Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1650 Scott Adams： The Great Clawback Has Begun. Freedom is About to Break Out Everywhere

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody. Wow, you are looking good. You know why you look so good? It's because

00:00:10.560 I'm wearing black today. Yeah, it's true. Everybody looks good when I wear black. I think that's the

00:00:18.040 same. If you hear something that sounds like a little bit of fry in the audio, that might be

00:00:25.520 the shower that's running in the room next to me in a feat of terrible timing. But it'll be over soon.

00:00:33.980 Now, yes, I do look great in black. You're right. You're right. And how many people are here for

00:00:41.460 the simultaneous sip? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, I thought so. Many of you. And all you need is a

00:00:48.700 copper mugger, a glass of tanker, a chalice, a canteen, a jug of flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:00:56.260 Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,

00:01:03.500 the dopamine here of the day, the drink that supports the Freedom Truckers. Anybody? Who's

00:01:11.440 in favor of the Freedom Truckers? Supporting them? So this is to you, Freedom Truckers. I hope some of

00:01:16.960 you are watching. You must probably don't have a lot to do up there, sitting in your cold cabs,

00:01:22.520 doing the best you can. So here's to you, keeping us free. And we'll talk about you a little bit more.

00:01:29.060 Go. Oh, yeah. You know, in all the time that the critics have tried to paint the truckers as some

00:01:42.640 kind of a rebel right-wing thing. Even once, did any of the critics think of this pun?

00:01:54.800 It's a bunch of honkies. Anybody? Nobody thought of that one. All right, well, I don't want to help 1.00

00:02:02.980 them. I don't want to help the other side. But really? Nobody in this? There's nobody who thought 0.75

00:02:09.540 of that one at all. Come on. All right, well, today's theme, I'm going to call it the demise

00:02:17.780 of the expert class. Am I right or am I wrong that the most striking part of the last five years

00:02:26.820 is the complete demolition of the credibility of all experts in everything?

00:02:33.320 I feel like that alone is the single biggest change in everything. Now, experts would include

00:02:41.740 people giving you the news. We never trusted the politicians, so that part's not new. But

00:02:49.040 I feel like this is a new thing. And I was thinking about the most natural path or trajectory,

00:02:57.920 I guess, that the civilization would take. And this is sort of off the top of my head just before I

00:03:05.500 came on here. But I want to run something by you to see if there's a predictable place where this all

00:03:11.820 goes. Are you ready? So if you go back in time enough, you would go back to a time when typically

00:03:18.800 the leader would tell the leader would tell the people, hey, I was chosen by God. And that was how

00:03:26.520 the leader got credibility. I was chosen by God. Because it probably was pretty hard to protect the

00:03:32.900 leader when nobody had good weapons, right? Seems like you could just throw a rock at the leader.

00:03:40.600 It'd be kind of dangerous. So they needed some kind of, you know, authority beyond force. But, you know,

00:03:48.080 then over time, people became more enlightened, and communication got a little better, maybe,

00:03:52.680 and education got a little better. And we stopped believing that leaders were chosen by God,

00:03:58.340 for the most part. And then you get dictators. Because if you don't have that cover story about

00:04:06.480 God, you need to use force. So you got a lot of dictators. And what happens when you have a lot

00:04:13.080 of dictators? Well, as the public communicates better, and over time, communication always keeps

00:04:19.800 improving, right? Right up to the internet, and then it went boom. So people are getting smarter,

00:04:25.580 they're communicating better. And what is the logical thing you'd expect when you have dictators?

00:04:31.420 You end up with revolutions. So dictators lead to revolutions. And then revolutions lead to

00:04:39.220 something like leaders chosen by the people. Now, what do you get when you have leaders chosen by the

00:04:45.920 people? Eventually, the people with the money are in charge of the leaders. Am I wrong? These are just

00:04:55.020 sort of normal things that follow. Dictators, plus educating the public, plus communications,

00:05:01.220 should lead to revolutions. The revolutions should give you something like leaders chosen by the

00:05:08.980 people. Once you have that, plus capitalism, you've got, well, maybe you don't even need the

00:05:16.140 capitalism. But you've got money that's going to control them. All right, so now you're going to be

00:05:21.320 in a situation where money chooses the leaders. But what was our only protection from that? Let's say

00:05:28.000 in Western democracies. What was our only protection from being abused by the money people and the

00:05:36.200 politicians? It was kind of our experts, wasn't it? Well, you can always sort of depend on, well,

00:05:43.840 they can't get away with that much because our experts will ferret out the bad behavior. You know,

00:05:49.320 the experts in our news industry will find out what crimes they did. The experts in our financial

00:05:54.860 industry will keep people from doing bad things. So basically, at least you have the experts watching

00:06:01.400 things. What happens when the credibility of the experts just disappears? Like what's left?

00:06:08.000 I feel like we're entering that territory. So can we predict what happens as surely as we can predict

00:06:15.380 that dictators plus education plus communication leads to democracies, which we can predict leads to

00:06:23.140 money taking over, which leads to our only protection being the experts, which leads to the experts being

00:06:29.900 bought off, losing their credibility, which leads to... Now, doesn't all that seem like it was predictable

00:06:36.780 in hindsight, right? It's easy to have hindsight. But is the next phase predictable?

00:06:46.920 What do you think? If all of those phases were kind of predictable, but really maybe only because

00:06:52.400 we're looking at it from today's perspective, but is there something that would be just as obvious

00:06:57.740 later that we should have said, oh, it's obvious where that's going to go? Well, let me throw out an

00:07:03.980 idea. You know, the two things that made the experts sort of worthless is some got bought off, but also

00:07:12.460 our problems are more complex. If you take an expert on some simple subject, relatively simple, such as

00:07:21.360 do cigarettes cause lung cancer. Relatively simple question. Took a while to know for sure, but a

00:07:30.760 relatively simple question. Now take climate change, completely different story, right? Totally

00:07:37.800 complicated. So we're in a world in which a lot of our problems, you know, what is Russia and Ukraine

00:07:43.800 going to do and all the different economic and military ways that this could line up. So experts can't

00:07:50.880 predict because things are too complicated and they've lost their credibility. So we're kind

00:07:56.600 of lost. And the question is, how do you have a trust free civilization? A trust free? Because we

00:08:06.780 don't have trust anymore. We don't trust experts, governments, people with money. We don't trust our

00:08:12.920 own intelligence agencies. We don't trust anybody. Don't trust the news. And we're not wrong,

00:08:18.900 by the way. Don't get me wrong. The problem is not that we have less trust. The problem is that we

00:08:25.340 found out we shouldn't be trusting. It's nothing to do with the public. The public's actually in pretty

00:08:32.040 good shape. The public is, you know, sort of waking up to just how bad things have gotten in terms of

00:08:39.580 trust. So here's where I think is the obvious only place it can go. Transparency. And I think that that

00:08:49.400 will be like incredibly obvious someday, you know, 20 years from now. And fairly soon, the only way we're

00:08:58.520 going to get past this inability to trust anybody about anything is to have just massive sea changes

00:09:06.900 and transparency. Now, here's the problem. That's also going to have an impact on your privacy.

00:09:15.160 And here's something I've been predicting for years that people always misunderstand.

00:09:20.960 People misunderstand me saying I'm in favor of what I'm going to predict. I'm not in favor of it.

00:09:27.280 It's irrelevant whether I favor it or not. I just think it's going to happen.

00:09:31.560 Right. And what's going to happen is the continuing evolution where we trade privacy

00:09:39.060 for function, for utility. Right. So every time we give up a little privacy, as long as we're doing

00:09:47.720 it in some intelligent way, we're getting back some kind of feature. Right. It makes our smartphones

00:09:54.120 work better. Basically, all of our technology, everything that makes life easy, costs us a little

00:10:01.960 bit in terms of our privacy. But think of all the problems you could solve if you got to a world

00:10:08.500 where you didn't have any privacy. Stop. Stop. There's something you're all thinking right now.

00:10:17.020 And I want to stop you from thinking that. You're thinking of a world in which people have

00:10:21.580 partial privacy. That's terrible. A world in which the government... Here's our world now.

00:10:27.940 The government knows more about you than you know about the government. How is that fair?

00:10:34.660 That's a big problem. Don't you think that you could solve a lot of problems if you could know

00:10:40.520 as much about your government as your government can know about you? Right. So if the only change we

00:10:46.440 made is to say, all right, it doesn't look like we're going to get any more privacy back,

00:10:51.580 realistically. But we could at least make the government more transparent. Right? We can

00:10:59.400 make science more transparent, probably in a variety of ways. I know science needs... Science,

00:11:05.200 you know, the community itself knows it needs to fix its credibility problem. Probably has lots of

00:11:10.080 good ideas for that by now. So I'm not saying you should give away your privacy. I'm just saying

00:11:17.820 it's going to happen as a just a side effect of that. Here's the other way that your privacy is

00:11:24.060 going to completely disappear. AI. Right now, the only way you can give away your privacy is if

00:11:33.480 somebody hacks you or there's a, you know, warrant that they can get into your stuff or you give it

00:11:39.820 away or something or you're careless, I guess. But what happens when AI can figure out everything

00:11:45.280 about you without anybody's permission? If you don't think that's coming, I don't think you know

00:11:53.360 what's coming. You know how an FBI profiler can look at just a few clues and know a lot about the

00:12:01.760 perpetrator? And it's almost scary how much they get right? How well do you think AI is going to do that

00:12:10.960 once it can find out everything about you that's public? And maybe it can find out everything about

00:12:18.340 you that's not public. I mean, if the AI is good enough, it'll just hack any system it needs to look

00:12:23.960 into. So at some point, AI is going to guarantee take all of your privacy. But it doesn't mean it's

00:12:32.740 going to distribute that privacy to anybody who wants it. But the AI itself will know exactly what

00:12:38.780 the frick you're doing. It's going to know before you know. You don't think it can predict you

00:12:44.520 before you do it? You're wrong. It absolutely can predict your actions before you do them. Not every

00:12:51.260 time. But if somebody had an active social media account, and it had access to it? Yeah, it could

00:13:00.940 put it. I'm sure it could pick out a shooter, a school shooter. I'll bet it could do that. Maybe not

00:13:07.280 yet. But it's obvious where everything's going. So I would say that the obvious place where all this

00:13:14.940 is going is an end of hidden secrets. And there'll be great transparency going on. Now, let me tell you

00:13:23.380 about a world in which you lose all of your privacy. Suppose even just the worst, just the worst stuff

00:13:31.700 that ever happened to you. Or they, every like, even maybe your, you know, your kinks, you're just

00:13:38.740 everything. Just everything you don't want people to know about. Let's just say it all went out there.

00:13:43.760 What would happen? Well, if you were the only person who gave up your privacy, devastation.

00:13:51.360 Everybody who still had their privacy would mock you into, I don't know, something bad.

00:13:56.660 But suppose you could communicate with anybody in the world, and everybody could see your stuff,

00:14:03.360 and you could see everybody else's stuff. All you'd have to do is find somebody who had a similarly

00:14:08.000 bad background. You could be best friends. And you could do it instantly. So instead of saying,

00:14:14.680 oh, I don't want to have a friend because they'll find out about my bad background, you just get on

00:14:18.880 the internet and say, all right, I need somebody else who's done all these terrible things or

00:14:22.360 something similar. Hey, look, turns out a lot of people, a lot of people are just like me.

00:14:28.720 Let's get together. So I think you would find that if you could find out other people's, you know,

00:14:36.120 let's say badness, and they could find out yours, you would just have more friends.

00:14:41.360 And it would be impossible to lock you all up. Because there'd just be too many of them.

00:14:46.280 And here's the best part. If everybody's flaws were on display all the time, you wouldn't see them

00:14:54.320 anymore. That's not immediately obvious, but think about it. If everyone's flaws, just their worst

00:15:01.900 components, were just on display. Let's say you had AR glasses, you know, where somebody's information

00:15:08.940 pops up just because they walked in the room. Or maybe you're in the metaverse, and it's the same

00:15:15.260 thing. And suppose you just know everything about somebody. You would be so exhausted by looking

00:15:21.860 at their list of problems that you would just be snow blind after a while. Do you know what snow

00:15:27.280 blind means? Is snow blind one of those things that only people who grew up in snow know what it

00:15:32.460 means? Basically, you just become blind. Everything is all whited out. So I don't know. I think the day

00:15:43.060 that we start treating our problems like they're special is the day everybody's got less anxiety,

00:15:53.660 and everybody has more friends, and it's easier to get a job. However, there might be no way to get

00:15:59.780 there without going through the worst thing that could possibly be, which is the government knows

00:16:05.000 more about you than you know about them. And that's where we are. So all right, that's my long-range

00:16:11.880 prediction is massive transparency is the only way, only way you can have a trust-based economy.

00:16:20.840 The only way you can have a trust-based economy is massive transparency. We don't have that.

00:16:27.180 All right. But we will. It's inevitable. Favorite story of the day? You know how Trump has been

00:16:36.220 criticized for his, let's say, his record-keeping systems, because some of the important records

00:16:45.700 from his presidency found their way to Mar-Lago, and I guess they're being shipped back, and it's not

00:16:51.440 like the biggest deal in the world. But we do know that Trump is not the best in how he handles

00:16:56.580 important documents, which leads us to this story. There's a report that pages from Maggie Haberman's

00:17:06.240 book had been found, flushed papers found in a clogging, clogging Trump White House toilets.

00:17:14.020 So I didn't know Maggie Haberman had a book until I learned that its pages were in Trump's toilet. 0.84

00:17:26.480 And I'm trying to think, if you were the publisher, and you found out that the only publicity you'd

00:17:35.220 gotten for your book in a, you know, in a market that's got a lot of publicity for a lot of books,

00:17:40.000 the best publicity, let's say, that you got for your book was that Trump had used it for possibly

00:17:45.360 toilet paper. The, I don't like to be gross, but the story was a little bit silent on the question of

00:17:54.200 whether the paper had been used or just torn from the book and put directly in the toilet. I think that's

00:18:00.180 an important detail. Uh, that might just be me, but I think this is like the best, uh, this would be

00:18:11.520 the ultimate test of, uh, all publicity is good publicity. You know, you always wonder where

00:18:26.960 these little, uh, common sense rules, like all publicity is good publicity. You always wonder

00:18:33.080 where, where the limit of that common sense is. And I think if, if the president of the United,

00:18:40.460 if the president of the United States used the pages of your book to wipe his ass, 0.68

00:18:45.060 that might be the limit of where publicity just turns bad.

00:18:51.580 Oh, speaking of bad publicity, uh, you know, we, we live in a world of, you know, massive, uh,

00:19:03.240 character assassination, as you know. And, uh, do you know what happens if somebody who doesn't

00:19:10.520 know anything about me, you know, me personally, somebody who doesn't know anything about me

00:19:15.920 finds out about me for the first time by reading stuff on the internet about me?

00:19:23.780 Do you have any idea what happens? Cause I heard about this recently.

00:19:30.960 Somebody who wasn't aware of Dilbert, you know, wasn't aware of, you know, any books I've

00:19:37.160 written, anything I've done on life. He wasn't aware of anything. Just went to the internet to

00:19:42.000 find out, because, you know, my name came up, went to the internet to learn about me.

00:19:50.620 Let me just say the word horrifying doesn't, doesn't cover it.

00:19:59.800 Ah, well, have I ever taught you that, uh, I think I say it too often that freedom from

00:20:08.100 embarrassment is like a superpower? Cause I'm not sure the rest of you could even survive this,

00:20:14.160 but to me, it's hilarious. You know, at first it was horrifying to me too. Like my first reaction

00:20:19.960 was, oh my God, if you didn't know anything about me, that's the first thing you'd learn. And

00:20:24.700 basically none of it is true. And, and, uh, but the more I thought about it, the more,

00:20:30.180 the funnier it is that there's a, just like this complete, you know, caricature of me.

00:20:35.440 Now this is of course in the context of watching what's happening to Joe Rogan. Cause you can't

00:20:40.680 really do a live stream today without talking about Joe Rogan's problems. And, uh, uh, watching

00:20:47.480 CNN run a, uh, a hit piece on him today that was just so messed up. I mean, just, just completely

00:20:55.680 messed up. Uh, yeah, I'm not even going to criticize it. It was so, it was just so messed up that,

00:21:01.940 uh, you think what a world, what a world we live in where I, you know, is Joe Rogan trying

00:21:08.360 to make the world worse for anybody? And what did he do to you? Did he run over your dog?

00:21:14.100 What? What? We're suddenly hating on him like, like that matters. He, he's probably the, uh,

00:21:21.760 least offensive. If you think about it, he might be the least offensive person in the public realm.

00:21:29.540 Think about it. If you were really serious about it and you really, you know, had watched enough

00:21:34.720 of his content, he might be the least offensive person in the entire public realm. Cause remember,

00:21:41.100 everybody's offensive to somebody, everybody doesn't matter if you're on the right or left,

00:21:46.380 you're offensive to somebody. So, but within the list of people who are offensive, which is

00:21:51.860 everybody, I'd put him pretty near the bottom. Now that video that came out about repeated use of

00:21:58.660 the N word, I feel like we need an exception. And I, I would say, uh, I'm of course not the person 0.89

00:22:07.100 who can ask for this, but, um, on behalf of the, well, not on behalf of, but would the black community 0.61

00:22:15.880 agree with this standard that comedians should be able to use any word if they're talking about the

00:22:23.700 word? Not if they're using it in, you know, a direct offensive way, of course, but could we agree 0.99

00:22:31.220 that standup comics and somebody who does that for a living could just be the exception? That that's,

00:22:39.840 that's the one class of people that we say, all right, all right, we get it. Your job, that's your

00:22:45.460 job. Your job is to, is to challenge us with words. If your actual job is to challenge people's

00:22:53.700 thinking with words, uh, let them use all the words and let them be the exception. Now, again,

00:23:00.480 I'm not saying an exception if they use the word in the direct insulting way, but nobody ever accused

00:23:06.540 Joe Rogan of that. Am I right? Nobody even accused him of that. In my mind, the problem is with the

00:23:13.360 people who think, uh, standup comics or somebody who's even doing a live stream within the context

00:23:19.920 of being a standup comic. That's the same thing I'd say to say that that specific kind of occupation

00:23:27.200 should be treated like all the rest is just nonsense. Am I wrong? You know, if I do think that

00:23:36.260 if somebody, you know, some other podcaster who was not known to be a comic, if that person had a

00:23:44.480 compilation of using that word in any context, I'd have some questions, wouldn't you? Like you'd want

00:23:51.540 to know more about that context. But if you hear that a comic, a professional comic use the words,

00:23:58.560 and the one thing, you know, is that nobody, nobody accuses of using the words in an insulting way.

00:24:03.860 Nobody. That's not even, that's not even in the conversation. Why are we even talking about it?

00:24:10.540 Um, he's the one exception. I mean, comics are the one exception. Now I would not put myself in that

00:24:16.820 category. Um, you know, I think you'd have to be a, I would say if you're a professional standup comic,

00:24:24.880 you just got to have different rules. It just ought to be that way for everybody's benefit, really.

00:24:31.080 Well, let's talk about the, uh, trucker rebellion. Um, Ezra Levant had a, uh, interesting thread in

00:24:40.920 which he has a prediction that the way this will get resolved is that Biden will go first in dropping,

00:24:46.360 uh, vaccine mandates for border crossings. And then it will make it a little bit absurd

00:24:52.080 if, if the border only works in one direction. You can go one way with a vaccination, but not the

00:24:58.720 other, or without the vaccination, but not the other. So, and I think that's a reasonably good,

00:25:04.900 um, good prediction. I do think that if it's between Biden and Trudeau, Biden would probably go first

00:25:11.380 if, if it's going to go at all. Um, so that's a pretty good prediction. I'll put that out there

00:25:17.200 and see how he does. All right. Um, on our theme of the destruction of the expert class,

00:25:23.880 I would like to read to you a tweet about the trucker convoy from somebody who's a, who has a PhD

00:25:31.100 and is a professor. So based on the bio, it's a PhD and a professor. And, uh, this PhD and professor,

00:25:41.600 he's a professor of social political philosophy. Now you have to be pretty smart and have, you know,

00:25:47.620 a lot of credentials to be that kind of a professor, right? Most kind of professors, but philosophy

00:25:53.060 tends to be high IQ people. So almost certainly a very smart person. And in his bio, he says,

00:25:59.820 he's not afraid to dig deeper. I deal with causes, not symptoms. Uh, we need intelligent dialogue,

00:26:04.980 not partisan, uh, cliquishness. And I'm thinking this, this guy sounds pretty good. Uh, lots of good

00:26:11.080 credentials, PhD. And he tweets this today. He says, realize that the trucker convoy and copycat

00:26:19.200 demonstrations are not about vaccines. They aren't about freedom. They are classic reactionary

00:26:26.060 tactics to disrupt society and force it toward a return to right-wing power. I got, had John,

00:26:33.060 I just realized I've never said this word out loud. Uh, hegemonies, hegemonies, right? 1.00

00:26:41.860 Hegemonies. That, uh, the end freedoms, open inquiry and ruled laws. In other words, the truckers,

00:26:49.480 um, say this one very intelligent professor, yeah, he believes it's really, uh, classic reactionary

00:26:56.160 tactics to disrupt society. It does, it is disrupting society. So that part is true. Um, but to force

00:27:03.920 it toward a return to right-wing power, had John hegemonies that end freedoms, open inquiry and rule

00:27:10.780 of law. In what universe, in what universe are the political right associated with less freedom,

00:27:21.740 less open inquiry, what? And less rule of law. That literally the, the three pillars, probably

00:27:33.400 the three pillars of the right, of the right would be these three things. Uh, more freedom, more freedom

00:27:42.160 of speech, which I think the open inquiry gets to that, and more rule of law. These are literally

00:27:48.280 exactly the three things the right wants, not the three things the right wants to get rid of.

00:27:54.540 How the hell do you get a PhD and say stuff like this in public? Am I wrong?

00:27:59.000 Am I wrong that this is literally ridiculous? So this is just more evidence of the complete

00:28:08.240 destruction of the, um, of the expert class. If you missed it, he's a professor of social and

00:28:16.400 political philosophy. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not even making fun of him as an individual,

00:28:22.940 so don't get this wrong. This is not about an individual. This is about the destruction of

00:28:29.480 the expert class. How in the world do you get a PhD and then put out a tweet like that?

00:28:37.440 I don't know. Or am I wrong? Maybe the tweet makes sense and we're all stupid. I guess that's the

00:28:43.040 other possibility. Given that we know he's got a high IQ, or I thought he did. All right. Um,

00:28:51.040 so what do you think about natural infection, uh, protecting against COVID versus the vaccines?

00:28:58.740 Well, there's a new paper brought to my attention by, uh, Dr. John Mandrola on Twitter. And, uh,

00:29:07.480 the new paper, basically it's a stronger evidence because it's a fairly strong paper and a good

00:29:14.000 publication. And it says that, uh, natural infection protects you against severe illness,

00:29:18.860 which basically takes almost all, everything out of the argument that especially young people

00:29:27.600 should have mandatory vaccines for college and hospitals since we know that, or the boosters,

00:29:33.020 um, mandatory boosters. So it doesn't make sense to boost somebody who has natural immunity

00:29:39.900 if, uh, the booster itself we know could be a risk, but the natural immunity is already done

00:29:46.120 what the booster is going to do. Now, isn't this yet another example of a destruction of the expert

00:29:53.720 class that we're listening to our experts? And don't you and I, and obviously Dr. Mandrola,

00:30:01.800 don't we all find this obvious? I feel like it's pretty obvious that at this point, natural infection

00:30:11.720 should be a perfect substitute for any kind of vaccine mandate. But the bigger question, of course,

00:30:17.960 is why have a mandate at all, um, at this point? All right. And here's another question. Um,

00:30:27.280 suppose other doctors like Dr. Mandrola would have the same opinion, which is that for, at least for

00:30:33.320 young people, all right, we'll limit it to young people and limit it to the question of boosters.

00:30:37.120 Um, suppose your doctor told you that was a bad idea, but your college or your hospital employer

00:30:46.980 told you you had to do it. How do you handle that ethically? If you're an employer and you ask

00:30:54.880 your employee to do something that your doctor says is against good medical advice,

00:31:01.020 what, what is the, where does that go? Like, how do you adjudicate that? Like who, who wins that?

00:31:11.620 I don't even know where that goes. Would that go to, is that even a, was there any kind of a law that

00:31:17.380 is broken? You get a medical exemption. Oh, okay. So I guess the law does handle that. You get a medical

00:31:25.400 exemption, but wouldn't everybody have the medical exemption. So couldn't you get a medical exemption

00:31:31.800 to the mandates just by saying that you're, you have a prior infection?

00:31:40.180 So give me a fact check on this. Wouldn't that tell you that the mandates are already unnecessary 0.99

00:31:45.680 if you're infected because you could just get a medical exemption?

00:31:48.940 So that would suggest that the mandates are not really enforceable to anybody who's been infected

00:31:55.440 if they wanted to get a medical exemption, right? Oh, so I guess I don't know enough about this story.

00:32:03.360 So maybe, maybe it's a less of an issue than I think, except for that extra step that seems,

00:32:08.680 oh, maybe the only way you can be sure that somebody has the, the prior infection.

00:32:13.960 I don't know if you'd believe it's just the test by itself. Anyway, so maybe that's, maybe we need to

00:32:23.500 know more about that. All right. So in the category of everything is racist, and we're going to mix this

00:32:30.020 with the, the dog that doesn't bite or doesn't, the dog that's not barking. So I look, how much do you

00:32:37.060 love dogs not barking stories? I feel like they're fascinating, but I might be wrong. The dog not

00:32:43.500 barking is the, the story that should be in the news, but for some reason it isn't. They always

00:32:48.900 tell you something, right? All right, here's one. In a context, and I think you would agree this is

00:32:54.720 our context, where everything is called racist. Am I right? That there's no story that doesn't have

00:33:01.600 a racist element to it. Just always. If you had a story that conspicuously was missing the most

00:33:09.360 obvious racist accusation, what would that tell you? Well, it would tell you that your media is

00:33:16.340 probably manipulated, but I guess you knew that. So here's one that I think, if you haven't heard

00:33:23.300 this before, it's going to blow your mind that the dog is not barking. And here it is. I tweeted it

00:33:29.700 earlier, that inflation is a stealth form of systemic racism. Inflation. Inflation is systemic

00:33:37.600 racism in the context that everything is racism. But the argument applies. And I'm not being like

00:33:44.680 overly clever or anything. I think it applies directly. Because when you have inflation, who

00:33:50.080 does it hit? Inflation hits hardest, low-income people, which are unfortunately overpopulated by

00:34:00.640 people of color. So because the rich, you know, they're also going to take a hit, right? I'm not

00:34:07.960 saying inflation only goes after low income. But the rich at least have some escapes, right? Their

00:34:13.620 assets that they own will increase with inflation. So even though your stuff costs more, your house is

00:34:19.760 becoming more, so there's some balance there. But, you know, low-income people don't own a house

00:34:24.640 to inflate. The rich can repay their existing loans with cheaper dollars, because inflation makes the

00:34:32.360 amount you borrowed seem like it's less and less every year. And who borrows money? Well, it's not

00:34:38.220 low-income people. Low-income people don't have credit. They can't borrow anything. So it's only the

00:34:43.360 high-income people who get this benefit. And then the high-income people are more likely to own a

00:34:49.340 business and be able to, you know, pass along price increases. But low-income people don't own any

00:34:56.100 businesses, and they can't pass along any price increases. Not easily, anyway. I mean, I suppose

00:35:01.140 they could negotiate for a pay raise. So here's the dog not barking. If most of the inflation had been

00:35:10.020 created by a Republican decision or set of decisions, wouldn't we be talking about them being

00:35:19.260 inflation being racist all day long? We would, right? We would be saying all day long, those darn

00:35:26.400 Republicans gave us a bunch of inflation, and that's racist. We would. So, and to me, the inflation

00:35:38.440 might be our biggest remaining problem, I think. Because I think a lot of our other big problems are

00:35:44.500 now, you know, at least we have a solution that looks like it's forming for everything. But not

00:35:49.960 inflation. You know, unless you just think, well, tough it out, and that's the only solution. Maybe it is.

00:35:55.520 Just tough it out. But, I don't know, I'm just amazed that we're not making a big stink about it being

00:36:02.720 racist. It has to be just because the Democrats control the media. All right. Give me a fact

00:36:09.660 check on this, but I thought I heard the director of the CDC yesterday say that they don't recommend

00:36:15.820 mask mandates. Am I right? That the CDC does no longer recommend a mask? I don't know if they ever did.

00:36:26.660 But, but they're now saying masking where the local people think it makes sense.

00:36:35.300 But I thought yesterday when I was hearing that the CDC was still pro-mask.

00:36:43.860 Do I have this wrong? Yeah, I thought the CDC said keep using masks where there are high infection

00:36:51.800 rates. But that that would be sort of a local decision what a high infection rate is. So to

00:36:57.460 me, it sounds like the CDC already took themselves out of the game. Because are they not saying use

00:37:04.600 your masks where the infection rate is high, but they're not telling you what is high. Therefore,

00:37:10.820 it's they're not telling you what to do. They're basically saying use their own judgment, right?

00:37:15.540 No, I saw the director of the CDC say that they're only recommending them where the infections

00:37:24.500 are high. She stated the states, the states trump the CDC. That's correct. Okay. So the CDC is no

00:37:35.140 longer part of the question is now a purely political question even more than it is, you know, anything

00:37:42.100 else. And I think at this point, that the burden of proof for masking has to be required. If you've

00:37:54.860 watched me for a while, you know that I treated the beginning of the pandemic like a risk management

00:37:59.920 in in the fog of war. Now in the fog of war, you do everything that might possibly make a difference.

00:38:07.800 If you can, you just do everything. And then later, as you get more data, you refine your method

00:38:14.920 based on what you've learned. So you don't make the same decisions in the beginning as you make in

00:38:21.160 the end. But likewise, where I would not have required my government to give me really, really

00:38:26.800 good evidence that masks work, when when things were hot and fresh, and we didn't know as much.

00:38:33.800 I do now. I do now. I really require it now. And if they don't have a study that's Omicron only,

00:38:43.880 then they don't have a study. Am I right? Anything that hasn't tested masks in the real world,

00:38:52.220 with Omicron, with vaccinations, with whatever scenario we want the public to go to,

00:38:59.420 if we haven't tested that, there is no data that's applicable to the situation. If there is no data

00:39:07.960 to suggest that they work, you're taking our freedom, and you're not giving us any reason.

00:39:14.900 Right? Now, I want to be really careful how I slice this. It is my opinion that masks do work.

00:39:23.900 Sorry. And that's an engineering decision, based on the fact that a direct plume in your mouth when

00:39:32.440 I'm talking to you has got to be worse than it coming out of the side of my masks and, you know,

00:39:38.380 maybe entering the room, but the viral load would be completely different. Now, is that difference a 1%

00:39:46.480 difference? A 10% difference? Well, I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a 50% difference. Am I

00:39:54.280 right? Let me see where I can get you to agree. We would all agree it's not a 100% difference,

00:40:00.660 right? Masks. We would all agree it's not a 50% difference, because you would see that so easily

00:40:06.280 in the data. We would all agree, I think, it's not a 20% difference. So far? Everybody on board?

00:40:15.020 It's definitely not a 20% difference, because you would see that. That would be too big,

00:40:19.740 even with the other confounding variables. I feel like you'd see that. So how about 10%? Well,

00:40:27.100 now maybe some opinions will start to differ, right? Maybe 10%? Well, if you can't prove that it's 10%

00:40:35.900 or 1%, I think that's where personal choice, personal freedom, personal responsibility start

00:40:44.360 to kick in as the dominant factors, right? In the realm of Omicron and the realm of highly vaccinated

00:40:53.260 and highly already infected, etc. So I think that the burden of proof has gone from you don't need

00:40:59.580 any proof at all, in the fog of war, to you better frickin' prove it, right? So the public's

00:41:09.020 requirement for proof should be sky high right now, because right now we're in what I call the

00:41:16.240 great clawback, where much of our freedom has been taken from us, voluntarily, in many cases,

00:41:23.060 voluntarily. But we got to get it back, and governments are bad at giving back. Good at

00:41:28.780 taking. So we're clawing it back. And during the clawback period, you're going to have to prove

00:41:35.160 that masks are making more than a 1% difference. Because if the best you can do is that you're

00:41:40.220 pretty sure they make a difference, I'm sorry, that's not good enough. Because you still have to

00:41:47.700 balance that against, you know, all of your rights and freedoms and other mental issues and everything

00:41:52.400 else. So if you can't tell us that it's above that line, whatever line psychologically you say to

00:42:00.160 yourself, well, I get that it makes a difference, but it might be such a small difference that

00:42:07.140 I'd rather not do it. Yeah. So here's what I would say about masks. If you're listening to scientists

00:42:17.420 about whether they work, you're listening to the wrong profession. If you're listening to

00:42:23.660 anybody who's not an engineer, you're probably listening to the wrong profession.

00:42:30.780 And it's because it's an engineering problem, not a science problem. And the engineer would say,

00:42:36.600 can I blow out a candle with a mask on? Yes or no? Nope. That means that it is blocking the forward

00:42:43.720 motion of something. Is it coming out the sides? Can I measure that? Yes. Do we know the viral load

00:42:51.840 makes a difference? Yes. Is the viral load going directly into somebody's mouth if I don't have a

00:42:58.200 mask? In many cases? Yes. Would it be better to put the viral load in different directions? Yes. If you

00:43:06.040 ask the scientist, you know what they say? Well, this is the size of a virus. And this is the size of a

00:43:12.680 water molecule. And this is the size of the mask holes. And it's all the wrong questions. If you talk

00:43:20.060 to the scientist, they will continually ask the wrong questions and give you the wrong result. You got to

00:43:25.580 ask an engineer. Who are you going to ask if your dam is going to collapse? I hate analogies too. But

00:43:35.160 a dam is a little bit like a mask in the sense that it's not so much a science question, is it?

00:43:42.000 There was certainly science at some phase of, you know, developing the tools that could build a dam.

00:43:47.400 But at some point, the handoff happens. It's just an engineering question. So I'm not going to talk to

00:43:52.780 my scientist about whether my dam is well engineered. And I'm not going to talk to a scientist

00:43:58.040 about whether the mask is stopping my spittle from hitting somebody in the face. It's just the wrong

00:44:03.520 profession. All right. I'm exaggerating a little bit there. Have you noticed how often you can fight

00:44:12.640 fire with fire? Literally. If you have a forest fire, sometimes you burn the area where it's heading,

00:44:19.800 but you do a controlled burn. So when the real fire gets there, it can't cross because there's

00:44:24.780 no fuel. But you haven't made things worse because you controlled the burn you did.

00:44:29.660 Called fighting fire with fire. Well, we saw that, I think, Omicron is what killed Delta, right?

00:44:36.960 The only thing that killed the virus was another virus.

00:44:41.060 In the end, I mean, everything helped. The vaccinations probably. Probably some of the stuff

00:44:45.920 we did help. But in the end, I think it was a virus that killed the virus. And probably that's the only

00:44:50.060 way it ever happens. Here's another example where I think this could happen. We're talking about the

00:44:56.700 fentanyl problem. So we're looking at, okay, is it the problem of the addict? Yes, in the sense that

00:45:05.860 personal responsibility requires the addict to be less of an addict. But they don't want to.

00:45:12.100 So we also have a free world where, you know, they don't want to, in many cases.

00:45:19.520 Then you could blame the Mexican cartels, but it turns out we can't do much about them,

00:45:25.160 because the government is basically owned by the cartels in Mexico. So we're sort of politically,

00:45:32.060 you know, we're sort of trapped. Now, we'd like to do something about China, but apparently the 0.99

00:45:37.180 problem with China is that even though China has changed the laws to make it a top offense to sell

00:45:43.800 these precursors to the cartels who then turn it into fentanyl and then give it to Americans,

00:45:50.080 that the Chinese makers of the precursors can just keep moving back a level in either finding a

00:45:57.720 different precursor or something that's a precursor to the precursor. So they keep finding all these

00:46:03.760 workarounds where no matter what they specifically make illegal, there's always something they can

00:46:09.280 ship that's just as good that's not yet covered. That's where we are so far. Now, I say to myself,

00:46:16.620 you tell me, are you telling me that the government of China can't stop that? No, that's ridiculous.

00:46:22.900 The government of China could stop anything because they know the name of the person doing it. We gave 0.88

00:46:34.820 it to them. The United States actually gave them the name of the person who's doing it, the main

00:46:39.380 person, and we just said, stop this guy. And then they didn't do it, apparently. So, and I was just

00:46:48.940 reading an article about where do you find the solution. Like, what's the base problem? Because

00:46:53.740 you've got the addict themselves, you've got, you know, the border crossing, the cartels, you've got

00:46:58.700 Mexico, too many moving parts. And here's my suggestion. The only way you're going to end fentanyl

00:47:04.320 is with a better drug. You need the Omicron that kills the Delta. And we have, I think, 0.58

00:47:16.120 we have the Omicron that kills the Delta. There is a drug that kills fentanyl. Do you know what it

00:47:24.700 is? Mushrooms. Mushrooms do seem to have a strong indication that they can stop addiction. And not,

00:47:37.860 I'm not limiting it to fentanyl. I'm talking about alcohol, cigarettes, all kinds of addiction. Now,

00:47:44.020 that knowledge is slowly becoming mainstream knowledge to the point where mushrooms are being

00:47:49.060 legalized in some limited context. But I feel like in the same way that climate change

00:47:56.320 turned nuclear energy from the dirtiest thing in the world to the cleanest, you notice that, right?

00:48:02.920 The thing that made nuclear go from, hey, that's the worst thing we could ever do to that's the only

00:48:07.820 thing that's good. The only thing that's going to save us is climate change, which had really,

00:48:13.440 in the beginning, it didn't seem to have anything to do with nuclear power. But it became the overriding

00:48:18.660 thing. As the number of overdoses approaches 100,000 a year, that's where we're heading. I think

00:48:29.400 fentanyl is already 64,000 of it. But overdoses in general are around 100,000 a year in the United States.

00:48:37.820 That big problem is going to make mushrooms legal. It's going to accelerate that. Because as soon

00:48:47.320 as you get a few studies, it shows it works. And I think that's where, now, of course, if it doesn't

00:48:51.620 work, we would hope science finds that out quickly. And, you know, we don't have a, we don't have some

00:48:57.140 kind of a problem where people are just doing more drugs. So this, this is all contingent on this

00:49:02.740 actually panning out scientifically. But I'll tell you, everything I've heard, everything I've

00:49:08.920 heard in every form is universally positive. Everything. There's nothing that indicates the

00:49:15.160 opposite direction at all. So I propose to you, ladies and gentlemen, that fentanyl has met its

00:49:24.120 Omicron. It knows its name, but Omicron has not visited its house yet. And if we ever get serious

00:49:32.700 about stopping addiction, which is really the only way to survive against China in the future,

00:49:40.620 meaning the competition among nations, the only way the United States and a lot of Western countries

00:49:46.540 will be able to compete in the future is to get a grip on addiction. Remember what Naval Ravikant

00:49:53.400 once said? Ravikant. I almost got, I almost got demonetized there by mispronouncing his name.

00:50:04.640 I believe he said something in nature that the, the future biggest challenge will be addiction.

00:50:10.480 That once everybody can get anything, that's sort of the case, you can, you can get your video game,

00:50:17.200 your cigarettes, your everything. You can get any kind of addiction you want. How you manage your

00:50:22.300 addiction will be the primary factor of success in a way it never used to be. And so unless the

00:50:31.560 United States thinks seriously of some kind of a moonshot against addiction, all of it, all of the

00:50:37.980 addictions, unless it does a moonshot against addiction, we can't compete in the future. And we do

00:50:44.540 probably have the tool already. We just have to get past the stigma. So in the same way that climate

00:50:51.080 change just dragged us past the stigma with nuclear power, I think the addiction and overdose deaths

00:50:58.420 are just going to grab us by the neck and drag us past our objections with whatever objections there

00:51:05.020 are with psilocybin and, and mushrooms and such. Now, I'm not saying mushrooms are specifically the

00:51:11.000 answer because there, there are other psychedelics that seem to have the same effect, but, um, we do

00:51:17.260 have, I think we have the solution. So let's Omicron that Delta up. Um, we heard some more about Bob

00:51:24.060 Saget. Cause of death apparently was a unexplained bump on the head. They think that he just went to bed

00:51:30.820 without thinking he was serious. And then they had a brain bleed and tragically died at night.

00:51:35.780 The only thing I would add to this story, and I was surprised it wasn't in the story itself,

00:51:41.520 is that a head injury that bad makes you tired. Did you know that? Like you, you'll barely be able

00:51:50.140 to stay awake. So he may have had no choice. It may not have been as much a decision as, you know,

00:51:57.880 if he was already in his pajamas, he may have just said, Oh, I could barely make it to the bed. I mean,

00:52:02.540 it could have been one of those situations. I'm just speculating, but it was left out of the story

00:52:06.860 that a head injury might've been so bad that he didn't, he didn't have the option of thinking

00:52:13.320 clearly and, and getting help. All right. Um, that ladies and gentlemen

00:52:22.200 is almost the end of my program. I would like to propose one other thing, which I've noticed,

00:52:30.880 and I'm not sure this pattern holds because there are probably exceptions to it. Let me ask you,

00:52:38.580 would it be true that, uh, Republican policies with one exception that I can think of? No,

00:52:45.880 actually not. You could argue it about this. The Republican policies almost always increase your

00:52:51.320 freedom and Democrat policies almost always decrease your freedom. Now, immediately I thought

00:52:59.880 of abortion and I thought, Oh, maybe somebody's going to say that's an exception because it's

00:53:04.040 making something illegal that a lot of adults want. But if you included the, uh, if you included

00:53:09.980 the wellbeing of the fetus, well, then you would be giving freedom to the fetus, the freedom of life.

00:53:16.380 Whereas if you take away the fetus is option of being born. So I, I guess you could argue that as a

00:53:23.080 increase in freedom as well. You know, you could argue against it, but there's a strong argument that it's

00:53:28.440 an increase in freedom. But am I, am I right that that pattern holds or am I just, you know, too much,

00:53:35.660 too much influenced by my audience at this point?

00:53:38.600 You know, if you think about, um, everything from mandates, you know, the mandates take away a

00:53:47.040 freedom, but I suppose the Democrats could argue it's giving other people the freedom, freedom to

00:53:53.260 not be infected. I don't know. It's not a clean argument because you can make an argument of

00:53:58.080 freedom on almost every side of everything. Can't you? But, but my overall feeling is that the

00:54:04.820 Republicans tend to be biased toward freedom and the Democrats seem to be biased toward protection

00:54:12.020 or biased toward not even protection, uh, uh, equal outcomes or something. I'm not sure what.

00:54:24.320 Yeah. But you know, Republicans are pretty biased toward safety because that's what law and order

00:54:29.480 is. That's what the strong military is. That's those, that's a bias toward safety. So it's just a

00:54:34.700 different bias toward safety. Equity, you think equity is a better word? Yeah. It's maybe freedom

00:54:41.560 versus equity. Freedom requires a lack of equity, doesn't it? Like, I don't know if require is the

00:54:49.500 right word, but you can't, you never have one without it. You could never have freedom without

00:54:54.820 massive inequity. I don't think you could because part of freedom is that some people would choose

00:55:00.900 not to go get stuff, right? The whole point of freedom is you get to decide what to do.

00:55:07.300 Some people would decide to start a business and become billionaires and other people would decide

00:55:12.160 not to, or wouldn't have the capability, I suppose. More likely. All right. Um, I'm pretty sure

00:55:21.780 that's what I wanted to say today. And I dare say one of the most useful and productive live streams

00:55:31.040 in the history of civilization. I don't think I've put too much hyperbole on that. That feels just

00:55:39.780 about right. And now, without further ado, YouTube, I will see you tomorrow. Great talking to you.

00:55:51.780 See you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 10, 2022

Episode 1650 Scott Adams： The Great Clawback Has Begun. Freedom is About to Break Out Everywhere

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