Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1557 Scott Adams： Here Now!

00:00:00.360 Why am I so late? Well, reasons. I got reasons. They're not good ones, though. Really bad

00:00:11.600 reasons. So, in case you're wondering, while I'm printing out my notes here, because I'm

00:00:17.240 a little bit behind, my wife did her IFR checkride yesterday. How many of you know what that

00:00:25.400 means? An IFR checkride. It means that she got her instrument rating for flying aircraft,

00:00:34.920 which is a really big deal. Apparently, getting your instrument rating is about the hardest

00:00:39.200 thing you can do. All right. Why is this not working? All right. We're going to have a smaller

00:00:47.340 crowd today, which is just as well, since I'll be promoting revolution.

00:00:55.400 All right. Let's see if I can look at your comments. Good morning. Oh, you're adding

00:01:06.680 over to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial? What's this? Oh, Anne-Marie is going to the Rittenhouse trial.

00:01:13.800 We'll talk about that. Yeah, you know, one of the things I learned following my wife as

00:01:23.860 she's going through her pilot training is that flying is a lot like learning photography was for

00:01:32.660 my oldest stepdaughter. She took photography class in high school, and she took photography 0.61

00:01:40.580 class in high school using regular film in old cameras at a time when nobody used the film

00:01:50.180 and cameras. It was already all digital. But the class required her to do this. I actually had to

00:01:55.620 search for special places to buy film because stores don't even sell it anymore. 0.97

00:02:01.260 That's how useless her class was. But when you watch the IFR training, so if you saw an example of an IFR

00:02:12.380 class, I watched some of them online with her. It is so complicated. The map that pilots use, you have to

00:02:21.020 be at a certain height in certain space, and you can only be, you know, between here and there. If you're in this

00:02:27.100 space, you have to be controlled by this tower, and there's just a whole bunch of rules about what you

00:02:31.900 can and cannot do in the air. So if you thought you could take off and fly someplace, not so much.

00:02:37.740 I mean, just an amazing, immense amount of very specific little rules that don't make any sense.

00:02:45.420 So if you learn to fly instruments, you know, so let's say a cloudy day, so you're just looking at your

00:02:50.260 instruments. It's pretty hard. But here's what it could be. Uh-oh, I flew into the clouds.

00:03:00.820 Autopilot. Now you're done. The problem with flying in the clouds is twofold. One is that you get

00:03:09.620 disoriented. And even if the instruments say you're flying straight, you think, I know I'm turning. I know

00:03:16.100 I'm turning. And you override your rational brain, which is telling you the instruments are saying

00:03:22.340 everything's fine. So the first thing is overriding your brain. And then the second thing is flying

00:03:28.100 into a mountain, because you don't know where you're going. It's one thing to fly flat, but you want to

00:03:33.860 make sure you're not flying toward a mountain. So if you have in a modern airplane, GPS,

00:03:39.060 GPS, and autopilot, how much instrument rating do you really need? But they teach you the whole thing,

00:03:48.900 because there are still plenty of planes that don't have those things. But if you think about it,

00:03:53.680 even I could fly a plane in clouds. Where's the autopilot button? Okay, there you go.

00:04:00.740 Pilots since 1992, and only one plane with autopilot. Yeah, they have to be a certain level of plane

00:04:08.840 before they have autopilot. And everything below that pretty much doesn't. But remember, it's 2021.

00:04:15.260 There's no reason you couldn't build all your future planes with that function.

00:04:20.040 All right, well, I'm a disorganized mess, if that's not obvious. And let's see if I can

00:04:33.500 figure out how to look at your comments. But it worked. Hey, everything's going well now.

00:04:41.520 Are you ready for the best show ever? The best thing that's ever happened to you.

00:04:46.180 And what do you need to make this extra special? Well, you need a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:04:51.920 a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite

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00:05:04.080 the thing that makes everything better, including your antibodies. No, especially your antibodies. Go.

00:05:10.200 So, Bob is thanking me for my notable boldness on Twitter lately. Well, I'm not sure it's a notable

00:05:24.300 boldness as it is. There are certain red lines. I've said this before about white people. 0.98

00:05:35.340 And maybe this is true of lots of other people, but I can only speak for

00:05:40.740 my personal experience. I feel as if white men especially have a characteristic, which is you

00:05:47.880 can push us around a lot because we're used to it. If you're an adult white man, you're kind of used

00:05:54.600 to getting pushed around. And you don't let the little stuff bother you too much. So you get the

00:05:59.980 feeling that, like somebody snapped. Oh, suddenly you went from flexible to, you know, revolutionary.

00:06:08.660 That's the way it, that's the way we're kind of designed or trained or something. I don't know.

00:06:13.580 But I know for myself, I'm really, really flexible until I'm not. Once I'm not, I'm really, really done

00:06:22.140 being flexible. So does anybody else have that? You're flexible until you're not. But when you're not,

00:06:29.380 you're done, right? Yeah. I mean, so, so anybody who says, uh, I'm looking a little bold,

00:06:37.320 it may be just that something, something clicked. You know, there was a red line. And I think that

00:06:44.900 that red line is here. We'll talk about that. But first, what do you think of Governor Newsom,

00:06:51.060 Governor of California, skipping the climate summit, uh, the biggest problem in the world,

00:06:57.600 the climate, some say, versus, uh, staying home and apparently his alternate use of time was

00:07:05.000 trick-or-treating with the kids? What do you think of that? Do you approve or not approve

00:07:10.400 of the governor missing the most important meeting in the history of the world, the climate,

00:07:15.760 and going trick-or-treating with his kids? Uh, I approve. Not only do I approve, I applaud it.

00:07:30.160 Remember, if you can't say good things about your political enemies, you're probably not,

00:07:35.680 you know, a rational member of the public. Almost everybody's got something going on that's

00:07:42.760 working. In my opinion, that's the best thing he's ever done. And I think the governor is actually

00:07:49.340 a mixed bag. He's a mixed bag. There's plenty of stuff I wish he would do differently. Uh, but he's

00:07:56.540 not, he's not a, he's not a basket case, right? He's got some qualities. And one of those qualities is

00:08:03.260 he made the right choice. Because that, that climate meeting was useless, if we can be honest.

00:08:11.200 China didn't go. Russia didn't go. Nothing got decided. It was useless. But apparently his family

00:08:17.460 and the kids formed an intervention and said, you're going away again? It's been non-stop emergencies

00:08:23.520 in California. He's probably been working like crazy. And he's just going to go away on Halloween.

00:08:28.620 And he just said, you know, screw it. I'm going to stay home. So I would say this is the first

00:08:34.740 example I've seen of a, uh, Democrat leader who cared about children. Am I wrong? The first notable

00:08:43.280 example of a Democrat leader caring about children. That's what it looked like to me. So I'm going to

00:08:50.160 applaud it. Uh, did you see, uh, Macron, head of, uh, France? There was a video in which there was a

00:08:57.480 little, uh, sign language interpreter. And you know, they do the little, uh, cut out. So there's

00:09:02.320 a little box in the corner and there's a sign, sign language interpreter. And I was watching the

00:09:08.920 interpreter and I don't know sign language, but I realized that you could, you could do a very

00:09:13.540 credible impression of a sign language interpreter with just these instructions. Are you ready? And I'll

00:09:21.060 demonstrate for you. After watching that interpreter, I realized that if you wanted to pretend you could 1.00

00:09:28.780 do sign language, you would simply pretend you were explaining how to remove a very complicated

00:09:35.820 bra. Allow me to demonstrate. This is either a sign language person or removing a very difficult and

00:09:46.260 complicated bra. Am I right? That looked exactly like sign language, didn't it? I think I nailed that.

00:10:04.100 All right, moving on. In the coordinated fake news category. So this is fake news that, uh, numerous

00:10:13.540 outlets do at the same time, obviously, uh, obviously, uh, coordinated. And this fake news is that

00:10:21.960 renewables are more competitive than coal. In other words, uh, solar and I guess wind are now cost

00:10:30.540 competitive with coal. True or fake? Now it's coordinated. Apparently there's a number of, uh,

00:10:37.900 number of outlets saying the same thing today. True or false? Here's the correct answer. I don't know.

00:10:49.580 The second part of the correct answer is neither do they.

00:10:55.440 If there's one thing I can tell you with really high confidence, because I did this for a living

00:11:03.080 for years. I worked in a big corporation, two of them actually, in which, uh, my job in part was

00:11:09.080 doing complicated analyses and figuring out what was the best financial move, this or that, and

00:11:15.560 comparing them. And I can tell you with complete certainty that the person who decides what the

00:11:21.080 assumptions are gets to decide what the output is, right? We're fooled into believing that the

00:11:27.720 calculation is the thing. That's not the thing. It's the assumptions. The assumptions that you put

00:11:34.720 into it will determine what the end is. And the assumptions are not math. Assumptions are opinion.

00:11:40.360 So all it is, is an opinion put through a math filter so that when it's done, it looks like it was,

00:11:46.280 uh, it was math or science or facts or something like that. But it wasn't. It was just opinions that

00:11:51.800 are laundered through a model. Let me give you an example. Uh, do you think that they

00:11:57.560 modeled, and I didn't look at the details, but let's just ask the question because it still works.

00:12:02.840 Do you think that they calculated the economic impact of outages? Because at the moment, the, uh,

00:12:12.200 the renewables are more susceptible to outages. Do you think if I looked at the analysis,

00:12:17.620 they would have an actual number that they put on the impact of outages? And how would they

00:12:24.240 calculate that? No, of course not. So somebody made an assumption about whether that's in or out.

00:12:31.780 Again, I don't know if it's in or out. It might, it might actually be there, but the example will

00:12:36.200 still serve to make the point, even if it is in there. The point is that somebody made an assumption

00:12:41.260 whether that should be in the calculation or not. And it was the assumption that's going to drive

00:12:47.820 the output, not the model, not the math. It was just the assumption. So if you think that any of

00:12:54.140 this stuff is like math or, you know, or rational thinking, it's not. These are just assumptions that

00:13:01.620 have been laundered through a model so that you think something, something fascinating happened.

00:13:07.780 All right, let me, more on that point. If you have inconsistent, uh, power, let's say because

00:13:13.720 it's renewable instead of coal or some other thing. Um, will new industries build a factory in your

00:13:21.500 town? And if they don't, would you even know that they decided not to? And if you didn't even know if

00:13:29.940 they decided not to, how do you put an economic estimate on that? Oh, it looks like we lost $3

00:13:36.620 billion because there would have been factories built here that would have produced a lot of money over

00:13:42.260 time. But they didn't because we don't have dependable, uh, electricity here. Now, again,

00:13:50.040 I don't know if that specific example is, is as relevant as I might be making it sound like,

00:13:55.260 but I want you to have the sense that there's a whole bunch of assumptions that make these things

00:14:01.480 what they are. And it's the assumptions that drive them, not, not the math. Uh, here's another one.

00:14:07.240 This will drive you crazy. If we know, and the analysis says this, that the cost of solar is

00:14:12.880 dropping fast. And we all agree with that, right? The cost of solar per, you know, per kilowatt hour

00:14:19.840 or whatever is dropping fast. Why doesn't it make, why won't it make sense to wait? Do you think they

00:14:27.480 modeled that? Do you think they modeled go hard now while solar is at its current price versus just

00:14:35.100 wait five years when the price is way down and then go hard, which one of those pays off better

00:14:41.800 because five years net from now, you're buying the same resource at pennies on a dollar and it will

00:14:47.280 still last 20 years or whatever. Do you think they modeled that? I doubt it. I doubt it. And if you

00:14:55.400 haven't compared things to the alternative, have you modeled anything? Not really. Not really.

00:15:01.480 I saw Elon Musk say that if you built a hundred giga plants, these are the enormous battery storage

00:15:09.600 facilities. If you built a hundred of them, you could, uh, store all the energy needed for the

00:15:14.580 entire world. Now, first of all, uh, because Elon Musk is saying it, I'm, I put a little more

00:15:21.920 credibility in that, you know, even if it's off by 50 or something, it's still sort of in the,

00:15:27.620 in the ballpark. And I ask you this question, what would it take to build a hundred giga plants?

00:15:36.900 And what do you do with the, the batteries that you're done with? If you had a hundred giga plants,

00:15:41.960 where do you put the batteries? I mean, I think it's solvable. It's not unsolvable,

00:15:46.440 just like nuclear waste. It's not unsolvable, but do they include all these costs? I don't know.

00:15:51.560 So that's my only comment. There's another fake news on social media. Anyway, not in the news news

00:15:58.460 that there's a edited video. It's a hoax of Kamala Harris, where she said, uh, that most people in

00:16:06.400 the hospital, uh, say that virtually every person in the hospital is unvaccinated. She said, but it got

00:16:14.440 edited. They took out the on. So it sounds like she's saying that every person in the hospital for

00:16:19.980 COVID is vaccinated, which is the opposite. Uh, I only mentioned this for the benefit of all the

00:16:27.560 people who said, I know the president called the neo-Nazis fine people. I saw it myself on the video.

00:16:36.560 And of course that was also edited maliciously. So it never happened in that case. And in this case,

00:16:42.360 Kamala Harris also never said that only vaccinated people are in the hospital.

00:16:47.320 Um, here's a lesson on vaccination persuasion. Uh, I am not going to persuade you to get vaccinated or

00:16:57.660 that they should be mandatory. I'm anti-mandate. So let me say this again. I'm anti-mandate.

00:17:04.800 You make your own decisions. Um, but this is a persuasion lesson and it's too late for them to go back.

00:17:12.580 So I don't mind saying this, but if, if somebody had hired me and let's say I had been unethical

00:17:18.920 and I decided to work for them unethically and to, uh, persuade people to buy into the mandate,

00:17:27.180 here's how I would have done it. You ready? The way they did do it is say, Hey, there's a really

00:17:33.320 good reason you should get this vaccination. It's good for you. It's good for the country.

00:17:38.120 Go get your vaccination. And by the way, we're going to make it mandatory. How'd that work out?

00:17:43.740 Okay. Not so well, right? Well, a lot of, a lot of pushback. Here's how I would have done it from

00:17:48.800 the start. It's too late to do it now. So don't worry. Don't worry that I'm giving them ideas. Okay.

00:17:54.540 Cause it's way too late. But if they'd done this from the start, imagine how much better it would have

00:18:00.060 been. Uh, this would be the first thing you ever heard about a vaccination mandate and it would come

00:18:05.460 from the government. This is all hypothetical. They would say, we've decided to add the COVID

00:18:11.140 vaccination to the list of required vaccinations. We're going to add it to the list, the existing

00:18:19.160 list of required vaccinations. Why is that better? Because if the first thing you say is that there's

00:18:28.620 a list of required vaccinations, that's your frame. Then people will say, Oh, okay. I wasn't

00:18:34.980 even thinking in those terms, but I guess there is a list of required vaccinations. Polio, for example,

00:18:40.600 right? And there's another one. I think there's another one that's required for school, maybe more

00:18:45.340 than one. But if you were to tell people, and again, if you're just joining, I'm not, I'm not in

00:18:51.340 favor of mandates and I'm not in favor of brainwashing the public. I'm giving you a lesson on how to

00:18:57.020 brainwash the public. I would have said, we're going to add it to the list. And immediately people

00:19:02.360 would say, well, the other stuff on the list made sense. And it would immediately change how you saw

00:19:07.800 it. That's all. All right. But it's too late. They're not going to do that. And if they'd asked me to do

00:19:12.780 that for them, I would have refused because it's unethical. All right. Regeneron, which I remind you,

00:19:22.080 I did recently buy some of their stock. Regeneron can also be administered in a shot. Did you know

00:19:29.420 that? So I thought Regeneron was just a drip. You know, you had to put the needle in your arm and

00:19:36.120 sit there for a drip. But apparently that's just one of the ways you can, you can get a shot

00:19:40.860 subcutaneous, they say. And they found out that if you get the shot, you have something like

00:19:48.480 eight months of protection at a very high level from the virus. In other words, a shot of Regeneron

00:19:58.220 acts very much like a shot of the vaccination. Yeah, eight months. So I guess you get eight months

00:20:05.960 protection. Somebody says just the drip. No, I read, I read, I read yesterday that they now have a,

00:20:14.840 an injectable form. So I think that's a fact. So the injectable form that is a shot will do the

00:20:22.380 basically the same thing as the vaccination. So here's what's interesting. What are they going to

00:20:30.560 call it? Are they going to say one of these things is a prophylactic and the others are vaccinations?

00:20:38.080 Because they have the same effect. Now they operate differently. One, one kills the virus really

00:20:46.320 quickly. The other, I think, encourages your body to kill it. You know, is that, is that right? 0.99

00:20:53.640 Do I have that distinction? But anyway, forget about the exact medical distinction. Just accept that

00:20:59.820 they're, you know, the mechanism is different. I think that's safe to say. But would that be enough

00:21:06.100 for them to say one is a vaccination and one is not? One is a therapeutic? I don't think it matters

00:21:13.260 what you call it. It matters what it does. But I think we're going to be in that conversation pretty

00:21:17.760 soon. Here's the biggest example of loser think I've been seeing. I've been telling people that doing

00:21:25.860 your own research is an illusion because we can't do that. You know, ordinary, normal people can't do

00:21:31.960 their own research and come to better, better ideas about things that are complicated and have people

00:21:37.680 on both sides. Now, the exception to that is if all you're doing is researching to learn something.

00:21:43.760 Well, that works. That works. There's nobody on the other side trying to confuse you. So if you're

00:21:49.380 trying to research what's the best way to, I don't know, exercise or diet or whatever, definitely do

00:21:54.020 that. That works for sure. It's just this political stuff, doing your own deep dive on this. It just never

00:22:00.880 works. Or more importantly, you don't know if it worked or not, but it feels like it did. That's why it's

00:22:07.120 dangerous. But here's the worst take I've seen. That if information is being suppressed, it must be true.

00:22:16.940 How many of you think that's true? That if there's somebody who's an official person, or if anybody in

00:22:25.860 an official capacity, it could be a company or a government, if they're actively suppressing

00:22:30.440 information, it's because it's most likely true. What do you think? Well, my take is that most

00:22:40.940 information that's suppressed is not true, right? That's why it's suppressed. Am I wrong that

00:22:46.880 of all the things that are true, you could fit those in a thimble? Let's just make an analogy here.

00:22:52.500 If you took all the things in the world that are true, you could put them in a thimble.

00:22:56.200 And then if you take all the things in the world that are not true, it would be the size of the

00:23:02.020 entire universe. So generally speaking, the reason anything is suppressed is that it's wrong.

00:23:09.800 How do you know that that's the one thing they suppressed? Well, okay, that one's true. 0.99

00:23:15.500 No, being suppressed doesn't tell you anything. Nothing at all. Now, it is true that people do hide

00:23:23.260 the truth, but it isn't true that if hidden, therefore, it's true. So be careful about that.

00:23:31.180 Am I wrong that the problems of anxiety and depression simply didn't exist when I was a kid?

00:23:38.940 Now, I'm being hyperbolic because, of course, they existed, but not in the quantities we're seeing,

00:23:46.220 right? Because in my life, almost everybody I know has depression or anxiety right now. Almost everybody.

00:23:55.380 Do you know anybody who doesn't have anxiety and or depression? It's pretty much everybody,

00:24:00.820 isn't it? Kids, adults. And I might be the only person who doesn't. I was bragging about this

00:24:09.200 recently. I got plenty of problems. I'm not sure you would want to trade places with me,

00:24:15.160 but I got plenty of problems. But as far as I know, I don't have a mental illness. And I think

00:24:22.520 that's kind of rare, isn't it? How many of you could say that you don't have a mental illness? 0.77

00:24:33.720 Some of you say you don't. Yeah. Okay, good. A lot of you say you don't. Good to know. Good to know. 0.99

00:24:42.240 I'd love to know the gender breakdown of that, though, and the age breakdown. All right. But if I 0.96

00:24:47.300 asked you if you had more anxiety than normal, you'd probably say yes, wouldn't you? All right.

00:24:52.200 Let me change the question to how many of you have definitely more anxiety now than, let's say,

00:24:58.300 when you were younger? How many of you have more anxiety? Somebody says less. Yeah, a lot of people

00:25:08.680 have more. So I'm not sure at what point anxiety becomes mental illness. You know, there must be a

00:25:14.560 point where normal anxiety becomes mental illness. But I would like to put out this thought.

00:25:22.180 The scaring children about climate change, because apparently that's a big part of what's making

00:25:27.300 kids depressed, is climate change. There's this new survey that says that 70% of Americans are now

00:25:36.460 very or somewhat worried about global warming. And it's causing all this anxiety, especially in kids.

00:25:44.560 Correct me if I'm wrong. Scaring children about climate change is child abuse, yes or no?

00:25:52.180 Is it child abuse? Because what are the children supposed to do about it?

00:25:57.800 It's child abuse. I'm pretty sure this is just straight child abuse. If they were adults,

00:26:04.340 and they could immediately go out and vote or do something, well, I'd say, you know, that's just

00:26:09.480 fair game. But if you're scaring children, and there's not a damn thing they could do about it,

00:26:15.740 it's just child abuse. And I don't believe that anybody's telling them the Adams Law of slow-moving

00:26:22.500 disasters, which says, we'll figure this out. Because we will figure this out. I don't think

00:26:28.720 they tell the kids, yeah, it looks like a big problem, but we always figure this out.

00:26:31.820 Who's saying that? I don't think they are. I think they're saying you're going to grow up into a

00:26:37.440 world that's on fire. Imagine what that would do to a kid. As others have noted, when I was a kid,

00:26:44.380 we were told that the odds of dying in a nuclear holocaust were, you know, something like 50-50.

00:26:50.720 You know, the odds were really high. And we literally did nuclear drills. And, you know,

00:26:56.000 my father built a bomb shelter in the basement where I lived. And we thought we were going to 0.94

00:27:02.920 die. Now, how much of a mental influence did that have on me? A lot, I think. A lot. I'm pretty sure

00:27:10.540 that messed with my brain. And, you know, I don't think I have a mental illness at the moment. But I

00:27:16.040 can imagine some people were pushed over the edge by that. All right. Speaking of polls, a CNN poll says

00:27:23.440 three quarters of the public think Facebook is making life worse. Three quarters say Facebook

00:27:30.100 is making life worse. What have I told you about every poll and the 25% number? No matter what the

00:27:38.960 poll is, 25% of the public will get the wrong answer. It doesn't even matter what the topic is.

00:27:46.840 Here it is again. 25% of the people think Facebook is making the world better. Okay.

00:27:53.440 Okay. So I've got a general comment about that, that when you turn fear into money, civilization

00:28:03.720 is doomed. And we found a way to turn fear into money. It's social networks. Social networks

00:28:11.720 primarily, and the news, I guess in general, scares you until you, you know, scares you about the other,

00:28:19.100 scares you about everything until you click on something. As long as that's our business model,

00:28:25.060 we are actually doomed. Now, the Adams law of slow moving disaster says we'll figure out how to get

00:28:31.120 past it. But at the moment, we're on a doomed trajectory. A doomed trajectory. Because we've

00:28:39.160 actually, our primary business model of the world is turning fear into money. And the only way that can go

00:28:46.140 is the end of civilization. The only way that can go. Because there'll just be more and more fear

00:28:50.960 until everything breaks down. There's no other way it can go. Except that the Adams law of slow

00:28:58.320 moving disaster says we'll figure out something. Right? I feel confident we'll figure out a way

00:29:03.740 around this. We figure out a way around everything. But at the moment, it is a doom path. You just have

00:29:10.020 to understand that. So you're serious about fixing it. I got a lot of pushback about doing your own

00:29:18.940 research. And me telling, saying that you think you can do it, but it's not a thing. Normal people

00:29:25.120 can't do their own research. Maybe some people can. Maybe. I mean, I haven't, I don't know if I've

00:29:31.000 ever met that person. But I would agree in sort of a general conceptual way, there might be people

00:29:36.300 who have those skills. It's a big, big world. Somebody does. But most people think they have

00:29:41.240 those skills and don't. That's where the trouble is. Oh, I read this post on Facebook, so I did my

00:29:46.760 own research. No, you didn't. Because you don't know if it's true. And you can't tell. You don't

00:29:51.880 have the skill to know if it was true or false. You could read a lot more articles, and you still

00:29:56.400 wouldn't have that skill. You could read a thousand articles, and you still wouldn't have that skill

00:30:01.520 to know what's true and what isn't. But you think you do. You think you do. And I think the

00:30:07.160 problem is that there are so many instances where doing your own research worked. But

00:30:14.180 it's closer to chance. So you can all think, can't you all think of an example where doing

00:30:20.900 your own research definitely worked? You even got the right answer before the news caught

00:30:26.440 on. You solved the problem that, you know, the standard thinking couldn't solve. You've

00:30:32.500 all had that experience. But don't be fooled by that one time you got it right. My point

00:30:39.360 is not that it never works, because sometimes you can get the right answer and do a bad job

00:30:45.960 of researching and still get the right answer by accident, because you weren't smart about

00:30:51.400 how you researched it. But you won't know if you're right. That's the problem. You can be right.

00:30:58.140 You just don't know when you're right. That's the problem. Does that make sense? It doesn't help

00:31:03.540 to be right if you can't tell when you're right and when you're not right. Was that clear? It doesn't

00:31:09.800 help to be right if you can't tell you're right, versus when you're wrong. It all looks the same to

00:31:15.840 you. All right. In hypnosis class years ago, when I learned to be a hypnotist, our instructor

00:31:25.400 told us something that I did not believe. Told me something that I was like, eh, that's a

00:31:33.640 little too far. Like, I'm willing to buy into a lot of this hypnosis stuff, but that's a little

00:31:39.760 too far. And it was this, that when people make a, let's say, a Freudian slip, they use

00:31:46.520 the wrong word, that it actually is meaningful, because it does tell you where their brain is,

00:31:53.060 and that it's not an accident, and it's not a simple accident. Now, when I first heard that,

00:31:59.480 I did not believe it. And the example he gave was this one. He said, let's say you're on a date,

00:32:06.560 date, and you've asked a woman out. That would be the example here. And it's your first date,

00:32:12.620 and you don't know if she's interested in you physically or not. And you're thinking about

00:32:17.080 going to dinner, and the woman says, oh, God, I'm glad we're going to dinner. I'm just ravished. 0.80

00:32:23.160 I'm just ravished. Now, the word she wanted was famished. Before I took hypnosis classes, I would

00:32:33.580 have said, oh, that's just two words that feel about the same in your head, and they got mixed up. 0.68

00:32:39.180 The hypnosis instructor would say, no, that's somebody telling you they want to have sex with 0.97

00:32:44.120 you. And so, one day, I was out with, many years ago in my single days, I was out with a woman who

00:32:55.040 later ended up being my partner for 15 years, a co-worker. And she said, while she was sitting at

00:33:02.440 the table, I'm ravished. It was the only hint she gave, the only hint that she was interested in me

00:33:12.100 more than a co-worker. That was it. The one and only hint. And it was enough. It was enough.

00:33:19.040 Because as soon as I heard it, I said, oh, game on. And we lived together for 15 years.

00:33:24.960 Now, I will tell you that that has happened more than once. I mean, not in the sexual context.

00:33:30.680 But the wrong word choice, the number of times that wrong word choice does, in fact, tell you

00:33:36.160 something useful is crazy. Now, will I say that there's science behind it? No. I mean, maybe,

00:33:43.620 but I'm not aware of any. So I can't tell you that it passes some kind of randomized controlled trial.

00:33:50.040 Might just be my confirmation bias, right? That would be a reasonable assumption. But you have

00:33:55.440 to see how many times it works. All right. So all I'll do is ask you to keep an eye on it.

00:34:01.160 Might take you 20 years to see the pattern. But keep an eye on it. This leads me to my next story

00:34:07.880 about Adam Schiff, who on an interview recently referred to the Trump inciting an insurrection.

00:34:17.500 That's what he hoped to say. That's what he hoped to say. He hoped to say that Trump had

00:34:23.100 incited an insurrection. What he actually said was Trump incited an erection. 1.00

00:34:31.440 Maybe those are just two words that sounded enough alike that his brain just confused him, 0.57

00:34:42.220 and it doesn't mean anything at all. Just a normal kind of a slip of the tongue.

00:34:47.600 The other possibility that seems far more likely to me, and I do believe, so I'm not, the sarcasm

00:34:57.580 is off. I'm going to tell you something that sounds like a joke, but I'm deadly serious.

00:35:03.320 I believe that Adam Schiff gets a sexual charge out of attacking Trump.

00:35:13.720 That's my honest belief. My honest belief. And by the way, I was picking this up way before

00:35:20.060 he made this verbal slip. He looked like a guy who was turned on by the whole situation.

00:35:28.020 Am I right? If you look at him, he looked almost like he was aroused when he talked about anything

00:35:35.500 that was bad for Trump. It didn't look political to me from the start. It never looked political.

00:35:42.880 It always looked sexual. Just my opinion, right? We can't read his mind, so there's no way to confirm it.

00:35:50.960 I'm just telling you that the totality of my experience, including everything from reading

00:36:00.640 body language, which is pretty sketchy stuff, to hypnosis class, to just my life experience,

00:36:07.860 he looks like a person who has some sexual tingle about all of this. And by the way, I wouldn't say

00:36:14.740 that I can't think of anybody else I'd say that about. Can you? I mean, I certainly see people

00:36:22.200 enjoying, you know, you can see that they're enjoying the back and forth of things. You know,

00:36:26.820 I think Adam Swalwell, Eric Swalwell, I think he kind of enjoys being on TV and stirring things up

00:36:33.000 and stuff. But I don't get any sense he's getting a sexual thrill out of it. But when I watch Schiff,

00:36:38.400 it just looks like he's enjoying it too much, if you know what I mean. Again, we can't read his

00:36:44.900 mind, so I can't say that's a fact. I'm just saying it's my experienced opinion.

00:36:52.660 All right. Did you hear that the QAnon shaman, you know, the guy with the, was it the bison horn

00:36:58.980 hat, who was part of the protest on January 6th? It looks like the prosecutors want to give him

00:37:05.200 four years in jail. For what? Trespassing in a photogenic costume? Now, I'm not saying there

00:37:19.140 were no crimes committed. There may have been crimes committed. But did you see any crime that

00:37:28.240 looked like a four-year jail sentence? At all? Anything? And I believe that the prosecutor

00:37:36.440 is saying fairly clearly that they want to make an example out of him. Boy, is that going to work.

00:37:46.260 If they make an example out of the QAnon shaman, they're going to get exactly what they wanted. 1.00

00:37:51.640 They're not going to like it. But they're going to get exactly what they thought they were asking

00:37:58.440 for. So be careful what you ask for, government, Department of Justice. I'm going to tie a couple

00:38:05.660 of stories here together. The next one is Kyle Rittenhouse. If you've been following that case,

00:38:11.660 you know that as of yesterday, we can conclude that there is no evidence whatsoever of a crime.

00:38:18.140 In fact, all of the prosecution's witnesses either provided no evidence of a crime or provided direct

00:38:26.300 evidence that it was self-defense, in their own words. Actually, only one of them was still alive,

00:38:34.060 I guess. So what do you do in a situation where somebody was arrested and even as far as toward the

00:38:44.280 end of the trial, the prosecutor has not presented anything that a reasonable person would see as

00:38:50.660 evidence of a crime? Actually, nothing. Actually, nothing. Now, my understanding is that in a case

00:38:59.000 like this, the defense at the end would ask for a motion to dismiss. They'd say something like,

00:39:04.900 well, we don't even have to give you our closing statement because there was no evidence of a crime.

00:39:10.100 I think you all saw what we saw. Let's just dismiss this. Now, apparently, that almost never gets

00:39:16.560 accepted because it's more credible for the system if the jury decides. You don't want the judge to

00:39:24.780 override the jury unless it's like a real weird situation. So I get that. I get that sometimes the

00:39:31.080 process has to run through. But here's my problem. There's a judge whose job it is to make sure

00:39:40.000 justice is done. This judge is watching the same thing we are, same thing the jury is. And that

00:39:47.040 judge knows that no evidence has been presented of a crime. Do you know what justice would look like

00:39:53.660 in this case? What justice would look like is releasing the judge, it would be the judge is

00:40:00.120 saying, look, let's stop right here because you don't have any evidence of a crime. So I'm not even

00:40:07.020 going to send it to a jury. And on top of that, I'm going to ask the bailiffs to arrest the prosecutor.

00:40:14.660 The prosecutor should be arrested and jailed for what he's done so far, which is ruin Kyle

00:40:20.580 Rittenhouse's life by prosecuting a crime that doesn't exist. And he had no evidence of it.

00:40:28.280 Now, I don't think some other people have said that the prosecutor was surprised by the

00:40:34.840 testimonies. I don't think so. I think the prosecutor knew exactly what everybody was going to say.

00:40:41.960 And he knew that he didn't have any evidence of a crime. And he prosecuted anyway. If you know you

00:40:47.000 don't have evidence of crime and you prosecute anyway for what I would have to say are political

00:40:51.260 reasons, I think you need to go to jail for a long time. I think the prosecutor should get 10 years in

00:40:57.780 jail. Based on what we've seen publicly. I wouldn't need any extra evidence. Just what we've seen

00:41:05.580 publicly. If you put me on a jury, I would jail that prosecutor for 10 years. Because what the

00:41:13.080 prosecutor is doing is destroying the whole system and targeting one ethnicity. Yeah, I'm going there.

00:41:20.960 What do the Kyle Rittenhouse and the QAnon shaman have in common? They're adult white men 0.93

00:41:29.400 who probably are pro-Trump. I think we can say that. I mean, I don't know if Kyle Rittenhouse is

00:41:35.120 even political. But, you know, he probably leans pro-Second Amendment, if you know what I mean.

00:41:41.240 And I think that you have to see both of these cases as the canaries in the coal mine for hunting

00:41:51.220 Republicans. If either of them are convicted, and let me put a nuance here, the QAnon shaman probably

00:41:59.720 violated some laws. Trespassing, at the very least. So if he gets convicted for, like, trespassing,

00:42:06.820 and, you know, he gets a time served or a fine or something, that's okay. That's okay. But if he

00:42:14.340 gets four years, and or Kyle Rittenhouse gets convicted, then a new standard has been set for

00:42:25.020 prosecuting adult white men. You just have to think that maybe they're part of some white supremacist

00:42:31.680 movement, and then it doesn't matter what they did. As long as you can smear them with association,

00:42:38.720 you can convict them right in public, right in front of everybody, for nothing. And you don't

00:42:46.280 even have to cover it up. You can put it right in front of everybody and say, I'm going to send

00:42:50.500 Kyle Rittenhouse to jail, because we don't like the Second Amendment and guns, and we don't like 0.86

00:42:56.220 Republicans, and we don't like white men. So Kyle Rittenhouse has to go to jail. So here's my take

00:43:03.780 on this. If the QAnon shaman gets four years, I think the government has to be overthrown. 1.00

00:43:16.160 Can I say that? At what point do I go to jail? Does anybody know? Now, I'm not encouraging you to do it.

00:43:26.220 Because you make your own decisions. I'm just saying that I personally, if the QAnon shaman gets 1.00

00:43:31.520 four years, that's war. That's war. And I'm down, just personally, I'm not going to encourage you to

00:43:40.160 do anything. I'm down for overthrowing the government on that basis. Because, you know, I warned you before

00:43:47.800 Biden was elected, I said, if he was elected, Republicans would be hunted. This is that. This

00:43:55.860 is that. These are Republicans being hunted right in front of you. Nobody's hiding any of this. This

00:44:04.360 is right in front of you. And so, at the very least, the Department of Justice needs to have some firings 0.74

00:44:10.940 over this QAnon shaman thing, if they really pursue this. And at the very least, you know,

00:44:19.580 Biden would have to fire people. But he's too degraded to do that. I don't see Biden firing

00:44:24.100 anybody. I just don't think he's in charge. And nobody else is going to do it. So I think we

00:44:32.180 would have to get serious. Well, no, I'll just say I'll get serious. I'm not going to talk you into

00:44:37.340 anything. Because I don't want you, like, to get arrested like the QAnon shaman. But just 1.00

00:44:42.280 personally, I would consider that cause for insurrection. So I'm certainly hoping it doesn't

00:44:51.040 happen. Because this would be an example of hunting white people, white men in particular. 0.98

00:44:58.400 And if this holds up or goes the way the prosecutor wants it to go, then the government has to be 0.89

00:45:05.020 overthrown. That's my opinion. Now, at what point is it illegal to have that opinion?

00:45:14.740 Can anybody advise me? Any lawyers there? I know there are always a bunch of lawyers watching this.

00:45:20.860 So any lawyers? What can I say in public about overthrowing the government?

00:45:26.260 Well, good question. Define overthrow. I'm not saying militarily. So I'm not suggesting anything

00:45:36.820 military. But I don't think anything military is required whatsoever. I think that public opinion,

00:45:44.020 when it reaches whatever, 70%, 75%, guess whatever it wants. So the way I would overthrow the government

00:45:53.040 would be by persuasion. And you could just wait to 2022 and have it done that way. And that would

00:46:06.860 be a good way to do it. And I would consider that overthrowing the government, essentially getting

00:46:12.940 rid of them. I'm not saying we should overthrow the republic. And I'm not saying that we should put

00:46:17.860 me in charge. Or somebody else specifically in charge. I'm just saying that this is a complete

00:46:26.140 failure of government. If you're targeting people for their ethnicity, and that's exactly what's 0.74

00:46:34.400 happening here. They're being targeted for their ethnic and also their political views. These are just

00:46:40.400 political prisoners. How many political prisoners are there right now that are just republicans?

00:46:45.540 Does anybody know the number? The number of republican political prisoners? Because there's two that

00:46:52.380 we know of, the QAnon shaman and Kyle Rittenhouse. That is very clever memeing somebody's doing

00:47:01.100 over on Locals. Yeah, I do have the right of freedom of speech. But can you call for insurrection

00:47:11.440 directly? Is that legal? Does anybody know? I don't think you can call for a violent anything.

00:47:20.560 And I wouldn't want to necessarily, I don't have any desire to change the system of a republic.

00:47:25.880 It's just that the people there would have shown themselves to be essentially criminal enemies

00:47:32.000 of the people. And you really can't have leaders who have proven to be criminal enemies of the

00:47:38.140 people. I would say the prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case is just a criminal. And calling him a

00:47:44.600 prosecutor at this point, I don't even think is fair. That doesn't even feel like what's going on. He's just a

00:47:49.440 criminal pursuing a crime right in front of you. That's all. Dershowitz says as long as people can offer

00:47:59.520 any kind of dissenting opinion, it's free speech. Is that the standard? That's a good standard.

00:48:10.620 All right. I guess I made that point.

00:48:19.260 All right. And here's some of the reasons that the prosecutor wants to prosecute the QAnon shaman. 0.56

00:48:25.360 Uh, the attempted coup, the prosecutor wrote, wait, what attempted coup? This prosecutor says

00:48:32.880 there was an attempted coup. That's not an evidence. Can a prosecutor say something is a coup when

00:48:38.400 there's no evidence of it? Um, uh, has made us all question the safety and security of the country

00:48:46.880 in which we will live. Well, nothing's made me question it more than watching this criminal

00:48:50.840 try to put Kyle Rittenhouse in jail and said those, uh, enormous harms born out of the acts of his

00:48:57.940 defendant must be deterred so that we never see a similar assault. In other words, he's saying

00:49:03.860 directly, we want to make an example of the QAnon shaman because he peacefully walked around in a

00:49:11.320 photogenic outfit in a place he wasn't supposed to be. So, um, do you ever see anybody ever watched

00:49:23.400 Doctor Who? And if there's anybody who's a Doctor Who fan, uh, you can help me on the quote here

00:49:32.140 because I'm going to paraphrase something from Doctor Who. Do you remember when he had some issue

00:49:37.120 with, I guess it was whoever was playing the Prime Minister of Great Britain? And he had some kind

00:49:44.000 of dispute with the Prime Minister and he said he was going to take down the whole government.

00:49:49.760 And the Prime Minister was like, what can you do? You know, how can you take down the whole government?

00:49:54.800 And Doctor Who said, I can do it with three words. And she just sort of dismisses him and walks away. 0.99

00:50:02.640 And then Doctor Who goes over and whispers to one of the top aides, she looks tired. 1.00

00:50:12.640 Is that the right quote? She looks tired. Can anybody fix my quote, please?

00:50:20.800 Uh, oh, don't you think she looks tired? I think that looks, I think you remember. Don't you think she

00:50:27.060 looks tired? And that was the end of the show. And the implication was that he brought down the

00:50:33.860 government with just those words. Now, that's, you know, that's the TV version of it. I don't think

00:50:41.700 those words would bring down the government. But you can see how, you can see how they might.

00:50:48.500 In other words, what he did was simply reframe something or create a frame that wasn't there,

00:50:53.700 which is that she looked tired. And all you have to do, yeah, the sleepy Joe, right? And all you have

00:51:02.020 to do is put that out there. If it's the right idea, it can topple a government. So, could I topple a

00:51:09.380 government? Yeah, I could. I would argue that anybody with my skill set could. Now, that doesn't mean they

00:51:19.440 could on every try, right? So, if I tried 10 times, I don't know, maybe once. Maybe once it

00:51:26.080 would work. So, I'm not claiming it's like some magic bullet or something. But somebody with my

00:51:31.200 skill set could actually, um, take down a government. If you have a big enough platform. And I also have

00:51:37.180 a big enough platform. I've said before that if I get to a million users, um, I'll be running the

00:51:43.540 country. I'm sorry, a million followers on Twitter. I think I'm up to 660,000. 2020, 2022 is coming in

00:51:52.900 2024. If you would like me to have more influence, uh, tell your friends to follow me. Preferably your

00:52:01.080 friends who won't hate following me. You know who they are. And see if you can get it to a million.

00:52:06.000 Because if my follower count gets to a million, um, I'm kind of unstoppable at that point. I, I think

00:52:13.240 that's roughly where the, the point of no return is. Where the government would have to kill me. 0.98

00:52:20.160 They'd probably have to assassinate me if I got a million followers. Now, um, what I know that you

00:52:27.240 don't know is that a lot of people have already sniffed around to figure out, you know, if I'm working

00:52:34.340 for a foreign power or what the hell's going on with me. Because a lot of people can't figure out

00:52:39.980 what my game is. Like, what's your game? Why, why are you even doing this? What, what's your, what's

00:52:45.980 your plan? Believe it or not, my plan is to be a patriot. And I know that people don't, don't accept

00:52:54.520 that. And I'll tell you where it comes from. I'm going to tell you exactly where it comes from.

00:52:58.940 Um, when my first marriage ended, one of the, one of the bad things about being a stepdad is that you

00:53:08.840 lose not only the wife, but, you know, the kids that you may have helped raise. So when I got

00:53:15.160 divorced, I lost everything, right? I mean, basically my entire structure that mattered, you know,

00:53:23.260 children and, um, and wife. And I remember saying to myself that until then I hadn't even really used

00:53:30.040 social media much because my, my ex, um, thought it was, you know, basically an access for, uh, too

00:53:37.920 many women to get to me, I guess, which would be true. I mean, social media does cause, you know, 1.00

00:53:43.700 massive marital problems. So she wasn't wrong about that. Um, but I didn't use social media because I,

00:53:50.160 you know, I put the family first, so, so to speak, but as soon as the, uh, divorce happened,

00:53:56.080 I thought I don't have any purpose. Literally it was waking up with no purpose because my purpose

00:54:05.040 had been, you know, the maximizing the, the family, family benefit. And so I was, uh, searching for a

00:54:11.960 purpose because the alternative is to just, you know, end your life basically. And I felt like, uh, I still

00:54:18.000 had some more, you know, value to give, and I thought it would feel meaningful to me to have

00:54:23.840 value. And I made a promise to myself. And everything you see from here on in is based on

00:54:31.040 that promise. And I've told you before, there's a difference between wanting and deciding, right?

00:54:38.280 Difference between wanting something and deciding. When you want something, you don't necessarily do

00:54:42.500 anything about it. When you decide you'll do anything, you'll do whatever it takes because

00:54:49.620 you've decided. So that's the difference between deciding and wanting. It's, it's what you're willing

00:54:54.620 to do. And I decided that day that I belonged to the world from that point on, because up until the

00:55:03.760 divorce, I belonged, I belonged to the family. And if it was a conflict between what was good for the

00:55:09.820 family and what was good for the world, I'd pick the family. But once, once that, um, association

00:55:17.940 ended, I wanted something else that would make me feel like I was doing something useful. Because

00:55:26.040 I didn't want to have the, um, I do possess, uh, a unique set of talents, if I can say it that way.

00:55:35.080 And I thought it would be wasted if I didn't have anything to do. And so I literally said out loud,

00:55:43.040 and I've said it many times since then, that, uh, I belong to the world now. Meaning that if it's not

00:55:51.180 good for the world, I'm not in, uh, in America first. So let me say this as clearly as possible.

00:55:57.320 America first, but also good for the world. And I, and I think those are usually fairly compatible,

00:56:04.960 not always, but usually compatible. What's good for America tends to be pretty good for the world,

00:56:10.520 not always. So when you see me do stuff like this, that's the reason. That's the reason. The reason is

00:56:19.600 if I'm not doing something useful, I'm not interested. And I need to be interested. I can't wake up if I'm not

00:56:26.660 interested. Now I'm very interested. And in 2016, 2015, actually, when I saw that Trump came into the race,

00:56:37.280 that was the moment something clicked with me. And I realized, I might be late. Hold on.

00:56:47.140 Nope. Nope. Um, and I realized that this would be something I could handle. How many of you remember

00:56:55.640 that when Trump first entered the race, he was just being called the clown and nobody took him 0.95

00:57:00.580 seriously. And when I wrote my, then became famous at the time, uh, clown genius piece, I reframed Trump 0.95

00:57:13.000 to be a master persuader. The four, four dimensional chess, three dimensional chess thing. And that

00:57:19.820 became the frame that allowed people who, uh, would ordinarily not support such craziness.

00:57:26.380 It allowed them to do it. I think I made that happen. Now, everything else had to happen too,

00:57:34.940 right? So it's not like one thing is responsible for Trump's success. Everybody who did anything useful

00:57:40.620 probably had to do everything that they did or else it wouldn't have happened, especially what Trump

00:57:44.260 did. Right. But that was the missing piece. The missing piece was that there was no frame

00:57:51.240 that could make him make sense as a, as a president. And I provided the frame and, uh,

00:57:59.960 and Alex Jones destroyed Hillary. Right. There were a lot of things that happened. So

00:58:03.020 you can't say one person is responsible for anything.

00:58:08.340 And so I, I pick things where I think my special skillset would have some impact. And I only do it

00:58:16.140 if I think that it's clearly what's right for the world. Um, Trump, I knew could come in and break the

00:58:22.860 things that needed to get broken. And he did. He broke the things that needed to get broken.

00:58:28.020 We, we think of everything differently now. And he did that. That's what I wanted. So I got out of

00:58:34.460 Trump exactly what I hoped to. I wanted him to just break the way we were thinking about everything.

00:58:39.640 And he just broke the hell out of it. So, um,

00:58:45.720 so that, so for those who are wondering, uh, and I think that the reason I was puzzling to some

00:58:55.500 powerful entities who came sniffing around is that, um, my motivation is sort of hard to understand.

00:59:07.380 And I think it's because it's rare. Now it's selfish. I mean, if you're always looking for the

00:59:13.860 selfish part, oh, it's plenty selfish. It's plenty selfish because it's the only thing that makes me

00:59:20.040 feel good. So I'm doing it to feel good. I hope it's good for you too. But yeah, it's ultimately

00:59:26.760 selfish if you want to think of it that way. Anyway, I got to go do some other stuff. Thanks

00:59:32.080 for waiting. Sorry. I was late today. I just got caught up in something and I will talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - November 10, 2021

Episode 1557 Scott Adams： Here Now!

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