Episode 1831 Scott Adams: Things We Know: FBI and DOJ Can't Be Trusted. Occam's Razor is Worthless
Episode Stats
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Summary
The country is more divided than ever, but it s not because we re all mad at each other, it s because we are divided. It s time to move to a country where we can all get on the same page.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to another optimistic highlight of human civilization
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Probably the best time you've ever had in your life, and it's coming at you now.
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Sure, sure, there's stuff in the news that's scary and annoying, but that's all behind
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And if you'd like to take it up another notch, and that's the kind of person you are, all
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you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tanker gels, a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a
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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, the thing that
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Who says the country is more divided than ever?
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So part of the debate that you see on social media is the country should divide into separate
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countries because we're not one country anymore.
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To which I say, were we ever, were we ever, do you really think things are worse than they
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You know, some of it might be just a bad memory or you're too young.
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If you live through the 60s, if you live through the 60s, this is nothing.
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America can handle this level of discontent easily.
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It's not even pressing the, you know, pressing the envelope at all.
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We are well within the everything is fine zone.
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It just feels like it's different because if you have a hobby of talking about the news, as I do, you get all these little nuggets of, you know, that are designed, they're designed to get your blood flowing.
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The news doesn't report things that are normal and, you know, everything's going fine.
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The only thing the news shows you is stuff that's going to get your, you know, your entire nervous system excited.
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So, of course, you think the world is falling apart if you follow the news or you follow social media.
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Every time I walk outside the house, everything seems fine.
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You know, you'll be looking at your phone and you're on Twitter.
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You're like, ah, rah, rah, you stupid, stupid Democrats, stupid Republicans, rah, you rhinos, rah, rah, rah, rah.
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And then you put your phone down and you walk outside and your neighbor's there watering the lawn or whatever.
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You know, it can't be more than 1% of the country who would literally want to divorce.
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There are things that people say hyperbolically in the political context.
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So, Republicans are always talking about an armed insurrection against their own government
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or having to defend themselves from their own government.
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I mean, it would only take, you know, it would take the right trigger to make it serious.
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There's nothing happening that's, you know, close to that kind of a trigger.
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If the government said we're going to confiscate all your firearms, well, then I'd have a very different opinion.
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At that point, I'd say, okay, that's a problem.
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The most, probably the most polarizing issue there is.
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And the people who are most hated by the left are people who are literally trying to save the babies of the left.
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The right as well, but they were going to be saved anyway, right?
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The Republicans are trying to save the lives of the children of their enemies.
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Because the Republican babies are largely being born.
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Obviously, there's a lot going on in all parties.
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But it's a weird kind of, yes, the world is falling apart because Republicans really want their enemies to have healthy, successful babies.
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Now, the way they're doing it is worth discussing, right?
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The way they're doing it is totally worth discussing, and we do.
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Creating states where everybody can get what they want,
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It might take some time for people to relocate if they care enough.
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You know, the country was designed where if we have huge disagreements,
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They can give you enough variety that you can go where you want.
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You like high taxes and higher social services?
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So I would like to be the one beacon of positivity in your day
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that will be surrounded with people trying to get clicks for getting you all excited.
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And I'll probably get all excited about some things, too.
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If you see me getting worked up about something that won't matter if I walk outdoors,
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I mean, literally, just walk out your front door.
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People are just sort of minding their own business, for the most part.
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made news by approving a small nuclear reactor design.
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I think it's specifically for the company New Scale, NU Scale.
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Is that the one that Bill Gates has invested in, New Scale?
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There's another one that is in the news all the time.
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He's invested in one of the big modular startups for nuclear.
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Somebody sounds like they know what they're talking about.
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But New Scale won't be the only one that goes through this process.
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It looks like there are a number of other entities that are also looking for this kind of approval.
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Now, somebody said the other day that nuclear will never work because the economics can never work.
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How they plan to fix the economics is to get an approved model of something that you could build smaller and modular.
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And it uses a technology that's unlikely to melt or impossible to melt down.
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If you've got the government approval and you've got a modular design where you can just, you know, make more of them after you get going, it looks like problem solved to me, economics-wise.
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Now, that's easy to say because we also thought that the last versions of nuclear power plants would cost what we estimated.
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And then they all ended up being multiples of what we estimated.
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But even if that's true, for the modular, it's still going to be way cheaper than traditional.
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So in 2029, they expect to maybe have some of these new scale deals up and running.
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Let's say they shoot for six, but in 10 years, we're knocking off modular nuclear power plants like crazy.
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And the fact that the climate change people don't talk about this incessantly proves that it's not about the climate, right?
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But it's clear that this isn't a purely political realm that people imagine it's about the climate.
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Because if people actually thought it was about the climate, everybody would be all in on nuclear.
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Now, here's an interesting thing that somebody said as part of this story.
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Somebody in the industry said that the zeitgeist had changed in the last two years.
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So in the last two years, the common belief in society and in government was that nuclear had gone from the worst thing you could do to, well, we better do this as quickly as possible and do more of it.
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The zeitgeist, by the way, let me define that, because that's one of those writer words.
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There are certain words that writers like to write and readers don't like to read.
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Because, you know, if you're a good writer, you're writing at about the sixth grade level of comprehension.
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So zeitgeist just means the way people are thinking, right?
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So the way people are thinking, for some reason, changed in the last two years.
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Was there anything happening in the last two years that would have changed the zeitgeist?
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Michael Schellenberger, for example, and a lot of other people helping, Mark Schneider, me, other people.
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But I do think that, collectively, we actually moved the zeitgeist.
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Because there was nothing else happening, am I right?
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You know, the startups were crawling along, same as they are now.
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The only thing I know changed is that Schellenberger got a bigger audience
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and made his case so persuasively that people just heard it and said,
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Because it wasn't like just the Republicans or just the Democrats.
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Pretty much society in general just sort of went to OK on nuclear from not OK.
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And, you know, that's part of the persuasion as well, a big part.
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Oh, there's, and then I see the suggestion that the Russia-Ukraine thing blew apart,
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blew apart our old model of how we were going to get energy.
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I think the zeitgeist changed well before the Ukraine thing blew up.
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So when we heard about this raid on Mar-a-Lago,
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I tweeted that I was going to give my government 48 hours to explain itself.
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A whole bunch of people who were artists, mostly writers you've never heard of,
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flooded my mentions and said some version of this.
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Oh, cartoon boy, what are you going to do after 48 hours?
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What are you going to do, Dilbert guy, after 48 hours?
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The only thing I'm promising you is that I'm going to give them 48 hours,
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If they tell me what the deal is and I'm satisfied, okay.
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If they don't tell me what the deal is, then I have questions.
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why isn't Trump telling me what the warrant says?
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Because they have to show the warrant to the recipient.
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the law says we can check these things on your premise.
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If it's sealed, that doesn't mean sealed from the recipient.
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Oh, are you saying that the recipient knows, but he's not allowed?
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So I'm seeing people on both platforms telling me I'm wrong.
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just put that in your comment so I can favor your comments.
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So I'm looking for a lawyer to just tell me what's true.
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Well, no, Trump can't declassify anything because he's not president.
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You're saying it's not a normal situation because there's national security involved.
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Levin said he'd have to go to court to have permission to release it.
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Did Mark Levin said that Trump would need court permission to release it?
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You're espousing the so-when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife argument.
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Why are we trying to rationalize the legality of a purely political act?
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Trump lawyer was shown the warrant, but didn't get a copy.
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All the people who have failed as writers are very mad at me.
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They're very mad at me, and they also are unaware that I've had any career beyond making comics.
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They feel like they're, like, cookie-cutter, like, artist trolls.
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You know, put something about writer in your profile, and then go after that Dilbert guy.
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The 48 hours would be over, I think, at 4 o'clock my time.
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So by late afternoon today, we will know if we've been told anything useful.
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Now, I'm not going to accept that there's a national security element to this, so we can't be told.
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If you were a normal citizen, I'd say, well, national security, so yeah.
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But I believe that whether it's national security or not, they could, at the very least, tell us the domain that they're looking into.
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I mean, couldn't they say, for example, it's about January 6th?
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Or they could say it's about something in the documents.
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Yeah, I mean, I was thinking 48 hours from the time I tweeted, but it makes more sense.
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A lawyer says that being the Dilbert guy is not an insult.
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But somehow they make it sound like that minimizes my opinion.
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I hate to tell you this, but if you took the average IQ of successful cartoonists and compared
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it to the average, it would be a lot higher than you think.
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A lot of the successful cartoonists are literally physicists, lawyers, you know.
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A lot of them are really credentialed, you know, Gary Trudeau, Ivy League.
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So being called a successful cartoonist is sort of a weird insult, isn't it?
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So let's talk about this criticism from the Democrats who say, do a fact check me on this
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So the Democrats are saying that Ray was appointed by Trump.
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They're saying that the judge was a Republican appointee.
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And so they're saying, well, if Republicans are involved in this, then there must be something
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To which I say, but Republicans were involved in the Russia collusion hoax.
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Were there any Republicans in the 50 former Intel people who signed off on the laptop?
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But does it seem likely that all 50 of them were Democrats?
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And how about January 6 hearings being managed by two Republicans, right?
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What about the Lincoln, one of those guys, the Lincoln Log Group or whatever they are,
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So imagining that having Republicans involved means it's not a hit job, that doesn't track
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The other bad thinking I saw from somebody who does not have a STEM education is that Occam's
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razor, meaning the simplest explanation is usually correct, suggests that the most likely explanation
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for what we're seeing with this Mar-a-Lago raid is that the judge and also the Attorney General
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must have seen something that was damning and important, because it's the best explanation.
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The way they're acting is as if they did know there was something important that they could
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Do you think that the simplest explanation is it's exactly what it looks like?
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They thought there was something important and they went to look for it.
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If you believe that the simplest explanation is correct, you might be very dumb.
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It's circular thinking, and people use it as if it's some kind of magic bullet to find
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It's a magic bullet to make sure that you're in circular thinking and you're not part of the
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What's the simplest explanation for the existence of reality?
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No, the simplest explanation, according to the atheists, is just evolution, change over
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And then they say, well, hell, how do you explain how it all got here?
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And then the atheists say, how do you explain how God got here?
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The point is, I'm not arguing whether God or evolution is true or not true.
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What I'm arguing is that no matter what you think is true, you also think it's the simplest
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You start with what you believe is true, and then you reason backwards to say, it's also the simplest.
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Anytime you see somebody using Occam's razor to argue, especially in these situations where
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there's lots of variables and there's lots of unknowns and still the fog of war, if anybody's
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using Occam's razor in a world in which the unlikely thing almost happens all the time, right?
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If you told me, so here's the problem with Occam's razor.
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When you saw the Russia collusion thing spinning up, wasn't the simplest explanation that there
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And it turns out the simplest explanation was Democrats are corrupt.
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Everything looks simple if it's the thing you think is true.
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So don't be confused by what looks like the simplest explanation.
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In science, that might have some use, though, because science is more bounded, and if you
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have fewer variables to explain something in science, that's good.
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So in science, it's still useful, but not in the real world.
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I reiterate the most dangerous question in the world for Democrats.
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If you're a Democrat and you believe Trump is a menace to society, unlike normal politicians,
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and this is the important part, everybody calls the politicians on the other side a menace to
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But Trump has been singled out as, like, a special, you know, menace who could end civilization
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And if you believe that to be true, wouldn't you falsify an arrest warrant to stop him?
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And if you wouldn't, what the fuck is wrong with you?
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If you believe the gaslighting and that Trump is, like, really a risk to end civilization
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itself, if you believe that, meaning that you believe what Democrats largely say in public,
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if you believe that and you did not break the law to stop him, you worthless piece of shit.
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Because if you put me in that position, I would break the law.
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There's no law I wouldn't break to kill Hitler.
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I would murder Hitler if I had a choice or a chance.
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If I had a chance, I'd murder him, even knowing I would get killed.
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So are you telling me that a sitting judge, let's say the judge is a patriot, cares about
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the country, but also believes that Trump is Hitler, are you telling me that judge is
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But if there's a judge that puts the law over the survival of the country, you need to get
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I want the judge that would break the law in that specific situation.
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I want the head of the FBI to violate the law totally under that specific situation that
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you're stopping a Hitler from coming to office.
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Any other situation, they'd better follow the law, because that's best for everybody.
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But in that specific situation, you really have to kill Hitler.
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Now, I'm not suggesting that they do that, of course.
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I'm telling you that they need to explain why they're not doing it.
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Because to me, the simplest explanation for everything we're seeing is that Trump is being
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framed in every way that they can figure out how to frame him.
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So if you think that because some people were Republicans, or they were upright citizens until
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this moment, you have to explain to me why you wouldn't kill Hitler if you had a shot.
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If you can't explain that to me, you're not part of the conversation.
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You should not have a ticket to the conversation if you're not willing to answer this question.
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Sometimes you have to say, yeah, people are going to die, but I still choose it.
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Because it's a risky proposition over the long haul.
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Yeah, people are going to die trying to occupy Mars.
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But it's the only way we're going to get there.
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So I feel like anybody who can't honestly say what they believe and what they would do
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to be consistent with that belief should just not be in the conversation.
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Here's some context that apparently Democrats are not aware of based on social media reading
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I don't believe that Democrats remember the Hunter Biden laptop thing was a disappeared story.
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I feel it's just something that they didn't know about and then maybe lately they heard about.
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So they're missing the entire fact that the government is proven to have plotted to frame Republicans
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Because the whole reason for the 50 past intel people signing off that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation
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was to change the nature of politics, to change the result.
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If you get 50 past intelligence people to lie, and I think they knew they were lying.
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If you get 50 of them to lie, that is an insurrection if it changes politics.
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So you've got this January 6th committee looking into the wrong insurrection.
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There was an actual proven one with 50 people who have the types of jobs where they shouldn't be lying to the public,
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What I make is that they probably believed that Trump was a threat to civilization.
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I don't think that those 50 people were just acting out of just politics.
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I think they actually believed they were saving the world by keeping Trump out of office.
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In my opinion, this is a clear, proven insurrection.
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Because the 50 people could not have known it was Russian disinformation,
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but they signed on to say that they did know that.
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So we don't have to wonder if the top level of government would plot against Trump.
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Have you ever talked to a Democrat about the Russia collusion hoax?
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Or as if Paul Manafort sharing some internal polling information with a Russian guy,
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But it didn't hurt the country to have some internal polling from the Trump campaign.
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I don't imagine there were any surprises in it.
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And apparently the judge who signed off had some...
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what is the likelihood that you could be blackmailed?
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Would you take the job of being Epstein's lawyer if you had not been to the island?
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Maybe you have to be somebody who hasn't been to the island.
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But something tells me that just defending him suggests that you are blackmailable.
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If you said, who's the most blackmailable judge in the whole world,
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I'd say, well, somebody who had had a close association with Epstein
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is right in the middle of the blackmail, black hole of the universe.
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Because I think we all assume that Epstein was running a blackmail operation.
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I mean, he certainly was getting lots of important people in compromising situations.
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If you believe that a judge or a lawyer associated with Epstein,
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being on Epstein's side makes him an easy target for blackmail,
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So I don't assume that even if it was a Republican appointment,
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it doesn't matter if it's a Republican appointment.
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they did confess to instigating the January 6th protest.
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is that when Ted Cruz asked the representative of the FBI
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that the FBI confessed to instigating January 6th
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I think it would have been easy for them to say,