Episode 1799 Scott Adams: Elon Musk Pulls Out Of Twitter Deal But Everything Is Trending Positive
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 28 minutes
Words per Minute
150.79834
Summary
In this episode of the highlight of civilization, Scott Adams talks about Elon Musk's decision to pull out of a deal with Twitter, and whether or not this is a good or bad thing. He also takes a news quiz about who is the first human to shit on a bird.
Transcript
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But over at Locals, it's looking good, looking good.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, it gets better every time you see it.
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Most things, you get used to them and you say, I've had some of that, I don't need any more.
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But when you watch this show, every single time it gets better.
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And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask,
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a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day,
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So I want to see how many of you are paying attention to the news.
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Who is the first human being to shit on a bird?
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I will accept, as acceptable answers, Magic Johnson.
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Now, we're all looking at this and saying to ourselves, hey, although we have not been
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to law school and we've never seen the actual agreement between Twitter and Musk, I don't
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think that should stop us from having a legal opinion.
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Do you think we should be limited in our legal opinions just because we haven't seen the
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And if you want some medical opinions later, you come to me.
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I don't have any medical experience, but I can definitely give you some opinions because
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Well, apparently, there's something in that deal with Musk and Twitter that said something
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like Elon Musk would not do due diligence, or he waived his right to due diligence.
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And I hear people interpreting that as, well, the joke's on you, Elon.
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You asked for more information to verify how many bots there are in the traffic, and they
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didn't give you what you wanted, but hey, too bad, because you signed a deal that said you
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To which I say, I'm no lawyer, but was that due diligence?
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Does due diligence mean that Twitter can make a claim that's not true?
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Can Twitter lie about the single most important part of their business?
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Hypothetically, I'm not accusing them of anything.
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But can they lie and then say, well, you didn't do your due diligence, so I guess we can lie
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about the single most important part of the transaction.
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Because Elon waived his right to due diligence?
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I don't think that that's what due diligence is all about, is it?
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Due diligence isn't about you checking to see if they're lying, is it?
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Isn't it about checking to see if there's something that's been omitted, or something that hasn't
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So you're looking for things that nobody mentioned before.
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It seems to me, again, not a lawyer, but do I need to be a lawyer?
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Do I need to be a lawyer to say that Twitter can't legally lie about the single most important
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part of the transaction, and say, well, you waive your right to look into it?
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But I'm watching Twitter say that, you know, the people on Twitter, I'm watching the people
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on Twitter act as though he waived his right to get the truth.
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So I'm seeing somebody say I'm absolutely right.
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Did anybody say what I just said, that this has nothing to do with due diligence?
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Has anyone talked to Jack Dorsey about this development?
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But how many of you think that this really means the deal is off?
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You know, if anybody's been involved in real business, of course you walk away from the
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Do you think Trump would have gone through with this deal?
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If this had been Trump, do you think he would close this deal now?
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Do you think, name somebody who's a great negotiator.
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He always has a more interesting answer than, you know, a yes or no.
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But this, I'm going to say this is the most likely possibility.
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The most likely possibility is that there'll be a new offer based on the fact that they
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haven't provided the information and that you have to discount that risk, right?
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So if you were going to reprice Twitter, you'd first take into account that the stock price
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So if you were going to make a new offer, you would have to make an offer that takes
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into account that you don't know if the traffic is real.
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So you would have to make an estimate in your mind of how likely that is and then say, okay,
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since I don't know if the traffic's real, I'm not going to pay full price, but I can't
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pay nothing or else I'm not going to get a deal.
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So I'm going to pay something-ish, you know, a little bit closer to the stock price, but
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Actually, I guess you couldn't buy it for less than the stock price.
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Should have got the shot, equals thinking past the sale.
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They can negotiate the price, but they can't negotiate the number of bots.
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Now, the fact that they could not provide that information tells you they don't have
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I mean, that's the hyperbolic, you know, version of it.
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If you can't tell us how many people are using the system and your business model depends
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on that number, it's the single most important number, you know, the amount of money.
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If you can't validate that you even have that traffic with real people, you don't really
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It's like an artificial business, like a fake business.
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Now, it's, you know, there are enough real people that you can say it's a real business.
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So whatever the price is for that, it's a lot less than the first offer.
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And imagine how unhappy Elon was when he saw the price of Twitter drop in half after he'd
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Because that was just wasted money if he completes the transaction.
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But it's funny to make Twitter begging to be bought.
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So we went from, Elon wants to buy you, and Twitter says, no, no, no, to making Twitter
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All right, so meanwhile, while this is like the biggest story in the news, arguably, so
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yesterday I'm sitting in my garage, which doubles as my man cave, I'm just working on my laptop
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and I'm sitting there in my pajamas, a little bit stoned, and I decided to reply to one of
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And so the one that I replied to was, it started with Elon Musk saying something about, you know,
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repopulating the world and having lots of babies.
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And then Nick Cannon, famous celebrity, Nick Cannon, you all know him.
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He weighed in and he says, right there with you, my brother.
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In other words, they were both in favor of having lots of children.
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And then Musk tweeted, we must expand scope and scale of consciousness for civilization to
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flourish and understand the nature of the universe.
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So he wants to expand the scope and scale of consciousness.
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In other words, have more humans and have them go more places, such as space.
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So more people going more places would expand the scope and scale of consciousness.
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And then he went on to say in his tweet, Musk did, consciousness resides most strongly in
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Because my understanding of evolution is that we don't need to understand the actual nature
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You know, you just have to, you just have to reproduce.
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Because I've heard Elon say it a number of times.
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So I'm not going to put an opinion about why he did it.
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But the tweet in which he said, we must expand scope and scale of consciousness for civilization
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to flourish and understand the nature of the universe.
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So he deleted that after, I don't think it's because of my comment necessarily, but he deleted.
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And to my surprise, the richest man in the galaxy, as far as we know.
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I think he's the richest human in the galaxy anyway.
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So the richest human in the galaxy, who's probably also the busiest human in the galaxy,
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running multiple businesses, worrying about this stuff,
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And I'm sitting in my garage, stoned in my pajamas.
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And I send him a message, and I get a response.
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Now, I have an interesting life, so interesting things happen on a regular basis.
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It's completely mind-blowing that I could just be sitting there in my little, mind-my-own-business
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garage, and the richest man in the galaxy is suddenly in a conversation with me, and it's
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And so I'm now in a public conversation with the richest man in the galaxy over the nature
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So anyway, I went on, because I challenged, why is consciousness even valuable?
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And Musk replied to me by saying, consciousness can understand the nature of the universe.
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Now, people watching the exchange said, boom, mic drop, gotcha, because that's what always
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When somebody says any kind of response, there's always somebody who comes in, gotcha, dude,
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And I'm thinking, well, I didn't really feel that.
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So after Elon Musk said, consciousness can understand the nature of the universe, clams,
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I said, evolution never needed us to understand reality before.
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Then later I thought about it, and I thought about how he said that humans have more consciousness
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than a clam, and I tweeted, I'd call it a tie so far.
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Does anybody know the context of why I so confidently engaged with the richest and arguably one of the
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It's because Elon Musk himself, I believe, based on what he said, thinks we live in a simulation,
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which would suggest that all of our consciousness so far has been a waste of time.
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Now, again, I don't want to put an opinion in somebody else's head, so I'm going to be as
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I'll just say that the appearance of it is that his main philosophy is that consciousness
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Because if we're really a simulation, everything we believed about reality is wrong.
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If you had a religion and you picked wrong, totally wrong.
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So my understanding of his opinion, which is different than his opinion, I want to be
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really clear, I cannot, anytime you say to yourself, let me characterize the opinion of a genius,
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You can't really characterize the opinion of somebody smarter than you and be confident
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Because whatever it was that made him smarter than you is why you couldn't have had that
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So I'm trying to be real careful about, you know, assuming what he believed, but the reason
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I was asking the questions and I was engaging is that I saw a conflict between thinking that
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consciousness is important and believing we're in a simulation which would suggest that all
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Now, somebody else weighed in and made a comment which was amazing, which is that we know from
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physics, and by the way, this is something we know, if we can know anything, I suppose,
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that you need to observe something for it to exist or to measure it, which is similar.
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Those of you who have better science backing than I do, which is almost everybody, you have
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to observe it or measure it for the wave to collapse or whatever it is.
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So reality doesn't become anything but a possibility until it's observed.
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Those of you who are saying no, look at the other comments.
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I'm saying that physics opinion, like all of the, well, probably not all, but the main physicists
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believe that reality forms because it's observed.
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I mean, there are enough yeses coming in that no people need to have some pause, right?
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Well, it's according to the Copenhagen interpretation, right?
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Can you give me, is it possible to give me a quick counterpoint to that?
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Because everything I've ever read said the same thing, that you have to measure it or
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observe it for the probabilities or possibilities to collapse.
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Are you saying that the observation doesn't create reality, it changes it?
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Is that the change you're looking for in what I'm saying?
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So let me say it in better language, all right?
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And so in my opinion, that would be called creating reality.
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If you don't want to call it that, that's fine, but we're still talking about the same thing.
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So if you want to say it's a change, I will agree with that as opposed to creating something
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from nothing, because I wasn't indicating it was creating something from nothing.
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There's always something there, but when you observe it, it changes it, and then that change
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So that was a long way to go to say that consciousness might be a 3D printer for reality.
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So we have this assumption that consciousness is important, right?
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And it could be that that's, you know, why the conversation sort of went to a dead end
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Why is it that we think consciousness matters or that we should have more of it?
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You know, there was something in Elon Musk's assumption going in that I was testing because
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But why do we assume that consciousness is good?
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And why do we assume that consciousness is that thing that makes us special and magic
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and spiritual and the most important creatures?
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Why is your consciousness important but not your eyesight or your ability to hear or your
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Why is consciousness the one that's the magic one?
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So it could be that reality requires consciousness like a 3D printer requires the physical form
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of the printer as well as the material going into it.
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It seems as if reality is printing itself, but to the physicist's point, if I can make
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a terrible analogy, the 3D printer simply takes the raw materials and transforms them into
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But the thing existed, in a sense, because there were always the raw materials.
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So the 3D printer changes its form just as consciousness can change the form of whatever was there
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So I see reality or consciousness as nothing but a 3D printer.
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It is simply a mechanical process that we notice.
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And because we notice it, because of the nature of consciousness, we think it's important.
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How many times have I told you that the thing we think is important is the thing we think
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So whatever it is that you think about the most is going to be the most important.
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Now, consciousness, by its nature, is the thing that makes you think about it.
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So if you think about your own consciousness all the time because you're designed that way,
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you can't not think about your own consciousness.
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Wouldn't that seem like the most important part of you?
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You would be fooled into thinking that your own consciousness was the most important part
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So we've sort of talked ourselves into the idea that consciousness has to fill the universe
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There's no reason we need more consciousness that I can come up with.
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But the trouble is, if you're Elon Musk and you're trying to sell the idea of going into
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space, you have to talk to people the way they can hear it.
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And when he says stuff like, we need to expand human consciousness, don't all of you say,
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I'm going to make another terrible analogy just to get you going.
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It's like when you ask billionaires what was the secret to their success, what do they
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What do billionaires usually say in public about why they were successful?
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They say passion because it sounds cool and it sounds like something you could do too.
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Well, if you would just follow your passion like I followed my passion, you'd be a billionaire
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Maybe a little luck, you could be a billionaire too.
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But you don't have any of that stuff, so good luck.
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Can Mark Zuckerberg tell you that the reason he's successful is by any objective measure,
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Can Bill Gates say the reason I built Microsoft and you didn't is because I'm, well, objectively
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speaking, I'm way smarter than you and I work really hard?
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So instead, you say things that sound good to the people you're talking to.
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My book behind me, Had It Failed Almost Everything and Still Win Big, has a chapter on passion being
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But when I hear that we have to expand consciousness into the space, I say, that sounds great, doesn't
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I absolutely, positively think that Musk taking us into space is one of the highest priorities
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But do you know why it's the highest priority of civilization, in my opinion?
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We're designed to take our consciousness somewhere.
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Now, we talk about it like it's our consciousness that's the important part.
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We just want more of us, just like every animal, every plant.
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But it's still going to happen whether we want it or not.
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That's just the way we talk about it after the fact.
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And the fact that Elon Musk had the ability to build a company that could take us to the
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This is something that most of you will never understand, unfortunately, for you, not for
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You'll never understand the obligation that you take on when you succeed.
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And what I mean by that is, before I had any success to speak of, I feel like I was in
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a pretty selfish mode, meaning that I wanted to acquire for my own benefit.
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And so I worked hard, and I acquired for my own benefit.
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But once I had acquired enough, just some freaky thing happened.
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And I thought, oh, crap, what's happening to my computer code in my head?
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And I suddenly realized that I needed some other reason to exist, because I had what
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I needed, and that was sort of my purpose for existing, was to protect myself.
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And once I'd done that, I naturally felt some obligation to the rest of the world.
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And so primarily, the reason I do this, instead of 10 other things I could do to make money,
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in fact, I could make a lot more money if I weren't spending my time on this.
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But when I do this, I feel a direct benefit to other people.
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And people tell me every day, you changed my life, I read your book, everything changed,
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you reframed something, I gave up drugs, I stopped drinking, I lost 80 pounds.
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Now, if you don't think that's motivating, I mean, that is really motivating, you would
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You know, it's something you can't buy, except with your own suffering, basically.
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I don't think that Elon Musk had a choice about building spaceships to take us off the planet.
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Because he had the ability, and he had taken care of his own needs.
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But we are designed so that if you have the capability to help the tribe, you practically
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You're just going to be called into service, basically.
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I feel that what I do here, to the extent that it helps people, is I couldn't help it.
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But I definitely don't feel like it was, you know, free will that got me here.
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There's something else I was going to say about that, but I forgot.
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Do you see that the Sri Lankans, they all protested and they attacked, I guess, the president's
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And I'm wondering how long it will take MSNBC to blame this on Trump.
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Was there something Trump said that caused this?
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Because this sort of thing doesn't happen on its own.
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Was Trump maybe saying something about you should have a peaceful demonstration?
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Because I understand when he asks for peaceful demonstrations, it often causes insurrections.
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There's a video of Jenna Ellis, one of President Trump's close advisors and attorneys.
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And she was talking about a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision today that she says,
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vindicates and validates what Team Trump argued back in 2020 in November, that election officials
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in Wisconsin had violated the state law in the administration of the election.
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And only now we get a Supreme Court Wisconsin decision that says it was true.
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But you know what is left out of this reporting so far?
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But if I were communicating this, I would have mentioned what it was.
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I would have mentioned what it was that got vindicated and validated.
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It seems like that's the first thing you say in a story like that.
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the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided today X and X now validates.
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It could be that this Wisconsin Supreme Court decision has some meat to it,
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and it means something, and it revises what we understood.
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So you're saying the ballot boxes were illegal?
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Should we care that there are illegal ballot boxes?
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Unless we know that that's what the problem was.
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Because, you know, in something like a state election,
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don't you think they violate laws all the time?
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There's probably a million little things they do wrong,
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people are saying there's something about ballot boxes.
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Is there an assumption that a certain number of votes
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Have I been saying his name backwards the whole time?
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Why does everybody call him Abe if it's his first name?
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about how Taiwan has to be defended against China.