Episode 1969 Scott Adams: Nothing Happening In The News But That Will Not Stop Us From Sipping
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
136.6519
Summary
Jimmy Kimmel's Trump jokes, the Maricopa County Attorney General's decision, and why the Supreme Court should have overturned the election of Donald Trump. Plus, a special Christmas edition of HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization, and it's Boxing Day.
00:00:11.320
Is that right? Boxing Day. For those of you who like to, I don't know, box or live in a box or something.
00:00:21.360
But it's a day for you. We don't know why it's called that.
00:00:24.300
If you'd like to take your experience up to almost god-like levels, I can help you.
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All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
00:00:43.860
It's the dopamine here, the day, the thing that makes everything better.
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It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to happen now.
00:01:05.780
He's got that late-night show that's being destroyed by Gottfeld with an exclamation.
00:01:12.780
But Kimmel was saying that his executives hinted at that he should maybe do fewer Trump jokes
00:01:22.460
because Jimmy Kimmel lost half of his audience by making, you know, so many Trump jokes.
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And he said that if they asked him to stop doing it, they sort of hinted around, they never asked.
00:01:36.320
But if they asked him to stop making Trump jokes, he would quit.
00:01:47.700
It's sort of everything's in that story, isn't it?
00:01:51.980
Does he understand, did Jimmy Kimmel understand that he was part of a business enterprise
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that really likes to serve all of its customers
00:02:00.980
and that he was hired to do a specific job and he decided not to do it
00:02:08.940
They should have fired his ass immediately for losing half of his audience.
00:02:12.780
His only job is to maintain his audience or grow it, right?
00:02:19.140
He decides to get rid of half of it and he keeps his job.
00:02:30.720
He tried not to even do the job for which he was hired,
00:02:36.200
He wasn't hired to entertain half of his audience.
00:02:40.940
But the funny thing is that the article is written
00:02:52.260
He said, I will quit if I can't make fun of Trump
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He has every right in the world to say anything he wants privately,
00:03:06.240
But why do we treat that like it was smart and good and holy?
00:03:11.340
And by the way, the same would be true if he reversed it, right?
00:03:14.560
If he'd lost his liberal audience, I'd say the same thing.
00:03:25.900
That would be the opposite of what he was hired for.
00:03:33.980
How did I miss the fact that there was a Carrie Lake Maricopa lawsuit decision?
00:03:40.280
Do you all know that there was even a decision?
00:03:42.060
It was like there was a lot of silence about it.
00:03:48.960
Was there anybody who predicted that she would lose?
00:03:58.720
I predicted she would lose because they did not show intent.
00:04:05.340
And I think they did a good job of showing that enough went wrong between the chain of custody question and the things printed on the wrong ballots, etc.
00:04:16.800
I think there was good evidence that it could have changed the result, and there was good evidence that things went wrong.
00:04:27.900
But there was no evidence that it was intentional.
00:04:31.280
I think the closest they got was speculation that the administrator had to do it intentionally.
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So, how many people were surprised at the result?
00:04:49.600
What I predicted, after you'd seen how clear the evidence was that there was a problem, because that part seems to be not disputed.
00:04:58.100
I don't think there's a dispute that there were major problems that could have changed the outcome.
00:05:03.360
But I just don't see the courts willing to overturn any kind of election.
00:05:23.160
A court setting such a margin aside, meaning the number of votes.
00:05:28.340
So, a court setting such a margin aside, as far as the court is able to determine, has never been done in the history of the United States.
00:05:39.640
Should it matter that an election has never been set aside before?
00:05:54.400
I like the instinct of the court not to interfere.
00:06:01.800
Don't you like the instinct of the court not to interfere?
00:06:12.720
Even though it, you know, maybe didn't go the way I would have preferred.
00:06:16.660
I feel like that's responsible and yet also not legal.
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You know, why does a judge take the non-law into consideration?
00:06:30.220
Because that's not the kind of precedent that they, it's not a legal precedent, is it?
00:07:08.060
Have you heard the stories about all the things they're doing to make sure these problems don't occur again?
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Let me remind you again, that whenever there's an opportunity to do something sketchy, that has a huge potential gain, such as winning an election, or making money, and there are lots of people involved, and it's possible to get away with it.
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That situation is a breeder for bad things to happen.
00:08:02.960
So I don't know if any bad things happened, but could they have done bad things and hidden it easily in this context?
00:08:09.680
If somebody did do, let's say, the ballot printing, if they had done it intentionally, would they be able to hide their intention?
00:08:21.900
It could have been a maximum of one personal conversation.
00:08:26.580
It might have been one person who talked to one other person who said, you know, if you just change the setting, all hell will break loose and conservatives won't get to vote on voting day.
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It would only take one person whispering to one other person.
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Like after the first person gets the idea in their head, there's no extra meetings, no conversations.
00:09:00.300
Do you believe that anybody is smart enough to know that the election results would change if they changed the size of the printed ballot?
00:09:11.420
Do you think that that was, that is likely that that was an intentional plan?
00:09:26.900
Or do you think you would have come up with that on your own?
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If you tell me that somebody is smart enough to know that that plan would work, I say, I haven't met that person yet.
00:09:48.360
There's just like one degree of sort of cleverness and uncertainty that just feels a little bit more than what real people do.
00:10:02.360
And I'm not saying that you're wrong if you think it was intentional.
00:10:07.340
I'm just saying that the nature of it requires a little bit more cleverness and thinking than I expect in politics.
00:10:23.600
But suppose it was a straightforward plot of collecting ballots from various places that were sketchy and then voting.
00:10:31.260
Does that sound like something that real people would do?
00:10:36.360
I'm not saying it happened or in big enough amounts to change anything.
00:10:41.520
I'm saying that would be like an ordinary, yeah, people would do that.
00:10:45.780
How about people filling out ballots for dead people?
00:10:49.060
Does that sound like something that would actually happen?
00:10:53.340
Yeah, because that's sort of easy and just straight ahead.
00:10:58.200
Now, maybe not enough to change the election, but yeah, you'd believe that.
00:11:02.860
But if somebody gets into the machine and they know enough to change the size of the printing because they know that the conservatives vote on voting day, they know it'll slow it down, maybe.
00:11:17.120
But I think you're in coin flip territory at the very least.
00:11:22.420
Like, if you could say that situation is 50% or more likely to be a conspiracy, I would say, I don't know.
00:11:33.580
If you told me there's a 25% chance that it was intentional, I'd say, that sounds about right.
00:11:42.220
Now, again, we're all just using our totally subjective opinion.
00:11:52.640
It's just that when you hear anything that's a little too clever, I always discount it.
00:11:59.140
Just too clever, boom, take down the odds that it's true.
00:12:03.640
All right, which doesn't mean I know it's true.
00:12:07.720
So, what the heck is going on with Maggie Haberman?
00:12:12.380
I keep reading the stories and I'm all confused.
00:12:15.700
So, Maggie Haberman was with Politico and is now with the Washington Post, right?
00:12:22.500
And she is famous on the right for having Trump derangement syndrome and writing continuous anti-Trump stories.
00:12:33.900
But, because the, what we learned recently is that, I guess it was the January 6th committee, found out that one of Trump's lawyers referred to, you know, was talking to somebody else, said that she was a friendly.
00:12:52.780
In other words, that she was friendly to the Trump organization.
00:13:01.660
Because the left now believes that Maggie Haberman is some kind of a, I don't know, Trojan horse or a trick or a plant or something, and that she's really working for Trump.
00:13:14.720
And their evidence includes the fact that Maggie Haberman's mother works with Jared Kushner?
00:13:26.780
I mean, that's what I'm saying, that there's some connection with the Trump world.
00:13:32.380
Now, and then I saw Cernovich tweet that people on the inside know that Trump talked to Haberman on the phone, you know, fairly often.
00:13:43.080
Which doesn't make sense for all the bad things she writes about him.
00:13:50.060
Because it can't be true that she's anti-Trump and pro-Trump at the same time.
00:13:59.740
How could we not tell, how could we not tell if she's pro or anti?
00:14:12.760
Well, I'm confused by the story, but I'm going to give you one hypothesis that has not been mentioned.
00:14:19.240
Which is that the story that she was friendly to Trump was incorrect.
00:14:25.440
So, the entire evidence is one reported statement by one person once.
00:14:34.940
That's the whole evidence that she's friendly to Trump.
00:14:38.640
Now, whatever Mike Cernovich has is based on information he has.
00:14:42.760
But in terms of the public information, one statement by one lawyer that she's friendly.
00:14:51.680
What are the odds that that was misheard, heard out of context, or misremembered?
00:14:59.920
Don't you think that the most likely explanation is it never happened?
00:15:03.140
The most likely explanation is that conversation didn't happen.
00:15:09.360
Or that he said, she's not friendly and somebody missed the word not.
00:15:16.020
Or maybe he said, she acted friendly, so I'm hoping for the best.
00:15:21.440
Or maybe he said, I'm going to act friendly and maybe that will, you know, hope.
00:15:27.020
Or maybe he said, it was a friendly conversation, which is different from saying, she's a friendly.
00:15:34.260
Don't you think the most likely explanation for this clear opposite of reality situation we have
00:15:51.380
Because it seems weird and complicated that she would be some kind of weird double agent
00:15:59.640
Now, do you think it's true that Trump would have multiple conversations with her,
00:16:07.420
Because at the very least, he would want to get his version of events out there.
00:16:12.280
So he should definitely be talking to the enemy.
00:16:15.140
Because if there's anything he can do to, you know, add a fact or some context
00:16:21.380
If, you know, she's going to come after him anyway, he should try to influence him.
00:16:31.980
I asked ChatGPT, the AI, what it thinks of marriage.
00:16:39.580
Whether marriage is just, statistically, whether it's a good idea.
00:16:47.620
Do you think AI said that getting married is a good idea or a bad idea?
00:16:56.000
It says the overall divorce rate in the United States has been declining in recent years.
00:17:02.360
Is it true that the divorce rate has been declining?
00:17:11.620
If fewer people get married, probably it's the ones who are pretty sure they get married, right?
00:17:19.120
And the religious ones, they have maybe a better chance.
00:17:25.500
But the AI says the divorce rate was about 2.9 per thousand people.
00:17:31.480
This suggests that the odds of a marriage in the United States working out well may be relatively high.
00:17:48.320
That's how many people out of all of them get divorced every year.
00:17:52.040
Am I wrong that AI doesn't know how to look at statistics?
00:17:58.680
I thought that would be one thing it would be good at.
00:18:01.660
Because the right statistic is you have a 40 or 50% chance of getting divorced.
00:18:08.600
Or you might not get divorced, but the statistics say you might not be happy.
00:18:13.380
But somehow it picked the annual number and compared it to some big number and concluded that it was a good risk.
00:18:37.080
So that's just yet another thing that you can't trust the AI on.
00:18:45.800
Because the AI might know all of the facts and still compare the wrong things.
00:18:51.620
Do you know why AI would maybe compare the wrong things?
00:18:55.600
Because the people who program it don't know how to compare things.
00:19:16.360
There's a Rasmussen poll that says 63% of likely U.S. voters believe Congress should investigate whether the FBI was involved in censoring information on social media.
00:19:39.020
Now, I suppose there might be some deeper question about whether the FBI had, you know, had orders to, you know, change the political landscape.
00:19:50.340
Is there any evidence that the FBI was doing it with the intention of changing politics?
00:19:57.400
The laptop thing is obviously, you need to look into that.
00:20:02.260
Maybe just because the laptop thing is so sketchy.
00:20:06.200
But I think that has more to do with the 50 Intel people who signed it.
00:20:22.600
As you know, my YouTube feed often gets demonetized.
00:20:31.600
Now, we've been watching, you know, what kind of content leads to demonetization.
00:20:41.420
You know, you'd think it'd be some kind of, you know, I think I'm also probably being, you know, throttled in some way.
00:20:50.720
But the thing that demonetizes me is the swearing.
00:20:57.080
So I've decided to make a new rule of no swearing going to the next year.
00:21:13.640
And I saw something today that I just have to give you one more.
00:21:21.740
So there's going to be a little demonetization going on in a moment.
00:21:31.040
You might be aware that I get a lot of pushback from people who say, why did you get vaccinated, Scott?
00:21:40.100
You know, getting vaccinated is like promoting vaccinations, say people.
00:21:45.140
Like if you're a public person and you got vaccinated, it's like you're promoting it.
00:21:54.520
And then people usually say, and then I say stuff like, but you know that nobody knew at the time whether the COVID was more dangerous or the vaccination.
00:22:09.900
And then my critics say, Scott, listen to Dr. Robert Malone.
00:22:16.280
If you would listen to him, he would explain to you what these mRNA technologies are and all the dangers of them.
00:22:28.380
Do you think if I'd paid more attention to Dr. Robert Malone, I would have known not to get vaccinated?
00:22:34.760
If I had taken him more seriously, do you think I would have not gotten vaccinated?
00:22:40.900
Because he was very clear about the warnings, wasn't he?
00:22:49.720
If I paid attention to the guy who says they're dangerous, you don't think I would have skipped it?
00:23:13.500
How many of you know that the biggest critic of vaccinations, Dr. Robert Malone, is himself vaccinated?
00:23:20.480
So I would like to just say something to my critics, who are suggesting that if I'd listened to the people they listened to, such as Dr. Robert Malone, chief among them, that if I'd listened to him like they did, that I would have made a different decision.
00:23:41.620
And so I'd like to say to all my critics, who say that I should have listened to Dr. Robert Malone, I might have made a different decision.
00:24:00.780
Fuck you until you disappear into the fuckness.
00:24:20.880
Now, Dr. Robert Malone says it probably was a mistake.
00:24:29.880
Did he say that the day he got the vaccination?
00:24:37.900
So all of those who said that I should have listened to the guy who made the same fucking decision I did, fuck all of you.
00:24:50.880
If I drop dead tomorrow with, you know, vaccine-related complications, well, you win.
00:24:59.360
But if I live a long, healthy life, then I took a risk so I could fly to Bora Bora, I did not get sick, and I had a nice vacation.
00:25:13.660
I'd say the vote is still out whether I die or not.
00:25:16.360
The Rand group, R-A-N-D, Rand, is a think tank, sort of a think tank situation, I think.
00:25:26.320
But they had an article on Russian propaganda and how they're doing it.
00:25:32.600
So apparently the Russian propaganda method is not to be surgical.
00:25:39.380
So they're not coming up with, like, the perfect meme or the perfect rumor.
00:25:45.460
They're just flooding the zone with bullshit so that you can't tell what's true.
00:25:51.480
So the Russians are just, you know, it's just overwhelming, continuous, but it's also inconsistent.
00:26:00.480
So even the messages they give are not all the same because they don't care what you believe.
00:26:13.040
They're not trying to persuade you necessarily.
00:26:15.180
They're trying to wear you out so you can't tell what's true.
00:26:19.780
Because if you can't tell what's true, you can't act on it.
00:26:24.980
So they're just trying to make America ineffective.
00:26:27.840
They don't need to make us believe a specific thing.
00:26:35.380
But here are some other persuasion-related things from Rand that I thought were worth mentioning.
00:26:44.340
So this is tying the technique to actual scientific studies.
00:26:50.620
And Rand says, experimental psychology literature tells us that first impressions are very resilient.
00:26:57.340
So the first thing the Russians do is they flood the zone with their own rumors, you know, false stuff,
00:27:04.000
before you've seen the correct reporting on something.
00:27:07.440
Because your first impression is really sticky.
00:27:15.700
It says, an individual is more likely to accept the first information received on a topic,
00:27:30.260
So if you have more than one message, they're going to favor the first one they heard.
00:27:39.860
And furthermore, repetition leads to familiarity.
00:27:42.680
The more you repeat the fake news, the more people will believe it, because they say,
00:27:51.940
Couldn't be so many people saying it if there's nothing to it.
00:27:55.640
So, so, so, uh, be first, repeat it until people think it's familiar.
00:28:03.620
Then, um, the illusory truth effect is well documented.
00:28:09.700
This is where people raise statements as more truthful and believable, um,
00:28:14.960
when there are new statements, those statements previously, oh, then when they were new.
00:28:22.300
So, a new statement will be considered, you know, a little bit sketchy,
00:28:26.740
but if they keep hearing it over and over again, there's nothing else that happens.
00:28:31.800
They'll start, they'll start to believe it just because they keep hearing it.
00:28:37.340
Um, when people are less interested in a topic, they're more likely to accept familiarity.
00:28:44.960
So, if you don't know much about it, whatever you hear the most is going to be your truth,
00:28:52.660
Um, consumers, uh, save processing, you know, resources.
00:28:59.220
In other words, their brains don't work so hard, uh, because they use a frequency heuristic,
00:29:06.460
a rule of thumb, that if they've been hearing the same thing over and over again,
00:29:17.380
Um, even with preposterous stories and urban legends,
00:29:21.020
those who have heard them multiple times are more likely to believe that they are true.
00:29:33.960
And, by the way, this is all stuff that hypnotists all know, right?
00:29:39.720
So, none of this is surprising to me, but maybe, maybe some of you.
00:29:44.400
Um, if an individual is already familiar with an argument, uh, they process it less carefully.
00:29:53.300
So, if you've heard the argument, you don't rethink it.
00:29:56.520
You just say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that old argument.
00:29:58.820
So, your brain doesn't click in again once you've decided what's going on.
00:30:14.540
Oh, they all, I guess the Russians also, uh, they use fake accounts that look like they're on your team.
00:30:20.620
So, if you saw a fake account that was all MAGA, pro-Trump, American flag,
00:30:26.780
and it says, oh, Bigfoot is real, and you also are in that same camp,
00:30:31.720
you're a MAGA-loving person, you're going to say, oh, this MAGA person, I trust them.
00:30:44.020
Um, Mark Andreessen had an interesting, uh, tweet today,
00:30:48.180
a quote from Michael Crichton, famous author, some of you know.
00:30:54.860
Quote, often, talking about the news and how unreliable the news is,
00:30:59.340
often the article is so wrong, it actually presents the story backward,
00:31:05.340
I call these the wet streets cause rain stories.
00:31:11.180
I might start using that, wet streets cause rain.
00:31:14.040
Because almost every vaccination mask-related story is one of these.
00:31:22.840
Where they did something and something happened,
00:31:27.860
You know, or you can't tell the difference between cause and effect, basically.
00:31:43.180
literally just get correlation and causation mixed up.
00:31:47.620
And the, and readers can't tell the difference.
00:31:52.160
Uh, in case you're wondering, over there on YouTube,
00:31:54.600
the clank is a reference to Sticks and Hammers show.
00:31:58.980
I think he clanks a spoon in a cup or something.
00:32:02.300
Uh, so they're, they're basically making it known
00:32:05.260
that they're in that club and they're coming over here
00:32:20.260
Now, do you think, is that something you'd bet on?
00:32:36.820
So, I did, I did, uh, something that you didn't trust
00:32:43.060
But, because you were afraid of it and I wasn't,
00:32:51.920
by the way, if anybody, if anybody saw me at the time,
00:32:55.060
did I mention how loud or was this just my private thinking
00:33:08.720
That part of the decision is that you're protecting other people.