In this episode of the show, Scott Adams talks about his troubles with his HP printer, and why he doesn't care if it doesn't have Wi-Fi. Plus, a debate about whether Bill Gates is a hypocrite or a hero when it comes to fighting climate change.
00:00:23.620Yes, did you notice the printer sarcophagus?
00:00:27.200Yes. So let me give you an update on my printer, and then we'll do the simultaneous zip.
00:00:35.060So it turns out that if you destroy your printer, your HP printer, in front of a live stream audience, HP will call you.
00:00:48.740So I got a call from HP, and here's the good news.
00:00:55.040So the good news is that HP has a really effective, quick response for stuff like this.
00:01:04.540So big companies often have like a quick response complaint group for any high-level complaints.
00:01:10.420So they were on it right away, and they offered to switch out my printer, which the problem was, I bought a printer, assuming that all printers, all high-end printers, I assumed all high-end printers had Wi-Fi.
00:01:27.540That turned out to be a dumb assumption.
00:01:31.380So I didn't really look very closely at the specs, because who would make a printer in 2022 or 2023 that wouldn't have Wi-Fi?
00:01:44.260So while I would say that was a user error, when I looked through the documentation, and it had all kinds of instructions on how to activate your Wi-Fi, and I used the software and it has instructions on how to activate the Wi-Fi,
00:01:59.040in the tidiest little letters, in the tidiest little letters, it says, asterisk, tiny little letters, asterisk, only if your model has Wi-Fi.
00:02:28.500Now, the question you're going to ask me is this.
00:02:31.740Why do I keep buying HP products if I keep having trouble?
00:02:37.800Well, first of all, I believe that all printers have mechanical troubles.
00:02:41.840I don't believe there's any such thing as a printer that doesn't break after a while.
00:02:46.820Yeah, I know you've got your favorites, but I don't believe it.
00:02:48.900Secondly, have you ever heard that when a customer complaint is satisfied, they become more loyal customers than if they'd never had a complaint in the first place?
00:05:21.840If he can fly around on his jet efficiently and allocate his capital toward saving the planet, that he personally is very, very much, very much net positive.
00:05:35.340Now, he would acknowledge that the jet uses more fuel than some other mode of transportation.
00:05:41.660But overall, he's saying, you know, I'm saving the world, but it costs a little to get there.
00:07:25.960Here's a good example of how the news tells you what to be mad about.
00:07:31.440Do you believe that you wake up every day?
00:07:33.320Sorry, I just saw a comment that was funny.
00:07:39.440Do you believe you wake up every day, and you look at the news, and then you decide on your own, just all by yourself, what things are important and what things you're going to get all worked up about?
00:07:49.820Is that your, let's say, your worldview?
00:07:53.560That you look at the landscape of all the possible stories, and then you, on your own, with no help, decide which one's going to be important to you?
00:08:07.060No, the news tells you which ones to worry about, and it's almost random if you looked at, you know, if you were to look at it objectively.
00:09:22.400If they just decided, that's the big story, a whole lot of people would be worked up about it.
00:09:29.340But as it is, we just think, oh, old man said strange thing, doesn't make, you know, won't make much difference.
00:09:35.240But instead, the main story that I saw on the Fox News, it may have changed by now, but the main story I saw on Fox News was that Leah Thomas, the trans athlete swimmer,
00:09:51.240a few years ago, or not, I don't know when it was, changed in a dressing room, the girls' or women's dressing room, and her penis was showing, and the other women are upset about that.
00:10:08.320So she showed her penis at the women's locker room, and that was the big story.
00:10:15.520That was like the main story at Fox News.
00:10:21.240I know some of you are racist, not racist, some of you are so close-minded that when I say her penis, you're like, wait, wait, you mean his penis.
00:10:33.000But no, that would be wrong, so don't say that.
00:12:17.920All right, anyway, Tracy tweets that a 2013 study on social conformity found that extroverts are more willing to go along with the opinion of the majority, even if it's wrong.
00:13:27.840Well, you could have some introverts who are on TV, but probably extroverts, a lot of extroverts.
00:13:32.960So what happens when you've got a situation where there's social conformity pressure and then you as a member of the public are trying to get some insight from all the experts and the government and the pundits?
00:13:49.680But if they're heavily extroverted, because there's a selection thing, right?
00:13:57.020The people who are famous usually try to be famous.
00:14:00.600So there's something extroverted about them.
00:14:02.580It kind of makes you understand how people, you know, how the top, anyway, the people in charge, it really makes you understand how they could so quickly conform, if it's true that extroverts conform.
00:15:06.020But how many of those do you think were mostly because they were afraid of needles, and then they reasoned backwards from their fear of needles?
00:15:20.760Everything that I know about psychology assumes that there are some people in that group.
00:15:26.080Because that's the way the brain works.
00:15:27.780The brain works, you know, you start with your irrational fear, and then you work backwards to your rationalization of why it all made sense in the first place.
00:16:17.720This is not my interpretation of anything he did.
00:16:21.240My interpretation is that he did some academic stuff on some very controversial stuff, but it's being mischaracterized.
00:16:31.680So in my personal opinion, he's being mischaracterized.
00:16:37.840Now, how I feel about it, I'm having trouble sorting it out.
00:16:44.460Because I also felt like I was being shadow banned.
00:16:48.480I don't know if I was, but I felt like I was.
00:16:51.240And I felt that people who at least agreed with me in some ways were being shadow banned, and I hated it.
00:16:58.100And therefore, I had, you know, bad feeling about anybody who would have been involved in doing it.
00:17:02.240So the animal part of me just wants to, you know, hate this Yoel Roth guy and, you know, grind him into the dirt for being on the other side from me and people I like.
00:17:17.600On the other hand, I'm a big fan of innocent until proven guilty, and there's a lot of accusations thrown around about this guy that I'm not comfortable with coming from government officials.
00:24:34.780I wonder if any sober person with an IQ over 110 has ever been killed by police after resisting arrest during a traffic stop.
00:24:45.080Now, I feel like I would have been canceled two years ago for that.
00:24:48.080But today, I don't think anybody wants to touch it, because I'm perfectly willing to have that conversation.
00:24:58.580I think stupid people and inebriated people get killed by police for resisting arrest.
00:25:04.480And if you think that has anything to do with race, I don't know what, you show me a stupid, inebriated person, male, almost always male, and I'll show you somebody who's got a real risk with police.
00:25:19.180Show me somebody who's smart and sober, and I'll show you somebody who could get into trouble, but they're not going to be murdered by police.
00:25:31.560I mean, unless it was just the weirdest mistaken identity situation, which is a whole different story.
00:25:38.420But let's stop pretending that people being killed by police while resisting arrest is anything about anything except stupid people.
00:25:51.200And if you want to tell me, no, no, Scott, it's a problem with the black community, then I say to you, why are you infantilizing black Americans?
00:26:00.060Do you know when I was smart enough not to pick a fight with a guy with a gun?
00:26:07.180At three years old, I already knew everything I would know for the rest of my life on the topic of whether I should pick a fight with somebody who had a gun.
00:26:17.160Now, pick a fight means resisting arrest in this case, right?
00:29:23.580I don't know what the story is, but I have a feeling that hard to work for is not going to be the reason that we finally figure out in the end.
00:29:37.480Did I see the unarmed guy on his knees in the hotel hallway get murdered by cops?
00:30:37.640Remember when I told you that when we heard that there was a story that the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up by Americans?
00:30:45.260Do you remember I told you, I'm not so sure about this story?
00:30:50.960Do you remember my skepticism at the initial reporting?
00:30:54.880Well, so apparently there's this one American journalist, Seymour Hersh, who's the one who believes he has this inside information that U.S. divers planted their explosives during a NATO exercise, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:11.080And then I see Mike Lee, senator from Utah, say, he tweeted, I'm troubled that I can't immediately rule out that the suggestion, that the U.S. rule out the suggestion, that the U.S. blew up Nord Stream.
00:31:25.580I checked with a bunch of Senate colleagues.
00:31:28.800Among those I've asked, none were ever briefed on this.
00:31:32.220If it turns out to be true, we've got a huge problem.