Episode 2050 Scott Adams: Murderous UFOs, SVB Worst Takes, Criminalized Pronouns, Republicans Hunted
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per Minute
150.24487
Summary
Scott Adams talks about a racist prank, UFOs, and Tucker Carlson's claims about UFOs. Scott Adams is a stand-up comedian and host of the popular podcast, "Coffee with Scott Adams". He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and hosts the popular radio show, "Scott Adams Radio."
Transcript
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and anything else you'd like to be.
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Welcome to the finest thing that's ever happened in the history of civilization.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's never been a finer moment.
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And if you'd like to take your situation up a notch, and you're the kind of people who like to do that,
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well then, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, chalice, a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the other day.
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The thing that makes everything better, it's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
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Probably racist. I don't know. It's hard to know.
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Well, I'd like to give a shout-out to a prankster who got me pretty good today.
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Let's see if I have the answer to getting rid of the prank yet.
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All right, so when I tweet before the show, I tweet the link to the locals' community as well as YouTube.
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And apparently, when I do that, some prankster has apparently hacked my account.
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And so, where it used to show my image automatically, you know, taken from the locals' account,
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the tweet automatically replaced it with a picture that some prankster put there of Dilbert with a KKK necktie.
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So, I didn't have time to do the show without looking into it, because we're looking into it.
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So, if somebody got into my account, or got into the locals' account, or did it on Twitter somehow, I don't know.
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So, I don't even know what they got into, but somebody got into something they shouldn't have gotten into.
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And my first thought was, oh, I'd better get rid of this right away.
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And my second thought was, this is a really good prank.
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Yeah, I put it in the comments, and it was a hack.
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I've been asked to look into the video of Tucker Carlson talking about UFOs.
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And, of course, you sent me on a wild goose chase, because I thought it was on his show.
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But, apparently, it was some separate thing he did.
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Now, if you don't know the story, Tucker tells the story of, and I hope I get it approximately correct,
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that he knows or was contacted by somebody who was a tenured professor at Stanford,
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And, allegedly, Tucker was told by this very person,
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that he was personally contacted by the government some years back,
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to look into the brain injuries caused by UFOs.
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The claim, allegedly, is that over a hundred or so...
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So, the story is that this brain injury expert was told by the government and the military
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that a hundred or so people had been wounded or killed by UFOs, military people.
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Over a hundred people killed by UFOs, murderous UFOs.
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Now, the way they killed people apparently was with some kind of radiating force that was giving people brain damage,
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And so, people quite reasonably said, what do you think of this?
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If there's more to this story, this is the only part I saw.
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The evidence that is true comes from a telling by Tucker Carlson.
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So, the first thing you say is, do you believe Tucker Carlson?
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But, do you believe that Tucker Carlson is accurately recounting something that somebody said to him?
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I feel confident that that's certainly not the sort of thing that most people would make up, and I don't think he would.
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Like, I see no signs that he would just make up a story.
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So, let's say that we believe that somebody told him that.
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This doesn't even look slightly credible to me.
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How in the world would you keep that, or injuries that are that severe?
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And, secondly, if you have one source, first of all, do you know it's a tenured professor?
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Do you know it's a tenured professor who other people think is sane?
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Has a tenured professor never lost their faculties and imagined something that wasn't there?
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I mean, there's just no credibility to this at all.
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Generally speaking, a single source is going to be far more likely wrong than right.
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That no matter what this story is, a single source, you'd bet against it.
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I would bet against a single source all day long.
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Anything's possible when it comes to these UFOs.
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But I would say the quality of evidence would be at the lowest rung of credibility.
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Ben Stein is getting the peacock treatment today.
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So, he did a little video in which he said, I'll summarize, paraphrase a little bit.
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He said that 60 years ago when he was young, black Americans looked like they weren't doing well.
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And, you know, just observationally, it looked like they weren't doing well.
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But in modern times, they have at least the opportunity to have a good life and go to a good school if they qualify, and get a good job and have a good time.
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And that was his entire observation, is that things have improved for black Americans.
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And do you think he was called a racist for that?
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He was immediately labeled a racist for saying that things used to be worse for black Americans, but they've improved, and under the right conditions, you can have a real good life.
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Now, do you think that people took him a little too literally?
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Do you think that when he talked about black people, that people may have assumed that he meant every single one was going to live a good life?
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Because I don't believe that would be a reasonable way to interpret his observation.
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You know, individuals are still going to have racism, they're still going to have problems.
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But he's saying there's this, you know, golden highway to success, and anybody can get on it.
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Because this is not about racism, and you know that, right?
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So anybody who says anything about race, anything, they'll just get labeled racist so they can take their voice off the field.
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What percentage of stories about public figures are accurate in the first telling?
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In the first wave of news, you hear a story about a celebrity or a public figure.
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How often is that accurate and within the right context?
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If it's in the political realm, it's really zero.
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Because what makes the initial story a story is that something incredible happened.
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They don't do stories about somebody acting normal today.
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They do stories about, whoa, somebody did something unexpected today.
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Now, Scott Alexander, which is a pseudonym for a blogger, had the best take on this a number of years ago.
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He said, if something in the news looks incredible, you're like, whoa, I can't believe that happened.
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If you hear the news and you're like, whoa, I can't believe that person said that, they didn't.
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Now, they might have said the exact words quite often.
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But when the context is removed, the exact words can be actually even reversed in meaning just by the change of context.
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So, a good general rule for following the news is that all political stories are false in the first telling.
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So, you say to yourself, well, that can't be true because, you know, the people who support the people are going to tell the truth.
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The people who support whatever politician are going to tell the untruth that supports them.
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Meaning that they'll leave out the context that's inconvenient.
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So, any news about politics in 2023 is fake in the first telling.
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But generally speaking, how long does it take for the fake news about a political situation to be clarified so that even the people who disagreed with it eventually say, hmm, okay.
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That does look different than what I thought sometime ago.
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What's the general time it takes for a fake story to be clarified accurately?
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But I think that never, I think that never applies to some people who just can't be convinced.
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But of the few people who can actually change their mind, I'd say one to five years.
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That's the approximate time it takes for a fake news story about politics to evolve into something true.
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How long did it take before we found out that the 50 signatures on the Hunter laptop document were liars, basically?
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How long did it take to find out that Russia collusion was a hoax?
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How long did it take for the public to get more complete video about January 6th?
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So one to ten years is how long you have to wait to find out if that political story is real.
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And I would include as a political story anything about bigotry.
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Because those are political stories if the public figure is known to be associated with one side.
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It's just a political story because he's a political figure.
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The story about me, I don't know if all of you have realized it yet, but that was completely political.
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The political right looked at it, looked at the context, said, well, that was alarming, but I see what you did. Carry on.
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The political left didn't look at the context and didn't care because they only care that I'm a political figure and they wanted to take me off the chessboard.
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Well, if you think that the initial version of any story about a political figure is true, you haven't been paying attention.
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It would be the rarest thing if the initial story held for five years.
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Do you think that whatever you heard in the last few weeks about Project Veritas, do you think that will be the same thing you'll understand in five years?
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I don't know what's true and what's not true, but I can say confidently in five years you'll have a different opinion if you're a person who can change their opinion.
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Several years ago, I got mocked for saying Republicans would be hunted.
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Headlines today, more than, I think this is on Fox News, more than a thousand people will face new charges because of January 6th.
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New charges, a thousand, a thousand people, all Republicans, will face charges that all of us know they would not face if they were Democrats in a similar, had they done exactly the same thing or a similar thing.
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We know that Democrats would not have been charged.
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Now, how do you like my prediction that Republicans would be hunted?
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If you said to yourself, Scott, a hundred percent of Republicans aren't being hunted, well, then you're bad at understanding life.
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Yeah, Republicans are being hunted by the thousands now.
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You can actually say out loud without any political spit on it.
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The Republicans are literally being hunted by the Justice Department.
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I don't think there's a Democrat that would doubt that.
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They would not be for for the types of crimes they did.
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You know, the trespassing and interfering with the public event.
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Nobody would be except Republicans who are being hunted.
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Apparently, the Biden administration is proposing or thinking about making it a violation of Title IX to use the wrong pronouns.
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But apparently it would be some kind of a hate crime if you use the wrong pronouns.
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That might be the worst idea I've ever heard in my life.
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However, the good news is I have a workaround for you.
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I did a little research today and I found that there are some black academics, which is important,
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that there are black academics, have wanted to classify racism as a mental disability or a mental disorder.
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Do you think that actual racism, the real kind, not the fake kind?
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Do you think that actual racism should be considered a mental disorder, which would allow it to be a disability?
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Well, whether or not that makes sense or not, I'm going to extend that thought, logically, to bigotry in general.
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So don't you think that somebody who's a racist is not that different from somebody who's just a bigot in general, right?
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So you could be a bigot against, let's say, a race or religion, but also a bigot against trans people or non-binaries and be a bigot in every way.
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If you were a bigot about everything from race to religion to, you know, you name it, would that be considered a mental disorder?
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So if I can get an expert to say in writing, and apparently a psychologist would be sufficient, could a psychiatrist or a psychologist, both of them actually, could they give you a medical note that says you have a disability in the field of bigotry?
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And they can even give examples, unwilling to use the correct pronouns.
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And unwillingness or inability, the patient, I can certify that this patient is either unwilling or unable to use correct pronouns.
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My diagnosis is that they have a disability, because that would be the kind of disability that would prevent you from getting jobs and, you know, operating in a normal way in society, which is what a disability does.
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It allows you to have less access to society in some way.
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So I think that just to protect yourself, you should get a psychologist to give you a medical diagnosis of bigotry as a disability.
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Now, you say to yourself, well, maybe I can't get somebody to do that.
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But I remind you, years ago, when activists wanted marijuana to be legal in states, they started with medical marijuana.
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And the critics said, no, you're going to try to get that medical stuff legalized.
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And then you're going to sneak in with the regular recreational stuff after everybody gets comfortable with the medical stuff.
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But there were always doctors who were willing to say that you needed it for medical reasons, weren't there?
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Did anybody have it? Well, if you were in the right state.
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If you were in the right state, did you have any problem getting a doctor to say you needed it for medical reasons?
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Not your regular doctor. No, not your regular doctor.
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You can just Google it and find a doctor who would be, let's say, just a little bit more flexible than the average doctor
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about whether or not you have a medical problem that weed is just right for.
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You don't think that there would be a psychologist or a psychiatrist somewhere
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who would advertise, I will give you a bigotry diagnosis
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so that you could be taking advantage of whatever benefits you get for being disabled.
00:20:02.000
Now, one of the benefits is you can't be fired simply for your disability.
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You know, if you can't do the work with reasonable accommodations,
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you can still be fired because you still have to do the job.
00:20:19.000
But I would think that I could get some psychiatrist to say, no, Scott, you have a bigotry disability
00:20:26.000
and therefore you cannot be fired simply for your opinions or what you said.
00:20:35.000
You know, you can't really help that you shouted out something profane.
00:20:47.000
Well, I would say yes if it's maybe a customer-facing job.
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But if you're somewhere where everybody understands that you have a disorder,
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then I would think that the workplace would allow it.
00:21:01.000
You know, a little more yelling than usual, but basically you make some accommodations.
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Give them an office or something, whatever it takes.
00:21:12.000
If we could get those bigotry diagnoses, you would be protected from the law,
00:21:21.000
I'd like to tell you the worst opinions I've seen on Silicon Valley Bank.
00:21:26.000
The worst one is the so-called moral hazard argument.
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That if you allow all the depositors to be made whole, that would create what's called
00:21:37.000
a moral hazard, meaning it would incentivize people to take more risks than the system
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So you really need to be tough on people who take the wrong risks and things go wrong.
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Because if you're not tough on them, then everybody will take more risks.
00:21:53.000
So the thinking here is that the managers of the banks would not have done what they did,
00:22:03.000
except for knowing that their depositors were protected.
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And the Silicon Bank people did their bad stuff in the context of knowing that their depositors
00:22:26.000
So some people want to make sure that future bankers, if they're going to do something that's,
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let's say, a little risky, that they would know that the only thing that could go wrong for them is that they would lose their jobs,
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which are really good jobs if you're the top of a bank.
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But the thinking here with this moral hazard stuff is that those things are not enough to stop you from bad behavior.
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So you wouldn't be stopped by losing your job for sure, being shamed and scorned by all your neighbors who lost their money,
00:23:08.000
But what would really make you want to do bad behavior is knowing that the strangers were called depositors,
00:23:18.000
people you've never met, knowing that those strangers would be made whole.
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That would allow you to take the risk of losing your job, losing your reputation, being scorned in society and having to move.
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The thinking is that people will stop doing bad behavior because of people they've never met.
00:23:46.000
But by the way, you could always blame those other people if they lose their money
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because they knew there was only a $250,000 limit on insurance.
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is that the depositors need to learn to do due diligence.
00:24:09.000
So it's not just about the leaders of the bank.
00:24:12.000
You have to train depositors in the country to do a better job of researching their bank.
00:24:21.000
So you need a few big banks to fail and all those depositors to lose their money.
00:24:27.000
whoa, I better stay under that limit and I better watch my risk.
00:24:35.000
Because if you teach people to manage their risk with banks, there will only be four banks left.
00:24:46.000
It does not make sense to keep your money in the 19th biggest bank.
00:24:50.000
As I said before, when people asked me, did you have money in Silicon Valley Bank?
00:24:55.000
I said, I have a degree in economics, I have an MBA, and I was a banker for years.
00:25:03.000
You think I'm going to put my money in the 19th largest bank?
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To me, as soon as I heard that anybody had money in the 19th biggest bank, I just laughed.
00:25:19.000
I said, you don't know anything about risk management.
00:25:22.000
Being in the 19th biggest bank is the worst idea in the world.
00:25:32.000
But being in the 19th largest bank is stupid from the bottom to the top.
00:25:39.000
Now, I get that Silicon Valley Bank had sort of a clever situation
00:25:44.000
where they wanted you to put some of your personal money and your venture capital money
00:25:48.000
and you'd get a little extra benefits somehow with that bank.
00:25:56.000
The only reason that small banks survive is because depositors don't do due diligence.
00:26:03.000
The minute they did due diligence, they'd all go out of business.
00:26:06.000
It would be crazy to keep your money in a small bank,
00:26:09.000
unless you trusted the government to have your back.
00:26:14.000
And if the government wouldn't have you back in a situation where,
00:26:23.000
and put it in the top two banks or under your mattress or some damn thing.
00:26:30.000
But it's a terrible take that depositors should do their own research.
00:26:36.000
And let me give you one specific suggestion I got from somebody on Twitter
00:26:43.000
who was making this case that the depositors should do their work.
00:26:58.000
Anyone going and reading a short bit of history could develop a reasonable risk model.
00:27:06.000
So he wants people to do a short bit of history,
00:27:10.000
to find out about history before you open your checking account.
00:27:13.000
So how much history should you look into before opening your checking account?
00:27:23.000
but you could start with reading about the second bank of the United States
00:27:30.000
So the suggestion here is that before you open a checking account with your bank,
00:27:35.000
you should do some history and a deep dive of the banking system
00:27:42.000
and especially look at this case of Nicholas Biddle versus Andrew Jackson.
00:27:48.000
Because what we learn about Andrew Jackson's time is totally relevant to today.
00:27:58.000
There's somebody who thinks that an ordinary depositor
00:28:04.000
and come up with a risk management model for their checking account.
00:28:14.000
Well, the Congress heard from, let's see, who is it?
00:28:24.000
talking about the border and the situation on the border.
00:28:27.000
And he said about the border border, I like to say border too much,
00:28:37.000
He says it's not controlled, meaning it's open.
00:28:43.000
But basically, we don't have a border security.
00:28:47.000
He also said that Trump's wall should have been built.
00:28:50.000
And I think he backed the people who were accused of whipping migrants on horseback.
00:29:06.000
And so that whipping migrants on horseback, how long did it take before we figured out that was fake news?
00:29:20.000
I think most of the people who knew about horses and stuff knew right away.
00:29:24.000
But I think in terms of the public, when do you think Democrats found out that was fake?
00:29:36.000
I don't know, but I bet it's never been covered.
00:29:39.000
So do you think maybe in a few years there might be a story about it on the left
00:29:45.000
and then they would find out about it for the first time?
00:29:52.000
Ultra Derek says I'm confusing depositors with investing.
00:29:58.000
Now, if I'm talking about depositors, you know what I mean.
00:30:03.000
Don't pretend that I'm in cognitive dissonance because I just demolished your mental model
00:30:14.000
I don't think anybody was confused that opening a checking account is an investor in a bank.
00:30:28.000
Rasmussen did a poll asking people what they thought about the Arizona voting integrity.
00:30:37.000
And the result was 55% of likely Arizona voters believe it is likely that problems with the 2020 election in Maricopa County affected the outcome,
00:30:52.000
Now, the 35% probably is pretty close to the, you know, the serious Republican number.
00:30:57.000
But at 55%, doesn't that suggest that a number of Democrats are now convinced?
00:31:04.000
Are Democrats in some number now convinced that Maricopa didn't look copacetic?
00:31:14.000
So I don't have an opinion of what did or did not happen there.
00:31:25.000
But I haven't seen any convincing evidence that there was anything wrong.
00:31:40.000
Now, I call it propaganda because it's unproven allegations.
00:31:56.000
If you're an anti-Trumper, you have this idea in your head, your frame, that everything Trump did was a bad idea,
00:32:03.000
and everything that's the opposite of that was a good idea.
00:32:07.000
But it's really hard to hold that frame when you see that Biden did the opposite of Trump and it's just everything went to hell.
00:32:14.000
And everything that Trump did is starting to look smarter and smarter with time, as I predicted it would.
00:32:26.000
So on CNN, they often have these political analysts and opinion people.
00:32:31.000
And one of them is Julian Zelizer, who you might know is, he's like the worse than a Watergate guy.
00:32:38.000
When CNN needs to remind the public that orange man bad, they have a few people they bring out.
00:32:55.000
So write us an article about something, but make sure you say orange man bad.
00:33:00.000
Now, I don't think they had that conversation, but it feels like it.
00:33:05.000
So here's something that this deep anti-Trumper said about Biden.
00:33:15.000
For the 2024 presidential election, we'll establish a similar dynamic because he was talking about Reagan versus Carter.
00:33:23.000
He says for Biden, it will be important to avoid looking like Carter.
00:33:28.000
It will be important to avoid looking like Carter.
00:33:32.000
Meaning that even this anti-Trumper thinks that Biden is starting to look like Carter.
00:33:38.000
Specifically, Carter didn't campaign too much against Reagan when the hostages were being held in Iran.
00:33:46.000
So it was interpreted that Carter wasn't sort of trying hard enough to win.
00:33:51.000
The reality was he was, I guess, working to get the prisoners released.
00:34:01.000
And even an anti-Trumper is saying it's going to be a bad look if Trump comes in looking like Reagan and Biden is looking like Carter.
00:34:13.000
Because a lot of our minds like have that model in our head.
00:34:16.000
And it's just going to be devastating for Biden if that's the model that people have in their head.
00:34:20.000
Oh, it's a it's a Reagan versus Carter election version two.
00:34:24.000
In fact, the more times you hear it's Reagan versus Carter version two, the more likely the more likely the Reagan in this example, which would be Trump, is going to win.
00:34:35.000
Because if you can put into people's minds that this is just Reagan versus Carter and it's just a replay.
00:34:43.000
And I have to admit, it looks a lot like it, doesn't it?
00:34:52.000
So I don't know how many other people would be primed to automatically accept that analogy.
00:35:07.000
What's the best story if Biden runs against Trump again?
00:35:12.000
If Biden wins a second time, would you say, oh, that's surprising?
00:35:18.000
Or would you say, all right, that's just more of the usual?
00:35:21.000
So a second Biden win would just be more of the usual.
00:35:25.000
The most interesting story would be the comeback story,
00:35:29.000
where Trump comes back and saves the country from everything that Biden did.
00:35:36.000
Now, even if you're a Democrat, you would still recognize the better story.
00:35:47.000
So this whole Reagan versus Carter dynamic could be really important.
00:35:54.000
You know, the more people talk about it, the more it will become the opinion of the public.
00:35:59.000
And then the public will just start viewing things through the Reagan versus Carter frame.
00:36:06.000
You won't even look at the people who are running.
00:36:08.000
You'll just look at history and say, well, Reagan versus Carter.
00:36:19.000
First, Republic Bank got rescued by some banks that got together and decided to do that.
00:36:26.000
I think our banking problems are not over, but they're not going to be a debacle.
00:36:33.000
I think it's just a challenge that needs to be managed like a lot of other things.
00:36:39.000
I don't make any recommendations about what you do with your money,
00:36:46.000
But my opinion is that we're going to work our way through it
00:36:54.000
I saw Greg Gottfeld say this yesterday, I guess on the 5 or the day before,
00:37:03.000
talking about any story about Hunter Biden, you get Hunter Biden exhaustion.
00:37:09.000
We've heard so much about Hunter Biden that if tomorrow a news story breaks,
00:37:17.000
murdered a family and then cannibalized them himself.
00:37:23.000
If you heard that story today, you'd be like, yeah, Hunter, he's a bad man.
00:37:32.000
Like, we're so conditioned to see that there's nothing that Hunter Biden does that could be so bad
00:37:47.000
So it's just like outrage fatigue about this one thing.
00:37:53.000
So now apparently we have some banking records that we know that the Bidens, three of them,
00:38:01.000
Haley Biden, you know, the ex of Beau Biden who died and then Haley dated Hunter later.
00:38:10.000
Which, by the way, I don't have a bad opinion about.
00:38:13.000
I know you probably think that just because I mentioned it that I'm judging it.
00:38:29.000
And whatever they needed to make themselves happy, that was entirely up to them.
00:38:39.000
And it's not, like, really surprising that somebody would like somebody who was like the person they married.
00:38:47.000
The fact that any of us are grossed down about it is about us.
00:38:56.000
If two people figured out a way for, you know, to legally be happy in an adult way, I have no problem with it.
00:39:05.000
Now, I get that it, you know, is uncomfortable for the family.
00:39:19.000
And when I see two people find some little sliver of happiness, I'm sure they liked it while they were doing it.
00:39:25.000
If they find a little sliver of happiness, and it doesn't bother me, and it's completely legal, and they're adults, I'm out.
00:39:35.000
You've told me everything I need to know about this situation.
00:39:40.000
So we can judge him on, you know, maybe corruption if that gets proven.
00:39:53.000
So the big Chinese company gave what I guess Biden's lawyer is calling good faith seed money to the Biden family, which got distributed to Haley and Hunter in small amounts, presumably because bigger amounts would have caused higher notice.
00:40:13.000
Now, what do you think it means when somebody, a company gives you good faith seed money?
00:40:22.000
That is the most lawyer, lawyerly term for a bribe that I've ever heard.
00:40:26.000
Because this does say it's not for a purpose, that they were given money for no purpose.
00:40:33.000
Obviously, there was some, you know, presumed purpose.
00:40:37.000
But even the lawyer can't figure out like a legal obvious reason that it happened.
00:40:43.000
You had to go with good faith seed money, which is kind of brilliant, because what else are you going to say, right?
00:40:51.000
If you had to say something, that was pretty good.
00:40:57.000
I mean, it still says they weren't working for the money.
00:41:03.000
Has anybody ever given you any good faith seed money?
00:41:06.000
Hey, I'm not going to ask anything of you, but it's just sort of a good faith seed money situation.
00:41:13.000
So if any of you would like to give me some good faith seed money and require nothing whatsoever from me in return,
00:41:23.000
I don't encourage it, but you have a right to give your good faith seed money, which happens all the time.
00:41:35.000
Everywhere I go, people are trying to give me some good faith seed money and ask of nothing in return,
00:41:41.000
because that's a normal thing that happens in the real world.
00:41:45.000
In my opinion, this is probably enough to conclude that they were taking bribes from other countries for access.
00:41:55.000
I don't know what would make it illegal, what's legal or not.
00:41:58.000
But if you had heard this story first, can you imagine?
00:42:04.000
Can you imagine how you'd feel about it if it's the first thing you'd ever heard about the Biden operation?
00:42:21.000
And the first thing you heard was they took all this money.
00:42:34.000
But we've been so exhausted, as Greg said, got felt.
00:42:52.000
You can't do that if you're related to a current or past vice president or president.
00:43:17.000
Like intellectually, you're like, oh, yeah, that's a major crime.
00:43:24.000
Like we've been drained of feelings about Hunter Biden.
00:43:33.000
And again, if this is the first thing you saw, you couldn't stop screaming.
00:43:46.000
Here's a claim by Robert Kennedy Jr. and a number of you.
00:43:53.000
That ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not allowed because doing so, at least by the
00:44:01.000
Because doing so would have made the emergency authorization, which allowed the vaccinations
00:44:08.000
to be developed, would allow that not to have happened, at least under that cloak.
00:44:15.000
Because if you have a treatment, you can't do something risky to make a treatment, if you
00:44:21.000
How many of you agree that that's the reason that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were depressed?
00:44:32.000
Now, how would you tell the difference between that, which is a perfectly reasonable assumption?
00:44:39.000
So, I agree that anybody involved in making money on vaccinations almost certainly was also
00:44:46.000
involved in talking down ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
00:44:51.000
So, does that prove that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work?
00:45:03.000
But I think there's some assumption that, although science is completely useless for
00:45:09.000
everything, the exception is it works for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
00:45:15.000
The science is always lying, and it's always about follow the money.
00:45:19.000
But the exception would be these studies we've looked at for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
00:45:26.000
We don't believe in vaccinations because we think science is all liars and money chasers,
00:45:32.000
but we do believe in science when it's this other money chasing and other people.
00:45:37.000
Now, I get that maybe the people who did the studies weren't directly benefiting from
00:45:45.000
I mean, somebody would have made a lot of money on ivermectin.
00:45:48.000
I mean, it might have been a generic maker or something, but somebody was.
00:45:53.000
So in both cases, money would be presumably behind the science.
00:45:59.000
But for some reason, we accept that the ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are somehow subject to
00:46:06.000
good science, and that was the one time that people weren't lying to us to make money.
00:46:11.000
But in this other case, we can be sure they were lying to us to make money.
00:46:18.000
I completely agree with the fact that the big pharma companies were, let's say, maybe stretching
00:46:25.000
things and cutting some corners and didn't do what we wish they had done and all that.
00:46:30.000
But none of that says the product doesn't work.
00:46:41.000
But since we don't believe any of the science, what does it matter what science says?
00:46:47.000
So the only thing I'm pointing out, this is not a conversation about whether vaccinations
00:46:53.000
It is not a conversation about whether hydroxy or ivermectin work.
00:47:00.000
My conversation is, if you don't trust the science, you can't pick winners.
00:47:12.000
So I don't believe anything about the vaccination science, as of today.
00:47:17.000
And I don't believe anything about the ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
00:47:22.000
Now, I heard somebody say, but Scott, all you have to do is, you know, use your own experience.
00:47:32.000
So somebody said, I took ivermectin and I got better.
00:47:35.000
So the observed experience is more useful than the science.
00:47:41.000
Is your observed anecdotal experience more useful than the science?
00:47:56.000
I think there are actually some situations where it is true.
00:48:01.000
If you had the kind of thing which, let's say you had a rash for, suppose you had a rash
00:48:08.000
And then you got a recommendation and you rub some cream on it and it went away in an hour.
00:48:13.000
If it went away in an hour after five years, but the science says it doesn't work, would
00:48:22.000
it be reasonable to conclude that the science is wrong?
00:48:27.000
In that really specific case, I think the anecdote is stronger than the science.
00:48:35.000
But if you rub it on and it goes away after 10 years of nothing else working and it happens
00:48:39.000
the same day, that would be a pretty big coincidence unless it worked.
00:48:45.000
And given that, you know, scientific studies, half of them can't be replicated, I would say
00:48:51.000
that your anecdotal experience is much stronger than the science in that weird little case.
00:48:57.000
But generally speaking, here was my response to somebody who said, they took ivermectin and
00:49:06.000
So I explained that I got COVID, I watched television, and I got better fairly quickly.
00:49:14.000
So I'm pretty sure it was the television watching, because I don't think it was a coincidence
00:49:20.000
I was watching television, which I didn't do as much of when I didn't have COVID.
00:49:25.000
So I watched a little extra television, rapidly recovered.
00:49:35.000
So that was pretty strong, strong evidence there.
00:49:40.000
But we've reached a point where we used to say, trust the science.
00:49:44.000
And that actually sounds like a punchline, doesn't it?
00:49:53.000
Because it's been used as a punchline a lot of times.
00:49:59.000
It used to be the highest level of smart thinking.
00:50:04.000
I know you savages are using your anecdotal and lived experience, but we smart people, we
00:50:14.000
You know, if you don't follow the science, well, I don't want to be judgmental, but that
00:50:19.000
would put me up here with the smart people, and that would put you down with the savages
00:50:24.000
But, you know, you don't have to follow the science, but all the smart people do.
00:50:29.000
I feel like it was only five years ago that follow the science was the most respectable thing you could
00:50:36.000
say, and that today you sound like a frickin' clown.
00:50:41.000
Anybody who follows the science because the science said so, you just have to be a clown.
00:50:48.000
So we've actually replaced follow the science with follow the money.
00:50:53.000
And there's a large proportion of the public who believes that gets you a better answer.
00:50:59.000
And so they say, we followed the money on the vaccinations, and we didn't like what we
00:51:04.000
saw, and we ignored the science because if you follow the money, you don't need the science.
00:51:12.000
So they said, we got the right answer because we found that the people making it were doing
00:51:17.000
sketchy things that were all directly related to making money.
00:51:26.000
They would have done all of those sketchy things even if it works.
00:51:31.000
Even if the vaccine is a good idea, they would have done all the same sketchy things.
00:51:37.000
They still would have wanted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to go away.
00:51:41.000
They still would have wanted all the competition to go away.
00:51:44.000
They still would have wanted the government to guarantee it.
00:51:46.000
They still would have wanted the government to say they can't be sued.
00:51:50.000
They still would have wanted the government to write them massive checks.
00:51:53.000
They still would want you to think that the shots were more, let's say, more safe than they were.
00:52:00.000
So the fact that the big pharma did every sketchy thing you could do, clearly just to make money, doesn't say anything about the quality of the product.
00:52:12.000
Because they would do that whether the product worked or not.
00:52:15.000
And I don't believe that everything they've ever made doesn't work.
00:52:25.000
So follow the money and follow the anecdotes is what we have left because the science has done such a bad job.
00:52:31.000
All right, here's an example of the high ground maneuver.
00:52:34.000
I tweeted this and it ends the conversation, or should, on TikTok and being banned.
00:52:42.000
So Congress is noodling about how do we ban this thing or do we ban it?
00:52:47.000
You know, can we, you know, take out the data part and make the data safe?
00:52:54.000
But is there any way we could get some guarantees that there wouldn't be any bad behavior?
00:52:58.000
But, you know, it's also about persuasion that they could persuade us.
00:53:03.000
And should we ban it or ban it later or ban just some things or something?
00:53:12.000
Once the Pentagon and the Department of Justice have weighed in and said,
00:53:17.000
this is a national security risk and it's not a small one, which they have.
00:53:24.000
The Pentagon and the Department of Justice have agreed it's a major homeland security risk.
00:53:33.000
Let me explain how decisions are made by people who are not absolutely incompetent.
00:53:40.000
When the Pentagon tells you it's a national security risk, you immediately cancel it in America
00:53:46.000
and then you take your time figuring out if that was the right answer.
00:53:53.000
We're talking about all the ways you could do it and if you do it.
00:54:01.000
The right way to make the decision is first you remove the risk
00:54:05.000
and then you make sure that was the right decision.
00:54:08.000
And if it was the wrong decision, well, you can reverse it.
00:54:29.000
And then I'll add to that, don't let 16 year olds back on it no matter what.
00:54:39.000
If you're going to make any change at all, do that one.
00:54:52.000
Just ban it and then figure out if you made the right decision.
00:55:02.000
You won't see anybody say, you know, we really should let this national security risk, you know, continue until we get the right answer that we'll never agree on anyway.
00:55:20.000
I think in some ways, this is why I think somebody would want to cancel me.
00:55:34.000
Because this is the sort of persuasion, you know, I tweeted this.
00:55:38.000
This is the sort of persuasion that actually moves the needle.
00:55:42.000
Not everything I say has any impact on the world.
00:55:45.000
But every now and then, I can develop a high ground position that really will change opinions.
00:55:53.000
And I would argue that the first time you heard, decide now and then figure out if it was right later.
00:56:00.000
If you had not heard that, I'll bet some of you were still saying, you know, we better make sure we do this right.
00:56:11.000
I'll bet a lot of you were thinking that, that that was reasonable.
00:56:14.000
But the moment you hear, if it's a national security risk, stop it immediately and then figure out what you did.
00:56:22.000
The moment you hear it, you adopt that opinion.
00:56:25.000
That's called the high ground maneuver, persuasion.
00:56:28.000
So people who have this level of persuasive technique, I'll just call it technique.
00:56:37.000
It's something anybody could learn, are dangerous.
00:56:42.000
Because I can move maybe 100,000 votes in a day.
00:56:50.000
But I could probably move 100,000 opinions in a day.
00:57:01.000
I've got a million followers on Twitter who could have seen this tweet.
00:57:15.000
But if a million saw it, you don't think that 100,000 would immediately say, yeah, that's right.
00:57:22.000
At least, I think all 900,000 would say it immediately.
00:57:29.000
So I would claim that I can move 100,000 people's opinion in a day.
00:57:50.000
Anybody who had the same talent set, I think, could do the same thing.
00:57:56.000
You know, if you want to name some names, Cernovich could do it.
00:58:09.000
People are still angry or disappointed in me that I do not accept the conspiracy theory
00:58:16.000
that says the pandemic was planned from the start and the technical problem.
00:58:22.000
So people are mad that I haven't accepted that the pandemic was a plannedemic.
00:58:32.000
And that the people conspiring did it to gain power and money.
00:58:38.000
Now, here's why I don't believe the conspiracy theory.
00:58:43.000
The people who believe that conspiracy theory, would you agree, have a low opinion,
00:58:52.000
The people who accept the pandemic, plannedemic, as being all planned,
00:58:58.000
would you agree that they have a low opinion of the people involved with all that?
00:59:09.000
You believe that my opinion is based on having a higher opinion of those people, don't you?
00:59:28.000
I don't believe that there's anybody in large numbers who could coordinate this and be undetected so far.
00:59:36.000
Now, you think you've detected them, but not in any legal way, obviously.
00:59:42.000
I don't believe people are that smart, or not even close to that smart.
00:59:49.000
A conspiracy in which one person and one person only knows about the conspiracy?
01:00:10.000
Well, when you get to ten people, the odds that one of them doesn't, you know, break out of the thing and tell, it gets smaller.
01:00:19.000
But you could still imagine ten people, you know, coordinating.
01:00:23.000
Certainly, like, if it's a mafia thing or something, yeah, yeah, you could imagine 25 people.
01:00:32.000
You know, there's no conspiracy theory where hundreds of people have to keep a secret.
01:00:38.000
And I think the plandemic, I don't know if it'd be hundreds, but it's not five people.
01:00:45.000
It would take more than ten people, you know, who would have some connection to the conspiracy.
01:00:57.000
I don't buy any conspiracy theory in which hundreds of people would have to keep a secret.
01:01:14.000
Before the internet, and if everybody's on the same side, you could probably keep a secret.
01:01:23.000
But in the real world, people are too fractured.
01:01:28.000
You know, all it would take is, you know, one member of the conspiracy theory to disagree politically with somebody else in the group.
01:01:38.000
So, the only thing, so I don't want to really have a conversation about whether it was or was not a plandemic.
01:01:48.000
Never assume that my opinion of people is higher than yours.
01:01:56.000
Always assume that I think people are even less capable than you do, generally speaking.
01:02:05.000
You know, some people are highly capable, of course.
01:02:10.000
Did I tell all of you about the prank on me, or was it just on locals?
01:02:20.000
YouTubers, did I tell you about the prank somebody played on me this morning?
01:02:33.000
Normally, I wouldn't like it if somebody does a prank on me, if it was just, like, clumsily done.
01:02:40.000
So, every day I tweet, I tweet that I'm going to be on here doing the live stream, and I tweet the URLs.
01:02:49.000
When I tweet the address for the scottadams.locals.com, it used to put my profile picture up there that I have on locals.
01:02:59.000
So, it would just, you know, automatically grab that image and put it with the tweet.
01:03:08.000
And they replaced my profile picture with a picture of Dilbert wearing a KKK necktie.
01:03:16.000
And when I tweeted it, I don't get to see it until after it's posted.
01:03:33.000
So, the fact that I'd have to tweet it before I would know that it would put a KKK image there is pretty good.
01:03:43.000
Like, I don't know what they hacked or if it was an insider.
01:03:49.000
But, and they're looking into it now in locals to find out.
01:03:54.000
But, even though the prank is on me, would you agree that's a pretty good prank?
01:04:11.000
I don't know if it'll change automatically if they fix it.
01:04:30.000
So, I think I mentioned I was gonna talk to Larry Elder for his show.
01:04:39.000
The neighbor was doing construction, so it was too loud.
01:04:53.000
I wouldn't make it a national story or anything.
01:04:56.000
By the way, it's not like, you know, it's not like Dave Ruben was behind it or anything.
01:05:05.000
Wouldn't have noticed the tie if I hadn't pointed it out.
01:05:13.000
Part of the prank is probably that maybe I wouldn't notice.
01:05:37.000
So, I know I told it to the locals people before I got on.
01:05:41.000
It's hard to remember what you've just said versus what you plan to say.
01:05:47.000
When you give a lot of public speeches, the most terrifying thing is that you say a sentence
01:05:53.000
and you say to yourself as you're on stage, did I just say the same sentence twice?
01:06:11.000
I'm going to go talk to the locals people privately because they're special.
01:06:15.000
The only place you can find the Dilbert cartoon, Dilbert Reborn, is now on the scottadams.locals.com
01:06:22.000
But if you're on YouTube, you should be hitting that subscribe and like button and all that
01:06:36.000
I've been doing a lot of Robots Read News comics as well.
01:06:44.000
So on the Locos platform, I put these little two to four minute lessons that give you a
01:06:49.000
life skill, like a total life skill, a thing you can use that's useful in two to four minutes.
01:07:00.000
So believe it or not, I came up with 200 things that I could teach you that would be useful