In this episode of the live stream hosted by Alex Blumberg, host of The FiveThirtyEight podcast, Alex takes you on a tour of the world s most bizarre news stories of the past 24 hours, including the latest in the drought crisis in California, the latest on fake news, and much, much more!
00:03:31.460And if 60% of the public wants something, and they understand it well enough to know what they're asking for, it doesn't make any sense that that has to go through Congress.
00:03:48.520Now, I could imagine that maybe you don't go with the referendum if it's close, because then maybe you want your experts in Congress to, you know, tell you what you missed or something.
00:03:58.980But if it's 60-40 and we understand the issue, I think we ought to just do an end run around Congress.
00:04:07.640I don't know any way to fix the system that's a constitutional amendment probably, so impractical.
00:04:13.680All right, here's your media lesson in how to interpret or actually spot fake news.
00:04:19.940All right, so you may have seen a clip of Representative Goldman, who is talking to Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger, I think, at a congressional event.
00:05:01.920Even with Twitter, you cannot find evidence of any direct government censorship.
00:05:06.960If I hadn't called out the word direct, and you were just sort of casually listening, wouldn't you assume that the government never tried to get anything censored at Twitter?
00:06:47.420And I say to myself, hypothetically, if you divided a bunch of young people of any colors or ethnicities, you just randomly divide them into two groups.
00:06:58.760You say, all right, group one, we're going to have you focus on equity.
00:07:04.420We want something like, you know, similar outcomes for people.
00:07:08.000So, organize your life toward being mediocre.
00:07:13.040Try, if you work really hard, I think we can get you up to average.
00:07:34.060Now, the other group, be they white or black or Asian Americans, whatever, you say to them, all right, here's the deal.
00:07:41.660We're going to teach you how to focus on the future, build a talent stack, and we're going to try to get you to excel.
00:07:48.980Well, you're the ones who are going to have the tools of success, and you're going to use these tools to be better than people who don't know how to do it.
00:07:57.740You're going to go as high as you could possibly go.
00:08:00.200Not everyone will reach the top, of course.
00:08:02.760But you're going to outperform ordinary people who don't know how to do this kind of thing.
00:08:08.080All right, then check back in a few years, which group is doing better?
00:08:14.400Well, what if you get what you try to get?
00:08:17.240The people who wanted equity achieved mediocrity just like they wanted.
00:08:22.680The people who were learning to excel probably beat the average, on average.
00:08:51.260Would it be racist to say, look, black Americans, if you learn these tools of success, and the rest of the world doesn't, or at least any more than they already are,
00:09:29.320This is sort of impossible in the real world, but imagine if I specifically could train a generation of black Americans, young black Americans,
00:09:39.860the tools of success, you know, systems over goals, and don't get hung up on passion, and how to calculate the odds, and how to persuade people,
00:09:50.220you know, just all the tools of success, how to negotiate, how to handle money, you know, basic stuff.
00:09:56.300If I did that for, let's say, five years, or let's say I educated a generation, I just did it every day,
00:10:04.440how long would it take for black Americans to surpass the performance economically, economically,
00:10:13.820how long would it take for the black Americans I trained to surpass white Americans, especially,
00:10:21.160who did not have the same training, right?
00:10:24.320Because poor white Americans also don't hear the tools for success.
00:10:27.520It's something that high-income people are more likely to be around.