Episode 1493 Scott Adams： I'll Tell you Who is Being Persuasive and Who is Not, In the News Today
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams talks about the dangers of fake news, Ellen Barkin's "expiration date" for white males, and why the media should be worried about that kind of language.
Transcript
00:00:08.500
Again, one of the best things that's ever happened to you in your whole life.
00:00:16.120
And if you'd like to take it up a notch, you probably do.
00:00:20.740
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, a chalice, or a steinac, a jug, or a flask.
00:00:30.620
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,
00:00:35.700
the thing that makes everything better except ivermectin.
00:00:40.640
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
00:00:50.740
I saw an interesting comment just moments before I went live here from Ian,
00:00:58.160
who says, I wonder if we would be in the same situation if Trump had not become the thing that the media lied about.
00:01:08.500
So Trump not only exposed the media for being fake news, but by his existence, he probably created more of it.
00:01:17.700
Because they were after him so hard, they just started making up stuff like, oh, he says drink bleach, or neo-Nazis are fine people.
00:01:25.740
Now, most of you watching this know that those never happened.
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But if the media keeps selling you hoaxes, and then a pandemic comes, and the only way that you know what to do is because the media told you what is true and what is false,
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And I wonder if the media is not killing hundreds of thousands of people.
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Ellen Barkin, famous aging actress Ellen Barkin, tweeted,
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What is the expiration date for cis white males?
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What is the expiration date for a demographic group?
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Shouldn't we be a little worried about that kind of language?
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Is the group that I belong to have an expiration date?
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As in, I'm not allowed to be a member of society?
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Well, Glenn Greenwald was not about to let that go, and so he tweeted about her tweet.
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It's utter madness that discourse like this is acceptable, and even celebrated, rather than resulting in instant shunning.
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Now, interesting that he used shunning instead of cancelling.
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I don't think he's a big fan of cancellation, but individuals can shun.
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He goes, Moreover, famous, straight, rich, white women, she literally is or was married to a billionaire and was a famous actress, right?
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Famous, straight, rich, white women somehow concocts a definition of the privileged class that excludes her.
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How in the world did she not find herself in the privileged class that's annoying the rest of the world?
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How many of you know what cis, white male, even means?
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In the comments, tell me how many of you don't even know what that means.
00:03:52.960
Now, isn't it a word that's been in the news for quite some time?
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I was today years old when I learned what it means.
00:04:12.520
You know, it was just your generic, basically a generic person who was,
00:04:17.620
the actual definition is somebody who was born the same gender that they present themselves as.
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I mean, I think I'm botching the definition a little bit.
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But basically, it's somebody who was born in the gender that they recognize as their current gender.
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So, I guess it's some, I thought the CIS stood for something, but it's just some Latin derivation, I guess.
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And, anyway, just the fact that that word exists is kind of a, kind of an eyebrow raiser.
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But, yeah, so there are people who can actually say on Twitter that an entire demographic group,
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of which I am a member, maybe needs to be expired.
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Here's three things we learned in the past year.
00:05:13.080
Number one, if you don't look for a problem, logically, it does not exist.
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Today, even today, literally today, an opinion piece says that the courts didn't find any fraud,
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Are they designed to find fraud that nobody has brought to their attention?
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Number two, the things we've learned this past year, do your own research,
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leads to at least some people eating horse pills and snarfing bleach and then dying.
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But my point is that doing your own research, have we proven now that that was never a real thing?
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But haven't we proven that people can't do that?
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Who was the first person you ever heard tell you that doing your own research is the dumbest fucking thing anybody ever thought of?
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Now, I'm not saying that there are people who can't get the right answer.
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But they don't know they have the right answer.
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It's not even in the realm of the zip code of a universe in which that's a thing.
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Do you know who else can't do their own research on, let's say, medical stuff?
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Because they're not coming to the same conclusion.
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If they all came to the same conclusion, we'd either all like ivermectin or not like ivermectin.
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The fact that even doctors disagree whether ivermectin works or is proven to work or is a good risk management thing to do.
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If the doctors can't figure it out, what the hell are you going to do?
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And you say to yourself, well, Scott, Scott, Scott, 95% of doctors are on the same side.
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Do you think all 95% of those doctors did their own research?
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The rest of them just listened to what the other doctors were saying.
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That every public health policy is also good for big pharma.
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I mean, I can't connect any dots and tell you it's not a coincidence.
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That there are anonymous Biden staffers who claim that when Biden is on TV talking, they will turn down the sound because it makes them too anxious, thinking that Biden will say the wrong thing.
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He'll either gaffe or he'll take questions when he's not supposed to take questions.
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Anonymous staffers say they sometimes will turn off the sound because it's too cringy to watch their boss talk.
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If you saw this story about Trump, would you believe it?
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Would you believe it if you heard it about Trump?
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Anonymous staffer says something behind his back.
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If it was your president, and I'm just saying that because I think most of my audience was or is Trump supporters.
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If you heard that about Trump, you wouldn't believe it.
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So why would you apply a different standard to Biden?
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You think to yourself, well, if it's Biden, they probably do think that.
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Yeah, if it's Biden, they probably do turn off the sound.
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Probably the number of people who do it is that one person who said it, or maybe the one person who said it heard about one person who did it.
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We're not talking about the chief of staff turning off the sound.
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So it might be, like, slightly, slightly tiny true for one person who talked to one reporter.
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If this were Trump, you wouldn't believe it for a second.
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Texas passed their voting law, new voting laws.
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Of course, the critics say it's trying to make it harder for minorities to vote.
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Abbott, Governor Abbott of Texas, and other lawmakers, they argue that the new rules will make it easier to vote.
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And one of the ways they're doing that is by expanding the required early voting hours in the state.
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Expanding the number of hours to vote, does that restrict voting?
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Or does it give you more time to vote for everybody?
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But critics point to the reduction in early voting hours in some of the state's most populous areas, which will now be prohibited from allowing overnight early voting.
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So they're increasing the early voting in general.
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But some places already had more early voting than that.
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So the places who already had overnight voting have to reduce to get back to the standard.
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And all the places that didn't have early voting, or as much of it, have to increase to reach the standard.
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So is this a clever trick by the Republicans to...
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Because let's say that they know the populous areas are where there's more minorities, and it's making it harder to vote there, but easier to vote in your white areas.
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Because if it is, critics have a point, don't they?
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Nobody is ever going to make a voting change that works against their party.
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No politician will ever make any changes to the election process unless they believe it's good for their party.
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Does it matter that it might also make sense in some logical way of reducing fraud?
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Do you think if the Republicans were easily getting elected with the current system, and they thought that that would continue, do you think they'd be all about fixing the system?
00:13:31.840
So, when I look at how CNN has covered this, it is almost as if they don't want you to understand the topic, right?
00:13:40.960
Let me read these two sentences again, and you tell me, does CNN want you to understand the topic, or to accept uncritically that it's racist?
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Abbott and other lawmakers argue the new rules will make it easier to vote by expanding the required early voting hours in the state.
00:14:03.860
And then they say, but critics point to the reduction in early voting hours in some of the state's most populous areas, which will now be prohibited from allowing overnight early voting.
00:14:14.920
So those are two points of view that are opposites.
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Doesn't CNN owe us a little bit of a solution, as in a little bit more analysis that says which of these views is correct?
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All they did is simply tell us what other people think.
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And once you've said what the two opinions are, you're done.
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Shouldn't a news organization say there are two opinions, and let us fact-check those two opinions?
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Why would they show you the opinions without the fact-checking?
00:15:01.480
Well, for the same reason that any political party will only make choices about changing the election that help them,
00:15:13.320
And CNN doesn't want you to see clearly, apparently, does not want you to clearly know what the Texas law is, and is not.
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Does Fox News want you to know exactly what the law is, and why some say it's racist, and really sort of dig into that?
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I think they want to wave their hands at it and get their audience assuming that it's a good thing.
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And CNN wants to wave their hands at it and get their audience to assume it's a bad thing,
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without anybody digging into it to say why it's good or why it's bad.
00:16:06.300
If you'd like, you can record this and just replay it every day.
00:16:10.220
Well, it looks like there's going to be some trouble getting the infrastructure plan passed through Congress.
00:16:16.720
Do you know what the news on this will be tomorrow?
00:16:18.740
Well, it looks like there's some trouble getting the infrastructure bill through Congress.
00:16:24.320
How about the week after, two weeks after, three months later?
00:16:28.700
Well, looks like there's trouble getting the infrastructure bill through Congress.
00:16:37.900
I guess we could call him conservative writer or commentator.
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I don't like to describe people in words that they don't use to describe themselves,
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I guess there's some controversy that he's following up on.
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He said, yes, I said that I don't like female analysts and reporters in football.
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Yes, I think women are feminizing traditionally male spaces.
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And, of course, he's trending because women said he was being terribly, terribly sexist.
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And why can't women have jobs in sports, in men's sports in particular?
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Now, personally, I do not watch brain damage as entertainment.
00:17:40.540
And football and boxing are basically brain damage packaged as entertainment.
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It's a little bit of hyperbole, but not too much.
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I don't care who's broadcasting it, especially with all the kneeling and stuff.
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But if I were a fan, I'm pretty sure I would want the commentators to have experience playing football.
00:18:10.860
Now, clearly there are people who, men, who do comment on sports with which they're, you know,
00:18:18.400
not terribly familiar because they didn't play it.
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Again, all things being equal, wouldn't it be better if the sportscasters had experience with the game they're sportscasting?
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Now, they have color commentary to help them out on that.
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But I would think you'd want experienced people, people who have at least played it in high school or something.
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Somebody mentioned Bob Costa, because he's like 5'6 or something, and said,
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well, you know, he probably didn't play football.
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To which I say, no, if he was a boy in America, he almost certainly played football, at least, you know, during gym class and stuff.
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I don't know any males in America who haven't played football if they're that age.
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If you're over 40 and male, is there anybody who's over 40 and male who has never played football?
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Yeah, I would think, yeah, of course I played football.
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We played tackle football without padding, without helmets.
00:19:58.040
Rasmussen Poll says that 77% of the people polled say they would get a booster shot.
00:20:09.980
Because it seems to me that once you've committed yourself to the vaccination path,
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I feel like your brain would talk you into being consistent with your last decision.
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And maybe it's, of course, could be skewed by people who did not get the vaccination answering it too, I suppose.
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Now, it seemed low not because of whether you should get a booster or not.
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It seemed low because, in terms of psychology, people like to be consistent.
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And 77% is pretty big, but I would have thought it would be 90%, 95% would have been where my best guess would have been.
00:20:56.340
Well, over in the Philippines, police have killed four Chinese nationals in a sting operation
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because the Chinese were bringing in half a ton of meth.
00:21:06.900
Do you know how much damage you can do with half a ton of meth?
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Because it doesn't take much meth to get you going.
00:21:26.820
But I'd like to see more killing of Chinese dealers.
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And I'll say again, I think we have the moral and legal right to kill Chinese fentanyl dealers in China,
00:21:40.780
I think we have the moral and complete legal authority to do that.
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Now, you could argue, blah, blah, blah, that it's illegal.
00:21:51.440
I just don't want to hear it because it's just self-defense.
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There isn't really any argument against self-defense.
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I'm sorry, there's no argument against self-defense.
00:22:01.000
And killing Chinese dealers whose names we know, whose addresses we know.
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We know their names and addresses of the actual dealers in China.
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And we should kill them right where they sleep.
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I mean, it could look like a fentanyl overdose, for example.
00:22:22.560
But they should be dropping like flies at this point.
00:22:25.080
Now, would this cause Chinese intelligence agencies to start killing Americans?
00:22:35.560
Because they're not going to kill 94,000 Americans to get even if we kill one dealer, or three or four.
00:22:43.180
They might kill three or four people we don't want to be killed.
00:22:45.820
But we're talking about trying to reduce tens of thousands of fentanyl deaths a year.
00:22:51.880
Now, you could argue, oh, Scott, if you stop the Chinese fentanyl, somebody else will just jump in and make it.
00:22:58.480
The cartels will figure out how to make it themselves.
00:23:02.640
But they're going to need those precursors that come out of China.
00:23:07.160
So I would say we need to normalize the idea that we should be killing Chinese citizens on Chinese soil if they're mass murderers of Americans.
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I wouldn't worry about the Chinese reaction for one second.
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Because the problem is so huge that you need to kill people to stop it.
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I'm not talking about the little dealers that sell little at a high school or something.
00:23:46.140
Joe Biden was talking about tornadoes the other day.
00:24:27.380
But we're going to analyze his persuasiveness, right?
00:24:30.440
So in the following discussion, I am not concerned with whether ivermectin works or does not work.
00:24:36.540
I'm only going to talk about his persuasiveness, okay?
00:24:38.840
And he says the ivermectin nonsense must stop, okay?
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What is the persuasion mistake in the first five words?
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The people he's trying to convince don't think it's nonsense.
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So if you start with calling it nonsense, you've already backed him into a corner, you've put the defensive shield up, you're done.
00:25:06.960
You don't even need to write the rest of it because there's nothing that can happen well after you say the ivermectin nonsense.
00:25:15.620
Soon as you've dismissed other people's opinions as nonsense, they're going to stop listening to you.
00:25:27.880
Wait, is it literally killing people from the overdose?
00:25:33.360
I don't know that the ivermectin is, but possibly the lack of vaccinations might be what he's referring to.
00:25:39.340
So I'm going to give him that one if he means lack of vaccinations.
00:25:43.400
And he says, those who have been peddling false claims of its enormous benefit, when the evidence is stating the complete opposite, must be pressured by the media to explain their ludicrous claims.
00:26:00.700
He says that the evidence is stating the complete opposite.
00:26:15.160
But does it ring true to you that the evidence on ivermectin is the complete opposite, meaning that the evidence completely shows it doesn't work?
00:26:33.800
So pretty much none of you agree with that statement.
00:26:37.820
That is a persuasion failure of epic proportions.
00:26:44.660
Because in order to convince you, and you're the ones that need to be convinced, because there are probably more doubters here than in other places, he has to pace you.
00:26:57.260
And then you say to yourself, oh, this is a person who agrees with me.
00:27:01.240
And then, once you get them to agree with you, you might be able to nudge them somewhere.
00:27:07.160
But until they know you're on the same side, they're not going anywhere.
00:27:11.680
So if you start out with ivermectin nonsense, you just took a team, and you guaranteed that the people you're trying to persuade won't listen to you.
00:27:25.600
So saying that the evidence is stating the complete opposite makes you look like a liar, even if you're right.
00:27:33.740
So remember, persuasion is not about what's true.
00:27:39.260
And this doctor could be completely right that there's just nothing to ivermectin.
00:27:44.700
But if he's insulting people and telling them that everything they believe is wrong, he's not going to get any persuasion.
00:27:54.440
Let's say I wanted to persuade you to not take ivermectin.
00:27:58.380
I don't want to persuade you of that, by the way, because I'm not a doctor.
00:28:01.580
So I'm not going to persuade you to take it or not to take it.
00:28:04.680
And nothing I say here should be construed as that.
00:28:10.720
But if I wanted to persuade you, here's how I'd do it.
00:28:15.600
I would say there are lots of studies that show ivermectin works.
00:28:28.720
You believe it's true that there are lots of randomized controlled trials, 31 of them actually, that indicate ivermectin works.
00:28:37.060
Plus, a whole bunch of observational trials that collectively say it works.
00:28:44.960
Now, whether or not that's true, here's how you would approach somebody who believes that's true.
00:28:53.200
There are, as you know, dozens, dozens of randomized controlled trials that indicate ivermectin works.
00:29:05.220
Because everybody here just says, okay, okay, that's true.
00:29:11.200
I'm saying that's how I would try to persuade you.
00:29:13.480
I would tell you it's true because you think it's true.
00:29:20.920
You think it's true, so therefore it's good persuasion.
00:29:23.040
Then I would say, once I had you on my team, yeah, we're on the same team.
00:29:30.640
And then I'd say, but did you know that if you remove the low-quality studies from that group, it reverses the outcome?
00:29:44.560
When I agreed with you completely that these studies exist, and you said, yeah, yeah, now we're on the same page, but then I added something that maybe you didn't know, that if you remove the low-quality studies from that group, it reverses the outcome.
00:30:06.460
In the comments, and forget about what's true for a moment, okay?
00:30:12.020
So it doesn't matter if it's true that removing those studies reverses it.
00:30:16.940
I think it's true, but it doesn't matter to the point, right?
00:30:20.640
And I think it's true that there are lots of randomized controlled trials.
00:30:32.460
Well, low-quality would be, among other things, a low number of people in the trial,
00:30:37.440
or something about the controls that weren't as perfect as they could have been.
00:30:42.620
Maybe it's not as blind as it should have been, for example.
00:30:45.700
So it would be a variety of things, but people who understand this world could fairly easily pick out the low-quality studies.
00:30:59.520
Somebody who knows studies and statistics could just look at them and say,
00:31:04.580
Now, would that make it a subjective process as opposed to science?
00:31:13.500
If you're using your judgment to decide what studies are credible,
00:31:22.900
I mean, it's not illogical, but it's not exactly science.
00:31:31.660
Like, you know, I always support, for example, doctors using their judgment about what to prescribe,
00:31:37.240
even if that judgment disagrees with the mainstream recommendations.
00:31:46.500
You know, you don't always have access to perfect information, so you have to make your call.
00:31:54.820
Speaking of persuasion, the CDC has a video trying to persuade you to get a vaccination if you've recovered from COVID.
00:32:03.680
In the comments, how many of you think it's a good idea, forget about the fact that you need vaccinations to travel and stuff like that,
00:32:14.260
assume that nobody would care, do you think it's medically a good idea to get a vaccination if you've already recovered?
00:32:23.800
In the comments, you're not doctors, so it's just your opinion, almost all knows, right?
00:32:31.160
So when the CDC says, yes, you do need it, and they say the reason is this,
00:32:38.000
because we don't know how long natural immunity lasts, did that persuade you?
00:32:48.000
You believe that natural immunity lasts, otherwise your answers would not look like this, right?
00:32:54.100
The reason that almost all of you, I think every one of you that's answering this right now,
00:32:57.900
I think every one of you is saying you don't want the vaccination if you've already recovered.
00:33:03.440
But suppose it was true, and I don't know if it's true,
00:33:08.260
but suppose it's true that the smartest people don't know if that immunity will last.
00:33:17.040
Depends on the timing, but the point is that we don't know the timing.
00:33:23.600
We don't know if it's going to last a week or a month or a year, right?
00:33:31.060
You know enough to know that nobody's natural immunity has run out yet, right?
00:33:37.260
Is there even one example of somebody whose natural immunity just expired,
00:33:43.240
unless they had some kind of special medical problem?
00:33:49.140
It seems to me we've gone a year or so, and people still have pretty good antibodies.
00:33:57.040
I'm not trying to spread misinformation, so fact-check me if that's wrong.
00:34:02.360
It's exactly the same problem as the last example.
00:34:12.940
They're telling you something that you don't believe is true,
00:34:15.480
and they're not really giving you a counterargument,
00:34:18.020
because the uncertainty argument applies to everything.
00:34:26.220
If you wait two years after you get vaccinated,
00:34:34.960
They can't know it, because it hasn't been two years.
00:34:40.000
So when they tell you that you should make a decision
00:34:45.220
but they don't mention that all of the other things are uncertain too,
00:34:56.220
when it's obvious that all the things are uncertain,
00:35:04.380
if you're only treating one variable as uncertain
00:35:17.620
Because I don't know of a good argument for this.
00:35:20.920
I guess the best argument would be extra is better.
00:35:59.500
Because it's just going to be around forever, right?
00:36:23.240
Remember, we're talking about persuasion, not truth.
00:37:35.980
What I'm teaching you is not a natural ability.
00:38:02.340
So this is the part where some of you will bail out,