Episode 1575 Scott Adams： Today I Will Trigger Some of You Into Cognitive Dissonance. Sorry
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
135.39117
Summary
I don t care if you get vaccinated, but I would like to try a new experiment to see how many people would be triggered into cognitive dissonance by a fake shock at the thought of a new strain of the flu.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Good morning, everybody, and a welcome to the best thing that's ever happened.
00:00:09.580
Coffee was Scott Adams, and it never disappoints.
00:00:23.020
I'd like to take a moment to remind you I don't care if you get vaccinated.
00:00:36.500
Now, again, I'm not going to talk about whether you should get vaccinated.
00:00:40.660
We're going to do a little experiment to see how many people I can trigger into cognitive dissonance in a live setting.
00:00:48.480
I'll tell you what to look for, and then you're going to watch it happen in real time.
00:00:54.040
So, it's going to be fun, but again, I don't care if you get vaccinated.
00:00:58.160
I'm not trying to influence you one way or another, but watch what happens when we just talk about it.
00:01:06.260
But first, how would you like to take it up another notch?
00:01:12.440
Would you settle for less when you could have more?
00:01:18.000
And so, you want more, you want the simultaneous sip,
00:01:20.220
and all you need is a cuppa, a mug, a glass, a tank, a gel, a stein, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:01:33.100
the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:01:38.560
It's called the simultaneous sip, but it happens now.
00:01:50.820
Now, I would like all of you to help me express fake shock.
00:02:00.180
Do any current events change what I've written in LoserThink?
00:02:07.880
So, I'd like you all to participate in this at home.
00:02:14.780
I'm going to read you a news headline, and I want you to pretend to be shocked.
00:02:23.520
Just when we thought the pandemic could be winding down, it seems there's a new variant.
00:02:51.040
Literally, the most fucking predictable thing that could ever happen in the world.
00:02:56.440
Now, remember I told you that follow the money works even when it shouldn't?
00:03:06.840
Even when money seems to be not part of the decision, it always predicts.
00:03:15.200
Because what would be the most profitable thing for the pharma companies?
00:03:23.060
And wouldn't you imagine that it's likely that the vaccines will work against the variant?
00:03:32.260
Or maybe somebody will come up with a new pill that only works against the variant.
00:03:38.440
Well, now you say to yourself, but Scott, the pharma companies might like to sell more vaccines.
00:03:46.640
But that has nothing to do with the fact that other scientists have discovered this variant.
00:03:54.000
You know, the variant is either there or it isn't, right?
00:04:05.140
Except that follow the money always predicts right.
00:04:14.100
And I'll say again, the odds that some novel virus, such as coronavirus, which we highly
00:04:22.800
suspect may have been engineered, if it were engineered in a way that would trigger a lot
00:04:29.380
of deadly variants, wouldn't we have a lot more of them, the deadliest ones, really just one
00:04:40.340
I feel as though you would have dozens or hundreds or maybe zero.
00:04:47.160
But exactly the right number to support the vaccine program, right?
00:04:53.720
That of all the possibilities, from one to infinity, of how many deadly variants there could be,
00:05:01.880
there's just three, you know, the original delta and then this one, and they happen to
00:05:10.620
I'm a little suspicious of all of this, as all of us should be.
00:05:17.180
Let me give you a persuasion lesson in one tweet.
00:05:20.880
I tweeted something obnoxious, and the purpose of the tweet was attention, of course.
00:05:36.800
So here's the tweet, and I'll tell you what the technique is in it.
00:05:42.200
I said that political influence is the product of persuasion skill times reach.
00:05:47.680
For example, if I had 10 million Twitter followers, I would be in charge of America.
00:06:11.040
So I started with saying that political influence is the product of persuasion skill times reach.
00:06:19.440
That if you were persuasively skilled, that wouldn't help you at all if nobody knew about it.
00:06:26.060
But if you had a giant platform, you know, 10 million users, you'd have more basic, right?
00:06:32.120
So the first part of the influence is that I say something you'll agree with.
00:06:38.800
The first thing I say is something you'll agree with.
00:06:50.160
It's more like saying something that sounds smart that you agree with.
00:06:54.720
What happens when I say something that sounds smart?
00:07:00.640
If I say something that sounds smart and you agree with it, what have I done?
00:07:17.760
So it's a little bonding thing and primes people for what comes.
00:07:24.300
I said if I had 10 million Twitter followers, I'd be in charge of America.
00:07:27.740
Someone pointed out accurately that I had once said something along the lines, if I had 1 million Twitter followers, that I would be the most influential person or something like that.
00:07:42.000
Now, suppose I could get you to debate whether it would take me 1 million users or 10 million to run the country.
00:07:55.300
If you're debating how many users I need before I'm in charge of the country, I've made you accept that I would be in charge of the country as some number, which is a little bit absurd and yet true at the same time.
00:08:11.440
I mean, it feels absurd even to me, but it's a little bit true.
00:08:15.340
Somebody with my persuasion skills, Trump has them.
00:08:21.420
There are lots of other people who have the skills, but they don't necessarily have the huge platform.
00:08:29.600
When he had the huge platform and the persuasion skills, President of the United States.
00:08:35.980
So, and then I also used the phrase, I would be in charge of America.
00:08:49.440
Because those things would make you afraid, right?
00:08:52.160
Like, oh, this guy's trying to become president.
00:08:56.760
And so I said I'd be in charge of America like it would be a, like a duty.
00:09:02.980
Instead of saying I want it, which I'm not sure I do, it would feel like a responsibility.
00:09:09.520
So I put that out there, and it was very unpopular as a tweet, because I think it made people uncomfortable.
00:09:19.020
But I would argue that about, that at 10 million Twitter followers, I would effectively run the country.
00:09:24.400
I believe that the real way to see who is in charge of everything is that there is a battle of competing Illuminatis for every topic.
00:09:46.020
Now, I've been behind the curtain enough in the last several years to know that that's actually the best way to see things.
00:09:54.040
You know, the cartoonish views we have are, you know, somebody's going to say, Jews control the world.
00:10:01.500
Somebody's going to say, it's the elite, or there's an Illuminati, or it's the deep state.
00:10:08.640
There's always some shadowy group that you're afraid is running everything.
00:10:13.180
The actual best way to see everything is that for every topic, there's at least one Illuminati.
00:10:20.620
In other words, one group of people behind the curtain who have something they're trying to influence, but probably competing with others.
00:10:27.380
So it's like small groups of shadowy figures, and you don't know their names.
00:10:33.320
But by the time you see it, it's coming through a politician's mouth.
00:10:37.980
And by then, all the influence has been laundered out.
00:10:44.200
There's usually a battle behind the curtain, and then the politician just tells you who won for their vote, anyway.
00:10:54.400
And certainly somebody who had my persuasion skills, and again, it's not because I'm genetically gifted or something.
00:11:03.600
I'm just saying that I've learned how to persuade, that the techniques are learnable.
00:11:10.020
And if you have learned them, if you had 10 million followers, you could pick a topic and probably have a big influence on it.
00:11:16.240
How many topics do you think I've influenced already?
00:11:22.940
Like in the actual national level, tell me what things you think...
00:11:30.900
What things do you think I've directly influenced with, you know, half a million to, I guess, 600 and almost 70,000 followers?
00:11:39.880
I'm seeing Trump, I'm seeing China, nuclear policy, telemedicine, the simulation, fentanyl awareness, coffee, telemedicine, yeah.
00:11:56.920
So there are enough examples that it makes the point, doesn't it?
00:12:01.340
You know, if I tried to influence everything, it would dilute my influence, and I wouldn't be able to get anything done.
00:12:07.800
But if you've got X number of followers and you know how to influence, you can pick a topic, and you can really make a dent.
00:12:17.680
Right, Greta Thunberg makes a dent because she's picked one topic.
00:12:24.320
All right, so apparently this new virus, the Omicron, as it's being called, the big story is that they skipped a few Greek letters to get to Omicron.
00:12:37.220
And one of the ones they skipped was the letter XI.
00:12:41.200
I don't know how you pronounce the Greek letter XI.
00:12:44.080
But if it were a Chinese name, which it also is, it would be Xi.
00:12:51.440
So if you pronounce it the way the Greek letter would be, it would be Kai.
00:13:03.080
And somebody says Jack Posobiec pointed out that Omicron is an enneagram for moronic.
00:13:14.600
But if you're saying to yourself, oh, the World Health Organization skipped the letter Kai because it looks like XI, and then people would say, oh, that's Xi, President Xi of China.
00:13:31.940
And I'm not sure that's the reason, though, because I think China, there's already a Xi virus.
00:13:39.160
It's called fentanyl, kills about 60,000 Americans per year.
00:13:44.080
And that comes from China through the cartels into the United States.
00:13:51.000
It's just called fentanyl from fentanyl, China.
00:13:57.580
I provocatively tweeted this, which got people all mad, which I suppose I expected.
00:14:06.220
I said, is it my imagination or are the unvaccinated secretly hoping the vaccinated die in large numbers to prove a point?
00:14:16.860
Now, people, of course, jumped in and said, oh, it's the other way around.
00:14:20.720
I think those vaccinated people want the unvaccinated to die.
00:14:32.320
And the reason I ask the question is that I felt this pull myself.
00:14:39.500
In other words, there's always a pull to be right.
00:14:44.180
And unfortunately, some people predict things will go well in the world.
00:14:53.000
Even if you don't want things to go poorly, you still kind of do because you want to be right.
00:15:00.320
If I asked you, do you want people to die so you can be right, most people will say, no, no, I don't want people to die just so I can be proven right.
00:15:13.280
Meaning that the influence to be right is so powerful that it does kind of push you slightly uncomfortably in the direction of being a little bit happy if people died and made you right by dying.
00:15:33.360
So I would have been amazed if nobody else had the same feeling.
00:15:38.000
Now, again, I don't want people to die to prove me right.
00:15:44.380
And one of the comments that I got, and here's where I'm going to start pushing you into cognitive dissonance.
00:15:52.120
And by the way, let me tell you what the tells will be.
00:15:56.580
So you can see it in yourself and you can see it in the comments.
00:16:05.940
And it would look like, Scott, you've lost it with nothing else.
00:16:10.600
Or, well, you've really jumped the shark now with no other comment.
00:16:17.200
So if you attack the messenger, probably cognitive dissonance.
00:16:21.680
If you imagine I'm saying something different so that you can prove me wrong on some point I'm not talking about,
00:16:31.760
If you can't handle the points I'm making, you will imagine I'm making a different one and argue that one.
00:16:37.920
So watch for that, and I'll point it out when I see it.
00:16:43.840
Now, there might be other triggers as they come by.
00:16:47.740
But the writing in all caps, I don't know what that means.
00:16:57.440
For example, this morning, I heard somebody say on Twitter,
00:17:02.740
Scott, why does it seem like you're regretting your vaccination decision?
00:17:12.760
I certainly question whether it was right, but regretting it's a whole different thing, right?
00:17:19.500
I mean, nobody can be 100% sure you made the right vaccination decision for yourself.
00:17:25.160
All right, so I would say that anybody who says they're 100% certain probably has a mental competence problem.
00:17:37.020
Because if you're 100% sure that you made the right vaccination decision, there's just something wrong with your brain.
00:17:48.000
At least you're allowing that you could be wrong, right?
00:17:51.420
So I'm vaccinated, but if you ask me, are you 100% sure that was the right decision?
00:18:00.040
I mean, I don't have data that I trust, do you?
00:18:09.160
So full certainty is the other way to know somebody's got something going on that isn't good thinking, all right?
00:18:17.700
So here's where I'm going to trigger you into cognitive dissonance, some of you, and watch for it in the comments.
00:18:24.380
The number one comment I got from the unvaccinated is,
00:18:37.160
Because the vaccination people want to do something to us.
00:18:49.540
All right, here's where the cognitive dissonance is going to get triggered.
00:19:08.360
Why do you accept and reinforce the divisive frame of vaccinated versus unvaccinated?
00:19:17.840
Somebody's imagining that I'm increasing the vaccinated versus unvaccinated frame.
00:19:27.360
Because I tell you I don't care if you're vaccinated.
00:19:34.600
So if you think this is my clever way to, you know, divide people or to cause you to do something, none of that's happening.
00:19:51.460
It is definitely true that the vaccinated, on average, are trying to get the unvaccinated people to do something, get vaccinated.
00:20:00.440
But it is also true that the unvaccinated are having a huge impact on the vaccinated.
00:20:11.700
Because the vaccinated would say, and again, this would be their opinion.
00:20:22.340
The vaccinated would say, we could have opened up by now.
00:20:31.600
And the vaccinated would say, you have completely fucked up my life by not getting vaccinated.
00:20:45.680
I'm just saying that we live in a world where everybody's choice affects everybody else.
00:20:58.640
To imagine that you're the one who just wanted to be left alone is, I think, selfish beyond anything I could imagine.
00:21:20.860
Because the unvaccinated are having a gigantic impact on every part of the vaccinated people's lives, or so the vaccinated people would say.
00:21:36.340
So how many of you would accept that neither of you are leaving the others alone?
00:21:46.020
In fact, leaving the other side alone is so opposite of what's happening right now.
00:21:50.840
So now I think we would get into, watch, this would be another trigger or indicator for cognitive dissonance.
00:22:04.140
Now, word thinking is where you just try to win by defining things.
00:22:07.540
So somebody is going to define a way, the way the impact goes both directions.
00:22:23.140
Well, no, the people who have no choice are a separate thing.
00:22:28.520
So 83% of adults are vaxxed, not fully vaxxed, though.
00:22:37.520
Wow, the comments are so long, it's hard to see them.
00:22:53.980
So the unvaccinated are being selfish because the vaccinated insist that the unvaccinated must be vaccinated before letting things open.
00:23:06.620
Yeah, I'm saying that in a civilized society, everybody expects everybody else to do their part.
00:23:16.740
Like, I expect you not to litter so that I can enjoy walking on the street.
00:23:21.060
I expect you not to commit a crime so that I can feel safe.
00:23:27.340
I'm putting expectations on you all the time, as you are on me.
00:23:32.740
So to imagine that this pandemic is the one case where one group can just be left alone.
00:23:40.700
They could be left alone if there were six of them and they didn't affect anybody else.
00:23:44.340
But you're talking about, you know, tens of millions of people who have a gigantic effect on every part of the other people's lives.
00:24:02.180
The idea that you could leave either side alone is purely imaginary.
00:24:07.240
And you'd have to sort of word think it to turn it into being left alone.
00:24:30.000
Wouldn't cigarette smokers say, why don't you just leave me alone?
00:24:37.080
To which I say, you know, I'm sensitive to that argument.
00:24:44.820
But you're sitting next to me in the restaurant.
00:24:48.540
If you're sitting next to me in the restaurant, is that the same as leaving you alone?
00:24:56.100
So my point is, both sides are always influencing both sides.
00:25:06.660
So it's a ridiculous argument to say, I just want to be left alone.
00:25:12.420
Because that's what the other side wants to do.
00:25:20.640
Yeah, if your only reason that you have is an analogy, then you don't have a reason.
00:25:26.100
Because you wouldn't need the analogy if you had an argument.
00:25:29.800
An analogy is good if you've made your point, but maybe you want to, you know, inform a little extra or something like that.
00:25:37.560
Now, the other thing that I saw, and it's, well, so here's a question I asked on Twitter.
00:25:51.560
And this is, again, this is not intended to show you my opinion.
00:25:58.220
I need everybody to feel that first, or you won't be able to hear the rest of it.
00:26:08.120
So I was asking your opinion because I'm interested.
00:26:11.100
I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on this.
00:26:14.840
So I came up with this totally artificial question to get people hopping mad.
00:26:25.980
I said, if you are unvaccinated by choice, and let's say there's no health reason, you just didn't trust the vaccine.
00:26:34.500
So if you're unvaccinated by choice, and there's only one bed left in the ICU, and of course, that's never the case because they can expand and stuff.
00:26:44.300
But I'm just trying to get to sort of a clarifying of your opinion question, right?
00:26:53.420
But if there were only one ICU bed left, and there was a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person, they both had COVID.
00:27:01.980
Do you think that the unvaccinated person has the same moral right, moral, that's the key word, the same moral right to the one bed?
00:27:19.760
Do you think the vaccinated and the unvaccinated have the same moral right to be treated?
00:27:39.960
So if what you're looking at is the moral standard, yeah, you can't treat people differently, right?
00:27:49.200
As soon as you go down that road, it's all lost, right?
00:27:53.740
The single most important thing we do as human beings, and certainly in America, the thing that makes America, in my opinion, its strongest thing, is that we don't ever do this.
00:28:07.040
We don't treat some people as morally less valuable, you know, even to the point of a fetus, you know, for tens of millions of people.
00:28:19.340
It doesn't matter if you've made a bad decision, it doesn't matter if you've made a bad decision, a good decision, it doesn't matter if you're a criminal, old or young, you are morally exactly equal.
00:28:28.560
However, but, it would also be a triage decision, wouldn't it, which is different than a moral decision.
00:29:18.320
So a doctor on Twitter responded and said that he would treat the vaccinated person first.
00:29:36.800
Why would you treat the vaccinated person first?
00:29:58.020
The doctor said that the vaccinated person has such a higher chance of quickly recovering
00:30:03.940
compared to the unvaccinated that the vaccinated person would open up a bed sooner.
00:30:13.680
The vaccinated person is more likely to have a quick rebound and therefore open up another ICU
00:30:25.940
If you go for the unvaccinated person first, there's a much greater chance you'll lose that
00:30:31.140
person and lose the person that didn't get the ICU.
00:30:51.560
I'm not the one who could argue this point, by the way.
00:30:57.360
Maybe other doctors would have different opinions.
00:30:59.280
Now, how many of you think that the shots increase your rate of myocarditis?
00:31:11.240
In the comments, how many of you believe that the shots, the vaccinations, increase your
00:31:51.560
So if they have more of it, more compared to what?
00:32:03.300
You know what I'm doing to you right now, right?
00:32:07.380
Is it logical to compare the myocarditis of the people who got vaccinated to the people
00:32:20.700
Except we're moving into endemic territory, which means you're going to get COVID.
00:32:35.620
So the real comparison should be not vaccinated compared to unvaccinated.
00:32:44.220
In the specific context of knowing we're all going to get it or likely.
00:32:49.080
You should compare myocarditis for the vaccinated to myocarditis to the unvaccinated, both of
00:33:08.640
So if you get infected, you get more myocarditis.
00:33:14.040
How many of you knew that the infection itself can give you myocarditis as well as other things?
00:33:22.800
So if you know you're going to get the virus, are you with me?
00:33:29.900
Do you buy just the logic of it that comparing it to people who don't have a virus and didn't
00:33:38.140
You have to compare it to people with the virus.
00:33:43.780
Now, my understanding is, and again, all data is not to be trusted.
00:33:50.520
Can we agree that all the data is not to be trusted?
00:33:54.500
But if the data we have that's, let's say, public and generally agreed by the experts,
00:34:00.760
if that data were correct, and that's a gigantic if, it would be safer to get vaccinated if
00:34:09.880
you believed you were going to get the virus anyway, right?
00:34:19.020
So I see one disagree, but I don't see a reason.
00:34:22.540
Can we not compare it to the time before COVID?
00:34:32.500
Let's say, with clear incidence of myocarditis coming from VACs getting into the bloodstream
00:34:38.020
rather than the muscles, this argument is missing context.
00:34:54.260
I'm not sure we can tell anything about excess deaths.
00:35:03.780
You are spending a lot of money for these comments, but I appreciate the money.
00:35:17.880
So I got the, there's your first cognitive dissonance trigger.
00:35:25.900
So something I said, didn't agree with them, but they, they could recognize it as correct
00:35:32.940
James Bond says, Scott is pushing the vaccine again.
00:35:38.600
If, if you were here in the beginning, that's cognitive dissonance, because, um, I really
00:35:47.360
And I'm willing to accept the, uh, the, the greater restrictions so that you can have that
00:35:54.780
No, I believe that the unvaccinated have an enormous effect on me because they do.
00:36:02.040
I think the, the, the, the lockdowns, the masking and all that would all go away if
00:36:07.740
we were a hundred percent vaccinated, but I, I'm not telling you to get vaccinated and
00:36:14.020
I'm completely willing to put up with the inconvenience so that you can maintain that
00:36:20.680
Are you okay that I willingly take an enormous, enormous load for the unvaccinated, but I do
00:36:29.140
it willingly because I'd rather that you have that freedom.
00:36:36.860
I mean, is that, is that a fair opinion that I am willing to suffer tremendously for you to
00:36:45.340
Because if it were the other way around, I'd ask you to do the same.
00:36:51.140
But do the shoe and the other foot trick, right?
00:36:54.000
If the thing, if it were the other way around, I would ask you to sacrifice a lot for me to
00:37:06.200
I would ask you to put up with a lot for me to have that freedom.
00:37:15.500
Now, if you're saying to me, but Scott, you can't be sure if everyone got vaccinated,
00:37:35.840
Apparently, there's a precedent that I'd forgotten about, but I need a fact check on this.
00:37:42.160
Is it true that alcoholics don't get liver transplants because they're alcoholics?
00:37:53.260
I'm seeing some yeses, but I don't know if that's a...
00:37:57.720
There's probably enough doctors on here who can tell me if that's true.
00:38:10.260
Compared to getting an unknown number of shots and boosters.
00:38:17.280
Let me get back to that about the number of boosters.
00:38:20.600
So somebody's pointing out on YouTube that if you're trying to do your risk analysis,
00:38:25.580
did you do your risk analysis assuming that you would get one shot or infinite shots?
00:38:41.520
which is if the first two shots didn't kill you,
00:38:47.400
I feel like it's really unlikely the third one would.
00:38:53.560
My understanding is that if the vaccinations would cause problems,
00:39:06.380
And so just giving you more of what you've already had,
00:39:09.700
you've probably already proved you're okay with it.
00:39:13.700
Richmond, the goth says you're wrong about that.
00:39:22.620
Are you comfortable with me saying, as a rule of thumb,
00:39:27.280
probably most of the problems happened right away, so we'd know about it.
00:39:31.560
But I'm also allowing that there could be things like,
00:39:40.040
So I would say that adding shots definitely increases risk.
00:39:52.120
But if you told me anybody knows that, no, nobody knows that.
00:39:56.240
Yeah, the first two months is where everything happens, it seems like.
00:40:10.340
At least one person loves my cognitive dissonance shows.
00:40:13.740
Let's see if we can catch anybody in the comments who's got cognitive dissonance.
00:40:22.100
Oh, let me just do one more thing before we do that.
00:40:29.120
when if you gave me a choice between scientific studies,
00:40:55.020
Why would you listen to these anecdotal stories
00:41:08.960
You know, one of the most basic things I've always believed about the world
00:41:13.240
is that the science was better than the anecdotal observations.
00:41:25.620
But I've got a feeling that people are doing just as well
00:41:29.040
with anecdotal observations during the pandemic
00:41:41.740
I mean, science has really damaged itself in the last few years.
00:42:44.140
of something that has a big effect on other people.
00:44:06.040
and I really need an expert to help me on this one.
00:44:14.020
and then you decided to mix and match with another one.
00:44:18.480
that if the first one didn't excite your system
00:44:36.360
is the mechanism that a vaccination would hurt you,
00:44:52.280
Has anybody seen any cognitive dissonance go by?