Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1698 Scott Adams： How to Fix All The Fake News, Trump Is Being Trump Again, And More Fun

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody, and welcome, yes, once again, to the best thing that's ever happened.

00:00:09.900 It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. Now, I don't know if you've noticed, the regular viewers,

00:00:17.240 that if I tell you you're going to have a good day, it will make it more likely. Why? Because

00:00:25.700 reality is subjective. You might have exactly the same amount of problems, but if you come here

00:00:32.100 every day and I tell you it's going to be great, it'll be a little bit greater, as far as you can

00:00:37.880 tell, and that's all that matters. Now, how would you like to take this experiment up a notch?

00:00:44.800 It's called the simultaneous SIP, and there is plenty of science to suggest indirectly that it

00:00:53.280 might make your day better, but I guarantee it. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of

00:00:58.240 tanker gel, a canteen, a drink, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:01:05.580 I like coffee. Now, join me for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing

00:01:10.480 that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous SIP, and it will be sipped around

00:01:16.560 the world now. Go. Exactly. I see in the comments, if I may read this comment, it's the best thing

00:01:27.800 that's ever happened to me. A lot of people would put it in the top ten, but I think it

00:01:35.520 probably belongs in the top three. I will allow that the birth of your children, possibly your

00:01:43.120 wedding day, if things went well. Could be better days, maybe, maybe, if those things

00:01:48.500 went perfectly. I would say the bad version of all those things is still worse than the

00:01:54.220 good version of coffee with Scott Adams. But the best, I'll give you, I'll give you that

00:01:59.440 the best version of those things would have a little bit of an edge. Well, here's an update.

00:02:05.640 Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's a fake news update. Do you remember,

00:02:10.120 do you remember the story about the guy who wanted to vote back in 2020? He wanted to

00:02:17.620 vote, but he could not find any way to get a government ID. Here's an update on that

00:02:22.580 story. He still doesn't exist. Still doesn't exist. Okay. All right, next item. How would

00:02:34.040 you like me to fix fake news? I mean, actually do it, like right here. I'm going to perform

00:02:41.420 a magic trick. Are you ready? I'm going to describe an app, or maybe it's a process. It doesn't

00:02:52.380 have to, it doesn't have to be an app. It could be something that gets the same thing done.

00:02:57.580 And it goes like this. Number one, how much do you dislike commercials on your television?

00:03:08.860 I think you don't like them at all. Wouldn't you wish that if you were watching live TV,

00:03:14.900 where you can't fast forward, that you could have something entertain you during the commercials,

00:03:19.880 commercials? And yet, here's the key. And yet, have the thing that entertains you during the commercials

00:03:26.800 be on the same topic or within the same field as the show you were just watching? And so I submit to

00:03:36.340 you what I call News Buddies. What it is, it's a live stream, could be on an app, but it could be

00:03:46.200 just live stream, that is at the same time as the live network broadcast or cable broadcast of CNN,

00:03:56.280 Fox News, MSNBC. And so if you're watching any of those shows, you can have a call up on your other

00:04:05.600 device. So let's say you're watching the news on your television, because you're a certain age,

00:04:10.440 you watch a television. And you call up on your phone a little person, a real person, who at exactly

00:04:18.280 the same time, for you and other people watching the same show, will be your little news buddy.

00:04:25.280 It'll be like a little avatar that just sits there on your phone and is completely silent, mostly,

00:04:30.600 during the actual broadcast. The moment the broadcast moves to a commercial,

00:04:35.520 you can silence your TV and then have the little news buddy say, you know, that story you just

00:04:44.640 watched, that's kind of fake news, because it's a little bit out of context. Here's what they left

00:04:50.960 out. And what would you rather do? Would you rather listen to the commercial? Would you? Would you

00:04:59.560 rather listen to the commercial? Or would you rather listen to somebody tell you what was wrong with

00:05:04.560 what you just watched? Which is more entertaining? Because that's all that matters, right? Now let's

00:05:11.120 say it's free. Could be. Could easily be free. Because if you put it on, let's say, on YouTube,

00:05:20.720 you could have the, maybe the commercials run, I don't know if you, could you do this? Make the

00:05:26.020 commercials run on your buddy app at a different time as the ones on the TV, so that you never get

00:05:33.160 commercials at the same time. I think you could do that. But you could do it on an app if you build

00:05:38.120 it yourself. And so therefore, you wouldn't have to listen to the commercial, maybe it's just running

00:05:43.560 in video, doesn't even have any sound, while the news buddy is talking. And now, let's say that you

00:05:52.440 don't like one of the news buddies, because it looks like that's another propaganda. You pick another one.

00:05:58.940 And other people can judge the other news buddies and pick one you like. So there should be somebody

00:06:05.400 who, and by the way, there wouldn't be any copyright problem, because the news buddy would not be

00:06:11.000 showing the stream. You would have to have your own separate stream for CNN or whatever it is you're

00:06:16.520 watching. Now, you have the news buddy doing a little fact checking while the live news is on.

00:06:22.540 And then the news buddy could even, hold on, it gets better, send you links to the fact checks.

00:06:30.960 Huh? Huh? In real time. In real time. So your little news buddy, you know, as soon as it goes to

00:06:38.580 commercial, it says, you know what they said about climate change? Well, some people say that that's

00:06:44.140 not true. Here's a link. You'd be like, seriously? I totally believe that. There's a link that says the

00:06:49.720 opposite thing. Now, how many senior citizens, how many senior citizens could handle, you know,

00:06:58.020 having a news buddy on the phone plus the TV on? Okay, over a certain age, I'll give you that it

00:07:04.060 would decline in usability. But it's also over the certain age that they're not as active in anything.

00:07:11.740 So you tell me that people in their 50s and 60s can't handle opening an app on the phone. I say,

00:07:21.340 no, of course they can. So the people that you're really trying to reach, even the older segment,

00:07:26.300 can absolutely turn on a simultaneous app. That's not even hard. So here's something that

00:07:35.960 I would like to give you as a general concept. If I had told you before you'd ever heard of

00:07:44.080 something called a jury trial, that I was going to design this justice system where 12 of your

00:07:51.460 peers would be selected and then vetted by lawyers, and we'd have all this checks and balances and the

00:07:57.000 judge, but ultimately there'd be 12 people would decide if you go to jail or not. How many of you

00:08:02.740 would have thought that would work? Seriously. Be honest with yourself. If the jury system had

00:08:10.160 never existed and somebody described it to you and said, I got this great idea, would you think

00:08:15.580 that was going to work? Really? I don't know. Some of you, maybe. Maybe better than the alternatives.

00:08:23.220 What about the Supreme Court? You know, think of all your problems with the Supreme Court,

00:08:28.680 all the complaints you have. If somebody had described the Supreme Court before anybody knew

00:08:35.300 it ever existed, it was just a whole new idea. Would you have heard that and said, yeah, I think

00:08:41.120 that's going to last at least 200 years. People will find that very credible. I don't know. Maybe.

00:08:48.660 Maybe you would have thought it was better than the other ideas. So, you know, that'd be good enough.

00:08:53.340 But I'm not sure that we're so smart that we know that we can't engineer systems to at least make us

00:09:01.500 satisfied that we've done the best job we can. So, when I was talking the other day about could you

00:09:06.900 have a Supreme Court of fact-checking, how many of you said, oh, you can't do that because then the

00:09:13.920 fact-checkers would just be, you know, bought off by somebody. And then you think of all the reasons

00:09:19.180 why it doesn't work. I get that. Every one of the reasons why you offer that that wouldn't work,

00:09:26.500 if you designed it incorrectly, yeah, you're right. It wouldn't work. But don't underestimate

00:09:35.160 the ingenuity of the public to design something that does work, even if we get it wrong, you know,

00:09:41.260 19 out of 20 times. If you just keep chugging along, you're going to get something that works.

00:09:46.420 So, when I talk about this news buddy app, the only thing I'm trying to transmit is that

00:09:56.240 you'd be surprised how many thorny, impossible-seeming problems could be solved if you just chug along

00:10:05.200 and try enough things. It doesn't mean this will be the solution, to have a little news buddy,

00:10:09.860 because, you know, the obvious thing is they become corrupted, blah, blah, blah. But we do have a

00:10:15.500 history of solving problems that, I would say, are like this-ish, in the sense that you can't

00:10:22.500 imagine how you could get the bias and the criminality out of it. But we seem to largely

00:10:29.300 be able to fix those things. It just takes a while. So, I don't know if the news buddy's

00:10:33.920 the way, but something cool could probably fix the fake news. I don't think what's going to fix it

00:10:41.260 is competing platforms. That's my best guess. Do you? Do you think that the fake news will

00:10:48.700 ever be fixed by somebody coming up with a competing platform that's, oh, that's all the

00:10:54.380 good news, so we'll watch that one instead? Doesn't feel like it, right? And so, since we've

00:11:00.560 tried that, in effect, should we not try something else? Right? Somebody cleverly is saying, so,

00:11:13.080 when did you create this news buddy app? It would have been smarter to develop the app before giving

00:11:18.800 you the idea, but I feel like it's more about the concept of designing systems that work. It's not

00:11:26.140 even about the app. And I don't have that much interest in that kind of an app. But it was a

00:11:31.260 good question, yes. It was a good question. All right. One of the coolest things about being me,

00:11:40.160 if I could be all about me for a moment, and why wouldn't I be, is that every now and then I'll wake

00:11:46.520 up and just something cool will happen that's just so cool you can barely contain yourself. And you

00:11:52.400 didn't know it was coming. It was just, hey, that's cool. I was curious about something related

00:11:58.340 to a story I'm going to talk about later. And in order to talk about that other story, about an

00:12:04.140 author being cancelled, I wanted to Google myself and see if, you know, what's the highest rated thing

00:12:10.760 about me to see if it was negative or positive, and to compare it to this other story. And I discovered

00:12:17.440 that something like three days ago there was a story that the Dilbert comic is going to be featured

00:12:22.540 in a, or already is, in a Rick and Morty episode. And I guess they go to an alternative universe or

00:12:31.600 something. And they go into an alternative universe where there's a Dilbert world and the desks are

00:12:41.300 eating the people or something. And here's what's weird. So this was four days ago, actually, this was

00:12:48.200 published. How in the world did I not know about this for four days? How in the world could there be a

00:12:57.960 Rick and Morty episode all about Dilbert? And it took four days for me to figure that out? And I had to find it

00:13:04.220 myself. Nobody mentioned that to me? None of you? Nobody? Really? Seriously? There's not one of you?

00:13:14.840 There's not one of you who already knew that and thought to mention it? Come on. I rely on you to

00:13:21.200 tell me the obvious stuff. Four days and I didn't know that. Now, call my agent. I don't have an agent

00:13:29.040 for that kind of stuff. I have an agent for my books, but not a general agent. So here's what

00:13:35.780 I'd like to say. Rick and Morty is just about the best thing on television. And being featured in

00:13:46.380 that, even if they mock it, I haven't seen it. So I don't know if they treat it like a cultural icon

00:13:53.280 or they treat it mockingly. Either way is fine with me because I'm such a fan of the show.

00:14:02.100 Somebody says my audience doesn't watch Rick and Morty. What's wrong with you? You should.

00:14:09.760 Yeah, I would say it's my favorite animated show of all time. Could I say that? Yeah, I think I

00:14:18.940 could say that. I think it's my favorite animated show of all time, including my own.

00:14:27.560 Well, finally, the Biden administration and Congress has passed an anti-lynching bill.

00:14:35.680 And I'm hoping this will maybe stop the tide, this rising problem of lynching, which I don't

00:14:43.900 believe has happened in a long time. I don't know anybody who's opposed to a bill against lynching.

00:14:50.640 You could argue that the states already did it. But I don't mind that the government,

00:14:56.880 you know, the federal government makes it official, if you could say that. You know, I would say maybe

00:15:02.680 it wasn't the most important thing we're working on. So if it was easy, you know, it didn't cost

00:15:08.760 anything. Okay. I mean, I feel like it was unnecessary work. So I'm not sure I would have

00:15:16.240 done it. Solves the problem that doesn't really exist. But as a messaging thing, sure, I agree

00:15:22.880 with the message. So if it didn't cost too much, I'm not going to hate it. But I wonder, was

00:15:29.860 anyone on the other side of that argument? Like, I mean, anybody who took the other side of this

00:15:37.880 argument was really not playing this right. Because, you know, and I understand you might

00:15:46.500 say something like, oh, we already have laws, why waste our time? I get that. But don't

00:15:52.680 say it. Don't say it. I understand if you think it. But how in the world could this be

00:16:00.420 politically smart to be the one who gets singled out for being against it? It's such an obvious

00:16:06.940 trap. Here's how I would have played it. If I were in Congress, just so I don't get caught in

00:16:15.200 this, you're against the anti-lynching bill? I would have been more for it than anybody.

00:16:21.980 I would have been for digging up people who had been for it just to kill them again. I mean, 0.99

00:16:29.820 I would have been so for it that if they ever talked to me, I'd say, are you kidding? I'm like

00:16:34.400 the number one person in favor of this. Which would make sense, because I have identified

00:16:38.720 as black for a while. But I noticed a trend. And can you tell me if this is bias or is this real?

00:16:49.440 Okay? This is just something I observe, so there's no science to it. There's no data to it. Just

00:16:55.240 sort of my observation. Does it seem to you that Democrats are tough on crime when the crime isn't

00:17:02.300 one that's actually happening? Am I wrong about that? I mean, we've got the lynching. They're

00:17:09.320 tough on lynching, which thankfully is basically not happening. If it ever does happen, yeah,

00:17:17.500 I mean, we should go as hard on whoever does such a horrible thing as we can. But it's interesting

00:17:23.060 that they would pick that as where they'd be tough on crime. Do you remember when the Democrats

00:17:28.320 thought Russia collusion was real? Well, they were pretty tough on that, weren't they? They were tough

00:17:34.860 on that crime that, oh, wait a minute, that didn't exist. Yeah, so they're tough on that crime that

00:17:40.260 doesn't exist. They're also tough on a lot of crimes of people thinking things wrong. So if you're

00:17:46.960 thinking things wrong, they're really tough on that. I feel as if Democrats are not really

00:17:53.500 understanding the whole tough on crime concept and where to apply it and when not to apply

00:17:59.740 it. Is it just me? I don't know. It feels like a trend or a pattern. Maybe just my imagination.

00:18:12.460 Apparently, the number of workers in the workplace, which is exactly where the workers should be.

00:18:17.580 If you see a worker not in the workplace, send them back. They belong in the workplace.

00:18:24.060 Even at lunch, we'll have no goofing off. All right, apparently there are more people using drugs

00:18:30.780 in the workplace. But I was surprised that they say it's risen to 4.6% of a bunch of people who

00:18:39.020 were randomly tested. And I thought to myself, only 4.6%? What workplace could you go into

00:18:47.180 and find only 4.6% are on drugs? And I thought, oh, oh, just certain drugs. Just certain drugs.

00:18:59.660 If you tested all the people who were on the drug that would affect their performance,

00:19:05.500 how many would that be? Well, that would be all of them. It's just some of them are legal.

00:19:10.620 Some of them are prescribed. It's coffee. It's booze. But I would guess that 75% of the workforce

00:19:20.300 is consciously changing their brain chemistry through drugs, one way or the other. I mean,

00:19:27.820 maybe it's only on the weekend. Yeah. Maybe it's sugar. Anyway.

00:19:33.260 Okay. Joel Pollack has an article in Breitbart in which he's talking about the reparations efforts

00:19:42.620 in California. And he points out, and I never thought of this before, that California had never

00:19:48.380 been a slave state. So I live in a state, California, there have never been slaves here. It's always been

00:19:55.580 a free state. But we're talking about, and there's some kind of committee, to come up with a plan for

00:20:03.980 reparations or to see if it's practical. And they spent quite a bit of time so far, and here's what

00:20:11.340 they came up with. It's just a preliminary beginning decision to throw other black people under the bus. 1.00

00:20:19.660 So progress so far by a committee that apparently is largely black to decide that only people who can 0.79

00:20:32.300 prove they were descended from slavery in America would be eligible for the reparations. So the very

00:20:39.340 first thing that a largely black committee did was find a new way to divide people at this time. 0.91

00:20:50.060 This time dividing black people in America. 0.79

00:20:54.220 And in so doing, they came up with a new standard in which you'd have to be able to demonstrate you

00:20:59.100 were descended from slaves if any reparations were ever approved. So it's all very preliminary.

00:21:05.980 To which I ask the obvious question. Is it not discriminatory to ask black Americans to have 1.00

00:21:15.420 identification for some government process? Because we know that voting, it would be discriminatory to

00:21:23.180 require a government ID. But yet the Committee on Reparations believes that the same public that

00:21:33.100 would find it a burden, or at least some of them, would find it a burden to get government ID,

00:21:39.180 would be able to plow through and prove through what, I don't know, DNA, or maybe

00:21:44.700 a search of the public records that they had descended from actual slaves in America.

00:21:52.700 I'm not sure this Committee is moving the ball forward, if you know what I mean.

00:21:57.420 I think they came up with a standard that is so provocative that they've reduced the chances

00:22:04.380 of reparations. Am I wrong? I think they just reduced the chance that this could ever happen.

00:22:10.300 Let me tell you what you would have done if you wanted to increase the chance.

00:22:16.060 Just find something that Republicans like, too. That's it. Just find something Republicans like.

00:22:23.180 For example, about something that would improve education options for everybody who's low income,

00:22:31.500 which would be very beneficial for the black American community, because they find themselves

00:22:39.180 in the deepest hole, especially with the education system. So if you say, let's fix the education

00:22:44.700 options, you know, maybe add choice, whatever, for everybody, then the Republicans can say,

00:22:50.860 wait, did you say for everybody? And then they say, yeah. And then somebody says, but you know,

00:22:56.140 this will disproportionately help the black public, because they're in a deeper hole. And the Republicans 0.87

00:23:02.220 say, we don't freaking care, as long as it's applied evenly. Right? Right?

00:23:08.860 Nobody's going to complain, if it's applied to everybody evenly, that it has an outcome that's a

00:23:15.500 little biased. That's everything Republicans want. So if it were hard to do it, I'd say don't try.

00:23:23.740 But given that it would be the easiest thing in the world to do, just come up with a plan that

00:23:28.620 the Republicans like. Vote. Done. Bring the country together. Fix the biggest source of systemic racism,

00:23:37.900 which is the unequal education system. But if you fix the unequal education system, granted,

00:23:45.740 there's a whole lifetime of people, you know, who aren't going to get that benefit. Or they could

00:23:51.260 maybe do something with training and adult education as well. Maybe.

00:23:55.100 Maybe. But if you did something that people liked, well, maybe you'd get something.

00:24:01.100 That's all I'd like to suggest.

00:24:02.940 How about this?

00:24:11.500 Is it possible for Trump not to be Trump for a minute? Don't we all think that we could be

00:24:19.660 Trump better than Trump? Now here's the problem. For some things, it feels like we could. But there

00:24:27.740 are a whole bunch of things you know you couldn't. You know, when you saw his letter,

00:24:33.580 talking about his hole in one that he got. And, you know, even people who are not fans had to admit

00:24:39.900 it was well written. It was just hilarious and on point. And it was just sort of perfect. It was

00:24:45.820 self-mocking without being too self-mocking. It just had everything. So as an entertainment and a piece

00:24:51.820 of writing, it was just brilliant, in my opinion. But then he does this. But then he does this.

00:24:58.860 He's so hard to unambiguously like. All right? So I'm a fan, of course. And I liked him personally

00:25:07.180 when I met him. So I liked the family. They were all very nice to me. So I have only positive feelings

00:25:12.380 about them personally. But he's in an interview with, I guess, just the news, John Solomon. And

00:25:23.100 Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release any damaging information he has about

00:25:29.900 the Biden family. Come on. Come on.

00:25:46.700 He's up. So Trump is up something like, I don't know, seven points against whoever runs against him,

00:25:53.980 if he were to run as president again. You know, he has this pretty much commanding lead and

00:25:59.420 situation. The only thing he could do wrong is say something that could be spun as him siding with

00:26:05.740 Russia. It's the only thing he could do wrong. And he knows exactly what he's doing. He doesn't fly 0.86

00:26:12.140 close to the sun by accident. If this looked like an accident to you, you haven't been paying attention.

00:26:22.140 This was no accident. This was someone saying, watch this.

00:26:30.780 Watch this. I feel like that's all it was.

00:26:34.620 I feel like he just said whatever is the most provocative thing he could say that would force

00:26:40.860 people to demand an apology or clarification, which would not be forthcoming.

00:26:49.820 So, you know, when you see this sort of thing juxtaposed with his statement about his hole-in-one,

00:26:58.380 the hole-in-one statement should give you a tip-off of when he's tongue-in-cheek. But it won't,

00:27:06.140 it's the people who want to interpret as entirely, you know, entirely serious. They're just going to do

00:27:12.620 that. So to me, I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have done it. But would I have been president of the

00:27:23.740 United States? No. No, probably not. So whatever he does keeps working in some ways. And then we're

00:27:32.540 all geniuses when something doesn't work. We're like, oh, we saw that coming. Why didn't he?

00:27:37.580 Well, I don't know why, you know, we're all confused a little bit about why things keep working. They

00:27:43.260 shouldn't work. But he seems to know how to harness energy. In this case, he created energy under

00:27:49.820 nothing. And then the energy will come, you know, directed back at him. And then because he's an energy

00:27:56.140 monster, he'll redirect the energy to his advantage. So first he creates the energy,

00:28:02.700 then he hands the energy to his enemies. They throw the energy at him. Hey, hey, hey, look what

00:28:09.500 you said. And he says, oh, I got more energy back than I gave you. I gave you like 10 pounds of energy,

00:28:16.220 and you gave me back a thousand pounds. Thank you. Thank you. Redirect.

00:28:20.220 Watching him do this in real time is just such a lesson on managing the public and everything else,

00:28:29.180 I guess. Well, even the friendly news sources, the friendly to the Democrat news sources,

00:28:37.580 are noting that Biden's gaffes are becoming a little bit harder to explain. A little bit harder to explain.

00:28:45.180 But now, and now they've resorted to the ridiculous. This is another, Joel Pollack also said this in a 0.53

00:28:55.260 tweet. By the way, if you're not following Joel Pollack on Twitter, you should be. Don't wait for me to

00:29:05.020 talk about it. But anyway, when the White House defended Biden talking about, you know, Putin should not be in

00:29:13.660 charge. And it sounded like he wanted him removed. But then he got walked back. And now they're saying

00:29:20.940 that Biden was speaking in his personal capacity. And as Joel points out, there's no such thing as a

00:29:28.300 president's personal capacity. What? What? You know, maybe in some weird philosophical way,

00:29:38.380 but not in a real way. If you are the president of the United States and you give an opinion about what should

00:29:45.660 happen in foreign affairs, it's not your personal opinion, even if it is your personal opinion.

00:29:52.460 It doesn't even mean anything when you're the actual president. So, and it's funny that it takes somebody to

00:29:59.660 actually say that before you say, oh yeah, there's not really a difference. All right,

00:30:06.780 apparently Chris Rock is selling tons of tickets to his stand-up show. So he's coming out way ahead.

00:30:15.980 So now we have the weird situation where, unless this was fake news, and I worry that it was,

00:30:21.980 because I saw somebody else say that he didn't make any statement about it. But I saw a statement that

00:30:26.380 Chris Rock said, in which he apologized. That happened, or was that fake news? Did I get taken by fake news?

00:30:34.460 I think he apologized, right? Somebody says it's fake. Oh, really? Oh, it was a fake.

00:30:46.940 Oh, wow. Huh. Okay. The fake news was very good. It was a well-written fake.

00:30:57.020 So, but at least, at least I could smell it a little bit, enough to ask the question.

00:31:04.780 All right. Wow. Okay. Anyway, Chris Rock is coming out ahead, because he's selling a lot of tickets,

00:31:11.740 and I think people appreciated that he didn't get violent, and he didn't freak out, and he went on with the show,

00:31:17.340 and, you know, and even if you think he shouldn't have said what he said,

00:31:21.660 you're not really going to come on down too hard on a comedian being a comedian. Especially,

00:31:28.220 I think there was evidence he didn't know about the alopecia, which is perfectly believable.

00:31:34.940 So, no, it wasn't a staged little flap, I'm sure of that. So, Chris Rock comes out ahead. How about

00:31:42.860 Jada Pinkett Smith? Did she come out ahead? I'd say yes. Because do you think the women hate it when men 1.00

00:31:51.020 defend them like that? No, they don't hate it. Nope. Nope. They might say they do, but they don't hate it.

00:31:59.820 And I'd be surprised if she hates it. So I think she came out ahead, you know, on an interpersonal level.

00:32:05.900 How about did she come out ahead in any other way? I would say yes. Because she's very,

00:32:16.380 she's been classy about not commenting about, except I think she did one meme she posted about

00:32:23.740 being here for the healing or something. So basically, just no comment except one positive

00:32:29.100 one about healing, I guess. Good. I think she also brought the message about what Propecia is, 0.68

00:32:35.020 and more importantly, more importantly, how, how emotionally disturbing it is for the person with

00:32:45.260 it. It would be real easy for you to say, well, of all the problems, that's not the big one. And by

00:32:51.340 the way, she's rich and beautiful. And didn't she shave her head because she wanted to anyway? I don't

00:32:57.340 think so. I think probably it was always alopecia. Just a guess. But, you know, I think she came out ahead.

00:33:03.900 Am I wrong? I think she looks good. I think a message that she'd like you to understand,

00:33:11.580 which is people suffering from this probably have more of a suffering than you would imagine.

00:33:17.020 I think she looks good. How about Will Smith? He got an Oscar. He got a standing ovation.

00:33:24.700 He apologized. Now, that's not fake, right? That Will Smith apologized for the hit? I think he did.

00:33:33.820 And I feel as if it won't affect his movies. I don't think so. I feel like everybody came out ahead.

00:33:45.100 The Academy Award got better ratings. The media got clicks. I had something to talk about. You were

00:33:52.220 entertained. Is this the weirdest situation in the world? Literally everybody came out ahead.

00:33:58.060 I'm not wrong about that. I mean, you know, Chris Rock suffered one slap and then sold four times as

00:34:07.660 many tickets and got rich. And he's more relevant than he's ever been. And I don't know. It looks like

00:34:16.460 he came out ahead. Some people say they lost respect for Will Smith. But here's the thing with

00:34:22.460 celebrity. It matters more that you made people like you than you made people dislike you.

00:34:30.140 Because the people who were sort of willing to dislike him, in other words, they were, you know,

00:34:36.140 probably lukewarm on him in the first place, they weren't going to buy his tickets and go to his movies.

00:34:41.340 The people who already liked him probably like him a little bit more and more likely to buy a ticket.

00:34:46.940 If I had to bet, I don't know it'll hurt his box office appeal at all. I don't think it will.

00:34:54.060 You might lose some, but then gain some. Hard to say. Well, Putin has apparently refocused his army on

00:35:03.740 the east. And people say, is this a change in strategy or a sign he is losing? What do you think?

00:35:11.100 Why is Putin refocusing away from capturing Kiev and focusing on the east where he's already

00:35:18.300 got control? So he's going to consolidate control. Why would he do that? Is it because he's losing?

00:35:25.580 Or is it just good strategy? And it was his plan all along? Well, I would guess that whatever his

00:35:33.900 plan all along was, it got some modifications. But it might be that they can just ignore a cave

00:35:40.940 until everything else is settled and then go back. Or maybe they don't want to keep incurring losses

00:35:48.700 around Kiev, if that's where there are the most losses. So maybe he's just cutting his losses during

00:35:53.980 the time he's negotiating. So it doesn't look like he's losing anything. It looks like he's winning.

00:35:59.580 We don't know, basically. That's the bottom line. But I'll tell you what the big problem here is.

00:36:05.180 In order to make peace, doesn't one side need to think it's losing? There might be exceptions to

00:36:13.020 that. But generally speaking, you don't really get peace until one side thinks it is losing or will

00:36:19.180 lose, right? And the problem is, they both think they're winning. So Putin, I think he can make a very

00:36:25.980 strong case that he's winning or will win, even though it will cost a lot. I think he can make the case

00:36:33.100 he's winning. And I think that Ukraine is already making the case through their propaganda that

00:36:38.860 they're winning. So Ukraine can't say, hey, we're totally winning this thing, but we'll give you lots

00:36:45.660 of things for peace. So Ukraine has to make an offer in the peace deal that reflects their propaganda.

00:36:53.820 And so they did. Their propaganda says we're totally winning this thing. And so they made an offer that

00:36:59.820 you wouldn't have made unless you thought you were going to win the thing. And of course,

00:37:03.660 Putin thinks he's winning. So he's not going to accept an offer that suggests the other side's

00:37:08.300 winning. That's not going to happen. So how could you possibly have peace? The only way you can have

00:37:15.420 peace is somebody has got to lose or be in the direction to lose or looks like it's going to happen

00:37:20.620 any moment. Now, I heard a term that I had not heard before, which is, what is it called? It's about

00:37:32.540 when an army is getting ready to collapse. Oh, a culminating point. So this is Michael Ryan,

00:37:39.900 a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy. So he thinks, he speculates,

00:37:47.100 and I don't think this is a widespread opinion yet, but he speculates that the Russian army might be

00:37:53.580 reaching a culminating point. Now, as I understand it, the idiot explanation of that is you have enough 0.97

00:38:03.820 food until you don't. And you have enough ammunition until you don't. And the don't part can happen 1.00

00:38:12.220 suddenly, and then everything falls apart, right? Because if you're looking at how much ammunition

00:38:19.500 you have, and it's just enough to escape, it's not enough to attack, what the hell are you going to do?

00:38:25.560 If you don't know there's more coming, all you have is this much ammunition, and you think, well, I could

00:38:31.140 probably do it to cover my escape, but I don't think it's going to help me attack anything, and it doesn't look like

00:38:36.760 it's going to change. You would instantly go from offense to defense, right? Same with food. If you have

00:38:44.340 food, you keep fighting. If it's the first day they tell you there's no food, you say, wait a minute, did I

00:38:51.220 hear that right? Today's a no food day? When does the food come back? And they're like, well, we don't know.

00:38:58.460 They keep attacking our food trucks. It's a culminating point, I think, if I'm interpreting right.

00:39:05.060 So the Russian army, at least in pockets, might be approaching a complete disintegration point.

00:39:16.000 But if it happens, it would happen quickly. Somebody says the Viet Cong ate rat meat. Yeah, it's hard to

00:39:22.920 completely understand what people will do to survive, so I suppose they would just start, you know, raping the 0.93

00:39:31.440 Ukrainian countryside. But even that would be the army falling apart, because even to rape and pillage, 0.98

00:39:38.320 they'd probably disperse. So what do you think? If you had to guess, is any significant part of the

00:39:47.560 Russian military force near a culmination point? Well, I'm guessing no. If near means in the next 0.84

00:39:58.380 month, I'd say no. And if it takes longer than that, then Russia will just find new ways to get 0.93

00:40:05.140 supplies, I suppose. So it looks like there's something about this situation where everybody

00:40:11.860 can resupply. But if you can't resupply quickly or well, maybe you can keep limping along to do a

00:40:18.360 peace deal without without getting your reaching your culmination point. So here's a story I read in one

00:40:25.040 publication. I forget which one. I think it was a British publication. That one of the reasons that Ukraine is 0.99

00:40:34.320 doing such a good job is of defense is drones, but not the big ones, not not the kind that come from Turkey and

00:40:44.220 look like a big rocket. I'm talking about the little ones that you might have at home. So apparently there

00:40:50.320 was some effort in Ukraine that was fairly advanced to sort of self-organize all the people who knew

00:40:57.740 about drones, military or non-military, didn't matter. And they formed some kind of a quasi-drone

00:41:04.600 air force of small drones. And, you know, they were cobbled together in various ways and different

00:41:11.980 models. And part of the story said they were having trouble getting parts because of, you know, things

00:41:20.140 are banned in certain countries, to which I thought that doesn't make sense because NATO would just give

00:41:25.020 them the parts. I mean, if it's a military thing, I can't imagine that those that those restrictions

00:41:32.820 would, you know, be permanent. If we wanted to arm Ukraine, we could certainly get them some hobby 1.00

00:41:39.640 drone parts, I think. But the story goes that that little unit with the well-trained people that were

00:41:49.040 part of it would go out on some kind of four-wheeled vehicles at night. They'd have their night

00:41:54.740 vision small drones spotting stuff, and they would blow up the most strategic things. So they'd blow

00:42:02.200 up whoever's in front. And then once they slowed things down, they'd look to pick off, you know,

00:42:08.920 colonels and, you know, officers and, I don't know, supply trucks and stuff, that sort of thing. So if you

00:42:16.380 can pick and choose, after you slow them down, you basically can just stop a whole convoy. And it looks

00:42:23.220 like, to some extent, maybe they did. Now remember, every story that comes out of this region

00:42:29.460 has to be suspect. It's all propaganda, fog of war. But it's what I was expecting to hear.

00:42:38.680 So remember, I'll tell you this too many times, you'll be sick of it. I think I was the only person

00:42:43.560 I know of. There had to be more. But only what I heard saying that the Ukrainians would be unusually

00:42:50.420 effective because of new technology that we had not seen employed before. This is that. Now, if

00:42:58.020 this is true, and that's a big if, this would be a clear case of smaller drones being deployed in a

00:43:06.080 way that had never been used this effectively before. Yes, small drones have been used for a long

00:43:12.000 time, but not like this. So it's more about the way they're using it and effectively building a drone

00:43:19.380 air force attack unit to, you know, strategically attack things. Now, here's the thing that I found

00:43:27.020 fascinating. You wondered how the small drones could get through because, of course, Russia would 0.92

00:43:35.560 have jamming stuff to be able to jam the signal, right? But apparently, the strategy is they wait for

00:43:41.160 the Russians to launch their own drones. Because apparently, you can't really have a convoy in

00:43:46.960 2022 without your own drones. And you would kill your own drones if you sent out some kind of

00:43:54.700 suppressing signal. So the Ukrainians would wait for the suppressing signal to be turned off, which means 0.74

00:44:01.440 the Russians are launching their own drones, which means you can launch your drones. So they've got this

00:44:07.020 whole, you know, drone, electronic, you know, battle going on that is, and I'll say again, I don't know if 0.99

00:44:17.660 we're really reading the actual tactics of a thing happening or is total bullshit. It could be like the 0.97

00:44:24.540 ghost of Kiev and all the rest. It could be complete bullshit. But it sure sounds right. Sounds good. 1.00

00:44:32.620 All right. Ukraine allegedly, and here's another maybe bullshit fake news story, allegedly fired 0.97

00:44:43.560 some artillery into Russian territory. And at least one report, and I don't think any of this is 0.93

00:44:49.620 confirmed or even reliable. It may have been like a weapons depot or ammunition depot or something like

00:44:56.440 that. But here's my question. Why is Ukraine waiting so long to attack Russia? Who made the rule 0.55

00:45:06.340 that only Russia can attack inside Ukraine, but Ukraine's military, which must have some

00:45:12.860 some capability? Why can't they attack Russia? I've never really understood that. Is it because 0.86

00:45:20.880 Putin will get mad? I mean, he acts like he's kind of mad right now, a little bit. Somebody says no

00:45:29.700 ability, but that seems so unlikely. Are you telling me that they can't even get a terrorist attack into

00:45:35.240 Moscow? Not recommending it. Not recommending it. I don't recommend violence. But I'm wondering about

00:45:41.880 the strategy. Because if the problem is that the Russian citizens are not getting the message of

00:45:48.920 what's happening over there, how do you send the message? That's how I'd send it. If I were an

00:45:55.240 unscrupulous leader and didn't care about casualties, I would start blowing stuff up in Moscow any way I

00:46:03.120 could through individual agents. You know, because I got to be honest, you don't have to blow up things

00:46:11.380 like the Twin Towers with spectacular attacks. I'm pretty sure, and I don't want to get into

00:46:18.880 details and you shouldn't either, but with no exaggeration whatsoever, I'm pretty sure I could

00:46:25.620 take out in a city by myself. Am I wrong? It wouldn't be that hard, I don't think. I think I actually

00:46:38.200 could. Now, I'm not going to tell you how I would do it. It wouldn't be straightforward, but

00:46:44.540 yeah. I mean, yeah, it's doable, right? I don't want to give you ideas, but all I want you to do,

00:46:57.780 those of you who say it can't be done, just look at the comments from the people saying yes.

00:47:03.440 The people saying yes have already figured out how to do it. The people saying no, it's just that

00:47:10.280 you haven't figured out how to do it. And I've never understood why the Islamic, you know, the 1.00

00:47:17.020 terrorists who are the extremists, I've never understood why they only do attacks one way,

00:47:24.260 because it's so limiting, when they could just take out a whole city pretty easily. Nobody does it,

00:47:28.880 I don't know why. All right, well, don't get your ideas from me, but I don't understand why Ukraine 1.00

00:47:35.160 isn't doing it. There must be some strategy behind that. And here's some Disney fake news.

00:47:45.200 I've been ignoring this whole Florida don't say gay bill, because it's not really don't say gay.

00:47:51.280 So I guess the bill in Florida that schools will not be allowed to teach anything about sexuality to

00:47:59.960 kids below a certain age, is that true? Did I summarize that correctly? Because I'm not really

00:48:06.440 following the story, but that's basically it. Okay, people saying yes to that. And that seems fairly

00:48:12.980 reasonable, right? I can see how most parents would say, no, leave that to us, you know, at least up to a

00:48:19.000 certain age. You know, if you're teaching a 14-year-old about birth control, then you have

00:48:28.280 my attention, right? That maybe you can make the argument, and I'm not going to make an argument

00:48:32.860 pro or con here, I don't want to get into it, but you can make the argument that the school would be

00:48:37.100 a good way to capture that, because parents don't do a good job at it. You know, you can make an

00:48:42.320 argument. But it's hard to make an argument that the parents shouldn't be solely in control of the

00:48:48.680 earliest impressions for something of that importance. But here's what I'd like to say.

00:48:56.960 The opponents of that have turned it into a don't say gay meme, basically. So they're

00:49:05.780 characterizing the don't teach our kids anything about sexuality. They're characterizing that as,

00:49:11.720 oh, you're not allowed to say gay, which of course is total misrepresentation. But as a

00:49:19.640 misrepresentation, it's really good. So persuasion-wise, really good. I mean, let's just look at this.

00:49:29.020 First of all, it's got a say and gay in it. What happens when you put a rhyme in something? 0.57

00:49:34.880 If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. We've talked about this many times. If it's fast and sticky

00:49:42.020 and it rhymes, in California, they had a thing about putting on your seatbelt, and it was a click

00:49:49.780 it or tick it. Click it or tick it. These are all good. So yes, don't say gay looks like professional 1.00

00:49:57.920 work to me. It could be accidental and then it caught on. Could be. But it looks professional 0.72

00:50:05.960 because it's got technique built into it. A little bit more than you normally see from something that

00:50:12.240 occurs naturally. So I'd say somebody who's got some skills came up with that, and I'd say that it

00:50:17.560 probably works. Now, there was a video I saw on Twitter in which a Disney public, a Disney official

00:50:28.780 of some kind, was saying that they're striving to make 50% of the characters in Disney content

00:50:34.400 to be either LGBTQIA, and I don't even know what the IA is anymore, and racial minorities.

00:50:43.760 So between the two categories, they'd like 50% of their characters. And of course, people

00:50:52.180 were outraged. People were outraged. Because they said, you're so woke. Why, Disney? Why

00:51:00.700 must you force, you know, 50% of your people in your movies to be racial minorities and LGBTQIA?

00:51:10.520 Why? Well, all for a reason. It could be that that's exactly what the country is.

00:51:18.380 Could it be that what Disney said is, yeah, we want our movies to reflect roughly what the country

00:51:24.100 is, which is that. That's what the country is. Here are the actual numbers. 58% of the country

00:51:33.440 is white. So remember, she said 50% would be minorities, but 58% are white. So you'd say,

00:51:41.780 oh, that's a little high. No, because she said minorities and LGBTQ. What percentage of the

00:51:51.260 population of any population, let's say the white population, is also LGBTQIA? And it's about

00:52:00.040 6%. So if you start with your 58% are white in America, and then you're not counting 6% of

00:52:09.620 them as being LGBTQIA, you get about 52% are white and straight, if that's even the word

00:52:17.420 anymore. And Disney just said, that's what we're going to make our content, just like the people.

00:52:24.020 Now, how many of you were offended when you heard they were going to make their content just like

00:52:31.860 the public? Probably some of you. Am I right? Just because nobody did the math, and when you first

00:52:41.180 hear it, you're like, whoa, what are they doing? That seems like too high. And I think there's a known

00:52:46.740 phenomenon where people are bad at estimating what percentage of things there are in the country.

00:52:52.440 That's a known thing, right? This is one of those. And I cheekily tweeted about this. And I said that

00:52:59.780 in related news, 40% of all sick days in the workplace are on a Monday or a Friday. 40%. Can you believe

00:53:06.900 that? That's an outrageous number. 40% of all the people calling in sick are doing that coincidentally

00:53:14.740 on a Friday or a Monday? Huh? How about that? Oh, wait. Monday plus Friday would be two end of the

00:53:25.800 five work days, which is exactly 40%. That's right. No, I actually did a Dilbert comic about that.

00:53:34.620 All right. So here's a story about Alex Epstein, author. He's got a book coming out called The

00:53:47.400 Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And apparently there was going to be a Washington Post article he was

00:53:54.400 warned about that was going to try to cancel him and paint him as a racist because he thinks there's a

00:54:00.740 moral reason for, or apparently he argues in a book I haven't yet read, but plan to, that there's a

00:54:07.900 moral case for fossil fuels. Now, I think you've all heard the argument. I would assume that you're

00:54:13.880 going to get lots of, you know, good meat on this. But you've heard other people have made the argument

00:54:18.280 that fossil fuels are better for the poor than they are for anybody. I guess it's supposedly good for

00:54:25.580 everybody, but the poor especially needed to survive because they need energy. And if you

00:54:30.540 can't get it another way, you're going to have to get it that way. Now, here's the thing. Do you

00:54:35.780 believe that there's a real thing where the media colludes or maybe even just one media entity to

00:54:44.760 write a hit piece to take out the reputation of somebody who has a book that goes against the

00:54:51.200 narrative? Do you believe that's real? It's very real. Okay, you're all saying yes. I wasn't sure if

00:55:00.560 you were all convinced. No, it's very real. Bloomberg, one of the Bloomberg publications did this to me

00:55:08.680 when I was saying good things about Trump when he was starting to get traction. So you could see

00:55:15.140 people getting picked off one by one and I survived. Now, I told you earlier that I googled myself and I

00:55:23.340 was trying to see if that Bloomberg piece was still the top hit because for years, for years,

00:55:30.800 one of the, or it was either the top or one of the top news hits was a hit piece because it was a big

00:55:36.840 publication and it was recent. So it says there at the top. Now it's gone away and I wonder if it ever

00:55:43.540 deserved to be there because it went away. I don't know, there weren't that many new things that were

00:55:51.100 like major news pieces to replace it, but it went away. So these are the things that I wonder about. I

00:55:57.540 understand that the book by Robert F. Kennedy, the real Anthony Fauci, he was also subject to the media

00:56:08.020 colluding to basically ignore that book. I think he had no, no book reviews, but sold a million books.

00:56:15.580 How do you sell a million books and not get a book review from one of the major publications?

00:56:21.580 It's collusion of some kind.

00:56:25.340 All right. So I would recommend to you Alex Epstein's book. It's coming out in May, I guess,

00:56:30.680 called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. And like I said, I haven't read it, but obviously people have

00:56:40.600 seen advanced copies. There's definitely an effort to make sure that whatever is in that book

00:56:47.000 does not be, is not seen as credible. So you should ask yourself, why would they try to kill a book

00:56:55.640 before it even comes out? And the best reason to do it is that it's true. That's the best reason.

00:57:03.840 So I'm thinking that there's some good stuff in there that somebody really wants to die.

00:57:11.760 All right.

00:57:15.280 All right. That, ladies and gentlemen, is just about everything I want to say.

00:57:19.960 And I think you'll agree that this has been a peak experience for most of you. For some of you,

00:57:27.740 the very best thing that will happen today, for some of you, others, it will just be the beginning

00:57:32.480 of an amazing day. No, I cannot send your book that you send to me. Do you know it's embarrassing

00:57:39.640 when people ask me to fill in a form and I tell them I can't? I'm disabled. I'll tell you that.

00:57:47.360 But my drawing hand has a focal dystonia, which means there's literally nothing wrong with my

00:57:53.360 hand. And I'm still disabled. Because the only thing I can't do is write with a pen. It's the

00:57:59.680 only thing I can't do. I mean, I could juggle, play the drums, I could play any instrument.

00:58:05.580 The hand is perfect. There's nothing wrong with it physically. There's a little mental glitch

00:58:10.760 that happened because I overused it. And then the brain said, you can't do that anymore. And that

00:58:15.320 won't let me. So my hand won't work when I put a pen in it and put it to paper. It just

00:58:19.880 freezes. So I draw left-handed, but I've never taken the time to learn to write left-handed

00:58:28.780 quickly enough that I could fill in a form. I mean, if I took forever, I could. It's called

00:58:33.920 a focal dystonia. It's related to the voice problem I had. They often travel in pairs.

00:58:41.320 But thankfully, they usually don't go in more than pairs. So I'm probably two and done in

00:58:52.020 all likelihood. All right. Let me see what's going on here. And I will talk to you soon.

00:59:07.460 Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good day.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 30, 2022

Episode 1698 Scott Adams： How to Fix All The Fake News, Trump Is Being Trump Again, And More Fun

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