Episode 1860 Scott Adams: Orange Brandon, US Life Expectancy Falls, Workplaces Less Polite, More Fun
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
144.68564
Summary
The Queen is ill, and family members are gathering around, which is usually the signal that the cat s on the roof. I predict that the Queen will pass soon, and then all the bad news about Trump will stop for a while, because they need to save the good stuff to when you're not paying attention. Elon Musk thinks that fusion energy will never be economical, and I think he's wrong.
Transcript
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Well, the Queen of England is ill, and family members are gathering around, which is usually the signal that the cat's on the roof.
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Meaning that I don't think that they're expecting the Queen to recover from this.
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Because when you do the family is gathering around part, that's kind of telling you the game is about over.
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Do you believe that the news happens on a sort of a random schedule?
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Do you think that news happens, but it just happens when it happens?
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And if it's going to happen, that's when it happens.
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Should the Queen pass, do you know what's going to happen?
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All of the bad news about Trump will suddenly stop for a while.
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Because they need to save the good stuff to when you're paying attention.
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So for about a week or so, if the Queen passes, for about a week or so, the political news will get really boring.
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If you ever want to test to see if the news is real or manufactured, watch how it stops when there's a competing story.
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There's some things that the news can't control.
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But things like an anonymous source told us something bad about Trump,
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I'll bet you that anonymous source is going to wait another week if there's a competing story.
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As you know, Russia cut off Europe from its gas deliveries and is selling it to the Far East, and China in particular.
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But that plan might not be as awesome as they hoped, because China just bought a ton of LNG.
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And they bought it at half of the current spot price.
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China is buying Russia's gas, but at half the market price.
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But this reminds me that if you're worried about China and Russia becoming too close,
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I don't think they're friends, I don't think anybody's going to do any favors for the other.
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So if China gets a chance to screw Russia on a business deal, they're going to do it.
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But I don't know that Russia is in a good place here.
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But depending on China to keep you alive seems like a really bad proposition, because they'd have a lot of power on you.
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All right, here's something that messed up my mind pretty good.
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I've mentioned before that there's a small number of people who, if they disagree with me, I immediately have to change my opinion.
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For example, if I had some dumbass opinion about the Constitution, but I heard Alan Dershowitz say the opposite opinion,
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I would immediately say, ah, damn it, Dershowitz.
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And I would just agree with him, because my own opinion would be worthless in that context.
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But I just found out that Elon Musk thinks that fusion energy will never be economical.
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That's the opposite of what everybody thinks, right?
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The whole point of fusion is that once you get the reaction going, it's the most economical thing you can do.
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Well, Musk, who I believe has invested in fusion, and so he would know what's actually on the, you know, on the workbench as well as what's in the real world.
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And he says in a tweet, fusion would be expensive energy, given the difficulty of obtaining and transporting source fuel.
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And that's interesting, because I thought you only had to do that once.
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That once you get your source fuel, it doesn't need new fuel.
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Plus maintaining the reactor, so it would be hard to maintain the reactor.
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He says it's far better to use the sun and thermonuclear reactor with no need to refuel or service.
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I feel as if he's making a prediction about fusion based on what we know how to do today.
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It looks like a prediction about the future based on what we know how to do today.
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And that seems wrong coming from him, doesn't it?
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Because do you think he knew how to go to Mars before he started?
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Do you think he knew how to build Tesla before he started?
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Do you think he knew that battery technology would progress the way it has, which has been quite tremendous?
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He probably hoped it would, but he didn't know exactly what innovations would be next.
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I mean, if he did, that would be pretty impressive.
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So I feel as if he's got a little bit of apples and orange or a bias going on here somehow.
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One possibility is he just knows more about it than we do, and you're finding out.
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The other possibility is I feel like he's picked a favorite.
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You know, he's got more money invested in batteries, of course.
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I feel as if looking at fusion and saying we don't know how to solve these problems is not fair,
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because we didn't know how to solve the problems for anything else.
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We always start first and then solve the problems.
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But it could be that he knows that the nature of fusion is that it'll always be difficult to maintain or always difficult to get the fuel.
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And I hate that he does that to me, because I can no longer hold a public opinion that fusion is our economical savior.
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It might be, but I don't want to be on the other side of this question from Musk.
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If you were asked a question, let's say if the public were asked this question,
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if student loan forgiveness means colleges will raise their prices,
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for example, support for the policy, what happens to support for the loan forgiveness?
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If you believe that colleges would just raise their prices,
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because then students wouldn't have to pay as much in theory,
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would you still be in favor of loan forgiveness if it's just going to cause prices in colleges to go up?
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What percentage of the public believed that loan forgiveness is still a good idea if colleges just raise their prices?
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Carrie Lake has announced that she says she has discovered evidence of voter fraud.
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I assume that means in her state, Arizona, in the last election.
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What can we conclude about this discovery that she has about voter fraud?
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What can we know for sure based on what little we know about the situation?
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You would give it to the AG, but you'd also give it to the news.
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So what we can say for sure is it's not important.
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But she's selling it like it's important by not acting like, oh, I can't tell you.
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Because it makes you talk about the thing that you can't confirm.
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Making you talk about the thing that you can't confirm?
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So Carrie Lake is just doing the same play on the Democrats as the Democrats are doing on Trump.
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And boy, are they concerned about what's in those boxes.
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So she's just throwing it back in the Democrats.
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Speaking of not being able to predict the future,
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Now, the punchline of the story comes at the end.
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So the first part's interesting, but wait for the end.
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how to make a better battery than the normal ones for cars and stuff.
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And they would use materials that are all available in the United States.
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So if their technology works, and if it's widely adopted,
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we would not be beholden to China or anybody else for any materials needed to build them.
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And apparently, they'd be, you know, basically better in every way.
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They won a competition for top 10 battery, battery, new battery makers, I guess.
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Which means that there are at least nine other companies
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that are probably roughly as, have roughly the potential of this one.
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So whatever you think is the future of battery technology,
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But that's 10 companies that probably have been funded.
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And they think they've got a surprise coming for you.
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Like, when's the point when you can get all excited?
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It's just going to be this sort of gradual improvement.
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And 10 years from now, you're going to say to yourself,
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I think the CDC proved beyond any doubt that they're corrupt.
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So the, was it Walensky, the director of the CDC,
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was asked about the wisdom of giving the booster shots
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we have a good reason to give it to the healthy people,
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or to say that there was some medically reasonable reason
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She defended giving vaccinations to people that don't need them
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because it's simpler to say everybody, everybody just take it.
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I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but go check it yourself.
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And her full answer was basically that the CDC would recommend,
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but the way I understood it is very clearly that she's saying,
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we prefer giving shots to people who don't need them
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because it's easier to explain, hey, everybody,
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I mean, I don't know how much more done you could be
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with an organization after an answer like that.
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You should be fired immediately for that answer.
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If it's true, then there's something more aggressive
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or maybe she was in charge of the decision, I guess,
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I think you need to be fired immediately for that.
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except I don't know who would do it because she's the boss.
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How does the director of the CDC even get picked?
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That is the funniest thing about the director of the CDC.
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the online organization that lets you buy tickets for stuff,
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My understanding is that the documentary involves him
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And I think he gives them time to explain their whole opinion.
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Do you think we've overshot the mark here a little bit?
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you don't have to worry too much about the slippery slope
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So, it's amazing that that could be considered a hate,
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because a lot of things Trump did were just working.