Episode 2119 Scott Adams: DeSantis & Musk, Trans Issues Boycotts, Decoupling, Trump's Meme Game
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per Minute
139.76102
Summary
The dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, it s called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now. It s a new way to make electricity out of the air, and some people think it s going to be a big deal.
Transcript
00:00:03.720
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Highlight of Civilization.
00:00:08.040
We've got a lot of fun stuff to talk about today.
00:00:10.320
I think today will be one of the best live streams I've ever done.
00:00:20.280
If you like this experience to be somewhere between DMT and Bud Light,
00:00:25.640
all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tanker, gels, a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:00:33.260
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
00:00:36.820
And join us now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:00:41.660
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it happens now.
00:00:55.640
Maybe Scott will allow Dilbert to be the face of a revolution.
00:00:59.800
I don't think Dilbert's really the face of a revolution.
00:01:05.180
I don't think Dilbert's exactly inspiring, at least in that way.
00:01:17.860
Scientists have figured out how to make electricity from air.
00:01:30.100
Now, it turns out that this is something that could be done for a long time.
00:01:34.920
I think maybe 20 years ago, an inventor showed me a video of a little shack in which he was harvesting electricity from the air.
00:01:46.260
Just some kind of static electricity or something.
00:01:49.720
Now, the problem, and it was actually operating machinery.
00:01:55.080
Now, the problem was that it wasn't economical.
00:01:58.480
So it wasn't really a good, clean way to get electricity out of the air.
00:02:04.540
So it might have some, you know, some use in space or something, but that's about it.
00:02:10.380
Well, this new thing makes electricity from air from any material.
00:02:23.400
It doesn't have to be like nickel or something.
00:02:35.340
Now, the secret is that they're tiny holes and that they're just the right size.
00:02:40.840
And what happens is that the normal moisture in the air tries to get through these little holes.
00:02:47.720
The water in the air gets a little bit slowed down or stuck,
00:02:52.180
and it creates momentarily a difference in charge from one side of the material to the other
00:03:06.920
All you have to do is get the holes the right size, and it creates electricity.
00:03:11.820
Now, you say to yourself, well, how much can it create?
00:03:20.100
So you might have one little membrane, and then it's just on top of another little membrane,
00:03:24.280
and I guess you can make them as big as you want and stack them as high as you want,
00:03:29.100
and some people are saying it's going to be a big deal.
00:03:31.760
Now, I like to remind the people who thought the climate models were telling you everything
00:03:38.760
you needed to know, as well as the people who said electric cars will never work because
00:03:48.440
It would be impossible to know what's going to happen in the next 30 years, technology-wise.
00:04:01.080
Now, I'm not going to tell you that this little, weird little battery situation,
00:04:10.480
I'm not going to tell you that this is going to be the big breakthrough.
00:04:19.300
Maybe it's this new battery technology so it's easy to restore them.
00:04:26.140
But I can tell you for sure that the climate models did not anticipate any of it.
00:04:30.480
So that's been my point from the start is that projections are always,
00:04:38.280
if you do everything wrong, look where you're going to end up.
00:04:42.320
And that never happens because you never do everything wrong for 30 years in a row.
00:04:53.860
As you probably know by now, DeSantis announced his campaign for presidency
00:05:00.660
on Twitter's Spaces feature, which is audio only.
00:05:08.700
and members of the locals community who follow me were with me,
00:05:21.800
Did it take 15 or 20 minutes to work out the technical problems?
00:05:30.080
And here's how CNN covered the technical problems.
00:05:58.200
And the DeSantis-Musk alliance has been a year in the making.
00:06:07.720
So CNN, you have to understand, Twitter is now their competitor for news.
00:06:17.140
So when CNN covers a Twitter event, they're not going to be kind.
00:06:27.820
CNN wants you to think that CNN is where you should get the news and the announcements.
00:06:31.500
They don't want you to think that Twitter is where you go for that.
00:06:37.060
And they acted like the technical problem was the story.
00:06:41.420
Do you think the technical problem was the story?
00:06:48.700
If there had been no technical problems, they would have had less attention.
00:07:00.000
So, here's what the mainstream media gets completely wrong.
00:07:04.780
They're trying to sell you a narrative that the technical problems that are 100% Twitter's fault
00:07:11.760
are somehow a reflection of Ron DeSantis' preparation.
00:07:28.220
In 2023, I think we all got educated to understand how an entrepreneur works, Musk,
00:07:36.480
how a software company that's doing something it's never done before,
00:07:42.120
which is host something on Musk's account of that size.
00:07:46.440
And what I saw was everything working the way you expect it to work.
00:07:51.120
How many of you thought Spaces was going to work perfectly
00:07:53.600
when half a million people came in for the first time ever?
00:07:59.920
They've had bigger events, but they didn't all come in at the same start time.
00:08:05.960
I mean, so the fact that Twitter had a problem with it,
00:08:13.680
Do you know what the sign-ups are on Twitter today?
00:08:20.740
So did Twitter do a bad job yesterday because it was a technical problem?
00:08:30.500
Do you think that CNN reported that Twitter has record sign-ups because of that event?
00:08:47.880
Twitter made more money yesterday and increased their base and power and prestige.
00:08:58.260
The people who are competing with Twitter have to find something bad about it and put that on DeSantis
00:09:07.000
so people don't want to use Twitter for this in the future.
00:09:12.460
I think that from the public's perspective, here's what they took away.
00:09:17.040
Ron DeSantis is using a more modern form of campaigning.
00:09:24.440
Ron DeSantis understands modern forms of campaigning.
00:09:31.080
There was a big delay in the technology and everybody's talking about it.
00:09:37.480
Well, if everybody's talking about it and they're signing up for Twitter like crazy,
00:09:41.780
I don't even know how that could have been better if you're trying to get attention.
00:09:48.940
Here's something I said in the man cave last night when I was just talking to the locals people.
00:10:00.160
I'll hit you with that later when it's in its proper place.
00:10:04.140
So here are some of the things that DeSantis said and did.
00:10:08.400
I'll give you my persuasion grade for DeSantis.
00:10:14.600
So the first thing you have to consider is that it wasn't an interview.
00:10:20.040
I thought it was going to be more of a conversation interview with maybe a little pushback, but it wasn't.
00:10:26.700
Now, given that it wasn't an interview, I'm not going to grade it as an interview.
00:10:34.900
It should be treated as just a speech, an announcement.
00:10:39.380
Because all they did is really introduce him and then let him talk, basically.
00:10:43.560
With a little variation in that, but basically they just let him talk.
00:10:56.500
I think he made one passing reference to Trump being too woke, which made me laugh.
00:11:04.900
Because, you know, he's got a little argument there.
00:11:09.840
But, you know, there's a little bit of an argument that he's a little less woke than Trump, I suppose.
00:11:17.860
I mean, it's not true, but you could make it sound like that if you want to.
00:11:26.500
Because what would have happened if the mainstream media was the ones who handled this?
00:11:33.680
What questions would the mainstream media ask DeSantis?
00:11:39.840
They would have just asked him one Trump question after another, and it would have turned into a Trump event.
00:11:46.180
But by doing it on Twitter and not having questions, per se, you know, he could just handle it any way he wanted.
00:11:59.420
Overall, I would say that DeSantis' presentation style was A++++ on persuasion.
00:12:09.520
The only negative he has is that he sounds like an AI-generated voice, and he does not have the zing that Trump brings.
00:12:23.880
However, allow me to give him a compliment for handling his lack of sizzle.
00:12:30.100
The worst thing he could have done is to try to compete with Trump by an hour sizzling him.
00:12:40.700
Yeah, it would look like Rubio trying to joke with Trump about, you know, penis size.
00:12:47.860
Because you can't go to Trump's home court and expect to win a game.
00:12:55.280
You've got to say, I'm playing a different game, and then play it better than he's playing his game.
00:12:58.900
And I think that's what DeSantis is doing, because he characterized himself as a, quote, energetic executive.
00:13:19.260
Because he's not competing with Trump for the sizzle, and it's the sizzle that gets Trump in trouble.
00:13:25.140
No, I'm not going to be over there sizzling and getting in trouble.
00:13:31.680
Now, countering Trump, as opposed to competing with him, is exactly the right play.
00:13:37.780
So politically, it appears he's getting good advice.
00:13:43.800
Do you think DeSantis is getting good political advice?
00:13:57.320
I've got lots of examples of yeses, but what would be an example of no?
00:14:10.440
Well, no, he was just getting ready to announce.
00:14:18.240
So, I would say that in terms of describing what the problems are, and then describing how he could be the right person to solve them, I don't think I've ever seen better.
00:14:33.860
I would say in terms of selling himself as a capable, energetic executive, that's what I saw.
00:14:41.320
I saw somebody who did a perfect sale for an energetic executive.
00:14:49.900
If you think he's competing with Trump to be more Trump than Trump, then it doesn't look like he did it, right?
00:15:01.880
And I don't think that trying to do that would have been the right play.
00:15:04.680
He's trying to carve out his own unique brand, and then he's selling that brand.
00:15:13.560
That was one of the best, probably one of the best just communication jobs you'll ever see.
00:15:21.280
Now, I've said before that Vivek is almost unparalleled in his communication skills.
00:15:28.920
And he brings a little more, a little more X factor, a little more zing.
00:15:40.020
So DeSantis, as a capable, smart person who can say,
00:15:44.200
these are the problems and here's what I'll do about them, he nailed it.
00:15:51.280
However, as Trump points out, maybe he needs a personality transplant.
00:16:03.920
Trump knows that people will vote for entertainment.
00:16:07.380
I hate to admit it, but I'm very biased by entertainment.
00:16:11.660
I'm very likely to vote for somebody who looks good or sounds good or makes me laugh.
00:16:21.600
But I know myself, and I know that I am influenced by those things.
00:16:32.540
Words that DeSantis tried to focus on for his, let's say his brand, would be focusing on merit.
00:16:41.120
You know, the system should be, the United States should be merit-based.
00:16:46.840
Based on sanity, and of course, that's an indirect attack on both Trump and on crazy Democrat stuff.
00:16:58.760
And then integrity of institutions, which I think we're all caring about at the moment.
00:17:05.020
In terms of selling his brand, that's right on brand.
00:17:09.740
So, I think, given that Musk is making this available to everybody, he's getting a lot of unfair attacks, Musk is, for apparently looking like he's a right-winger now.
00:17:32.880
Because he gave DeSantis a platform to really showcase.
00:17:36.600
But he says publicly, and he just tweeted it today, that all the presidential candidates are invited.
00:17:43.040
And I would assume it would be the same basis, meaning that they would get to talk, and there wouldn't be a lot of pushback, and they'd just get to put their thing out there.
00:17:52.180
Now, as long as there are other places that the candidates can debate, and other places that they could get challenged by the interviewer, I think you have everything you need.
00:18:01.880
I like the fact that DeSantis just got one really big announcement platform, so he could put out there everything he wants to put out there.
00:18:12.120
And now other people can poke at it and push it.
00:18:19.480
I appreciated it, and I was mostly entertained.
00:18:25.480
All right, here's my favorite subplot of that entire thing.
00:18:31.000
Number one, is the simulation kidding us when it has Elon Musk buying a feature on Twitter called Spaces?
00:18:45.080
And then, just a coincidence that the feature he's using is called Spaces.
00:18:55.260
I would love to know what happened when they went live and they had the technical problems.
00:19:02.580
Because the way they solved it was, according to Musk, that having all that traffic on Musk's account has a different impact than when they made it work by moving it to David Sachs' account.
00:19:14.260
And it had something to do with the uniqueness of his account or the number of followers or something.
00:19:19.820
But it crashed until they figured out how to move it to Saks' account, and they started from there, and then it worked.
00:19:27.660
Now, wouldn't you love to know how that conversation went in real time?
00:19:35.980
It turns out, because I was telling my followers at the time, you know, the locals people, I was saying, if it's a volume-related problem, they're not going to fix it.
00:19:47.720
If it's just volume, there's just nothing you can do in real time.
00:19:52.180
You're going to have to go back and retool and try it again.
00:19:57.460
It was a combination of volume plus the unique account it was coming from.
00:20:04.860
Who knew that moving it to the other account would make it work when it was the same amount of volume?
00:20:13.180
And I have a hypothesis that because the person sitting there being embarrassed by it not working is the most storied engineer in the history of the United States, Elon Musk.
00:20:27.160
And don't you wonder if he told the engineers to try that, based on intuition, that that probably would be a way to go?
00:20:43.880
Because if Elon is the one who figured it out in real time, that sort of goes more to his legend, that he would be, hypothetically, surrounded by the top engineers in Twitter and he had to tell them how to fix it.
00:21:00.100
But, you know, I have no reason to believe it did, except that he's the most storied engineer and he was in charge and he was the one who wanted it fixed.
00:21:12.860
I'm just so curious about that little technical question.
00:21:17.780
Anyway, did everybody see the Trump parody that came out right after?
00:21:27.680
So, apparently, he had been prepared in advance.
00:21:29.740
And it showed the Spaces page, which is just a page of profiles of different participants.
00:21:36.500
Except the parody version, the only participants were, besides Musk and DeSantis, there was Hitler, Soros, Klaus Schwab, Satan, and Dick Cheney, and the FBI.
00:21:56.940
But, like, this one falls into the category of, you know, for the, one of the best of all time.
00:22:06.000
It's one of the best political, humorous parodies you'll ever see.
00:22:13.080
It's on, you can see it on, choose social, you can see it on Twitter, on my account, and a number of releases.
00:22:36.300
One of the things he talked about with the wokeness that he's against is, you know, getting into college.
00:22:44.340
He said, talking about, you know, your daughter who's going to college.
00:22:48.180
And saying, you don't want her to be roadkill in the woke Olympics.
00:22:51.940
And if you listen to everything that DeSantis said, it was sort of a brilliant example of visual language.
00:23:05.160
But when he talked, you could see pictures forming in your head.
00:23:12.440
That's somebody who's probably been trained in persuasion by somebody who knows what they're doing.
00:23:19.720
Because I don't think that was part of his normal tool bag.
00:23:23.180
That stood out as being obviously visual preparation.
00:23:41.300
If you just look at the headlines in the top left of CNN's page.
00:23:45.640
Because that's where they put the stuff they want you to see first.
00:24:01.720
Oh yeah, DeSantis is totally normal unless it's possible he could win.
00:24:05.980
Well, if he could win, then he's just as dangerous as Trump.
00:24:10.400
Otherwise, he's just a normal, sane person and nothing like Trump whatsoever.
00:24:45.960
That DeSantis was trying to be the capable, competent executive.
00:24:57.920
What I saw is Twitter had some issues because so many people wanted to see him.
00:25:04.060
If you ever have a chance to fail and somebody gives you a chance of ways to fail,
00:25:09.700
hey, Scott, I'll give you 10 different options of how to fail.
00:25:18.400
I failed because too many people wanted to hear my message.
00:25:38.980
And he brought such a mass audience, he broke it.
00:25:41.240
But it got fixed by, maybe, the most storied engineer of all time in America in real time.
00:25:55.100
You could not have scripted that better than having it fail because too many people wanted to hear it.
00:26:07.800
CNN said Twitter's problems were predictable, given Twitter's, you know, recent technical problems in the past.
00:26:32.760
Um, and they said there is such a thing as negative attention.
00:26:40.680
So they're trying to make the case that he brought out negative attention.
00:26:49.120
It's not negative attention when there are too many people who want to hear you.
00:27:02.760
And I will use the, um, the lawyer standard for this, which is if you can see that one of the fact checks is obviously fake, it's a fake fact check, meaning it's just propaganda.
00:27:15.480
You don't have to listen to the other fact checks.
00:27:19.200
If one of them is obviously just propaganda, you can ignore all the rest as well.
00:27:26.460
Um, so they fact checked DeSantis saying the whole book ban thing is a hoax.
00:27:32.600
So the accusation is that Florida is banning books.
00:27:36.100
But DeSantis says the whole book ban thing is a hoax.
00:27:39.660
There's not been a single book banned in the state of Florida.
00:27:52.480
So I hope that they're not misleading in their fact check.
00:27:58.060
Because their whole point is that he's misleading.
00:28:01.420
So he's misleading, they say, because there has been no statewide ban a book.
00:28:05.880
Oh, so he's completely right, because he said there's no statewide ban on books.
00:28:13.300
Oh, but it's misleading because, but, Mr. DeSantis is vastly playing down the extent to
00:28:20.100
which individual school districts and libraries in parts of the states have removed books.
00:28:26.380
In fact, Florida ranks second behind Texas as the state with the most bans at 357.
00:28:39.440
Is there any fundamentally important part of the story that the New York Times left out
00:28:45.140
when they were telling you that DeSantis was being misleading?
00:28:51.740
That the bans were specifically about material that was too adult for children?
00:29:00.120
It was too adult material for the age of the children.
00:29:07.080
Do you know how many other books are banned everywhere because they're too adult for the age of the children?
00:29:15.080
Is there any place on earth that doesn't restrict pornography from children?
00:29:26.040
The New York Times is actually in favor of adult material for children.
00:29:32.640
Don't you think that they should have mentioned that in the fact check,
00:29:36.160
that it only applied to material that they thought children were not ready for,
00:29:40.820
but when those children reach an age where their minds can handle it,
00:29:45.520
it is 100% available, 100% available to adults.
00:29:53.620
and thought that maybe that was important to the fact check?
00:30:00.320
So therefore, you are free to say that all their other fact checks are bullshit.
00:30:09.640
But you are allowed to say there's no credibility to their fact checking
00:30:24.880
NBC is also a competitor to Twitter for political news,
00:30:28.640
so they're going to talk about them as a competitor.
00:30:35.880
A Democratic strategist said the joint must-destantist event
00:30:39.840
was only the latest example of the tech billionaire
00:30:43.240
aligning himself and Twitter with increasingly conservative politics
00:30:52.900
Or do you think he said every candidate is invited
00:31:07.160
that their competitors are trying to put on them.
00:31:45.160
comment from Mike Cernovich about DeSantis versus Trump.
00:53:08.320
Because Asian Americans and whites have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the
00:53:16.780
likelihood of admission compared to black American applicants.
00:53:22.380
Imagine being, well, you probably don't have to imagine it if you are.
00:53:25.960
But Asian Americans having a one-tenth the chance of getting into an Ivy League school, one-tenth
00:53:38.420
Higher qualifications, but only one-tenth the chance.
00:53:58.220
is that he would use the Department of Education
00:54:33.700
Because wherever you're at becomes a little bit sticky.
00:55:05.080
and smarter than anything anybody else was doing.
00:55:25.460
well, I guess that makes sense constitutionally,
00:56:00.300
which doesn't say there won't be more of it, right?
00:58:29.480
which were the thing that got featured in the news,
00:58:57.560
So you're saying that the fact check was wrong.
00:59:30.200
hey, they're selling tuck swimwear to children.