Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1473 Scott Adams： All the Headlines With Twice the Sipping. Get in Here. Whiteboard Coming.

00:00:00.000 Bum-ba-dum. Do you hear this? Oh, that's the sound. Yeah, that's the sound of crisp paper

00:00:09.820 coming out of my new HP printer that was just installed. Working like a champ. And I think

00:00:17.280 that that is a sign of a great show to come. Great show. And if that's not enough,

00:00:24.280 I'm just getting started. That's right. The whiteboard behind me. Don't get too excited.

00:00:31.960 I know what that does to you. But wow, it's going to be a good one. And if you'd like to take it up a

00:00:37.100 notch, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a canteen jug, a flask,

00:00:42.300 a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the

00:00:46.980 unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called

00:00:51.220 the simultaneous sip. It happens. Now, go.

00:00:59.940 Ah. Ah. So good. Well, so it turns out that Alabama is getting crushed in their ICU capacity. So

00:01:15.120 they're over capacity. Half of the people in there are there for COVID. So that's what's crushing stuff.

00:01:21.220 But they say only 12% of the patients in the hospital are fully vaccinated, which means

00:01:28.460 it's not really a problem of vaccinated people. It's a problem of unvaccinated people.

00:01:36.300 And I was thinking, have you noticed how getting a vaccination is a lot like voting?

00:01:43.140 Alabama basically voted to not get vaccinated because I think it's the lowest vaccinated state

00:01:50.180 or one of them. So the people in Alabama looked at the news, same as you did, did their own

00:01:56.860 research, maybe not the same as you did, and came to the conclusion, in a sense, they voted

00:02:04.800 to be in an unvaccinated state, relatively unvaccinated. And they got what they wanted,

00:02:11.360 which was no ICU capacity. I don't know what to do about people getting what they want.

00:02:19.940 Right? Because on one level, you want everybody to do well and have good outcomes. But what if

00:02:26.560 they choose bad outcomes? What if they get exactly what they chose? I don't know. I feel

00:02:34.620 as if the people in Alabama had the same information everybody else did. Now, could they be right?

00:02:40.320 Well, in the end, what if people who got vaccinated grow horns? Well, if that happens, those people

00:02:46.020 in Alabama are going to look pretty, pretty smart, aren't they? Because you'll be walking

00:02:49.560 around with your vaccination horns. And you'll be like, gosh, I wish I hadn't gotten vaccinated

00:02:54.740 because I grew horns. And then you go to Alabama, and everybody's like, no horns? And you're like,

00:02:59.820 these guys are freaking geniuses. They saw this coming. They made the right choice. Anyway,

00:03:07.400 the point is, we don't know who will be right. But we can say for sure that Alabama got what

00:03:12.540 they voted for, in a sense. Jack Posobiec had a couple of good tweets today, as he often does.

00:03:20.580 He's got a little scoop, I guess, an inside story saying that Biden is telling staff that he wants

00:03:28.100 to go back to Delaware. He hasn't been sleeping well this week. Hum. Did anything happen this week

00:03:36.780 that would make a sitting president lose sleep? Anything, anything. Ah. The weather? No, no.

00:03:46.880 Was there anything in the headlines that would make a president feel anxious or lose sleep?

00:03:55.140 I can't think of anything. Anybody? Anybody? You got anything? I got nothing.

00:04:00.060 So, clearly, Biden is correct that the problem is probably the bed. The problem is the bed.

00:04:07.700 He's got a bad bed in the White House, but that Delaware bed is just firm enough.

00:04:11.720 He doesn't say if he uses a MyPillow topper in Delaware, but I'll bet. I'll bet he's got a MyPillow

00:04:20.280 topper, because that's the good bed. And so he wants to stay in Delaware. But here's another way to

00:04:28.180 interpret that, because there are always multiple ways to interpret. The other way to interpret it is

00:04:33.900 that the cat is on the roof. You know the joke? It's an old joke. Cat is on the roof. The short

00:04:40.380 version is that it's warning you that something might happen to the cat later, but we don't want

00:04:45.040 to break it to you right away. Well, let's just say the cat's on the roof. Later, we might tell you

00:04:50.000 the cat fell off the roof. Maybe has an injury. And then later, we'll say the cat passed away, but by

00:04:55.500 then you're all primed. You know, you're kind of ready for it. I feel like they're readying the

00:05:01.820 public. Step one, make a really bad decision. Step two, stay in Delaware, because you can't sleep.

00:05:12.040 Step three, say that you've got a little bit of a headache. Step four, you're feeling tired. Step five,

00:05:20.340 well, pretty soon, President Kamala Harris. So that's what it's looking like. The only slight

00:05:29.160 flaw with the plan, just a little flaw with the plan, it's a great plan, except for the part that

00:05:37.520 Kamala Harris is even less trusted than Biden. Now, let me tell you how brilliant this plan would have

00:05:45.260 been if the vice president had any capabilities whatsoever. Really good. It would have been a

00:05:51.120 good plan, because Biden would have beaten Trump for the presidency, then a capable person would

00:05:56.400 have slid right into that job, and that would have been pretty, pretty good. But for that plan to work,

00:06:03.680 you don't want your vice president to be less competent than somebody whose brain stopped working

00:06:08.920 about nine years ago. But that's what they did. So there's your good planning. Rasmussen says,

00:06:19.080 asked people how likely do people think it is, likely voters, how likely do you think it is that

00:06:24.580 Harris would replace Biden before his term is over? 51% said it was highly likely or somewhat likely.

00:06:32.460 So over half of the country thinks it's at least somewhat likely that the person who got elected

00:06:39.820 president won't make it four years. Now, how much less trust could you have in your government

00:06:49.280 than think they won't even, like, survive? You know, basically, people are putting similar odds

00:06:54.880 on Biden making it through as the Afghan government surviving the Taliban. Yeah, they're not that

00:07:01.380 different. You know, one was one was like a six month. Remember, the intelligence agency said that

00:07:07.240 the Afghan government would last maybe six months, which is very similar to what people believe

00:07:15.560 Biden will last. So there was a point where we weren't sure if the Afghan government or the American

00:07:22.740 government would last longer. I'm not making that up. There was a real point this year where the

00:07:30.140 intelligence people weren't quite sure if the Afghan government would fall before the American

00:07:35.540 government, meaning that Biden would leave office. Surprise, surprise. All right. But 26% say it's not likely

00:07:45.900 that Biden will leave office or they don't know. 26%. What is that close to? It's very close to 25%. That's what

00:07:56.120 it's close to. And as you know, 25% of people will get the wrong answer on any survey. Doesn't matter

00:08:03.320 what the topic is. 25% of the public are going to get the wrong answer or act like they don't know.

00:08:11.640 So let's dig into this Afghan withdrawal story. Yeah, I'll tell you why this is interesting to me.

00:08:17.840 Because there's just a ton of psychology involved in analyzing the whole thing. And that's the

00:08:26.860 interesting part to me. The number one psychology layer here is Dunning-Kruger. You know, Dunning-Kruger

00:08:35.480 is when people think that they're more capable than they are. How many of you are pretty sure you could

00:08:43.380 have done military logistical training better than the experts? Pretty much all of us. I think all of

00:08:51.020 us, really. Now, are we right? Can we really do military planning better than the experts?

00:08:59.280 We actually think we can. In this specific case, people are like, in this case, I think I could have.

00:09:06.940 But could we? Let's dig into it a little bit and find out if you're all Dunning-Kruger'd up, 0.99

00:09:12.820 or if you're actually one of the smart people who could have gotten this right.

00:09:18.780 So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, he said that he was explaining things. He

00:09:25.900 said that the intelligence indicated there were multiple possible scenarios after the troop withdrawal.

00:09:32.840 And that he saw nothing warning of a total collapse within 11 days of U.S. departure.

00:09:37.680 All right? Let's say that's true. Now, don't assume anything anybody tells you is true,

00:09:43.440 because everybody's covering their ass at this point. But look, let's just play it through. 0.97

00:09:47.060 Let's say it was true, because I think they're saying this consistently, that nobody believed

00:09:54.880 that the army would fall in 11 days. Now, what is it I always tell you about Democrats that they get

00:10:04.560 wrong? In the comments, in the comments, tell me, what do I always remind you that Democrats get wrong

00:10:13.080 every time? That's right, human motivation. Human motivation is their blind spot. Every time Democrats

00:10:21.040 get something wrong, it's the same thing. It's the same damn thing. Every time. What did they get wrong 0.99

00:10:27.540 this time? Human motivation. What does an Afghan government who believes that their survival depends 0.97

00:10:35.980 on American military presence, what do they do when you withdraw? They run. Human motivation.

00:10:46.860 Are you surprised? Now, the only thing that should have mattered is we should have talked to the people

00:10:54.340 in the Afghan government and said, hypothetically, if you saw the U.S. military presence drawing down,

00:11:01.020 and it was trying to get to zero pretty quickly, whether it's months or days, but pretty quickly,

00:11:06.560 what do you think you'd do? How do you think you'd act if the American military left? What would they say?

00:11:13.660 Well, they'd probably lie, right? But I feel like you could have deduced that the Afghan government

00:11:21.940 didn't think it could survive. And if the Afghan government didn't think it could survive,

00:11:27.600 whether we left quickly or slowly, what the hell are they going to do if they find out we're leaving?

00:11:33.280 They're going to run, or they're going to join the Taliban, or they're going to do whatever it is that 0.60

00:11:37.820 looks like they could survive. And then the second question I ask is, why are there so many people

00:11:48.460 there? I'm no genius about Afghanistan, but didn't we know months ago? We knew months ago that you

00:11:58.280 needed to get out of there if you were an American or if you had any risk once the Taliban took over.

00:12:03.320 Didn't you know that months ago to get the hell out of there? Weren't they all warned months ago?

00:12:09.580 How much responsibility do you have for people who have been warned to help themselves and then chose not to?

00:12:17.660 Like, where does your responsibility end when people do the wrong thing right in front of you?

00:12:23.760 I don't know. How many troops do you want to risk saving people who wouldn't save themselves?

00:12:28.920 It's a sort of a philosophical ethical question. So let's say, let's take a look at the whiteboard.

00:12:39.980 Are you ready? Let's go to the whiteboard. So here's my interest in this. I'm a little bit

00:12:46.180 interested in knowing if anybody made a mistake, right, in the decision making. But I'm way interested

00:12:52.360 in how decisions are made and, you know, just the process of decision making. So I'm going to draw it

00:12:59.040 out the way I see it. I see that there were two options, but in your mind you can, of course,

00:13:06.320 translate to there were infinite options in between. But just for analytical purposes,

00:13:12.020 let's keep it simple and say, you know, if these two options give us an answer,

00:13:16.600 maybe it would be similar for the ones in between as well. So if we do a fast exit, and that's what

00:13:23.600 happened, our military starts packing up. And we know this, we don't have to guess. We know the

00:13:28.860 Afghan government immediately left. And that created a bunch of chaos. And the only hope of getting the 1.00

00:13:37.820 people out, the 30,000 people, the only hope is that the Taliban gives them safe passage. Now what

00:13:46.700 are the odds? What are the odds that the Taliban would give the Americans safe passage? Well, let's 1.00

00:13:54.220 look at human motivation. Now we know the Taliban are kind of crazy. So we think, oh, they'll do 0.99

00:14:00.540 anything. They'll kill anybody. And that's certainly a big risk. But what is the Taliban's big 0.98

00:14:06.880 self-interest? What do they want more than anything? The Taliban want more than anything 1.00

00:14:14.160 to get American military out of there. What would be the worst way they could get what they want?

00:14:21.660 The worst thing they could do is start killing those Americans who couldn't get out or anybody 0.98

00:14:26.640 else who wanted to get out. It's the worst thing they could do. They've already said that they're not 0.97

00:14:31.180 going to go after the interpreters. I don't know if you could trust them. I mean, that would be kind 0.96

00:14:35.460 of iffy, right? But they're saying the right thing, which means that they understand where

00:14:41.320 their self-interest is, and they're pursuing it. If somebody announces, here's my self-interest,

00:14:48.220 and you can look at it yourself and say, yeah, that is your self-interest. You want us out first,

00:14:53.740 then you might turn into a very bad people again. But at the moment, just stay cool, and you'll get

00:15:00.820 everything you want. Just stay cool for a month. Get all the people out. You'll be fine. Now, could

00:15:07.940 you have depended on that to be true? Not really, because it's the Taliban, right? You can't really

00:15:14.120 predict all the way to the end. But you could predict chaos. I think that was predictable,

00:15:20.080 because you could predict that the government would fall. That's how human motivation works.

00:15:24.640 As soon as they're exposed, they're going to take care of themselves and get the hell out of there.

00:15:28.540 So that's what we ended up with. But let's say we'd gone the other way and done a controlled

00:15:34.340 Trump-like withdrawal, where we kept forces there and did an orderly evacuation.

00:15:42.360 How would that go? Well, a lot of people are saying, well, that would have worked.

00:15:47.220 You keep the military, you get rid of all, you get all the evacuations done, and then you remove 0.66

00:15:52.800 the military. Very orderly, right? Makes sense. Pretty much everybody would think that makes

00:15:58.440 sense. But there's one problem, and it's the place where I differ in assumptions with most

00:16:03.940 of you. It happens right here. I think that as soon as you begin the civilian evacuations,

00:16:11.020 you've signaled to the country that you're leaving. Why would people who are afraid of the Taliban

00:16:16.320 wait? What would make them wait around? I think that the Afghan government falls under

00:16:24.120 both scenarios and all the ones in between. That's my assumption, which makes me get to

00:16:30.340 a different opinion than you. What is my assumption based on? Human motivation. The same human motivation

00:16:37.380 that made the government fall when we left quickly would be exactly the same as it would make the

00:16:43.940 government fall if we left slowly. Because in both cases, they'd say, oh, hell, I got to get out of

00:16:50.940 here. One time slowly, one time fast. But in both cases, that has to do with the people leaving. It

00:16:58.520 doesn't have to do with the government. The government would probably bug out about the same time.

00:17:04.420 So imagine trying to evacuate people as the government is falling. And you don't have enough forces

00:17:12.260 because you've already drawn down. You can't protect everything. And I guess we're being told

00:17:17.180 they couldn't protect the embassy, Kabul, and Bagram at the same time. They didn't have the forces.

00:17:23.340 Couldn't do it. So they had to make some choices. They made them. And they were all bad choices.

00:17:29.360 But, you know, leadership, right? You got to make bad choices. If you only have bad choices,

00:17:33.540 you still have to make a choice. It's leadership. So I believe that if it had been a slow withdrawal,

00:17:40.260 you would have seen something closer to a civil war. If the Afghan government had tried to stay

00:17:45.720 and fight, there would have been a civil war, door to door. Probably any people who couldn't get

00:17:52.380 down to the country at that point probably would get killed because there was no point in not doing it.

00:17:57.540 So I feel as though the slow withdrawal would have caused the same amount of chaos because the

00:18:04.600 government was going to fall anyway. And then you would have a civil war. And this might happen

00:18:10.740 before you got people out. So you might be evacuating people in the midst of a civil war.

00:18:17.600 Seems worse. Now, of course, it was a civil war. It just happened in 11 days. So you barely noticed it.

00:18:22.940 So here's how economists debate each other. And it's different than the way the rest of the world

00:18:33.760 debates each other. The way economists debate each other is they usually just look for where you have

00:18:40.300 a difference in assumption. Because economists generally think the same. You know, they have

00:18:45.160 similar kind of reasoning skills. They know how to compare the right things. They know the difference

00:18:51.060 between short-term and long-term. They know what a sunk cost is, etc. So the only place we tend to

00:18:58.100 disagree is not in the reasoning so much as in the assumptions. And so I think the only assumption

00:19:04.720 that puts me on a different page from some of you is the assumption that if we'd done it slow and

00:19:10.820 orderly, the Afghan government would have stayed in business and kept things going. I don't think

00:19:16.280 there's any reason to believe that's true. So in the comments, is anybody persuaded to the following

00:19:26.980 point of view? That we can't know from our perspective as civilians sitting here, we can't

00:19:33.500 know if that was a mistake. Because we don't know what the other way would have been. Because you don't

00:19:40.200 know if the Afghan government would have still surrendered so quickly that it wouldn't have made much

00:19:46.060 difference. Yeah, we're all guessing that. So economists like Paul Krugman, you know, what mistake

00:19:58.480 does Paul Krugman make? Doesn't he always make the same mistake? Human motivation?

00:20:10.740 Yes. All right. So I'm looking, I just want to see if, oh, somebody says plausible. All right. I just

00:20:19.380 wanted to see if any of you would agree with me that we really don't have the information or the

00:20:26.400 insight to know how poorly things went. So now, of course, Trump is doing exactly what Trump should

00:20:33.840 do, which is he's going at this hard. And man, you do not want to give Trump this much of an opening

00:20:40.400 because he is just dancing on their graves right now. I mean, Trump is, if you wanted to say,

00:20:49.400 like, what is Trump good at? It's this. Trump is really, really good at spotting an opening

00:20:57.340 that's, you know, got a little weakness and just going in and just killing it. And he's doing that 0.86

00:21:03.280 now. So he's giving some interviews. And you forget, it's easy to forget how much we appreciated just the

00:21:11.080 way Trump talks. Everything he says is just closer to, like, something that's real and raw than what

00:21:20.680 other politicians say. And even if you, you know, if you hate him and you don't like what he's doing,

00:21:27.160 you still feel there's some kind of weird truth at the bottom of it, isn't there? Or at least it's

00:21:32.000 his truth. You know, he's telling you his actual opinion. Now, of course, there's plenty of hyperbole

00:21:37.160 and fact-checking problems and stuff. But weirdly, Trump has this strange honesty that comes through

00:21:42.980 in a lot of stuff. And here's another example. Trump said, I realized I had a loser, speaking about

00:21:50.880 Mark Milley, the general. And this is the single greatest embarrassment I've ever seen. 0.96

00:21:57.120 And then he went through the logic of how he would have kept troops there and withdrawn people.

00:22:01.500 Now, when Trump tells it, he has the advantage of hindsight. So Trump can tell the story as if he

00:22:09.380 knew all along that the Afghan government would fall in 11 days. Right? We all act like that. We all act

00:22:16.180 like we knew that. Well, we knew that. Pretty obvious. Afghan government was going to fall in 11 days.

00:22:21.240 We didn't know that. You didn't know that. You just knew it was going to fall. Now, if the Afghan 1.00

00:22:27.000 government had lasted a few months, probably things would have been fine. Right? We probably could

00:22:34.420 have gotten people out. And the Afghan government would have been, you know, maybe good enough to 0.91

00:22:39.080 help get people out. So, you know, Trump has the advantage of hindsight. But that's politics. You

00:22:46.180 know, he gets to dance on this one. And he is. So good job in persuasion, Trump is doing. And

00:22:54.280 and who can argue that he wouldn't have done a better job? You can't. You can't argue that you you I

00:23:02.020 mean, I can give you a intellectual argument about how maybe he would have done a better job. But you

00:23:08.920 don't know. You don't know. There's no way to compare. And it seems to me that Trump was on a faster

00:23:15.980 schedule drawing troops down. I don't know how that would have worked out better. Right? I mean, Trump's

00:23:21.720 Trump's claim is that he would have done it faster. But more controlled. Okay. I think

00:23:29.700 it's just the advantage of hindsight. I feel as though any president who is in office would

00:23:34.920 have been killed by this issue. So Trump, he gets the win that the vaccinations didn't

00:23:42.660 get, you know, as widespread as they could have. And we're still in the coronavirus problem.

00:23:47.560 So that's going to accrue to Biden, even if there's nothing he could have done about it. And

00:23:52.520 and then the Afghanistan thing is going to look like Biden's problem. I tell you, what would have

00:23:59.460 been luckier than Trump losing the second term? Think about it. Think about it. The luckiest thing

00:24:06.700 Trump ever did was lose the second term. Because if he'd been president, his whole administration

00:24:13.820 would look like this. It would look like bad news on coronavirus followed by bad news on Afghanistan

00:24:21.200 would have been terrible. But now Trump gets to say, well, if I'd been there, things would

00:24:26.840 have been better. He's not wrong. You just don't know. I mean, he might be wrong. Just no way to

00:24:32.740 know. All right. One of my favorite stories of the day is that apparently Larry David and Ellen

00:24:42.600 Dershowitz got into a screaming match at a grocery store, which, which is pretty funny to me.

00:24:54.540 So can't you just imagine that? Because it seems exactly like a skit from Larry David show. And I

00:25:01.740 hope he turns it into a skit. Let me make a suggestion. Larry David, if you're listening,

00:25:07.840 Alan Dershowitz, if you're listening, just put this on Curb. This is a perfect episode. You probably

00:25:17.440 already thought that. I don't have to tell you that, right? It's like I think I'm telling Larry

00:25:21.380 David what a perfect episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm looks like. It looks like this. And I think he knows

00:25:27.200 it. So if you want to get a lot of people watching your show, invite Alan Dershowitz to just do an

00:25:35.440 episode and just do the scene, do the grocery store scene. Whereas I don't know if you know how

00:25:41.460 Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David show. I don't know if you know how he scripts it, but he only

00:25:47.540 scripts it approximate so that the actors are kind of doing their own thing and making up lines,

00:25:53.160 you know, to a model, but they stay within the model and make up their own stuff. Wouldn't you like

00:25:58.960 to see Alan Dershowitz playing the role of Alan Dershowitz running into Larry David playing the

00:26:05.580 role of Larry David in a grocery store exactly the way it happened? Wouldn't you like to see that?

00:26:13.400 You know, and add a few, maybe add a few, you know, jokes to exaggerate a little bit. Come on.

00:26:18.420 That would be the best TV. How could you not watch that show? That would be great.

00:26:24.340 And here's the thing. It sounds like Larry David is, you know, genuinely mad at Alan Dershowitz for

00:26:30.560 supporting Trump. And here's what you don't want to do. If you get into a public disagreement with

00:26:38.820 somebody, here's a little tip. Here's a little tip on managing your public personality. Don't get into

00:26:48.600 a public argument with the most verbally gifted lawyer in modern times. It might not go well, right? Larry

00:27:00.940 David, excellent at writing TV shows and appearing in them. Excellent. But arguing your case, Alan Dershowitz,

00:27:11.200 a little bit better, a little bit better. If you wanted somebody to argue to the Supreme Court, who do you

00:27:16.940 pick? Larry David or Alan Dershowitz? I think I'd pick Alan Dershowitz. And here's what Alan Dershowitz

00:27:23.360 said, which became one of the quotes in the press. So Dershowitz is talking about Larry David and about

00:27:30.240 this situation. He says, while he was writing bad jokes, I was helping to bring about peace in the

00:27:35.280 Middle East. Dershowitz told us, what has he done? Now, how much do I frickin' love this response?

00:27:44.060 It's actually true. You know that, right? That Dershowitz actually did help create peace in the Middle

00:27:54.680 East. You know, not as much as, you know, Jared and Avi Berkowitz. But he was part of that.

00:28:03.200 This sounds like a joke, right? Larry David wrote jokes. And Alan Dershowitz, in part,

00:28:11.560 because he did have a relationship with, you know, the administration. And he, you know,

00:28:16.800 he was a critic, as well as a supporter, based on where the law went. You know, he was following

00:28:22.260 the law. It looked to me like he was just following the law. I didn't see, actually, any bias, honestly.

00:28:27.100 And I would call it out. It's not like I'm such a team player that, you know, I can't identify

00:28:32.600 somebody who's just being a team player. But I never saw that with Dershowitz. Did you?

00:28:38.580 Did you ever see Dershowitz say something that was contrary to the law? Right? Somebody says

00:28:48.240 it's a boring topic for non-Americans. It probably is. Probably is. Do non-Americans not know who 0.60

00:28:54.580 Dershowitz is or Larry David? I guess it depends where you are. But you do need to know those

00:28:59.920 two personalities. However, yes, you don't want to get into an argument with somebody who is

00:29:08.460 contributing in a very productive way, I would guess, to peace in the Middle East.

00:29:15.820 Right? That's not a fair fight. One wrote really good jokes. The other helped solve the most

00:29:24.460 unsolvable problem in the entire world. Peace in the Middle East. I mean, we don't have peace in 0.94

00:29:30.660 the Middle East, but got a lot closer. So that was good. All right. Here's another little tip.

00:29:41.420 If you're looking to scapegoat somebody, and you want to make it look like if there's a big disaster,

00:29:48.460 you want to make it look like somebody's problem, somebody made a mistake, you want to pick somebody

00:29:53.540 who looks like General Mark Milley. Now, also, is it Austin, who's the Secretary of Defense?

00:30:02.920 Those two guys, standing in front of the public, as sort of the, you know, the leadership pair, 1.00

00:30:10.660 they look dumb. Now, luckily for me, one of them is white. So, because otherwise you'd be like, 1.00

00:30:18.440 you racist, why do you say that the black guy is dumb? I don't say that. I say that there was a 1.00

00:30:26.040 black guy and a white guy, and they both look dumb to me. Now, are they dumb? Clearly not, right? 1.00

00:30:32.900 You know, clearly if you had either of those guys take the SAT test or an IQ test against, let's say,

00:30:39.180 me. They might beat me. I mean, on paper, they might be smarter than me. I don't know. Maybe.

00:30:47.500 But, can we agree on this? No matter how smart they actually are, and I can't imagine you could

00:30:55.040 become a General or Secretary of Defense without being pretty darn smart. However smart they are,

00:31:01.340 would you agree with the following statement, that they don't look smart? Anybody? And again,

00:31:08.920 you know, this isn't racial, because it's a white guy and a black guy, and they both have that same

00:31:12.660 sort of vibe to them. They just don't make me feel confident. Right? And they looked a little extra

00:31:21.080 dumb, because the Afghanistan situation primes you to think that they're dumb, and then they act that 1.00

00:31:26.980 way, and it's just a little too much. Yeah, they're woke. Yeah, you know, it's fun to tie that together 1.00

00:31:34.620 and say, oh, they're so woke, and that's the real problem. But I'm not so sure. I'm not sure that's

00:31:41.820 the problem. All right. Here's my next question for you. If it's true that the vaccinated states

00:31:53.420 have lots of ICU capacity, and the unvaccinated states, such as Alabama, are running out of ICU

00:32:00.680 capacity, is there anybody, including my mascot, Anomaly, you know my mascot? He used to be my

00:32:08.520 critic, but he just became so silly, he's more like a clown. So I feel like he's more of a mascot 0.99

00:32:13.180 than a critic at this point. But my mascot still thinks that the vaccinations are a mistake.

00:32:19.820 Is there anybody who at this point, and this is a question, not a statement, it's going to sound

00:32:26.820 like it's a rhetorical question, but it's not there yet. Could we, in the comments, tell me your

00:32:33.940 opinion? Can we conclude with what we know now, that the vaccinations worked? Now, that doesn't mean

00:32:42.580 you don't need a booster. So I think of them more as therapeutics. But did the vaccinated states get a

00:32:49.620 better outcome than the unvaccinated states? In the comments, tell me, do we have enough data yet

00:32:55.640 to know just in terms of the ICU traffic? All right, I'll just limit it to just ICU capacity.

00:33:02.240 Can we say that vaccinations work just for ICU capacity? Let's see in the comments. A lot of

00:33:12.060 people say no. A lot of people say not yet. I don't know that you're wrong. Because what have I told you

00:33:19.760 from the beginning? Don't look at one state, and don't look at one other country like Sweden, and think

00:33:26.540 that that tells you something. Those are illusions. We so easily can be fooled into saying, oh, Lithuania

00:33:34.360 did one thing and got a good result, so it must be that one thing. It's not. There are lots of

00:33:41.260 variables going on. Let me ask you this. Is Alabama about the same BMI, about the same weight as the rest

00:33:49.820 of the country? Yeah, you didn't see that coming, did you? Yeah, if Alabama is also substantially

00:33:56.340 fatter than the rest of the country, no matter what was happening, their ICUs would have much more

00:34:03.920 problem, right? Now, I don't know how much that's factored into any of this, but oh, and somebody says

00:34:10.140 that they have, I'm seeing in the comments, they have a larger black population, and we know that they

00:34:14.880 have worse outcomes. Do we know for sure, and I honestly don't know the answer to this question,

00:34:23.140 do we know for sure that the vaccinations are the difference in the ICU capacity? Now, I'm leaning

00:34:31.920 toward yes, right? So I'm seeing most of you say no, but I feel like most of you are saying no because

00:34:38.540 you're skeptics, right? I feel like you're sort of committed to the skeptical position,

00:34:45.000 so you're saying, well, it's not proven yet. And I would agree with you, by the way,

00:34:49.500 that I don't think it's proven to a level that I'm willing to say it's just a fact.

00:34:54.780 But I think we're moving that way. It feels like we're, you know, we're moving in a direction where

00:35:01.020 questioning whether vaccinations helped hospital capacity. I think it's moving in a direction where

00:35:08.520 it will be dumb to question it fairly soon, but not yet. I would say so far you're on solid ground

00:35:15.720 to generally say we don't know what's happening anywhere or why. That feels like a pretty good

00:35:22.700 position to be in for a long time. But over time, that complete, you know, ambiguous view of the world

00:35:30.980 will start collapsing into some things we know worked and some things, or at least science will decide

00:35:36.840 some things work and some things didn't. Scott is shilling for his big pharma bosses that killed

00:35:44.900 his stepson with a fentanyl patch on his arm. Dr. Johnson. So one of my trolls here. Let's get rid

00:35:51.820 of you. Hide user on this channel. I can't even tell if these are real trolls. Like, who would really

00:36:01.200 think that I'm shilling for a pharmaceutical company? Like, you'd have to be pretty dumb to have that 1.00

00:36:06.380 opinion. And by the way, if there's a pharmaceutical company that would be willing to pay me to shill for 0.99

00:36:16.600 them, please contact me. Make me an offer. I can't imagine how much they'd have to offer. Like, how much

00:36:26.360 money would I have to take to sell somebody's, like, pharmaceutical stuff? I mean, let's take the

00:36:34.000 assumption everybody has a price, right? Just take that assumption everybody has a price. So let's say

00:36:39.140 I have a price. What would I have to take to sell pharmaceuticals to you without telling you that

00:36:48.000 that's what I was doing? Because if I got caught, I mean, that's the end of my career and reputation and

00:36:54.160 everything else, right? So what would it, how much would you have to give me, you know, my current

00:36:58.660 income level and, you know, lifestyle, et cetera? What would you have to give me? Somebody said

00:37:05.480 that they might offer $50,000. Yeah, I mean, what they would have to pay me would be something in the

00:37:11.660 tens of millions to, you know, to bend my ethical construct. And, you know, I'd like to think that

00:37:19.720 they couldn't do it, right? I'd like to think I'd turn down a billion dollars. But I also believe

00:37:25.100 in human motivation. And if you really got offered a billion dollars, you might get flexible. You know,

00:37:32.200 we all like to think we wouldn't. I'd like to think that of myself. I mean, I genuinely like to think

00:37:37.500 that I would turn down a billion dollars. But until you're in the situation, you know, you can imagine

00:37:45.040 that cognitive dissonance would get the better of you and you'd be like, you know, I was totally

00:37:49.180 opposed to this at $10,000. But now that you're offering a billion, I see the wisdom of your

00:37:54.520 argument. I mean, that's what would happen. You started thinking the other side wasn't as bad.

00:38:00.920 And, well, you know, if they gave me a billion dollars, I could, you know, help people with it.

00:38:06.500 And that's not bad. You would talk yourself into it. At some dollar amount, you would talk yourself

00:38:11.160 into it. But my dollar amount is nowhere near what they would pay, right? I mean, I would be in the

00:38:18.000 tens of millions. Are they going to pay me tens of millions when they can get, you know, somebody

00:38:23.020 at anomalies level for $5,000? I mean, not him, because he's on the other side of the issue.

00:38:31.340 But you can get somebody with a big audience who doesn't have money, right? So I tell you all the

00:38:40.860 time that if you have a degree in economics, or you understand business and business models,

00:38:45.500 you can see around corners. So somebody who thinks that I would be taking money to shill

00:38:51.380 pharma products doesn't understand economics very well. Because you couldn't come up with a price

00:38:56.520 where that business model makes sense for me. But you could for somebody who had a big audience

00:39:02.320 and didn't already have money. So if you're thinking an influencer, let's say on Instagram,

00:39:08.940 is shilling, that's a pretty good guess. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's a good guess.

00:39:15.320 If you're guessing that somebody who's already rich is shilling for a pharma company,

00:39:20.460 it's very unlikely. I mean, anything's possible, right? But it's deeply unlikely that I would take,

00:39:26.820 I mean, do you think I would take $100,000 to shill a pharma product? Not even close.

00:39:33.060 Do you think I would take $1,000,000? $1,000,000? Let's say tax-free. Let's say $2,000,000. So I get

00:39:40.500 $1,000,000 after taxes. Would I take $2,000,000 before taxes to sell pharmaceuticals to you and not

00:39:47.840 tell you I was doing that? No freaking way. No way. Because $1,000,000 wouldn't change my life

00:39:53.960 in any way. I wouldn't even notice the difference. So learn economics, and you can see around corners.

00:40:01.620 This is one of those, I mean, clean cases of that. All right. Let's hope. I do hit these points

00:40:11.660 too long, don't I? You know, one of the problems with having a diverse audience, you're all over 1.00

00:40:19.280 the board in terms of what you know about and et cetera, is it's really hard to craft a general

00:40:24.720 live stream that hits everybody's attention span just right. So I'm aware of that.

00:40:31.620 And did you notice, I'm seeing the locals' comments here. Did you notice the Dilbert comic

00:40:41.220 this week, Dilbert's employer, is doing gain-of-function tests on the employees, trying to take that

00:40:48.340 headline and match it with the Dilbert comic? And unfortunately, the gain-of-function experiments

00:40:53.500 on the employees. The gain-of-function experiments made them grow tails, which actually made them

00:41:05.140 more efficient, so they liked the tails. All right. Somebody says, diversity doesn't work.

00:41:15.980 Why are you saying that? Is that even related to the topic? Diversity doesn't work? What? 0.86

00:41:23.300 I would disagree.

00:41:24.360 I disagree. Whoever said diversity doesn't work, I disagree. I agree that it's not a solution,

00:41:33.960 but I disagree it's always negative. There are lots of situations when having more points

00:41:39.340 of view representative gives you an advantage. Every situation is just different. I don't

00:41:45.340 think you want diversity for the sake of diversity, but it's a mistake to say diversity hurts you.

00:41:51.220 It just depends on the situation. Scott's shtick is starting to get kind of tired, Chris B. says.

00:42:01.000 Well, you know what it is, is that my analysis, usually persuasion-influenced, I can only talk

00:42:11.020 about the news. And if the news gets in a rut, it does affect me. I can't make up news,

00:42:18.160 news, but maybe I should. Oh, just looking at some of your comments here. You need Trump. Yeah,

00:42:32.400 we all need Trump to keep us all fired up. But I have to admit, I'm going to admit that my life

00:42:39.220 has been a lot calmer. And I would say that my mental state has been better without Trump.

00:42:44.500 Can anybody say the same? Now, I can still, you know, wish we had Trump for a variety

00:42:50.640 of topics. So that's still true. But as I've said, it's, it's, I don't think there's such

00:42:56.720 a thing as a good president and a bad president. I think you have presidents that fit the topics

00:43:01.300 of the day and ones that don't. And I think Trump fits some topics really well. And then

00:43:06.480 others, you know, like the coronavirus, maybe less so. All right, more about DeSantis. He hasn't

00:43:15.740 done much today, has he? Yeah. Treatment tents in Florida. Is that what's happening? You know,

00:43:26.340 I wouldn't look too much at the contingency planning states are doing. Like, we hear some stories

00:43:31.020 about, you know, such and such estate is bringing in, like, refrigerated trucks for bodies and

00:43:37.040 stuff. That's just smart. You know, preparing for stuff just makes sense. I don't judge that.

00:43:42.860 All right. That is all I have for today. I've got to go do some stuff. And I will talk to

00:43:46.920 you tomorrow.

00:43:47.740 All right.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 19, 2021

Episode 1473 Scott Adams： All the Headlines With Twice the Sipping. Get in Here. Whiteboard Coming.

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