Episode 1972 Scott Adams: Today I Will Trigger Viewers Into Cognitive Dissonance By Debunking Hoaxes
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
140.4857
Summary
Dilbert gets triggered by a tweet from Elon Musk, and Rep. Eric Swalwell says you can't have liars in Congress, and I'm done with liars. Also, Peter Sweden was banned from using his name on the internet, but he's back.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams, the highlight of your life
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I don't think there's been a finer day, but wait till tomorrow, even better.
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How would you like to experience some beverage with a little cognitive dissonance?
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Some of you will be triggered by today's, well, a lot of you actually, maybe two-thirds
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of you, will be experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance.
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And I'm doing it intentionally, so before we start, you should know that that's going
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to happen to two-thirds of you, but you don't know which ones.
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Now, if it happens to you, you're just going to get angry, and you're going to swear that
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Your reaction will be, I'm not in cognitive dissonance, darn it.
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The words I say are making complete sense, but they won't.
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They'll be on the wrong topic, and everything else.
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But before we get into that, how would you like to take your energy up to a level that
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And all you need is a cover mug or a glass, a tanker, jealous, or stye, and a canteen jug
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that
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It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
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So yesterday, a bot told me that Elon Musk started following me on Twitter, which gets
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Because when the bots say that he follows somebody, people definitely notice that.
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Now, he has been following the Dilbert Twitter account for several months, but now he's following
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So, I guess I don't have any extra comment on that.
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But how many times have I told you that what we've created here with this live stream is
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It's almost like an augmentation to the Constitution or the Republic.
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And what I mean by that is it's an efficient way for opinions to bubble up and get to the
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So, to the extent that your opinions, you know, are, let's say, unified on some topic, and
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to the extent to which I tweet about it, you've got more visibility now.
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So, when I say that, you know, Elon Musk is following my Twitter account, that really
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is about you as well, because, you know, it's all part of one process.
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Remember I told you that I wanted Representative Santos, who's now, seems to be the biggest
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Um, I wanted him to keep his job specifically because, why?
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Because it would be funny when the other members of Congress say he should quit because he's
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Eric Swalwell, to suggest that he should be investigated for being such a liar.
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There's like, there's no work for the professional humorist.
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The professional humorist may take the day off, because the straight line or the set-up
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Eric Swalwell says that you can't have liars in Congress, and I'm done.
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Set-up and punchline, set-up and punchline, all in one little neat package.
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As a professional humorist, I appreciate the efficiency of this situation.
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We want to see, I want to see Adam Schiff rail against this liar.
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I'd also like to see CNN bring on John Brennan to say we could never have a liar like this
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So being a dick to me is reason for being blocked.
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Peter Sweden, who I believe at one point was banned on Twitter, but he's back.
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And he's one of the people who's notable for saying things about the pandemic,
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Now, I'm not saying that he is right or wrong, and we're going to enter the cognitive dissonance
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Now, here's the first way you can identify which one of you are getting triggered, because
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The first way is you won't be able to stay on topic.
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So look for the people who make very excited comments that might be true, might be true
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facts, might not be, but they won't quite be on topic.
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It'll be sort of in the same zip code, but it'll be like they're intentionally missing the point.
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What's the name for somebody who says something that's not popular, but not a negative way?
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Contrarian is the word I'm looking for, because I wanted a word that doesn't say anything about
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So rule number one, we're not saying whether he or his points are good or bad.
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So if any of you were to make a point in the next few minutes and say, but his point is
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Let's see how many people will go off topic to show that they're in cognitive distance.
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He tweeted a picture of the VAERS report and showed that there's a gigantic number of
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reports in the VAERS database for pandemic-related stuff.
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VAERS meaning that there were negative reports of maybe a side effect from, I think, the vaccination.
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Now, you all know that the VAERS reports are not substitutes for randomized controlled trials.
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It's simply people saying, hey, you might want to look into this.
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And if lots of people are reporting the same thing, well, then you definitely want to look into it.
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So can we all agree that if the VAERS report shows any anomaly, that the way you treat that
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is not as a fact, but as something you definitely want to look into?
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So I tweeted that I was glad that Twitter had added a context note.
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The context note basically debunked the interpretation of the VAERS thing and also mentioned that anybody
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So my comment is that the context notes from Twitter are good.
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Now, your comment, which will be off-topic, is you can't do randomized controlled top, right?
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Who else can't deal with the fact that it's simply a context question?
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I blocked somebody's wife, and he says I'm jealous.
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Man, make an argument for why the VAERS report is right or wrong, which is totally not the
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So is everybody here on the same wavelength that a gigantic anomaly is worth looking into, but
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Do you think you'll do as well on the next one?
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Do you think you'll do as well on the next one?
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By the way, I guess my objective, you know, I've got a number of things I always like to accomplish, but among them, I would like my audience to be the most sophisticated analyzers of the news.
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The people who know immediately what's wrong, like you see it immediately, and I'm going to give you another one in a minute that's going to be really tough for you.
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I said, how many of you believe some group of elites or leftists, and this could include Bill Gates, right?
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But how many believe some group of elites or leftists or someone important wants to reduce the population of Earth?
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How many say that that is a true statement, that there are some elites, some people in power who want to reduce the population of Earth?
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Now, how many of you, let me ask more specifically, how many of you have seen Bill Gates, either a video or seen his quote where he directly says,
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yes, he says it directly in a video and also in a quote that he's looking to, wants to reduce the population of Earth?
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Now, those of you who have seen those things, do you know they're hoaxes?
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The video of Bill Gates saying directly that he wants population reduction, it's actually a voiceover, it's just a hoax.
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But there's also a quote that says it directly, right?
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I mean, there's a quote of real words that came out of his mouth that say it directly, right?
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There's a larger quote which they Rupard, whoever did it, somebody Rupard it.
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They took a real quote and combined it, they changed its context.
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So if you see it out of context, it looks exactly like he wants to reduce the population.
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The actual context is he's talking about reducing something else.
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So you can't actually find any evidence of Bill Gates wanting to reduce the population.
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How many of you believe me that it's a hoax and a well-documented one?
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We know exactly what the real video says, and we know what the hoax says.
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We know exactly what the real quote says, and we know what the hoax says.
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Now, if there's anybody left who still believes that Bill Gates is interested in population decline,
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I don't mean to insult you, but what I'm going to do next might be a little tough for some of you.
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I'm trying to make sure I have the most educated live stream.
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This will be a little tough, but I think you can handle it.
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On the Bill Gates population decline, you should not have had to do a fact check.
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It doesn't pass the really test, you know, where you go, really?
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Because up to around, this is just my guess, an IQ of about 120,
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you could imagine that people maybe don't understand how population and economics work together.
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In other words, if you believe that reducing the population of Earth could ever be good for Earth,
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then you don't understand economics and population.
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You might understand economics alone without the population.
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You might understand population, but you don't understand that a growing population is absolutely required for economic stability.
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Find somebody that you believe is well above average and ask them,
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what's better for the economy, a growing population or a shrinking population?
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It will be 100% of the people will say, oh, it has to grow,
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It has to grow, but it should be a controlled, smart growth.
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Now, some people say that there's a Rockefeller, you know, shady Rockefeller group that recommended back in 1975
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that the policy of the United States should be to reduce, you know, out of control population growth.
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True or false, true or false, that in 1975, it was believed that population growth was the problem.
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When I was that age, you know, I'm old enough to remember it, everybody was worried, all the smart people.
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The people up here, they were all worried that the population was getting out of control.
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But smart people watched what happened when countries got richer.
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And they learned that, wait a minute, every single time a country gets richer, their birth rate goes down.
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So it turned out it was like a self-correcting problem.
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Now, I ran a little poll, and I asked how many of you believe some group of elites or whatever want to reduce the population of Earth?
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There are a lot of things that we talk about where a difference in opinion or priorities, different of, like, projection and stuff.
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You could have lots of reasons to disagree, but this isn't one of them.
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This is one that there is no room for actual disagreement.
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It would be like disagreeing with gravity, right?
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You need a growing population to have a good economy, and every person who pays attention and is at least a little bit smart, they all know it.
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There are no elite people who want to reduce the population of Earth.
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But you might hear people say, you know, there might be, say, some African country that's getting ahead of itself, right?
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So you could easily imagine some individual place has more population growth than locally they can grow food.
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Now, how many of you are saying to yourself, huh, I used to think that there were smart people who wanted to reduce the population of Earth,
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but now that you've explained it this way, I can see your point.
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How many people have I convinced to change their mind?
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If you haven't changed your mind about this, you're in cognitive dissonance.
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This one is not the kind where there's any room for disagreement.
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You won't find any disagreement for people who understand the topic and are reasonably smart.
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Now, if you'd like to test this, I'd like you to find that person in your own life.
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See if you can find a person who actually has the opinion you believe is widespread.
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Now, you might say to yourself, but Scott, we're only talking about the elites.
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Maybe not smart people in general, but the elites.
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The elites don't want a shrinking population because those are their customers.
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They want more people paying taxes, more people buying their stuff.
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But again, in a controlled way, not out of control growth.
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How many people said, when I asked, you know, is there a group of elites, blah, blah, blah.
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So, apparently, the people who said, you never know, I think are the same as the, you know, it's close to a quarter of the people said, you never know.
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I don't want to make fun of a quarter of the people who answered this poll, but it's right on.
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Now, if I ran this poll again, you should all be able to answer that.
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How many of you are having, like, the biggest mindfuck of your life right now?
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How many of you were positive it was true until, like, just now?
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Well, 72% of my poll said they were positive it was true just an hour ago.
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Now, is anybody having a negative feeling about me?
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Because that would be cognitive dissonance, too.
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Is anybody thinking, oh, no, he's not trying to help us.
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Do you think I'm part of the elite who's trying to pull the wool over your eyes?
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What reason would I have to try to dupe you on this question?
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All right, well, I don't know if it's because I primed you so well,
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Those of you who are not changing your mind, you know,
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you already knew that population growth was good.
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Because I would have expected far more word salad.
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So I feel like maybe we are accomplishing something.
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is that my audience would learn how to change their mind
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Do you realize what an upgrade to your thinking process that would be?
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If you could actually learn to just change your mind.
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But I feel like maybe this is a group that's better at it,
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even though there's no evidence of it whatsoever
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that said that women can detect who's married versus unmarried
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by sniffing their T-shirts and looking at their photos.
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Let's see how trained you are to identify bullshit studies.
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by sniffing their T-shirts while looking at pictures.
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don't you think that looking at the picture part
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Do you think the sniffing was how they figured it out?
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Or do you think it was just looking at the picture?
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Is there anybody who wouldn't be able to identify married men
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is that single people have higher testosterone.
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That your testosterone goes down as soon as you get married,
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and testosterone absolutely changes how you look.