Episode 1753 Scott Adams： Take My News Hoax Quiz See If You're Smart Enough To Talk Abt World Events
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, I describe the third episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in terms of the characters and their demographic groups. And then I talk about why I think this is a good thing. I'm not a writer, I'm a creator. And as a creator, it's hard to write a good story when you have to deal with all of the baggage that comes with it.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody. Wow! I don't know, have you been getting extra sleep or working out?
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Why do you all look so good today? Incredible. I don't know. You get better looking, dare I say,
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sexier, every single time I see you. And that's no lie. If you'd like to get even sexier,
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the only thing you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chals or stein, a canteen jug or flask,
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a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid I like, coffee. And join me now for the
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unparalleled pleasure. It's the dopamine hit of the day. It sounds like I'm talking dirty,
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but I'm talking about coffee. Join me now for the... Simultaneous sip. Go.
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Oh, oh, shudder. I feel a quiver coming. Does anybody else feel it? It's coming on. It's
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going to be like a shiver. There it was. All right, well, I once again tried to watch this TV show
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called Star Trek Discovery, a new series. And I told you before, this is an update on what I've told
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you already, that a lot of the sci-fi has gone extra woke, which is fine, because Star Trek was
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always the most woke of the early sci-fis. It's one of the things that made it, you know, so big
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and so popular everywhere. Basically, every person likes Star Trek, you know, every demographic,
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not every person. But within every demographic, you've got Star Trek fans. So they did a good
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job with the whole inclusiveness before that was a big deal. But like any good idea, sometimes you can
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take it too far. You can take it too far. Yeah, like the State Farm commercials. So I watched the third
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episode, and I swear to God, I'm simply going to describe this. I'm going to describe this.
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Oops. Not now, Alex, not now. I'm going to describe it the way I saw it. But I'm going to describe the
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characters in terms of their demographic groups. So I'm just going to tell you the story the way it
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unfolded. But instead of naming the characters by their names, I'll refer to them by the demographic
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group they're in. So the number one and number two stars of the show are adult white men. Adult white
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men, which is weird because it's such a woke kind of thing. But the episode involved the adult white
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men being trapped in a storm on a planet until they were rescued by some entities.
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But the two white men who are the stars of the show didn't have anything to do with the show
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except they were trapped on the planet. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the women who were in charge of the
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enterprise of various species, some were, well, I don't know, actually. I'm not sure if any were
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meant to be earthlings. But there were various creatures that were female in look. And they saved the
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day. They saved the day. And it turns out that when they figured out, once the women had saved the
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day, while the two men were huddled together on the ground on the planet, literally huddled together
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on the ground on the planet, not part of the plot at all. And they discovered that there was
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a tragic, dare I say, mistake. There was somebody on the crew who made a terrible mistake. And they'd
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identify it, they narrowed it down to the one black guy. So the one black guy made a mistake that almost
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cost the entire crew their lives. But he was spared by the two women who were in charge, because it was an
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honest mistake, I guess. So it must be torturous to try to write plots in 2022, or whenever they wrote it,
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because you really have to juggle all of these things, so you're not accidentally insulting some
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group. And how do you really do that? Part of this, I'm responding to it as a writer, as a creator.
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It is so hard to write any kind of a story that people want to hear. There's a reason that people
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who can do it well are highly compensated. It's rare. It's hard to do. But if you add on top of
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the burden of writing a good story, that you've got to handle all of the characters with their,
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you know, demographic sensitivities, and the audiences, and, you know, please everybody,
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it almost eliminates all of the space you can move. So it just makes your art get smaller and smaller.
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And let me say again, and I'll say this a hundred times. I like all the woke stuff, right? It's entirely
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the right impulse. Let everybody live their best life. You know, it's not my business, what anybody
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does. And certainly, you know, I don't see any kind of pattern that would tell me that any individual
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must conform to any specific stereotype. So my personal feeling is that woke is great. And if
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somebody wants to be referred to in some specific way, I just think that's good manners. I would want
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people to refer to me in whatever way I felt most comfortable. And they already do. I mean, except
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online, where everybody's awful. But in person, people generally refer to me in whatever I would be
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most comfortable with. So I'd gladly return the favor. The only thing I ever ask in return
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is if I get it wrong, just don't be an asshole about it. That's all. Like, I want to be polite.
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I'll try my best. But if I get it wrong, like, you know, if I dead name somebody accidentally or
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something, just don't be an asshole about it. That's all I'm asking. I'm asking what you're asking of me.
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I'll give back what you what you're asking of me. That seems fair. Well, here's an update on my Keith
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tactic. Some of you know, I've been using this tactic on my trolls online, where when they attack
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me personally, as opposed to anything about what I said, my argument, I respond with, okay, Keith.
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Now, my internal thought about why I'm saying this is that I'm just mocking Keith Olbermann,
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who, who for years has been coming after me personally, basically, just personal attacks on
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me, and doesn't really have much to do with anything I'm saying. It doesn't seem like it seems like it's
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more personal. So here's why this works. People don't know what to do with it. Nobody has a mental
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model for what happens when they attack you personally, and you call them by their wrong name.
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They don't know what to do with it. It completely, so far, I think it has diffused 100% of what was
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about to become a troll fight. You know, because I, I like getting sucked into troll fights, because it's
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just good sparring. Yeah, I just like it. So I do it more than I should, because I sort of enjoy it.
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It's part of the public spectacle of Twitter, so, you know, I'm all in on public spectacle.
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So it's good eating. So just think about this from the persuasion perspective. There's,
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there's actually a basis for why this should work exactly the way it's working. It should work because
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it takes people out of their frame. When somebody insults you publicly on Twitter, they've entered a
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frame in which they think you should feel insulted and either ignore them or block them or fight back
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with some, you know, equally toxic words. So, so they get into this frame, and then you say,
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okay, Keith, and it's not even their name, and they don't know what the reference is or why
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or where you're coming from, and they can't stay in their frame, because there's nothing in there
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that tells you what to do with, uh, thanks, Keith. Now, I suppose at some point, it would be like
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Karen if it became big. I don't think it will. But if it did, then people would recognize, oh,
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that's Karen. But it would still work until they had some way to bring it back into their frame,
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because it just doesn't fit there. So try it. Try it at home. Just say, okay, Keith. Or you could
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throw in any other name of somebody that you think is funny. But there's something about the word
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Keith, especially because it's so white. It's so white guy. It's like one of the whitest names
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you could ever have, Keith. I suppose Scott is the whitest name you could have. Let me confess
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that. I don't think you could be Scott for a whiter name. Am I right? Has anybody ever met
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anybody black named Scott? Is there a famous one? Is there like a famous black man whose first name
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is Scott that I'm not thinking of? Scotty Pippen. Thank you. Scotty Pippen. Scotty Pippen.
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One of the all-time great basketball players. All right. Will Smith. This is the weirdest story.
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You thought the Will Smith slapping Chris Rock story lasted too long, but finally it was
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Scott Joplin? Scott Joplin. Is that a musician? Okay. So there are lots of black people named
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Scott. Apparently it's a very black name. And since I identify as a black woman, I believe
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that's at least one more example. All right. So you're right. So this Will Smith story just
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released was an interview that Will Smith did before he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars.
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And it was with David Letterman on his interview show there. And Will Smith was talking about
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an experience with Ayahuasca, a psychedelic, in which he hallucinated that he lost all of his money in his
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career. His career and his money just went away. And it was a nightmare and he panicked. But that the
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learning he got from it was that there was anything he could withstand because he learned to be calm
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while his career. And even somebody he loved was in danger. His daughter, Willow, was screaming. And he
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managed in his Ayahuasca hallucination to find calm despite the worst possible things he's imagining
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happening around him. And then he thought that his permanent learning from that is that he could
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handle anything. You know, nothing would destroy him. Now, he had this vision of losing all of that
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right before he slapped Chris Rock on stage and lost all of that. Now, he's still going to be rich,
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one assumes. But, you know, for a while his career has taken a pounding like few people have ever taken a
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pounding. And here is my first question. Number one, did he, in fact, survive this so far in exactly the
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way he said he could? In other words, did the Ayahuasca actually do what he imagined it had done at that
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point? Did he carry that ability through and weather this latest thing? Because even though he's the one to
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blame, I think we all agree, right, he's the one to blame. And he would know that, one assumes.
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Do you think that he is okay with it? Do you think he just took it like a, you know, Zen Buddhist monk
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and just said, well, you know, clearly it was my mistake. I'm now dealing with it. And I accept this.
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I'm dealing with it. I don't know. I'm going to surprise you. I'm going to surprise you.
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I'll bet he's handling this better than 99% of you could have. It's just a feeling. There's no way to
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know, right? But that Ayahuasca experience, I think that's real. I think that's real. I believe that he
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actually did learn that he could handle anything. That didn't make his mistake any less of a mistake.
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But he certainly found himself in a situation where he had to handle something pretty, pretty bad.
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I mean, really bad. And I think he handled it probably better than you could have.
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Just a guess. I think it's probably real. But what is the coincidence that he would have this just
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before it mattered? And again, this makes you wonder about the nature of reality, doesn't it?
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Did he predict it? Or did he cause it? Did he predict it? Did he cause it? Or is it just a coincidence?
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Because, you know, coincidences happen. That's why we talk about them. They happen all the time.
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Rare things happen all the time. It's just you can't predict which rare thing is going to happen
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when. But rare things happen all the time. So if this is just another rare thing, you'd say,
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well, I wouldn't have predicted this specific one. But rare things happen all the time. This is just
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another one. And we notice them because they're special. I don't know. It certainly makes you at least
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say, what the hell's going on here, doesn't it? Well, Ricky Gervais has a Netflix special in which
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in his Ricky Gervais way, he's going after whatever would cause the most provocation. So apparently
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his jokes target. I'm going to say target, but then I'm going to argue that's the wrong word.
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Let's say involve. Yeah, I'm not going to say target. I'm going to say his jokes involve
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the trans community. Now, Ricky is fairly brutal in his comedy. And the trans community is,
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you know, some of it anyway, is up in arms. And one assumes that some of the trans community
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thinks it's funny. Is that fair? Do you think that the trans community acts as one? And they
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all have the same opinion at the same time? No, of course not. One assumes that some percentage
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of the trans community will watch Ricky Gervais special and say, that's hilarious. I would have
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made that same joke. That's pretty funny. Same thing we say privately. I assume. But then I think,
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you know, some percentage, and I don't even know if it's 80, 20 in which direction. I have no,
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I have no sense for which way that goes. But one could see why others would be offended.
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Now, here's the thing I'm going to say that Ricky Gervais doesn't ask for and doesn't need and probably
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doesn't want. Me defending him. Because part of the beauty of what he does, like the thing that makes
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it art, is that he doesn't apologize for it. And so I don't want to ruin his art by apologizing for
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him. But there is some context here. And it's not an apology. There is some context here that's very
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important. And it's the personal perspective context of who has the power. I'm going to prime
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you for this with the following example. Let's say there are two people you're considering. One is a
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boss and one is a really high-end engineer who works for the boss. Who has the power? In the comments,
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that's all you know. Really high-end engineer and a boss. Who has the power? The boss or the engineer?
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Sort of depends on the point of view, doesn't it? Well, if you're saying engineer, you sort of guessed
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where I was leading you. Depends. There we go. That is the correct answer. The correct answer is it
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depends. If the engineer wants to take the power, that engineer has the power. If the engineer chooses
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not to take the power, then the boss has the power. Now, in some specific instances, the boss would have
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all the power. In other specific instances, I would argue that the engineer would effectively have all the
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power. And so we often... So here's the priming for my next point. Who has the power is always an
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opinion. Well, that's too strong. Who has the power is often an opinion. And it could go either way.
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Will you go with me that far so far? That who has the power in any given situation is somewhat
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ambiguous. Often. And it depends on the specifics, right? So given that, wouldn't we all agree,
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and of course that's not true, but wouldn't many of you agree that it's unseemly to punch down,
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meaning make jokes at people who are below you in the power scale, but that it's routine and actually
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maybe even good to punch up, to make fun of the people in power. Would we, largely would you agree
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that that's a good standard? It keeps comedy in its proper place to maybe take the powerful down a
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notch without hurting the disadvantage, right? So if you saw somebody punching down, your natural
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instinct would be, oh, stop that punching down. If you saw somebody punching up, you'd say, yay.
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Cheer for them. So here's the controversial question. Is Ricky Gervais punching up or punching down
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when he talks about trans? Here's what makes it art. You can't fucking tell. That's why he's Ricky
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Gervais. And you're not. He can do that. That's art. That's art. You can't tell if he's punching up or
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punching down. Because much of what the trans community has managed to pull off is increasing
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their power around certain issues that they have the most at stake. So when Ricky Gervais is, let's say,
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involving the trans community, I'm not going to say targeting. I'm going to say involving them.
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Is he punching up from the perspective of a, let's say, a generic white male in 2022?
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Do you think that a generic white man in 2022 feels that his power is above that of the trans community
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in society right now? No. No, I'm not saying what's true. I'm saying what does a generic white man feel
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is true. And I'm not even saying what Ricky Gervais feels is true. Because remember, he's producing art.
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He's not telling you his inner feelings. That's not what he does. So I think the genius of what
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Gervais does is that you can't fully sort out if he's punching up or down. And to pull that off,
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that's like Chappelle-level cleverness, in my opinion. Like, there are only a few people who are
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operating at that level. And he's one of them. So I like the fact that Netflix is going to back
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him on this. And I hope people can see this for what it is. And he's actually said, so this is an
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actual Gervais quote. He said, I don't know if he said this on stage or in an interview. He said,
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okay, full disclosure, in real life, of course, I support trans rights, Gervais says. I support all
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human rights and trans rights or human rights. Live your best life. Use your preferred pronouns.
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Right? Exactly my opinion. So is he punching up or is he punching down? Here's the other thing that
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people don't understand. When I misuse a word because I'm using the way people commonly misuse a word,
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I get to do that because I'm a professional writer. And professional writers as a class
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get to decide what is common usage. I know you don't like it. I didn't sign up for it. But it's
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just one of the duties that come along with being a professional writer that anybody's listening to.
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We get to decide, not me personally, but like as a group, the people who write stuff,
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the people who write stuff for a living, get to decide what moves from bad grammar into good grammar
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because people use it a lot. It's just the way it works. And people like Ricky Gervais get to decide
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when somebody is moving from a powerless situation into a powerful situation. Now, he didn't sign up for
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that. Probably never thought about it. It's not in his job description, but it is his job.
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Comedians do that. Part of what they do is decide who they can punch at and they tell you, okay,
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they took power. Now they can take a punch. So it's sort of like getting promoted. If you're in the
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trans community and you're wondering, you know, how are you being viewed by the world?
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Ricky Gervais just gave you a promotion. And if you don't see that, that is sort of a little bit
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of a tragedy because if it makes you feel bad or makes you feel diminished, it should feel the
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opposite. Now, and I'm going to make a real important distinction. Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle,
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including you in their humor, is not diminishing you. Not the way they do it. Right? If it's a bad
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comedian, somebody who's not operating at their level of subtlety, then yeah, they're just being
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assholes. Right? They're just picking on somebody because they can get a cheap laugh. Right? That's
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not what's happening. This is a promotion. All right. There are two groups you can insult. People who are
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more powerful than you and people who are not organized. So you can still make fun of dumb
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people because dumb people don't have much power, but they also are really bad at organizing.
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Guess why? It's because they're dumb people. It's the only group you can punch down at because
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they can't organize. All right. The World Economic Forum is happening and the president of Alibaba
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group, this Michael Evans, he was talking about the development of, you know, noodling about this
00:24:33.060
as a possibility of individual carbon footprint trackers. So you can monitor what an individual
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buys, eats, and where and how they travel. Now, of course, I think he's describing it as something
00:24:49.040
you would use for yourself so that you could monitor your own carbon use. Motherfucker went
00:24:56.640
there on a private plane. Is there anything else to say about this? Well, that's the whole
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conversation, right? He's talking about wouldn't it be great for everybody to be able to track
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their own carbon footprint? Motherfucker went there on a private plane. There's nothing else
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to say. Dismissed. Dismissed. All right. Are you watching this Pennsylvania race with
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Dr. Oz and McCormick, I guess? They're down to within a thousand votes that are being disputed.
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So they, you know, we don't have a final answer. And if that thousand gets a little bit fewer,
00:25:39.200
then apparently there's a forced runoff or something. So they're really fighting for every vote.
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And McCormick's filed a lawsuit challenging ballots that don't have, that were returned
00:25:54.040
on time, but they don't have a date on them. So it shouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter that
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they don't have a date on them because they were returned on time. And I guess they can
00:26:04.980
verify that. So they don't have to wonder if they were late because they have them and they
00:26:11.540
had them on time. So what do you think of that? Do you think that would be a reasonable
00:26:16.540
if the court were to agree, oh, since we can confirm the dates were sufficient, we don't
00:26:25.400
have to see the dates? What do you think? I'm actually really curious about your opinions on
00:26:31.160
this. Opens the door. Yeah, you're a little cautious on this one, aren't you? See, the
00:26:38.020
problem is it makes perfect sense. That's the problem. The problem is the argument is perfectly
00:26:44.060
good. And in any other context, you'd say, okay, that makes sense. That is fair. But it
00:26:52.880
opens the door. As soon as you say that any rule can be broken because you've got a good
00:26:59.320
reason why you shouldn't, you know, why you can make an exception, I wouldn't call that
00:27:04.620
a slippery slope. That's more direct. If you can break a rule, you can break a rule. It's
00:27:09.260
pretty much, I mean, that's the beginning of the end of the slope, right? So it's not too
00:27:14.480
slippery. It's just yes or no. So as soon as you break that rule, everything falls apart,
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doesn't it? Now, I suppose if you took it through the court system, maybe if it went to the Supreme
00:27:32.820
Court, that could launder it into credibility. Well, you know, I would accept that, actually.
00:27:39.280
If that's what happened, I would take the answer.
00:27:44.480
Anyway, what if this changes the outcome? What if the counting reverses the current vote?
00:27:57.300
Is anybody going to trust? And nobody's going to trust any election ever again, if they do. I don't
00:28:03.120
know. But this could be devastating. I mean, it's not that big a deal if they simply delay the
00:28:10.860
result, and it goes the way the vote has gone so far. If it doesn't change the direction,
00:28:16.880
we're going to forget about it pretty quickly. But if it changes the direction of this thing,
00:28:22.260
like reverses it? I don't know. People are going to be talking about that for a long time.
00:28:29.080
All right, here's a question that people are debating with me. Did Putin want all of Ukraine,
00:28:37.360
or is he getting the parts he wants, and therefore assuming that he consolidates control? Did he win?
00:28:46.580
So what do you think? Did Putin want all of Ukraine, or was it always a fake-out so that he could
00:28:53.740
pin down the Ukraine military around the capital, and then take his time consolidating forces where he
00:29:01.340
really wanted to control things where the separatists are? What do you think? I'll give you the correct
00:29:07.520
answer. The answer is, why would he have either opinion? Both. Sort of both. Here's how a good
00:29:18.520
decision-maker would approach this. Now, let's assume he's a good decision-maker.
00:29:23.360
Let's assume Putin's a good decision-maker. Let's assume that he's at least as good a decision-maker
00:29:35.900
as I am. Because here's how I would play it. I would say to myself, well, I want all of Ukraine.
00:29:45.700
I want it. And there's at least a non-zero chance I could get it for cheap, the whole country. Because
00:29:55.400
who knows? Maybe you start the war, and you're so devastatingly effective in the first few days.
00:30:01.860
Maybe Ukraine folds. Maybe they say, oh, we'll put your puppet in if you stop bombing us. Maybe.
00:30:10.000
Maybe. What were the odds? I don't know. Low. But still some chance. So here's how you would
00:30:16.740
approach it. If you said to yourself, what I really want is those separatist areas,
00:30:21.660
because it gives me a land bridge, and a blah, blah, blah, and economic whatever. If you said to
00:30:27.320
yourself, what you really want is just that part of Ukraine, but you would love to take the whole
00:30:33.040
country. I mean, that would be ideal. You would make a play for the whole country,
00:30:38.760
but you wouldn't care that much if it worked. Because if it didn't work, it would pin down the
00:30:45.780
Ukraine military and the rest of the country, and give you time to build up your forces where they
00:30:51.460
were. If it did work, if it did work, well, then you conquered the whole country, and it was cheap.
00:30:56.140
So anybody who's looking at this and says that Putin did not want all of Ukraine, or did want all of
00:31:05.520
Ukraine, they're completely wrong. I'm sure. I'm sure that what he wanted was separate from what he
00:31:15.240
knew the cost-benefit risk analysis was, and he wasn't dealing with what he wanted. He was dealing with
00:31:22.080
what's possible. Somebody says, sorry, Scott. Now, what's that mean? I beg to differ.
00:31:34.960
Does anybody have a counter-argument? General's dead on purpose? No, I'm not saying that Russia did a
00:31:44.860
good job at the invasion. I'm not saying that they didn't take larger losses than they expected.
00:31:52.080
I do think the Ukrainian military was more effective than most people except me predicted.
00:31:59.200
But I feel like a Putin would know that he has two ways to win, get the whole country or get part
00:32:07.040
of the country, but that he'd be happy with either one. Why isn't that obviously true?
00:32:14.900
Wouldn't you say there's no argument to be made here? That it's sort of obviously true?
00:32:19.600
That if he would be happy with just the separatist parts, because it's such a big win, he should
00:32:25.320
be happy with that. And he could spin it as a victory at home. I don't know. His losing
00:32:34.760
only has to do with what happens with his economy after that, I guess.
00:32:38.060
I asked this question for which I was pilloried online. I said, how can Russia hold territory
00:32:45.540
in the age of drones? Let's say Russia consolidates control over these separatist regions, they
00:32:53.780
call them. And what happens if Ukraine wants it back? And they're willing to fight to get
00:33:00.540
them back. Wouldn't the Ukrainians just put endless drones into there until the Russians
00:33:07.140
just can't hold it anymore? Maybe nobody can. Maybe they would return the favor if the Ukrainians
00:33:13.240
did it. But here's the feedback I got. Scott, Scott, Scott. If the Ukrainians could reconquer
00:33:23.380
these, you know, or get back these territories in the future, why didn't they do it in the
00:33:42.040
past before drones were available and good? So is there any reason that before drones were
00:33:48.320
available and worked well, is there any reason they didn't use them to get a victory before
00:33:54.100
they existed? Anybody? That's the quality of argument I'm getting online right now, is that why
00:34:01.520
didn't they do it in 2014? Well, the drones were a little bit different in 2014, as in a lot,
00:34:09.960
as in a lot. They're different than they were a year ago. In fact, they're way different than
00:34:15.800
they were a year ago. And certainly the availability, the militarization of them, how much payload they
00:34:21.460
could take, the distance they can travel, all of it. It's like completely different than it was,
00:34:28.260
you know, even a year ago. So everybody who says to me, drones can't work because they haven't worked
00:34:36.100
so far. And then a number of people said, Scott, you're ignoring all the reports of the Ukrainian
00:34:44.060
drones that have been shot down by the Russians. To which I say, you mean in the past? As in last
00:34:51.660
week? Because last week's the past. I'm not talking about what is going to happen in the past.
00:34:58.820
That's not my prediction. I'm not predicting the past. I'm predicting the drones will continue to
00:35:04.600
get better really quickly, and that Ukraine will have unlimited access to them because of NATO,
00:35:10.680
et cetera. And that if they decided to use them, that's a big if. That part, I don't know. But if
00:35:16.680
they decided to use them in a continuous stream of swarm attacks eventually, you don't think that
00:35:23.080
they could make it unoccupiable? Because I would assume they would always have spotters, right? The
00:35:30.320
occupied territories would be full of spies. Check that assumption. Could we assume that the
00:35:37.380
occupied territories, if Russia takes that Donbass area, et cetera, that they would have plenty of
00:35:44.100
Ukrainian spies that would say, OK, here's the barracks. This is where the Russian soldiers come
00:35:51.280
out of every day. And here's the thing that's going to blow up over there. So I think they'd have
00:35:57.980
spotting, exact spotting. And they would have unlimited drones to send over to blow up wherever there's a
00:36:04.980
human being outside. Yeah. Now, they might not be able to blow up a tank. And I'm not talking about
00:36:11.540
the big, like, Turkish drones. I'm talking about the, you know, the hobby-sized ones that can travel
00:36:16.780
two miles or whatever it is. I think they can do a couple of miles now. And that, I would expect that
00:36:22.000
with, correct me if I'm wrong, but does the distance a drone can travel change with Starlink?
00:36:30.260
If you add Starlink to hobby drones, at the moment, you can't do a handoff like forever. But if you had a
00:36:42.100
continuous Starlink connection, could you control your drone with very small lag to anywhere, as long as the
00:36:53.220
drone had power? Is that right? They don't use internet, but they could, right? No, I realize they
00:37:01.860
don't use internet. That's why they have a distance problem. But they could, right? The only thing that
00:37:07.300
they couldn't do is necessarily have the right time lag to be just a little bit more of a time lag.
00:37:15.380
But if they're targeting something stationary, or it can track something that's moving and fire on its
00:37:21.380
own, they wouldn't need that. They could be a second or two late, and it would still work, right?
00:37:28.100
You need large equipment to receive Starlink. Really? So you don't think you could put a Starlink
00:37:34.500
receiver on a drone? Yet? Okay, well, it's an open question. So anyway, my point is, I'm talking about
00:37:45.340
Ukraine in the next one to three years, what kind of drone power they could put together. Do you think
00:37:52.060
that Russia has the technology to stop a drone swarm? I don't think so. I don't think anybody has
00:37:59.260
that. There seems to me that some numbers of drones will beat some number of anti-drone defense.
00:38:06.460
But even if it's a cat and mouse game, you know, both are going to win for a long time. All right.
00:38:20.300
Corey DeAngelis reports that 23 states have now decided to cut ties with the National School Board
00:38:27.980
People are finally realizing that the biggest problem in the world is teachers unions and school
00:38:52.620
boards. Because their power distorts, you know, what society needs. All right. Provocatively,
00:39:02.460
I tweeted the other day that Trump would have solved the baby formula problem in 10 minutes.
00:39:07.500
Oh, boy, did that stir up a hornet's nest of turds. Wow.
00:39:14.540
By the way, I saw a great meme yesterday. It was Amber Heard. It was a picture of her. And the meme said,
00:39:24.140
I think it said that she was the only one in the relationship that gave a shit.
00:39:35.660
All right. So when I said that Trump would have solved the baby formula problem in 10 minutes,
00:39:43.020
what I meant was my understanding was that it was only red tape, you know, or agreements with other
00:39:51.260
countries, et cetera, that was preventing it. Now, is that true? Because I know we didn't have a domestic
00:39:58.780
supply. But was there more to it than just the availability of getting it from other countries?
00:40:09.180
All right. So I think there's, there was definitely a shortage in this country. But was there a shortage
00:40:14.700
in other countries? Did other countries have enough that if we had rapidly purchased it, it would have
00:40:22.140
made a difference? Does anybody know that? I'm seeing a lot of people say, no, it wouldn't have made a difference.
00:40:28.780
If there's no shortage in other countries and trucks exist, would our supply chain problem have
00:40:38.380
caused us not to be able to get it in an emergency situation? Because we would have airlifted it as we
00:40:43.660
did. I don't know. So my assumption was that anybody who said, all right, break all the rules and
00:40:53.020
feed our babies would have gotten something done faster. I don't think that's a bad assumption.
00:40:59.740
But then I learned that Democrats have been taught that Trump caused the problem.
00:41:06.460
Did you, have you heard that narrative? That the baby formula shortage was caused by Trump? It's
00:41:12.780
sort of popular on Twitter. Has anybody heard that?
00:41:16.140
That? And had something to do with NAFTA or something?
00:41:24.860
I don't know. Maybe. But I treat them as separate problems. Even if it's true, and I doubt it is,
00:41:33.660
even if it's true that something he did caused the problem, it was obviously something that, you know,
00:41:39.580
smart people thought was the right course. It just didn't work out. So that's different from
00:41:46.300
could he have fixed it? I think the fixing he's better at than the predicting weird things in the
00:41:52.300
future, which nobody's good at. There's a great article on China dominating rare earth materials,
00:41:59.020
which sounds like the most boring topic. But I've been waiting to see somebody just summarize it.
00:42:04.620
So I could get a sense of, you know, is there any other source for rare earth materials and stuff like that?
00:42:11.980
So this appears to be a big, big deal because of all your technology requires these, you know,
00:42:18.700
11 or so heavy earth, you know, rare materials. But here are some things I didn't know.
00:42:26.060
One source for some of these is Greenland, which might suggest why Trump wanted to buy Greenland.
00:42:34.380
And there's something discovered near Japan and the ocean that looks like it's got tons of rare earth
00:42:42.060
in there. It's hard to get out of the ocean. But you should read the article. It's written by
00:42:50.780
insightful geopolitics. But just look at my Twitter feed and you can see it just it's the only time
00:42:58.220
I've seen somebody explain it in simple terms. Now, it turns out that we are we the United States
00:43:05.020
is doing a lot to try to get our own, you know, friendly sources of rare earth. So there's a lot going
00:43:11.500
on. But China has so far dominated the known sources. But here's the big wild card. We keep discovering
00:43:20.700
new sources. So it could be the kind of thing. Yeah, maybe it's maybe it's an asteroid. It could be
00:43:28.300
space. But we keep discovering new ones. So, you know, if we keep discovering new ones, could there be
00:43:35.340
I guess there's a recent one in far west Texas, a mountain called Round Top. Round Top is known
00:43:43.420
that it might make America greatly self-sufficient in rare earth materials.
00:43:51.020
It discovers five out of six of the light rare earth and ten out of eleven. So there's basically
00:43:56.780
one place in Texas, one mountain, that might have enough of these rare earth materials
00:44:03.020
that would make the United States self-sufficient.
00:44:05.740
Now, do you think there's not even one other mountain in the United States that has any rare
00:44:13.180
earth materials? There's this one mountain that's got five out of six of one type and ten out of eleven
00:44:19.500
of the other type and all five permanent magnet materials. That's just a one mountain in Texas.
00:44:26.860
You don't think we're going to find some more mountains?
00:44:28.940
Somebody says a pebble mine in Alaska. Right? Well, isn't the problem just finding it? I feel like the
00:44:40.140
problem is not getting it. The problem is just knowing where it is. I feel like this is one of
00:44:47.420
those gigantic problems that will be solved one day. Like maybe this is it. Maybe this far west tall
00:44:54.460
mountain. Maybe it solves everything. I don't know. Once they start digging, they're going to find
00:45:01.020
out how much is in there. They don't know how much is in there. What if it's ten times as much as they
00:45:05.180
think is in there? The problem is already solved. I mean, you know, given some time.
00:45:12.700
I think the Adams law of slow-moving disasters applies here better than in most places. And it works
00:45:20.300
pretty well everywhere. And that goes like this. That before we would run out or have some World
00:45:25.260
War III with China over rare earth materials or that we'd have a war and, you know, they'd make
00:45:31.020
them unavailable to us. Probably far before that's going to happen, we'll just discover a few more
00:45:36.700
mountains and we'll have all the rare earth materials we want. We'll just look harder for them.
00:45:42.300
Or we'll learn how to get them out of the ocean more reasonably.
00:45:45.500
Rasmus had a poll and they asked, is it possible to completely prevent mass shootings like the ones
00:45:52.700
in Buffalo? Completely. Is it possible to completely prevent mass shootings like the one in Buffalo?
00:45:58.940
24% of the people said yes. 24% think that you could completely prevent mass shootings.
00:46:07.180
24%. That's roughly, yeah. It's a neighborhood of a, it's about a quarter. A quarter, 25%. 25%. 25%.
00:46:20.460
All right. The next question was, would stricter gun control help prevent mass shootings like Buffalo?
00:46:27.500
40% said yes. But in this case, it was help prevent. You know, I think you could answer that one either way.
00:46:34.380
You know, stricter gun control, even if you didn't like it. It might, it might help.
00:46:42.860
It might, there might be one fewer. And that would help. I mean, it would help a lot if you were one of
00:46:48.940
the victims of that one fewer, the one that didn't happen. So yeah, I suppose this has more to do with
00:46:54.540
how you, you define the question or understand the question, I guess. All right. Here's the big
00:47:00.380
payoff for today. I developed a quiz, a 10 point quiz of news hoaxes. And I propose that you should
00:47:09.260
not talk to me about world events unless you can pass this test. Would you like to now participate
00:47:17.820
in the 10 questions that will determine if you are one who is duped by hoaxes? I will tell you in
00:47:25.900
advance that everything on this list is a hoax, a known hoax, a really well-known hoax. If your news
00:47:31.980
source believes that these are true, you need to change your news source. All right. Number one,
00:47:39.740
Russia collusion hoax. Number two, the steel dossier hooker story. Three, Russians paying bounties on US
00:47:47.820
soldiers in Afghanistan. Number four, Trump calling neo-Nazis fine people in Charlottesville. Number
00:47:54.220
five, Trump suggested drinking or ingesting bleach to COVID. Six, Trump overfed koi fish in Japan
00:48:02.300
with the prime minister, I guess. And seven, Trump cleared protesters with tear gas for a Bible photo
00:48:10.460
op. Number eight, Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. Number nine, elections were fair
00:48:16.220
because no court found major fraud. And number 10, January 6 was a quote, insurrection to overthrow the
00:48:22.780
government. Now, how many of you think one of these hoaxes is true?
00:48:31.420
Ten for ten. All right. Well, that has as much to do with who my audience is as the hoaxes
00:48:43.340
themselves. But what do you think of this as a starting point? Here's a rule of persuasion that is
00:48:54.940
one of the best rules you'll ever learn. And I learned this when it was my job in corporate America
00:49:03.180
to write up business cases or write up what our strategy was or generally to put into words
00:49:09.180
words what it is we wanted or planned to do. And what I learned was that the person who puts it into
00:49:15.420
words is actually sort of in control. Because the way you word things decides whether it's going to
00:49:23.980
happen. If you word it right, it happens. If you word it wrong, it doesn't. And so the person putting
00:49:30.300
things into words can also insert a little bit that maybe the boss hadn't intended. Maybe subtract
00:49:35.900
something that the boss would have put there but you don't think belongs there. So the person who
00:49:40.780
controls the speech, the speechwriter, has a lot of control over the country, the business, whatever.
00:49:48.220
So if you're ever in a position to be the one who writes it down, take that job. Take that job
00:49:54.860
immediately. Because the one who writes it down is a charge. So what I did was I wrote down this quiz
00:50:03.340
and this gives me sort of a power position because since I created it, it makes something that somebody
00:50:11.500
has to respond to. And it makes them respond within my frame. So I'm creating a frame and then I'm
00:50:18.780
inviting victims in to respond to it. But I've rigged the game, right? So it's already rigged. So it gives
00:50:26.700
me power to be the first one to write it down. So that's your persuasion lesson. Be the one to write
00:50:32.860
it down. Be the one to write it down first. It gives you tremendous power.
00:50:37.340
And I noticed that when I would mention any of these hoaxes individually, people would just fight them
00:50:47.100
to death. But I'm using list persuasion here, where if somebody looks at this list and they say, yeah,
00:50:54.300
okay, I admit that half of these are definitely hoaxes. What are they going to think of the other half?
00:51:00.700
Because I put it in the context in which they could say, okay, even I know, at this point I know,
00:51:07.820
that the Hunter laptop was not Russian disinformation. Right? So I know that one's
00:51:12.860
true. So if that one's true, oh, wait, I know. Okay. I do know that Trump didn't overfeed the koi fish.
00:51:21.100
I saw the full video to know what that was about. Okay. So two of these, I know they were real hoaxes
00:51:26.740
and they were on TV. Oh, okay. Yeah. That third one. Yeah. They never proved that there was any
00:51:33.540
bounties paid on U.S. soldiers. Okay. I'll give you three. So don't you think that people who
00:51:38.660
were inclined to believe at least one thing on the list would look at the list and sort of talk
00:51:44.660
themselves into thinking that the list maker knew a few things. Because when you agree with somebody,
00:51:52.260
you think they're smart. So if I put something on the list that they're going to agree with,
00:51:57.460
they'll think, well, you're at least smart about that one. So I'm drawing them in.
00:52:01.620
So persuasion wise, this list persuasion, which I hate it when it's used against me,
00:52:07.220
but it's a powerful technique. If you're going to be the one who makes the list,
00:52:11.780
it's powerful. So imagine the same technique if you had made a list of mistakes that Biden made,
00:52:19.140
or mistakes that Trump made. A list of 10 of them is going to be more persuasive,
00:52:24.420
as long as somebody believes a few of them. If the whole list is bullshit, then it doesn't work at all.
00:52:30.580
But if a few of those on the list, you say to yourself, okay, those, I see your point on a few
00:52:36.420
of those, then you're more inclined to think that the larger list has some weight.
00:52:44.100
Oh, I forgot an E on Steele dossier. Thank you. I'll fix that.
00:52:51.300
All right. I would invite you, actually, I think I'll probably,
00:52:57.060
I might correct that typo and then repost it. But feel free to use that, to use my list of 10.
00:53:06.340
You don't need to give me credit or anything. But if it's useful, you have my full permission
00:53:13.460
as if you needed it. You didn't really need it.
00:53:15.380
Can we move Charlottesville higher on the list? No. Because I didn't want people to get there until
00:53:24.500
they had seen a few that they agreed with. So Erica asks, should we, could we put the Charlottesville
00:53:31.460
neo-Nazi one higher on the list? If it were a list of how bad they were, I'd put it toward the top.
00:53:39.380
But remember, the point of it is persuasion. So putting it forth is about exactly what you want to do.
00:53:50.420
All right. That's all I got for today. I think, I think you would agree, this was just about the
00:53:59.380
best thing you've ever seen in your life. Am I right? Yeah, of course I am. And once again,
00:54:04.660
your dopamine levels are higher than they would have been. I think your oxytocin is
00:54:10.740
starting to peak. And a little bit of caffeine too, for some of you. Yes, you're feeling good.
00:54:18.340
You're feeling better. Things are going great. And by the way, if you want to look forward to a
00:54:24.180
Dilbert series that's coming up, Dilbert's company is entering the big pharma space.
00:54:29.220
And they're producing a pill. And there will be some controversy about whether the data is accurate
00:54:34.980
or not. So if I'm still around a month from now, I'll be surprised. See you tomorrow.