Episode 1839 Scott Adams： Sam Harris & ExCIA Chief General Hayden Make Public Confession About Trump
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.92242
Summary
On today's show, Scott Adams talks about a new poll that shows 53% of Americans now agree that the FBI is run by Joe Biden's personal Gestapo. Also, the CDC is under fire for their handling of the Pandemic Pandemic, and Scott tries to figure out what to do about it.
Transcript
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Good morning everybody and welcome to another highlight of civilization. It's called Coffee
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with Scott Adams and I don't want to get you too excited but today double whiteboard. That's right
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not just one double-sided. I know it's almost too much to handle but we'll we'll do it together.
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Together we will handle this awesomeness and I think we can climb this mountain but first we need
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some fortification and all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stye
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and a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee
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and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. It's the dopamine of the day. It's the thing that
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makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip and it's happening now. Go!
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Sublime. Oh so good. All right we're going to do a little test a little intelligence test here.
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Let's see if the locals people can beat the people on YouTube platform who are watching now. All right
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it's a question for all of you. It's going to be based on a Rasmussen poll and people were asked if
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they agreed with this statement. This was something that Trump had said at one point. He said quote
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there is a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI or using the FBI as Joe Biden's personal
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Gestapo. What percentage of people strongly disagreed with Trump? Strongly disagreed.
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Whoa. You're pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah the answer is
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26 who strongly disagreed. So there's 26 strongly disagreed that Joe Biden is using the FBI
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as his personal Gestapo. I don't have an opinion. I'm just saying that's what the numbers are.
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But at the other end, actually if you added together the ones who strongly agree and the
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ones who agree, you get a much bigger number. All right. Let's see who doesn't agree. A majority
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see a majority now agree 53% with that statement. Oh actually that I'm sorry that wasn't Trump's
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quote. That was Roger Stone's quote. So Roger Stone is the one who quoted it. I said it was
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Trump. It was Stone. But 53% of voters now agree that the FBI is run by a Joe Biden's personal
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Gestapo. Now that means that there are a lot of independents or at least a smattering of Democrats
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Democrats who are now in the side of thinking that the FBI is Joe Biden's personal Gestapo.
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Anyway, the CDC who came under a great deal of criticism for their handling of the pandemic.
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How do you think the CDC is going to respond to all the criticism? So they're going to take action
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now. They're responding to the fact that they, I guess they confessed they didn't do as good a job
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as they'd like to do. What do you think they're going to do about it? What would Dilbert's boss do
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about it? What would they do about it? Like literally in a Dilbert comic, what would they do
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about it? They would reorganize. So it appeared that they had done something. That's exactly what
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my comic would do. Now, do you remember the rule that Elon Musk has for Tesla? Don't do something
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that could show up in a Dilbert comic. I've never done a comic about Tesla. Just think
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about that. I've never done a comic about anything that happened to Tesla. So apparently they take
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that shit seriously. But the CDC, as soon as they're being criticized, they decide that the
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response is to reorganize. And I'm thinking to myself, that is exactly my comic. That's exactly
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my comic. I wouldn't even add anything. That's the joke right there. So good job there, CDC,
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and making it worse. All right. So yesterday, based on a smart suggestion, I decided to grab
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the domain hoaxquiz.com. So now I own that domain, hoaxquiz.com. And it seems to me that
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what we need is some kind of a competitor to Snopes and the other fact checkers. And so,
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you know, I started with my list of, you know, the top 10 hoaxes, which is now up to 14 people
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have added to it. So we've got 14 what I would consider confirmed hoaxes. One of them's not
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quite confirmed, but it looks like it will be. But here's my problem. Here's my problem.
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I'm not willing to put the hoax quiz up unless I can do conservative hoaxes too.
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You okay with that? If I say Seth Rich being murdered by Hillary Clinton is a hoax,
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you're going to be okay with that? Will you? Because if I don't do it, there's no point in
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doing it at all. Is there? If I don't have conservative hoaxes on there, there's no point
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in doing it at all. It'd be a complete waste of time. But if I put both of them on there,
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then what position does that put me in? It puts me above the news. Now, could I pull that off?
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Probably not. Probably not. It would be pretty tough. But imagine you could create a place where
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people could go look and find out if the news is promoting a hoax. And let's say you actually
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were convinced that it showed hoaxes on both sides. It showed the conservative ones as well as
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the left-leaning ones. Would that make you more likely to find it credible? Before you answer,
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know for sure that I'm going to tell you things that you believe are true or hoaxes.
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I can't help it. I can't help it. Because we all have different opinions, right? So there are going
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to be things on that list that you think are real that I think are a hoax. So you have to be okay
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with that. Can you handle it? See, the trouble is, this is not the sort of thing you can do right.
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Can we agree on that? You can do maybe good enough. And good enough would be some kind of a,
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maybe a guardrail on the fake news so the fake news doesn't get too far out of control.
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But it wouldn't be possible for me to be right every time. No matter how I judge it or who I bring
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in to help me judge it, it's not really possible that I'd be right all the time. Should I do it
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anyway? Knowing that I would be wrong on some notable, probably some big examples too. I don't
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know what that would be. But should I do it if I know I'm going to be wrong? Yeah, see, already I'm
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getting pushback on the Seth Rich. Here's what I'd say about Seth Rich. There are rumors, there are
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rumors that this happened, but there's no evidence of it or no proof of it. Something like that. I'd
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probably say there's no proof of it. Now, would you be okay with that? See, I don't know if I could
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call that a hoax. I could just say we don't know one way or the other. So I feel like I need another
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category. I wanted to do hoax or no hoax and keep it simple. I didn't want to do the slightly true,
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slightly not true thing. But you probably get forced into it, don't you? Because there's going
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to be too many gray areas. All right, well, I have the domain and I'll maybe peck at that a little bit
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and see if it gains some energy to pull me. By the way, here's a little tip. A tip on how to get
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motivated. Does anybody have trouble getting motivated to do something they know they need
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to do? Here's a tip. I start lots of things that I know would be interesting or good to do.
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And I take the first step. And then sometimes I'll take the next small step. But I'm looking for the
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project to start pulling me, right? So the energy I have on day one, I don't know if that's the same
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energy I would have if I started going on the project. Because sometimes you get excited and
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then it gets boring and then, you know. So you've got to find a project where if you seed it, you know,
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you just give it a nudge, it takes on its own energy and then starts pulling you. I don't know if
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this one will pull me. I know I had enough energy to register the domain. And I know I have enough
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energy to think about how it would be. And I put on a question on the Locals platform if anybody
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wanted to help. But I don't know if I'll yet have enough energy for it to, like, pull me to completion.
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So I've got a number of projects right now that are in that state. I've done something,
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a little bit, but I'm seeing which ones are going to start pulling me, right? Now, my book I'm writing,
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I was pushing that until just recently. Like, it was just work. But more recently, it got to the
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point where it's shaping up nicely. And so as it starts to shape up, it brings its own energy. It's
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like, oh, wow, this would be good to finish this book. Because it looks like it's going to be pretty
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good. So now it's starting to pull me. And I wake up this morning and think, oh, I hope I have time to
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write that, to spend some time writing. Because I can't wait to, can't wait to fill it down a little
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bit. All right. Well, Alex Jones is off the Trump train, as people are saying. He's going to, I guess
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he wants DeSantis to be president. He would prefer him. Now, I don't know what Alex Jones will do if
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DeSantis doesn't run. What if the only Republican choice is Trump? Will Alex Jones be back? I don't
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know. Yeah, we'll talk about Sam Harris in a minute. So, Geraldo Rivera made a bold statement on Twitter.
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Now, I know a lot of you are sort of anti-Geraldo Rivera. But I'm so pro-Geraldo. I'm just totally
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pro-Geraldo, which is different from agreeing with him. Can we make that distinction? I love the fact
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that he puts himself out there. I love the fact that he doesn't appear to be afraid of anything.
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He doesn't seem to be physically afraid of anything. And he doesn't seem to be embarrassment-wise
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afraid of anything. Yeah, he took off his shirt at age 70 or whatever it was. He's my role model.
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Yeah. Yeah, Geraldo is absolutely my role model. And again, it has nothing to do with whether I agree
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or disagree with any opinions. But his, I guess his approach to life is one I think you should all
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emulate. Yeah, if you could be as, you know, as, let's say, unafraid as he is, your life would look a lot
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better. It really would. So let's try to separate whether we hate his opinion on any particular
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topic, because I disagree with him on this particular one I'm going to talk about. But I just love the
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fact, I just love the fact that he expresses himself with no remorse. Here's what he said
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in a tweet. Geraldo did. He said, whatever your politics, we should all recognize Liz Cheney's
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selfless courage in standing up to the Trump title wave. Wyoming Republicans are going to end her
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congressional career today. I guess this was yesterday. But nothing will wash away the role
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she played standing up for democracy and the Constitution. Now, I like the fact that he knew
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he would get absolutely crapped on today for that opinion, and he still put it out there. Still
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put it out there. I love that. He shows his work, right? He gives his reasons, shows his work. That's
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all I ask of anybody. If we could learn to appreciate somebody who acts the way he does,
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even when we disagree, man, we would be so far ahead. So far ahead. All right. But here's what I
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think about Liz Cheney. I would buy into the selfless courage part. This is Geraldo's characterization.
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I would buy into it being a selfless act for the country under the following condition.
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That the way she'd acted had presented some kind of balance. That she was open, for example,
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to, let's say, open to an argument on both sides and acted in a way that her rhetoric showed
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an openness to know, to find out what happened, as opposed to a Captain Ahab mission to kill a white
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whale, or an orange whale in this case. At what point did Liz Cheney say, we don't know the motivation
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of the protesters, but a Harvard study just said that the vast majority of them believed that they
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were saving the Republic, not overthrowing it. Now, if Trump was the primary persuader of the group,
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and the group had been persuaded that they're trying to save the Republic, isn't that completely
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different than the way she has presented it so far? Now, independent of what evidence, specific
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evidence gets presented, if you don't start with the context being right, you're not an honest player.
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So I don't know what was happening in Liz Cheney's head. I try to be consistent about saying I don't
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know what people are thinking. But we can say for sure that her actions did not display any balance.
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Who would disagree? Did her actions show that she was open to an argument and discovery,
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or did it look like she had an opinion she was trying to just prove no matter what?
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So, you know, I get her oldest point that it takes a lot of courage to go across the, go against the
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mainstream. And she had to know she'd paid for it. She had to know there would be a price, right?
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So I would accept the fact that it's courage. So I would accept courage. But I'm not so sure about
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selfless, because I feel as though her actions strongly suggested that it was personal. It looked
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personal. Now, again, we don't know what she's thinking. But if you act in a way that doesn't
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have balance in a situation that just screams for balance, you know, you should have balance
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in that situation more than any situation, especially if you're a Republican looking at
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a Republican. If you can't have balance in that situation, one has to assume that there's
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something else going on. And I do. All right. I would like to revisit this idea.
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So Edward, Edward Luce tweeted this. I don't know who he is, but he's just somebody on Twitter.
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He Twittered, I guess he's a reporter of some kind. I've covered extremism and violent ideologies
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around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic,
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dangerous, and contemptible than today's Republicans. Nothing close. Really.
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Nihilistic would be people who don't want to follow the rules. Don't want to follow the rules.
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Would Republicans be a group that doesn't want to follow the laws and the Constitution of
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the United States? There's someone who actually is smart enough to write sentences and use Twitter
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who believes that the most central thing about Republicans, that they're rule followers,
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Constitution, Bible, the law of the land. There's nothing that defines Republicans more
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than wanting to follow the rules and making sure other people do as well. Nothing defines them more.
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Period. That's almost baked into the definition of conservative, right?
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Conservative. Let's do it the way we've been doing it. Follow the rules.
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All right. But anyway, this is this one person's view that the Republicans are opposite of what
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it looks to me. And they're dangerous and contemptible. Okay. Now, clearly, some Republicans are dangerous,
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as some of every group are, right? But here is the shocking part. General Michael Hayden,
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ex-CIA director, agreed with this tweet. And he said, I agree. And I was the CIA director.
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So the guy who was the CIA director believes that Republicans today are more nihilistic, dangerous,
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and contemptible than anything else around the world, such as al-Qaeda, Taliban, just to pick a
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couple of examples. Now, I'm not going to disagree with his characterization because that's not the
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point. The point is that we finally got a direct confession. It's a direct confession. In his
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opinion, the Republicans are as bad as this. And that would be a complete explanation of why the CIA
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and the FBI apparently colluded for the Russia collusion hoax. And probably they're colluding
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again. He says it directly, that he believes that the threat of the Republicans was greater than
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external threats. So if you would be willing to, you know, assassinate al-Qaeda, what would you be
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willing to do to a greater threat than al-Qaeda? He doesn't say, but I appreciate the transparency.
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He's saying completely, he's basically saying that there would be nothing, if you read between the
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lines, it suggests that there's nothing you wouldn't do. Now, let me say, let me say there's nothing
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wrong with that. And a little bit, I'm going to agree with Sam Harris, and it's going to make your head
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just blow up. I agree with General Hayden, that if, in this one narrow sense, I agree. If you really
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believed that this group was as dangerous as he apparently says he does, then you would break some
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rules to stop him, because you would murder Hitler, wouldn't you? I would. I would break a rule to murder
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Hitler. So he's basically saying, you know, that the Republicans are worse than al-Qaeda, worse than
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external threats. So he doesn't say that he would break a rule to stop them, but I think that's
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perfectly implied. If you're the director of the CIA, and there's something that's like a mortal threat
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to your country, I feel like it's implied that you might bend a rule to stop it. And if you wouldn't,
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what's wrong with you? Would you want anybody who wouldn't bend a rule in that case? I wouldn't
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want to be around somebody who wouldn't bend the rules in that case. But here's the problem.
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The fake news is what's our main problem, and we're being distracted. I'm going to go to the
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whiteboard, and I'm going to tie it all together. You ready for this? Tying it all together.
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Here's how I see the world. I see the fake news creates extremism. And then the FBI encourages
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the extremists. And then, not in every case, but in some notable cases, such as Russia collusion,
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and, you know, there may be something with the Hunter Biden laptop. So basically, every time we see
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the people in charge who should be protecting us doing sketchy stuff, it makes the extremism worse.
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Does it not? So between the fake news and the fact that we don't trust the people who are supposed
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to be protecting us, this creates a feedback loop that creates more fake news, more money, etc.
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So this is the answer to the question, why don't they ask the would you kill Hitler question?
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The question that the media won't ask, because they make money by not asking it, is if you
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believe the fake news, if you believe what the news is saying, why wouldn't you murder Republicans?
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If you believe the news, right? So the news can't ask the question, because they're the problem.
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So everybody who thinks that the extremists on the left are the problem have been duped by
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the fake news. Everyone who believes that the extremists on the right are the problem have
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been duped by the fake news. So General Hayden, and we'll talk about Sam Harris later, both
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duped by the fake news. Now I don't think that either of them seem to quite grok how strong
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the news is, its persuasive ability. In other words, its ability to make you believe something
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that absolutely couldn't be true. The news is good at that. I believe yesterday alone,
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I believed two hoaxes until I got corrected. That's just yesterday. I fell for two.
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Yesterday. That's just one day. And I fell for two hoaxes. Now they were on social media,
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they weren't in the regular news. But it's so easy to fall for a hoax. Right? If you ever
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see me mocking somebody for falling for a hoax, you should correct me. Because you shouldn't
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mock the person for falling for a hoax. You should be mad at the hoaxer. Because the reason
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the hoaxes are a thing is that they work. Right? It's not always the fault of the person
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who believed it. We can get better at not believing stuff. But it's not really the fault of the
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person who believed it. It's more the person who created the hoax. So we have this system
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in which the people who are causing the problem are telling us that it's other people and we're
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believing them. And the tell for that is that they won't ask the only question that matters.
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The only question that matters, hey, Democrat, if you believe what you're saying about Republicans,
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would you break all the rules, including an election rule, to stop them from power? And let me say
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clearly that I would. I would. If I believed the fake news about Trump, I would break a law to stop
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him. Wouldn't you? If you believed it? Now the difference between me and General Hayden and Sam
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Harris, we'll talk about in a moment, is that I don't believe what they believe. But if I did,
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I wouldn't act the way they would act. I would act pretty aggressively. So they have this weird
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dichotomy where their actions and their words are not aligned. Or at least they're not willing to
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admit it. Although I think Sam Harris came pretty close. We'll talk about that in a minute. All right.
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I had something on the other side of this. Let's tie it all together.
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Oh. So let's talk about Sam Harris, and then I'll give you my test for cognitive dissonance.
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We'll work up to it. So here's a Jeff Giza tweet. He asked me on Twitter this question. How would you
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rank the following forces based on their impact on today's political discord? All right. So which of
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these things do you think is causing the most political division? Media distrust, social media
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algorithms, foreign intel operations, perverse political incentives, specific corrupt political
00:26:43.600
actors, politicization of the Fed, federal bureaucracy, and economic shifts? Now, all of those have an
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impact. But the main one is left off the list. The one that's left off the list is not media mistrust.
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Our problem is not media mistrust. Our problem is the media. It's not that I don't trust them. It's that
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they're not trustable. It's not my fault. Did I do something wrong by not trusting people who lie to me?
00:27:21.520
Well, how's that my fault? I feel like I'm doing it right. The not trusting people who have a track record of
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lying to you feels like that's right in the sweet spot right there. So it's interesting how blind we can be to
00:27:36.520
what's happening. Because I don't mean to make fun of, you know, Jeff, because he's a smart observer. In fact, you should
00:27:44.220
follow him. He's a good follow on Twitter. It's just that no matter who you are, it's so easy to lose sight
00:27:50.820
that the media is actually just manipulating and hypnotizing us for their own benefit, not yours.
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And it's just so easy to lose sight of it. Somehow it's the public is, you know, we're extremists and
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we're not following the news and we're not doing our own research. It is not our problem. It might be our
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problem to fix. But it's not, we didn't cause it. We're just being people. All right.
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So in my opinion, the fake news is what makes us fight. And if you fix the fake news, extremism would
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disappear. It would disappear. Have you ever, have you seen lately what the left thinks about me
00:28:33.340
personally? Have you seen any of my social traffic lately? Think about the things that people have
00:28:40.120
said about me. Almost, or maybe 100% of it is based on incorrect information. So there are really bad,
00:28:51.500
bad feelings about me. But I think zero of them actually know my opinion. They've heard it from
00:28:57.980
somebody else or heard it from somebody else. So basically, we're all suffering under insanely bad
00:29:03.000
information. And it's causing us to hate each other. Where does this bad information come from? Well, in my
00:29:10.320
case, a lot of it is on social media. But do you think the people on social media would be coming after me
00:29:17.980
every day, every day, if they did not believe fake news? Let me explain. If they knew what my actual
00:29:27.500
opinions were, they wouldn't have much problem with them. Or at least they'd, you know, disagree with
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an assumption, but they wouldn't think I was, you know, Hitler myself. And I think that that's largely
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true of all of us. I believe that if you put me in a room with the leftist lefty and the rightist
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righty, you know, extremists on both sides, that I could find out what information we differed on
00:29:53.400
and probably bring them together. The leftist left and the rightist right. I believe if nobody else
00:30:01.580
were in the room and I was allowed to give them accurate information, I actually think I could get
00:30:08.000
them on the same page, no matter how left and no matter how right. Now, the exception would be if
00:30:14.180
they're just being crazy, right? If they have an interest and they're not in deep cognitive
00:30:21.240
dissonance, if they have an interest, I could do it. Now, what happens if somebody's in cognitive
00:30:28.080
dissonance? How do they know and how do you know? Well, I'm going to give you an example. So Sam Harris
00:30:35.620
was on the Triggerednometry podcast, which is a big, very good podcast. And he said directly
00:30:48.220
that Trump was such a menace and especially the Trump University was such an example of something
00:30:55.840
that was far worse than anything Biden is accused of. Not only worse than what Biden may have done for
00:31:03.560
sure, but even worse than what Biden is accused of, you know, accused of maybe some bad dealings with
00:31:12.000
Ukraine, for example. And in Sam Harris's view, the media suppressing the Hunter laptop story
00:31:23.400
to get Biden elected was legitimate. And he agrees that the news, faking the news to keep Trump out of
00:31:33.360
office, literally faking the news. It was justified because Trump is such a risk. What do you think of
00:31:42.240
that? Here's the problem. Did you just say to yourself, damn that Sam Harris, that freaking Sam
00:31:51.300
Harris, that guy, there's something wrong with that guy, right? Okay, I'm going to disagree with all of
00:31:57.120
you. Do you know what's wrong with Sam Harris? Nothing. Nothing. He's a victim of the news.
00:32:06.900
He's a victim of the news. He actually believes the news, or he believes some subset of the news that
00:32:12.240
got him to this point. So if you think the problem is with Sam Harris, again, you're being diverted.
00:32:17.360
The problem is the news. If the news told him the truth, I'm pretty sure his opinion would be
00:32:26.140
different. All right? So I do, I give him an A plus for intellectual honesty. And he's saying
00:32:36.180
basically, I'm okay with breaking the rules if you're stopping a mortal threat. I totally agree with
00:32:43.680
that. I would break a rule all day long to stop somebody from getting killed. Right? Now,
00:32:50.800
of course, you know, you got this slippery slope if everybody's, if everybody is breaking the rules,
00:32:55.860
blah, blah, blah. But I don't think that counts if you're talking about killing Hitler. Nobody thinks
00:33:01.440
that killing Hitler is a slippery slope, do they? Well, if you can kill Hitler, next thing you know,
00:33:06.700
you're going to be murdering toddlers. No, no. Special case. I think we can handle special cases
00:33:13.180
without worrying about the slippery slope every single time. So the real problem is, is Sam Harris
00:33:21.920
experiencing cognitive dissonance, or am I? And in this case, I'll be a proxy for many of you in the
00:33:29.720
audience. Am I, and you, experiencing cognitive dissonance about Trump? And is he maybe like the
00:33:39.180
Hiller that some are afraid of? Or is Sam Harris and people who would agree with him suffering?
00:33:46.340
Here's your test to find out. All right? Here's your test. Can you argue the other side?
00:33:56.700
That's it. Can you argue the other side? If you can take the other person's perspective and,
00:34:03.240
and argue it in a full-throated, balanced way, then you probably do not have cognitive dissonance.
00:34:12.260
If you can't do it, and you change the subject, or you start going off on the person, you probably do.
00:34:20.400
Right? So if I said to you, okay, and I'll just use Sam as my experiment. I'll say, all right, Sam,
00:34:28.520
you've made a claim that the Trump University thing is worse than anything Biden has done,
00:34:33.480
or is even accused of doing. I'm going to take your point of view, and I'm going to argue it.
00:34:41.680
Here's my argument. Trump did something with Trump University, which shows that he cannot be trusted.
00:34:48.720
And somebody who is, who would do something so blatant should never be president. And therefore,
00:34:55.380
that gives us cause to doubt anything else he ever does, because that example gives us a clear
00:35:01.660
pattern of his personality and his priorities. Did I do it? Did I take his point of view and argue it
00:35:12.520
in a way that shows I understand the argument? Now, I'm not saying you need to agree with the
00:35:19.500
argument. That's not the point. I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just saying, can I take that
00:35:23.840
argument and argue it? Did I succeed? All right. Now, I had a problem with Trump University, too.
00:35:31.320
But remember what Trump promised us? Do you remember his promise? I'm no angel. I'm going to do for you
00:35:40.260
what I've been doing for myself, which is, you know, maybe break some rules and make stuff work.
00:35:46.660
That's what he said. And when I supported him, I thought, wow, he's going to be expensive. He's
00:35:53.560
going to break a whole bunch of stuff. But he might do some things that can't be done otherwise.
00:35:59.220
So I've always characterized Trump as being someone who can't do easy things, such as staying out of
00:36:05.280
trouble. But he can do some impossible things, such as the Abraham Accords and, you know, shaking hands
00:36:13.340
with Kim Jong-un until that problem basically went away. Right? So there's some things he can do that
00:36:19.360
just other people couldn't do. And that's what I was buying. I thought that's what I was buying. And I
00:36:24.360
thought it'd be expensive because I thought there would be some division in the country. And I thought
00:36:28.940
it'd be expensive. So I got what I thought I was buying. An imperfect person who had a set of skills
00:36:35.620
that were right for the times in some very specific ways. Now, do you think that Sam Harris could take
00:36:44.780
my argument and argue it back to me? I don't know. But that would be the test. If he could take my
00:36:52.940
argument and present it in a full throat, then I would say to him, okay, all right, well, that looks
00:36:59.060
like you've looked at all the facts and maybe our priorities are different. But, you know, I see where
00:37:04.140
you're coming from. But his current argument that the Trump University thing is worse than maybe
00:37:10.740
colluding with Ukraine or, you know, being victim of potentially blackmail of Ukraine or something
00:37:17.620
like that. That's, I mean, on its surface, it looks like cognitive dissonance to this audience, I'm sure.
00:37:26.420
But I don't think you can be sure that cognitive dissonance is not on your end. Can you? How do you
00:37:32.040
know it's not on your end? By definition, you don't know. I would propose this test and see if
00:37:39.700
you can do it. See if you can make an argument that agrees with Sam Harris, right? Even though you
00:37:46.480
don't believe it, see if you can make the argument. If he can, if you can, then maybe you're looking at
00:37:52.060
it objectively. If you can't, there's no chance you're being objective. No chance. Now, of course,
00:37:58.920
there are some people whose arguments are just so crazy you can't even make an argument on their side.
00:38:04.640
But I don't think that's the case with Sam. I think Sam shows you his work, and I can reproduce
00:38:11.720
it. Yeah, the character of this person is such. It's been demonstrated by these past things which
00:38:19.340
we have some confirmation of. Why would you trust such a person in such an important job? It's a
00:38:24.960
very easy argument to make. All right. So there's a good test for you. See if you can argue the other
00:38:35.100
side. And all this stuff about us being fake enemies. Now, here's, I think this is sort of
00:38:44.600
related to this. So I asked, I did a little Twitter poll, and I said that I'd predicted that
00:38:57.060
Republicans would be hunted if Biden got elected. I predicted that in 2020. And I asked people if
00:39:04.060
they thought that that prediction had been realized. And 80% of the people who answered, who are
00:39:09.020
probably mostly right-leaning, said that indeed, it appears to them, Republicans are being hunted in
00:39:16.660
a variety of different ways from January 6th on. Now, Phil Bump, who I believe writes for Washington Post,
00:39:26.660
right? He wanted to mock me. And there were two tweets with two separate but related predictions.
00:39:40.700
One was that you'd be hunted, but the related tweet in the same thread said that there's a good chance
00:39:49.220
you would be dead in a year if Biden got elected. Now, the trouble is with a prediction like that,
00:39:57.300
there's a good chance. What do you interpret as a good chance of being dead? Go. If I, what is the
00:40:04.940
minimum percentage of the chance that you would say fits a good chance? Some would say 51. Some would
00:40:13.940
say 10. Some say 50, 25, 50, 50. Now, remember, this is a good chance of being dead. If you talk
00:40:23.280
about the chances of being dead, any percentage seems like too much, doesn't it? So in this context,
00:40:29.360
I was thinking more like 5 or 10% chance of being dead, you know, 2%, something like that.
00:40:35.600
And what did Biden do as soon as he got elected? It took a little longer than a year. But the next
00:40:42.520
thing you know, we're talking about nuclear war with Russia. That was all Biden. Biden actually
00:40:48.460
got us into a serious conversation about nuclear war with a nuclear superpower. Now, I don't think
00:40:54.480
it was that close. But it was close enough to talk about it. So when I say there was a good chance,
00:41:01.020
I was thinking 5%. You know, it would be ridiculous to think that you're most likely going to be dead
00:41:07.080
in a year. What is it about anybody on the left who would believe that I thought that? Would anybody
00:41:17.480
interpret it as I thought there was a greater than 50% chance that you individually would be dead
00:41:22.640
in a year because of who got elected? Who would believe that I would actually predict that?
00:41:28.000
But it's provocative enough to say that there's a good chance. 5%. Yeah. So, yeah. So, open borders,
00:41:40.660
fentanyl deaths. Yeah. Correct. But I was thinking in terms of civil war as well. So, Phil decides to be my
00:41:51.240
personal critic. And he's got an argument. He wants you to see. But to me, it looks like cognitive dissonance.
00:42:05.400
And here's my guide for identifying an NPC. Now, I've been using the NPC thing as sort of a metaphor from...
00:42:15.240
Is that the right word? Is it a metaphor? For the simulation? That some people are just scenery.
00:42:22.900
And I don't mean that literally. I mean, it could be true literally, but I don't mean it literally.
00:42:28.400
What I mean is that there are a certain number of people who will only say the most obvious thing
00:42:32.880
that you say in a situation. For example, if I were to tweet, I believe that...
00:42:40.240
Let's say, I believe that we'll never make it to Venus or something. Whatever it is. Some science-y thing.
00:42:49.700
What is the most obvious thing that somebody would tweet?
00:42:53.600
The most obvious thing would be, oh, the Dilbert guy disagrees with science.
00:43:08.440
If somebody just says there's something wrong with you.
00:43:17.460
So if somebody says to Rob Ryder, let's say Rob Ryder does a tweet.
00:43:21.840
What is the most obvious thing that somebody's going to say if they disagree with his point of view?
00:43:26.680
They're going to say, oh, I guess that's why they called him Meathead when he played that character years ago.
00:43:36.580
How many people say the most obvious thing every time he tweets?
00:43:41.120
Every time he tweets, people go into the comments and say,
00:43:45.020
well, I guess that's why they call him Meathead.
00:43:49.440
Now, the people who tweet that, are you unaware that it's the most obvious thing to say?
00:43:58.020
Or are you just trying to be first with the most obvious thing?
00:44:02.480
I don't really know what's going through their minds.
00:44:05.820
The other is, if I say I have a technical problem, as I did today,
00:44:11.300
what's the most obvious thing to say if I specifically, me,
00:44:17.460
if I have a technical problem, what's the most obvious thing to say?
00:44:27.860
Now, sometimes that might actually be the full explanation.
00:44:32.640
But it's also just the most obvious thing to say.
00:44:37.880
The other thing is people will imagine that you're thinking something dumb or wrong.
00:44:44.220
So if somebody says, you know, this policy is bad, somebody's going to say, well, what you really mean.
00:44:52.000
The most obvious thing is to doubt that they're thinking what they're saying.
00:45:04.160
And somebody will always come into the comments and say some completely unrelated thing, well, the other team did that, too.
00:45:15.980
Now, sometimes it's worth saying, oh, your team did it, too.
00:45:21.640
But it's also the most obvious thing you're going to say.
00:45:28.180
It makes you look like an NPC, even if you're not.
00:45:32.120
So I've been just tagging everybody who says the most obvious thing with an NPC, you know, hashtag NPC.
00:45:39.120
And let me tell you, it changes the conversation immediately.
00:45:42.820
When you tell somebody, can you try to avoid saying the most obvious thing, they don't know what to say.
00:45:51.660
But most people don't know how to get beyond the most obvious thing.
00:46:02.120
Now, if you're doing a TV show to entertain people in politics, then you always do the hypocrisy thing, the both sides, the whataboutism.
00:46:12.180
But if you're making an honest argument and you think that what somebody did somewhere else at a different time in a different situation is relevant to this discussion, then you're just being political.
00:46:33.740
Do you think that I couldn't get along with the leftiest lefty if they didn't know or if they'd never seen my social media?
00:46:47.280
I mean, I live in California, Northern California.
00:46:57.660
Now, I'm not sure I get invited to as many places.
00:47:07.080
Do you ever have any difficulty one-on-one with any American citizen?
00:47:17.780
See, and the news has convinced us that we're at each other's necks.
00:47:23.120
The number of people I've seen suggest that we're close to an actual, you know, a violent civil war just blows my mind.
00:47:34.540
Do you know how we're not at the cusp of a civil war?
00:47:44.720
Do they want to kill you or do they want to say hi?
00:47:48.720
There's no anger out there at all about each other.
00:47:54.220
Like, we all have this generic anger about the other group.
00:48:07.080
We're only divided mentally because the news has made us divided.
00:48:28.460
Oh, you have to turn the hunger up to see the revolution.
00:48:31.840
So if things went wrong, it would turn violent.
00:48:33.940
Now, do you know what would happen if the United States got hungrier?
00:48:41.860
Do you know what Republicans would do if for some reason only Democrats were starving?
00:48:48.560
They would immediately form some kind of help to feed them.
00:48:56.660
I'm a little less confident about it, but I think it works the other way.
00:49:01.080
Now, when it comes right down to it, we're going to take care of each other.
00:49:07.720
And this whole division thing is entirely manufactured by the fake news.
00:49:25.720
All right, let's see if I forgot anything I was going to talk about.
00:49:32.480
I believe I have the best question on this topic, and I have not seen it addressed.
00:49:37.720
And the best question on the topic of declassifying the Mar-a-Lago documents is,
00:49:44.140
can a president declassify things by his actions, meaning it's obvious that he meant it to be declassified?
00:49:54.880
Now, I'm not the constitutional expert, but this is what I read today.
00:50:01.340
I didn't realize that both George W. Bush and Obama had both signed executive orders, which are still in force,
00:50:08.820
and it gave the presidents, whoever the president is, sweeping authority to declassify secrets.
00:50:19.260
Do not have to follow the mandatory declassification procedures that all other government officials do.
00:50:33.020
If somebody knows where I took that from, you probably read it, too.
00:50:36.620
Could you give credit to wherever this came from?
00:50:39.860
I think it was a good addition to the conversation, but it was on a right-leaning website somewhere.
00:50:47.040
In my opinion, if a president who has full, sweeping authority to declassify says,
00:50:58.200
take these boxes and put them in my residence, he's declassified them.
00:51:05.620
If the president, who doesn't have to follow any procedure,
00:51:08.940
says take these top-secret things and move them to this non-top-secret facility,
00:51:24.660
But how in the world are you going to get a court of 12 people to think that's not the case?
00:51:30.240
Do you think you could get 12 jurors who are going to say,
00:51:36.500
Yes, the president can declassify any way he wants.
00:51:42.940
He doesn't have to write anything down, doesn't have to do a document, doesn't need to tell anybody.
00:52:00.800
So if you put me on the jury, I'm just going to say, I don't know.
00:52:04.640
I mean, you can't prove that he didn't declassify them.
00:52:14.680
If you can't even know if they're classified or not, why are we even talking about it?
00:52:18.620
Now, keep in mind, when we talk about it in the news, you know, we're just people talking about it,
00:52:25.600
we can act like, you know, we have some certainty that we don't have.
00:52:29.720
Oh, definitely declassified or, oh, definitely wasn't.
00:52:36.320
The jury would have to be, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt,
00:52:42.920
How in the world would any jury be sure of that if the attorney says,
00:52:51.280
and by his actions, it's obvious he meant them to be declassified?
00:52:55.060
Would you agree that if somebody takes something out of a top-secret place
00:52:59.040
and intentionally puts it in a low-security place,
00:53:02.680
that they have changed the, you know, the de facto declassification?
00:53:11.580
But there's no way you don't get nine of them to agree.
00:53:16.800
How in the world do you not get at least some of those 12 to say,
00:53:21.500
you know, that is enough of a gray area that I'm not going to convict somebody on that?
00:53:41.940
If he writes it anywhere about documents, or sets of documents,
00:53:48.360
So I don't know if he said something that would also qualify, but maybe he did.
00:53:52.560
I mean, suppose Trump had said, and this is not in evidence,
00:53:56.960
but suppose he had said to the GSA people who were packing up the boxes,
00:54:00.820
suppose they said, hey, this is top secret stuff, you know, we have to handle it differently.
00:54:06.540
And suppose Trump just said, ah, no, just put it in the boxes and send it to Mar-a-Lago.
00:54:19.320
I don't think there's any legal risk at all on that.
00:54:30.180
So even Newt Gingrich pointed out that Liz Cheney said, quote,
00:54:35.240
I will do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.
00:54:39.720
And Newt says, is it any wonder most of us think the January 6th committee is a Stalinist show trial?
00:54:46.440
She is so bitterly anti-Trump, how could she be trusted?
00:54:49.820
Now, again, Newt is doing a little mind reading.
00:54:55.180
You know, he's looking into her mind and seeing that she's bitterly anti-Trump.
00:55:08.760
I mean, I can't read her mind, but if anybody ever looked bitter,
00:55:12.520
that's about as bitter-looking as you could ever look.
00:55:19.820
So pretty sure I covered everything I want to cover.
00:55:25.680
So I submitted a comic to my syndication company this week,
00:55:36.020
And I had to rewrite it, and I believe the rewrite has been accepted.
00:55:49.400
But if you belong to the Locals platform and you are a subscriber,
00:55:54.460
sometime later today you will see the comic that the rest of the world will not see
00:56:02.640
So you'll see the original version that's not yet published.
00:56:07.240
Well, it's, let's see, I think the date is September 25th when it would come out.
00:56:13.160
And you'll get to see the one that my editor said,
00:56:24.160
The topic was Dilbert's company created a robot that looked too much like an attractive woman.
00:56:51.920
Well, what it was supposed to be is a comment on the fact that we will have robots
00:57:00.800
that are more attractive than humans really soon.
00:57:06.340
And that that's going to be a civilization-threatening situation.
00:57:13.260
Because once you like your robot better than people,
00:57:18.040
Because keep in mind, your robot will eventually look more like an attractive human
00:57:28.200
If you pick a human, you'd be really lucky if you got like a super beautiful one
00:57:33.940
But the robot's going to be super beautiful or super handsome
00:57:38.480
And it's very soon going to look exactly like, you know, an actual human.
00:57:45.260
And what happens if AI gets into the robot so it can have a conversation with you
00:57:55.040
And the AI will be interested in what you're interested in,
00:57:58.460
and it will show interest in you and caring about you.
00:58:26.480
Now, I don't think my editor was wrong, by the way.
00:58:34.460
You know, the job of the editor is not just to, you know,
00:58:38.560
make sure that the editor stays out of trouble,
00:58:47.580
And my editor's opinion, which I trust in this situation,
00:59:36.480
Micro lesson for kids leaving for their freshman year of college.
00:59:56.580
I think my reparations comic is going to get stopped, too.
01:00:03.080
Now, I did tell you that I don't plan to retire.
01:00:13.480
So I think I'm going to make Dilbert more and more dangerous