Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1716 Scott Adams： Elon Musk's Plan B for Twitter, How To Avoid Anxiety

00:00:00.000 local's platform, by the way. Sometimes I go late, but they get good stuff. And would you like good

00:00:05.300 stuff too? So here's the situation. I woke up this morning, like I do every morning, whether it's a

00:00:14.480 holiday or a weekend, whether I'm healthy or sick, happy or unhappy, because I like to be here for

00:00:23.720 you. Because I like it. If I didn't like it, I probably wouldn't do it as much, right? So I

00:00:29.740 like being here. And that is the first benefit you get this morning. Don't you prefer being with

00:00:36.040 people who want to be there? If you think about it, if there's one requirement you ask of people

00:00:42.400 to be around you, just one thing, just enjoy being there. That's it. It's not really hard. Just show

00:00:51.460 me you enjoy being in the room with me, and I am so happy to be around you. That's all it takes.

00:00:57.220 Now that is a little tip for the day. You say to yourself, how can I make the world a better

00:01:03.760 place? Just show me you're happy to be in the room. That's all. Now, how would you like to take

00:01:10.020 that advice, multiply it by 100, before we're done here today? That's what's going to happen. And it's

00:01:17.300 all going to start around the time of the simultaneous sip. That will be the launch pad,

00:01:23.660 really the beginning of something so special, so amazing, that you might even forget it's Easter

00:01:30.020 for a minute. Oh, then you can return to your religious beliefs. But for a moment, for a moment,

00:01:36.580 you can have a profound spiritual experience right after the simultaneous sip. And all you need for

00:01:43.720 that would be a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask,

00:01:49.320 a vessel of any kind, except for a cave with a big rock in front of it, which I understand is not so

00:01:57.040 good for containing its contents, if you know what I mean. Happy Easter. Bra, bra, bra. Join me now

00:02:02.580 for the simultaneous sip. It's the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit. Go.

00:02:12.940 Ah, yeah. Wow. Yes. Jesus is not the only person who has risen. I believe that my spirit has

00:02:26.300 has risen, too. Feeling quite good. How about you? Anybody feeling better than you did 10 seconds

00:02:35.220 ago? A little bit, right? You started feeling whatever you were feeling, wherever your baseline

00:02:40.560 was, and then simultaneous sip happened. Probably, I don't know, somewhere between 5% and 37% improvement

00:02:48.560 just that quickly. So you're somewhere in that range.

00:02:51.960 Here's something that I've been hearing a lot. How many times have you heard a conversation

00:02:59.760 that goes roughly like this? I have a lot of anxiety. Okay, not yourself, you know, somebody

00:03:07.320 else is talking. I have a lot of anxiety. Anybody heard that lately? Is there anybody in your life

00:03:15.340 who has told you that they're having anxiety? Well, it seems to be some kind of giant epidemic

00:03:25.700 that's coming across the country. Now, do people with anxiety sleep well? They do not. They

00:03:34.620 do not. And the reason that they don't sleep well is because, why is it that people with anxiety

00:03:41.140 don't sleep well? Well, it's the anxiety, right? The anxiety causes them not to sleep well. Now,

00:03:48.900 what would be something that might cause you to have anxiety? Well, I'll tell you one thing that

00:03:57.220 really can limit your ability to function well. It's not getting enough sleep. So there are people

00:04:04.520 who complain that their anxiety is preventing them from sleeping, but also their sleeping is

00:04:09.780 preventing them from getting over their anxiety because they're so not well rested that they're

00:04:15.460 anxious. And then you put those two things together and they just keep getting worse and worse until

00:04:21.040 you're depressed. Now, what do people who are anxious and can't get to sleep do when they're not

00:04:29.220 getting to sleep? It's 2022. And it's, you know, it's, it's 11pm. And you're thinking that wouldn't

00:04:38.380 it be great if I were asleep about now, but you can't sleep. So what do you do? Probably take out

00:04:45.200 your phone, start looking at some viral videos, maybe check some text messages, right? And so if you

00:04:56.320 figured it all out now, the anxiety causes lack of sleep, the lack of sleep causes you to use the

00:05:02.940 smartphone, the smartphone causes you to become anxious, which causes you to lose sleep, which

00:05:09.480 makes your anxiety worse, which there's really only one thing you can do if you have bad anxiety,

00:05:15.060 you need to distract yourself with the phone. So one way to cure your anxiety is to distract yourself

00:05:23.140 by using your smartphone, which gives you anxiety and keeps you from sleeping. And then have I made

00:05:31.140 my point? Let me, I'm going to tell you a story that sounds unrelated, and then I'm going to bash

00:05:38.120 them together. I'm going to marry them right in front of you. And they're going to have a baby idea. 1.00

00:05:43.400 Seems like a completely unrelated story. Here it goes. I've been eating especially clean lately,

00:05:50.140 meaning, you know, far fewer additives, more natural, and feeling really good. So the clean diet is

00:05:59.860 definitely, every day I just feel a little better, just physically, I can tell. But one day, my,

00:06:08.560 I guess my cockiness at how well things were going with my diet, caused me to eat an entire bag of chips,

00:06:15.100 chips, because I don't know if anybody ever told me this, but chips, the ones with the little ruffles

00:06:22.280 in them, it doesn't have to be the ruffles brand, but the ridges, they're really good. Has anybody

00:06:28.940 told you that? I mean, they're really good. And I have pretty good willpower. I pride myself on being

00:06:36.360 able to, you know, have some discipline in a variety of areas, but nobody's perfect. And with all of my

00:06:43.800 powers, have I mentioned how good potato chips are with the little ridges? Oh my God, they're so good

00:06:51.880 that they do the commercial where you can't have just one, right? But that applies to the other

00:06:59.740 brands as well. You can't really eat one chip. Do you know how many times I've literally tried to do

00:07:06.180 that? I've actually tested it. I'll walk over, I'll take out the one chip, and I'll eat it, and they'll say,

00:07:12.680 oh, it's like exploding with pleasure in my mouth. I'm so happy. I will never need another chip as

00:07:19.160 long as I, well, one more chip isn't going to kill me, right? Two chips. Is there really a difference

00:07:26.200 between two chips and one? Am I right? Not really. Not really. If I said somebody ate two potato chips,

00:07:33.500 would you say, oh, that's so different than the person who ate one potato chip? No difference.

00:07:37.460 And is there really a difference between three potato chips and two? I don't think so.

00:07:44.060 And what if you get up to a larger number, like 50 potato chips? If you've eaten 50 potato chips in a

00:07:49.760 row, is it the 51st potato chip that's going to make the difference? No, but it'll be delicious.

00:07:56.140 So there is actually no reason to stop eating potato chips until there are none left. That's logic.

00:08:06.020 So I was following that logical path that day from first chip to bottom of the bag, and this was after

00:08:15.340 eating really cleanly for a few weeks. Guess how I felt? Not only immediately when I was done,

00:08:24.320 but the next day, the entire next day, it just completely threw me off my healthy path. Probably

00:08:34.060 had, you know, mental impact, probably had energy impact. I actually looked different in the mirror

00:08:40.580 with my shirt off, right? If I took my shirt off, I'm like, uh, I thought I'd been making some gains

00:08:47.960 lately, but not really. One day later, after the chips have had their time to work through the system

00:08:56.300 and the salt, I guess, I looked the same, you know, so it lasted one day. But the amount of impact

00:09:04.860 that one deviation had was just so noticeable, but only because my palate had been cleaned

00:09:11.420 by a good diet. Now, suppose my diet had always been sketchy. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it

00:09:18.440 wasn't. During the day, I might have a healthy thing, but, you know, eat something less healthy

00:09:22.580 at night. I never would have noticed that the potato chips kicked me in the ass, or because

00:09:30.060 everything else would be kicking me in the ass also, so I would just get lost in the noise. 0.92

00:09:35.320 So it's quite an experiment to eat clean for two weeks, because most of you could pull that off,

00:09:41.820 right? I mean, it's really hard to eat clean forever. You know, I've tried. It's really hard.

00:09:48.420 But you could do it for two weeks. Almost everybody could. And just see what happens. You will be amazed

00:09:53.920 how hard it is to have something unhealthy in your body after two weeks of not. Just immediately,

00:09:59.900 you're like, oh, what the hell? Why did I do that? Even things like simple carbs that you thought

00:10:06.660 were harmless. It's like, ah, some french fries. If you're eating clean, those french fries will

00:10:12.940 really have an impact on you, and not in a good way. Although they'll be delicious. They might be

00:10:17.860 twice as delicious if you haven't had them in a while. All right. So here's my big putting it all

00:10:27.940 together there. So the people who have anxiety have not figured out that the things they do

00:10:33.040 influence the way they feel. And how consistent that is, if you look at your life, the people who

00:10:42.580 can't figure stuff out, like they've got a problem and they can't solve it, they have somehow missed

00:10:48.240 the central lesson in life, that the things you put into your body have an influence on how you feel.

00:10:57.940 And as dumb as it is to even say that, because when I say it, every one of you say,

00:11:04.800 well, obviously, obviously the fuel you put into your body makes a difference. But people don't

00:11:09.980 realize how much. I think everybody understands the things you do to yourself have an impact,

00:11:16.200 but they don't know how much. It's the how much that matters. And that's what the potato chip story

00:11:21.920 was about. If I had not taken out the other distractions so I could see what just the potato

00:11:27.100 chips did, I would have no idea, no idea how damaging that was to me. I just thought I would

00:11:33.180 have felt bad all day for a variety of reasons that I would never be able to understand.

00:11:37.660 So when you meet somebody who's successful, here's a little hypnosis for you. I'm going

00:11:47.300 to hypnotize you right now by telling you something that you're going to remember that will then

00:11:53.060 be reinforced in the future. All right? So it only works if you're willing to let it work.

00:11:58.920 But every time you encounter somebody who's successful in any realm, the question you got

00:12:07.740 to ask yourself is, does this person believe that the things they put into their body have

00:12:14.760 an influence on their performance? And watch what happens. Now, it won't be 100%, you know,

00:12:22.040 not every person, but you're going to see something like 80 to 90% of the successful people

00:12:28.060 are very strongly, keenly aware in a way that informs all of their actions that the things

00:12:35.220 they're doing to their body influence their happiness, their anxiety, their health, their

00:12:40.340 fitness, their capability, their energy, everything. Everything. How many of you have at least once

00:12:49.420 since you've been watching me, and I mention it all the time because I've got a big birthday coming

00:12:54.800 up? So I'll be 65 in a month or so. How many of you have wondered how I can get as much done as I

00:13:03.560 get done and stay, let's say at least mentally, a little bit young? Do you ever wonder? And the

00:13:13.900 reason is that I'm really, really careful about what I put in my body and what I put it through. Now,

00:13:19.860 I don't get enough sleep, so that's something I'm working on, but that has more to do with,

00:13:23.880 you know, just current events. It has nothing to do with... So I don't have a problem sleeping.

00:13:29.760 I have a problem finding enough time to sleep, which is a whole separate problem. So I'm completely

00:13:36.500 aware of my need to sleep more. And probably I'll take a long nap as soon as we're done here.

00:13:42.560 But the people who make it a lifestyle to understand that everything they're putting in

00:13:50.760 their body is making a difference that they can notice, it's the difference you can notice

00:13:55.940 that's the part that makes the successful people stand out. Because they just know that you're an

00:14:01.720 instrument. Sort of like a race car. You know, imagine the best race car driver in the world,

00:14:06.700 but the car is poorly maintained. You could never win anything. But if you had the best maintained

00:14:13.160 car, probably you don't have to be the best driver in the world to win the race, if you have the best

00:14:19.060 car, best maintained. So there you go. Can Elon Musk win in his goal to buy Twitter? Well, he's mentioned

00:14:32.400 a plan B, and we know that the board has a poison pill, and maybe the government will try to stop

00:14:38.500 him, and maybe there'll be various pressures put on him in various different ways to make him back

00:14:45.060 off. But if you know anything about Elon Musk's past business adventures, there's not a lot of

00:14:54.660 quitting in him, is there? Do you remember the time that Elon Musk quit? You know, he tried to do

00:15:01.420 something, and then it was hard, and so he quit. Well, I don't. I don't know. I feel like regular

00:15:08.840 people give up once in a while, but it feels like nothing makes him quit. Certainly not being near

00:15:16.820 bankruptcy. Certainly not having to work 20 hours a day. Certainly not, you know, you can imagine the

00:15:23.020 pressure that was on him when he was near bankruptcy after being rich. But it doesn't seem to stop him.

00:15:29.600 So can we imagine that Elon Musk would simply be dissuaded because it's difficult? I don't think

00:15:38.440 so. Does anybody believe that he'll stop whatever he's trying to do because it was difficult? I don't

00:15:46.260 think so, right? So you're not going to scare him away. So let's assume that whatever happens

00:15:51.800 isn't him saying, you know, I took a run at it, but I got other things to do. Probably not. I feel

00:15:58.580 like he's already, you know, got his teeth into it, and it's pit bull time. Like, he's not going to let

00:16:04.720 go. Whatever happens, it's not going to be because he let his jaw loose of the target. So here are some

00:16:12.500 things that I've learned in the last day because I don't know really anything about this area of

00:16:17.460 mergers and acquisitions. So smart people say that if you sue the board of directors for rejecting the

00:16:25.100 offer, you're not going to get away with that. And here's why. Because the board of directors is only

00:16:33.340 responsible for picking management. They're not responsible for the decision. And I thought to

00:16:39.820 myself, damn it, that sounds like that's probably right. Right? So if management makes a decision,

00:16:48.580 I suppose you could say the board should have replaced them or something. But they'd have to

00:16:53.460 have a strong reason, and I don't think we've seen that. And here's the real killer. You can't even

00:17:00.420 assume anybody's doing anything wrong at Twitter, the board or the managers or anybody, unless they have

00:17:07.120 no argument for rejecting the offer. All they really need is a good argument. And the board of

00:17:14.180 directors is not responsible for knowing who has the better one, really. They're responsible for

00:17:19.000 picking management, but they're not really responsible for double-checking management's

00:17:24.500 decisions on everything. You know, it's more of a longer term. Is this manager capable? And, you know,

00:17:31.820 that sort of thing. So it seems unlikely that management of Twitter could not make an argument

00:17:40.760 that Twitter would go up on its own, with or without Elon Musk, to the amount that he's willing

00:17:46.680 to pay. Do you think that they would have any trouble making that argument? Because it's an argument

00:17:51.880 it's an argument that's made all the time. Oh, yeah, we're just we're putting into place our

00:17:56.640 advertising strategy. It hasn't been fully rolled down. But wait, when that's rolled down, look at

00:18:02.440 our internal documents. Our internal documents have been saying for a long time that as soon as our

00:18:07.240 new ad platform rolls out, I don't know if they have a new ad platform. I'm just making up the part

00:18:11.800 about the ad platform. But they're going to say something. They say, oh, this management plan we've

00:18:17.040 rolled out, you can see that even on paper we say we're going to double our stock price

00:18:20.740 in five years. Why would you take a 20% instant gain when you could have, you know, double it in

00:18:27.100 five years? It's better. So it should be fairly easy for management to make the case that you're

00:18:37.840 better off just sticking with the stock the way it is. But suppose Elon Musk decided to just make it

00:18:46.100 really hard on the board of directors. Could he just make everybody's job hard enough by bringing

00:18:54.460 everybody into discovery, bringing them all into the process? Because probably he wouldn't have to do

00:18:59.960 too much explaining. And if he did, his lawyers would do it. But you wouldn't want to be running a

00:19:05.420 company and have to fight off the biggest lawsuit of the world from, you know, somebody who's not used

00:19:12.540 to losing. So it could be that he just makes it so unpleasant to be a board member or a manager at

00:19:21.760 Twitter that they just say, you know, we just got to do something besides fighting in court against

00:19:27.460 the richest guy around. So let's just give him what he wants. Right? So maybe he could wear him down.

00:19:34.900 I doubt it. That doesn't seem likely to me. I don't think he can sort of pressure them

00:19:40.700 that direct way. But what if the only thing he asks is for the board and management to allow

00:19:50.400 the stockholders to directly vote on whether the offer should be accepted? So there's a word for

00:19:57.260 that, but we don't need the technicalities. So it's a thing. You can do that. The board and the

00:20:04.460 company can put the vote out to the people, and the people can vote. And if everybody says that's

00:20:12.100 what it's going to be, then that's what it is. Whatever the vote is, that's what happens.

00:20:16.480 Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that Elon Musk could successfully sue if they don't put it

00:20:23.700 out for a vote? Ah, now that's a different standard, isn't it? Because it's one thing to say,

00:20:30.560 oh, we definitely know that Elon Musk makes more money than continuing the way we are. Nobody really

00:20:36.840 knows that. So the benefit of a doubt, I think, is always going to be with management. Because it

00:20:42.820 should be, probably. But what if he says, all I'm asking is that you let the shareholders decide

00:20:50.500 what's good for themselves? How in the world do you argue against that? Because it's not that big of a

00:20:58.640 distraction compared to all the lawsuits. The lawsuits would be a big distraction. But if they

00:21:03.880 just put it out to a vote, that's somewhat routine. I assume you hire somebody who manages that for you.

00:21:11.220 So it's pretty straightforward. Twitter could just, you know, queue up that process, pay some entity to

00:21:17.480 do it. Pretty simple. I think that's much harder. Now, again, remember, I don't know this field of law

00:21:27.700 or economics at all. So I'm just sort of using the best guess and thinking it through, seeing if we can

00:21:35.420 second guess what's going to come. It seems to me that Elon Musk will be successful in forcing it to

00:21:43.120 the shareholders as a vote. What do you think? Do you think he will be successful in forcing the

00:21:49.880 vote? I think he might be the most influential person in the world right now. Yeah. Yeah, I think

00:22:00.360 he can. You know, remember, he doesn't have that problem of either being on the left or on the right.

00:22:05.900 He's so ambiguous. Because he's all in on, you know, electric cars and climate change and solar

00:22:13.700 power. But he doesn't tolerate fools, which makes the right think that he's on their side.

00:22:22.780 He's just not into nonsense unless it's funny. Like, the only nonsense that Elon Musk appears to

00:22:30.700 tolerate is stuff that makes you laugh. And, you know, how do you hate that? Which is part of why

00:22:36.240 you're so influential, because you can't look away. He's got the the Trump technique of being so

00:22:43.040 interesting in a funny way, an entertaining way, that you can't look away. And the people you pay

00:22:48.360 attention to are the most influential. They're not, you don't pay attention to them because they're

00:22:53.880 influential. They're influential because you paid attention to them. It shouldn't be that way. But

00:23:00.960 that's how you're that's how your brain is wired. Whatever you think about the most is the most

00:23:05.620 important to you. By the way, I've said that before. And every once in a while, somebody say, my God,

00:23:10.560 that you just simplified everything. That's it. Whatever you pay the most attention to for whatever

00:23:18.280 reason. Could be you have OCD. Could be somebody who's forcing you to look at it, such as the fake

00:23:23.820 news. But for whatever reason you got there, it doesn't matter how you got to paying attention to

00:23:29.420 it. Once you pay attention to it, suddenly it's it's a big important thing in your brain, even if it

00:23:35.600 isn't. Even if it isn't. All right. So Elon Musk has talked about a plan B. Do you think the plan B

00:23:45.900 is getting the shareholders to vote? Or is he talking about a plan B if it doesn't even get to

00:23:53.660 that? Because maybe even that could be blocked. What would be let's just think logically.

00:24:01.080 Elon Musk's stated purpose for wanting to buy Twitter is that it's the the lever to free speech

00:24:08.400 in a practical sense, not not a legal sense. But in a practical sense, it's the strongest lever for

00:24:14.700 free speech and it's not working right. He wants to fix it. So his goal is gigantic because fixing

00:24:21.220 free speech, as he said directly and often, if you don't have free speech, democracy, democracy itself

00:24:28.140 and capitalism and everything that we hold to be useful just doesn't work. So he's trying to fix the

00:24:35.460 most important part that sort of lubricates everything. Do you think he's just going to say,

00:24:41.540 oh, I took a run at it? I guess free speech is gone? Sorry about that. Here's what's interesting.

00:24:50.540 If you were a normal person and you tried to take over Twitter and it didn't work,

00:24:56.120 you'd probably just get interested in something else, right? You just go somewhere else because it

00:25:02.260 didn't work. Isn't that what normal people do? But if you're overarching, if you're overarching goal is

00:25:09.500 not to own Twitter, I don't think Elon Musk cares anything about owning Twitter. I think he wants

00:25:15.060 to fix the free speech thing. It looks, to me, it looks genuine. I mean, you could be wrong, right?

00:25:20.820 You can't really read minds. But on the surface, and really even under the surface, it looks like

00:25:26.720 he really actually wants to fix free speech. So if he can't do it by buying Twitter, what is plan B?

00:25:32.400 What is plan B if he can't fix free speech because of Twitter? Let me tell you what it's not. Starting a

00:25:44.240 competing network. It's not that. No, it's destroying Twitter, which he could do. He could destroy Twitter.

00:25:56.400 Do you know what he'd have to do? He'd just ask all the conservatives to stop using it.

00:26:05.720 That's it. It'd be gone tomorrow. Because the reason Twitter works is it has both sides.

00:26:13.560 Twitter works because it grew up in a day before the two sides were so polarized that it seemed impossible

00:26:21.040 to be on the same network. Now, if you started any network today, it would either be the conservative

00:26:26.720 one or the liberal one. So all Elon Musk would have to do is say, all right, Twitter, if I can't

00:26:33.880 buy you, you need to go away because you're hurting freedom of speech. And the way you're going to go

00:26:39.320 away is I'm just going to ask conservatives, of which I'm not. I mean, you could say I'm not a

00:26:43.200 conservative. But if you are a conservative, why in hell would you be on that network? You should

00:26:48.220 starve it to death. You should kill it. It would be gone in a week. Because it would go

00:26:54.460 down. Well, I mean, it wouldn't be gone. So let me back up on the hyperbole a little bit

00:27:00.160 because sometimes you take me too seriously. And sure, because if I'm not clear, you have

00:27:05.400 every right to do that. He could probably drive the stock price down 30 percent by just threatening

00:27:15.700 to do it. Actually, he doesn't even have to do it. He could say plan B is to encourage

00:27:21.320 anybody on the right to stop using it. He could just say it and the stock would go down 30 percent.

00:27:29.860 Because do you know what the left believes about the right? That they'll do anything like that.

00:27:36.440 The left believes the right will do exactly that kind of thing. And they would also understand

00:27:41.500 that Twitter would lose all of its power if it's just the left talking to the left.

00:27:46.120 You know, it's got to have that battle to be a functioning company.

00:27:52.800 So that's my... So my take is this, that plan B might be different ways to buy Twitter.

00:28:00.280 But I think the real plan B is if he can't buy Twitter under any of those ways,

00:28:05.440 that he's going to drive it out of business. And then they're going to reconsider selling it to him.

00:28:10.060 Maybe at a lower price. Because if he takes the stock price down 30 percent and he's got a perfectly

00:28:18.260 good argument and reason for doing it, and he's telling you exactly what he's doing and he's showing

00:28:23.220 his work in public and it has a public good purpose behind it, which is, you know, helping speech.

00:28:31.120 I think he does have the power to drive them down 30 percent and just keep his boot on them as long

00:28:35.820 as he wants. And I don't think the management could survive that permanent fight.

00:28:42.520 On the other hand, it's election season coming and nobody wants to get off Twitter and we're all

00:28:46.100 addicted. So even Elon Musk cannot beat our Twitter addiction, which I think might be closer to the

00:28:52.300 truth, actually. But does the left know that? The left might say to themselves, oh my God,

00:28:57.420 he's going to put Twitter out of business. And that's our main lever to power. Because Twitter

00:29:02.960 influences the journalists and then the journalists have to write things that Twitter approves of,

00:29:08.220 basically. So, all right. Next category. I don't think Putin is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:29:18.620 I've been thinking about this for a while. They've had a lot of controversial winners in

00:29:23.700 the past. But I don't know. I'm not going to bet on them. I don't think Putin is going to

00:29:29.420 win the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Now, I'd love to tell you I'm not 100 percent sure. I'm not

00:29:36.500 100 percent sure. But if I had to bet, I mean, I wouldn't bet he's not in the top five.

00:29:43.420 But, I mean, he is denazifying Ukraine. He says. And apparently you can win a Nobel Peace Prize

00:29:56.340 just for what you say you're doing, in some cases. You don't even have to do anything. You can just

00:30:02.540 say you're doing it. And that's good enough sometimes. But I don't think he'll make it

00:30:07.180 into the top spot. But I think maybe top five. Top five. So, the Wall Street Journal editorial board

00:30:16.460 is talking about California. They're floating in California, my wacky state, to limit the work

00:30:24.340 week to 32 hours. In other words, making it illegal to work more than 32 hours unless you're paid,

00:30:29.640 like, overtime, time and a half or something. What do you think of that idea?

00:30:33.700 What do you think of making it harder for everybody to get anything done? Well, I have

00:30:42.980 a mixed opinion. Mixed opinion. And let's call it the Bill Gates photo session theory. I once

00:30:55.220 talked to a photographer, professional photographer, who was photographing me for some article. And

00:31:02.080 I always ask the photographers who else they photographed because they have good stories about

00:31:07.340 famous people they photographed, et cetera. And

00:31:10.940 it's so hard to read your comments and tell the story at the same time. So

00:31:20.420 about, oh, about how much work you can get done. So if you go from a 40-hour work week to a 32-hour

00:31:31.040 work week, do you think productivity will change? The bottom line is it depends on the job.

00:31:38.420 Bill Gates used to say to the photographer, the photographer would say, you know, I'm going to

00:31:43.760 need about an hour to get the lighting right, make sure that we're getting lots of pictures so we

00:31:48.800 can pick the right one, because this is going to be for the cover of a magazine. And it's at least an

00:31:53.580 hour. So allocate about an hour to the photo shoot. And Bill Gates would say, you have 10 minutes.

00:31:59.560 And the photographer would say, whoa, whoa, I can't do anything in 10 minutes. 10 minutes,

00:32:04.780 I'm not even going to, my camera won't even be out of the bag. Seriously. This is for the cover of a

00:32:08.960 major magazine. We'll only have one shot at this. This cannot be done in 10 minutes. And then Bill

00:32:13.920 Gates says, you have nine minutes now. No, no, no, no, no, it can't be done. It can't be done.

00:32:20.700 Camera. It can't be done. You have to give me a few more minutes. And Bill Gates will be like,

00:32:27.580 eight minutes. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. I don't know if I'm getting

00:32:32.640 anything. Click, click, click, click, click, click. And we're done. And he'll get up and walk out.

00:32:37.360 All right. Now, do you think that they don't get a good picture that they use on the cover of the

00:32:43.800 magazine? They do. Every time. Every time. So what does Bill Gates know that the photographer

00:32:51.200 doesn't know? That if Bill Gates makes him do it in 10 minutes, he'll do it in 10 minutes.

00:32:58.100 Do you know how many times I've seen that played out? Because it's one of the things that,

00:33:02.380 I hate to say it, but if you're, if you're sort of in the public eye, you often have to limit people's

00:33:09.220 time because, you know, they're, they're trying to get a piece of your time. And I do it all the

00:33:14.380 time. And it works pretty much every time. Whatever people say they absolutely need to get a job done,

00:33:22.280 you can say some fraction of that, just like Captain Kirk. You know, it's like the Star Trek,

00:33:28.120 you know, Scotty, give me warp six. I cannot give you warp six, Captain. I can only give you warp four.

00:33:35.340 If I give you any more than warp four, we'll, Polipot is not made for warp six, Captain.

00:33:40.460 And then the captain will say, give me warp six, Scotty. And then somehow Scotty figures out how to give

00:33:46.820 him warp six. So when you look at the, on the surface, when you say, hey, if you limit the work

00:33:55.520 week to 32 hours, that's going to be a lot less than you accomplish. It's going to be really bad

00:34:02.780 for capitalism. But it kind of depends on the job. I can tell you that there's no job I've ever had

00:34:08.880 that I couldn't, that I could not have reduced from 40 to 32 hours. Pretty much anything I've ever

00:34:15.700 done, if I had to, right? It's only a problem if I add writing a book or something, and then there's

00:34:22.040 not much I can do. But yeah, any kind of thinking cubicle job, you could probably do it in 32 hours.

00:34:31.620 But as somebody said, does somebody think that a Tesla factory worker can produce the same number

00:34:39.520 of cars in 32 hours as 40? Well, probably not. So if it's an assembly line situation, yeah, you just

00:34:49.280 pay more for less productivity. So that's not good. So it depends highly on the job. I don't see how it

00:34:57.300 could ever be practical to have a four-day work week. It seems like that should always be optional.

00:35:05.720 Let me give you another story. When I worked as a salad chopper, yeah, that was a job. I think I was

00:35:13.660 in college, and I was working at a big resort in the back kitchen. And we would have to prepare,

00:35:19.720 you know, tons of salad because everybody came in at the same time in the resort. And so we would

00:35:23.960 just be in an assembly line of chopping lettuce and chopping vegetables and stuff. And I think

00:35:29.460 there were maybe five of us. And one day, one of them quit. And so the boss came in and he said,

00:35:37.400 she said, here's the deal. I could hire somebody else, and then we'll be back to full staff,

00:35:43.700 five people. And then you would be doing the same amount of work you're doing now, and it would cost

00:35:48.240 me the same amount of money. But it would be some extra work to hire somebody. However, if you'd like,

00:35:55.600 you can do the extra work among yourselves any way you want. Work longer hours, work harder,

00:36:02.660 just figure it out. And I will take that extra employee's pay, and I will distribute it equally

00:36:08.520 among the rest of you. Have you ever heard of that? Talk about something that you remember forever.

00:36:15.660 Like, you'll remember that forever. Now, she was the owner of the company, right? So she and her

00:36:22.320 husband owned the resort. So she could do what she wanted. So she liked running, and that was the 0.92

00:36:27.180 operation that she ran. She ran the back kitchen. And, oh, somebody says it happened to their dad,

00:36:33.980 yeah. Interesting. Yeah, and I got to tell you, those of us who remained, we were good employees.

00:36:42.040 You know, we were the ones who showed up and did the work. And it wasn't hard. I got to say, I never

00:36:47.580 even noticed. The difference between four people and five people doing the work, I never noticed.

00:36:55.340 I guess, you know, mentally, I thought I better work harder or something, but I don't think I worked

00:37:00.320 an extra hour, and I don't think I sweat an extra, you know, drop of sweat. So, yeah, you can absorb

00:37:07.300 things pretty quickly. It's surprising. Here's the dumbest story of the day. Dumbest story of the day.

00:37:14.900 Here's the dumbest story of the day. Florida has this rule about, or law, that says you can't put

00:37:23.660 critical race theory stuff in school textbooks. And so a number of textbooks have just been rejected

00:37:31.000 by Florida because they did have critical race theory mentions in them. And here's the weird

00:37:38.620 part. They were math books. So there were a bunch of math books submitted for approval that were

00:37:46.820 rejected because somebody in Florida said there's too much critical race theory mentioning in the

00:37:54.100 math book. Now, why is this the dumbest story in the day? Well, as Axios writes, so Axios reports on

00:38:05.460 this, and they say, worth noting, the education department described the review process as, quote,

00:38:11.960 transparent, but did not name the rejected textbooks nor provide examples of passages that failed to

00:38:18.760 meet the criteria. What? What the hell kind of story is this? I'm keeping it PG because it's Easter.

00:38:29.960 What kind of a news story tells you that there's a controversy over critical race theory in math books

00:38:36.400 and doesn't give you an example? Wasn't the first thing you wondered was, what would be an example of a

00:38:43.480 racist math book? Two plus two equals three because you're poor? How does that even look?

00:38:54.880 Now, I have to give credit to Axios because I did read this story in other publications that shall remain

00:39:01.680 nameless, and they didn't call out the fact, because I was looking for it and couldn't find it,

00:39:06.560 but only Axios calls out the fact that the entire heart of the story, which is, can you give me an

00:39:13.260 example of this supposedly racism-related math book? You really, really need an example for this story.

00:39:23.200 This story doesn't really, doesn't work without the examples, does it? Now, maybe they're good examples.

00:39:29.560 I wouldn't be surprised. You know, there could easily be word problems that inject some social opinion in there.

00:39:38.780 Could be. But I kind of want to see the examples. I can't judge this story. Am I supposed to be angry about this?

00:39:46.600 Or am I supposed to be, you know, angry that the, that they were blocked? How in the world am I supposed to have

00:39:53.200 any opinion on this? This is ridiculous. We're seeing examples over on YouTube.

00:40:03.360 Jimmy has five racist classmates. One gets expelled. How many racists are left?

00:40:12.720 The only thing I can think of is exactly that. Because what is in the math book except word problems, right?

00:40:20.280 It's got to be, it's got to be something like, there were four, four white people and three people of color

00:40:28.620 at the class. Three people randomly are expelled. How many racists were, were expelled?

00:40:39.320 What else is it? Come on. I mean, seriously, is there, is there a foreword or introduction to the book

00:40:45.880 that, that, that gets into critical race theory? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Because every, every possibility

00:40:52.880 you can think of is sort of ridiculous. So you can't rule anything out. If all the possibilities

00:40:57.740 have to be ridiculous, there's nothing left. So, oh well. So that's the dumbest story of the day.

00:41:06.040 The day, the day. All right. Here's my last little advice because it's Easter and because I want you

00:41:13.560 all to be happier and more successful. This will be a weird little reframing that will change some of

00:41:21.360 your lives. Now again, when I do this, some of you are just spectators and you watch other people's

00:41:27.040 lives get changed. And some of you will actually be the ones whose lives are changed. And you might

00:41:31.760 not know who you are until you hear the topic. And here's the topic. Things that are learnable,

00:41:38.580 but you might not know it. Are there things that you see other people do and you say, oh God,

00:41:44.940 I wish I could do that. How does that person do that? And you think to yourself, they must be born,

00:41:49.980 just born with that ability. If you believe that, you're really missing out on your best opportunities.

00:41:58.000 Let me give you some examples. Do you think that some people are good at small talk and some people

00:42:03.440 are not? And it's just, it's just sort of the way you're born. A lot of people think that. They think

00:42:09.360 that small talk is something some people could do and some people can't. And it's just sort of baked in.

00:42:16.040 But it's not. It's 100% learnable. The Dale Carnegie course, among others, can teach you how to do it.

00:42:24.440 I teach you how to do it. And my book had failed almost everything and still went big. I steal it from

00:42:29.040 Dale Carnegie. I give them credit. But it's just a simple technique. Now, I'm not going to teach it

00:42:35.000 to you here, but it's basically just showing interest in people and asking questions. That's the essence of

00:42:40.080 it. And it's so simple. Not only is small talk learnable, it might be the most easily learnable

00:42:49.100 thing you've ever met. There's no layers. It's just showing interest in people and asking questions

00:42:56.140 that make sense. It takes you about five minutes to master the skill of asking questions that make

00:43:01.940 sense. And then you're done. And then everybody thinks you're awesome and you're good at talking

00:43:06.280 and they love spending time with you. They don't realize that they didn't ask anything about you.

00:43:11.080 They just remember that it was fun talking to you. Why was it fun? Because you got to talk about what

00:43:16.960 you wanted to talk about. You got to talk about yourself. And they acted interested. If you act

00:43:22.260 interested in what somebody's talking about and it's about themselves, they think you're their best

00:43:26.380 friend. So how about making friends? Is making friends something that's, just some people can do it.

00:43:35.880 I don't know how. It's like magic. They just got the charisma. No. No. It's learnable. It's 100%

00:43:44.940 learnable. And easy. Easy to learn. It's not so easy to implement, but it's all doable, right? You

00:43:53.580 have to put a little effort into it. But to learn how to do it, let me give you an example. Did you

00:43:59.420 know, for example, science backs this up, if you want somebody to treat you as a friend, if you share

00:44:04.700 a secret with them, they automatically start defining you as a friend. Because you did what only friends do.

00:44:12.000 Now, the trick is, don't share a secret that's going to get you in trouble. Share like a little

00:44:18.200 one with the assumption that it's not going to be kept a secret, because nothing ever is. Yeah,

00:44:23.200 we're in a post-secret world. You just can't assume anything's a secret. But if you give them

00:44:29.880 something that's relatively harmless, you can turn somebody into a friend. Now, that's not the only

00:44:35.320 technique. But it's not much harder than that. You do the Dale Carnegie thing of asking questions

00:44:42.300 and showing interest. You share a secret. And then the only other thing is you share an activity.

00:44:48.480 That's about it. That's it. Have you noticed that most of the people you're friends with is because

00:44:54.380 you bet in some kind of association or group or activity? That's all it is. You put people in

00:45:01.320 in groups, and they gravitate toward each other, you know, people who just have natural interest

00:45:07.120 in each other. And then you put a little bit of technique, learn how to make small talk, learn how

00:45:13.040 to invite them over and host. Oh, learning how to host. Now, there's something that's completely

00:45:17.560 learnable. When I became an adult, I wanted to learn how to host people, which unfortunately meant,

00:45:25.060 at the time, learning how to serve alcohol in various ways. So I learned how to serve a whole

00:45:30.460 bunch of different alcohols in various ways. Later, I learned not to drink alcohol. But before I

00:45:37.780 learned not to drink alcohol, it was very handy to know how to do a social event. So very, very

00:45:45.000 learnable. How about avoiding embarrassment? I've done some micro lessons on that on the locals

00:45:49.800 platform. Again, it's something Dale Carnegie literally teaches you, how to avoid embarrassment.

00:45:55.580 Not how to avoid the thing that triggers it, because that happens naturally, you can't avoid

00:46:00.360 that. But how to care about it? You're just like, oh, that was fun. I am literally at the point where

00:46:07.220 when I embarrass myself, like in a really bad way, I think it's awesome. I just laugh at it. It's like,

00:46:13.840 oh my God, that's really embarrassing. That is awesome. And you can actually get there. And

00:46:21.880 some of it is practice, some of it is technique, some of it is how you reframe things. But it's

00:46:27.360 all learnable. And you wouldn't think so. How about love life and dating? Do you think you could just

00:46:34.920 learn how to be better at dating? Yeah, yeah, totally. Absolutely. Do you think you could learn

00:46:43.440 how to get somebody to say yes to a date? Yes. Yeah, it's completely learnable. You know, if you think

00:46:52.100 it's not, look into it. How about fitness? Do you think people are just naturally fit and some people

00:47:02.320 aren't? Well, some people who are not fit would like to believe maybe that some people are naturally

00:47:08.800 more fit. And of course, there's a wide difference in, you know, people's physicality for all kinds

00:47:14.520 of reasons. But there's not really anybody who can't get fit unless they have a serious medical

00:47:20.280 problem, right? That's completely learnable. And I would argue, and certainly this has been

00:47:27.060 reinforced recently, I would argue that the thing you need to learn to be good at fitness is learning

00:47:34.580 how to learn about fitness. Just learning how to learn. If you just keep your filter open,

00:47:41.340 and you experiment an A-B test and say, well, I got bored with this exercise, I'll try this.

00:47:46.460 I'll hang around with people who know how to do this. I'll ask them some questions. It also makes

00:47:50.260 good small talk. By the way, one of the very best things for small talk is asking people about their

00:47:55.660 fitness or, you know, or sporting activities. They love to talk about it. And you often find the

00:48:02.380 commonality there. So fitness is one of those things that you should treat as an information

00:48:07.240 problem. That's what I teach you in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Went Big,

00:48:13.200 my gigantically influential book. If you treat it as an information problem, you will succeed

00:48:20.880 guaranteed. If you treat it as a willpower problem, it's like, ah, I've got to push myself to hurt myself,

00:48:28.320 you will almost certainly not succeed. Because people don't like to hurt themselves. So if you

00:48:34.620 keep hurting yourself, you'll find a reason not to do it. I've got too busy to exercise. But if you

00:48:41.000 use it as an information problem, you will learn how to, for example, use putting on your footwear

00:48:47.500 to motivate you to actually work out when you didn't feel like working out. It's a little trick that's in

00:48:53.420 my How to Fail book. And there are just a bunch of other little tricks that once you learn them,

00:48:59.500 it actually becomes easy to exercise. So it's an information problem. Very learnable. If it were a

00:49:05.920 willpower problem, I don't think you could learn it. Can you learn to have more willpower? I'm not

00:49:10.980 even sure willpower is a real thing. But you can learn information. So reframe it as information and

00:49:16.220 you will succeed. Same with diet. Diet is completely an information problem, which we accidentally feel

00:49:22.180 like is a willpower problem. Or how much you like ice cream problem. It's not. It's an information

00:49:30.700 problem. It's a learning problem. So you can learn how to eat things that are delightful and you will

00:49:36.800 enjoy and that are good for you. You just have to learn it. It's not willpower. How about being more

00:49:44.920 likable? Would anybody like that? How would you like to be not the person that people go,

00:49:50.060 uh, I think I'd like to fill my drink? Uh, nice talking to you. Or would you like to be the person

00:49:56.120 that everybody's interested in? Totally learnable. Learn how to tell some interesting stories.

00:50:03.900 Learn how to show interest in other people. Learn that people care about people more than objects or

00:50:12.060 concepts. If you're doing small talk, don't talk about the concept of the constitution versus

00:50:18.940 Marxism. You know, at most, that's a tweet. That's not a conversation. Not if you want somebody to like

00:50:28.300 you. I mean, you do find nerds who love talking about nerdy things, but you know that when you see

00:50:33.800 it. And that's fine. If you both love it, yeah, go nuts. But watch people's eyes if their eyes are

00:50:39.740 starting to close. Talk about people. The best person to talk about is the person you're talking

00:50:46.360 about. You talk about that person you're talking to. Talk about their family, their relationship,

00:50:52.300 their boss. People. That's all people want to hear about. They want to know what people do. People are

00:50:59.280 weird. People. Suppose you had a dream last night and you thought it was really interesting.

00:51:05.080 Who wants to hear about your dream? Nobody. But the exception would be a quick summary. I do think

00:51:15.160 it's interesting when people say, I dreamt I stabbed you last night. I want to hear about that. You know,

00:51:22.160 the details, not so much. Or if somebody says they had a sex dream about you. Well, yeah, you want to

00:51:27.740 hear about that. Don't you? Of course you do. But you don't need the details of, yeah, I was,

00:51:33.540 somehow I was in an elevator, but really when it opened, there was my classmates from seventh

00:51:39.840 grade and they were standing on a prairie and then the prairie turned into a department

00:51:45.520 store. Like, no, no, no. This is a learnable skill. Here's what to learn. Don't tell people

00:51:54.920 about your dream. Here's another one. Last night, I had the best meal. This potato was, it was just

00:52:04.700 seasoned just right and it was just delicious. I don't think I've ever had a better potato.

00:52:10.860 No. No. No. Do not talk about something you tasted. No. Because the other person can't taste it

00:52:20.800 and they've tasted their own food. Sometimes they liked it. Never tell people about your food.

00:52:27.980 It's bad enough that you post it on social media, but at least that has a visual appeal.

00:52:32.360 Yeah, I can see why people post food on social media. I get it. But if you're telling a story,

00:52:39.160 you don't even have the picture. Imagine how much you don't like it when you see a food picture on

00:52:46.360 social media. And then imagine it was only described. It was just text. How hard is it to learn what's

00:52:53.360 boring? How about asking you about your job? Hey, Bob, how's work? Well, I gotta tell you,

00:53:05.740 can you believe that the RGB system went down exactly, exactly when we need to submit the PDQ?

00:53:13.040 And then the PDQ, it's the old technology. And I tried to talk to Larry, and Larry is saying,

00:53:20.320 no, it's the new technology. I'm saying to Larry, what do you call new? This is like five years old,

00:53:25.420 and this technology... No. No. No. If somebody asks you how your job is, this is the correct answer.

00:53:35.540 That's great. Hey, what are you doing later? Do not talk about your job. In fact, just to make the

00:53:47.680 point, I knew somebody who will remain nameless, a top executive, who was in charge of the syndication

00:53:55.820 for, you know, Peanuts and Dilbert and lots of interesting things. And when he would be on the

00:54:02.340 flight, if somebody would try to engage him in conversation and say, so what do you do for a

00:54:07.780 living? He would say he worked in insurance, because otherwise he had to talk about these

00:54:13.360 interesting people he knew for six hours, and he wanted to read his book. So talking about your job

00:54:20.020 is just deadly. But know it. It's something you can learn. There's no skill whatsoever... I'm sorry.

00:54:26.820 There's no natural ability that matters in any of this. This is all learnable. And so what I'm

00:54:34.560 trying to tell you is there's a whole bunch of stuff you think you can't learn. Other people have

00:54:38.540 some natural advantage. They don't. Sometimes they get to it by, you know, lock or imitating their

00:54:44.740 parents or something. So they get to it in a weird way. But you can get there, too. Just learn it.

00:54:48.860 Here's my inspirational tale that I've always thought about all my life. I don't even remember

00:54:55.140 who told me this. But somebody long ago told me a story about somebody who was probably my age at

00:55:01.020 the time. And the person was described as very not attractive. All right. So definitely nothing to

00:55:08.740 look at. But was hugely successful with women. And that was the essence of the story that there's

00:55:17.600 somebody who really had nothing going for them physically, which is hugely successful. Do you

00:55:23.220 know how this person was successful? Somebody said great personality. Maybe. But how did that great

00:55:34.000 personality arrive? Do you think that person was born with it? Here's what I think. And this is the part

00:55:42.660 I didn't tell you in the story. This person was really good at dancing. So he could go somewhere

00:55:50.960 where there were women. He could grab a woman and go out and dance. And he could lead. And he could

00:55:57.800 spin her around. And do you think that he was born with the ability to do that? Nope. Nope. He was

00:56:08.160 simply, he simply learned how to dance. A very critical skill if he wanted to compensate for the

00:56:14.860 fact he didn't have much going on physically. So did it work? Absolutely. So could he learn to be

00:56:21.080 popular in dating? Yup. Yup. He just learned a specific skill and it just took him right to the top of the heap.

00:56:28.340 Now, he also had another skill. He would let women know how much he liked him. Now, you say to yourself,

00:56:41.220 well, that doesn't seem hard. It is. It's hard to do it non-creepy and in a way that the woman 1.00

00:56:48.900 actually appreciates. There is a skill to complimenting, which was another micro lesson that I did,

00:56:54.740 how to compliment without sounding creepy. It's a skill. So if you can dance and you can compliment

00:57:03.400 a woman so she really feels like that was like the best compliment she got today, and it rings,

00:57:08.120 it's true. That's the important part. It has to ring, it's true. But if you can pull that off,

00:57:14.860 you can make a woman feel amazing and they'll remember how they feel before they'll remember how

00:57:22.200 you looked. They'll remember how they feel. So that was largely his trick. Now, of course,

00:57:28.040 he probably had some other, you know, micro tricks within that. Maybe he knew how to persuade.

00:57:34.340 Maybe he learned sales. Maybe he, yeah, maybe, I don't think he was nagging. Somebody's mentioning

00:57:40.900 that. I don't think he was doing that. But now this, this person might not even exist. And if I knew

00:57:46.400 with them, maybe I wouldn't be as impressed as the person who told me the story. Maybe it has morphed

00:57:50.360 in my mind over time. But one of the things I tell you is you should always have a story

00:57:54.820 that is like your operating system. So that when something comes up, you can go to your story.

00:58:02.900 So if something comes up like, hey, you know, you want to be more popular with other people.

00:58:08.440 Well, my story is I can learn that. That's my story. Because my story is this guy that I don't

00:58:15.540 know who it is. And maybe he doesn't even exist. But that's my story. Oh, you can overcome

00:58:20.780 incredibly things you wouldn't think you could overcome by just learning skills. And they're not

00:58:27.760 even hard skills. So remember these tips for today. Everything you do to your body makes a big

00:58:36.320 difference. If you want to succeed, do good things to your body and learn how. And if you want to really,

00:58:42.320 really take it up a level in life in terms of your enjoyment and your effectiveness, just

00:58:47.160 understand that all of those skills are learnable. And as soon as you think somebody has natural

00:58:54.720 ability, well, they might. But you can learn to do the same thing with a minimal amount of

00:59:00.720 learning. It's not even hard. So because this is Easter, and the news is almost non-existent

00:59:11.020 because it's Easter, I thought I would leave you with something that feels good so that

00:59:16.740 today you can go forth and make other people feel happy as well. There are some funny memes

00:59:26.160 going by on the Locals platform.

00:59:27.860 All right. YouTube, have a wonderful day. And if you don't know how, well, you can learn. See you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 17, 2022

Episode 1716 Scott Adams： Elon Musk's Plan B for Twitter, How To Avoid Anxiety

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