Episode 1650 Scott Adams： The Great Clawback Has Begun. Freedom is About to Break Out Everywhere
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the demise of the "expert class" and how this could be the beginning of the end of the world as we know it, and why it's time to move on from them.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody. Wow, you are looking good. You know why you look so good? It's because
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I'm wearing black today. Yeah, it's true. Everybody looks good when I wear black. I think that's the
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same. If you hear something that sounds like a little bit of fry in the audio, that might be
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the shower that's running in the room next to me in a feat of terrible timing. But it'll be over soon.
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Now, yes, I do look great in black. You're right. You're right. And how many people are here for
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the simultaneous sip? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, I thought so. Many of you. And all you need is a
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copper mugger, a glass of tanker, a chalice, a canteen, a jug of flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,
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the dopamine here of the day, the drink that supports the Freedom Truckers. Anybody? Who's
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in favor of the Freedom Truckers? Supporting them? So this is to you, Freedom Truckers. I hope some of
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you are watching. You must probably don't have a lot to do up there, sitting in your cold cabs,
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doing the best you can. So here's to you, keeping us free. And we'll talk about you a little bit more.
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Go. Oh, yeah. You know, in all the time that the critics have tried to paint the truckers as some
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kind of a rebel right-wing thing. Even once, did any of the critics think of this pun?
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It's a bunch of honkies. Anybody? Nobody thought of that one. All right, well, I don't want to help
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them. I don't want to help the other side. But really? Nobody in this? There's nobody who thought
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of that one at all. Come on. All right, well, today's theme, I'm going to call it the demise
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of the expert class. Am I right or am I wrong that the most striking part of the last five years
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is the complete demolition of the credibility of all experts in everything?
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I feel like that alone is the single biggest change in everything. Now, experts would include
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people giving you the news. We never trusted the politicians, so that part's not new. But
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I feel like this is a new thing. And I was thinking about the most natural path or trajectory,
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I guess, that the civilization would take. And this is sort of off the top of my head just before I
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came on here. But I want to run something by you to see if there's a predictable place where this all
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goes. Are you ready? So if you go back in time enough, you would go back to a time when typically
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the leader would tell the leader would tell the people, hey, I was chosen by God. And that was how
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the leader got credibility. I was chosen by God. Because it probably was pretty hard to protect the
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leader when nobody had good weapons, right? Seems like you could just throw a rock at the leader.
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It'd be kind of dangerous. So they needed some kind of, you know, authority beyond force. But, you know,
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then over time, people became more enlightened, and communication got a little better, maybe,
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and education got a little better. And we stopped believing that leaders were chosen by God,
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for the most part. And then you get dictators. Because if you don't have that cover story about
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God, you need to use force. So you got a lot of dictators. And what happens when you have a lot
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of dictators? Well, as the public communicates better, and over time, communication always keeps
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improving, right? Right up to the internet, and then it went boom. So people are getting smarter,
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they're communicating better. And what is the logical thing you'd expect when you have dictators?
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You end up with revolutions. So dictators lead to revolutions. And then revolutions lead to
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something like leaders chosen by the people. Now, what do you get when you have leaders chosen by the
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people? Eventually, the people with the money are in charge of the leaders. Am I wrong? These are just
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sort of normal things that follow. Dictators, plus educating the public, plus communications,
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should lead to revolutions. The revolutions should give you something like leaders chosen by the
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people. Once you have that, plus capitalism, you've got, well, maybe you don't even need the
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capitalism. But you've got money that's going to control them. All right, so now you're going to be
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in a situation where money chooses the leaders. But what was our only protection from that? Let's say
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in Western democracies. What was our only protection from being abused by the money people and the
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politicians? It was kind of our experts, wasn't it? Well, you can always sort of depend on, well,
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they can't get away with that much because our experts will ferret out the bad behavior. You know,
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the experts in our news industry will find out what crimes they did. The experts in our financial
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industry will keep people from doing bad things. So basically, at least you have the experts watching
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things. What happens when the credibility of the experts just disappears? Like what's left?
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I feel like we're entering that territory. So can we predict what happens as surely as we can predict
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that dictators plus education plus communication leads to democracies, which we can predict leads to
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money taking over, which leads to our only protection being the experts, which leads to the experts being
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bought off, losing their credibility, which leads to... Now, doesn't all that seem like it was predictable
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in hindsight, right? It's easy to have hindsight. But is the next phase predictable?
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What do you think? If all of those phases were kind of predictable, but really maybe only because
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we're looking at it from today's perspective, but is there something that would be just as obvious
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later that we should have said, oh, it's obvious where that's going to go? Well, let me throw out an
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idea. You know, the two things that made the experts sort of worthless is some got bought off, but also
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our problems are more complex. If you take an expert on some simple subject, relatively simple, such as
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do cigarettes cause lung cancer. Relatively simple question. Took a while to know for sure, but a
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relatively simple question. Now take climate change, completely different story, right? Totally
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complicated. So we're in a world in which a lot of our problems, you know, what is Russia and Ukraine
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going to do and all the different economic and military ways that this could line up. So experts can't
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predict because things are too complicated and they've lost their credibility. So we're kind
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of lost. And the question is, how do you have a trust free civilization? A trust free? Because we
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don't have trust anymore. We don't trust experts, governments, people with money. We don't trust our
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own intelligence agencies. We don't trust anybody. Don't trust the news. And we're not wrong,
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by the way. Don't get me wrong. The problem is not that we have less trust. The problem is that we
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found out we shouldn't be trusting. It's nothing to do with the public. The public's actually in pretty
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good shape. The public is, you know, sort of waking up to just how bad things have gotten in terms of
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trust. So here's where I think is the obvious only place it can go. Transparency. And I think that that
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will be like incredibly obvious someday, you know, 20 years from now. And fairly soon, the only way we're
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going to get past this inability to trust anybody about anything is to have just massive sea changes
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and transparency. Now, here's the problem. That's also going to have an impact on your privacy.
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And here's something I've been predicting for years that people always misunderstand.
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People misunderstand me saying I'm in favor of what I'm going to predict. I'm not in favor of it.
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It's irrelevant whether I favor it or not. I just think it's going to happen.
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Right. And what's going to happen is the continuing evolution where we trade privacy
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for function, for utility. Right. So every time we give up a little privacy, as long as we're doing
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it in some intelligent way, we're getting back some kind of feature. Right. It makes our smartphones
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work better. Basically, all of our technology, everything that makes life easy, costs us a little
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bit in terms of our privacy. But think of all the problems you could solve if you got to a world
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where you didn't have any privacy. Stop. Stop. There's something you're all thinking right now.
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And I want to stop you from thinking that. You're thinking of a world in which people have
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partial privacy. That's terrible. A world in which the government... Here's our world now.
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The government knows more about you than you know about the government. How is that fair?
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That's a big problem. Don't you think that you could solve a lot of problems if you could know
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as much about your government as your government can know about you? Right. So if the only change we
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made is to say, all right, it doesn't look like we're going to get any more privacy back,
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realistically. But we could at least make the government more transparent. Right? We can
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make science more transparent, probably in a variety of ways. I know science needs... Science,
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you know, the community itself knows it needs to fix its credibility problem. Probably has lots of
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good ideas for that by now. So I'm not saying you should give away your privacy. I'm just saying
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it's going to happen as a just a side effect of that. Here's the other way that your privacy is
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going to completely disappear. AI. Right now, the only way you can give away your privacy is if
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somebody hacks you or there's a, you know, warrant that they can get into your stuff or you give it
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away or something or you're careless, I guess. But what happens when AI can figure out everything
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about you without anybody's permission? If you don't think that's coming, I don't think you know
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what's coming. You know how an FBI profiler can look at just a few clues and know a lot about the
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perpetrator? And it's almost scary how much they get right? How well do you think AI is going to do that
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once it can find out everything about you that's public? And maybe it can find out everything about
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you that's not public. I mean, if the AI is good enough, it'll just hack any system it needs to look
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into. So at some point, AI is going to guarantee take all of your privacy. But it doesn't mean it's
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going to distribute that privacy to anybody who wants it. But the AI itself will know exactly what
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the frick you're doing. It's going to know before you know. You don't think it can predict you
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before you do it? You're wrong. It absolutely can predict your actions before you do them. Not every
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time. But if somebody had an active social media account, and it had access to it? Yeah, it could
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put it. I'm sure it could pick out a shooter, a school shooter. I'll bet it could do that. Maybe not
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yet. But it's obvious where everything's going. So I would say that the obvious place where all this
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is going is an end of hidden secrets. And there'll be great transparency going on. Now, let me tell you
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about a world in which you lose all of your privacy. Suppose even just the worst, just the worst stuff
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that ever happened to you. Or they, every like, even maybe your, you know, your kinks, you're just
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everything. Just everything you don't want people to know about. Let's just say it all went out there.
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What would happen? Well, if you were the only person who gave up your privacy, devastation.
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Everybody who still had their privacy would mock you into, I don't know, something bad.
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But suppose you could communicate with anybody in the world, and everybody could see your stuff,
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and you could see everybody else's stuff. All you'd have to do is find somebody who had a similarly
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bad background. You could be best friends. And you could do it instantly. So instead of saying,
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oh, I don't want to have a friend because they'll find out about my bad background, you just get on
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the internet and say, all right, I need somebody else who's done all these terrible things or
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something similar. Hey, look, turns out a lot of people, a lot of people are just like me.
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Let's get together. So I think you would find that if you could find out other people's, you know,
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let's say badness, and they could find out yours, you would just have more friends.
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And it would be impossible to lock you all up. Because there'd just be too many of them.
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And here's the best part. If everybody's flaws were on display all the time, you wouldn't see them
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anymore. That's not immediately obvious, but think about it. If everyone's flaws, just their worst
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components, were just on display. Let's say you had AR glasses, you know, where somebody's information
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pops up just because they walked in the room. Or maybe you're in the metaverse, and it's the same
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thing. And suppose you just know everything about somebody. You would be so exhausted by looking
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at their list of problems that you would just be snow blind after a while. Do you know what snow
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blind means? Is snow blind one of those things that only people who grew up in snow know what it
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means? Basically, you just become blind. Everything is all whited out. So I don't know. I think the day
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that we start treating our problems like they're special is the day everybody's got less anxiety,
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and everybody has more friends, and it's easier to get a job. However, there might be no way to get
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there without going through the worst thing that could possibly be, which is the government knows
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more about you than you know about them. And that's where we are. So all right, that's my long-range
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prediction is massive transparency is the only way, only way you can have a trust-based economy.
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The only way you can have a trust-based economy is massive transparency. We don't have that.
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All right. But we will. It's inevitable. Favorite story of the day? You know how Trump has been
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criticized for his, let's say, his record-keeping systems, because some of the important records
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from his presidency found their way to Mar-Lago, and I guess they're being shipped back, and it's not
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like the biggest deal in the world. But we do know that Trump is not the best in how he handles
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important documents, which leads us to this story. There's a report that pages from Maggie Haberman's
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book had been found, flushed papers found in a clogging, clogging Trump White House toilets.
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So I didn't know Maggie Haberman had a book until I learned that its pages were in Trump's toilet.
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And I'm trying to think, if you were the publisher, and you found out that the only publicity you'd
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gotten for your book in a, you know, in a market that's got a lot of publicity for a lot of books,
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the best publicity, let's say, that you got for your book was that Trump had used it for possibly
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toilet paper. The, I don't like to be gross, but the story was a little bit silent on the question of
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whether the paper had been used or just torn from the book and put directly in the toilet. I think that's
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an important detail. Uh, that might just be me, but I think this is like the best, uh, this would be
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the ultimate test of, uh, all publicity is good publicity. You know, you always wonder where
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these little, uh, common sense rules, like all publicity is good publicity. You always wonder
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where, where the limit of that common sense is. And I think if, if the president of the United,
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if the president of the United States used the pages of your book to wipe his ass,
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that might be the limit of where publicity just turns bad.
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Oh, speaking of bad publicity, uh, you know, we, we live in a world of, you know, massive, uh,
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character assassination, as you know. And, uh, do you know what happens if somebody who doesn't
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know anything about me, you know, me personally, somebody who doesn't know anything about me
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finds out about me for the first time by reading stuff on the internet about me?
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Do you have any idea what happens? Cause I heard about this recently.
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Somebody who wasn't aware of Dilbert, you know, wasn't aware of, you know, any books I've
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written, anything I've done on life. He wasn't aware of anything. Just went to the internet to
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find out, because, you know, my name came up, went to the internet to learn about me.
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Let me just say the word horrifying doesn't, doesn't cover it.
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Ah, well, have I ever taught you that, uh, I think I say it too often that freedom from
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embarrassment is like a superpower? Cause I'm not sure the rest of you could even survive this,
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but to me, it's hilarious. You know, at first it was horrifying to me too. Like my first reaction
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was, oh my God, if you didn't know anything about me, that's the first thing you'd learn. And
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basically none of it is true. And, and, uh, but the more I thought about it, the more,
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the funnier it is that there's a, just like this complete, you know, caricature of me.
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Now this is of course in the context of watching what's happening to Joe Rogan. Cause you can't
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really do a live stream today without talking about Joe Rogan's problems. And, uh, uh, watching
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CNN run a, uh, a hit piece on him today that was just so messed up. I mean, just, just completely
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messed up. Uh, yeah, I'm not even going to criticize it. It was so, it was just so messed up that,
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uh, you think what a world, what a world we live in where I, you know, is Joe Rogan trying
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to make the world worse for anybody? And what did he do to you? Did he run over your dog?
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What? What? We're suddenly hating on him like, like that matters. He, he's probably the, uh,
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least offensive. If you think about it, he might be the least offensive person in the public realm.
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Think about it. If you were really serious about it and you really, you know, had watched enough
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of his content, he might be the least offensive person in the entire public realm. Cause remember,
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everybody's offensive to somebody, everybody doesn't matter if you're on the right or left,
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you're offensive to somebody. So, but within the list of people who are offensive, which is
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everybody, I'd put him pretty near the bottom. Now that video that came out about repeated use of
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the N word, I feel like we need an exception. And I, I would say, uh, I'm of course not the person
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who can ask for this, but, um, on behalf of the, well, not on behalf of, but would the black community
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agree with this standard that comedians should be able to use any word if they're talking about the
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word? Not if they're using it in, you know, a direct offensive way, of course, but could we agree
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that standup comics and somebody who does that for a living could just be the exception? That that's,
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that's the one class of people that we say, all right, all right, we get it. Your job, that's your
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job. Your job is to, is to challenge us with words. If your actual job is to challenge people's
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thinking with words, uh, let them use all the words and let them be the exception. Now, again,
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I'm not saying an exception if they use the word in the direct insulting way, but nobody ever accused
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Joe Rogan of that. Am I right? Nobody even accused him of that. In my mind, the problem is with the
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people who think, uh, standup comics or somebody who's even doing a live stream within the context
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of being a standup comic. That's the same thing I'd say to say that that specific kind of occupation
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should be treated like all the rest is just nonsense. Am I wrong? You know, if I do think that
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if somebody, you know, some other podcaster who was not known to be a comic, if that person had a
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compilation of using that word in any context, I'd have some questions, wouldn't you? Like you'd want
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to know more about that context. But if you hear that a comic, a professional comic use the words,
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and the one thing, you know, is that nobody, nobody accuses of using the words in an insulting way.
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Nobody. That's not even, that's not even in the conversation. Why are we even talking about it?
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Um, he's the one exception. I mean, comics are the one exception. Now I would not put myself in that
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category. Um, you know, I think you'd have to be a, I would say if you're a professional standup comic,
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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
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which he has a prediction that the way this will get resolved is that Biden will go first in dropping,
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uh, vaccine mandates for border crossings. And then it will make it a little bit absurd
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if, if the border only works in one direction. You can go one way with a vaccination, but not the
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other, or without the vaccination, but not the other. So, and I think that's a reasonably good,
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um, good prediction. I do think that if it's between Biden and Trudeau, Biden would probably go first
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if, if it's going to go at all. Um, so that's a pretty good prediction. I'll put that out there
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and see how he does. All right. Um, on our theme of the destruction of the expert class,
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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,
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he's a professor of social political philosophy. Now you have to be pretty smart and have, you know,
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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,
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he's not afraid to dig deeper. I deal with causes, not symptoms. Uh, we need intelligent dialogue,
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not partisan, uh, cliquishness. And I'm thinking this, this guy sounds pretty good. Uh, lots of good
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credentials, PhD. And he tweets this today. He says, realize that the trucker convoy and copycat
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demonstrations are not about vaccines. They aren't about freedom. They are classic reactionary
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tactics to disrupt society and force it toward a return to right-wing power. I got, had John,
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I just realized I've never said this word out loud. Uh, hegemonies, hegemonies, right?
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Hegemonies. That, uh, the end freedoms, open inquiry and ruled laws. In other words, the truckers,
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um, say this one very intelligent professor, yeah, he believes it's really, uh, classic reactionary
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tactics to disrupt society. It does, it is disrupting society. So that part is true. Um, but to force
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it toward a return to right-wing power, had John hegemonies that end freedoms, open inquiry and rule
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of law. In what universe, in what universe are the political right associated with less freedom,
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less open inquiry, what? And less rule of law. That literally the, the three pillars, probably
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the three pillars of the right, of the right would be these three things. Uh, more freedom, more freedom
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of speech, which I think the open inquiry gets to that, and more rule of law. These are literally
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exactly the three things the right wants, not the three things the right wants to get rid of.
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How the hell do you get a PhD and say stuff like this in public? Am I wrong?
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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
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political philosophy. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not even making fun of him as an individual,
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so don't get this wrong. This is not about an individual. This is about the destruction of
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the expert class. How in the world do you get a PhD and then put out a tweet like that?
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I don't know. Or am I wrong? Maybe the tweet makes sense and we're all stupid. I guess that's the
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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
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
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
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,
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.