Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1687 Scott Adams： More Fake News About Everything and Two Micro Lessons That Might Change Your Life

00:00:00.000 Well, I have a treat for you, because I know you woke up this morning and you said to yourself,

00:00:10.780 this will be an ordinary day, and then you lucked, or perhaps it was skill, and came upon this

00:00:17.600 live stream, which will change many of your lives. Now, if you wait to the end, I'm going to give

00:00:23.960 you a micro lesson, two of them actually, that are designed for high impact in the shortest

00:00:29.560 amount of time to actually reprogram some of you from your sadness and or PTSD into a happier

00:00:38.200 version of yourself. And I can do it in about four minutes, two minutes a piece. And that'll be on

00:00:44.920 the whiteboard, and that'll come. So that's just a teaser to make you stay. Normally, I put these

00:00:50.160 behind a paywall, but my local subscribers have agreed with me that these would be important

00:00:57.260 enough, or at least they agreed with my judgment, that it would be important enough to share them

00:01:02.100 with the wider audience. And so, that's coming. Now, if you'd like to extend your experience

00:01:10.120 into another realm, almost unimaginable, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or

00:01:16.480 gel or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid I like,

00:01:22.700 coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. It's the dopamine at the end of the

00:01:29.240 day. Yeah, it's the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And

00:01:35.980 doggone it, it's good. It's happening right now. Go!

00:01:39.100 Now, if any of you have ever tried this with a placebo sip, where there's no actual beverage

00:01:51.280 in your cup, it was better than no sip, probably. But next time, improve your game. Make sure there's

00:01:59.840 a beverage in there. That's all I'm saying. I'm not going to name names. Well, Trump has said,

00:02:07.420 quote, the New York Times just admitted and participated in an effort to rig the election

00:02:13.320 for Joe Biden. Now, there's a statement that not long ago would have been considered unfounded.

00:02:25.180 It might have been considered hyperbolic. Fact checkers would have said it wasn't true.

00:02:32.800 What'd they say about it today? Well, if they have a dictionary, and they believe the reporting

00:02:40.980 in the New York Times, they say, well, that's true. I doubt they actually say it just like

00:02:47.400 that. But the New York Times reporting does fit the actual dictionary definition of something

00:02:56.600 that's rigged for a specific purpose. It looks like it. Now, the part we don't know

00:03:02.000 is intention. Am I right? I mean, we can't read the minds of the New York Times. Could they

00:03:08.980 have been legitimately fooled, but then later came out of their fog? Could be. Could be.

00:03:17.780 You can't rule out that people are legitimately brainwashed and then climb out of it after time.

00:03:24.020 Could happen. But let's give this the really test, shall we? If you're new to this, the really test

00:03:34.480 is you just use the word really in a sarcastic way after saying the statement that you're testing

00:03:40.240 and just see if it works. Okay? I'll try it. So the New York Times wasn't trying to influence

00:03:48.380 the election, despite their close ties to Democrats and the history of slanting their coverage for

00:03:58.380 political purposes. But even though it would have been a very clever way to rig an election,

00:04:06.340 and even though it worked perfectly, exactly as one imagined it would be, and even though

00:04:12.840 all the people who would love to have seen the New York Times do such a thing, which allegedly they

00:04:18.860 did, but we have no evidence of, is it possible that the New York Times did not succumb to all the

00:04:25.400 pressures, political, financial, and otherwise, that was put upon them and act exactly as they have in

00:04:32.040 the past in the fashion we should expect and predict? No, they were just fooled, and then they came out of it.

00:04:41.500 Really? Really? They were just fooled by their own reporting. So they brainwashed themselves,

00:04:51.420 but then they unbrainwashed themselves out later, and didn't believe their own reporting,

00:04:57.980 or the 50 Intel officials, former officials, who said that the laptop was Russian disinformation.

00:05:07.000 But it turns out it was a real laptop. Yeah, this one doesn't really pass the really test, does it?

00:05:12.560 Meaning that Trump's assumption that all of this was intentional, you can't prove it, probably,

00:05:23.040 unless there's some kind of written record somewhere. But it sure looks like it. Let's just say that.

00:05:31.360 All right, here's another little test for truth that I like to call the elephant in the room test.

00:05:38.180 And the elephant in the room test, as I've described before, and then I'm going to apply it to a new

00:05:43.000 situation, is that if there are two people in a room, and one of them says, hey, there's an elephant

00:05:50.020 in this room with us. Let's say there's no furniture, there's nothing else, it's just a bare room,

00:05:54.940 two people in it. One of them says, do you see this elephant that's standing right here in front of us?

00:06:00.540 And the other person in the room says, um, nope, I do not see an elephant. And then the first one

00:06:09.460 says, uh, we're in a small room, just the two of us and an elephant. Surely you see the elephant.

00:06:18.100 And then the other one says, I honestly do not see an elephant. Which one of them is hallucinating?

00:06:23.660 The one who sees it is the one who's hallucinating. Maybe not 100% of the time, but as a rule of

00:06:32.880 thumb, it's really, really reliable. The hallucinations are additions to scenery, not

00:06:39.880 subtractions. People don't hallucinate not seeing something. Do you understand that? You don't,

00:06:48.860 you don't, nobody walks into a room full of furniture and hallucinates that it's an empty

00:06:54.280 room. I mean, maybe in the history of the world somebody has, but that's not a common

00:06:58.940 thing. But we've seen with all the fake news that people believe about just about anything,

00:07:05.640 that adding scenery, you know, adding an elephant to a room, 50% of the public will believe any

00:07:12.120 elephant in any room, and they'll say they see it. So adding something to a scene is almost

00:07:17.180 always the hallucination, not the one who doesn't see it. Now, is the filter understood? Because

00:07:25.540 now I'm going to apply it. And remember that when I apply it, I'm also aware it doesn't work

00:07:32.100 every time. Can you accept the humility I'm trying to inject here? That I'm not saying that

00:07:39.420 this is some kind of 100% thing, but it's pretty darn reliable, and you're not going to like

00:07:44.960 it. Can I prime you by saying you're not going to like what I say next? You're going to fucking

00:07:50.320 hate it. Most of you. It goes like this. We're seeing some, some people talking about the data

00:07:58.880 about the vaccinations, and that the vaccination itself, they claim, can be shown by various data

00:08:06.880 data to be more dangerous than any officials have admitted. Now, would you say, first of all,

00:08:14.940 that that is happening? That there are people who are saying the VAERS database is telling you

00:08:20.580 something. Others say it's not. So you would agree that that's happening, that difference in opinion.

00:08:26.620 There are those who say the excess mortality numbers. There was a gentleman on the war room

00:08:34.360 recently who looked at the millennials' excess death rate, and his claim is that using public

00:08:43.540 information, you can see that there's just a huge spike at about the time the vaccinations were

00:08:49.580 rolling out, apparently. So his hypothesis is that it is clear from excess death that the vaccinations

00:08:58.500 themselves have some mortality element that has not been fully disclosed to the public.

00:09:06.300 Now, so far, I'm just telling you what other people have said. So we're not talking about what's true

00:09:12.220 yet, just the claims. Now, also, other people have said they've looked at, I think, the Pfizer data and said

00:09:21.560 that they found stuff in there that they believe also suggests that the vaccinations are more dangerous

00:09:27.460 than has been claimed. So the context here is that there are multiple sources of data

00:09:34.160 that would seem to suggest, and I'll use suggest, that the vaccination themselves had more danger

00:09:44.940 than has been disclosed to the public. Does everybody agree with the context so far?

00:09:50.560 I think you're OK with that, right? Now, here's where the elephant test comes in. And again, remember,

00:09:58.160 the elephant test isn't 100% accurate. It's just really, really good rule of thumb. So everybody in

00:10:05.440 the world who knows about data and virology and vaccinations, basically anybody who has an interest

00:10:12.080 in it is looking at all of this data. Wouldn't you agree? There are lots of people looking at the

00:10:17.800 same data. Would you also agree that with so many people with such a great interest, I mean,

00:10:25.000 the greatest possible newsworthiness you could have, that there are lots of people who are looking

00:10:29.640 at the same data and saying, I don't see it. Now, I'm not saying it's not there. The claim is very narrow

00:10:37.000 that I'm making. That there are lots of experts who are capable. I'm not. I'm not capable of looking

00:10:43.440 at the data. But there are lots of experts who are capable of looking at it. Some of them see the

00:10:48.520 elephant, and some do not. So far, I've not made a judgment. Would you say that the setup is correct?

00:10:56.820 The experts are looking at multiple data sources. Some are saying, I see all this danger,

00:11:02.860 and it's very clear, and some are looking at the same data at the same time, and saying, I don't see it.

00:11:11.320 Correct or not correct? Now, can I independently do a deep dive with all of my expertise and figure out

00:11:21.740 which of these two groups is right? Well, if those two groups can't do it, why could I do it?

00:11:29.440 Why would there be people disagreeing who actually have all the expertise in these areas?

00:11:36.020 If those two groups are disagreeing, how the hell am I, with my complete lack of knowledge,

00:11:43.800 going to do a deep dive and figure out who's right? I mean, that's not really a thing.

00:11:49.080 So all we can do is look at the people who are looking at it. We can't look at the data,

00:11:53.920 really, if you're being honest about it. You can't really tell by the data.

00:12:00.600 But are the people credible? Do you believe the person who sees the elephant, or the person who's

00:12:05.840 standing right next to him in the room, looking at the same room, and they don't see it? And there

00:12:11.980 are lots of them. In this case, it's not one person who doesn't see the elephant. It's lots of them.

00:12:17.800 Now, of course, people are saying follow the money and their other incentives, etc. That's fair.

00:12:25.140 But there are so many people with an interest who don't have a financial incentive. They would see

00:12:32.200 it, too. And I don't think it's happening. All right. So keep in mind, somebody says it's a bad

00:12:39.380 analogy. All analogies are bad. The only thing I'm saying is that I use the analogy to make a general

00:12:47.020 point. So if you don't like the analogy, you don't need it. Just take the general point.

00:12:54.360 The general point is that hallucinations are almost always additions to the scenery.

00:13:00.220 They're rarely a subtraction. Once you notice that, it becomes a lot easier to untangle what's real and

00:13:07.980 what's not. That's why I don't believe in UFOs, by the way. UFOs are an addition to the scenery

00:13:17.660 that you would expect a lot more people would have seen and gotten some good pictures by now.

00:13:25.440 But, you know, I don't believe additions to the scenery, basically.

00:13:28.720 There's a big story about Putin's palace. Now, of course, this fits perfectly into what you would

00:13:35.700 expect for wartime propaganda. So can we believe that this story is true? Because it was in the

00:13:44.220 media? No. But even the media suggests that they can't confirm that it's Putin's palace. But

00:13:53.360 allegedly there's this, I don't know, 190,000 square foot gigantic palace on the Black Sea

00:13:59.380 that Putin allegedly forced the oligarchs to buy for him and includes an underground hockey rink and

00:14:05.920 all that. Everything you would imagine in a modern palace. But officially, Russia says that Putin lives

00:14:16.260 in an 800 square foot apartment, which is an 800 square foot apartment. I wonder if there's anybody in

00:14:29.700 Russia who believes that. Probably, right? Probably 25% of the people in Russia, because, you know,

00:14:36.600 25% is the number I always jokingly say will believe anything. Probably 25% of the people in Russia are

00:14:43.000 like, wow, that Putin sure lives an austere life. We think he only owns one suit, because he seems to

00:14:52.220 wear the same suit all the time. So you see, he probably owns one suit and an 800 square foot

00:14:56.840 apartment. So, but maybe not. The other possibility is that he's the richest human who has ever existed

00:15:05.080 in the history of the universe. Or he lives in an 800 square foot apartment on $140,000 a year.

00:15:12.340 It's one of those two things. I always laughed at the Warren Buffett myth. So Warren Buffett, you know,

00:15:21.560 at one point, I guess he was richest man in America, but he's still up there. Warren Buffett has always

00:15:27.460 been reported to have lived in his basically the same relatively modest home that he had always lived

00:15:35.500 in. And I believe there's, you know, he's added to his modest home. So there's like a superstructure

00:15:43.880 behind the modest structure. So this is a little bit bigger than it looks. But does that mean anything

00:15:51.040 if you're Warren Buffett? How often is Warren Buffett not in the presidential suite of whatever

00:15:58.780 high-end hotel he's at? Does Warren Buffett like spend much time at home? I feel like it's where he goes

00:16:06.960 on holidays and, you know, to visit his wife and whatnot. But I don't think it would be accurate to say

00:16:14.280 that one of the richest people in the world, you know, lives in that little home that he visits often.

00:16:20.400 People have reported that he does, in fact, stay there. So that's a confirmed fact. But how many

00:16:28.860 days a year does he not stay at somebody's mansion or, you know, or at the best facility that humans

00:16:40.320 have ever created? Anyway, your challenge today is twofold. It's a two-part challenge. Is everybody up

00:16:50.280 for it? Number one, I'd like you all to mock me for my lack of military expertise. You may do this

00:16:56.600 now. Please begin. Begin the mocking. You've heard me say many things about the Ukraine situation.

00:17:05.140 And I welcome you now to mock me for, and accurately, quite accurately, mock me for my complete and total

00:17:12.120 ignorance of all things military. Go. Good. Good. General Dummy. Nice. General Adams, not mocking enough.

00:17:26.800 Yes, General Adams. I think General Adams is a good general satirical direction. You don't know Schiff.

00:17:33.800 Good. It's a callback. I like the callback. You've never even been in a fight, Scott. Good. Go after my cowardice.

00:17:45.560 I think that's a good vein to mine. Productive. Private Scott. I'm not a general now.

00:17:56.440 No. Wimp. Major Dunce. Major Misunderstanding. Not bad. A plus. My new nickname is Major Misunderstanding.

00:18:10.860 Or General Adams. All right. So you're doing a good job of this. Major Clot. Another callback. I like that.

00:18:18.780 The callbacks are all appreciated. All right. You're doing a very good job of mocking me for my lack of

00:18:24.580 military expertise. Now, let's move on to the second part of the challenge. Remember, this is a two-fold

00:18:32.520 challenge, and I must say, I must compliment you. Your mocking of my lack of military expertise is

00:18:38.660 excellent. Gomer Adams. Nice. Gomer Adams. I like that one. Major Malfunction. General Disarray.

00:18:47.400 Private Pekka. What? Pointy-ear General. Pointy-ear General. I'm going to give that top shelf.

00:19:00.360 Lieutenant. Rear Admiral. Come on. Don't do that. Adams Doolittle. All right. Here's the second part of

00:19:13.500 your challenge, now that you've successfully mocked me for my lack of military expertise.

00:19:18.040 Part two. Explain why I'm the only person who predicted Russia couldn't defeat Ukraine in two 0.89

00:19:23.400 days because the defenders would have access to high tank killing weapons.

00:19:32.400 Okay. That took all the fun out of it. I'm just saying that sometimes you don't need to be an expert

00:19:40.080 to see things that are just sort of glaringly obvious. Now, the assumption that I made is that

00:19:46.760 they would have access to enough, and that part maybe I got lucky on, I'll admit, because I didn't know

00:19:53.960 how much they had. I knew they had access to the good stuff, whatever the good stuff was, because they

00:20:00.160 had such good friends. Friends meaning NATO in the United States. When you've got friends like NATO,

00:20:05.420 NATO, you probably, and especially if Russia is involved, you probably have access to good

00:20:12.320 weapons. And I had speculated that since nobody had ever seen a high quantity of the best kind of

00:20:20.960 weapons against tanks, that common sense sort of says that even if they had air cover and coordinated

00:20:27.860 artillery, even if they did everything right, it seemed to me that if you had enough drones and

00:20:35.500 shoulder-mounted stuff, the defenders would still have the advantage. Now, I don't know,

00:20:43.880 was that just a lucky guess based on my ignorance cancelling out my other ignorance? It could have been,

00:20:48.980 to be honest, it could have been. But you do have to ask yourself why all the experts were wrong and the

00:20:55.120 person that you just mocked for, incorrectly, correctly mocked for my lack of military understanding,

00:21:02.100 got it right with reasons. I mean, I showed my work. I said, here's the reason, advanced military

00:21:09.120 equipment that will surprise you how effective it is. I said it directly. Now, I also got completely

00:21:15.400 wrong that Putin would actually attack. I said it was a bluff. And my reasoning for the bluff

00:21:22.480 was that it seemed obvious it couldn't work. And I think I was half right. It's obvious. I mean,

00:21:32.040 to me, it looked obvious that it couldn't work. So I thought it must be obvious to Putin. And that's

00:21:37.840 where apparently I'm completely wrong. Now, I could also be completely wrong still if Putin ends up

00:21:44.460 prevailing. At the moment, the experts that I'm seeing at least quoted in the news lately, and do a

00:21:54.160 fact check on me. Is this correct? That the military experts are now saying that Putin does not have

00:22:02.420 a sufficient source, force to take and hold Kiev. That's true, right? And that therefore they won't

00:22:10.520 actually conquer the government. So can you fact check that? I haven't seen every military opinion.

00:22:18.560 But I think the military is now saying they could destroy the city, but they can't really take it and hold it

00:22:24.600 because they don't even have the right kind of forces to do that. Not even close. Like they have maybe 20%

00:22:31.260 of what they need, something like that. Yeah, what are they actually holding now is a good question.

00:22:39.140 All right.

00:22:43.440 So here's an interesting thing that happened.

00:22:49.280 I think I'm all over the place in my order of things.

00:22:51.640 I saw a tweet by Nazir Afzal. He's a prosecutor, among other things. And he said this. He said,

00:23:00.460 are you surprised that in the matter of Jeffrey Epstein and hundreds of high profile men sexually

00:23:06.500 abusing hundreds of young girls and children, the only person convicted is a woman? Now, of course,

00:23:13.760 that means only on top of Jeffrey Epstein himself. I assume that's implied. But

00:23:20.040 just think about that. It's basically a crime committed allegedly by hundreds of men.

00:23:28.980 And so far, the only person convicted was the only woman who wasn't, the only person who

00:23:34.860 wasn't Epstein was a woman. Now, she was guilty as hell. So, you know, it makes sense that she'd

00:23:41.120 be the first person to be convicted who isn't him. But I don't think we're going to see any

00:23:46.920 other convictions. Do you? It looks like this has been successfully just taken away from the

00:23:54.080 public's right to have any justice or knowledge about it. Why are we okay with this? There's

00:24:03.720 literally nothing you can do about it, is there? Unless you wanted to make it like your life's work to,

00:24:09.300 you know, start a big campaign to get everybody interested in finding the names of these people.

00:24:14.560 But I don't know that anybody has that much power or passion or cares about it compared to all the

00:24:21.620 other gigantic problems in the world. And so in a sense, it's sort of lucky for the accused that

00:24:28.440 there are bigger stories at the moment. That always helps. But this is, it's kind of tells us a lot

00:24:35.680 that we'll never know who was on the island besides Epstein. I mean, except for the few that we've heard

00:24:41.280 about who flew in the plane. But that's all we know for sure. They flew in the plane.

00:24:46.600 Breaking news. Breaking news. And I want you to listen carefully to this, because if you haven't

00:24:51.720 heard this yet, this is breaking news. Breaking. A hundred former intel officials have determined

00:24:58.460 that you can end war in Ukraine by spanking your taint with a wooden spoon. Several anonymous sources

00:25:05.220 inside the White House have confirmed the story. And no court has ruled it false. And fact checkers

00:25:13.120 and science agree. Now that's a lot of credibility. I mean, I would be convinced if one former intel

00:25:23.340 official told me something. But if a hundred told me, well, that's pretty believable. I mean,

00:25:30.400 could you imagine that like dozens of intel officials could tell you something that was just

00:25:35.220 not true, like intentionally? Well, I can't imagine that. That could never happen, could it?

00:25:40.700 So that's believable. And then there are several anonymous sources. And I don't know what's more

00:25:45.700 believable than an anonymous source. I do. Several. The only thing better than an anonymous source in the

00:25:52.580 White House is several. That makes it totally believable. If somebody, if one person tells you that there are

00:25:58.260 several, why would you not believe that? And then no court has ruled that this is false. And as we

00:26:10.080 learned in the elections, as long as the court hasn't ruled something to be true, it's not true. And if

00:26:16.980 they haven't ruled it false, it's not false. And if the fact checkers and the science all agree, well,

00:26:23.300 we've never seen the fact checkers be wrong. And I think you'd all agree that the science

00:26:27.740 is settled. And once the science is spoken, that's all you need to know. Now, I'd like to explain

00:26:33.740 something to the non-native speakers. If there are some people here who are confused by the word

00:26:40.640 taint, let me give you a history lesson. Taint is a, let's say, an evolved word from the poor grammar

00:26:51.000 in English that used to be ain't. So people used to say, and it's considered poor grammar,

00:26:58.200 this ain't true, meaning this is not true. It ain't. But when people say it ain't, that is often

00:27:09.600 shortened by rural people in the United States to taint. My grandmother, for example, she would say,

00:27:17.300 taint true. But taint true. And she actually did use that. So the taint is actually defined in

00:27:26.080 modern usage as, and I have to say this carefully so I'm not kicked off of any platforms. So I'm

00:27:34.980 going to say this in a G-rated way. The taint is defined as the part of your body that's between

00:27:42.480 your genitalia and Congress. So everything that's between your genitalia and Congress,

00:27:51.460 that's called the taint. Because it taint your genitalia, and it taint Congress, it's the taint. 1.00

00:27:59.260 Now, that's just for the benefit for anyone who is not a Native American speaker.

00:28:05.460 And by the way, if you want to get that confirmed, talk to any Native American speaker on this

00:28:14.540 live stream who can confirm it for you. Because that's the kind of people they are. They like

00:28:19.420 to help. All right. So let's see what else is going on. We've got Axios was accused of some fake

00:28:31.180 news by the other fake news. So the fake news said that Axios had some fake news, which has been

00:28:37.240 corrected to less fake news. And the story was that reporter Zachary Basu had written a story that

00:28:46.400 some Ukrainian had asked, earlier had asked the U.S. to, quote, go beyond traditional military aid and

00:28:56.100 provide the country with the funding, training, and weaponry to support a long-term resistance

00:29:00.880 movement. But the Ukrainians say, no, that's not a real letter. Nobody ever sent that letter.

00:29:06.400 And the American government says, no, nobody ever sent us that letter. So Axios has updated it to

00:29:14.180 say that the letter is disputed. Disputed by the people who sent it and the people who allegedly

00:29:20.060 received it. Allegedly all. So that's some fake news that may have been corrected. But I'll give

00:29:27.660 Axios credit when the criticisms were leveled at them. They did keep the story and they added that

00:29:36.320 it's disputed and, you know, evidence free. You know, if I've often said this, they have to judge

00:29:46.340 people by how they correct their mistakes or how they respond to mistakes. If you judge people by

00:29:51.360 mistakes, then we're all assholes. That's sort of the end of the story. There's, there's no redemption

00:29:58.080 because you just can't, you can't judge people by their mistakes. If you go through life like that,

00:30:05.860 you're just lost. I mean, civilization won't even hold together because we're all basically a mess

00:30:10.800 and we're all, we're all messing up a lot. So it's just not a viable way to judge people as by the

00:30:17.760 mistakes they make. But a very viable way is to judge them by how they respond. Do they say,

00:30:23.920 oh God, I'm so sorry, and mean it? And do they then tell you what they're going to do about it?

00:30:29.840 And then do they follow up and actually do that thing that they said they would do to not make

00:30:35.000 that mistake again? Now, if somebody does that, I like them better than if they hadn't made the

00:30:39.720 mistake in the first place. Because I can't judge somebody for making a mistake, even bad ones,

00:30:45.020 really. But you could totally judge people by how they handled it after the mistake.

00:30:51.560 And that's fair. Because that's technique. And it's available to everybody, right? It's not hard.

00:30:57.860 You apologize, you admit, you make good, you say what you're going to do differently,

00:31:03.180 and then you follow up on it. And you do it differently. Everybody knows how to do that.

00:31:06.940 So some can do it, some can't. Anyway, so I give Axios credit for the correction.

00:31:18.700 Apparently, California is experiencing crime tourism, according to a KABC story. And the story here,

00:31:28.600 and I saw Michael Schellenberger tweet this, who is running for governor of California as an

00:31:35.440 independent, the only person I've ever known to run for office with a complete vetted set of solutions

00:31:44.640 for the exact problems of the state. And by vetted, I mean, actually researching what works and what

00:31:51.360 doesn't, showing his work, stop doing the things that we know don't work, do the things that do work.

00:31:57.340 I mean, just basic. Basic, I don't know, strategic business way to approach anything.

00:32:05.420 Who knows if being non-political works? He's basically trying to win by extreme competence.

00:32:15.040 And I don't know if that's ever been done. Honestly. Think about that.

00:32:20.040 Who's ever tried to win a major election, let's say governor, senator, president, with extreme

00:32:27.240 competence? In other words, just demonstrating an ability to do a bunch of things successfully.

00:32:34.040 Has anybody ever done that? You're saying Trump, but, you know, Trump would be disputed as how much

00:32:40.580 is hyperbole and how much was real. But, you know, if you look at Schellenberger's work,

00:32:45.340 even his critics will say this is an impressive body of work.

00:32:52.800 Somebody says Cory Booker. I don't know too much about that.

00:32:56.640 Anyway, crime tourism, as Michael Schellenberger tweeted.

00:33:01.260 So law enforcement agencies have determined that there are criminal groups from South America

00:33:07.380 that are organized to come to California to do these sort of organized smash and runs

00:33:14.360 on private high-end residents. So they'll go to someplace when you're not home, you know,

00:33:20.000 a rich person's house generally, and break in. They don't worry too much about alarms,

00:33:25.440 I don't think, because they're going to be in and out. And they, I think they just go to the

00:33:29.620 bedroom mostly and look for jewelry, the easy stuff. They're not looking for furniture and

00:33:34.500 flat screens, TVs. They're looking for a quick hit of usually jewels.

00:33:38.820 And so this is the story. And I can confirm that according to my neighbor's video surveillance,

00:33:48.620 we all share our video surveillance. I mean, not electronically, directly, but, you know,

00:33:54.420 when something happens, we're very well organized in the neighborhood. So as soon as anything happens

00:33:59.560 at anybody's house, everybody sees the video of it. And apparently, the South American teams have

00:34:06.600 hit two of my neighbors. So this is a story that actually directly affects me. Literally,

00:34:15.060 this is not a joke. If I stood up and my window was open, I could throw a baseball and hit my

00:34:23.520 neighbor's house that was robbed by one of these South American groups. The other one, I'd have to 1.00

00:34:29.880 throw the ball twice, but it's in the neighborhood. Twice. This is just my neighborhood. I'm talking

00:34:36.980 about one block. Not really the same block, but effectively, the distance of a block.

00:34:44.760 Now, my house is never empty. Somebody's always here. So usually, they go for an empty house.

00:34:51.940 And at least I've got that going for me. But I also have the last house in the world that you'd

00:34:58.740 want to break into. You don't need to know the details. I'll just tell you that if you're looking

00:35:06.100 for a house to break into, you might want to prioritize mine last. Not only because there's

00:35:11.520 nothing in it of any value that you could carry out. Literally. Oh, this would be an interesting

00:35:19.680 question. What would be the highest value thing in my house that you could actually carry out

00:35:23.840 and, like, put in a car? Yeah. Yeah, like $400 worth of, you know, medicinal marijuana. That's

00:35:33.360 about it. My printer. If they steal my printer, I'm in good shape. I don't even think people

00:35:38.460 steal computers anymore, do they? I don't even know if it's worth it. So, anyway, crime tourism

00:35:45.880 is happening. Let's get to the good part, shall we? Shall we get to the good part? Let me tell

00:35:53.860 you the great thing about being my age. So here's the first inspirational thing of several

00:36:00.600 to come. People who are young are scared to death of being older. I was completely surprised

00:36:09.720 at how awesome it is in a lot of different ways that you don't see coming. You just don't

00:36:15.120 see it coming. One of the ways is that you know how it all turned out. Now, that's only

00:36:21.400 good if it turned out well in some way. Now, when I say when it turned out well, I use the

00:36:27.120 following standard for success, which is how many people you helped in a significant way.

00:36:35.480 And I don't think there's any other good standard because money doesn't, you know, really capture

00:36:40.540 it. If you had a great relationship with one person, well, that's great for the two of

00:36:47.680 you. But maybe if you could do something for some other people, that would be good. Now,

00:36:53.580 one of the things that I chose early in my career, I originally wanted to be a lawyer. In

00:37:00.400 high school, I thought that's where I was going. But at some point, I figured out that being

00:37:04.740 a lawyer is usually a zero-sum game. There's a winner and a loser. So society sort of breaks

00:37:13.020 even, you know, in a very general way. It's not a clean win. It's not an addition. Elon Musk

00:37:21.080 is just added, right? He didn't take anything from anybody. He just added stuff to the world.

00:37:28.200 That's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a person who only added and never had to take

00:37:33.040 something from anybody. So I didn't want to be in a militant kind of a job. So I became

00:37:38.080 a cartoonist. And then I write books that are designed to be useful. And then I also

00:37:43.080 do these micro-lessons, which are designed to be useful. Now, I've got over 200 micro-lessons

00:37:49.020 on the Locals platform that you have to subscribe to to see. These will be public because the

00:37:54.400 Locals people trust me to make a decision when to make stuff public. And what I'm going to

00:37:59.700 do is show you two reframes, which is simply a different way of looking at something, to help

00:38:05.500 you with any kind of past trauma or PTSD, and then any kind of feelings of despair or sadness.

00:38:14.200 Two separate lessons, two minutes apiece. Now, the math of this goes like this. There's no reason

00:38:20.880 to suspect that either of these two lessons would necessarily help any one of you specifically.

00:38:25.980 I guarantee that some percentage of you will have your lives changed in the next few minutes,

00:38:33.280 in less than five minutes probably. Guarantee it. It's just a law of large numbers and the fact

00:38:39.300 that I know these to be useful. Now, secondly, every one of you could probably benefit from

00:38:44.880 something on the list of over 200 of the micro-lessons. And you would respond to different

00:38:50.080 ones. But the math of it is you would probably have a life-changing experience to be exposed,

00:38:55.640 exposed to that much material, which is designed to be a high impact in a very short hit. I'll give

00:39:03.860 you two examples. Number one, let's say you've got some trauma in your life. And you say,

00:39:12.780 this trauma is affecting me into my whole life, and I'm worrying about it, and it gives me

00:39:17.460 all kinds of problems. And maybe it does. Maybe it does. But here's the best reframe that I've ever

00:39:25.100 found. Because like you, I've had problems in my life, sometimes very big. And I find this the most

00:39:32.860 useful reframe. And it goes like this. You had a big problem. Not everybody had one. You had a big

00:39:40.760 one. And you know that you survived. Oh, you took a beating, but you survived. So you know what you

00:39:49.000 can handle? Do you know what everybody else doesn't know? Unless they had that much trauma also? Do you

00:39:55.960 know what they don't know? They don't know what they can handle. And they're afraid. So a person who has

00:40:03.080 never had a really big problem thinks that maybe the maximum that they could handle without damage

00:40:10.120 is much lower. And because they are timid, and they will not go into higher risk categories. And

00:40:19.040 when I talk about risk, I'm not talking about physical risk. I'm talking about embarrassment,

00:40:24.020 failure, what other people think of you risk, maybe financial risk, that sort of thing. Not physical.

00:40:30.200 Stay away from physical risk. I'm not recommending that. But I call this the free money zone,

00:40:36.860 the zone between what ordinary people who do not have trauma guiding their lives, what they think

00:40:43.000 they can handle is their limit. That is not your limit. Your limit is fucking amazing. Your limit,

00:40:52.400 if you've experienced some serious shit in your life, your limit is almost unimaginable to most of the

00:41:01.920 world. That's your superpower. You can do stuff that other people are afraid of. I first noticed this

00:41:10.020 when I would see that veterans who had seen combat when they went into business were often unusually

00:41:17.360 successful. And it was just, I don't know if it's actually statistically true, but it's something I

00:41:23.520 noticed. That people who had gone through horrible experiences, and I'll bet, by the way, that you would

00:41:29.420 find this scientifically true. But I don't have any science for it. And the idea is that people have

00:41:34.840 gone through horrible things, just have a higher tolerance for everything. For everything. They

00:41:41.220 know what they can handle. They know what they can push through. They know when they're in the

00:41:45.600 deepest swamp, they say, I've swam through this swamp before. I've seen this swamp. This swamp is

00:41:53.120 nothing. You think this swamp is bad? You should have seen the other swamp. This one I'm going to kill in

00:41:58.600 two days. It took me 16 years to beat that other swamp. This one, two days. The people who don't have 1.00

00:42:07.120 that kind of problem in their life will never be able to handle that. That is micro lesson number one.

00:42:13.220 It dovetails into micro lesson number two.

00:42:15.460 And this is a reframe for people who have despair in their lives. I'm not going to use the S word,

00:42:28.060 because I just don't want to put those words in your head. But you can put it in your own head. There

00:42:34.600 are some people whose lives are so bad, they say, I'm not sure my life is worth going on.

00:42:39.420 I'll bet a lot of people have had that thought in the past two years, especially. And I'll bet

00:42:45.900 almost all of you have had it at least once, maybe when you were a teen, etc. A lot of people go

00:42:51.320 through it. And I'll tell you a reframe that can take you out of it almost immediately.

00:42:56.660 Almost immediately. And it goes like this. Imagine you have one day to live. Now, you don't

00:43:10.760 have to convince yourself it's true. And believe me, that's important. Because if you thought

00:43:16.600 to yourself, well, you know, I know that's not the case. So it doesn't work. No, it doesn't

00:43:22.000 matter. This is purely a reframe. A reframe doesn't have to be true. It just has to work.

00:43:28.560 It's just a little mental hack. It's a trick. Don't get lost on whether it's logical. It

00:43:34.800 doesn't need to be. That's not an important element of it. If you can just say to yourself,

00:43:40.360 let me live today, like it was the last day. And if you can't convince yourself that it's

00:43:47.120 really the last day in any way that you can, you know, embrace this feeling, tell yourself

00:43:52.520 this. You have the ability to end it anytime you want. I don't recommend it. This is actually

00:43:58.360 a technique to make sure you don't, right? I want to be careful about this. I'm telling

00:44:03.020 you how to get out of those feelings. If you tell yourself that you have nothing to lose

00:44:08.620 because you only have one day, but you're perfectly healthy. Only your mind is messed

00:44:17.160 up. You're perfectly healthy, let's say. Let's hope. What would you do if nothing could embarrass

00:44:24.760 you? What would you do if you weren't afraid of anything? Now, again, I'm not talking about

00:44:31.400 physical fear that can kill you. I'm talking about social fear, fear of what other people think

00:44:37.760 of you, fear of failure. What if all of that went away? Because if you wanted to, you could

00:44:45.280 end your life when you wanted. It is kind of optional if you think about it. And again,

00:44:49.960 I'm telling you how to live your life, not end it. What about your feelings of self-worth?

00:44:56.300 All of those things become immediately useless if you only have one day to live. You do not worry

00:45:02.660 that you were embarrassed because you're dead tomorrow, mentally in this reframe. It is one

00:45:10.740 way to induce what I call artificial ego death, very similar to what the medical experts say

00:45:17.160 you would experience with, let's say, medically supervised use of psychedelics, such as mushrooms.

00:45:25.080 If you can induce a state of artificial ego death in which you can temporarily, and this

00:45:33.520 is how you start, just start with temporary, where you can temporarily imagine that embarrassment,

00:45:39.660 fear, self-worth, all the things that are gnawing at you, your sense of failure, will you make

00:45:46.660 it, who hates you, who doesn't, all the things that are just torturing you, those are all your

00:45:52.680 ego. Your ego is telling you you're important, and that therefore all the assaults on your

00:45:58.600 ego matter. As soon as you realize that you're not important, in this specific sense, because

00:46:06.500 in this artificial mindset that you create, just to hack your mind, you create this idea

00:46:12.800 that you only have a day to live, you inhabit it, and you say, if I only had a day to live,

00:46:17.760 I could go up to that person that I've been thinking about, and give them a flower, and

00:46:25.080 say, you know, I know you and I probably will never be a couple, but I'd just love to give

00:46:30.700 you this compliment. I just think you're terrific. And then you walk away. And you don't say,

00:46:37.740 I must date that woman, or I must marry that man. You just say, I really enjoyed giving them 1.00

00:46:45.000 a compliment. You might discover that literally everybody loves a compliment. I'm going to do a

00:46:52.480 separate micro lesson, but I'll give you a teaser, that if you learn how to compliment people without

00:46:58.420 being creepy, and I could teach you that, everybody likes it. You can make almost everybody want to be

00:47:06.940 your friend if you can learn to give a sincere, non-creepy compliment, which is pretty much just

00:47:14.620 technique, and I could teach you how to do it. Now, this technique, try it. You will not believe it

00:47:22.540 will work until you have tried it. I believe that if you try either of these two reframes, some number

00:47:29.400 of you will have a profound impact on your life. So while maybe only 1% of you, maybe 25% of you,

00:47:40.380 maybe 50% of you might find something substantially useful here. But all of you would find something

00:47:49.120 in the list of over 200 micro lessons. So that is your two micro lessons for the day. And on that note,

00:47:59.140 I'm going to end the YouTube feed. I'll be talking to the locals people a little bit more. And I hope

00:48:05.800 you found that useful. And I think you'd agree, this was the best live stream you've ever seen,

00:48:13.580 or ever will, until tomorrow. See you then.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 19, 2022

Episode 1687 Scott Adams： More Fake News About Everything and Two Micro Lessons That Might Change Your Life

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