Episode 1679 Scott Adams: More Fake News and Propaganda and Some Even Funny. Let's Sip a Beverage
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
135.10927
Summary
Is there anything more pleasurable than a single sip of coffee? Is there anything you would like more than a sip of your favorite beverage? I can feel your answer coming to me directly from your thoughts. And the answer is, this is what you need. And all you need to participate is a cup, a mug, a glass, a chalice, a stein, a canteen drink, a flask of esophantikide, and join me for the unparalleled pleasure of modern civilization.
Transcript
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La-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na.
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of modern civilization.
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We're not so sure about the ancient world, but I have a feeling,
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that it's probably better to live now than then.
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And so that would make this the highlight of all civilization in all likelihood.
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Now, is there anything that you would like more
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And all you need to participate is a cup or mug or a glass of tank
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or a chalice, a stein, a canteen drink, a flask of esophantikide,
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You might start to feel your dopamine start to surge in a little bit.
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And, by the way, if I keep telling you it's going to do that,
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I saw in the comments, I almost hate to say this, but somebody prematurely sipped.
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Would you raise your hand, the premature sipper?
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And so, I think we should drink to you, the premature sipper.
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Not only do we sip to you, we salute you for being ahead of it.
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You might even get in two sips to other people's one.
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You know, that's what I've come to expect from my audience.
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Some of you are thinking, oh, one sip would be great.
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And then there's somebody out here who's like, what if I get, what if I sneak in two sips?
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In the title I was writing to this live stream, I tried to write, let us sip a beverage.
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And then spellcheck kicked in, and maybe, you know, I was actually talking to text.
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And instead of a beverage, it changed it to of, O-F, of beverage.
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And I looked at it and said, and I thought, let us sip of beverage.
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And then I started to wonder, could I write Shakespeare accidentally by simply using voice-to-text and mumbling a little bit?
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And then the voice-to-text would sort of misinterpret a word here and there, and it would sound exactly like Shakespeare.
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Because here's what doesn't sound like Shakespeare.
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One of the problems of having an economics background, as some of you do, and I do,
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is that sometimes you can see ugly truths that you wish you couldn't see.
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Because if you know how things work economically, it's almost like you can see the gears of civilization somewhat obvious to you.
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Because follow the money pretty much always works.
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But if you don't have a sense of business models and that sort of thing, you might not be able to follow them as easily.
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But once that's your filter, you know, you've learned economics or business, you just see it everywhere.
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Is it possible that the news or the news business has ever been real news?
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Because, just correct me if I'm wrong, there was a time in our, let's say, American history,
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when the big newspapers were owned by billionaires, you know, like Hearst, William Randolph Hearst.
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Was the Hearst newspaper involved in actual accurate news reporting?
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Don't we know for a fact, historically, that you were seeing the editorial opinion of the publisher?
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And I would assume that every other publisher was the same.
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So, if you understand economics, you understand that at some point in history,
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the, you know, the concentration of publishing power certainly was in the hands of rich people.
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And why in the world would they give you the news straight if they didn't need to?
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If they could give you a slanted version of the news and completely get away with it, there's no penalty.
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And anybody with an economics degree would understand that.
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But then, what about in the, let's say, the 60s?
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You know, was Walter Cronkite just straight news?
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In those days, was the news business more of a, you know, a lost leader at the networks,
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You know, you're getting ahead of me in the comments.
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Or was maybe the CIA and our government directly involved in brainwashing the public for our own good,
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I think they would have said, to make us more consumers and to make us, you know, hate the communists and all of that stuff?
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Well, I don't know if that's economics predicts it.
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But can't you predict that if all you needed to do was, let's say, corrupt a few people, that it would be easy to do?
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Imagine the CIA going to the head of any news network in the 60s, let's say.
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And they have lunch, and the CIA guy says, you know, the CIA has many ways to guarantee that you're very profitable and successful for the rest of your career.
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They say, yeah, you know, I can't give you specific examples, but trust me.
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You're going to have, you know, access to the good stuff.
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Basically, everything about your life would be better if you maybe cooperate with us.
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And if we tell you to put a slant on something, it's for the good of the country.
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And if it's for the good of the country anyway, and it would make money for you, what's to complain about, right?
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Maybe a few, but you have to assume that the news business has always been corrupt, but just for different reasons.
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And now we have this clickbait model in which the more fake the news, the more profitable.
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The more fake the news is, the more you go, what?
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And you're like, click, click, click, like a monkey getting a pellet or a chicken getting a pellet.
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And so for at least three different reasons, anybody with an economic degree would say
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to themselves, I'm pretty sure the news has never been real.
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What might be different is the influence from foreign entities.
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Because they would have more ability to penetrate social media than they would, and put fake stories here.
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They would have more ability to do that now than they would have, you know, co-opting an American billionaire
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to print a story that was good for Russia, for example.
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So this brings me to, you know, we've talked about the Gell-Man amnesia,
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where if you're an expert on the story yourself, you know it's fake.
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But if somebody's not an expert, they can't tell.
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So, you're going to hear a number of stories about me in the coming days.
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And by the way, this is a filter that I used successfully the other day.
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So the other day, somebody said to me, I heard that you said X.
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Now, X, it doesn't matter what it was, but X was wow.
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And so here's how I successfully made that fake news go away.
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I said, given everything you know about me and every interaction you've had with me,
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do you believe that that's something I actually said?
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No, I said, is that something that you actually believe I said?
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And the moment you put it in that frame, people say, oh, no.
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Because sometimes if you just say, really, really, based on everything you know, that sounds like something that really happened.
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So here's a, we're going to use this filter a little bit, right?
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There's a viral video going around of a local TV station where there was a reporter who was standing on a intersection.
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And the story is about how this intersection is like the most dangerous intersection in L.A.
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As he's talking, behind him, there's a fairly serious vehicular accident.
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As he's talking about this being the most dangerous place for a traffic thing.
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And probably, there's probably somebody here who saw it live.
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But here's the thing I want you to think about.
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Because all it took was a reporter in the foreground,
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and then a green screen, and a traffic accident in the background.
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If you just saw it on social media, and nobody had vetted it.
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You know, it wasn't like it was on CNN or something.
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Now, if you'd like to take a little, let's say,
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So I think I know my live stream audience pretty well,
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both of these realities existed simultaneously.
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I'm just saying what Huffington Post says, okay?
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It's just context before they tell you something else.
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So I'm not going to tell you that because it's in the Lancet,
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that means it's real, because that's not how the world works.
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but it would purport to say that you couldn't see any difference
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You couldn't see any effect of masks or policy.
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The only thing that made a difference was vaccinations,
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I know you're going to say I'm pushing vaccinations.
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In one, it's now been proven that masks and distancing and policy
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made no difference at all, but vaccinations did.
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And in the Huffington Post world, at least they agree on the vaccinations.
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But in their world, oh, those masks totally work.
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and people are saying, hey, I think things will go this way
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Predict that it will go a third way, whatever that is.
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Because you're probably going to be just as likely right
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as the people who are saying it's going to go one way or the other.
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Don't the experts say that the only things that could happen in Ukraine
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are that the Ukrainian resistance could hold out long enough
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that maybe Putin would, his economy would get squeezed to the point
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I don't know that many people think that will work.
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You know, do you think that's a strategy, first of all?
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that the economic pain causes Putin to get flexible?
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But I can't see that there's anything I can do about that.
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And it's looking more and more like that might be the case.
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Somehow we still are able to get stuff into Ukraine.
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So as long as we can still get stuff into Ukraine,
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there should be an endless amount of shoulder-mounted weaponry.
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had enough shoulder-mounted high-tech equipment,
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isn't it just a question of how many there are?
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I'd like somebody to actually answer this question.
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but I think if it loses its army on the ground,
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Because they have to conquer it to hold it, right?
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So yes, they can do horrible things in the air,
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Well, I think that's the totally underrated question
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is what happens if Ukraine actually just wins outright.
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China's getting more COVID, especially in Hong Kong.
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What do you think's going to happen over there?
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contain COVID that hasn't yet ravaged the country?
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I still feel like there's something we don't understand,
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was really why they had such low infection rate.
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There's just something unexplained happening over there.
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All right, here's something that if you were to Google me,
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If you Googled me, you would see that I had once
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Think of everything that you've ever heard me say
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do you think that I would ever make a sweeping statement
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You know, all people in the category act alike.
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there's always something like it that happened.