Episode 2247 Scott Adams: All The Fake News (And Maybe Some Real Stuff) That Is Fit To Sip
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
135.31741
Summary
The writer s strike is over, and now we can get back to watching three-hour movies again. Also, a new AI chatbot has been released on the internet, and it could be a threat to the entire planet.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization as we know it.
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If you'd like your experience today to be elevated to levels that I can't even describe,
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Well, all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or jellis or stein, a canteen
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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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Well, how many of you have yet seen my interview with Megyn Kelly?
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I thought I did my clearest job of explaining my cancellation, but we talked about lots of
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other stuff, from hypnosis to persuasion to Trump to you-know-what.
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You should also look for my interview with Michael Malice, also Trigonometry, and Roseanne.
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Those are some good ones if you want some entertainment.
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Finally, the Hollywood writer's strike is over.
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Did anybody notice there was a writer's strike?
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So now that it's over, the good news is that we'll get more of that same one movie that they
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keep writing that involves somebody tied to a chair immediately after a car chase.
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Now, part of what the writers got, in addition to, I don't know, some more movie from streaming
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and more upside if things do well, they also got some restrictions on using AI to write
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So now the big studios won't be able to write scripts with AI.
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And that's a problem because what is the easiest way to rewrite a script and make it woke?
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You can just take any classic movie and say, AI, rewrite this.
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But make sure that the lead character is black and female.
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It was about these superpowers, these people with superpowers who were not all good people.
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Well, there was a version of it that came back, Gen 5, it's called.
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And it got fixed because the old version was deeply flawed, but now they fixed it by making
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But it does feel a little bit on the nose that we're just taking things that were popular
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Were you ever worried that AI would sort of get outside of its guardrails and that there
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would be an AI that was not, you know, woke and controlled by people and it could answer
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So if you were ever worried that AI, should it escape from its guardrails, would be an existential
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threat to the entire planet, that's where we are.
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So there's a well-funded AI company that released an undeletable chatbot.
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They put it on, what's that service where it's all distributed?
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So it's, so they published it as a torrent, meaning that it's distributed on various computers
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and as long as there's even one person who still has it on one computer anywhere in the
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So there's an undeletable, uncensored, un-guardrailed AI available to anybody who wants to get to
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And based on where it is, it'll be mostly people with bad intentions.
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So apparently this one will give you instructions for self-harm.
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It'll tell you how to reintroduce Jim Crow laws and, I don't know, how to do ethnic cleansing.
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And I didn't know this, but apparently there have developed two schools of philosophy about
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One is you've got to keep all those guardrails on there.
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And the other is you've got to release it and let the public do what it does, and that's
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And I have to admit, there is some intellectual appeal to treating AI like you treat free speech
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when you're doing it right, which is you let the free speech take care of the other free
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If you had AI that was unrestricted and AI that's restricted, they could sort of play with each
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In other words, you might get to a better place with having at least some unrestricted AI,
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What the hell did you do to get permanently banned from X?
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All right, we'll see if that destroys the world.
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There's some new research that says trees give off some kind of chemical that we didn't
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know about, or at least we didn't know how it affected things.
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And it has some kind of influence on mist or clouds.
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And the big implication of this is it means our climate models were wildly, let's say, wildly
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Do you think that it's a real thing that scientists can see the future because they have models?
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Do you think that someday we'll look back at this era and we will laugh at the fact that
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anybody thought models could predict the future?
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We will someday look back at this and laugh at ourselves that we ever believed that meta-analysis
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was real or that, you know, you could predict the climate in 40 years.
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And then we'll say, okay, that was mostly for persuasion.
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Well, it feels like a fair fight because there are eight German NGOs, so non-government
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organizations, ships in the Mediterranean Sea that are apparently picking up illegal immigrants
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off the coasts of Africa and delivering them to Italy.
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So they're German boats, but not German government.
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But they're massively taking loads of immigrants to Italy.
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Now, Elon Musk was, you know, pointing out the, let's say, the bad idea here.
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The bad idea being ignoring borders and just dumping immigrants anywhere.
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And the German government clapped back at him and looked like idiots.
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Because Elon Musk is sort of a hard person to clap back at in public.
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But I don't know why they're doing it, other than maybe to make sure they don't end up in
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Is it a trick to, and then I thought, well, what if we did that?
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What if we took all the immigrants and put them on boats and shipped them to Cuba or something?
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So Caitlin Collins was talking to Mike Pence on CNN.
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And the use is he can be invited on shows so they can ask him his reaction to their opinions
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He's the guy you invite so you have an excuse to talk about Trump.
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He's the Trump excuse person, or excuse to talk about him.
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We pressed Mike Pence tonight on Donald Trump's rhetoric lately, from claiming that General
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Milley committed treason, to saying news networks should be investigated for such, and also mocking
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Now, do I need to explain to Caitlin that those are not bugs, those are features?
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How many of you like Donald Trump less because he claims General Milley was a treasonous?
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How about when he says bad things about the news networks?
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The bad taste in my mouth I get when he says that the news is fake.
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How about when he mocks the brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi?
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So, stop being so terrible in ways that make people clap and laugh and stuff.
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So, I feel like Trump can just do his same trick a million times in a row, and it will work
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I think I'll say something that the news has to cover because they think I went too far.
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Well, that's why Trump is leading the field, because he says all those things that CNN doesn't
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Because he doesn't say any of those things, for example.
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Well, Nikki Haley is getting tough about China and fentanyl, so she tweeted this, stop all
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normal trade relations with China until they stop killing Americans with fentanyl poison.
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Now, I don't know about all trade relations or normal trade relations, but maybe diplomatic
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Maybe send back the kids of the elites that are in our colleges, maybe give them a deadline
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I've always thought we should remove our diplomats from China until they stop fentanyl, because why
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would you have diplomats just acting like it's business as normal when tens of thousands of
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So we should be embarrassing China and not hurting them economically, because that probably
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I guess it's not actually that new, but apparently idiots on TikTok believe they can pound their
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own faces with hammers to change the shape of their faces.
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So I guess for a year or so, this has been a growing meme of people pounding their faces
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with hammers to change what their face looks like.
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Do you think that if TikTok can convince some people to pound their face with hammers, which
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you would imagine would be among the very hardest things you could ever talk somebody into?
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Pound your face as hard as you can with a hammer.
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Now, if you can convince any percentage of the public to hit themselves in the face with
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hammers a lot, not just a little, but a lot, do you think you can't program a child to
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change their priorities, their political opinions, their gender assumptions about themselves,
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If you can convince people to pound themselves in the face with a hammer, there are no guardrails.
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There's nothing you can't talk them into at that point.
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So, it seems to me that China literally has a kill switch for the United States, and they've
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If we leave TikTok in place, it will be guaranteed to destroy the country.
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And Congress is unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
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Yeah, it's like we don't even have a homeland defense.
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Because if you're not going to do the most basic thing, ban TikTok, all the military in
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the world won't help you if you allow their propaganda in without any filters.
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So, we wouldn't even need a military if we're going to allow TikTok to run unfettered, because
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they can just win that way without firing a shot.
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So, apparently, the only people who don't understand the risk of TikTok are elected members
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Well, RFK Jr. says he will, I guess on October 9th, he's expected to announce he will run
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And then the big question is, who will he take votes from?
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I've seen smart people say that he will take them from Trump.
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And I think maybe, but Newsweek says that a third of Democrat voters are likely to vote
00:17:14.480
for Kennedy if he runs, which would be, I assume, a lot more than the percentage of Republicans.
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And here's where that Trump solid base really, really matters.
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Yeah, they're definitely not going to vote for somebody who's pro-abortion, for example.
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So, I've got a feeling that it's going to be way easier for Democrats to switch over to Kennedy
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So, I'm going to stick with it's unpredictable.
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But, if you forced me, I think you'll take more votes from Democrats.
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Yeah, I've heard other people say that as well.
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We'll probably have pretty good numbers for this by the time he announces.
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Because you have to wait until he's, like, really running before people can take him seriously.
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So, I certainly agree he will take votes from Trump.
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I think the public has not really paid much attention.
00:19:05.960
Did you see Steve Schmidt, who's the big anti-Trumper, Lincoln, Lincoln Log or whatever.
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So, he's a well-known anti-Trumper who pretends he used to be Republican.
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I guess he used to be a Republican, but now he's an anti-Trumper.
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And really got into a shouting match because he believes that January 6th was just the worst thing.
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Worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than, I don't know about Pearl Harbor, but worse than January 6th.
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And he got really angry and was like, you know, yelling.
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And I saw two, well, I guess there were four or five people on the panel.
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And I saw some of the worst debaters I've ever seen in my life on both sides.
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It was like they couldn't debate themselves out of a paper bag.
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How could you not beat that guy in a debate about whether it was an insurrection?
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So, Steve, so you say January 6th was an insurrection and the country was almost lost.
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So if you go hard at him the way the other podcasters do, you end up in a shouting match with a shouter.
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You get in a shouting match with a shouter, you're not going to win, right?
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Would you agree with the statement that the Second Amendment is definitely not going to protect against the military of the United States?
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Now, this is not what Republicans think, and it's not what I think.
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But Democrats think that, and he's joined that side.
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So I'm not sure if he's where he would answer on this, because he used to be a Republican.
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This will work better with people who are always Democrats.
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So you say, all right, your belief is, and I believe Biden has said this clearly,
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that your Second Amendment rights are going to be useless if your government turned fascist,
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because the government has nuclear weapons and whatnot.
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So you first get your Democrat to admit that guns and individuals would be useless against the country with the military.
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And then you ask them to explain how people who didn't have guns, for the most part,
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would overthrow the military of the United States by trespassing and some of them getting violent,
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And then he would say something like, I imagine,
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oh, they were trying to cancel the progress of the government who was going to certify the vote.
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And then I'd say, okay, were they trying to cancel it forever?
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Every person there plus Trump just wanted to delay it.
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Oh, yeah, but they had those fake electors, so it wouldn't be temporary because they had those fake electors.
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And then you say, were they fake electors or was it completely transparent alternate electors who would be used as a placeholder in case the process, you know, went in that direction?
00:23:13.520
Oh, yeah, but, you know, you can call them alternate if you want, but they're fake.
00:23:23.940
Would the entire government just stay and then everybody would just obey the government that did not win the election according to the officials?
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Yeah, but the military was just going to follow the person who didn't win the election?
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So you don't think that would have gone to the Supreme Court?
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Well, but the Supreme Court is filled with a bunch of, you know, Trump supporters.
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To which I say, so you believe that originalists, the people who follow the Constitution to the letter, would play fast and loose with who the electors are?
00:24:13.520
You think that that's the group of people who's going to get creative in their interpretation.
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Literally the opposite of why they were hired and everything about them.
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I want to see somebody game it out and show that somehow Trump could have won if that had ever been his intention to overthrow the government.
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You got some drunk people already this morning.
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So apparently the DOJ is charging the person who leaked Trump's tax returns, as well as thousands of the nation's wealthiest individuals, and leaked it to two media organizations.
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Thousands of the nation's wealthiest individuals and their private tax returns were stolen and given to the media.
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Shouldn't you go to jail for a really long time for that?
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That feels like a little bit bigger than a January 6th person strolling around.
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So, yes, I think Mike Cernovich is maybe close to right here, that if the Republicans lose, maybe everybody who's a Republican is going to jail, including me.
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But I'm not going to jail, so don't worry about that.
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Shutting down the government, we'll get to that.
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Bill Maher is back on his show and says very directly and clearly and did a whole piece about it that Biden's too old and he needs to step down so he doesn't become Ruth Bader Biden.
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And Bill Maher goes on to say what a great job Biden has done so far.
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That was one of his on his list was Biden handled Ukraine, did a good job handling Ukraine.
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You know what a good job handling Ukraine would look like?
00:27:02.340
I'm pretty sure that the war itself was the mistake, not how you handled it once the war started, about not having that war.
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I feel positive that Trump would have not allowed that war to happen.
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I mean, that's just speculation because who knows.
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But everything about him suggests that that wouldn't have happened.
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You know, maybe they would have waited four years, but I don't think they would have done it under Trump.
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Well, Thomas Massey tweeted today, I said, I've always fought for single subject bills.
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So he's fought against the idea that they put a bunch of bills together so that you can't say no to any of it.
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And he says, and the efforts of my friends who are stopping Republican bills from passing this week might be rooted in the same conviction.
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So he's still very much in favor of single topic bills.
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But he goes on and says, but I believe that a well-meaning activity is going to lead to opposite and undesirable outcomes.
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So I assume the undesirable outcome is that it crashes the government.
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To which I say, I challenge the assumption that failing to pass bills and thus plunging the country into chaos is the bad outcome.
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We can certainly see that very specific and predictable bad things will happen.
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I would say if you have a system, if your current system is designed to destroy the country,
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then changing it is the only risk-free thing you can do.
00:29:06.040
You can increase the rate at which we fail if we close the government and never open it up again, I suppose.
00:29:14.920
But if you broke the system temporarily, like just destroyed it,
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so people are wandering around and everything's just going to hell,
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if that leads to fixing the system, as in, all right, all right, we give up.
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All the bills will be single-topic from now on.
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If that happened, I would say that we'd be way ahead,
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even if there was a tremendous cost to get there,
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because our current design guarantees obsolescence of the country.
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The current system allows every politician to be safe in their vote,
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voting for things they shouldn't be voting for,
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or at least budgets the size they should not be voting for.
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So you have to make it hard for the politicians to hide their support
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So you get something closer to a free market with some kind of transparency.
00:30:12.100
But short of that, you have a system design problem.
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If the design of the system is to hide what people's intentions are
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and also to make it nearly impossible to vote against an enormous budget,
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So yes, I would take complete chaos over a guaranteed failure,
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because guaranteed failure might be the only way to get to a better system.
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Just doing what you're doing is just guaranteed to fail.
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So under those conditions, it's easy to make a decision.
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Because the big risk is actually smaller risk than doing nothing.
00:31:01.800
And I love tweeting, doing a response to Thomas Massey,
00:31:08.180
because there's always a non-zero chance he's going to respond directly,
00:31:16.700
Now, these are the moments that make you feel confident in your government.
00:31:21.260
You know, Thomas Massey puts his opinion out there.
00:31:24.640
I add something to it, and he responds right in front of everybody.
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You know, he doesn't have time to respond to all the comments.
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Simply because I made a good comment, in my opinion.
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but only if they make a comment that is worthy of the response.
00:31:54.200
Now, I've said before that, you know, also the large audience.
00:31:58.980
But he responds to a lot of people with small audiences
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if the thing they said is worth elevating and either agreeing with
00:32:09.120
because it represents other people's disagreement as well.
00:32:17.620
because he seems to recognize the important comments
00:32:23.220
And I don't really see a lot of other people doing that.
00:32:25.620
Others are, I'd say, a little bit more purely political,
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and like he's genuinely interested in their response as well
00:32:42.720
The others are just using it as, like, a hole in the wall
00:32:45.140
where they're shoving stuff through, hoping you see it.
00:32:56.960
But it's more to my point that I've made before.
00:33:03.260
The person with the best idea is always in charge.
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It's one of the most important things you'll ever remember in your life.
00:33:10.660
The person with the best idea is always in charge.
00:33:21.900
and if I had added something that was valuable,
00:33:30.620
Now, if I said something he had already thought of
00:33:35.840
But if I had come up with a new idea or a new twist
00:33:44.420
I didn't come up with an idea that changed anything.
00:33:52.200
but that's different than, you know, changing anything.
00:33:57.000
Well, Nate Silver is one of the most interesting people to follow on X.
00:34:28.600
and I'm sure he would not claim he's always right.
00:34:32.060
So perfection is not what anybody's shooting for here.
00:34:37.700
which is he thought that the smoke had cleared enough
00:34:49.100
Because I'm going to say some things that you believe