Episode 1798 Scott Adams: Let Me Tell You All The Things The News Isn't Telling You Today
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 16 minutes
Words per Minute
142.05702
Summary
Scott Adams talks about the Boris Johnson and Shinto Abe murders, and why he thinks the government should be run by people who can break things, not people who are good at breaking things. Plus, a new upgrade to the iPhone 5s that doesn't require non-standard haircuts.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Highlight of Civilization.
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Coffee with Scott Adams, and it doesn't have to be coffee.
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You can have your coffee any way you like, conservatively or otherwise.
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But you will need a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine the other day, the thing that
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Well, I'm going to start including headlines from the Babylon Bee, because it used to be
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I would say, oh, I'm not going to talk about joke headlines, because those are just jokes.
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So I feel like I can give you Babylon Bee headlines just along with the others.
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I'm not even going to mention where they come from.
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Does this come from the Babylon Bee or from CNN?
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A recently published study presented a worrying statistic regarding the masses of Californians
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The study finds 92% of those fleeing the Golden State don't survive the first winter.
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If you were on my live stream yesterday from locals, you'd have to be a subscriber to see
00:02:04.260
it, you would have seen me discussing the fact that the word fleeing is a good word for
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Notice it's like, study finds 92% of those fleeing the Golden State.
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That's how you know it's the Babylon Bee and not CNN.
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Well, Boris Johnson resigned and Shinto Abe was murdered.
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So, it's a bad day for, bad week for conservative leaders around the world.
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I mean, I feel like, you know, there was like, you know, scandals.
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And he looked too much like Donald Trump, his haircut.
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You know, I'm wondering if the way things work best is that you get a Boris Johnson or a Trump,
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and they fix stuff, and then you let other people run it for a while until something breaks.
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But when something breaks, you need somebody to come in and kick some ass again.
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So, I feel like, I feel like maybe, you know, the people who can break things the best shouldn't be the people who are running things.
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Because you need the demolition people to just come in and break everything.
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And then you need the people who are just going to pick up the garbage.
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So, it might not be bad that your Boris Johnson's come, and then they do the thing, and then they go.
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But I wonder, I wonder, is the Boris Johnson situation the simulation sending us a signal about Trump?
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Now, the way we usually talk about it is, is there some trend developing with this one point of data?
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And I don't know that it's a trend, but maybe the simulation is winking at us and saying,
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hey, hey, we're moving on to a new upgrade, and it doesn't require people with non-standard haircuts.
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The more tragic news, and this is really shocking.
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You know, former Prime Minister Shinto Abe, am I saying it correctly?
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Okay, that sounds like a story I don't know about.
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In their little story, they called him an arch-conservative.
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I guess people didn't like the way he was characterized.
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Because it's very, you know, the gun control is very, you have the shooter, and a homemade
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So apparently, you should not get the news from me reading comments as they stream by.
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Turns out that's a very inaccurate way to get the news.
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So it wasn't printed, but maybe he made it himself or something.
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Well, I don't know what we're supposed to take away from the story, because on one hand,
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you know, it's notable that they have strict gun control and the most, probably the most
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prominent politician in Japan just got murdered in public.
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But I don't know that it's telling us anything, is it?
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But what did we, did we learn anything from it?
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There's probably, I don't think there's necessarily anything to add to the story.
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But I'm watching in, let's say, great interest as the COVID skeptics, you know, the rogue doctors,
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And there's still studies coming out that, you know, support them or don't.
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He and two other doctors were on TV talking about a Swedish study that allegedly confirms that Pfizer does modify your DNA.
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It causes your cells to produce the toxic spike protein.
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So that was a news clip that I saw forwarded around.
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So let me give you the following context so that when you see this clip, if you do, you'll know how to evaluate it.
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Now, first of all, is it true that the Pfizer shot does something to modify your DNA?
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Would you say that less than half the time they would be confirmed?
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Now, I know in the social sciences, they have a really bad reproduction problem.
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Or is that only for the social sciences, where things are a little sketchier?
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Well, so the fact that there's only one study, that should tell you it's not.
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If you see one study, and it even looks like a high-quality study, can you say, without even
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knowing what the topic is, can you say that it's most likely not true?
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Most likely not true if there's a high-quality study that says it is true.
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You know, also high-quality gets the same result.
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Well, then you're much better, much better territory, right?
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But here are the other things you should say about this news,
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And see how many of these you sort of automatically got on your own.
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Number one, you should have said it's most likely not true,
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how many of you said automatically, probably not true?
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If you did, then you're a good consumer of news.
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All right, here's some other things you should have thought about if you saw it.
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who also has been very controversial as one of the rogue doctors,
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Now, one of the things that she said was that if it's true that the DNA is altered,
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she says that this might create new avenues for lawsuits
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against the pharma companies or against somebody because it modifies your DNA.
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And there's some law that says you can't discriminate against people with different DNA.
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And so the idea was that because DNA is involved and you can't discriminate against people
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who have different DNA, that gives you some kind of avenue for, I guess,
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objecting to be banned if you're not vaccinated, I guess.
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All right, she's not a lawyer, but correct me if I'm wrong,
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her legal theory, she's a lawyer, somebody says.
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In my opinion, as a non-lawyer, her legal take is stupid.
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Like, I'm not a lawyer and I'm evaluating somebody who you say is a lawyer
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Do you think there's any existing law about, you know, discrimination based on DNA?
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Do you think there's any law that this would apply to?
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I see people complaining, and I'm not going to let this go, all right?
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Usually I don't dump on people who are on the local platform because they're subscribers,
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I'm seeing a complaint that I'm talking about a topic that I don't understand again.
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I deal with you, it's interactive, you correct me, I correct you, you correct me, I correct you.
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A lot of this is breaking news, we haven't looked into it, we're just trying to figure it out,
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So if your complaint is that I don't understand thoroughly the topic,
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Because nobody understands any of these goddamn topics.
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If there's anything I can teach you, it's that nobody understands them.
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In fact, that's going to be the biggest theme today.
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Even the experts don't know what the fuck they're doing.
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So if you think the problem is I don't understand the topic, you're right.
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But it's a dumb fucking comment, because nobody understands the topics.
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So, listen, here are the other reasons you should maybe be skeptical of this new information about the Pfizer shots.
00:14:47.200
First, the legal part sounded so dumb to me that it degraded my opinion of their medical opinions.
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So maybe that sounded the same way to you, or maybe you know more about the law than I did and it doesn't.
00:15:00.480
Here's the part that was glossed over in the video that we saw.
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One of the hosts asked directly, and this is the most important question, they asked, so what?
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So Dr. McCullough said, you know, that the study shows that, you know, the DNA is modified in this particular way.
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What happened when she asked the so what question?
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Dr. Simone Gold cut her off to talk about something else.
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They didn't want to answer the so what question because it might be a so what nothing.
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It could be that there's like a technical change to something that's technically your DNA.
00:16:15.620
But if you heard the other side, which you didn't, what would they have said?
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What would the other side, what would Pfizer say?
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They might say, oh, God, you're being so technical.
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Yeah, in a technical way, you could say some DNA got modified.
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But if you look at the details, you can see that the way it's modified is so trivial,
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it would be more correct to say that nothing important happened.
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Now, I don't know if they'd say that or anything close to it.
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So what credibility would you put in a study where you haven't heard the, let's say the,
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you know, the offended party would be Pfizer, right?
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They would be the offended party in this because the data goes against their best interests.
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If you haven't heard from them, you really haven't heard the situation, have you?
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They made a legal pronouncement that, to my non-legal mind, just looks stupid.
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It just doesn't look like it applies at all to me.
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What trust or credibility would you put in a scientific study that says one company in
00:17:46.520
a competitive field, that one company is a company you shouldn't use?
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Well, who is the most likely entity that would fund a study like that?
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Who would have a lot of interest in putting some money into that kind of a study?
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So if the competitor funded the study, would you trust it?
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Now, if they don't tell you who funded it, should you trust it?
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Not telling you who funded it is the same as saying, well, don't trust it.
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If you found out that China funded it, would it change your opinion?
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Suppose Johnson & Johnson funded it because they use different technology.
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Suppose it was somebody who funded it who has a large investment in J&J.
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It's just somebody who has a large investment in it.
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And then why is no other major media covering it?
00:19:05.520
Now, you could explain that by saying they're all captured media.
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By the way, that's the phrase I'm preferring lately.
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So, fake news just turns into, you know, no, it's not.
00:19:24.280
So, you just argue about what's true and what's not.
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If you say it's the corporate media, it's true, but it feels sort of cold and analytical
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But if you say the captured news, the captured news, not big media, not mainstream media,
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So, this is borrowed from regulatory capture, if you know that topic.
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You have a regulated industry, let's say a phone company or the power company.
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The regulators eventually get owned by the company they're regulating.
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Over time, the company with the money finds a way to get people regulating them
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So, to me, it seems that between the pharma advertising and the Democrat influence
00:20:25.740
and the probably CIA, it looks like it, that the news, most of the news is captured.
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Meaning that there's somebody controlling it who is not interested in you hearing the total truth
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Because captured gets right down to what's happening, right?
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When you say corporate, it doesn't really describe the problem.
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It just gives you a vague unhappiness about corporations.
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But the captive media, as opposed to captured, I'm liking that upgrade.
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The President Biden gave out 17 Presidential Medals of Freedom.
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I guess that's the highest honor a civilian could get.
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The Presidential Medal of Freedom, including one for Denzel Washington.
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And the bigger news, this might be just me, but the bigger news in all of this is that
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I've been passed over again, but not Denzel Washington.
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And I think he's actually a solid citizen as well.
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But he does seem like a solid citizen, like the kind of person you want to listen to.
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You know, the kind of person who would give you dad advice you should actually pay attention to.
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But for all of his many qualities, of which I think Denzel Washington should be complimented,
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Did he do more for the country this year than I did?
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Yeah, I could give you six names of people who seem to have moved the needle,
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You know, I don't want to degrade his worthiness,
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But there might be some other people who got passed over.
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The Libs of TikTok account, if you're not following that on Twitter.
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So there's a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok,
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where they take TikTok videos and put them on Twitter.
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And they're the ones that make the people on the left look the worst.
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So you should look at them as humor more than news.
00:24:15.180
and I don't want to use your pronouns, and all that stuff.
00:24:19.420
The reason I'm not with you on the anti-wokeness stuff
00:24:22.260
is because, to me, it's just an extension of politeness.
00:24:26.060
Like, I'm fine with people telling me what they would feel comfortable being called,
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Now, the fact that people are making somewhat reasonable requests,
00:24:44.960
If you want to use this word or that, I'm willing to update.
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The question of demanding it is different, right?
00:24:59.580
But the question of, do I want to call people by the names that they would feel most comfortable with?
00:25:06.660
But there's no good idea that isn't taken too far.
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And when people look at my work, you know, with Dilbert,
00:25:14.820
they often misinterpret what it is I'm making fun of.
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And they'll say, you're making fun of all the bad things that corporations do.
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What I make fun of is good ideas that went too far.
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For example, I used to make fun of something called re-engineering.
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And the idea was, instead of tweaking things to improve them in your corporation,
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you would, you know, just tear them down and build them up from scratch.
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Re-imagine the whole thing instead of just fixing them on the edges.
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Now, weirdly, that was like a new idea in the 90s.
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So they had to introduce the idea that maybe sometimes you should, you know,
00:26:25.220
But the corporations, like they always do, took it too far.
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So they took a perfectly good thing and then they took it too far and it turned crazy and then it became bad.
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How about we talk to people the way they'd feel comfortable being talked to?
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And then it goes to, it goes all the way to, if you don't use my right pronoun, you're going to lose your job.
00:27:03.020
Now, somebody's saying you're wrong because you're saying that wokeness is a larger category than just pronouns.
00:27:11.920
My point is that this stuff always starts as something you could defend.
00:27:15.640
And then it grows and becomes this, you know, horrible, stupid thing.
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So anyway, there's this therapist on TikTok, a young, well, I don't want to, I don't want to label him.
00:27:32.940
So the they says that it's all, you're going to think I'm saying this wrong.
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It's so outrageous that you're going to think you heard it wrong.
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The therapist is saying that the mass shooters don't have mental illness, but a lot of the people they shoot do.
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That there's more chance that there are mentally ill people in the victim groups than in the shooter groups.
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And not only that, but this therapist, this is somebody who does this for a living.
00:28:04.540
This therapist is quite exasperated because we all know this.
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We all know that thinking that the mass shooters have mental illness is just a distraction from the gun issue, he says.
00:28:16.920
And that the real problem here is the patriarchy.
00:28:24.680
It's obviously guns and the patriarchy, says this therapist on TikTok.
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And it's funny how much of, well, it's hilarious that somebody's opinion on the left can be used as entertainment for the right.
00:28:47.660
When you look at this, you don't say to yourself, well, here's a political opinion I need to argue against, do you?
00:28:59.100
So, when you get to the point where somebody's, I think it's a serious political opinion, you can't even debunk it.
00:29:07.960
It's beyond the point where debunking even makes any sense.
00:29:19.320
Here's a take on the Russia-Ukraine thing that I thought was worthy of passing along from Armchair Warlord on Twitter.
00:29:27.840
So, I don't know anything about Armchair Warlord, but I'm going to tell you his, or they, opinion.
00:29:37.320
And he talks about his idea now is that the Russia has basically a total lock on winning, and all they have to do is grind it out.
00:29:46.660
Now, you've heard that before, but here's the specific to it.
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Apparently, the Ukrainian military would be quite capable if the Russian military met it, you know, military to military in a big old confrontation.
00:30:02.020
But modern militaries don't do that so much anymore.
00:30:05.260
So, they're standing at a great distance and shooting artillery at each other.
00:30:09.860
The problem is, the Russian artillery reaches the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian artillery does not reach the Russians.
00:30:17.700
And it doesn't look like that's going to change.
00:30:20.020
So, apparently, the Russians can just, you know, let's shoot off another thousand artillery shells.
00:30:31.280
They'll shoot off a thousand artillery shells, and like, all right, time for bed.
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Get up tomorrow, shoot off another thousand artillery shells.
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Now, when they're done, and it looks like they're not going to run out of artillery, there won't be anything left of the Ukrainian army, and there won't be any battle, right?
00:30:54.520
So, I said this about Russian artillery over a month ago.
00:30:59.240
Yeah, the thing that's, I guess, that we would add to it is that it doesn't seem to be a counter strategy to it.
00:31:06.700
But, the Vietnamese strategy, which I also read about on this thread from Armchair Warlord, the Vietnamese used to call it getting between the belt buckle and the person.
00:31:20.860
So, in other words, if you're at a place where their artillery can get to you, but you can't get to them, you've got to get closer.
00:31:32.260
Getting further away isn't going to help you, because then they just move toward you.
00:31:36.700
So, basically, the only strategy that the Ukrainians have is basically to attack a stronger military, get closer to them, so that their weapon's worth both ways.
00:31:52.340
So, you know, war is completely unpredictable, most of the time.
00:31:58.080
And so, I don't know, you know, I don't know if this is the steady state and how we can predict how it goes.
00:32:06.840
But I would also expect the Ukrainians to counter with different kind of weaponry and tactics and something.
00:32:13.300
But I think this is a worthy point of view that we might already see the end point, which is Ukraine just gets ground up and they can take as long as they want, because Russia's got time.
00:32:24.800
So, is there any theories yet about why Shinzo Abe was killed?
00:32:38.200
Because it was such breaking news, I didn't see anything before I got on.
00:32:45.060
He was based, he's a crazy guy, yeah, who knows.
00:32:55.480
Right, yeah, maybe because of China, I don't know.
00:32:59.380
It doesn't, I don't feel like China assassinates people in foreign lands.
00:33:07.500
That feels as non-China-ish as anything could feel.
00:33:11.340
Yeah, and believe me, I'm as anti-China as anybody.
00:33:15.600
But I don't think they do things that are that on the nose.
00:33:20.460
You know, Putin might just kill his adversary on foreign ground.
00:33:31.460
So, apparently, Germany is already rationing hot water, dimming its street lights, and shutting down swimming pools,
00:33:40.100
because the energy crisis is, you know, sweeping the country.
00:33:43.660
And how many different ways do we have to say that Trump was right about that?
00:33:47.740
If you were on the left, and you saw how many times Trump said something that was just outrageous,
00:34:00.660
wouldn't you be a little bit worried about your stance on climate change?
00:34:07.640
Every time Trump gets one right, that even, you know, even, I have to admit, even at the time when he said it,
00:34:18.700
I wasn't quite sure it would make a big difference.
00:34:21.240
You know, I thought things were stable with Russia and Germany,
00:34:25.020
and I wasn't really sure it would make any difference.
00:34:30.340
And now I would say, well, he was definitely right.
00:34:34.780
And the rest of the world seems to have been wrong on that.
00:34:39.180
But when you see him do that time after time, including running for president,
00:34:44.300
how many people thought Trump could win the presidency?
00:34:49.940
But when you see him get one like that right, that the smartest people were getting wrong,
00:35:21.500
His command of the details of, you know, topics, I don't know.
00:35:33.760
And his instinct is that the election was rigged.
00:35:40.700
Trump's instinct, which weirdly has been correct in times when you thought it wouldn't be,
00:35:46.440
or the fact that there's no evidence that stands up.
00:35:55.960
I would be uneasy if I were on the left because the more times Trump is proven right about something that's, you know,
00:36:03.700
a complicated topic, the more you have to wonder if he's right on the other one.
00:36:11.980
How many of you think this so-called red wave of Republican electoral victories is really going to happen?
00:36:19.740
Because I think Rasmussen is still confirming there's a big gap, eight-point gap at the moment.
00:36:25.280
And so the trouble is nothing seems predictable anymore.
00:36:50.360
I'm a little bit concerned that I'm not worried about complacency.
00:36:59.560
But I'm a little bit concerned that there will be another surprise.
00:37:01.980
And that the insurrection, the January 6th hoax may not be working as well as the Democrats wanted.
00:37:11.680
They have to kind of roll out another hoax, don't they?
00:37:20.520
Now, it could be they thought they had all they needed in the January 6th stuff.
00:37:24.380
It could be that there's some sub-hoaxes within the January 6th thing.
00:37:27.540
But we know some hoaxes are coming because that's their only play.
00:37:43.160
Now, let's say things go the way most of the pundits expect
00:37:46.320
and that the Republicans, you know, sweep Congress and even win the White House in 2024.
00:37:52.000
Do you know what the best part about that would be?
00:38:06.620
The best part will be watching the Democrats complain that the elections were rigged
00:38:10.800
because there's no way that they could have lost that badly in fair elections.
00:38:14.980
That's actually going to happen and they're going to do it shamelessly
00:38:21.000
as if they had not spent the prior four years complaining that you shouldn't say elections are rigged.
00:38:28.200
They're going to do it right in front of you and it won't matter
00:38:30.700
that they spent the prior year telling you it's not a thing.
00:38:36.140
Mark my words, it will not matter that they argued the opposite for four years.
00:38:42.340
They'll just act it like they had never existed four years ago.
00:38:56.900
How many think the next president will be Trump?
00:39:21.820
Now, this is not necessarily who you're backing.
00:39:32.480
What happens if DeSantis decides not to get in because Trump does?
00:39:50.180
Do you think it's a thing that DeSantis will stay out?
00:40:01.680
He's young enough, he can wait another four years.
00:40:56.260
Now, I don't think Christy Noem is probably going to run.
00:41:02.200
But of the people who are likely to have an interest,
00:41:08.500
Because I don't think he has any baggage, does he?
00:41:12.060
Somebody says, you know, he doesn't have the charisma.
00:41:14.280
Is that going to matter for the coming election?
00:41:18.820
Does the next Republican candidate need charisma?
00:41:24.400
I don't think the next Republican needs charisma.
00:41:27.560
A lot of people might say a little less charisma would be good this time.
00:41:32.360
A little less charisma might be exactly what we need this time.
00:41:56.660
Do you think Tom Cotton could beat Trump in a primary?
00:42:22.200
I'm going to give you an ulterior, let's say, a competing prediction.
00:42:33.980
He might be able to win a primary against Trump.
00:42:47.680
There's no Republican who's going to say Tom Cotton's not Republican enough.
00:43:17.740
In fact, I can't think of any video I've ever seen in which he's talking and the idea is, you know, he said something silly, so we're all joking about it.
00:43:27.840
So if you put somebody in there who's error-free, totally Republican, very smart, totally qualified, and he's running against Trump, what are you going to do?
00:43:40.080
Because you do think to yourself, well, I think Trump has more wattage.
00:44:02.640
So I think Tom Cotton could take Trump out, because a lot of Republicans are going to say to themselves, I want to win, but I don't want a repeat of having somebody in office who's just going to be, you know, the subject of all this controversy.
00:44:23.520
Somebody's saying Pompeo, and if Pompeo is in there, that would be interesting, because he'd be primary Trump.
00:44:39.020
If the not-Trump vote gets divided, Trump still sails through as one who has the most votes, right?
00:44:47.680
And yes, I will not ignore the fact that Tom Cotton has a very unfortunate last name.
00:45:04.200
I believe that if Tom Cotton had the right campaign help, he could take Trump out.
00:45:18.820
And I feel like calling it a long shot would be too far.
00:45:34.100
The main thing that would happen would be Trump gets in, Trump gets the nomination.
00:45:44.980
That when you hear Tom Cotton talk, you think to yourself, wait a minute.
00:45:49.560
Is he selling me the Trump benefits without the Trump costs?
00:45:53.880
How many Republicans would take that proposition?
00:45:57.060
I'll give you Trump-like policies, but without the Trump-like problems.
00:46:00.800
You don't think Republicans would find that attractive?
00:46:09.560
You know, Tom Cotton could say directly, look, my policies are not that different from Trump's.
00:46:20.000
I mean, if the proposition is given to you that cleanly, same policies or very similar policies, a little bit more research, don't worry about the drama.
00:46:39.160
You give me a, you tell me, imagine this, all right, mental experiment.
00:46:44.940
I'm walking down the street, and I randomly stop a Republican voter, just randomly.
00:47:00.220
Would you be even happier if you could get Trump's policies in a candidate who wouldn't be as much trouble and maybe make you look bad as a voter?
00:47:12.980
How many Republicans could I not convince to change the vote to one that's better for them as a voter, because I get all the right policies, but they're not smeared by the reputation that comes with being a Trump supporter?
00:47:36.640
If Tom Cotton just runs sort of an independent race where he says, I have good ideas, I don't think that's enough.
00:47:45.740
But if Tom Cotton says directly, look, I'm going to give you Trump policies or Trump-like policies, but without all the drama, how do you not vote for that?
00:47:57.380
You know, if you're saying his weakness is charisma, I say, well, that might make him less fun, but is that what you care about now?
00:48:06.800
Is that your top priority when the, you know, the world's at war, kind of, in Ukraine, and you've got big issues?
00:48:14.340
Is your biggest criteria that he's not entertaining?
00:48:19.900
I don't think anybody understands the strategic petroleum reserves.
00:48:30.120
There's a story out that some of the oil got sold to a Chinese company that has, that Hunter Biden had some financial investment in.
00:48:41.460
If our strategic petroleum reserves, that's the oil that we keep stored for an emergency, it was released for the purpose of increasing the supply of oil, which should have decreased the price.
00:49:01.320
Now, what I learned as I was dealing with this on Twitter, nobody understands the strategic petroleum reserves.
00:49:12.080
I wanted to come on here and explain it to you and say, well, let me explain to you.
00:49:18.300
But do you know what you're hearing in the news?
00:49:41.560
Does release mean they sold it at spot market prices, market prices?
00:49:46.340
Or does released mean they sold it only to domestic companies, or should have?
00:50:00.440
Does America use 20 million barrels a day, but the Strategic Reserve was going to release
00:50:19.440
20 million a day, but we released an extra one, which would be 5%, right?
00:50:24.780
Now, if all of that happened within a world which was just the United States, shouldn't
00:50:32.640
a 5% increase in supply have something like, it's not an exact correlation, but something
00:50:40.300
like a 5% decrease in the price at the gas station, right?
00:50:46.760
But what if it's released into the global economy?
00:50:52.500
Because I don't know how it's released, or if it's bought or sold or given away.
00:50:57.880
And the people I talked to on Twitter seemed to have pretty strong opinions, but also didn't
00:51:05.360
So I suggested on Twitter that maybe the Fed should buy everything in the Strategic Petroleum
00:51:20.020
The Fed, let's just have the Fed buy the entire Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down inflation.
00:51:46.760
Somehow I made it through economics without anybody being able to explain it to me.
00:51:52.120
I mean, I could repeat the surface-level stuff, right?
00:51:56.620
But there's something about it I just don't understand, right?
00:52:00.480
I understand some of its functions, but that's very different from understanding it.
00:52:06.240
And I've tried to read up on it a number of times.
00:52:09.060
And when I read up on it, I'm like, why does this not make sense?
00:52:13.800
Does anybody have that same experience where you try to educate yourself and say, I keep
00:52:22.520
And then you look into it, and you don't quite understand what it does.
00:52:26.800
The other thing like that is the strategic petroleum reserves.
00:52:34.260
Do we sell it, give it away, do something domestically?
00:52:37.520
Is it only for the refineries in the United States?
00:52:40.140
What happens if there's more oil than the United States could use because of refinery capacity?
00:52:45.540
Is it spot prices or a restriction on who buys?
00:52:50.840
So when I said, why don't you take the thing you don't know about, the Fed, and use it to
00:52:55.960
buy the other thing you don't know about, or you don't understand, the strategic petroleum
00:53:00.700
reserves, and reduce inflation, which is the third thing you don't know anything about.
00:53:05.900
Those are three things that economists don't understand.
00:53:09.040
The Fed, strategic petroleum reserves, and inflation in general.
00:53:19.060
Remember when we had stagflation in the 70s, or whatever it was?
00:53:23.760
And then later, all the experts said, well, we're going to get stagflation again.
00:53:33.080
So the thing you need to know when you see any story about strategic petroleum reserves,
00:53:40.040
or the Fed, or inflation, literally nobody understands them.
00:53:54.120
I did a micro lesson that I wasn't sure I was going to release, but I'm going to talk
00:53:59.440
I tried to learn music, specifically playing the drums.
00:54:04.240
And I got experts and looked at, you know, talked to people who got to music.
00:54:11.960
If I look at drum music written on a music sheet, and then I go to play it, it doesn't
00:54:19.680
If I play it exactly like the music is written, it doesn't really sound like anything you'd
00:54:25.320
And likewise, if you took a drum machine, and you just programmed it to play the notes
00:54:30.760
exactly as written, you wouldn't want to hear it.
00:54:39.020
So when somebody teaches me to play the drums, and I play it exactly as it's written and exactly
00:54:45.620
as taught, but it doesn't sound good, I say, why doesn't it sound good?
00:54:50.720
You know, why is this famous drummer sounding good?
00:54:56.340
And the answer is that the artist is actually adding something, right?
00:55:01.680
So the artist is modifying the notes in small ways, a little emphasis, maybe a little space
00:55:08.800
that they make up for by compressing the next one, something like that, whatever it is.
00:55:16.880
Well, if the good drummers are doing that, can't you just listen to them and then rewrite
00:55:23.060
the music so that a new drummer could look at how the other person played it in a pleasing
00:55:30.780
So why couldn't my computer simply listen to Keith Moon or some other famous drummer and
00:55:37.860
just say, oh, this drummer is not playing it the way it shows on the sheet?
00:55:41.960
They're either consistently making this kind of change, which would be easy to program, or
00:55:47.560
they're somewhat randomly adding things to it that your ear is picking up subtly, but
00:55:56.740
So there's no reason that your computer can't make this music better than an artist except
00:56:05.180
That the people who do it for a living, the artists, don't know what they're doing.
00:56:15.380
And the way you can confirm that is by talking to them.
00:56:18.440
Let me give you my impression of a very good artist who really knows music explaining to
00:56:29.740
Why can't I just put this in a computer and it would sound great?
00:56:32.960
And the artist says, no, no, it's not going to have the soul.
00:56:40.480
Because, you know, if the computer does it, it's just going to be to-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t.
00:56:48.500
But if a human does it, it's going to be cho-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch...
00:56:57.360
because what you're describing, if you understand it,
00:57:01.760
would be something you could write on this piece of paper,
00:57:04.740
and you say, look, don't play it the way it's written normally.
00:57:07.880
Make sure this is modified a little, this is modified.
00:57:13.160
And I'd say, oh, okay, so that's a little modification.
00:57:21.020
Now that would work, but that will never happen.
00:57:23.860
But instead, instead of saying, okay, modify your sheet music
00:57:28.280
so it's more like what they actually play that sounds good,
00:57:33.100
Oh, no, you just got to put a little, umph into it.
00:57:41.860
The experts don't know why the thing they're doing works.
00:57:56.120
So you get a lot of experts explaining to you things,
00:58:05.440
This will be the cockiest thing I've ever said,
00:58:09.440
This will be the cockiest thing you've ever heard,
00:58:17.940
Right, so I'm going to say something about myself,
00:58:20.900
but put yourself in that position, because it's about you too.
00:58:24.380
The reason I can't understand the Fed is not my fault.
00:58:31.820
It's because the people whose job it is to understand it
00:58:45.140
When the experts can't explain something to you,
00:58:53.040
80% of the time it's because they don't understand it.
00:59:05.720
I naturally wondered if there's some way to do it better.
00:59:08.940
Is there a formula to add, you know, something's funny.
00:59:13.500
And if you asked anybody who wrote humor for a living,
00:59:21.940
or it's, you know, tragedy happening to somebody else.
00:59:26.480
But if that's all you knew, could you reproduce it?
00:59:28.980
Could you take that and then go write some humor?
00:59:33.460
And the reason is that the people who made humor
00:59:37.480
They didn't understand their own area of expertise.
00:59:41.260
But, because I don't come from sort of an artistic background,
00:59:48.980
I spend so much time with them, you pick up the mindset.
00:59:56.380
well, there's got to be some formula underlying all this.
01:00:06.800
and use two of these six dimensions, it's funny.
01:00:25.320
And help me out if I forget two of my own things.
01:00:27.760
It's got to be cute, clever, absurd, recognizable, mean, or naughty.
01:00:36.060
Now, you understand what all of those words mean.
01:00:38.280
You would know what a cruel situation would look like.
01:00:41.300
You would know what an absurd situation would look like.
01:00:43.220
So there's no definition that really needs to be given there.
01:00:49.580
If you use two of those dimensions in your joke,
01:01:03.080
that you could just put into an objective form.
01:01:50.880
I'm not really talking about every single situation.
01:02:04.200
why do you say parenting is completely useless?
01:02:10.340
I'd say parenting is maybe 10 to 20% of the outcome.
01:02:21.080
but why are you saying that genetics is everything?
01:02:41.660
a 10% likelihood of outcomes for your children,
01:02:47.400
when you're talking about the life of your children.
01:03:13.400
People will interpret what you said as an absolute.
01:03:18.640
Why will people interpret what you clearly don't mean
01:03:25.340
They'll interpret it as an absolute to debunk it.