provocative to put in the public domain.

00:25:47.500 And I've been watching my subscription numbers drop like a rock. And the reasons, people are

00:25:55.300 telling me with quite good feedback. They're saying that I talk too much about masks and vaccinations,

00:26:02.660 which I cop to. By the way, the other thing I get that I am most, let's see, the other thing that I'm

00:26:13.960 most accused of is never admitting I'm wrong. Have any of you ever done that? Have you ever accused me of

00:26:20.940 never admitting I'm wrong? Well, here I am admitting I'm wrong. And so I'm going to take the advice of the

00:26:31.140 audience who says I talk too much about those things, because I definitely do. Now, what I tried to do is

00:26:37.460 talk about them from a risk management perspective, and only if there's something new. But you end up having to

00:26:43.560 in order to talk about anything new, you end up having to sort of, you know, set the stage, and

00:26:49.600 then you're talking about the old stuff again. And I'm pretty sick of it myself. Pretty sick of it

00:26:55.360 myself. And so I want to minimize it, or put it at the end of the show so you can turn it off if you

00:27:01.540 don't like it. But I do think that talking about persuasion is always useful. So I'm going to try to

00:27:11.000 teach you something about persuasion. I'll use the I'll use a case of something that you're familiar

00:27:16.380 with. But it's not really about vaccinations. It's about persuasion. Now, I believe that persuading on

00:27:24.280 the subject of vaccination is probably unethical, which is why I don't do it directly. People say

00:27:31.080 I'm indirectly persuading. But directly, I'm not intending to persuade, because I feel it's

00:27:36.120 unethical. Because I'm not a doctor, make up your own decisions, your risk is different.

00:27:42.700 But suppose you wanted to, I'm going to teach you a lesson on, in my opinion, the most effective way to

00:27:48.660 do it. This won't be done. So you don't have to worry about it. Don't worry about anybody doing

00:27:53.500 this. I don't think there's any chance it'll be done. And it's based on an experiment in which people

00:27:57.980 tried to teach people to save more for their retirement. And what they did was, and what

00:28:06.480 they did was, they digitally aged people's face. And then they showed them in the future.

00:28:14.480 And then they asked them to save money for their future self. And the people who saw themselves

00:28:20.640 digitally aged, now had a visual representation of themselves in the future. And what do you think

00:28:27.320 they did? They saved more money. Because they wanted to be nice to that guy in the future that they've

00:28:34.240 now seen. They've visually seen him. It's like a real person now. It just happens to be you. And you're

00:28:40.320 nice to you. So it's easy to screw your future self and not save enough money. Because it's a

00:28:48.980 stranger. Future you, you've never even met. Literally a stranger. And a concept doesn't even

00:28:56.580 exist. So as soon as you make a digital representation, it becomes real in your mind.

00:29:02.540 There's a real me in the future. And then you act differently. Almost immediately. It's a pretty big

00:29:06.960 effect. It doesn't get everybody, of course. Persuasion doesn't work that way. But it's

00:29:11.620 a pretty big effect. So suppose you wanted to be completely unethical and persuade people

00:29:18.200 to get vaccinated. How would you do it? You would take a Snapchat filter. And you would

00:29:27.580 make a filter that could take any picture of a person and put them in a hospital bed with

00:29:33.400 a ventilator. Dying of COVID. That would do it. If you see yourself with a ventilator

00:29:43.260 dying of COVID, you'll treat your future self differently. Not everybody. You'd probably

00:29:50.680 get, you know, 10 to 20%. But it's really unethical. Really unethical. Because you would be taking

00:29:59.800 people completely out of the domain of rational thought. You would be moving them away from

00:30:05.180 their own opinion of, you know, the odds, which is different for everybody. And you would

00:30:12.040 basically just scare them. You would scare them into loving themselves in the future, and

00:30:17.660 an irrational thing would happen, and then they would change their behavior. Very unethical.

00:30:22.040 But I thought it would be useful as a lesson. Oh, so let's talk about the people being forced

00:30:32.040 to get vaccinations because they need a passport to do something. As Raul Davis pointed out to

00:30:39.760 me today on Twitter, there's a reason that will never work. Do you know what it is? Tell

00:30:48.180 me in the comments, what is the reason it will never work in the long run to have vaccine

00:30:54.680 passports? Well, I'll jump ahead. It's because not enough black people have vaccinated. And

00:31:04.020 if you required the only vaccinated people could shop in a store, you would be racist. Because

00:31:11.960 black people have far lower rate of vaccination. It's racist. And it's unambiguously racist by

00:31:23.100 modern standards, right? You could argue that you don't think you should be. You could argue

00:31:29.780 that you think it shouldn't be treated as racist. But it is. According to our modern standard,

00:31:34.960 if you make a policy or a rule that clearly targets one group, not targets, but disadvantages

00:31:43.100 one group in a really obvious way, it's just racist. It's illegal. So I don't think that

00:31:50.460 passports could last unless everybody got vaccinated at something closer to a similar rate. That's just

00:31:56.620 not happening. All right. So apparently Americans, according to Bloomberg, are talking about a

00:32:07.560 poll that said 65% of workers who said their jobs could be done entirely remotely were willing to take

00:32:15.220 on average a 5% reduction in pay to stay at home. Is that big news? They take a 5% reduction in pay to

00:32:25.820 stay at home. Isn't 5% about what it costs to go to work? That's sort of what your commute costs.

00:32:34.120 It feels like. So it feels like they haven't really said anything except that they'll go where the

00:32:38.880 money tells them to go at the least amount of effort. So again, does money predict things? Yes,

00:32:46.180 it does. Money predicts that people will want to work at home just to save money because commuting is

00:32:51.940 expensive as well as paying the ass. So no surprise there. Remember my 25% idiot rule that you do a

00:33:02.020 poll on any topic and 25% of the people who answer will just be idiots? It wouldn't matter how obvious

00:33:08.920 the right answer is. 25% would still get the wrong answer. It's very consistent. Here's another one.

00:33:13.880 So according to another poll, 74% of voters, this is a Rasmussen, this is a Rasmussen poll,

00:33:25.820 74% of voters support photo ID requirements. 74% support photo ID requirements to vote.

00:33:36.380 That means something close, very close to 25% of the public thinks that you should vote without proof

00:33:47.120 that it's you. Really? Do you think you could sit in a room with somebody who could explain their

00:33:54.000 theoretical and academic argument for why you shouldn't be identified when you vote?

00:34:00.400 Do you think the reasons would sound pretty good when you heard them?

00:34:03.520 25%? 25%. It's so consistent. You could find one quarter of the public.

00:34:13.960 They can't reason their way out of anything. Anything. All right, let's talk about persuasion

00:34:20.940 and AOC. AOC was throwing Democrats under a bus today. So she was, or yesterday, I guess,

00:34:29.140 she was on Jake Tapper's State of the Union and said, talking about the renter's moratorium

00:34:37.860 situation and how the Democrats completely screwed it up. They waited too long. They should have done

00:34:44.920 something. They just completely screwed up the topic. And AOC was kind of brutal. Well, not brutal,

00:34:50.960 but she was frank. She said, there was frankly a handful of conservative Democrats in the House

00:34:56.500 that threatened to get on planes rather than hold this vote. And we have to really call a spade a

00:35:02.580 spade. So she said clearly that the Democrats, they're in charge and they messed up. Now, who does that

00:35:11.340 sound like? Who is a politician who you can think of who is persuasive, who also has, yeah, Trump.

00:35:23.780 If you want to be the president of the United States, you have to go after your own party.

00:35:31.840 You have to. If you want to be a senator, never go after your own party. Because, you know, you're just

00:35:38.860 a team player. But if you want to be president of the United States, you have to go full Trump.

00:35:44.940 You have to tell your own party why it's messed up and how only you can fix it. That's how you get the

00:35:51.500 nomination, first of all. But it's also how you get everybody to, you know, change to be your party.

00:35:59.480 Trump turned the Republican Party into his party by criticizing it. AOC, who I believe is destined to 1.00

00:36:07.540 someday be president, not anytime too soon. But I think she's going to have her turn in the

00:36:13.640 presidency. I think it's inevitable. You know, unless there's some scandal that comes out. That's

00:36:18.740 always a wild card. But this is yet again another one of those indications that she's operating at a

00:36:26.720 different level. You know, you need to be able to throw your party under the bus right in front of

00:36:32.000 them, or else you can't go further. You can't go to the presidency. I keep asking, there's this weird

00:36:40.720 thing happening where people keep saying that I quote, got a lot wrong about the pandemic. And that

00:36:48.200 I asked for examples. And the examples are kind of crazy. And I've been trying to figure this out.

00:36:56.860 And I think here's the reason. I think the reason that I trigger cognitive dissonance more than other

00:37:01.720 people. So they actually have false memories of things I've said or done is that my take doesn't

00:37:07.960 map to the binaries. So there's always a binary in every topic, right? People say this is absolutely

00:37:14.440 true, or this is absolutely true. But they don't allow that there might be some gray area. And the

00:37:19.760 binaries here are that master vaccinations either work or don't. If they work, you should use them.

00:37:30.020 If they don't work, you shouldn't use them. Would you say that's generally the binary? People say

00:37:36.160 they work or they don't. And if something works, you should use it. And if it doesn't work, you

00:37:40.220 shouldn't use it. I mean, in this in this case, working means gives you more benefits than costs.

00:37:47.300 But I don't say that. I don't say that. So I think that's what confuses people. I say

00:37:53.540 masks totally, almost certainly work for reducing some amount of risk. But you shouldn't use them.

00:38:02.680 If you're vaccinated. And if somebody who's not vaccinated doesn't want to use them, I don't

00:38:07.140 particularly care because I'm vaccinated. My risk is microscopic of dying anyway. So I don't know

00:38:15.120 anybody else who has that opinion or states it the way I do. They work. Don't use them. Same with

00:38:22.720 vaccinations or similarly with vaccinations. My opinion, which totally could be wrong, because it'll

00:38:29.020 take a long time to know for sure. But my opinion is that vaccinations, at least for people in my risk

00:38:34.500 profile, not necessarily you, makes sense for me. And I don't recommend that you get them.

00:38:42.380 So I think both of them work. Statistically, I think the science is, you know, more toward them

00:38:51.240 working. But I could be wrong. Either of them could end up not working in the end. And I'll tell

00:38:55.480 you that. If it turns out that they don't work, I'll tell you that. And I'll tell you I was wrong.

00:38:59.140 But I don't know anybody who has a nuanced position where they say, yeah, they work. But that's not

00:39:06.920 the question. The question is risk management and blah, blah, blah. So I think that's what's confusing

00:39:11.860 people, is that I don't belong to one of the binaries. And so they're pretty sure that I must be wrong

00:39:18.540 about a lot of stuff. Here's another example. I tweeted that, you know, that if you're,

00:39:29.140 vaccinated, it feels like you're not in a pandemic. But if you're unvaccinated, you're still in the

00:39:33.560 pandemic. And somebody said, well, you got that wrong. You got that wrong. To which I say, how can

00:39:40.540 opinion be wrong? I didn't, my opinion isn't wrong. Because it's how I feel. I'm telling you how I feel.

00:39:48.880 I feel that when I got vaccinated, and somebody else told me this the other day, actually,

00:39:54.620 without being asked, that it feels different. And it feels like you're done with the pandemic,

00:40:00.460 but other people are not. Now, can you criticize me for telling you how I feel?

00:40:06.020 It's just how I feel. It's not right or wrong. It's actually just how I feel.

00:40:14.480 So people are taking stuff like that and saying that I got stuff wrong. No, I'm pretty sure I know

00:40:20.780 how I feel. That's all I'm talking about. And then let me give you an example of how a typical

00:40:27.960 claim about the pandemic goes. So I asked in a tweet, I said, if ivermectin is so good,

00:40:36.020 and we know that a number of countries don't have enough vaccinations to take care of things with

00:40:40.980 vaccinations, shouldn't we see some smaller countries who have access to ivermectin,

00:40:47.200 because everybody does, for the most part, but maybe not vaccinations, shouldn't we see that some

00:40:53.400 of the countries had like totally squashed the COVID just with ivermectin? And how does this

00:41:00.880 conversation go? Have you seen enough of these that I don't even have to tell you what happened

00:41:06.480 next? So I said, give me some examples. And somebody did. So Paul Collider on Twitter said,

00:41:15.320 well, first I asked, why is it that we're not hearing about these successes? And Paul offered

00:41:20.920 these reasons. He said, major media's largest advertiser is pharma. So that would suggest that

00:41:26.280 the vaccination makers don't want you to know about anything that's a low cost solution.

00:41:31.280 Two, the major media sites on the left, that's not a serious question. In other words, he's saying

00:41:36.540 that the news industry is so corrupt on the left that you couldn't expect them to say anything about

00:41:41.880 it anyway. And then three, the major media sites on the right get a lot of their traffic from social

00:41:47.820 media. So they can't say too many things about ivermectin on the right either, because then they

00:41:53.980 won't get traffic sent to their content from social media. Pretty good arguments. Pretty good

00:42:01.440 arguments. So they do provide a reason why it could be possible. And before you ban me, YouTube,

00:42:08.900 wait till the end. You'll be happy in the end, YouTube, if you're watching me and deciding, uh-oh,

00:42:14.240 got my finger on the ban. If YouTube turns off, jump over to Locals. I took the subscription wall off

00:42:22.700 for this video. So if this gets banned on YouTube, just go over to Locals. They don't ban this stuff.

00:42:29.660 All right. Um, so, so we got a reason why maybe, uh, ivermectin could be solving the problem in some

00:42:38.960 countries, and we'd never even hear about it because the media business model is corrupt. Could be,

00:42:44.880 could be. But then, uh, I still asked for one example, and Paul gave me Zimbabwe. All right,

00:42:50.800 so here's the Zimbabwe example. Uh, so Zimbabwe didn't have much in the way of vaccinations,

00:42:56.480 uh, but I guess one, some famous, I guess some politician died of COVID or something,

00:43:02.620 and they decided to try ivermectin. So here's what we know from, uh, from Paul. He says,

00:43:09.320 the death rate, uh, rose sharply in January and peaked on the 25th as 70 deaths per day.

00:43:14.840 Uh, then officials authorized the use of ivermectin. It was granted, uh, toward the

00:43:20.540 end of January. Then one month later, in February, the COVID death rate had fallen to zero.

00:43:28.140 Well, that's what I asked for, right? I asked for, show me one country that didn't use vaccinations,

00:43:34.520 did use ivermectin, and, and just squashed the COVID. And there it was, Zimbabwe. 0.86

00:43:41.360 What happened next? Anybody? Anybody? What happened next? You've lived in the world long enough.

00:43:49.720 You know exactly what happened next. Tell me. I'm going to, I'm going to see how long it takes you

00:43:55.340 in the, in the cartoons to tell me exactly what, what happened next. It took about five minutes

00:44:02.420 for Andres Backhaus to find the Zimbabwe death rate and show that if you showed it like a month later,

00:44:12.180 the, the spike went through the roof. So Zimbabwe is an example of ivermectin not working 0.85

00:44:19.280 and not working hard. I mean, it really didn't work according to the, according to the death rate chart.

00:44:26.920 So how many of you are surprised? How many of you are surprised that there was a country that was

00:44:34.580 held out, and this is standard, showed you a graph, the graph looked real. In fact, the graph was real.

00:44:40.740 It was a real graph. It just wasn't up to date. How many of you knew it was going to happen?

00:44:48.660 That's the reason I did the tweet. It was predictable as hell. Now in the comments, you said,

00:44:54.260 what about Mexico? What about India? They used ivermectin and they squashed. No, they didn't. 1.00

00:45:00.820 No, they didn't. India is spiking. Mexico, that didn't happen. So all of these individual cases

00:45:08.500 you think really happened because you saw a chart, didn't happen. It's either an old chart or a wrong

00:45:15.980 chart or they didn't really use ivermectin or something. But basically the question still stands.

00:45:22.020 If you believe ivermectin works and not only just works, but like really works, like just squashes

00:45:28.800 the virus. If you believe that's true and there are countries who have tried it, why has it never

00:45:35.520 worked? Why has it never worked? Now again, can I conclude based on this information that ivermectin

00:45:44.860 works or doesn't work? No, no. This is the whole reason you need a randomized controlled trial,

00:45:52.640 peer review, and you need to repeat it. Even one randomized controlled trial is not going to be

00:46:00.580 as convincing as you want it to be. There's a reason you don't just look at a chart

00:46:06.040 and decide what works. It's because it doesn't work. You think you can do it and you can't.

00:46:13.560 Do you remember the part about do your own research? Don't be fooled by the powers that be.

00:46:18.560 Do your own research. Well, Paul did his own research. How did it work out? He came to the

00:46:24.760 opposite conclusion of what the data says. But he did his own research. So did he do something wrong?

00:46:31.460 Did his own research? Came to the wrong conclusion? Clearly. At least in Zimbabwe. I don't know about

00:46:39.000 the conclusion overall. So that's a good way to approach these questions about hydroxychloroquine

00:46:50.760 or ivermectin or something. The question you want to ask is what's missing? Here's what's missing.

00:46:58.640 Let me give you another one. If you're trying to decide if masks work or don't, remember I'm anti-mask,

00:47:06.180 so I'm not telling you to wear a mask. But if you're trying to decide if they work or not, here's the

00:47:10.900 question you should ask. Not, can I find a chart that says they work or not? Because doing your own

00:47:19.240 research doesn't work. It's just an illusion that you think you can look stuff up on complicated

00:47:26.860 topics and get it like the right answer. It just isn't a thing. But here's the question you should

00:47:32.800 ask. There are people who do have those skills, right? There are people who do know how to look at

00:47:38.360 medical things and scientific studies and come up to better opinions. Why is it that there's no top

00:47:47.140 medical experts, at least people who have control of decisions in any industrialized country who says

00:47:55.060 masks don't work? Why is that? Is that something about that all of them are suppressed by the system?

00:48:04.080 That nowhere, there's not one country anywhere, an industrialized country where the leadership says,

00:48:09.900 you know, we're looking at all the same data and we say it doesn't work. None? Now, I get the fact

00:48:18.580 that science, like everything else, you know, there's a herd mentality. I get that people don't want to

00:48:24.780 embarrass themselves, you know, by saying the wrong thing if everybody else is saying something else.

00:48:29.400 I get all those forces that are forcing you into the official narrative. But there are a lot of

00:48:35.500 countries. There are a lot of experts in a lot of countries. There's nobody in any of the other

00:48:41.740 countries of, let's say, the industrialized countries, right? You know, the countries that have a serious

00:48:47.480 science, let's say, structure. None of them? Not one? That stretches my, you know, just stretches my

00:48:59.220 imagination to the breaking point that you couldn't get one dissenter out of all those nations. Because

00:49:05.040 it seems like you could get a dissenter for everything. I can't even think of any question

00:49:09.760 you couldn't get a dissent on, but not masks, apparently. Now, let me say it again. Someday,

00:49:18.180 we'll probably know for sure. I don't know, maybe. But we could know for sure that vaccinations

00:49:25.400 worked or didn't, masks were a good idea or a bad idea. And if I'm wrong about any of this stuff,

00:49:31.820 I don't have any problem telling you. No problem. Because I always approach this stuff as a risk

00:49:38.340 management question, right? If I look at the question of masks, I don't tell myself there's

00:49:44.060 a 100% chance they work. I think it's 90% chance. But nothing's 100%. So if you're thinking that

00:49:51.900 I would have a problem telling you I was wrong, don't worry about that. I won't have that problem.

00:50:06.420 All right. Ivermectin is also low risk, somebody says. Yeah. I mean, that's worthy of consideration.

00:50:16.540 Um, Fauci never believed masks work in his 80 years, you're saying. Well, who knows?

00:50:29.040 Um, what is the definition of working? Good question. You know, if I had to put a number on

00:50:35.360 it, without the benefit of science, so it's just everybody's sort of guessing here. If I had to

00:50:41.160 put a number on it, I think the masking makes a 10% difference. In the context of a pandemic,

00:50:46.980 that's worth doing. Especially since the 10%, you know, quickly volumes up because of the

00:50:55.820 viral nature of things. Um, so here's somebody in the comments telling me that India is in fact

00:51:09.780 a proof that Ivermectin works, that the spike was small and didn't last. Um, see the problem?

00:51:19.200 You're all looking at the same data. And some of you are looking at the data and say, well,

00:51:23.420 I did my research. Here, it shows it works. I looked at a chart. And somebody else looked

00:51:28.240 at the same data and said, well, here's proof it didn't work. You're looking at the same chart.

00:51:32.860 It's just an illusion that you can do your own research on this stuff. Uh, masks found

00:51:40.700 to be 3% effective in the CDC in two studies. Look it up. Um, those I believe without looking

00:51:48.280 it up, whoever said that the CDC says masks are 3% effective. I believe that's, um, in

00:51:55.160 a laboratory setting, not in the real world setting. I believe that was the difference.

00:52:01.620 So I don't know that we know in the real world. That's where I'm saying 10%. Um, oh, is there

00:52:10.160 somebody here who, who has boots on the ground in India and says it's a media illusion? What

00:52:15.440 is the illusion? The illusion is that Ivermectin worked or the illusion is that it didn't work?

00:52:20.860 Uh, so I don't know which, what you're referring to. Um, can we talk about non COVID related

00:52:31.180 headlines? Well, we did. And now we're done. And tomorrow we'll talk about some more things.

00:52:38.720 So here's, here's my, uh, semi commitment to you. You can't really not talk about COVID.

00:52:45.720 I'm going to try to minimize it because I know it's, um, I feel the same thing. I did a comic

00:52:51.320 on it yesterday. We're, we're all just dying from the repeat story. Uh, just another year

00:52:56.800 of the same fucking questions, you know, there was slight changes is just, it's, it's awful. 0.91

00:53:04.660 Um, it's got countries won't denounce masks because type one versus type two error. Okay.

00:53:14.400 Um, um, let's see what else we got here for comments before I go. Uh, says half the transmission

00:53:26.540 in counties where masks are mandated. Yeah. None of those studies I trust. So in, on YouTube

00:53:32.260 comments, somebody was saying that, you know, the counties that had mask requirements had,

00:53:37.540 you know, such and such a, an outcome. I don't think any of that is conclusive, but yeah, it's,

00:53:44.720 it's worth throwing in the mix, but don't assume that you can conclude anything from that.

00:53:48.820 Um, uh, let's see. My spike observation is not incorrect. India is still ranked 116 for infections. Okay. 0.96

00:54:02.880 All right. That's all I got for now. And I will talk to you tomorrow. And let's hope that we have

00:54:13.540 some news that's more fun and we, we won't talk about the pandemic so much.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 04, 2021

Episode 1458 Scott Adams： Come Have Some Laughs About the News and Learn Some Persuasion Tricks Too

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