Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 2411 CWSA 03⧸12⧸24

00:00:00.000 la-pa-pa. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's

00:00:07.040 called Coffee with Scott Adams, and that's what you're going to do. Today's show may be the best

00:00:13.400 show ever. Maybe. You never know. Stick around. Maybe we'll make some news, too. Let's see. But

00:00:20.680 first, if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even imagine,

00:00:25.440 all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen,

00:00:29.340 jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.

00:00:36.120 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing

00:00:39.700 that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens now. Go.

00:00:50.760 So good. Well, I saw a story today that there's a new wearable technology that helped researchers

00:00:58.720 determine which coffee is the best. So you put a little thing on your head with a bunch

00:01:05.620 of sensors, and you taste some different things. And no matter what your conscious brain tells

00:01:12.140 you, the device will tell you how much you really liked it, which is awesome. By the way,

00:01:20.140 I know somebody, a good friend of mine, who does this kind of work. So if there's an AI company

00:01:25.120 that wants to train their AI how to figure out human emotions and human reactions, you could

00:01:33.400 actually do that by capturing enough human reactions to things that it forms a database

00:01:39.380 that AI could use to pretend to have some human reactions to things. Anyway, so that's a possibility

00:01:48.380 if anybody wants a good resource there. One of the things I learned yesterday is that

00:01:55.000 complaining works sometimes. You ever complain about stuff and nothing happens? I had this

00:02:01.160 weird day yesterday where I complained about things and things happened. I'll give you an

00:02:06.200 example. I complained because my blue check went away on X. It goes away if you change your

00:02:15.200 profile picture. It takes a while to be sure that you're really the same person. And I

00:02:21.180 complained that I didn't think it was ever coming back because it was taking longer than

00:02:24.260 it should. And it was back within an hour. I think an hour after I complained, it came

00:02:29.540 back. Coincidence? Could be. I don't know. But here are the other examples. So I complained

00:02:39.640 about my, I complained about my internet because I've had a really, I don't know, years, years

00:02:48.400 of bad internet. Literally years where it just goes in and out and, you know, glitches all

00:02:54.320 the time. And I finally just had enough and it got so bad that I couldn't, couldn't even

00:02:58.600 use it. And every time I'd done it, Xfinity would say they fixed something on a connection

00:03:05.480 to the house or something. And sometimes I'd update my modem and it seemed to work a little

00:03:10.360 bit, but not totally. And so yesterday I went through the normal tech support, but that wasn't

00:03:18.140 working out. So they had to escalate it to the like level two. So now I had basically

00:03:23.060 two levels of tech support. And then I complained about it on the X platform, which definitely

00:03:29.000 got their attention. So then that gets the executive response team involved. So at one

00:03:35.420 point I had, uh, I think I had three separate response teams working on it at the same time.

00:03:44.780 Within an hour of the, uh, contact with the top guys, there was a truck outside my house

00:03:51.000 doing something on the street, but when they were done, I had the best internet I've ever had.

00:03:56.880 It was about twice as fast on the download and 10 times as fast on the upload. I didn't even

00:04:02.840 know that was possible. So it was always in the network, had nothing to do with my house.

00:04:07.860 And for 10 years or so, I've been dealing with this and fixed it yesterday by, I finally complained

00:04:13.300 enough, I guess. Well, then there was also my complaint about TikTok, which, uh, got pretty

00:04:20.480 big response. Uh, Vivek contacted me and also he DM to me just to make contact because he has a very

00:04:30.860 different opinion on TikTok. And then he alerted me that he was going to do a, uh, a live stream.

00:04:37.540 So he did a live stream last night. I think it was on X and I watched that and they'll talk about that

00:04:42.780 in a little bit. So complaining worked three different times yesterday to get the attention

00:04:49.580 I needed, which is weird. I don't, I don't usually recommend complaining. I'm not a big complainer,

00:04:54.840 but it totally worked three times. Anyway, four years ago today, do you know what the anniversary

00:05:01.960 is? It's your four year anniversary of the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

00:05:08.620 Does it feel like four years since the beginning of the COVID pandemic?

00:05:17.040 That, that was a long few years in there, wasn't it? I think those are the longest years of my life.

00:05:23.380 Oh my God, I hated those pandemic years. Anyway, it's over. Uh, meanwhile, an update on the Tates,

00:05:30.420 the Tate brothers. Apparently they've been arrested again, uh, in their Romanian country.

00:05:38.620 They've been arrested on a UK warrant that's based on charges that were investigated first in 2012

00:05:46.620 and then dropped. But suddenly those charges are back. Hmm. How do you explain that? How do you explain

00:05:55.900 that the Tates are in renewed legal trouble, you know, years after charges were looked into and dropped?

00:06:03.540 Well, one possibility is new evidence. Definitely a possibility. The other possibility is this is part

00:06:10.480 of the larger trend of destroying any, uh, persuasive voices who might be pro-Trump. Now I'm not going to

00:06:19.320 say that the Tates are pro-Trump because I don't know if they are or not, but you would assume that

00:06:24.780 their general vibe and their general, what they believe in and promote seems more compatible with,

00:06:33.500 you know, sort of a Trump point of view, not, I'm not counting their, the way they make money,

00:06:38.620 but, uh, their political stuff. So do you think that the Tates are being arrested because of some crime

00:06:45.380 or do you think it's political? What do you, what do you think in the comments? Do you think

00:06:51.980 without even, I don't even know what the charges are. I don't know what the charges are. I couldn't

00:06:56.200 find that in the news. Everybody was talking about it, but they didn't mention the charges.

00:07:02.720 So what do you think? Do you think this is just political? I think it is. Yeah. I think this is,

00:07:10.300 uh, political. I think the United States and maybe, maybe Great Britain wanted to do it on its own,

00:07:16.640 but I think we might've twisted their arms to say, you know what? These Tate brothers are too

00:07:23.120 influential and they don't say things we like. So take them out. Now I don't have evidence of that.

00:07:30.400 Zero evidence, no evidence. It's just that it would be consistent with everything else we've seen.

00:07:36.320 Let me ask you this. Has enough time gone by that you understand that my cancellation was political?

00:07:42.240 You know that that was political, right? Does everybody know that? I don't know if that's obvious to observers.

00:07:53.760 All right. I'm just looking at your comments to see if, if that's coming through. All right. Uh,

00:07:59.280 you saw some, uh, post on, uh, X talking about how there's no such thing as a rich country that doesn't

00:08:07.280 have a lot of energy or use a lot of energy. Now, uh, I wanted to use that as a jumping off point for

00:08:14.960 this. Um, I guess it's a reframe. I believe that war, which ends up settling most of the things in

00:08:24.480 the human industry, you know, war is usually the big thing that changes countries. I think war is really,

00:08:31.600 really just economics. War and economy are almost the same thing. Uh, not in effect, but they're

00:08:39.920 the same thing in the sense that the country with the biggest economy is usually going to win the war.

00:08:46.560 The biggest economy usually wins the war. And what gives you the biggest economy?

00:08:51.760 Usually access to cheap energy so that energy is really the same as your economy because it's the

00:09:02.800 thing that has the most influence and your economy is kind of the same as your military in the sense

00:09:10.880 that it has so much influence on the other. So when you see, for example, a country like the United States

00:09:18.320 do what you think are terrible, dirty tricks and horrible things and coups, and you say,

00:09:24.480 it seems all about the energy companies. We're doing this for the oil companies. Well, maybe we are.

00:09:30.960 Maybe we are. Maybe it's exactly that. You know, the oil companies have a lot of money and a lot of

00:09:36.400 influence. And so we just do what they want. But I would submit to you that if we did anything else,

00:09:43.280 we'd already be dead. Do you get that? If we didn't go just really aggressively on energy,

00:09:53.360 especially in other countries, I mean, basically overthrowing countries. So we, we have a supply of,

00:09:58.560 you know, oil. I mean, we're very aggressive about energy, but, uh, because of our aggressiveness

00:10:05.520 about energy and the fact that we're lucky enough to have energy in this company is in this country,

00:10:10.960 our economy is booming. It's not the only reason, but it's a fundamental reason. And then we have the

00:10:18.240 biggest military. So it's all connected. So if you imagine that, I guess here's the point. If you

00:10:24.720 imagine that there's a conversation about war that's separate from the conversation about the economy,

00:10:30.480 that's separate from the conversation about our aggressive energy posture in the world,

00:10:34.800 stop that. It's all the same story. It's all one thing. It's just different windows into the same

00:10:42.000 thing. Well, there's a, uh, a media company that, uh, went, uh, had a bad day, uh, Deadspin. So Deadspin

00:10:53.360 was one of these, uh, dingleberry media companies that would do hit pieces on me on a regular basis.

00:10:58.880 And, uh, so I like to dance on their grave a little bit. Their company got purchased by a European 0.99

00:11:06.080 company who immediately said they were going to fire every single person in the company

00:11:10.320 and just use the assets. So I asked this question, what would be a good name for a media company

00:11:17.760 that spins the news until the company is dead? Spins the news until the company is dead.

00:11:25.120 Dead. Deadspin. Now I will also accept as an answer, CNN, Huffington Post, MSNBC, all good answers,

00:11:36.080 but the proper answer was deadspin. Now I'd like to share with you the most important

00:11:45.520 story of the day. It's about a sheep. You're probably saying to yourself, how could that be

00:11:50.400 important? Oh, it's important. You have to see it to see how important it is. Let me scroll down here

00:11:56.080 and find that sheep. So there's a sheep that, uh, had found a lazy way to eat grass.

00:12:04.400 It just, it just sits there and I don't know if you can tell, but it's munching the grass as it lays

00:12:10.960 there. So it's actually eating, eating and resting at the same time. See this little mouth munching.

00:12:18.880 And the reason I bring this up is because, stop it. The reason I bring it up is, uh,

00:12:26.480 the economy is so bad that even the sheep had to get a side job.

00:12:32.000 It's a side job. All right. Uh, also very important. Uh, if I were to own a sheep, um,

00:12:45.920 what would I name it? I would name my sheep, uh, James Woolsey, Jr. James Woolsey, Jr.,

00:12:54.640 who used to be the head of the CIA, but it'd be a great name for a sheep. James, get over here.

00:12:59.280 Um, but, uh, somebody in the comments had a better idea for the name of the sheep.

00:13:06.960 Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran. Damn it. That's good. Damn it. I wish I'd said it. All right.

00:13:18.160 But still, she has a side job. Economy's bad. All right. Uh, uh, I love a good cannibal story.

00:13:28.000 Uh, you know, I'm not a nice person, I guess. I guess that's all I can conclude.

00:13:33.760 That whenever I hear a story about cannibals, my first thought is not for the victims.

00:13:43.280 My first thought is not for the victims of the cannibals. 1.00

00:13:45.920 I know it should be. I know it should be. I know how I'm supposed to act. I just can't.

00:13:53.920 No, my first thought when I hear stories about cannibals is, well, this is going to be funny. 1.00

00:13:58.400 Uh, and sure enough, I was not disappointed. So Ian Miles Chiang, who's got a big account on

00:14:05.120 X platform. He posted, uh, I just received a request for comment from NBC news asking me to prove

00:14:14.080 cannibalism exists in Haiti. I wish I was making this up. And then they showed the actual, uh, 0.98

00:14:22.640 request. It was from an NBC reporter and the NBC reporter was asking, is his source only the

00:14:30.480 one article in the British star slash express with the one unnamed source. Now I said to myself,

00:14:38.080 is it possible that the entire story about cannibals came from one sketchy publication with an unnamed

00:14:46.640 source and we all just ran with it? Did it all come from there? I don't know. I saw people in the

00:14:55.360 comments saying they'd seen videos. I'm not sure I would believe any video that comes out of Haiti,

00:15:02.400 but, uh, I think it's hilarious that it's entirely possible that there were no cannibals.

00:15:13.920 Now, is that as funny to you as it is to me that we, we could spend a entire like two days news cycle

00:15:20.160 talking about something that's just patently absurd and NBC news just, just figured out,

00:15:26.960 maybe they should ask where it came from. All right. So I don't know if there's cannibals in Haiti.

00:15:33.520 All I know is that the criminal leader who seems to be in charge of the whole island at the moment,

00:15:38.240 his nickname is barbecue.

00:15:42.480 And he doesn't own a barbecue, if you know what I mean.

00:15:47.200 So some say he has that nickname because he likes to

00:15:50.480 light his opponents on fire. That's a possibility.

00:15:53.200 Or maybe he's a giant cannibal. I don't know. Nobody said he's a cannibal. It's just a funny nickname. 0.63

00:16:02.240 Uh, and then other people have suggested that, uh, if we, if we, uh, allow enough of the cannibals, 0.99

00:16:12.720 if we allow enough of the cannibals to migrate to the United States, it will 1.00

00:16:16.960 take care of the rest of the migrant problem.

00:16:27.120 So it's, it's sort of like when they introduce, uh, wolves into an area to get rid of the other

00:16:32.640 animals, you can introduce some cannibals into our ecosystem just, it's just to trim the fat.

00:16:40.320 All right. No, we're not going to do that. All right. NBC news is also reporting that

00:16:48.720 according to a poll support for same-sex marriages has actually dropped. It's actually dropped. So

00:16:58.800 in the comments, somebody's yelling at me and saying, that is not funny.

00:17:01.680 Well, you know, it's really funny. You telling me that's not funny. That's pretty funny. Anyway,

00:17:12.240 uh, support for same-sex marriages dropped researchers from PRRI found. So this among young

00:17:18.960 adults, which is even more curious, it's among young adults, the ones who supported same-sex

00:17:24.400 marriage declined to 71% last year from a high of 79 in 2018. What do you think? What do you think

00:17:32.720 changed? Uh, what do you think was the difference in support for same-sex marriages and why it declined?

00:17:41.120 I have a hypothesis.

00:17:44.480 My hypothesis, I don't have proof of this, but my hypothesis is that the entire decline

00:17:50.800 in support for same-sex marriage is from the people who tried same-sex marriage.

00:17:57.360 It seems like that drop from 79 to 71 would be roughly the same as the number of people who tried it.

00:18:05.280 I don't know if you've tried marriage. All right, let's just move on to the next story. No reason to beat

00:18:11.520 that to death. Um, so you might be aware that, um, I had some choice things to say about TikTok

00:18:21.120 and the people who were opposed to the ban. Um, and I thought that people opposed to the ban may not be

00:18:29.440 opposed to it for, uh, pure political and ethical reasons that there might be some monetary influence

00:18:37.440 and, or maybe they're just analyzing it wrong. But, um, I had some harsh words for Vivek to his credit.

00:18:46.160 He contacted me later on DM. We, we follow each other on X, so he could just send me a private message

00:18:52.160 and we followed up and we had a little back and forth. I don't want to, I don't want to tell you

00:18:58.000 anything about a private conversation, but, um, he alerted me that he was going to do a live stream

00:19:04.960 and he would be addressing it then. So I watched the live stream and I'll give you all my comments on it

00:19:11.680 here. So I'll do my best to try to represent his point of view, which I'm going to apologize in advance

00:19:20.960 because if you heard his point of view, you'd know, it's, it's just wonderfully complex, like in a good

00:19:27.920 way, um, and nuanced and has lots of context that he added about Chinese persuasion and all other

00:19:37.760 domains and stuff. So it was a masterful, uh, really it was quite masterful and impressive, um, explanation

00:19:48.320 of the whole situation and then his view of it. So I want to give you as best I can, uh, his view

00:19:56.560 and I hope I'm doing him credit and not misinterpreting. Now, normally the way these

00:20:01.360 things go is that I would now misinterpret what he said so that I could score my points.

00:20:08.560 You know, that's the normal way this goes, right? So the next thing, you know, I'll say something that

00:20:13.360 isn't what he said and then I'll mock it and it won't be what he said, but that would be the normal

00:20:19.200 way this kind of thing goes. I'm going to try not to do that. I'm going to try actually to, you know,

00:20:25.040 maybe steel man his argument and, um, make it as strong as possible so that if I say anything that's

00:20:31.760 counter to it, it's a fair contrast. So I'm going to try to do it fairly. I have, I don't have complete

00:20:38.480 confidence I can do it because his, his, uh, intellectual grasp of the entire domain is,

00:20:45.920 is pretty deep. So let's see if I can get anywhere near it.

00:20:51.280 First of all, he started off with a long explanation that was very good and really

00:20:55.120 interesting about how China uses access to its markets to influence American companies,

00:21:01.360 such as the NBA, uh, that, uh, need or want that Chinese market. And so they will bow to whatever

00:21:08.480 they want. And he made a connection I hadn't heard before that China wanted to, you know, stir up a 0.72

00:21:15.120 racial division in America because it would take the pressure off of China for their treatment of the

00:21:21.840 Uyghurs. Now I'd never really heard that frame before and hadn't heard that China might, you know, 1.00

00:21:28.160 be one of the influences behind black lives matter. Now, I don't know in what direct ways that's true,

00:21:35.120 but it does kind of make sense as a, you know, an influence narrative because apparently China was

00:21:41.120 saying out loud that, uh, as long as black lives matter is a thing, um, don't give them any advice.

00:21:51.280 So that's good context. So we know that China is, uh, trying to influence America. Uh, so that's, 0.86

00:21:58.160 um, and, uh, and also Vivek demonstrated his complete understanding that persuasion,

00:22:04.720 you know, is a sort of an apex concern. So he was quite clear on that. All right. So here's some

00:22:12.560 other things he said. He says he wants to ban all social media under age 16. He said that before,

00:22:18.240 and I like that. I agree with that. And it would go a long way toward, uh, fixing a problem because

00:22:26.960 the younger the mind, the more easily corrupted it could be. You know, if it were up to me, I'd extend

00:22:32.800 it to 25. There's no chance in the world that that could be approved. But if people's brains are not

00:22:39.840 formed until age 25, do you want tick tock to be the thing that forms it? I mean,

00:22:46.400 because that literally would be part of the formation of your brain from zero to 25. So

00:22:52.160 you could argue it should be, uh, an older age, but since that would never be approved in our world,

00:22:59.520 16 is a good, that's a good place to start. So I'm going to be completely supportive on

00:23:05.600 banning all social media under 16. And I'll also say that it would take a big chunk out of my

00:23:11.680 concerns about persuasion. Um, I don't know if it's more than half, but a big chunk, maybe 20%,

00:23:20.800 could be even 60%. It's a lot. I don't know how to put a percentage on it, but it would count.

00:23:29.040 All right. So here's some other things that Vivek said. Um, he said that we can't beat China by being

00:23:35.120 like China. In other words, um, if we were to put our heavy hand on this specific company,

00:23:42.880 uh, that would be more like a Chinese way of being than an American way, which would be more free

00:23:47.360 market and, um, banned behaviors. We'll get to that. So, um, and I'll give you my counters to it

00:23:56.160 as we go. Uh, can't beat China by being China. Well, what's your reaction to that statement? So we want

00:24:03.760 to keep our core American values and not just throw them overboard because we see China, you know, 0.87

00:24:11.120 doing some stuff we don't like. Good point, good point, bad point, no point. What do you think?

00:24:19.120 Tell me in the comments. Um, my take is that it's a good persuasion and it reminds me of, uh, you know,

00:24:28.080 if the glove fits, you must acquit. You repeated it a number of times and it is one of those sticky,

00:24:34.080 you persuasive things because I don't want to be like China. So I'm already predisposed to liking 1.00

00:24:39.920 this idea that we can't beat China by being like them. Like, Oh, I don't want to be like 1.00

00:24:45.760 people locking up Uyghurs. I don't want to be, you know, the government putting too much of a finger on

00:24:52.320 the free market. So no, I don't want to be like China. So it can't be China by being like China. 0.81

00:24:59.120 However, uh, you know, it's nonsense, right? It's good persuasion, but it's not an argument.

00:25:08.880 It's not even close to an argument. Uh, so let, let me give you an example of what I mean.

00:25:16.000 We don't, we can't beat China by being like China. So for example, China is growing their military

00:25:21.360 right now. So our best response would be to shrink our military in response to them growing their

00:25:27.920 military because we don't want to be like them and they're growing their military. Um, if China spies

00:25:34.960 on us and we know they do, our best response might be to not be like them and spy on China, 0.81

00:25:42.000 but to find something else. And if China has strong borders, we might not want to be like that. And

00:25:49.920 we might want to just open ours up. Now, those are stupid examples that have nothing to do with 0.99

00:25:55.680 TikTok. I'm just saying that as a general claim, you can't beat China by being like China is absurd. 0.99

00:26:03.200 It's absurd. So from a persuasion perspective, it's really good. Like a plus for persuasion on a logic

00:26:12.160 level, it doesn't have anything. It's completely empty of any logic. So I, I, uh, uh, I disregard that

00:26:20.800 as being something you should consider when making the decision. No, we act like China when it makes 0.78

00:26:27.120 sense exactly like China, when it makes sense. And when it doesn't make sense for a national interest,

00:26:33.360 then we don't act like China. So the real question is, what do you do for the benefit of America?

00:26:40.880 You don't ask yourself, what do you do for a benefit of America that's also incompatible with China? 0.78

00:26:46.240 Yeah. It's just, it's a nonsense idea, but the, he had real, he had real reasons too,

00:26:54.480 that are stronger than that one. Uh, his best argument, the strongest, I think that there wasn't,

00:27:01.040 uh, persuasion based, but more, you know, more nuts and bolts is that he would prefer to ban the

00:27:07.700 behaviors, not the company. So, and part of that argument is that our domestic platforms, uh,

00:27:16.080 might be doing something that's also very bad. So Facebook, for example, may be biasing their

00:27:23.760 results and trying to change things. And that would be bad behavior. TikTok might be trying

00:27:29.040 to persuade America politically or otherwise socially, that might be bad behavior. So wherever

00:27:35.280 there's bad behavior, just, um, put a control on the behavior. What do you think of that?

00:27:41.600 Um, because it would be sort of a Chinese thing to ban a company. It wouldn't be an American thing. 0.82

00:27:50.160 And if you start banning companies, you know, slippery slope, they'll ban you. He didn't say that,

00:27:55.200 but it seems reasonable. If you ban them, they ban you. But I think, uh, our social media is already banned.

00:28:01.040 So, um, there's that. So do you think that we could ban the persuasion behavior of TikTok? What

00:28:13.040 do you think? Is that something we could do? Is it a practical plan that we could ban persuasion?

00:28:20.960 Well, this is probably where he and I have our biggest, um, difference in assumption. Now I come from

00:28:27.280 the, I come to the persuasion, um, topic as a trained hypnotist. So I've written books on persuasion,

00:28:37.360 when bigly, notably, and I talk about persuasion all the time. And it's sort of a lifelong study of mine.

00:28:43.680 And like I said, I'm literally hypnotist. So when I look at the field of persuasion,

00:28:49.600 uh, there's something I know that maybe other people don't know. And I just assumed it was obvious.

00:28:55.840 So this is not obvious at all. So if Vivek has never had this thought, maybe it's the first time

00:29:02.480 he's hearing it. You can't detect persuasion. So how do you, how do you monitor it or police it?

00:29:11.040 How would you ever tell them to stop doing it when you can't find it? Now you're going to say to me,

00:29:15.440 I can find persuasion. Remember that researcher Epstein who looked at Google and he found that

00:29:21.600 the search results were super biased. That's persuasion. And definitely you could find it.

00:29:30.320 Now, what do you do about it? Suppose you found it. So you go to Google and you say, Hey,

00:29:36.320 stop this behavior. And they're going to say, what behavior? It's just the algorithm.

00:29:42.480 And then what do you do? Do you get access to their algorithm? And if you did, could you find the bias?

00:29:50.560 Do you remember the Twitter files? When Musk started digging into what the Twitter, the old Twitter code

00:29:57.360 actually did, it was so complicated and so distributed across multiple domains of people

00:30:04.320 who could influence it, that you couldn't even find all the places bias had been programmed in.

00:30:11.120 It just wasn't even findable. So if they say it's not there and that it happened naturally,

00:30:17.680 how are you going to prove it? You can't be, you'll never be able to look at their code and know what's

00:30:22.400 happening. Because even if you found some bias in the code and removed it, just like the Twitter

00:30:28.000 files, you would look at your output and it kind of didn't change. And you'd say, okay,

00:30:33.760 there must be some other place in the code. There's also some bias and you might never find the end of

00:30:39.280 it because there's, there might be, you know, literally hundreds of little tweaks that all move

00:30:46.720 in the same direction and you'd have to find them all. Now, so I don't think there's any practical

00:30:52.960 way to detect it based on output because it, you would never know what's natural. For example,

00:30:59.680 let's say a lot of output was negative on Trump. Isn't that because the news is? If the news is

00:31:07.200 nonstop negative on Trump, and then you do a Google search and it comes up with more negative Trump

00:31:13.280 stuff, are you going to say that the search was wrong? Do you ban that behavior? Because that

00:31:18.880 behavior would be super biased. It would also be natural because they're looking at the news

00:31:26.720 to give you search results. So in a real world, you could never win the argument,

00:31:32.080 hey, this is bad behavior. You can't win that argument because the other side just will have

00:31:37.840 infinite technical philosophical reasons why it isn't. And there's no objective standard for it.

00:31:44.880 But there's a worse, much worse fear. Do you think you could detect my persuasion?

00:31:55.840 Do you think you can?

00:32:00.480 What do you think? You've been watching me for a long time, most of you.

00:32:03.120 Most of it's obvious. And I usually call it out. I say, I'm persuading on this. You know,

00:32:09.280 I'm persuading on TikTok, for example. So usually I just call it out and then you can see it.

00:32:15.520 But do you think that I could fool you if I wanted to? Do you think I have the skill

00:32:21.680 that I could persuade you and you wouldn't even know it was happening?

00:32:25.680 Of course I could. It wouldn't even be hard. Anybody with my level of experience could do it.

00:32:31.760 Everybody could. It is trivial. You would never know. I've told you before that I see the world

00:32:38.720 like a Harry Potter book, that there are muggles and then there are people who are trained in persuasion.

00:32:45.280 The people who are trained in persuasion are invisible to you, just like the wizards.

00:32:52.320 You see them, but you can't tell. They have an invisible magic power of persuasion that sometimes

00:32:59.280 they'll show you just so you think you can see it all. Oh, he showed me all his persuasion. I trust that one.

00:33:05.920 No, they're not going to show you all their persuasion. They're just going to do it.

00:33:11.840 So no, there is no practical world in which people who don't know persuasion can identify it.

00:33:17.920 And that's what you'd need. And even experts who looked at other people's persuasion wouldn't

00:33:22.560 necessarily be able to identify it. And if they did, you wouldn't be able to prove it. So for example,

00:33:29.440 I could look at what some big platform does and I'd have all kinds of opinions. Oh, that looks like

00:33:35.920 persuasion. But could I prove it? Well, I don't have access to the code. I don't know if it could have

00:33:41.120 happened naturally. I don't know if it just follows the opinion of the public, even if I don't like it.

00:33:48.240 So no, there is no logical, practical way you can monitor the behavior of the companies

00:33:55.120 because they can always say, quite persuasively, this behavior is normal and natural and we didn't do it.

00:34:05.760 All right. For example, suppose your platforms said something about either climate change or

00:34:16.000 whether January 6th was an insurrection or a protest. So which answer from social media

00:34:25.600 would be persuasion and which one would be just the truth? Well, how can the platform get that right

00:34:32.320 if we can't decide? If I see the platform say all the results are insurrection for January 6th,

00:34:40.480 I'm going to say, hey, that's not fair because that wasn't an insurrection. And then the very

00:34:45.040 next person who uses the Google search sees insurrection and says, those are good results

00:34:50.240 right there. Because definitely it was an insurrection. So that's what I'd expect to see.

00:34:56.560 So I hope I made my point that if you are inexperienced in persuasion, you might think

00:35:04.640 that you could monitor the behavior. I took as an assumption, and I think it's my mistake that I

00:35:11.120 never said it out loud, that you could never monitor the behavior. If you could, it would be the better

00:35:16.320 way. So let me say, if there was a practical way to monitor the persuasion behavior of platforms,

00:35:25.920 that would be probably a better way. But you would also have to do it immediately.

00:35:30.000 How do you do that? See, the other thing about the persuasion of TikTok, and Vivek made this point

00:35:37.440 as well, that if you don't have data that says that Facebook is a worse, let's say a worse risk

00:35:45.600 to the United States than TikTok, if you don't have any data that would suggest that, why would you

00:35:51.440 treat them differently? Is that a good point? Because even Trump was saying that Facebook is the enemy

00:35:57.840 of the people, and he doesn't want TikTok to go away, and then all that traffic move over to

00:36:02.800 Facebook, because Facebook is anti-Trump, and how's that making the country better?

00:36:09.040 So that's not a bad argument. Trump's argument that the traffic would just go over to another enemy,

00:36:15.840 maybe. But I would argue that you cannot compare what an adversary is doing, or an adversary country's

00:36:25.440 product, versus a domestic company. In my opinion, the Zuckerberg risk is that we all turn into

00:36:33.520 Democrats. I know, terrible, isn't it? You don't want that to happen, do you? Oh my God, what if all the

00:36:40.880 Democrat policies got put into effect? Well, Zuckerberg is not a crazy person. He wants the economy to work

00:36:48.640 and the country to succeed. He needs that. His new Hawaii home that's being upgraded,

00:36:57.840 it's no good if the country fails. There's not a deep enough bunker. So Zuckerberg doesn't want America

00:37:05.040 to fail. I assume he's on our side. He just has a different idea of what's good and what's bad.

00:37:11.360 So even if you lost everything to Facebook, you might hate that situation, but we'd probably still

00:37:20.560 be a country. China might have a different opinion. China might be better off if the United States were 0.90

00:37:27.360 less important than China. So that's a completely different risk profile. And the big problem with

00:37:37.680 the detecting persuasion is that you might detect it, but it might be too late. So remember that

00:37:45.040 that researcher Epstein I talked about who found all the bias in Google? He didn't find it the day it

00:37:51.280 happened. He found it way later after it had already been done. So if one of the platforms did something

00:38:00.000 that was, let's say TikTok, did something that was really persuasive and then later we found it and said,

00:38:05.840 hey, you can't do that. They'd say, oh, we didn't know we did that. We'll stop doing that.

00:38:11.280 It'd just be too late. So on a practical sense, you can't monitor behavior, but you could make sure

00:38:18.240 that an adversary is not in the game. Is that worth it? Is it worth it just to make sure that the

00:38:27.440 adversary is not playing? And would that be, would that be American? Would that be consistent with

00:38:34.960 American values? Because this is Vivek's point. Would it be consistent with our American values

00:38:41.680 if we banned TikTok after we saw them persuading?

00:38:46.800 I don't know. I guess that's a judgment call.

00:38:54.080 All right. So I don't need any evidence that Facebook has been no worse than TikTok in the past

00:38:59.280 because I'm not living in the past. I'm living completely in the future. And you don't know,

00:39:05.120 and nobody knows, will TikTok push that heat button on something that will be devastatingly bad for America

00:39:12.080 in the future? I don't know. Will Facebook in the future do something that's worse than what they've

00:39:19.520 done in the past? Maybe, but probably only, you know, preferring Democrats. It's not going to be the

00:39:27.920 end of the world. Whereas TikTok might want a weaker United States in general. All right.

00:39:35.840 And, um, so that, so let me, uh, let me just summarize that. So the main points are, uh, Vivek

00:39:48.560 wants to ban all social media from people under 16, completely agree. That would make, that would 1.00

00:39:54.400 make a big difference in the TikTok persuasion. Um, can't beat China by being like China is a 0.99

00:40:01.120 meaningless bumper sticker in terms of how logical it is because whenever it makes sense for us to

00:40:07.840 be like China, we act like it just like anybody would. So that's the whole story. When it makes 1.00

00:40:13.600 sense, you do it. You don't care what China's doing. Um, ban the behaviors. There's no practical

00:40:20.800 way to ban, uh, persuasion. You'd never be able to detect it in time. And as far as Facebook being

00:40:28.160 being as bad as TikTok, I do agree that the Facebook risk is, is enormous. And I do agree

00:40:34.000 that we don't have data. I just know that, um, if I'm walking down a, let's say a darkened alley late

00:40:42.240 at night and I see somebody coming toward me and it's a family member, I'm not worried at all. I'm like,

00:40:52.000 well, I suppose a family member could murder me in this dark alley, but they don't want to.

00:40:58.000 So I don't even worry about it. They have no incentive, but suppose it's somebody who's poor

00:41:03.920 and has a gun, doesn't know you. Well, then maybe they're gonna rob you. So yeah, um, uh, I'm way less

00:41:10.800 afraid of somebody who is directionally on my team and Zuckerberg directionally. He's on my team.

00:41:20.640 He's an American. Do I like all of his persuasive stuff? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. 0.92

00:41:29.440 No. All right. So that's where we're differing. Uh, I think I have a experience difference.

00:41:34.240 And so I know it would be impractical to stop persuasion and maybe that's the big difference.

00:41:39.520 Uh, however, I would like to announce today that I am opening an account on TikTok, uh,

00:41:45.600 as soon as I get around to it might be today or later. And so I'm going to join TikTok. Here's my

00:41:50.800 reasoning. Number one, uh, it won't be banned. Do you need, do you need a reason for why I say it won't

00:42:01.520 be banned? And the, and the fight's already lost. It won't be banned for 35 billion reasons.

00:42:10.400 There's a gigantic donor who owns 15% of TikTok, who's one of the main donors to Republicans.

00:42:21.040 And I don't know, maybe, maybe donates to some Democrats when he, when it makes sense to him.

00:42:26.160 But as long as that's the case, that's way more money than any political process is going to overcome.

00:42:32.480 Now, one of the things Vivek said, he is he, he mocked people who were suggesting that he was,

00:42:38.960 um, flip flop or not flip flopping, but that he was, uh, not going hard against TikTok because there

00:42:46.320 was some financial gain for him. I want to make clear that I've never thought that.

00:42:52.800 All right. Uh, and, and then I worried after I heard it, I was like, oh,

00:42:56.480 I hope I didn't sound like I was saying that I did say that money is the reason.

00:43:00.720 And I did put his name in that conversation and I'm going to do it again because I don't

00:43:05.200 think that at any point there was any in my own mind, I had no suspicion or worry that he would

00:43:12.320 take money from some rich donor. Cause first of all, he doesn't need it. He pointed out he is

00:43:18.400 worth nearly a billion dollars and no, no, no. There's no way that Vivek is being bribed.

00:43:24.480 Like I just doesn't make sense. Yeah. That would be like the same as your family member in the dark

00:43:31.200 alley. They don't have a reason, right? He doesn't have a reason to take a bribe,

00:43:35.920 but where the money influences is on the Republican party of which he is a big supporter, especially

00:43:42.320 the Trump world. So Trump definitely, and other, uh, uh, big Republicans absolutely definitely

00:43:52.160 need money for campaigns and they need money for paying off law fair maybe, which is also a campaign

00:43:57.840 expense or it could be. So yes, I think money's part of it, but no, I don't think there's any chance

00:44:03.920 that Vivek is, you know, taking some kind of, you know, personal enrichment. I don't, I don't think

00:44:08.640 that's possible. All right. So I wonder this about the tick tock ban. I'm trying to remember

00:44:17.600 who were the first people who said you should ban tick tock? Could you tell me in the comments who

00:44:23.120 were the first public figures you saw say it? Cause I kind of wondered if it was me.

00:44:28.560 And so I did a search, uh, using Grok. So that's the AI that's built into X and it said that the

00:44:40.320 first public figure to bring up a band was Mike Pompeo in 2020. Does that, does that sound like

00:44:48.880 the first place you saw it? Because my memory is that it was me, but you know, I, I like to,

00:44:56.240 I'm a grandiose narcissist. So I tend to remember things about myself better than they actually

00:45:01.440 happened. But my memory is that it was me. Did anybody have the same memory or am I literally

00:45:09.120 just hallucinating? All right. So I see at least one person who thinks it was me. All right. I don't

00:45:17.600 know the answer to that. So when I asked Grok, here's what it said. Uh, I, I asked literally,

00:45:25.440 um, you know, if I was one of the first people and it said, uh, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert

00:45:30.880 comic has been vocal about his concerns regarding tick tock. So far, so good, particularly in the past

00:45:38.400 year. Exactly. However, he has not explicitly called for a ban on the platform.

00:45:47.440 Wait, what? He has not explicitly called for a ban on the platform. Instead, Adams has emphasized

00:45:55.120 the need to address the potential risks associated with tick tock, such as data privacy and security

00:45:59.360 issues, as well as his influence on young people. Um, in a recent tweet on March 11th, 2024, Adams

00:46:07.600 expresses concern about tick tock, stating Congress must be owned by China to some degree, because the

00:46:12.560 case for banning tick tock is both obvious and critical to the survival of the United States.

00:46:16.880 And Grok goes on and says, he further argued that tick tock poses a greater risk to America

00:46:21.680 than other issues such as Russia, climate change, ran and expended.

00:46:25.360 It is important to note that while Adams has not explicitly advocated for banning tick tock,

00:46:31.120 he has consistently raised concerns.

00:46:37.040 That's right.

00:46:40.320 Apparently Grok 0.97

00:46:43.680 thinks that the person who probably started the whole fucking thing isn't in favor of it. 0.99

00:46:51.280 Just hold that in your head for a moment. 0.99

00:46:52.640 A.I. is erasing history in real time.

00:47:00.000 Let me say that again.

00:47:01.920 A.I. is erasing history and rewriting it in real time.

00:47:09.920 Do you think that'll get fixed?

00:47:14.320 In the future, are you going to do a direct Google search or will you always be talking to A.I.?

00:47:19.840 And we're probably just a few months away from all searches would be A.I.

00:47:24.480 This is what A.I. thinks.

00:47:26.080 Now remember, this is an A.I., the A.I. that's built into X, that does not, as far as I know,

00:47:33.120 have a bias against me.

00:47:35.440 So there's no bias because I've tried to see if there is any.

00:47:39.280 When I search it, it doesn't have any bias against me.

00:47:42.560 But this is completely opposite.

00:47:48.000 That if it's true that I was the first person to say it, public figure.

00:47:53.680 And I don't know that's true.

00:47:55.760 I still need a fact check on that because I've got faulty memory.

00:48:00.160 But at the very least, I'm one of the most prominent people who's been saying it should be banned.

00:48:06.880 And it says exactly the opposite, that I've never said ban it.

00:48:11.440 Is that scary to you?

00:48:12.560 Am I making too much of a big deal about it just because it's about me? 0.97

00:48:20.240 Or does this scare the living shit out of you that history is just being erased? 0.93

00:48:26.640 Now why in the world would Grok have this opinion? 0.53

00:48:29.920 It didn't get it from any kind of a search.

00:48:33.040 Or did it make the opinion based on what it didn't find?

00:48:36.720 I don't know.

00:48:37.440 Should it make that kind of inference?

00:48:38.800 So that's scary.

00:48:44.640 Thomas Massey is talking about TikTok being a Trojan horse.

00:48:48.240 And he says that it would give the president the power to ban websites, not just apps.

00:48:54.960 And the person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. or offshore internet hosting service or app store, not the foreign adversary.

00:49:04.500 So in other words, the criminal would not be China or even TikTok, I guess.

00:49:11.840 No, he could ban the apps.

00:49:14.500 So they could ban the app, but it wouldn't be punishing China, the country.

00:49:18.820 So do you buy that the president should not have the power to ban websites and apps under the commander-in-chief role?

00:49:32.740 Commander-in-chief.

00:49:34.600 Should the commander-in-chief be able to ban a website or an app?

00:49:39.480 Well, the worry here would be that the commander-in-chief, being a political animal, would use this new power to do things that you would not want them to do.

00:49:50.840 And maybe they would ban a platform that just says bad things about them politically.

00:49:56.120 Is that a risk?

00:49:58.280 Well, here's my take on it.

00:50:01.720 What the hell do you think the commander-in-chief's job is?

00:50:05.880 What do you think his job is?

00:50:07.280 Or her?

00:50:09.480 The job of the commander-in-chief is to make decisions that would be too hard or wouldn't make sense to be done by committee

00:50:19.500 because they're so big and so important, and you don't need anybody but somebody who's looking out for you to make the decision.

00:50:26.180 And you've got to do it fast.

00:50:28.600 Well, that's what the commander-in-chief does.

00:50:31.760 Now, the one good thing about most of the commander-in-chief stuff is it's public.

00:50:36.160 So if the commander-in-chief says, I'm going to take out this terrorist, well, you might say to yourself, I'm not even sure that's legal.

00:50:44.920 But you also say to yourself, well, but it's definitely what a commander-in-chief is supposed to do.

00:50:51.020 So you let it go.

00:50:53.000 So I would say that if the commander-in-chief used commander-in-chief power to ban something for purely political reasons and everybody could tell,

00:51:01.440 well, there would be such an uproar that it just couldn't happen.

00:51:06.880 And politically, it would be, you know, suicide.

00:51:11.240 But if the president banned a website that clearly was damaging America, would you have a problem with that?

00:51:18.580 So remember that Massey's point is not that the commander-in-chief might ban TikTok specifically.

00:51:25.980 The bigger worry that he's expressing just in this opinion specifically is that it could be overused.

00:51:31.820 I don't buy that because the commander-in-chief is a position in which overusing it is built into the job description.

00:51:42.720 We do give them the power to do way more than you'd expect, you know, would be part of some legal structure.

00:51:51.760 So I would say this is normal and that the commander-in-chief has to not just look at missiles and bombs, but needs to look at persuasion as a military tool.

00:52:06.700 So, yes, it's a risk.

00:52:08.740 And, yes, the calling it a Trojan horse, it's hyperbole, but not too far off.

00:52:15.320 If we were not aware of this, that would be a fair statement.

00:52:18.820 And I don't think we would have been unless he pointed it out.

00:52:22.060 So you could say that's reasonable hyperbole in this situation.

00:52:26.320 There's such a thing as reasonable hyperbole.

00:52:29.720 Let me read this comment here.

00:52:32.280 Scott, I think you're wrong on this.

00:52:34.620 Imagine Biden and the complicit press making the case that the conservative treehouse website is full of domestic terrorist oath-breaking insurrectionists.

00:52:42.860 Right.

00:52:43.660 So that is the risk that you're saying is the one I'm acknowledging.

00:52:46.820 That the commander-in-chief could act in a way that's purely political, but it would be suicide.

00:52:56.220 It would be suicide.

00:52:58.440 Yeah.

00:52:58.780 So they could do that.

00:53:00.460 But the political blowback, it wouldn't be worth it.

00:53:04.340 So the thing you count on is it just wouldn't make sense.

00:53:08.260 Now, is it a risk?

00:53:10.640 Yeah.

00:53:11.640 It's a risk.

00:53:12.400 What would happen if Biden banned a, let's say, a conservative-leaning website for being a dangerous source of misinformation?

00:53:21.140 Well, the very next president would ban a liberal website.

00:53:26.480 And nobody wants that.

00:53:28.260 So there's some mutually assured destruction going on.

00:53:30.860 And it's a known risk.

00:53:35.180 So I will not minimize the risk.

00:53:37.980 I just think that when you're commander-in-chief, it's your job to manage gigantic risks.

00:53:45.800 And this should be part of the job.

00:53:50.560 Yeah, there are checks and balances even within the commander-in-chief job.

00:53:55.560 That's a good point.

00:53:57.060 Yeah.

00:53:57.760 The commander-in-chief can't just sign anything and it happens, right?

00:54:01.100 There will be a giant bureaucracy that's going to say, if you do that, do you understand all the problems that that's going to cause relative to what small problem you solve?

00:54:12.140 Let's take your example.

00:54:13.200 If Biden banned the conservative treehouse, that's a website, that would be a tiny, tiny little blow to the entire conservative ecosystem, although you've heard of it.

00:54:28.740 I mean, it's a substantial entity.

00:54:31.040 But compared to Fox News and all the larger entities, it's a small percentage.

00:54:36.020 But the political blowback from banning a website primarily for politics, and everybody would see that, would be so big that the benefit you got from silencing a smallish website couldn't possibly make sense, in my opinion.

00:54:54.520 But yes, it could be abused.

00:54:57.000 Anyway, here's why I'm joining TikTok.

00:54:59.220 It turns out that my biggest social media account is on TikTok already.

00:55:07.600 It's just illegal.

00:55:09.520 So there's something called Scott Adams underscore official, and it has 1.3 million followers and shares my clips from this show.

00:55:20.320 Illegally.

00:55:20.880 So I'm going to get on TikTok with a separate device so TikTok can't get into my stuff.

00:55:30.120 And then I'm going to contact my lawyer, and I'll have my lawyer contact this account or TikTok and see if they'll transfer it to me.

00:55:41.380 Now, they don't have to transfer it to me.

00:55:43.140 I don't think there's any law that would require that. 0.92

00:55:45.480 But I will lawfare them to death if they don't.

00:55:50.880 So, whoever is running the 1.3 million followers is obviously a fan.

00:55:56.500 And if you see this, and you probably will, you should contact me, and we should talk about turning over the account to me.

00:56:05.160 Because that's the one way that you can survive this.

00:56:08.720 Because I'm not going to go soft.

00:56:13.580 I only have two modes.

00:56:15.620 I only have two modes, which is, well, I don't care.

00:56:19.680 And, oh, now I have to make something happen.

00:56:25.620 So I'm not in the flexible mode.

00:56:30.040 I'm going to own this account or destroy it.

00:56:33.900 And if you want to fight about it, I'm up for that fight.

00:56:37.760 So let's do that.

00:56:40.160 I will put all of my attention into that fight.

00:56:43.140 So if you want to fight, and I don't think you do because I think it's a fan account, literally a fan account.

00:56:48.860 If you'd like to do what's good for me and you'd like to TikTok people to see my content, I'll help you out with that.

00:56:57.580 I'll make sure the content is still there, as long as I can monetize it.

00:57:04.520 Can you monetize on TikTok?

00:57:06.560 I don't even know if you can.

00:57:10.340 Who knows the answer to that?

00:57:11.840 I have so little TikTok exposure.

00:57:15.060 Do they monetize?

00:57:15.960 Pay him for it.

00:57:24.680 Jack off.

00:57:26.040 I don't have to pay for it. 0.92

00:57:29.320 Why would I pay somebody who stole from me? 1.00

00:57:32.700 That's the dumbest fucking thing anybody ever said. 1.00

00:57:37.340 No. 1.00

00:57:37.780 If he had had permission, it would be different.

00:57:43.120 But it's left.

00:57:45.360 It's just left.

00:57:48.180 All right.

00:57:51.340 The Hill says that 37% of the people surveyed say Biden is respected by world leaders.

00:57:59.880 That's in a Gallup poll.

00:58:04.000 Do you remember when that mattered?

00:58:05.600 Do you remember when the news told us it mattered, that foreign leaders respect our president?

00:58:12.580 And that, you know, because it was Trump, it was going to be a big problem.

00:58:17.040 Do you think that only 37% of people thought that world leaders respected Trump by the end of his term?

00:58:26.220 I don't know.

00:58:26.980 So why did this go from the biggest problem in the world to nothing?

00:58:30.580 Now it's just a poll result.

00:58:33.480 It's not the biggest problem in the world suddenly?

00:58:36.120 Yeah, what happened?

00:58:38.020 Well, maybe it's like BLM.

00:58:40.660 Black Lives Matter and all this police brutality was the biggest thing in the world until it didn't need to be. 0.54

00:58:46.680 And then suddenly it just went away.

00:58:47.980 Well, here's more evidence that our opinions are assigned to us by the medium, media.

00:58:57.700 They were happy to assign the opinion to us that the respect of our president among world leaders was a critical, critical thing.

00:59:06.120 And now it's not.

00:59:11.180 Of course not.

00:59:11.680 It doesn't matter.

00:59:13.980 So, yes, our opinions are assigned.

00:59:16.480 There's more talk about the Trump revenge tour and will he just get in office and spend all this time and resources getting revenge.

00:59:25.040 And, but he's done a good job of reframing that as revenge is just doing a good job.

00:59:33.680 He also reframes his, quote, conservative policies.

00:59:37.400 And he says he's not really a conservative, that he has common sense policies.

00:59:42.500 Very good reframe.

00:59:43.480 Now, you could argue how technically true it is, but if you're running for president of the whole United States, I think it's a mistake to say you have conservative policies.

00:59:55.140 You know, once you get outside the primary, you want the president to have common sense.

01:00:01.160 And that's actually a strong reframe.

01:00:03.300 I like that.

01:00:03.860 I think everybody is so disgusted with, you know, the, the Democrat versus Republican thing that simply saying you're, you're not just doing everything conservative.

01:00:15.540 You're just doing things that make sense.

01:00:16.640 And by the way, that actually fits because if you take something like IVF, Trump's in favor of it, but the, you know, there are some extreme, I don't want to say extreme.

01:00:29.860 There's some members of the conservative group who say no.

01:00:32.880 So he does pick, he does pick his policies.

01:00:36.860 So I think he does, he does have a claim that he is doing what makes sense and not what is just dogma.

01:00:45.500 I think that's actually true.

01:00:47.240 It's persuasion, but I think it's actually true.

01:00:51.920 He's repeatedly pledged to investigate Biden and his family after he becomes president, I guess, again.

01:00:59.020 And here's what I think.

01:01:04.560 The fact that the press wants to call it revenge, if Trump gets into office and then, let's say, initiates some legal action against people who he thinks deserve it.

01:01:15.600 Doesn't it feel like the press is priming us to see whatever happens to Democrats is revenge and not justice?

01:01:24.900 Doesn't it feel like priming?

01:01:26.260 Yeah.

01:01:29.020 So, so the, the, the, the comments on here are whether I look more like I have AIDS.

01:01:37.060 What was the other thing?

01:01:39.800 Yeah.

01:01:40.480 But basically the, the commentary is about my physical appearance.

01:01:44.280 You, you know, that's not what I lead with, right?

01:01:50.600 Are you concerned that my, my ego about my physical appearance will be, you're going to damage me somehow?

01:02:01.680 I have a mirror.

01:02:04.080 I have the mirror.

01:02:05.600 I know what I look like.

01:02:06.980 You're commenting on every single internal thought.

01:02:13.900 Is amusing. 0.99

01:02:14.860 The cannibal clown jokes are getting less funny every time you clowns reword it. 0.96

01:02:26.640 Cannibal clown jokes. 0.98

01:02:28.060 You mean jokes about cannibals and clowns?

01:02:31.320 Or you just don't like cannibal jokes?

01:02:33.740 There's some people here that don't like cannibal jokes, apparently.

01:02:35.880 Anyway, there's another story that says a litmus test for Trump's VP pick will be what they say they would have done if they had been in Mike Pence's position about certifying the 2020 election.

01:02:49.800 And one of the better answers was from J.D. Vance.

01:02:56.220 I'm not going to say there's a right answer.

01:02:58.140 I'll just say the better answer for both getting the job and for communicating.

01:03:02.760 J.D. Vance has a good answer.

01:03:04.700 He said he'd tell the states to send more than one slate of electors and he'd let Congress sort it out.

01:03:11.240 Now, I don't know enough about the process of the government to know if that's a good idea or a bad idea.

01:03:16.880 I really don't.

01:03:17.640 But it makes sense.

01:03:22.180 Like, as an answer to the question, it's pretty good.

01:03:26.340 See, this is the difference between was it an insurrection or was it a protest in which we were trying to find out what was true.

01:03:34.540 The Democrats are unaware, because nobody will tell them, that the so-called fake electors that the Trump people were trying to put together

01:03:45.520 was for the purpose of keeping their option and making sure that they've established a strong claim

01:03:53.300 with the knowledge that it always has to be worked out by the courts or the Congress or whatever.

01:03:59.920 Right.

01:04:00.160 So it's going to be some combination of the courts and the Congress.

01:04:02.400 It's not like Trump could just individually make a different slate of electors stick.

01:04:09.000 So I think you would have to not understand how anything works to believe the claim that Trump believed that simply having fake electors would make him the next president.

01:04:21.220 It would not.

01:04:23.520 And I don't believe anybody believed that because it's absurd.

01:04:26.700 All it was was to, you know, persuade and create the impression that they have a strong claim, buy some time to look into some specific allegations about the election,

01:04:38.720 which might have been 48 hours.

01:04:40.620 That's what they were asking for.

01:04:43.480 And then they would either have, you know, one slate of electors or the other certified.

01:04:48.540 So in other words, there was never anything that happened on January 6th in terms of the certification stuff and the electors.

01:04:58.880 That wasn't part of our process.

01:05:00.580 The process allowed all of it.

01:05:03.140 Right.

01:05:04.920 So let's talk about.

01:05:09.220 Oh, the Haiti prime minister resigned.

01:05:12.480 He stepped down.

01:05:13.780 So Haiti has no government.

01:05:15.120 And he said, well, he's going to resign upon the creation of a transitional presidential council.

01:05:22.980 So if they come up with a transitional council, he'll step down.

01:05:28.740 I think the I think we already have military over there.

01:05:31.780 The U.S. does.

01:05:32.880 So at this point, the U.S. is exerting control over it.

01:05:37.640 And I'm sure we'll get our puppet back in play.

01:05:40.080 OK, well, I asked on the another poll on X today, I said, what's more dangerous to America?

01:05:48.560 What's the bigger existential threat, climate change or DEI?

01:05:54.180 And of course, DEI won 90 percent of the vote.

01:05:58.140 Now.

01:06:00.140 Why is that?

01:06:01.020 Well, first of all, I like Alex Epstein's reframe that we shouldn't be talking about climate change.

01:06:08.760 We should be talking about minimizing any risk of it.

01:06:13.800 So minimizing the damage instead of stopping the thing, because you might not be able to stop the thing.

01:06:19.560 Maybe it doesn't need to be stopped.

01:06:21.140 Maybe warmer is better.

01:06:22.740 Who knows?

01:06:23.220 Maybe some places better, some places worse.

01:06:25.720 But if you concentrate on keeping people alive and fed, that makes a lot of sense.

01:06:32.380 Where if you say our problem is the change.

01:06:35.280 Well, then you do a bunch of crazy stuff and real expensive stuff.

01:06:39.460 So it's a good reframe to work on the.

01:06:42.760 We'll say the survival and the thriving of the humans and not measuring the temperature and trying to change that.

01:06:51.180 All right.

01:06:51.820 But big story, you already heard it, is that the reason that we can't have good things in America is because the CHIPS Act was supposed to put a bunch of money, government money behind building manufacturing for chips in the United States.

01:07:08.300 So we didn't have to depend on a little island off of China, Taiwan.

01:07:12.380 And apparently it's not happening.

01:07:15.220 Do you know why it's not happening?

01:07:16.500 It's because the DEI requirements and the CHIPS Act had 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a chief diversity officer at the National Science Foundation and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls minority serving institutions and more and more and more and more.

01:07:38.560 So anybody who is an entrepreneur or has investment money, they look at this and they say, well, I like the part about getting money to help build a chip factory, but I am not in any world going to agree to these onerous DEI requirements, so we don't get chips.

01:07:56.920 So let me ask you again, what is a bigger existential threat to the country, that the climate is changing slowly or that if something happens with China, we would lose access to all modern civilization because we can't make the chips? 0.96

01:08:18.800 Which is a bigger threat, which is a bigger threat, which is a bigger threat, it's not even close.

01:08:24.420 These are not even in the same galaxy.

01:08:29.280 Climate change might actually kill people and have to be a risk in some future time.

01:08:34.900 It's far more likely we'll figure out how to manage it than it is that it'll kill us.

01:08:39.920 But we are basically one order from President Xi that says, don't get near Taiwan or we'll sink your ship, and our entire civilization is done.

01:08:53.880 That is a really big risk.

01:08:56.260 So DEI is destroying the world, and you say to yourself, Scott, if DEI were such a problem,

01:09:03.840 it wouldn't be just in this CHIPS Act manufacturing thing.

01:09:09.620 You'd see it in other domains.

01:09:12.240 You would see it like creating a crisis of incompetency, not because minorities have less competence, 0.88

01:09:20.520 but because the math of it is the pipeline doesn't have enough for the people who want to hire.

01:09:26.340 So necessarily because humans are humans, they will meet their objective of diversity by hiring less qualified people.

01:09:33.320 Again, not because minorities are less qualified, but only because they're in short supply relative to the demand.

01:09:43.620 So if that were the case, and that's also bad, I mean, imagine what we would see if that were true.

01:09:50.620 I mean, you'd see suddenly stuff like, I don't know, like airplanes would be having all kinds of maintenance problems they never had before.

01:10:00.500 And we're not seeing anything like that.

01:10:03.320 You might see, like, massive lawsuits being filed over racial discrimination against white people.

01:10:11.500 Okay, we are seeing a lot of that coming out from Stephen Miller's group, the America First legal thing.

01:10:17.920 They're looking to sue over that.

01:10:20.460 Okay, well, maybe the planes are having massive maintenance problems,

01:10:24.440 and maybe there are massive lawsuits being formed over discrimination.

01:10:30.340 But, I mean, those are just a few items, right?

01:10:33.180 I mean, there's the chips, the airlines, the discrimination hiring.

01:10:40.020 But there's another story in the news that there's a Kobe Bryant statue in L.A., I guess outside the stadium,

01:10:45.900 and there are quite a few misspellings in the placard.

01:10:52.460 A lot of misspellings.

01:10:53.780 I don't know who made the Kobe statue, but I'm going to guess some DEI was involved, maybe.

01:11:07.280 And if DEI were such a bad thing, I mean, you can imagine that you wouldn't even have access to,

01:11:14.620 and this is horrible, but imagine that the general public would no longer have access to their favorite comic strips.

01:11:22.280 But we're not seeing anything like that happen.

01:11:25.500 So, sarcasm off. 1.00

01:11:30.540 All right, do you ever wonder why so many teachers are idiots? 1.00

01:11:35.360 Robbie Starbuck reports that if you apply to be a teacher in Nashville's public schools, 1.00

01:11:39.620 you have to agree to all the racist DEI questions or you can't get hired.

01:11:44.620 So, they've got a little test where if you don't basically fully embrace being a racist against white people,

01:11:52.260 you can't get hired as a teacher.

01:11:54.460 You actually have to prove in writing you're a racist against white people, or you can't get hired.

01:12:00.400 Now, you would say, Scott, you're mischaracterizing what it is.

01:12:03.680 It's really just a bunch of questions that show that somebody is, let's say, woke and cares about diversity.

01:12:10.880 No, it's nothing like that. 0.95

01:12:12.280 It's pretty much proving that you hate white people, or you can't get hired. 0.98

01:12:15.600 So, you can look at it yourself. 0.97

01:12:18.720 And the other thing that's funny is the multiple choices only have the choice of strongly agree or strongly disagree.

01:12:25.420 Talk about putting your thumb on the scale.

01:12:28.680 All right.

01:12:28.960 The HUR hearings are happening, H-U-R hearings. 0.90

01:12:34.220 So, this is the special counsel who is looking into Biden's retaining of those private documents.

01:12:41.440 And the first thing I heard about this is brand new, so I don't have details.

01:12:45.160 Apparently, in the HUR's report, it says, quote,

01:12:48.480 My team and I conducted a thorough independent investigation.

01:12:51.120 We identified evidence that the president, that's Biden, willfully retained classified materials.

01:12:57.340 After the end of his vice presidency, when he was a private citizen, willfully retained classified materials.

01:13:06.420 Now, that's worse than what Trump did, because my argument goes like this.

01:13:15.800 Trump at least has a cogent and reasonable argument, a common-sense argument, that when he was president, he had full control over what is declassified.

01:13:26.880 And the very act of putting them in boxes and taking them out is a de facto classification.

01:13:34.260 Now, will that argument work?

01:13:36.560 I don't know.

01:13:37.480 But if you ask me from a non-lawyer point of view, does that make sense?

01:13:42.480 Completely.

01:13:43.680 In fact, I'm pretty sure if the situation reversed, I would say, oh, okay, if Biden knew he was taking him and he was president, then that's a de facto declassification.

01:13:55.240 And there's no specific requirements of paperwork to declassify if you're president.

01:14:00.020 You just have to want it declassified, and it is.

01:14:03.220 So it looks to me that what Biden did was worse, because he was retaining things that had never been declassified or even de facto declassified in an arguable way.

01:14:15.320 But he did not get penalized, because we believe that Herr thinks he's an old man and his memory is gone and the jury would not convict him.

01:14:32.320 All right.

01:14:33.320 Stephen A. Smith.

01:14:34.640 Do you know Stephen A. Smith?

01:14:35.760 He's black, which I only say because it matters to the story.

01:14:44.740 And I'm not really familiar.

01:14:47.860 I guess he mostly talks about sports, and I've had only passing exposure to him.

01:14:54.480 Never had an opinion one way or the other.

01:14:56.400 I just didn't know his deal.

01:14:57.980 But he did a little three-minute speech on video in which he is sort of mocking Biden for, you know, making it an hour in a speech and people acting like, oh, that's all we need to know.

01:15:13.140 And the reason I would recommend this is I don't know if I've ever seen anybody give a better presentation about anything.

01:15:19.840 Oh, my God, he's talented.

01:15:21.220 So my statement here is not about Biden.

01:15:25.680 You know, we've talked about his energy enough.

01:15:28.240 But, oh, my God, if you want to see the best you could see of just somebody making a point in three minutes, watch Stephen A. Smith give you the best body language, visual, sarcastic, funny, right on point presentation.

01:15:50.220 I mean, I highly recommend it.

01:15:52.340 So it's in my X feed if you want to go look at that.

01:15:56.060 Really, really good job.

01:15:57.740 Anyway, apparently the hoax about Trump wanting to grab the wheel of the beast, the so-called beast, as the car the president drives in.

01:16:08.280 And Cassidy Hutchinson, who had been the chief of staff for Mark Meadows, said that she was she's so she's the one who said that that the president not only lunged at the steering wheel and that the Secret Service had to grab his arm because Trump wanted to go to the January 6th protest.

01:16:27.500 But the Secret Service wasn't going to let him.

01:16:30.300 And then Hutchinson said that he lunged for the clavicle of the Secret Service driver.

01:16:39.200 In other words, like his neck, a clavicle just below the neck.

01:16:43.300 And then we find out that there was testimony from the actual Secret Service who said nothing like that ever happened.

01:16:53.980 The Secret Service.

01:16:56.360 Under oath.

01:16:58.420 The Secret Service.

01:17:00.700 Under oath.

01:17:02.180 Said it never happened.

01:17:03.060 And of course, you're all familiar with that.

01:17:07.480 No, you're not, because it turns out the January 6th committee hid that.

01:17:12.760 They hid it.

01:17:14.420 You don't think that would be a little bit relevant to the question of whether it happened?

01:17:18.620 Talking to the person that it allegedly happened to, who is a Secret Service.

01:17:24.780 And under oath.

01:17:26.400 And said, no, nothing like that happened.

01:17:28.600 Or he was not aware of anything like that.

01:17:30.560 Didn't say it.

01:17:31.260 And he was, obviously, would see it.

01:17:34.340 So, it seems to me that the January 6th committee should be in jail.

01:17:39.700 No, you agree?

01:17:41.140 If they intentionally hid this testimony, there's got to be some law.

01:17:47.940 You tell me there's no law that allows, there's no law that prevents them from doing that?

01:17:54.140 There's got to be a law.

01:17:55.860 I mean, I would make up a law. 0.99

01:17:57.080 So, if Trump became president, and he said, look, you just made this shit up, and you hid the evidence that it didn't happen, and it's a horrible thing to the country, and we're going to put you in jail for it, would that be revenge? 0.99

01:18:11.400 Would you call that revenge? 0.99

01:18:14.980 If the people who hid the exculpatory evidence knew they were doing it, obviously they knew.

01:18:22.120 Did it anyway.

01:18:24.900 Again, I don't know what crime it is, but you can always find a crime in these situations.

01:18:29.620 I think they belong in jail.

01:18:31.060 It's one of the worst things I've ever heard in politics.

01:18:34.020 This is in the top 1% of the worst things in American politics.

01:18:40.640 What about the McCarthy hearings?

01:18:44.320 Not as bad.

01:18:46.740 Not as bad.

01:18:47.420 In my opinion, not as bad.

01:18:48.700 This is the worst thing I've ever seen in American politics.

01:18:52.700 Now, this assumes that the facts, you know, stay the facts we know.

01:18:56.700 Yeah, it's hard not to be in favor of revenge in this case, but I wouldn't call it revenge, because this would be just the thing that should have happened.

01:19:06.760 Why do you call it revenge if it's just the thing that should happen?

01:19:10.920 All right, Congresswoman Tlaib is trying to get together some kind of living wage for artists, so that the ones who don't make money on streaming and other ways can make some money. 1.00

01:19:22.820 Her claim is that if you had 800,000 plays of your song on Spotify, you would only be making the equivalent of, well, nothing, basically, $15 an hour.

01:19:37.980 It would be like a minimum wage job.

01:19:40.340 Can you imagine having 800,000 listens, and you got paid, you know, like a few hundred dollars?

01:19:48.900 Now, compare this.

01:19:50.780 In the old days, if you were making an album, you might, I'm just going to make up a number.

01:19:55.940 Let's say you sold it for $10, people would pay $10 for one album.

01:20:02.280 Now, you could pay $10, and again, I'm just making that up, it's in the ballpark, for all the music in the world forever, $10 per month.

01:20:12.460 So, where did all the money go?

01:20:15.640 It went to the streaming services.

01:20:17.240 So, the streaming services just basically robbed the musicians of an immense amount of money, because they could.

01:20:26.720 They just could.

01:20:29.000 Generally speaking, whenever you see that your work as an artist is being combined with other people's work for some distribution reason,

01:20:36.880 that's always bad for the artists who are at the top of the chain.

01:20:41.180 It will always be stealing their money. 1.00

01:20:43.840 And if they agree to it, they're idiots, but sometimes you get forced into it. 0.99

01:20:47.940 So, I'm on Spotify for this as well. 0.98

01:20:53.400 So, Spotify just lowered my amount, income royalties, whatever, from Spotify.

01:21:02.460 I don't know if it's a permanent change, because they're also moving me to a different kind of advertising.

01:21:06.940 I moved from, what do they call it, ambassador ads, to they would place the ads themselves.

01:21:15.360 But it went from, well, it decreased by 90%.

01:21:18.780 So, what I was getting already, which was small, they decreased it by 90%.

01:21:25.980 But I don't know if that's permanent.

01:21:27.680 I'll have to wait a month to see if it evens out.

01:21:30.280 So, yes, I would say that Spotify and the streaming services, when it comes to music or podcasts,

01:21:37.180 I don't like to use the word fair, but it would certainly make sense if the better artists got off that platform, if they could.

01:21:50.200 All right, Rassman says that eight months before the presidential election,

01:21:55.940 91% of likely U.S. voters think the economy is the biggest issue.

01:22:01.280 Almost as many, 86% think immigration-related issues.

01:22:05.300 But that's sort of tied up in the economy, so that makes sense.

01:22:09.600 And then 71% say the issue of abortion will be important, including 44% who say it would be very important.

01:22:19.060 What do you think?

01:22:20.560 Do you think abortion is going to be very important? 0.65

01:22:23.080 I don't know.

01:22:24.620 Probably.

01:22:26.860 So, there was a Boeing whistleblower.

01:22:28.820 You said that Boeing, I guess, his claim was that they weren't doing a good job of building their planes, meaning that it would be unsafe.

01:22:38.880 That would be the claim from the whistleblower.

01:22:40.620 And he was found dead of an apparent suicide by gunshot while he was in his car.

01:22:46.440 So, do you think that's a coincidence, that the whistleblower is dead of a gunshot, apparent suicide?

01:22:56.420 Well, it could be.

01:22:58.060 Here's why.

01:22:58.880 I believe that being a whistleblower and committing suicide are largely similar.

01:23:06.300 You don't become a whistleblower until you have devalued your own life.

01:23:11.620 Let me say that again.

01:23:14.620 You don't become a whistleblower until you've already devalued the value of your own survival.

01:23:20.720 Because that's built in.

01:23:23.500 If you're not willing to take that risk, you don't become a whistleblower.

01:23:28.060 Right?

01:23:28.560 You've devalued the value of your own life.

01:23:31.080 And that's what suicide is.

01:23:32.100 So, you have to ask the question, this is a pretty big coincidence, but on the other hand, it would be consistent with somebody who had blown up his entire life and he just said,

01:23:47.960 well, I just threw away everything to be a whistleblower and nothing changed.

01:23:52.640 What would you do?

01:23:54.340 You're a certain age.

01:23:55.940 I couldn't tell his age, 60-ish, maybe.

01:23:58.400 You're a certain age, and you just threw away everything, and you got nothing for it.

01:24:04.740 You got nothing.

01:24:07.100 And then he killed himself, they say.

01:24:09.240 That's not crazy.

01:24:12.040 So, we should all be concerned that he got Epstein'd, and I would certainly be investigating it like a possible murder.

01:24:22.680 But, this is a special case.

01:24:25.320 Could have been a suicide.

01:24:26.100 But, Rand Paul is sounding the alarm that Trump is endorsing Mike Rogers for his run for office in Michigan.

01:24:36.380 And, this is what Rand says about Mike Rogers.

01:24:38.680 Donald Trump just endorsed the worst deep state candidate this cycle.

01:24:43.520 Mike Rogers is a never-Trumper and a card-carrying member of the spy state that seeks to destroy Trump.

01:24:50.040 You have to ask yourself, who gives Trump this awful advice?

01:24:53.620 Who's next?

01:24:54.620 John Bolton.

01:24:56.100 Good question.

01:25:02.260 But, I assume, if, you know, Trump being Trump, I assume he has taken all of that into consideration, and that whatever reason he's doing it for is at least well considered.

01:25:15.240 You know, even if you don't agree with it.

01:25:16.940 So, there must be some play here.

01:25:19.220 It could be that, you know, he thinks Rogers will be on his side.

01:25:24.380 And, maybe he will.

01:25:25.320 I don't know.

01:25:25.680 But, but that concludes my amazing show for today.

01:25:30.560 Thanks for joining.

01:25:31.800 And, uh...

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 12, 2024

Episode 2411 CWSA 03⧸12⧸24

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