In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, we talk about the weather, climate change, AI, and the future of the future, and how to learn to use AI as a normal person. And, of course, there's coffee.
00:12:49.080Now, don't you think that they should have mentioned somewhere in the article how many of these came from Democrat worlds that they escaped?
00:12:59.780I feel like you guys, some of you are such assholes, honestly.
00:13:07.380You couldn't get through this without yelling Jews.
00:13:11.900A lot of Jews in that list, people are telling me in the comments.
00:14:19.320But I think every one of them is literally a father.
00:14:23.060And I think that's what actually binds them together, is that they're seeing that there's a tremendous failure on the part of the elected people, the people in charge.
00:14:35.040And I think it's not, the reason it doesn't look political, like you can't sort out who's a Democrat, who's a Republican, and this group of people.
00:14:43.720The reason you can't sort it out is that that's not the organizing principle.
00:14:48.360The organizing principle is that they're mostly dads.
00:14:53.920Now, there are two married women who are married to each other on the list.
00:15:00.240And I don't know if they plan to have any children, but they're fairly, I don't think they've been married that long.
00:15:10.960But anyway, the point is, people with kids seems like people with kids.
00:15:15.380So, and I don't know if they figured out who the, they also left out, and I think this is important, a whole bunch of independent journalists who I'm quite sure are the ones influencing this group.
00:15:32.020So, what Axios is getting a little bit right, but they're missing at least half of the story, is that these are a group of people who are being influenced also by something.
00:15:43.280They're not just the people who are influencing others, they're also being influenced.
00:15:49.180And the people that they're being influenced by are lesser famous.
00:15:52.680You know, a lot of the independent, you know, journalists that I tweet all the time.
00:15:59.300So, I think that part of the story is missing, the growth of the independent journalists.
00:16:03.440All right, so here's my theme of the day.
00:16:07.240What would cause the rise of all these internet dads?
00:16:10.720What is it that all these people, these so-called techno-optimists, what got them interested in speaking out in politics more than they ever have?
00:16:22.660Well, part of it, as Axios points out, the podcasting world is bigger, and that gives a whole new, you know, power network.
00:16:30.240So, that's part of it, but let's look at some other things that are happening in the world that might have activated the internet dads.
00:16:38.980Let's see if there's anything happening in the world that you might look at and say, uh-oh, it looks like that's not going to take care of itself.
00:16:47.320It looks like maybe I need to get involved here.
00:16:57.040Gavin Newsom reminds us that the economy is booming, inflation is cooling, and, oh, my God, is the economy looking good.
00:17:06.380If you were a member of the economy and you talk to anybody who's, you know, younger than 65 and doesn't have a fortune already, they're going to tell you that they don't feel like the economy is good.
00:17:23.340I do understand that some of the numbers are looking positive, but that doesn't seem to be working out in people's actual life experience.
00:17:31.260If you're young, buying a house looks largely impossible.
00:17:36.900So could it be that people are realizing they've been gaslit on this economy situation?
00:17:46.720Do they believe that President Biden delivered them the good economy, or are they saying, hey, I feel like our government is lying to us?
00:19:25.600Apparently, the federal governments have caught this al-Shabaab, al-Shabaab terrorist, who was caught at the border and then released to Rome freely for a year before he was arrested in Minnesota a few days ago.
00:19:41.880So our government is allowing known terrorists into the country.
00:19:46.340I wonder what would cause the Internet dads to think they needed to get involved.
00:19:50.740Could it be that their government is allowing massive numbers of military-aged people into the country, and some of them are known terrorists, and they're letting them free?
00:20:00.600I mean, that's the sort of thing that would make you say, hey, maybe I should get involved.
00:20:09.280Kamala Harris reminds us what is at stake in the 2024 election.
00:20:19.460Do you know why Kamala Harris says that freedom is on the ballot?
00:20:24.700Because they don't have any policy issues to run on.
00:20:28.740They don't have any success to run on that's real, that isn't just gaslighting because we're coming off a pandemic, and everything gets better after a pandemic.
00:21:53.640So, Ukraine is stealing money from me while I'm funding their defense.
00:22:00.780You know, that's the sort of thing that would make an Internet dad want to get involved.
00:22:05.160Because you look at the government and you say, are we really not accounting for the billions of dollars we're giving to other countries while we're falling apart?
00:22:15.280Yeah, that'll get your Internet dad's involved.
00:22:30.600Well, apparently Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, Republican, thinks they can get some kind of a border deal done if they, you know, maybe if the Ukraine funding is part of the deal.
00:22:44.960Let me give you some advice from an Internet dad, because apparently the government needs it.
00:22:54.600You don't negotiate your personal security.
00:23:59.600You need some techno-optimists to tell you this is not a negotiation topic.
00:24:06.320You don't say, oh, if you give us some Ukraine funding, we'll reduce the number of murderers coming into your country by a little bit.
00:24:14.020No, zero is the right fucking number until we get a handle on it.
00:24:20.760And then, of course, I'd like a healthy flow of immigrants in the future if we can vet them and know who they are and get rid of terrorists.
00:24:30.120But no, if you've got Republicans and Democrats, both parties, who think that physical security of the country is something they can negotiate on,
00:24:42.800You need somebody, an adult, to tell you what you negotiate on and what you don't.
00:25:12.040You know, China, you know, you should do this and maybe we could be better friends.
00:25:16.580No, you should close their embassies, send them home, send every fucking Chinese citizen home until there's no more fentanyl coming in the country.
00:25:43.980Why is there anybody in our government suggesting to Israel that they shouldn't negotiate with what would be a nation of terrorists living on their border who would certainly try to regroup and do it again?
00:25:59.520Who in the world is telling Israel that they shouldn't negotiate?
00:27:09.180Because apparently the government doesn't understand that you don't give sensitive data to your enemy, certainly who has access to it.
00:27:17.020How in the world were you planning to audit this process?
00:27:20.580When TikTok told you, oh, we promise we'll keep this walled off, did you think there was some physically possible way that you could check that?
00:28:52.320Again, this is not Democrat and it's not Republican.
00:28:56.780This is crazy to allow this to continue.
00:29:00.880Meanwhile, RFK Jr. and some others are pointing out that the FDA has changed their rule change here that allows them to do clinical trials that have minimal risk.
00:29:16.160That's in quotes, minimal risk without informed consent of the humans who are testing the therapies or the meds.
00:29:25.640So, in other words, if the medical people think that whatever it is they want to test on you medically, if they think it doesn't look like a risk, then they can go ahead and not tell you what the risks are because it doesn't look like a risk.
00:29:43.800Now, you might say to yourself, but Scott, that's just common sense.
00:29:48.400If the risk is, you know, minimal, why do you really need to inform people about the risk?
00:29:53.880But here's the problem, as RFK Jr. and anybody who has any experience with any big entity knows, as soon as you open that door, then there will be bad actors saying, you know, it looks like minimal risk to me.
00:30:08.360Now, as RFK Jr. says, can you think of any therapy that all the experts agreed was perfectly safe but turned out not to be?
00:30:17.080Well, you know, he's obviously talking about the COVID shots.
00:30:21.440I think he's exaggerating a little here.
00:30:23.880In the sense that I don't think all the experts said the shots were perfectly safe.
00:30:31.880I think all the experts said these shots will kill some people because stuff like this always kills some people.
00:30:39.060So, I don't think anybody said they were perfectly safe.
00:30:42.660I think they were arguing the risk-benefit, and they may have gotten the risk-benefit wrong.
00:30:47.540But, yeah, I think he's stretching the point a little bit.
00:30:51.260But his base point, that as soon as you say minimal risk is okay, it's going to get abused.
00:30:58.040But let me give you an example of what I hope it means.
00:31:59.720So, minimal risk looks like things like that where even a reasonable person, you know, who's not a medical doctor would say, yeah, okay, you can let that one go.
00:32:59.380As long as they say why they're saying it, then that's a form of informed consent.
00:33:05.160We're saying it's not dangerous because all it does is vibrate your arm, but you decide.
00:33:08.880If they're going to give you a pill that has active ingredients and they're going to tell me that that's a minimum, minimal risk, maybe not.
00:33:20.700But suppose, suppose they said we're going to test ivermectin to see if it works with COVID.
00:33:27.780Do you want them to do a total clinical trial, $10 million five years later, or do you want them to say, you know what, it's minimal risk because we've had it around forever,
00:33:41.400and maybe we should just repurpose it, which you could have done anyway.
00:33:44.980The doctors could do that on their own.
00:33:46.960But it would give them a little cover if they repurposed it and said it's been tested.
00:33:51.760So, there are cases where that minimal standard is useful to you as well.