Episode 1460 Scott Adams： I Admit I Was Wrong About the Pandemic
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Summary
Bill Gates regrets spending time with Jeffrey Epstein, but what does that have to do with the Pandemic? And what does it mean for the rest of the world? And why is it so hard to admit that you're wrong about something?
Transcript
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YouTube that the sound isn't good? I know. I actually gave you bad sound today. So I took
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the good equipment out of the mix and if you're on YouTube, your sound will be bad. If you're on
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Locals, your sound might be good. I don't know. We'll find out. Hey, even your video is bad on
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YouTube. All right. Well, today's going to be one of the best days you've ever had and it's
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going to start with a little something I call the simultaneous sip and all you need is a
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cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen, a jug or a flask, a Vassalavati
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guide, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the best,
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the best thing that's ever happened to you today. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens now.
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Well, which of my faulty equipment would you like to see me throw out a window? I've got
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one of these I can throw out the window. I've got, let's see, I've got one of these. I've got two
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printers that aren't working. So I think I'm just going to have one day where I just take all my
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broken technology. Just throw it out a window just for entertainment. And if you don't think
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that's serious, well, you don't know me because yeah. So I was going to read this yesterday,
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but it's still news. There were big headlines yesterday that Bill Gates says he regrets
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the time spent with Jeffrey Epstein. He says, quote, it was a huge mistake. Now, there are some kinds of
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stories that you can write without research. This would be one of them. Could you imagine the person
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who was assigned to this story? Can you give us a story about Bill Gates? Ask him if he has any
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regrets about being spending time with the most famous sexual predator of all time. What do you
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think he'll say? I don't know. Somebody's going to have to ask him because maybe, maybe he would say
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it was the best idea he ever had. Could surprise you. Could be news. But you send out your reporter
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and say, Bill Gates, what do you think about spending time with the most famous sexual predator of all
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times? And it turns out, he regrets it. I know that comes as a big surprise to all of us. But yeah,
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he probably got together with his advisors and said, how do we handle this? Should I, should we just say,
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you know, we really like the time we spent with him? And it was awesome. I'd do it again. What do
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you think? How do you want to play this? But he played it a huge mistake. That was probably the right
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way to go. So are you waiting for the part where I admit I'm wrong about the pandemic? Does anybody want
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to see me eat crow? Tell you how wrong I was? Here it comes. I was very wrong about the pandemic in a
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particular way. So a one of my friendlier critics explained this to me today. He said, Scott, when
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you talk about the statistics that don't agree with you, you say that they're low quality and you point
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out how unreliable data is and how unreliable our professional sources are. Do I do that? First of
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all, do it, if something doesn't agree with me, if I see a statistic, do I tell you that the statistics
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are bad? I do. If you see statistics from me that coincidentally agree with my point of view, do I tell
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you those statistics might be wrong? What do you say? What do you say in the comments? Do I as often
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tell you to be skeptical of stuff I disagree with as stuff I agree with? Huh? Huh? Well, a lot of it
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depends on which window you're looking in. Because people don't consume my content the same way. Some
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people watch every day. Some people just dip in and they'll see a certain story. And so watch
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carefully as I admit that I was wrong. Because later you'll say I've never done it. And by the
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way, I don't know if anybody's ever admitted they're wrong more often than I have in public. Literally
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wrote a fucking book about it. A whole book of stuff that were mistakes and things I did wrong. A whole
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book. And the most common claim, you never admit you're wrong. All right, here it comes. Here's me
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admitting I'm wrong. I'm reasonably sure that I don't question the things that agree with me,
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the statistics, as often as the things that don't agree with me. I feel like that's actually a valid
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statement. Now, the reason I don't do it is that I tell you all the time that half of all data is
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incorrect, don't trust anything. And I figure that covers it. But if I also say that the things that
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don't agree with me are sketchy, but the thing, I don't mention that when the other things are,
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that can be misleading. So I'll give you some examples.
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Let's see. Here's one. Experts say masks are safe to wear. That was the big trending thing on Twitter
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today. A bunch of sources saying that they did a bunch of studies and found out that masks don't
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make you short of oxygen. They don't give you any problems. All right. Now, does that point of view
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agree with my point of view or disagree? Well, I'm anti-mask at the moment for freedom reasons and
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because I think the risk is a certain size. But my earlier statements that masks work and would be
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better on than not, not sure how much they work, but that they work, would be supported by these
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stories. So this is the sort of story that my critics would say, Scott, I don't think you're
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critical enough about these statements that they don't, they don't have any negative effects. So
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let me say, I don't believe this. Do you? I mean, I don't believe it's false that masks have no
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negative impact. But I don't believe that the data is credible or reliable. Now, here's one of my
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little tricks for knowing what is BS. Look for when the science says one thing, but your personal
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observation is different. That doesn't mean you're right. It could mean the science is right and your
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personal observation is wacky. But if they're out of whack, that should be at least a little flag
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that says dig a little deeper. I wear a mask. And I have asthma. There's no fucking way I can
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breathe the same with a mask on. No fucking way. Now, I saw all the doctors putting the oxygen
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meter on. And then they put the masks on. One of them put like six masks on and was still able to
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breathe. And his oxygen meter still set 100%. So you saw a bunch of doctors do that, right? Put
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on the mask, oxygen meter was fine. Therefore, breathing is just the same with a mask on. Are
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you convinced? They did it right in front of you. No, because when I put the mask on, I can't fucking
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breathe. Does anybody have a different experience? You know, I have asthma, so I've got a little extra
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going on there. But does anybody have the experience that you can breathe the same with a fucking mask
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mask on? No, no, this is obviously fake news. It happens to agree with my viewpoint. But it's also
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fake. Right? So here's an example where something agrees with my general view of life. But it's
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obviously fake. Now, here's what's probably going on. I don't know this for sure. So this is speculation
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hypothesis. We know, for example, that people who have COVID and their lungs are degraded don't know
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it often. Do you know why they don't know it? Because they compensate. They breathe harder.
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But they don't kind of realize it. So they're getting enough, but not each breath. But then they
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don't realize it. Do you think that people who wear the masks have the same breathing pattern
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as someone who doesn't? In other words, if you went for a run with a mask on, would you have to
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work harder to get the oxygen you need? Probably. But it wouldn't be a problem of you not getting
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the oxygen. It would be a problem of you having to work harder to get it. Exercise would be kind
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of degraded. So I would say that that's not credible information. But I also don't have any reason to
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think that masks do hurt you. So I have no reason to think that masks are dangerous, at least in terms
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of science, but also no reason to think that they're safe just because this recent information says so.
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How about this one? The CDC estimated a one-year decline in life expectancy in 2020. A one-year
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decline, that would be gigantic. It would also agree with my worldview. Because I say the pandemic
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was real. We may have miscounted by 20% or something, but that wouldn't change the big picture.
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So I say the deaths are real, and it's a real pandemic, and it's not like a regular flu. That's
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my worldview. So this should agree with me, right? The CDC estimating there's a one-year decline in life
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expectancy. It's exactly what I'd expect, except it's bullshit. They just calculated it wrong.
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So Peter Bach goes through it in a publication, basically saying that they just made a bad
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assumption that it's just all bullshit. They just didn't know how to calculate it right.
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So here's an example of something that agrees with me. Well, two examples. Two data points that
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agree with me that I tell you, I don't think either of them are credible. They just happen to agree
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with me. So I don't think that I can keep this up, meaning that I doubt I will be as good as I was
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today, and tell you the things that agree with me are also wrong. But I'll try to do better. So I'm
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going to say that the criticism that I haven't done that enough in the past, probably valid.
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So here I am admitting to an error. All right. Well, actually, here's another example.
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There was a study, 80,000 people, I think, in the UK, and it said that long COVID, or just COVID,
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if you get COVID, your IQ will be lowered on average. And it's quite measurable. It's like a few points.
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Now, does that agree with my worldview? It does. If this were true, that getting COVID lowers your IQ,
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that would be right on point with my worldview, which says that the long COVID, you know, the risk of
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getting COVID is bad, not just because you might die, but that the long term consequences. So it
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agrees with my worldview, but is it accurate? Well, it took all of about a minute for somebody who's
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good at looking at looking at stuff. Donald Luskin, a practicing economist, looked at it and said,
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you know, there's 81,000 people you studied. They looked at 81,000 people and eliminated almost all
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of them from the study, because there wasn't any previous IQ information about them. So they could
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only find hundreds of people in the 81,000 that were even worth studying. So when the headline says
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81,000 people were studied, that's just bullshit. They started with 81,000 and then threw out almost
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all of them, because the only ones they could use were the ones where they had a fairly recent IQ test
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so that they could measure any difference. The whole story is just bullshit. It just happens to agree
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with me. So would I have been harsh to it, had it, you know, before this conversation? I don't know.
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You have to wonder. But here was a comment that I'm sorry I missed, but one of my, I think somebody
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who follows me said this on Twitter, that's a little too, a little too on the nose, right? Isn't it
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convenient that, you know, the powers that be want you to get vaccinated? And then conveniently,
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there's a study that says if you don't, your IQ is going to go down. Now, would you know if your IQ
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went down two points? Because it's, you know, sort of in that range, two, three points. Would you know?
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No, you'd think you did, right? Talk to somebody who's had COVID. Tell them that there's a study
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that says your IQ goes down two points. And then ask them, having primed them for the question.
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Now, now you've, you've biased them. Hey, there's a study that says your IQ goes down. Have you felt
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any difference since you got the virus? What are people going to say? Two points? Yeah, I feel like I
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feel that. Got a little brain fog. It was that time I tried to calculate a tip on, on the restaurant
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and, you know, I didn't get it on the first try. You're right. My IQ did go down, right? Yeah. And
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in the comments, somebody says with age. What, doesn't your IQ go down with age anyway? I had the same
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question. So if you studied people who, let's say, took an IQ test 10 years ago, isn't their IQ lower?
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You know, depending on which age group is getting the most COVID, if they tend to be skewing older.
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If you look at a 60-year-old compared to a 50-year-old, same IQ? I don't, I don't think so.
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I think it goes down a couple of points, I think, but I'm not sure. So I don't believe the story that
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COVID lowers your IQ. There were only a few hundred people tested. And I don't think any of this sounds
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credible to me. It just happened to agree with my worldview. There's a story that kids, teens are
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beating COVID tests, well, in the opposite way. They're giving it a false positive intentionally
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by putting cola, and I guess some fruit drinks, into the test. And it makes it seem as if you have
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COVID and then you can get out of school. So you get two weeks off of school by putting some soda in
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your COVID test. Now, I don't know if that's true. Just like every other story. I don't know.
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Is that true? Do you think so? Somebody says, I'm not a psychiatrist, but I can bet Scott is a
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narcissist. You don't have to bet. I can confirm it. The thing people don't understand about narcissists
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is that there are two different kinds. One kind likes to get its supply, as it were,
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its supply of praise and feeling of worth from doing good things for other people.
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Is that a problem to you? Is it a problem to you that I would like to get my feeling of self-worth
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and any praise that society wants to give me, that I would like to get that by doing good things
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for other people to earn that praise? Is that a mental condition? Do you think I'd need hospitalization
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for that? Because that's one kind of narcissist. There's another kind that just, and they overlap,
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of course, but there's another kind who just thinks they're a little bit better or a lot better
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than they really are. I'm also one of those, intentionally. I always set my, you know, my expectations
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of what I can accomplish. I set it higher than reasonable because it gives me something to
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shoot for and it lets me perform better. So you don't have to wonder if I'm a narcissist. I can
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confirm it. Absolutely. I mean, a hundred percent. Everything about me fits those categories, but you may
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not know that there's more than one kind. The malignant narcissist is just a whole different deal.
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And I may be one of those. If I am, I wouldn't know it. You know, I certainly have the other kinds
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for sure. But am I also malignant? I don't know. Could be. I'm not the one who would be able to know.
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Anyway, here's what I was going to say. So COLA causes false positives on tests. And it makes me
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wonder this. Are you ready for some deep conspiracy theorizing? I know you are. You love conspiracy
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theories. Admit it. Admit it. You love them. Here's one. What if, wait for it, what if a lot of the COVID
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positive tests were people who just had a diet Coke and read a Dilber comic and snorted Coke out of their
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nose? Yeah. If you laugh Coke out of your nose and then do a COVID test, aren't they going to get a
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little Coca-Cola on their swab? It's going to look like a false positive. Now, wait, wait, there's more.
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What if, what if there's a high correlation between the people who would drink a COLA drink,
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not exactly a health food, and the people who would be unhealthy and have comorbidities are likely to die
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anyway? Hmm. Hmm. What if it's a soda pandemic? Huh? Huh? What if the false positives are soda in the nose,
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and the people dying were going to die sooner than other people anyway because they have unhealthy diets,
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Now, I don't think any of that's true, but wouldn't it be easy to start that rumor?
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None of that's true. Don't take any of that seriously, okay? But I do wonder if it's true that
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these types of drinks can cause a false positive. Are you telling me that never, that never a person
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who just had a soda tested positive with a swab? Because if you've got the soda in your mouth,
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doesn't at least the, I don't know, the fumes from the soda get in your nose or something?
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No, just a question. Here's a question. Do vaccines work? Today there's a information that
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the people who have the Delta infection, you can get the same amount of virus
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regardless of vaccination status, early analysis suggests. What do you think of that? Now,
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those of you who believe that the vaccinations are not credible, did this information agree with what
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you already thought? It was pretty convincing, wasn't it? Because you already thought it was true.
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If you think that the vaccinations are sketchy and you don't trust them, you almost certainly believe
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that it didn't change the level of infection for Delta variant. But is it true? Well, even the people
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who did the study say don't believe us. Let me say that again. Even the people who said, who did the
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study, the people who did the study say in clear language, don't believe this is true until it's
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confirmed because they didn't do the kind of study that they are confident you can conclude it would be
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reproducible. So the first thing is, even the people who did it don't say you should believe
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it. All right? So should you believe it? Well, if they say don't believe it, should you? Now,
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they do say there's enough of an indication that it's a real worry. Should you be worried? Of course.
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you should be worried. Somebody says, what about anal swabs? That is a good question. Because
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wouldn't that pick up some Coca-Cola? Good question. So what, so listen to the exact language. Delta
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infections may produce similar virus levels, regardless of vaccination study status. They may produce it.
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What does that tell you? Doesn't that tell you that it's like that with some people, but not with
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others? And didn't you already know that? Did you not already know that some people can get a
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vaccination and get just as much COVID as if they had no vaccination at all? You all knew that, right?
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Because for some people, for whatever reason, the vaccination just doesn't work. You know, they have
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some weird situation with their immunity. So is it telling us that everybody has the same virus level
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and that it lasts the same amount of time? We don't know. So we don't know anything. Because what if you
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do have the same virus level, but only during this shorter period, and then it goes away fast? Do we know
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that having the same amount of virus in you makes you just as transmissible? We don't. Because what if
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you're not coughing? You know, what if you're vaccinated? So you're not getting symptoms. So
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you're just not coughing and you're not breathing extra hard, which is what happens when your lungs are
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degraded. I mean, do you think that vaccinated people transmitted as much? Don't know. That's worth
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studying. But we do know that they, at some point, some of them might have a lot of virus in them,
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which I think we already knew. But it's being presented like new information.
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So if you don't get sick, and by the way, I think we've all, we all agree that these are not
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vaccinations in the classic sense of preventing. They're more like therapeutics that come in a needle,
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which is good, which is good. All right. I'm seeing some charts go up on the locals platform.
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Somebody's making an argument with charts. Let me tell you what you should believe when somebody
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puts a chart on the internet. Nothing. Nothing. If somebody gives you a really convincing chart,
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even with sources on the internet, what should you say to yourself? You should say, I have seen no
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information here. Nothing. Because you probably don't know the context, blah, blah, blah. All right.
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Rasmussen has a poll asking people if Cuomo should resign, Governor Cuomo, because of the report saying
00:24:39.080
he had a number of highly credible sexual improprieties in the workplace. 73% said he should
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resign. Huh. 73% think he should resign. So roughly 25% of the public thinks that a guy who is a serial
00:25:03.780
sexual abuser should keep his job as a leader of the state. What have I told you about 25% of the
00:25:12.100
public? On every poll. It's not every poll, but it's so consistent, it's hilarious. 25% of the public,
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and I hope it's a different 25% every time, are idiots on every question. It's just so consistent.
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But here's the weird part. 77% of conservatives think Cuomo should go, but only 69% of moderates and
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73% of liberals. So in other words, conservatives are more me too on this than liberals. Or they just
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don't want a Democrat to be governor. So of course that's in there too. So in this particular case,
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one could interpret this as conservatives believe women and liberals, not as much. But of course,
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it's the politics that's pushing those numbers, not anything else. How many of you know internet user
00:26:09.880
Zuby, who is a, do you say hip hop star or rapper? I'm not sure because I'm not young and I'm not cool.
00:26:19.640
I don't know if I know the right words for that, but many of you follow him. He's a great follow,
00:26:25.060
great guy. And a lot of fun, very talented, talented in a number of areas. He's a classic
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talent stack kind of a guy that if you looked at any one talent, you'd say, oh, that's, that's,
00:26:38.920
that's good. That's not the best one in the world, but he's got a whole bunch of them.
00:26:41.860
Like everything from fitness to media to marketing to music to just a whole bunch of shit. So Zuby is
00:26:52.760
pretty impressive as a human being, but he's got one very provocative belief. I'm going to dig into
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it a little bit, which is that the pandemic wasn't a real pandemic. We just, we just got too excited
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about it and that, uh, yeah, people are dying, but it's closer to a flu level problem and we should
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not have changed the world for it. Now here's the question. Can you, and I guess part of this belief
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was that the total number of deaths from COVID are not real, that they're more about comorbidities
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and stuff. But here's my question. Can't we know for sure by just looking at excess,
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more, more, excess deaths compared to the trend line for the last few years and say, well, where
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did all those people die from? It wasn't the lockdown. I mean, I don't, I don't know too many
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people who died from the lockdown. There are more suicides. So maybe that counts more people drinking
00:27:54.580
themselves to death, more, more opioids. That probably counts, but it doesn't explain all of
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it. So here's the most basic question I asked if you're trying to trust numbers. Uh, number one,
00:28:09.920
well, let's give us some context. We've seen some reports lately that COVID deaths have been
00:28:14.740
overcounted in hospitals. Everybody agrees with that, right? There's nobody here who thinks
00:28:19.120
that COVID counts are accurate, right? Nobody believes that. But how, how accurate they are
00:28:27.160
is a subject of dispute. My sense of it is they're probably with it. It's probably 80% accurate,
00:28:33.620
which would give you the same strategies for everything as if they're 100% accurate. But
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suppose they were only 10% accurate. Well, then all your policies would be wrong, probably.
00:28:46.260
Right? But how do you tell? How do you know if you're 80% accurate or 20% accurate? Well,
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one way is to look at the total deaths, because there's no other explanation for the total deaths
00:28:58.260
after you've taken out the suicides and the overdoses, the things that clearly are,
00:29:04.340
you know, more related to that lockdown than the pandemic. If you, if you do that comparison,
00:29:11.720
shouldn't you know for sure if your COVID estimates are at least within the ballpark,
00:29:17.260
right? And have people done that? Well, so when I asked that question, what do you think happens?
00:29:23.700
When I asked the question, have we compared COVID deaths the way we count them to the overall
00:29:29.760
mortality? And the answer is, you will be sent many graphs on Twitter. If you'd like to know the
00:29:37.620
answer to that, look at my tweet, and you'll see that people have sent you a lot of graphs.
00:29:42.600
Now, what is the credibility of a graph on Twitter, regardless of the source? Zero. None. So,
00:29:52.900
believe it or not, it's the simplest question in the world, or feels like it. It can't be answered,
00:29:58.680
because we don't have any credible sources of anything. It's just all bullshit on bullshit on
00:30:03.280
bullshit. Now, some people said, but Scott, it has been studied. Here's my graph.
00:30:12.880
No. No, it hasn't been studied. Because if you haven't studied next year, you don't know what
00:30:21.080
the fuck happened. Because if next year, if deaths are way down, then you would know that all you did
00:30:26.680
was, you know, push some deaths into a prior year, and that the total number of deaths maybe is the same
00:30:32.060
as if no pandemic had happened at all. You know, if you looked at two or three years on average.
00:30:38.240
So, no, we don't know the answer to this question, because we don't know the future.
00:30:42.620
We don't know what the measurement will be next year. And if you don't know that, you don't know
00:30:47.460
what happened this year. It can't be known. In my opinion, it can't be known. So, is Zuby right
00:30:53.860
that the pandemic is fake, and when it's all said and done, we won't see the excess deaths
00:31:00.000
that could be attributed to it. Only excess deaths, or mostly excess deaths. I don't want
00:31:05.700
to be an absolute about somebody else's opinion. But mostly excess deaths from other means,
00:31:13.020
the lockdown. Don't know. We actually don't know. The biggest question in the world,
00:31:20.680
we actually don't know. But I do think that the data shows that the excess deaths are hard
00:31:28.340
to explain any other way. But we'll know in a year or two.
00:31:35.100
Why is it that when humans are, you know, accused of something, we say they're innocent
00:31:41.080
until proven guilty. But should we say that about an election? It makes sense to say a human
00:31:49.420
is innocent until proven guilty, even when we know that's not true. It's just the way we want
00:31:56.340
to manage the way we live with each other, is that until it's proven, you're not guilty
00:32:02.280
according to the law. That makes sense. But what about an election? An election is not a person.
00:32:09.460
Right? You can't hurt its feelings. You can't put an election in jail. Should an election be
00:32:14.080
innocent until proven guilty? Because that's the approach we've taken. We've taken the approach
00:32:20.800
that the 2020 election had to be fair, or at least this is the mainstream narrative. It had to be fair
00:32:29.220
because there's no evidence it's guilty. That only makes sense for people. It doesn't make sense
00:32:37.980
for a system. For a system, you should look at the whole situation and then decide if it's innocent
00:32:45.460
or guilty. So here's my take. If you have an election that's designed in a way that prevents
00:32:54.900
audits from happening, and I think that's the case, our election seems to be designed in a way
00:33:00.300
that at least part of it, the electronic part, is not auditable in the classic sense. So if you design
00:33:08.400
a system that's not auditable, you know you've done that, right? During the design phase, you would
00:33:13.760
certainly know if you designed it to be auditable. You have to assume it's fraudulent. Don't you?
00:33:22.020
Doesn't that reverse the burden of proof? I would say if a system is designed so it can't be audited,
00:33:29.440
you've also designed a system that guarantees fraud. You just don't know when. That's the only
00:33:36.220
question. It's guaranteed by the design because they're hiding places. Whenever they're hiding
00:33:42.020
places, parts you can't audit, you always get fraud. You just have to wait long enough, right?
00:33:47.980
It doesn't mean it happened today, and it doesn't mean it happened in 2020, but it'll happen. It's
00:33:54.780
guaranteed. It's built into the system. It's literally designed to guarantee fraud. So shouldn't
00:34:01.480
our default assumption be that it was fraudulent? Because remember, the election, you can't hurt its
00:34:06.900
feelings. It's not a person. You can't put it in jail. You can't give it any legal rights. It's
00:34:14.460
just a system. And if a system is designed to guarantee fraud, that should be your default
00:34:20.120
assumption. Even if you're wrong, it should be your starting assumption. All right. Or to put it more
00:34:28.180
cleanly, you get what you design. You get what you designed. And we designed a system that you
00:34:37.720
can't check. That's what we got. All right. Let's talk about persuasion again. It was pointed
00:34:47.860
out, Mark Schneider said this, and some other people were weighing in on this on Twitter, that
00:34:53.640
showing pictures of people getting the actual needle is anti-persuasive. Because there are
00:34:59.520
enough people who have a needle phobia that just the picture of it is such a turnoff that you don't
00:35:06.800
want to get the vaccination. Number one, is that true? I would say that's probably true.
00:35:13.600
That seems, you know, you have to test this stuff to really know. But, you know, with any, you don't
00:35:19.300
even have to be experienced in persuasion to know this is true. That if you show the scariest thing,
00:35:24.100
and you show it in a visual form, you've made visual a concept. What happens when you make visual
00:35:31.380
something scary? It gets worse. Right? It gets worse. Showing all these celebrities who are not
00:35:38.860
afraid of the needle getting a needle is the worst thing you could do. And that's a good observation.
00:35:44.500
And I didn't make it myself. And I'm, I'm embarrassed because I should have seen this.
00:35:49.760
So what should you do instead? Let's say you wanted to persuade. Stop, stop. I'm not persuading you
00:35:57.900
because I don't, I don't try to persuade you to make medical decisions. That would be unethical of me.
00:36:03.300
So I don't do it. But talking about persuasion is what I do do. And so we'll talk about it in this
00:36:08.520
context. If you wanted people to get the vaccination, knowing that a lot of them have needle phobia,
00:36:14.040
how would you do it? Here's how I'd do it. I would show somebody who's getting a vaccination,
00:36:21.020
but I would just show them the face. All right. So look at, look at me in the camera,
00:36:25.580
if you can see this. So if you can see my big old head and you can see me worrying about getting the
00:36:31.660
shot, and then I get the shot and then I say, when are you going to give me the shot? And they say,
00:36:36.540
you just got it. And then I go, oh, I just got it. I didn't even feel it. And then you show another
00:36:42.280
one. You just do a compilation clip of just faces of people saying, was that it? Did I get
00:36:49.160
the shot? And you have them looking away because this is what I do. I don't have a needle phobia,
00:36:55.920
but I don't like seeing it either. So I have never looked in the direction of the person who gives me
00:37:01.520
the shot. I sit on the chair and I go like that. I look to the left or right because I usually get a
00:37:07.560
shot in the other arm. So I usually look that way and I just keep looking that way the entire time
00:37:12.840
because the last thing I want to see is the fucking needle. I don't want to see it. No,
00:37:21.000
no. If you showed people getting open heart surgery, I think fewer people would get it.
00:37:29.440
You don't want to see it. You want to see the happy face of the person who recovered from the
00:37:34.840
surgery. So show me faces. Faces are the most persuasive. So visual and faces, and you show
00:37:43.420
people being surprised that they could barely feel it. That's it. That's your persuasion.
00:37:52.220
And if you show enough people, the more you show, the more persuasive it gets.
00:37:56.100
Here's an interesting thought. Getting the COVID shot will cure you of being afraid of needles.
00:38:08.540
Because a number of people have said this, that for whatever reason, the COVID shot,
00:38:12.300
you barely feel it compared to other vaccinations you may have experienced. I don't know if it's
00:38:17.740
because the needle is thinner, it doesn't go in as far, it doesn't catch a vein. I don't know what,
00:38:21.900
but if you compared it to anything like having your blood drawn, it's not even close. You just
00:38:27.500
barely feel it. You hardly know it's even happening. So here, I would go right at this. And I'd say that
00:38:34.780
getting a COVID shot will fix two problems. You'll be vaccinated, and it will help you with your fear
00:38:42.000
of needles because you're not even going to feel this freaking thing. So now, is that true? We're
00:38:48.580
talking only about persuasion, so it doesn't need to be true in this context. All right.
00:38:55.560
That is largely what I wanted to talk about today.
00:39:04.000
Damn news is straight up boring now. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the...
00:39:10.060
So, Biden was answering a question about Ron DeSantis today. Did you see it?
00:39:17.480
And somebody said, what about Ron DeSantis? Yeah, I'm paraphrasing. He, you know, he says he's going to
00:39:23.360
block your, you know, rules or whatever, your federal rules. And here was Biden's... Biden looks at the
00:39:30.460
reporter. He goes, Governor who? And he laughs and walks away. Governor who? Now, it's kind of genius.
00:39:39.720
It's kind of genius. Biden's strategy of not engaging sometimes is just brilliant. Because
00:39:51.020
whatever he said would be a headline, right? Because it's the president versus the governor.
00:39:56.100
And instead of engaging with it, he just blows it off. But here's the best part. When Biden jokes
00:40:04.840
that he can't remember something, it starts creating this context where the next time he
00:40:11.460
can't remember something legitimately, he can joke about it. He's creating a context in which
00:40:17.420
he can hide his dementia. It's really clever. Now, is he doing it intentionally? I don't know.
00:40:25.580
All right. Let me... Let me pause here. I'm seeing in the comments a picture of somebody
00:40:35.860
who had an adverse effect from a vaccination. Do we all agree that there are adverse effects
00:40:43.600
from vaccinations? Nobody says they're not, right? So how many individual examples would
00:40:52.680
you need to see to convince you one way or the other that you should get a shot? Well,
00:40:59.000
here's the last thing you should do if you want to be helpful. Show people pictures like
00:41:05.100
this of people who had a bad effect. That's almost criminal. It's almost criminal. If, well,
00:41:13.500
let me make an assumption. If the vaccinations are good overall, and I'll allow that some of you
00:41:19.120
are not convinced of that. But if the vaccinations are, as the experts say, the only way we can get
00:41:26.760
past this, then showing an individual picture, because remember, pictures are very persuasive.
00:41:33.220
A picture of somebody with a bad outcome from a vaccination, which we know happens. Statistically,
00:41:38.220
we know this for sure. It's just the worst thing you could do. Now, if you're convinced that
00:41:43.660
vaccinations are definitely worse than not getting vaccinated, well, then you're persuading exactly
00:41:51.440
the way you want to. But man, you better be right. I would say that if you take the risk of
00:42:00.140
showing a picture of somebody with a bad outcome from vaccinations, you better fucking be right
00:42:05.740
that vaccinations are worse than not getting vaccinated, because you're taking that responsibility.
00:42:11.260
When you persuade that hard, because most of us are just chattering on Twitter, right? It's not
00:42:18.360
terribly persuasive. Oh, there's a tweet with some words in it. But as soon as you take that to the
00:42:23.860
next level, and show me the picture of somebody with a bad outcome, and you can really see it,
00:42:30.000
you're a doctor. You've sort of crossed the line. You've crossed the line into making medical
00:42:37.560
recommendations, and you're not a doctor. It's one thing when we talk about the doctors, and we
00:42:42.800
question them, and we're skeptical. That's all good, to be skeptical. But once you show that picture
00:42:50.200
of the person with a bad outcome, you're a doctor, because you're really telling people what to do with
00:42:55.020
their medical situation at that point. That's not just talk. So just be careful of it. All right,
00:43:01.080
I don't mean to come down on a subscriber, Daniel, because I know that you're trying to be useful
00:43:06.800
here, and let people know what the risks are. And I appreciate that. So I believe the intention
00:43:13.160
is all good. No doubt about that. I don't question the intention. So good intentions,
00:43:19.440
but just be careful. When you go visual, especially like scary visual, fear and visual persuasion are the
00:43:27.940
two strongest things. So I mean, that's what we're just talking about with the showing people getting
00:43:32.680
vaccinated. It changes behavior. A scary picture changes behavior. I would argue that the video of
00:43:40.660
Wuhan with people collapsing in the streets had a lot to do with, you know, behavior. And that was
00:43:49.420
probably not even true. All right. Dr. Johnson says, Scott, don't want to upset your big pharma bosses,
00:44:00.500
sheep. Well, Dr. Johnson, let me speak to you directly. Fuck you. Fuck you for imagining that I
00:44:10.260
would take money from pharma and give people medical advice based on being paid for it. Fuck you and
00:44:17.060
everybody in your family. Fuck you, your dog. Fuck your house. Fuck your car. Fuck your bank
00:44:23.700
account. Fuck your stupid fucking ugly head. Fuck everybody you've ever talked to. Anybody who likes
00:44:29.900
you. Fuck you completely. No, I don't take money from pharma. I don't take any secret money from anybody
00:44:40.980
you're not aware of, right? I take subscriptions from individuals who would like extra content that's
00:44:48.100
a little too edgy for the public. I definitely do that. But if you imagine that I'm taking money from
00:44:54.780
anybody, especially pharma. I fucking hate big pharma, just like most of you, right? I think pharma is
00:45:02.460
largely a criminal organization that also does good things, right? Like the food industry. The food
00:45:10.600
industry is, at least the grocery store industry, it's a criminal organization. If you've ever dealt
00:45:16.940
with it, they're just fucking criminals. But we also need food, so there's a good side to it.
00:45:24.300
Anne-Marie says, Dr. Johnson has a PhD in social work. Well, maybe that's why you're so fucking stupid,
00:45:30.300
Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson, you are one of these smart idiots I keep hearing about.
00:45:38.460
Like, why would you even really think that I would take money from pharma to sell a drug?
00:45:45.720
I can't even think of anything less ethical than that. Can you? Think of something less ethical than
00:45:52.780
that. I can't. I can't think of anything that would be worse than that. And by the way, I'm saying this so
00:45:58.860
clearly that my life would be completely over if somehow, like, later information came out, and it
00:46:06.000
always does, right? You always get caught. If information came out later that I've been paid
00:46:10.420
by somebody to do something, I'd get caught. You know, there'd have to be somebody else who knew
00:46:15.500
about it who would want to talk about it later. So no, it would be a stupid risk. Only an idiot would do
00:46:22.820
that. And you'd have to be a really unethical idiot who wants to just have no credibility
00:46:29.840
whatsoever in their life. So Dr. Johnson, fuck you and everybody who looks like you. And please
00:46:35.740
never, never consume any of my content again. All right.
00:46:47.020
You and Bill Gates are buddies. Local, somebody's saying, no, I've never met Bill Gates. I always
00:46:54.820
wanted to, but now it would be too dangerous. I always thought it'd be fun to be Bill Gates.
00:47:00.940
At the moment, not the right time. So probably won't be following up on that.
00:47:14.140
Let's see. People are trying to reconcile how they agreed with you on Trump and not on the
00:47:19.340
vaccines. Yeah, you know, there's a strange phenomenon where people can think that I was
00:47:29.800
reasonable and smart on, on one topic that's in the news that has, you know, same information
00:47:35.180
we're all looking at, right? I don't have special information usually. And then I'll be all smart
00:47:41.560
and rational on that topic. And then the very next topic, like I'll lose my mind. And, and the only
00:47:48.660
way you can explain it is that I must be bought off by a big pharma company. It's like, there's only one
00:47:53.680
one way to explain it. Do you ever consider the alternative explanation that I'm right twice?
00:48:03.180
Is that, I mean, the, the people, the people who are sure I was right before, but now I'm wrong.
00:48:09.020
Do you ever even consider the possibility that I was just right twice and that maybe you were wrong?
00:48:14.140
Um, some people look, suffer from a lack of imagination. Yeah. So that's, uh, I often say
00:48:25.900
that if you can't think of any other reason for why you see something, um, that's a lack of
00:48:33.340
imagination. It doesn't mean you've determined that there's only one possibility because the
00:48:39.060
possibility is that you're just wrong or you're experiencing cognitive dissonance, um, or somebody
00:48:47.140
says, you're not right about everything. So here's somebody who's joining this late, who's accusing
00:48:52.320
me of pretending I'm right about everything. When the entire theme of my show was how wrong I am.
00:49:01.240
Um, see the problems. Um, uh, 90% are moderate and 10% chasing a joke. I'm not sure I get that.
00:49:17.360
Dr. Johnson says we have an intervention plan for you. I'm talking to Christina about it now.
00:49:23.000
Yeah. Maybe I do need an intervention. Uh, but Dr. Johnson, fuck off. Uh, I don't like you. You're not
00:49:34.500
a good person. And that is my show for the day. Let me ask you something. Um, I know that you,
00:49:45.660
you hate the COVID content. I do too. Like I really want to talk about other stuff like
00:49:52.760
politics and world events and stuff, but the news industry has decided we can only care about one
00:49:58.140
thing. And so there's not much else to talk about. Uh, when there is, I'll be talking about it and
00:50:04.440
then things will get back to normal. But my God, can this pandemic ever get over? It doesn't look
00:50:10.380
like it, nor do we have a strategy to get past it. Yeah. If there's one thing that bothers me the most
00:50:15.680
about the way the government is handling this, it's that they're not telling us the truth.
00:50:20.880
They're not telling us the truth that at our current rate of vaccinations, we're not going to get
00:50:27.000
there. And we have to just figure out what life looks like without getting there. So, um, that's