Episode 1473 Scott Adams： All the Headlines With Twice the Sipping. Get in Here. Whiteboard Coming.
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the latest vaccine scare in Alabama, and whether or not the people who voted for it were smart or dumb. Plus, what would make a sitting president lose sleep? And is the cat on the roof a bad thing?
Transcript
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Bum-ba-dum. Do you hear this? Oh, that's the sound. Yeah, that's the sound of crisp paper
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coming out of my new HP printer that was just installed. Working like a champ. And I think
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that that is a sign of a great show to come. Great show. And if that's not enough,
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I'm just getting started. That's right. The whiteboard behind me. Don't get too excited.
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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
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notch, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a canteen jug, a flask,
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a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the
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unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine of the day. The thing that makes everything better. It's called
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Ah. Ah. So good. Well, so it turns out that Alabama is getting crushed in their ICU capacity. So
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they're over capacity. Half of the people in there are there for COVID. So that's what's crushing stuff.
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But they say only 12% of the patients in the hospital are fully vaccinated, which means
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it's not really a problem of vaccinated people. It's a problem of unvaccinated people.
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And I was thinking, have you noticed how getting a vaccination is a lot like voting?
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Alabama basically voted to not get vaccinated because I think it's the lowest vaccinated state
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or one of them. So the people in Alabama looked at the news, same as you did, did their own
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research, maybe not the same as you did, and came to the conclusion, in a sense, they voted
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to be in an unvaccinated state, relatively unvaccinated. And they got what they wanted,
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which was no ICU capacity. I don't know what to do about people getting what they want.
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Right? Because on one level, you want everybody to do well and have good outcomes. But what if
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they choose bad outcomes? What if they get exactly what they chose? I don't know. I feel
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as if the people in Alabama had the same information everybody else did. Now, could they be right?
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Well, in the end, what if people who got vaccinated grow horns? Well, if that happens, those people
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in Alabama are going to look pretty, pretty smart, aren't they? Because you'll be walking
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around with your vaccination horns. And you'll be like, gosh, I wish I hadn't gotten vaccinated
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because I grew horns. And then you go to Alabama, and everybody's like, no horns? And you're like,
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these guys are freaking geniuses. They saw this coming. They made the right choice. Anyway,
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the point is, we don't know who will be right. But we can say for sure that Alabama got what
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they voted for, in a sense. Jack Posobiec had a couple of good tweets today, as he often does.
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He's got a little scoop, I guess, an inside story saying that Biden is telling staff that he wants
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to go back to Delaware. He hasn't been sleeping well this week. Hum. Did anything happen this week
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that would make a sitting president lose sleep? Anything, anything. Ah. The weather? No, no.
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Was there anything in the headlines that would make a president feel anxious or lose sleep?
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I can't think of anything. Anybody? Anybody? You got anything? I got nothing.
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So, clearly, Biden is correct that the problem is probably the bed. The problem is the bed.
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He's got a bad bed in the White House, but that Delaware bed is just firm enough.
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He doesn't say if he uses a MyPillow topper in Delaware, but I'll bet. I'll bet he's got a MyPillow
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topper, because that's the good bed. And so he wants to stay in Delaware. But here's another way to
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interpret that, because there are always multiple ways to interpret. The other way to interpret it is
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that the cat is on the roof. You know the joke? It's an old joke. Cat is on the roof. The short
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version is that it's warning you that something might happen to the cat later, but we don't want
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to break it to you right away. Well, let's just say the cat's on the roof. Later, we might tell you
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the cat fell off the roof. Maybe has an injury. And then later, we'll say the cat passed away, but by
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then you're all primed. You know, you're kind of ready for it. I feel like they're readying the
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public. Step one, make a really bad decision. Step two, stay in Delaware, because you can't sleep.
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Step three, say that you've got a little bit of a headache. Step four, you're feeling tired. Step five,
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well, pretty soon, President Kamala Harris. So that's what it's looking like. The only slight
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flaw with the plan, just a little flaw with the plan, it's a great plan, except for the part that
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Kamala Harris is even less trusted than Biden. Now, let me tell you how brilliant this plan would have
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been if the vice president had any capabilities whatsoever. Really good. It would have been a
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good plan, because Biden would have beaten Trump for the presidency, then a capable person would
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have slid right into that job, and that would have been pretty, pretty good. But for that plan to work,
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you don't want your vice president to be less competent than somebody whose brain stopped working
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about nine years ago. But that's what they did. So there's your good planning. Rasmussen says,
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asked people how likely do people think it is, likely voters, how likely do you think it is that
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Harris would replace Biden before his term is over? 51% said it was highly likely or somewhat likely.
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So over half of the country thinks it's at least somewhat likely that the person who got elected
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president won't make it four years. Now, how much less trust could you have in your government
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than think they won't even, like, survive? You know, basically, people are putting similar odds
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on Biden making it through as the Afghan government surviving the Taliban. Yeah, they're not that
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different. You know, one was one was like a six month. Remember, the intelligence agency said that
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the Afghan government would last maybe six months, which is very similar to what people believe
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Biden will last. So there was a point where we weren't sure if the Afghan government or the American
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government would last longer. I'm not making that up. There was a real point this year where the
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intelligence people weren't quite sure if the Afghan government would fall before the American
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government, meaning that Biden would leave office. Surprise, surprise. All right. But 26% say it's not likely
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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
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it's close to. And as you know, 25% of people will get the wrong answer on any survey. Doesn't matter
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what the topic is. 25% of the public are going to get the wrong answer or act like they don't know.
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So let's dig into this Afghan withdrawal story. Yeah, I'll tell you why this is interesting to me.
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Because there's just a ton of psychology involved in analyzing the whole thing. And that's the
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interesting part to me. The number one psychology layer here is Dunning-Kruger. You know, Dunning-Kruger
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is when people think that they're more capable than they are. How many of you are pretty sure you could
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have done military logistical training better than the experts? Pretty much all of us. I think all of
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us, really. Now, are we right? Can we really do military planning better than the experts?
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We actually think we can. In this specific case, people are like, in this case, I think I could have.
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But could we? Let's dig into it a little bit and find out if you're all Dunning-Kruger'd up,
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or if you're actually one of the smart people who could have gotten this right.
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So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Milley, he said that he was explaining things. He
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said that the intelligence indicated there were multiple possible scenarios after the troop withdrawal.
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And that he saw nothing warning of a total collapse within 11 days of U.S. departure.
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All right? Let's say that's true. Now, don't assume anything anybody tells you is true,
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because everybody's covering their ass at this point. But look, let's just play it through.
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Let's say it was true, because I think they're saying this consistently, that nobody believed
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that the army would fall in 11 days. Now, what is it I always tell you about Democrats that they get
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wrong? In the comments, in the comments, tell me, what do I always remind you that Democrats get wrong
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every time? That's right, human motivation. Human motivation is their blind spot. Every time Democrats
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get something wrong, it's the same thing. It's the same damn thing. Every time. What did they get wrong
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this time? Human motivation. What does an Afghan government who believes that their survival depends
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on American military presence, what do they do when you withdraw? They run. Human motivation.
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Are you surprised? Now, the only thing that should have mattered is we should have talked to the people
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in the Afghan government and said, hypothetically, if you saw the U.S. military presence drawing down,
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and it was trying to get to zero pretty quickly, whether it's months or days, but pretty quickly,
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what do you think you'd do? How do you think you'd act if the American military left? What would they say?
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Well, they'd probably lie, right? But I feel like you could have deduced that the Afghan government
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didn't think it could survive. And if the Afghan government didn't think it could survive,
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whether we left quickly or slowly, what the hell are they going to do if they find out we're leaving?
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They're going to run, or they're going to join the Taliban, or they're going to do whatever it is that
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looks like they could survive. And then the second question I ask is, why are there so many people
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there? I'm no genius about Afghanistan, but didn't we know months ago? We knew months ago that you
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needed to get out of there if you were an American or if you had any risk once the Taliban took over.
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Didn't you know that months ago to get the hell out of there? Weren't they all warned months ago?
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How much responsibility do you have for people who have been warned to help themselves and then chose not to?
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Like, where does your responsibility end when people do the wrong thing right in front of you?
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I don't know. How many troops do you want to risk saving people who wouldn't save themselves?
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It's a sort of a philosophical ethical question. So let's say, let's take a look at the whiteboard.
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Are you ready? Let's go to the whiteboard. So here's my interest in this. I'm a little bit
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interested in knowing if anybody made a mistake, right, in the decision making. But I'm way interested
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in how decisions are made and, you know, just the process of decision making. So I'm going to draw it
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out the way I see it. I see that there were two options, but in your mind you can, of course,
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translate to there were infinite options in between. But just for analytical purposes,
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let's keep it simple and say, you know, if these two options give us an answer,
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maybe it would be similar for the ones in between as well. So if we do a fast exit, and that's what
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happened, our military starts packing up. And we know this, we don't have to guess. We know the
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Afghan government immediately left. And that created a bunch of chaos. And the only hope of getting the
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people out, the 30,000 people, the only hope is that the Taliban gives them safe passage. Now what
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are the odds? What are the odds that the Taliban would give the Americans safe passage? Well, let's
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look at human motivation. Now we know the Taliban are kind of crazy. So we think, oh, they'll do
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anything. They'll kill anybody. And that's certainly a big risk. But what is the Taliban's big
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self-interest? What do they want more than anything? The Taliban want more than anything
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to get American military out of there. What would be the worst way they could get what they want?
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The worst thing they could do is start killing those Americans who couldn't get out or anybody
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else who wanted to get out. It's the worst thing they could do. They've already said that they're not
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going to go after the interpreters. I don't know if you could trust them. I mean, that would be kind
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of iffy, right? But they're saying the right thing, which means that they understand where
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their self-interest is, and they're pursuing it. If somebody announces, here's my self-interest,
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and you can look at it yourself and say, yeah, that is your self-interest. You want us out first,
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then you might turn into a very bad people again. But at the moment, just stay cool, and you'll get
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everything you want. Just stay cool for a month. Get all the people out. You'll be fine. Now, could
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you have depended on that to be true? Not really, because it's the Taliban, right? You can't really
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predict all the way to the end. But you could predict chaos. I think that was predictable,
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because you could predict that the government would fall. That's how human motivation works.
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As soon as they're exposed, they're going to take care of themselves and get the hell out of there.
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So that's what we ended up with. But let's say we'd gone the other way and done a controlled
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Trump-like withdrawal, where we kept forces there and did an orderly evacuation.
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How would that go? Well, a lot of people are saying, well, that would have worked.
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You keep the military, you get rid of all, you get all the evacuations done, and then you remove
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the military. Very orderly, right? Makes sense. Pretty much everybody would think that makes
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sense. But there's one problem, and it's the place where I differ in assumptions with most
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of you. It happens right here. I think that as soon as you begin the civilian evacuations,
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you've signaled to the country that you're leaving. Why would people who are afraid of the Taliban
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wait? What would make them wait around? I think that the Afghan government falls under
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both scenarios and all the ones in between. That's my assumption, which makes me get to
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a different opinion than you. What is my assumption based on? Human motivation. The same human motivation
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that made the government fall when we left quickly would be exactly the same as it would make the
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government fall if we left slowly. Because in both cases, they'd say, oh, hell, I got to get out of
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here. One time slowly, one time fast. But in both cases, that has to do with the people leaving. It
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doesn't have to do with the government. The government would probably bug out about the same time.
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So imagine trying to evacuate people as the government is falling. And you don't have enough forces
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because you've already drawn down. You can't protect everything. And I guess we're being told
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they couldn't protect the embassy, Kabul, and Bagram at the same time. They didn't have the forces.
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Couldn't do it. So they had to make some choices. They made them. And they were all bad choices.
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But, you know, leadership, right? You got to make bad choices. If you only have bad choices,
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you still have to make a choice. It's leadership. So I believe that if it had been a slow withdrawal,
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you would have seen something closer to a civil war. If the Afghan government had tried to stay
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and fight, there would have been a civil war, door to door. Probably any people who couldn't get
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down to the country at that point probably would get killed because there was no point in not doing it.
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So I feel as though the slow withdrawal would have caused the same amount of chaos because the
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government was going to fall anyway. And then you would have a civil war. And this might happen
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before you got people out. So you might be evacuating people in the midst of a civil war.
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Seems worse. Now, of course, it was a civil war. It just happened in 11 days. So you barely noticed it.
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So here's how economists debate each other. And it's different than the way the rest of the world
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debates each other. The way economists debate each other is they usually just look for where you have
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a difference in assumption. Because economists generally think the same. You know, they have
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similar kind of reasoning skills. They know how to compare the right things. They know the difference
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between short-term and long-term. They know what a sunk cost is, etc. So the only place we tend to
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disagree is not in the reasoning so much as in the assumptions. And so I think the only assumption
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that puts me on a different page from some of you is the assumption that if we'd done it slow and
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orderly, the Afghan government would have stayed in business and kept things going. I don't think
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there's any reason to believe that's true. So in the comments, is anybody persuaded to the following
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point of view? That we can't know from our perspective as civilians sitting here, we can't
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know if that was a mistake. Because we don't know what the other way would have been. Because you don't
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know if the Afghan government would have still surrendered so quickly that it wouldn't have made much
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difference. Yeah, we're all guessing that. So economists like Paul Krugman, you know, what mistake
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does Paul Krugman make? Doesn't he always make the same mistake? Human motivation?
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Yes. All right. So I'm looking, I just want to see if, oh, somebody says plausible. All right. I just
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wanted to see if any of you would agree with me that we really don't have the information or the
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insight to know how poorly things went. So now, of course, Trump is doing exactly what Trump should
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do, which is he's going at this hard. And man, you do not want to give Trump this much of an opening
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because he is just dancing on their graves right now. I mean, Trump is, if you wanted to say,
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like, what is Trump good at? It's this. Trump is really, really good at spotting an opening
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that's, you know, got a little weakness and just going in and just killing it. And he's doing that
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now. So he's giving some interviews. And you forget, it's easy to forget how much we appreciated just the
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way Trump talks. Everything he says is just closer to, like, something that's real and raw than what
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other politicians say. And even if you, you know, if you hate him and you don't like what he's doing,
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you still feel there's some kind of weird truth at the bottom of it, isn't there? Or at least it's
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his truth. You know, he's telling you his actual opinion. Now, of course, there's plenty of hyperbole
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and fact-checking problems and stuff. But weirdly, Trump has this strange honesty that comes through
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in a lot of stuff. And here's another example. Trump said, I realized I had a loser, speaking about
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Mark Milley, the general. And this is the single greatest embarrassment I've ever seen.
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And then he went through the logic of how he would have kept troops there and withdrawn people.
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Now, when Trump tells it, he has the advantage of hindsight. So Trump can tell the story as if he
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knew all along that the Afghan government would fall in 11 days. Right? We all act like that. We all act
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like we knew that. Well, we knew that. Pretty obvious. Afghan government was going to fall in 11 days.
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We didn't know that. You didn't know that. You just knew it was going to fall. Now, if the Afghan
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government had lasted a few months, probably things would have been fine. Right? We probably could
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have gotten people out. And the Afghan government would have been, you know, maybe good enough to
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help get people out. So, you know, Trump has the advantage of hindsight. But that's politics. You
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know, he gets to dance on this one. And he is. So good job in persuasion, Trump is doing. And
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and who can argue that he wouldn't have done a better job? You can't. You can't argue that you you I
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mean, I can give you a intellectual argument about how maybe he would have done a better job. But you
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don't know. You don't know. There's no way to compare. And it seems to me that Trump was on a faster
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schedule drawing troops down. I don't know how that would have worked out better. Right? I mean, Trump's
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Trump's claim is that he would have done it faster. But more controlled. Okay. I think
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it's just the advantage of hindsight. I feel as though any president who is in office would
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have been killed by this issue. So Trump, he gets the win that the vaccinations didn't
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get, you know, as widespread as they could have. And we're still in the coronavirus problem.
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So that's going to accrue to Biden, even if there's nothing he could have done about it. And
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and then the Afghanistan thing is going to look like Biden's problem. I tell you, what would have
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been luckier than Trump losing the second term? Think about it. Think about it. The luckiest thing
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Trump ever did was lose the second term. Because if he'd been president, his whole administration
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would look like this. It would look like bad news on coronavirus followed by bad news on Afghanistan
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would have been terrible. But now Trump gets to say, well, if I'd been there, things would
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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
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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,
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you know, to a model, but they stay within the model and make up their own stuff. Wouldn't you like
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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.
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That would be the best TV. How could you not watch that show? That would be great.
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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
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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
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Middle East. Dershowitz told us, what has he done? Now, how much do I frickin' love this response?
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It's actually true. You know that, right? That Dershowitz actually did help create peace in the Middle
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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
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
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,
00:30:10.660
they look dumb. Now, luckily for me, one of them is white. So, because otherwise you'd be like,
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
00:30:26.040
black guy and a white guy, and they both look dumb to me. Now, are they dumb? Clearly not, right?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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