Scott Adams talks about a new government plan to deal with wildfires in California, and the Pope's new stance on the Ukraine crisis, and why he thinks it's a good idea to have homeless people live in the forests.
00:03:12.440Ideally, not in a, you know, apartment building where other people would be concerned about their drug use or whatever.
00:03:19.520Let them live in the forest and do foresty things and just do something useful.
00:03:25.320It actually sounds like an idyllic life, doesn't it?
00:03:30.040Live in the forest, do drugs, and just clean up some brush once in a while.
00:03:34.420Well, here's a surprising story, and I've been waiting to hear about this.
00:03:37.380So we've got all this violence in Ukraine, you know, Russia's invasion.
00:03:42.620And were you wondering the same thing I was wondering, which is, what does Pope Francis think about the violence?
00:03:50.220Because just the other day I was thinking to myself, I wonder if, I wonder if the Pope is in favor of violence in this case.
00:04:02.280You know, he's fairly consistent against violence, but I was wondering, I wonder if he'd make an exception and be in favor of violence for once.
00:04:11.280But, no, it turns out he made a statement, and the Pope is opposed to violence in Ukraine, so you can stop wondering.
00:04:19.980The Pope has made a firm statement, and I guess he's remaining consistent.
00:04:25.800So he's, once again, he's against violence.
00:04:29.16025 years ago, I did a joke about permanent news, probably 30 years ago, about permanent news.
00:04:37.640And the joke was that the permanent news was that the Pope has announced he's opposed to the violence.
00:04:45.320It's just, every time, every time, hey, the Pope, he's still opposed to violence.
00:04:51.420Well, I think it's good that he reminds us that.
00:04:54.200Speaking of fake news, there was a lot of concern yesterday that Iran had allegedly sent some cruise missiles
00:05:02.820into some American consulate or some kind of American facility in Erbil in Iraq,
00:05:11.300and that maybe it was payback for something, that somebody got killed or something.
00:05:18.060And today, the State Department issued a statement that said,
00:05:23.680there is no damage or casualties at any U.S. government facility in Erbil.
00:08:22.160So it's my view that anybody who uses the word apologist as a description for someone else is experiencing cognitive dissonance and that you should ignore them completely.
00:08:37.080Here are some other examples of the personality being more important than the fact.
00:08:42.960So we're arguing over Glenn Greenwald, not because of his opinion, but because of him.
00:13:32.920Just the fact that they can even float the question, I think it shows some kind of movement in a good direction.
00:13:40.800But at the same time, Bill Maher mocked Trump for saying that the problem in Ukraine was all caused by a rigged election.
00:13:50.560And he sort of mocked it because Trump always goes back to his talking point about the election.
00:13:54.740Except if you've already accepted that there might be a reason that Putin didn't invade under Trump, Trump's answer that the election is the problem in Ukraine is exactly right under that assumption, if you believe that the election was rigged.
00:14:13.280Right. So I'm not making that assumption.
00:14:31.540If he'd been president, it wouldn't have happened.
00:14:33.240So you're seeing Bill Maher and Trump actually completely agreeing, but they can't quite get there, so they have to act like they're disagreeing.
00:14:42.420I think Bill Maher has to act like he's disagreeing with Trump, even when he's not exactly disagreeing.
00:14:49.860So he played both sides there a little bit.
00:14:54.720How about Beto O'Rourke said in public, I guess this week, that critical race theory should not be taught in schools.
00:15:22.720The three things would be Trevor Noah saying Trump would have done better on at least the phone call.
00:15:32.100Bill Maher saying, you know, why didn't Putin invade under Trump?
00:15:36.300And now Beto O'Rourke saying critical race theory should not be taught in schools.
00:15:41.420Now, he might be word thinking there a little bit, and maybe he's saying that the high level, college level critical race theory should not be taught.
00:15:50.160But I don't know that he's against the ideas of it.
00:15:55.380So this might be a little bit of fake news.
00:16:00.720Because it might be that the only thing he's disagreeing with is that a high level college philosophy course should not be taught in grade school.
00:16:10.460But maybe the concepts, which are simpler, you know, don't discriminate, blah, blah.
00:17:02.640So in 2011, three American researchers, this is what Richard Gallant writes in CNN, three American researchers revealed an eye-opening finding about the U.S. bombing campaign in Vietnam War.
00:17:16.000And they found that the more bombs that were dropped on South Vietnamese hamlets in 1969, the likelier the Viet Cong insurgents were to end up controlling the territory afterwards.
00:17:29.360So it's almost as if the more you bomb the civilians, the more likely they're going to resist you stronger and it's not going to work the way you want.
00:17:42.520Then two years later, this other historian, Richard Overy, what a last name, Overy, he did a study and he concluded that the targeted bombing of European cities in World War II was also a military failure.
00:17:58.320So there are two examples in which bombing civilians in modern, I guess that would be modern times if you count World War II, worked the opposite of the way it was supposed to.
00:18:14.200Now, I'm not sure that we should believe either of those studies.
00:18:20.240Because when I saw this first one about Vietnam and said, you know, they bombed these hamlets and they were more likely to become Viet Cong strongholds, isn't that the reason they were bombing them?
00:18:32.320Don't they have cause and effect backwards?
00:18:34.880Why would you bomb something that was irrelevant?
00:18:38.080Aren't you only going to bomb something that you think the enemy has a stronghold in?
00:18:42.920I'm not sure I believe any of this, but it's worth asking if there's any, because I asked the same question.
00:18:50.920I said, is there military evidence to suggest that bombing civilians works?
00:18:57.760We know it depopulates, but if you looked at the long run, is the history that it works?
00:25:25.140If you took the contrarian view of every single thing that's been in the news, how often would you be right?
00:25:32.840Versus if you took the standard view, and then you waited long enough, who would be right more often?
00:25:41.840The standard view, and let's say the last five years, would the standard view have been more right or more wrong than the generic view?
00:25:49.720Now, sometimes we underestimate the generic view, you know, the classic view, because most of the world said Russia was going to invade Ukraine, right?
00:26:16.780Now, the reason I thought he wouldn't is because it was obviously a suicide mission.
00:26:24.100But apparently, the story is, and I don't think you can trust the story, that the only reason he made such a bad mistake is that his intelligence people gave him bad information.
00:26:34.380But I wouldn't have made that mistake, and I didn't listen to any intelligence people.
00:26:39.920I just said, it's 2022, and Ukraine is going to be armed with all the modern equipment NATO can give it.
00:26:48.520And it's probably a bad idea to attack.
00:29:06.080If you said to me, Scott, there's a worldwide shortage of wheat, would you mind cutting back on wheat because it's not that healthy for you anyway?
00:29:16.980And you could go a few months without bread.
00:29:19.300You could go a year without bread because you've got plenty of carbs.