Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 2703 CWSA 12⧸28⧸24

00:00:00.000 at a better time. But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even

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00:00:30.000 Well, I thought it was Sunday until just recently. I've been told it's Saturday. Do we have

00:00:43.220 agreement on that? Today's Saturday? All right. Good. Good. We're starting out with complete

00:00:48.920 agreement. I do not like the... All right. That's better. Let's fix that. All right. First

00:00:58.760 of all, a minor announcement. I'm going to try to use, well, two things. I'm going to try to curse

00:01:09.060 less in the coming year. I won't call it a resolution, but year-end's a good time to start.

00:01:15.260 And if I do, I'm going to use AI to remove the curse words. So YouTube will first, you know,

00:01:24.620 it's live streaming. So any curses will be in there, but we can quickly replace them.

00:01:31.120 There are several AI programs that you just run the video through and it takes out the curse words.

00:01:37.120 So we're going to play with that. I don't know if that'll work, but in theory, you should be able

00:01:42.420 to get a curse-free version of everything, at least on YouTube. And then I suppose we can load that up to

00:01:51.680 locals as well. All right. Apparently, some researchers are building an AI system to talk

00:02:00.140 to animals. And why it matters is because it could aid human knowledge of our world. Okay. Okay.

00:02:07.880 Talking to animals. That's good. But it could provide a compelling case for giving animals broader legal rights.

00:02:15.000 So do you want to live in that world where the animals can talk so they start pestering for broader rights?

00:02:28.840 You know, it's bad enough that your job is being taken from somebody from another country. Do you want to lose

00:02:35.820 your job to a ferret or a giraffe or something? No, much worse. We don't want our animals to talk.

00:02:42.820 They'll be taking our jobs. I'm just joking. They're not going to take your jobs.

00:02:47.360 But we'll talk about that other thing. So, yeah, I want that so I can talk to my dog.

00:02:56.900 Meanwhile, according to CBS News, homelessness jumped 18% this year. And they say it's, the title says,

00:03:05.460 it's driven mostly by lack of affordable housing. How do you think they'd know that?

00:03:10.640 So they're quite confidently claiming that homelessness is up 18%. Now, that part they can

00:03:17.980 really just count. You know, it misses the people who are, you know, homeless, but staying with a

00:03:23.020 friend. But the actual outdoor homeless, they can just count it and it's up by 18%. But then they go,

00:03:29.460 it's mostly because of a lack of affordable housing. How do they know that? Do you believe

00:03:37.300 that they did a survey of just the people who were added to the homeless to know that just the

00:03:43.420 increase was mostly people who couldn't afford houses? Do you think they did that? No, I don't.

00:03:51.360 I think they just wrote a headline that said, huh, homelessness is way up and also rents are high.

00:03:57.800 Yeah, it must be because the rents are high. It might be. But everything we've seen historically

00:04:05.560 is that when you go to this same group of people, you say, hey, I got a deal for you. We will subsidize

00:04:12.760 your indoor living. You're now saved. You can leave the streets. You're not homeless anymore. We'll pay

00:04:18.880 for it. And then they say, uh, but do I have to follow your rules indoors? Well, I mean, you have

00:04:26.260 to be like a regular person. Yeah. So I can't be smoking meth and doing fentanyl. Well, we'd rather

00:04:34.280 you didn't do that. Well, then I think I'd rather just stay outside. So the people who have mental

00:04:40.220 problems and the people who are drug addicts, they're not outdoors because there is no way to be

00:04:45.900 indoors, even if somebody else pays for it. They're outdoors because all things considered,

00:04:53.060 they prefer it. So do you think CBS News simply guessed what the reason is? Or did they do a

00:05:00.440 survey that they didn't mention in the article? Now, if they mentioned it, I didn't see it.

00:05:05.920 So how could you make a claim like that without referencing how you came up with it?

00:05:10.760 So they could be right. I just don't think that they did any, any research to know if they're

00:05:17.800 right. Um, as you know, Trump has asked the Supreme court to delay the start of the

00:05:22.960 tick tock ban. Do you remember when you said to me, not you, but people said to me, um,

00:05:30.580 that tick tock should not be banned because of free speech. And I said, but China can manipulate it.

00:05:39.200 So that's a big risk. Well, how big of a risk is it? Well, you know, the two things to say,

00:05:46.200 number one, if Trump, um, gets his way, I think a conservative group of investors will buy tick

00:05:53.840 tock. Can you imagine a world in which X is owned by Musk and hypothetically tick tock gets bought by

00:06:04.120 some American right-leaning entity that would give the political right, or at least, at least

00:06:11.860 the reasonable middle, um, a lot of clout, it seems like, and it would reduce the risk of China,

00:06:18.980 um, manipulating. But is there really a risk that China, good old China, is there really a risk that

00:06:25.940 they would do some sneaky thing with an online thing? Come on, come on, it's China. Has China

00:06:33.060 ever done anything that would make you suspect, hmm, if they had some weapon they could use in the

00:06:39.320 cyber world, would they use it? Of course not. There's no evidence whatsoever that China has

00:06:46.000 any interest in bothering us with any cyber... Wait, my next story is, uh, apparently China has

00:06:54.740 penetrated all of our inter-telecommunications networks, uh, with a cyber attack called Salt

00:07:01.340 Typhoon, and they just totally attacked our ninth U.S. telecom company. Hackers have access to your

00:07:08.940 private text calls and even identified the owners of targeted devices. Um, so, yeah, apparently China

00:07:18.420 has penetrated all of our American important infrastructure. Let me say it again. China

00:07:29.320 already controls all of our digital infrastructure, meaning that they can turn off anything in our

00:07:37.240 country that's big and matters. All of it. And when I say they made these attacks, your, your common

00:07:46.340 sense is telling you, oh, they made an attack and then we, we found it and then we got rid of them.

00:07:52.440 You know, it's just, it's just whack-a-mole, but, you know, occasionally they'll get through and then

00:07:56.580 you get rid of them. No, that's not what happened. What happened is China burrowed into these companies

00:08:02.440 and they're there permanently. Meaning we can't find them and we can't get rid of them. They have permanent

00:08:09.540 control over all of our important networks for everything. Why? Well, Christopher Wray says that their

00:08:17.000 cyber efforts are 50 to one bigger than us and they're absolutely determined to own everything in the United

00:08:24.280 States in terms of the controlling our cyber infrastructure. And they've already done it.

00:08:30.340 It's not a future risk. They already own us. Now, the part we don't know is there, is there mutually

00:08:38.700 assured destruction? Meaning is America in all of China's important systems? Well, I hope so.

00:08:46.680 I hope so, but I don't know. And I think the only thing that keeps us from a catastrophic,

00:08:54.780 you know, total cyber crash that we can't recover from is that we do the same to China

00:09:00.340 because we would know it was them. So we'd, we'd pay them back and they can't afford that.

00:09:05.400 So it's mutually assured destruction. The cyber, cyber warfare has reached a level

00:09:11.980 where the only thing that keeps you from doing the biggest of the attacks, where they really try

00:09:17.760 to take down the network. The only thing keeping it from happening is that we do it to them.

00:09:22.540 That's it. We don't have any defense against it. So there's that. China, of course, denies involvement,

00:09:31.200 but here's what one expert said. Apparently there's some new updated guidance from the Department

00:09:36.660 of Homeland Security that just has one little scary line in it that says they discourage companies

00:09:43.320 from using two-part authentication by text. You know, when you're signing up for something

00:09:50.160 and it says, we'll text your phone to make sure it's really you. The Department of Homeland Security

00:09:56.600 says that's not safe because your text messages are being read by China. So two-party authentication

00:10:05.420 is not safe. Now that should tell you everything, you know, if China can read all of your text

00:10:14.840 messages and has some kind of control over your second-party authentication, they're into

00:10:21.100 everything. There wouldn't be any exception, I don't think. So there's that. That's according

00:10:28.180 to the AP News and Fox. Mexico built an app for the potential deportees in this country.

00:10:35.060 So if you're a Mexican, non-American citizen and you're at risk for being deported, Mexico

00:10:41.600 wanted to give you an app so that as soon as you found out you were going to get arrested,

00:10:45.480 if you knew in advance, you could push a button and it would warn at least your family, but

00:10:51.860 it would warn other people. As the Amuse account on X points out, that might be one thing they

00:11:00.940 didn't think about. Apparently this app gives the American government the ability to find all of

00:11:08.640 the non-citizens because you could just figure out who has the app and then you can figure out

00:11:14.500 their location and just go pick them up. Now, I'm not sure I have the whole story. It might be that

00:11:24.180 it's not that simple, but don't you believe our government could, with some legal authority,

00:11:31.140 figure out where any kind of phone made by an American company, what the app is and what the

00:11:39.200 GPS is? So I don't know that this is completely true. So there might be a little more to it that I

00:11:46.460 don't know. But if it's true, it would be funny that the Mexican government created an app that

00:11:53.040 the United States used to find all the illegal people. Anyway, Jonathan Turley points out that

00:12:03.580 the media is, as he says, struggling to ignore the corruption of the Biden scandal by insisting

00:12:10.040 there's no evidence. I saw this live when it happened and I just shook my head. So Abby Phillip

00:12:15.820 on CNN, who's a promoter of the fine people hoax, if you want to know who she is, if I tell you she's

00:12:25.480 a big promoter of the fine people hoax, that's everything you need to know. But she said the

00:12:33.240 other day, maybe yesterday, I'm still waiting to see the proof of Joe Biden enriching himself.

00:12:39.720 I take it that his brothers and son perhaps made some money, blah, blah, blah. And Jonathan

00:12:45.500 Turley's informing us that if you enrich your family members, that's still the crime family,

00:12:54.600 right? If Joe Biden did something that made his brother and his son rich, or just made money,

00:13:01.440 that's still the same crime. It doesn't matter if he personally got it, but he also personally got it.

00:13:07.640 If you ask me, this is the most well-documented series of events in America. We know exactly what

00:13:15.740 Hunter Biden did. We know who Joe met with. We know when. We know the entire flow of money from,

00:13:24.020 you know, let's say, dark Chinese sources right through the shell accounts and right into Joe Biden's

00:13:32.380 pocket. We know all of it. The only reason that we're sort of ignoring it is that there are people

00:13:38.480 like Abby Phillip who want to pretend that somehow there's nothing there. But they have to do that

00:13:45.520 because they also pretended they couldn't tell that he had dementia. So imagine the situation with the

00:13:55.480 fake news that they're just being beaten up like crazy, just getting beaten up for hiding the fact

00:14:05.180 that Biden was obviously, you know, not mentally capable. And now they're also hiding the fact

00:14:13.280 that the Biden crime family was not just a thing. It's the most well-documented thing we've ever seen

00:14:19.580 ever. It's so well-documented. So if they have to admit that they intentionally ignored all the solid

00:14:29.560 evidence of, you know, the Biden crime family, that's on top of ignoring the other massively obvious

00:14:36.840 thing that he had, mental decline. So I can see why they dig in and not have a second thing. But how are

00:14:43.760 they doing? Let's see. How are the ratings? Let's see. The AP reports, you know, in the gateway pundit

00:14:50.240 was talking about this, that MSNBC was down 54% from pre-election. CNN is down 45% from pre-election.

00:15:02.540 So I think that's just telling you that people got all they needed from the election stuff. And then

00:15:08.760 when the election was over, they had less interest. So they watched less news, right? That makes sense.

00:15:13.760 You know, you're all at, you're all interested before the election. That's when all the fighting

00:15:19.120 over who's going to win. But then when it's over, well, it's just Christmas and moving on to other

00:15:24.440 things. So it completely makes sense that temporarily, you know, temporarily, there'd be a little lull

00:15:30.060 in their ratings, right? So while CNN was down 45% and MSNBC was down 54%, obviously over at Fox News,

00:15:39.460 they would also be up 13%. Up 13%. Who's saying this? Oh, Neera? Yeah. So some people are mad at me

00:16:00.120 because I agreed with somebody who had other opinions I don't agree with. Does that make sense?

00:16:05.620 Is it okay if I agree with one thing and disagree with other things? Apparently that's not allowed,

00:16:14.360 right? Yeah. You have to just be in a team and you have to act stupid. So if I have to be stupid to

00:16:20.180 be part of a team, I don't want to be on the team. If I, if I could be smart and be on the team,

00:16:25.760 I'll do it. If it's a good team. All right. So I think that maybe the decline in MSNBC and CNN

00:16:33.600 could be partly because they're negative, meaning that all they're talking about is the end of the

00:16:39.880 world because Trump won. And if you go to Fox News, they're literally talking about the golden age

00:16:44.900 and how everything's going to be fixed pretty soon.

00:16:47.320 Which would you rather watch? Everything's bad or everything's good? I think there's a reason that

00:16:54.680 Fox News is doing well. But secondly, once the dust settled, you could see that the Fox News

00:17:01.620 pundits were largely correct in their predictions that Trump had the better ideas and it looked like

00:17:09.400 he was going to win. And then you would look at the MSNBC and CNN reporting and the pundits and you'd say,

00:17:16.080 were all of them wrong? Or were they just, were they lying? Or were they all wrong? But you would

00:17:23.960 certainly know by now that if you got your knowledge about the world from two of those sources, that

00:17:30.860 two of those sources were completely wrong about everything. So maybe people noticed,

00:17:40.160 maybe that's why the ratings are down.

00:17:41.920 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from winners,

00:17:45.360 I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from winners? Like that woman over there with

00:17:51.920 the designer jeans. Are those from winners? Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full

00:17:57.740 price? Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater? Or those knee-high boots? That dress?

00:18:02.980 That jacket? Those shoes? Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:18:07.160 Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners. Find fabulous for less.

00:18:12.620 Anyway, the Gateway Pundit says that the January 6th political prisoners are going to launch a

00:18:17.600 $50 billion class action lawsuit against the Department of Justice. And here's one sentence

00:18:24.660 from that report. Gateway Pundit is reporting on that. According to Federal Watchdog, the plaintiffs were,

00:18:30.740 quote, hunted down like animals by the FBI for peacefully protesting. Hunted. Hmm. So I like to point

00:18:42.940 out, as often as possible, that in 2020, before the election, I said that if Biden won, Republicans

00:18:50.100 would be hunted. Can I take a victory lap? I was mercifully mocked. But my post on that was

00:18:59.620 taken and put into the media and a number of left-wing things just to laugh at it. Just to laugh at me.

00:19:08.040 They didn't say, they never said, here are the reasons why you might be wrong.

00:19:12.740 They just mocked me for saying that Republicans would be hunted. And then they were. Not every

00:19:21.100 Republican, obviously. That wouldn't have been possible. But if the January 6th prisoners actually

00:19:28.800 won this class action, I'm thinking they would have a low chance of winning. Are there any lawyers

00:19:35.460 here who could weigh in on this? Are you a lawyer who could say, huh, I think they have a chance to

00:19:42.080 get that? Or is it more of a sort of a Hail Mary? They're not really going to win that. What do you

00:19:47.860 think? I don't know. But if they do win, they're going to get reparations.

00:19:58.160 They're going to get reparations. And what happens to the black Americans who are looking for slavery

00:20:05.460 reparations if 1,500 largely white Americans get paid reparations for January 6th? It's not going to

00:20:16.080 make everybody happy. It would make me happy. I'd be very happy if they got what they asked for.

00:20:22.500 I wouldn't want to pay for it. I guess I'd be the one paying for it as well as taxpayers. So I don't

00:20:27.640 want to pay for it. But if you ask me, do they deserve compensation? I would say yes. Yes, I do.

00:20:35.600 So the question of do they deserve compensation for the government? Hell yes. Just as much as the

00:20:41.980 Japanese American citizens were rounded up under FDR. Yes. Yes and yes. I think that if several

00:20:49.400 generations went by, I probably would say, I think you need to let that go. So just so I'm being

00:20:56.100 consistent. There is sometimes time matters. These people are in the middle of their lives. So I think

00:21:05.580 reparations are appropriate. So Elon Musk predicts that we will have AGI sooner than other people. He

00:21:15.560 said AGI is artificial general intelligence. What we have now is just AI that's sort of pattern

00:21:22.660 recognition AI. The general intelligence would be smarter than people. And Elon said, one could debate

00:21:31.760 whether it will be smarter than any human by the end of next year or if it will take two or three

00:21:36.500 years, but it won't be more than five. He obviously knows a lot more than I do and most of you do on

00:21:44.860 AI and what's possible and what they're working on. But to the best of my knowledge, nobody has any kind

00:21:51.720 of breakthrough or technology that would even put you on the path to AGI. So what I don't know is if

00:21:59.400 you just kept doing the large language models and maybe you tweak it a little bit, do they ever get

00:22:05.940 to the point where they're as good as AGI or is that a completely different architecture and chips

00:22:12.700 and everything else? And nobody's invented it. So it's not like we're 1% of the way there because

00:22:18.860 we don't even know how to get there. So I'm not going to bet against Elon Musk on AI.

00:22:26.560 Is that fair? But I also don't see any way that this is going to happen.

00:22:33.580 And I'm trying to square this with what Naval predicts, that AI will never be smarter than

00:22:40.500 collectively humans, I guess. I'm not sure if I don't think I'm expressing his opinion quite right,

00:22:48.300 but I'd love to know if they're on the same page. I guess that's a better way to say it.

00:22:52.760 Because I've been commonsensically, which means I don't have deep knowledge of the field,

00:23:00.760 but commonsensically, I can't see how we'll get to computers being smarter than humans in ways that

00:23:07.440 we care about. Certainly, it'll know more and it'll operate faster and it'll find patterns faster.

00:23:13.460 So it'll do all the things that computers can do faster than humans. So that's obvious. But we'll

00:23:19.800 be able to reason the way we do. Because even humans can't agree what that would look like.

00:23:28.440 In a few minutes, I'm going to talk about what happened with the debate about foreign workers.

00:23:33.720 And the one thing you should take away from it is if AGI weighed into that argument,

00:23:41.400 what would its opinion be? Just think about it. If AGI, this advanced general intelligence,

00:23:52.240 artificial, if it weighed into that argument, which viewpoint would it take? And then if it took

00:23:59.880 a viewpoint, would the people on the other side say, well, yeah, darn, I thought I had a good point.

00:24:06.700 But now the artificial general intelligence, which is so much smarter than me, has told me that my

00:24:12.100 views on this topic are wrong. So I guess I'll change my mind. Because the AGI is just so much

00:24:17.520 smarter. In no world can that happen. In the human world, the people who are on the other side from

00:24:24.460 whatever the AGI says will say, you'd better fix that AGI. And by the way, did you tweak that thing

00:24:30.940 just to give you what you wanted? I don't even believe that's AGI. I think you've got your finger

00:24:35.120 on the scale. I think AGI is fake. I don't even think it's real. I think you're saying it's AGI,

00:24:40.780 but you're really telling it what to say so that you can blame the AGI instead of the people behind

00:24:45.780 who programmed it. You frauds. I want you all dead and in jail. That's how the real world works.

00:24:53.700 But do you see some world in which AGI is going to wade into one of these important, important issues?

00:25:00.140 And then we're all going to say, oh, yeah, well, I hadn't thought about it that way. But

00:25:04.160 now that I see how much smarter you are. Yeah. Yeah. If you can watch the debate about engineers and

00:25:14.200 engineering and you see Elon Musk's view, far more complete than almost any of our views,

00:25:23.600 definitely knows more than we do about not only the foreign worker situation, partly because he was

00:25:29.020 one, and certainly he knows about what their fate is and how soon before they're replaced by AI,

00:25:36.440 et cetera. If you disagree with Elon Musk, just think how different that would be if you were just

00:25:43.520 disagreeing with AGI, it'd be the same. It'd be exactly the same. If you plop Elon Musk into the

00:25:51.580 middle of a national debate in which he knows more than you do, and he's way smarter than you,

00:25:57.160 most of you, he's way smarter than me, right? If he's way smarter and he knows more than I do about

00:26:04.100 the topic, shouldn't I just agree with him? If it were AGI, would I just say, oh, well, you know more

00:26:11.460 than I do? I'll just agree with you. I don't think it works that way. If you can't trust somebody who

00:26:19.060 is way smarter than you and way more well-informed, why would you ever trust AGI? So it might be

00:26:26.320 technically possible that AGI could be way smarter than humans. We will never know it because we will

00:26:33.760 argue that it must be flawed. Do any of you remember when GPS in your car was brand new

00:26:41.220 and it would tell you to go somewhere and you would argue with it? That's the wrong way.

00:26:46.600 Sometimes you were right. It would be like that.

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00:27:51.960 Anyway, let's talk about the big brouhaha of which I think I caused a lot of it yesterday.

00:27:59.580 I'll tell you all the things that I know to be true, and I'm going to ask you some provocative

00:28:03.480 questions so that you can think deeper about the subject of foreign workers in the United States.

00:28:09.220 Now, let me just give you, let me tell you how the news talked about it. So Kelly Risman, writing for

00:28:17.520 The Independent, said that, Musk says, the hateful, unrepentant racists must be removed from a

00:28:26.240 Republican Party. Now, he did say that. The hateful, unrepentant racists must be removed. How would you

00:28:34.540 remove anybody from a party that anybody can sign up for? So I don't know that that's not really a

00:28:41.920 thing, is it? How would you remove anybody from your party? I don't know what that means. But let me

00:28:50.480 interpret it. I'm going to use my reading comprehension to sort out what it must mean.

00:28:56.960 What it must mean is we should, we who are not in that small group, should not tolerate them or give

00:29:05.580 them oxygen, I suppose. No, that seems fair. Then the report says that Scott Adams, creator of the

00:29:14.520 comics for Dilbert, chimed in. Chimed in? Why is it that everybody else is just giving their opinion,

00:29:21.740 but I'm chiming in? Am I not to be taken seriously? I'm just a chimer inner? Hey,

00:29:30.200 can't I be more than that? So whenever I get introduced as the comic strip guy, and then they

00:29:36.620 say I'm involved in any kind of important question, they always assume that I'm bringing only my

00:29:43.120 cartooning experience to the question, and I chimed in. So chimed in. So Kelly Risman,

00:29:52.700 don't appreciate that language. Anyway, not that it bothers me, really, one way or the other. It's

00:30:00.880 just the word you wouldn't use for anybody else. I don't think you would say Elon Musk chimed in,

00:30:07.320 right? You wouldn't say that. You would just say he had an opinion.

00:30:17.120 And what I said was in a post, I said that the MAGA Republicans are taking a page from Democrats on

00:30:23.760 how to lose elections while feeling good about themselves, which I did. And then Elon commented

00:30:32.400 on that, and he said, yes, and those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party

00:30:38.700 root and stem. Those contemptible fools. And then a lot of Republicans, or they might have been

00:30:47.520 paid trolls, I can't tell, pretended that they heard what he said differently than what he said.

00:30:53.260 So when he talked about those contemptible fools, a whole bunch of people said, he's calling

00:30:59.080 everybody in MAGA a contemptible fool, which of course he isn't. And anybody with an IQ over 80

00:31:06.040 knows it. But in these internet fights, we always pretend that if anybody says there are three people

00:31:12.480 in your group who did something wrong, why are you saying every person in my group did something wrong?

00:31:18.040 All right. So there should be a word, there should be like a label for that so that you could dismiss

00:31:23.500 people who do that. Probably half of all the people who thought they were debating with me yesterday

00:31:30.740 were pretending they couldn't tell the difference between saying some members of the group are

00:31:36.680 in a line, according to somebody's opinion, versus all members of the group are defective.

00:31:43.460 How many of you thought that Elon Musk was talking about MAGA in general when he made any of his

00:31:48.980 comments? Now, I know my audience is keyed in and they know that he wasn't talking about them,

00:31:54.160 but so many people just pretended. I think Laura Loomer might've been one of them. It was ridiculous.

00:32:04.240 So that's also a Democrat thing. So Republicans are sort of taking a page out of the Democrat playbook

00:32:11.000 of, you know, losing but feeling good. Now, what I mean by losing but feeling good is that the

00:32:18.820 question, there were, I think, at least three separate conversations and people were conflating

00:32:26.860 them so they could make irrational criticisms of other people. So that would be me like saying,

00:32:34.600 oh, you like, you like sunny weather, do you? No. But you also like toasters. So, I mean, all right,

00:32:45.580 never mind. So then when Elon Musk clarified in a follow-up post that when he said contemptible

00:32:54.940 fools, he was referring to, quote, those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists.

00:33:00.880 They will absolutely be the downfall of the Republican Party if they are not removed.

00:33:05.780 Now, the first thing you need to know is that the conversation on X was just flooded with

00:33:13.500 professional or organized trolls. The professional and organized trolls sometimes might be Democrats

00:33:22.420 sending people to cause trouble, might be somebody in the Republican Party who's got something to

00:33:28.620 prove. But they were obvious trolls and they were the ones who were most racist. So the first thing

00:33:35.260 you need to know is that a lot of the people pretending to be MAGA-oriented racists probably

00:33:42.220 could have been fake. They could have been sent by somebody to make the MAGA people fight with each

00:33:47.860 other and look bad. There are definitely some members of the Republican MAGA world that some of us would

00:33:56.360 call a racist. That's obviously true. And Democrats as well and independents as well. Basically every

00:34:02.360 group in America. And no exceptions. Every group has its racists in it. So that's not the question.

00:34:08.840 The question is whether the people we were seeing yesterday represented anything but trolls.

00:34:14.360 And I don't know. I actually don't know if even one of the really negative comments that I got

00:34:22.120 yesterday were real. But when I posted that people should be aware that a lot of what looks like

00:34:27.740 looks like disagreement online is literally just paid trolls trying to make it look like there's

00:34:33.340 disagreement online. Now, when I said that, I didn't have proof because I was just doing pattern

00:34:40.400 recognition. And somebody asked me, how can you tell somebody who's a troll, Scott? I can tell and

00:34:46.520 I'm not going to tell you how in public. Because if I told you, they would change. Because it wouldn't

00:34:52.020 be hard to not look like a troll. They just don't know that they're looking like trolls. So once you

00:34:57.180 notice the pattern, you can go, oh, I see what's going on. So I noticed the pattern because I've been

00:35:03.240 in this before. So in 2016, I was massively attacked by paid trolls. Later, we learned

00:35:09.900 who paid them and that they were organized and that they did go after people like me.

00:35:14.400 So it seemed like I was just maybe imagining it in 2016, but it was confirmed. It was exactly what

00:35:20.040 I thought. And since then, there have been other waves of trolls. And now I recognize them. I go, oh,

00:35:26.440 oh, it's one of those. I got it. So to my comment that the trolls might be making it look like there's

00:35:35.820 more of a disagreement than there is, Elon Musk weighed in and said that, yes, they had detected

00:35:44.260 massive organized trolls and that they were, quote, nuking them.

00:35:48.260 All right. So let me talk to this guy in all caps. We are not fake. We are not racist. We want all

00:35:59.220 immigration stoked. Stoped. And all these systems, stop pretending you don't know what is going on.

00:36:08.240 Now, I'm going to use you as an exhibit A of the idiots online. Do you think that I have pretended

00:36:15.740 that I don't understand that the H1B system and the related systems are being gamed and that they're

00:36:24.080 not giving us what we want? I say it out loud and I say it often, but if you just saw one post that I

00:36:32.440 made and it didn't happen to have that topic included, you might say to yourself, why doesn't

00:36:37.980 he understand that the real issue is that the current system is broken? Let me say this as clearly as I

00:36:45.080 possibly can. I'm pretty sure everybody knows the current system is broken. I have not yet met one

00:36:51.200 person who was unaware of that. It's not me. I'm not aware of that. I'm not unaware that the system

00:36:56.640 is broken. It's the most common things people are saying. So when you were screaming at me in the

00:37:02.140 comments in all caps, had you done some research to figure out what my opinion was? Or did you think

00:37:07.840 that if I was talking about A, I'd never heard a B? Because sometimes you can talk about things

00:37:13.800 without mentioning everything else in the world. Sometimes you can just talk about the thing that

00:37:19.060 you're interested in and other people can talk about the things they're interested in and they

00:37:23.160 might be related, but I don't really need to talk about everything when I talk about one thing.

00:37:28.480 So let me talk about one thing and show you how this works. Here's some of the things that we know

00:37:34.920 for sure and that I'm going to tell you some things we don't know for sure. We know for sure

00:37:40.020 that if you have a system and we don't, and we don't, we don't have a system, we do not have a

00:37:47.420 system, but if we did, that could get us the top 0.01 engineers and that's it, just that, that we would

00:37:56.920 be a much, a much stronger country. We'd be safer. We'd have more money. And the total number of 0.01

00:38:05.960 engineers that would enter the country would be so small, they would have no impact on the average

00:38:12.020 person getting a job or anybody else. Because they would literally be filling positions that

00:38:17.020 nobody could fill because you run out of the 0.01 top engineers pretty quickly. Now that can be true

00:38:25.120 as a universal statement that's common sense and obvious to everyone, that the top 0.01 percent.

00:38:31.560 Now, if you're wondering how much of a difference that makes, I think 51% of the, you know, top

00:38:37.540 billion dollar startups were foreign born people. So if you get the top people, they just nail it and

00:38:44.540 kill it. And everybody gets more jobs and the country gets stronger. We can pay for a stronger

00:38:48.820 military and we're all safer. It's also true that if you look at the history of the United States,

00:38:55.660 and by the way, if you're, if you want to jump in and yell at me because I've not yet gotten to your

00:39:02.060 pet point, just give me a minute. Just give me a minute. I'll try to hit your point. But if I talk

00:39:09.180 about A, it doesn't mean I don't know B exists. Let's try to learn that. If you can learn that lesson,

00:39:14.880 that would go a long way. Talking about A doesn't mean you don't care or don't know about B, okay?

00:39:20.720 So A, in this case, is that if you could find a system that only got you the top 0.01 percent of

00:39:28.860 engineers, you would be the superpower forever and you'd be in good shape. B is do we have a system

00:39:38.060 that can do that? Nope. No. Now I'm no expert on it. So I'll take the word of all the people who seem

00:39:45.260 to be close to it who seem to agree on this point. Are you okay with that? Do you mind if I say

00:39:52.880 that if we could do it, it would be the best thing we could do? We do not have a mechanism that does it.

00:40:00.240 In fact, it does the opposite and brings in lots of people who probably are competing with American

00:40:05.440 jobs. So which part do you disagree with? Can both of those be true? So most of my conversation was

00:40:13.320 because it was bugging me that people didn't understand how much horsepower a top 0.01 percent

00:40:21.500 engineer can bring to a situation. I don't think people have a good understanding that the leverage

00:40:27.920 in that is just off the charts. It's not like bringing in just people who are good at their job.

00:40:34.240 That's a whole different conversation, right? So that's the first thing you need to know.

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00:41:04.920 Conditions apply. And then Grumpy Dad showed me the messy thinking. So I want to just read his

00:41:13.680 comments and you'll see how the two things, the A and the B, get conflated into one thing.

00:41:20.520 All right. So Grumpy Dad on X says, the first major misstep of what Scott would call the internet dads,

00:41:27.320 and that would include me, the bring in the 1% and the H-1B fraud issue are the same.

00:41:33.080 You can't make the meritocracy argument until there is a level playing field.

00:41:37.860 They led to the wrong argument. Okay. So the internet dads, I was watching them operate all

00:41:45.360 yesterday. Some of them were not fully informed on some of the issues. As they weighed in,

00:41:55.180 other people who were better informed corrected them, added things. And then you watch people

00:42:01.300 start modifying their opinions based on new information that we're getting, extra context.

00:42:07.160 But the internet dads, basically the smart people on the internet who were not being paid for their

00:42:13.780 opinion, which includes, let's call them the internet moms as well, or just men and women.

00:42:19.920 But I don't think any of them are confused that there are two topics. When Grumpy Dad says they must

00:42:31.160 be treated as one topic, I say, that's just muddy thinking. It's muddy thinking. To say that you can't

00:42:38.660 say it's a good idea to have the 0.01, and also it's a good idea to fix the broken system.

00:42:44.360 To me, that's clean thinking. But if you say you have to treat it as one thing, I say, well,

00:42:51.800 that's messy. I get what he's saying. I obviously understand it. He's saying basically the priority

00:42:58.580 is to fix the H-1B. And I don't disagree with that. I'm not even in that conversation.

00:43:05.460 If you think that's a priority, all right, we'll talk about that more, but I'm not disagreeing.

00:43:11.580 I'm just saying they're separate, separate conversations. But related, of course.

00:43:19.120 And ironically, a lot of my critics yesterday weighed in, as Grumpy Dad did, to tell me that

00:43:26.920 I don't understand that the goal and the system are different things.

00:43:30.120 Now, those of you who have been with me for a while, just try to grasp the irony of that.

00:43:40.880 I'm literally the most famous person in the world for saying that goals and systems are different

00:43:46.660 and that the system is more important than the goal. And my critics said, I don't think you

00:43:51.380 understand that the goal and the system are different in this case.

00:43:54.000 No. I've written books on the goal of the system are different. I've also written books saying the

00:44:04.700 system's the important thing. If you get the system right, well, then maybe your goal or something like

00:44:10.700 it is likely to happen. If you're starting with a goal and you don't have a system, then you don't

00:44:16.320 have anything. I'm literally world famous for that point of view. And all day long, people are saying,

00:44:25.140 I don't think you understand that the goal and the system are different. Yes, I understand it.

00:44:30.140 I get it. All right. So here's the things that I would say that nobody who is well-informed would

00:44:37.840 disagree with. That if you could, and we can't in our current system, get the top engineers, we'd be

00:44:43.960 better off. Is there anybody who thinks that that's not true? Does anybody want to argue at

00:44:48.980 just that point? I want to see in the comments. Is there a pushback to the question, if you could

00:44:54.460 do it without affecting anything else and you had a way to get the top engineers, would we be better

00:45:00.940 off? Now, there were a few people who said no. I think Jesse Kelly was one of them. So the second

00:45:09.040 thing that happened in this debate is it was a reason for people who had old scores to settle

00:45:14.320 to say bad things about their enemies. So Cat Turd came after me and I think maybe Jesse Kelly said

00:45:22.220 something dumb. And you'd have to know there's some bad blood there. Now, I consider both of those guys

00:45:30.820 idiots. So if I can be blunt, Cat Turd is an idiot. He doesn't get things right. He got a whole Crenshaw

00:45:39.800 thing wrong about his stock trading. No, about his donations. So he had like all the context wrong

00:45:49.180 and he goes after Crenshaw and Crenshaw had to basically flame him on Christmas day because he

00:45:54.720 got everything wrong. Cat Turd is an idiot. He's very entertaining. So if you're watching it for the

00:46:00.180 entertainment, yeah, why not? But he's not smart and his takes are not good. And Jesse Kelly argued

00:46:10.800 that literally nobody should come into the country because it's like the Titanic is sinking. You know,

00:46:17.560 why would you throw another glass of water at the Titanic? Now, you know what I say about analogies,

00:46:22.940 right? You use an analogy when there's no argument. Nobody uses an analogy if they have a reason.

00:46:30.180 Like an argument with reason. So if you tell me that your argument is the Titanic can't handle a glass

00:46:36.580 of water, I'm not going to take anything you say seriously. That's just an idiot. So taking care of

00:46:43.700 the idiots on the internet, that's sort of a side controversy. But so let's see. And then Elon said,

00:46:54.140 more to confuse things, he said that we wouldn't be a great country without H-1B visas.

00:47:04.500 And, you know, basically you wouldn't have people like him and a lot of the success we have.

00:47:09.260 Now, did people say there, oh, wait a minute, Scott, I thought you were talking about the 0.01%

00:47:15.820 of engineers. Now he's talking about H-1B visas. And that's, that's like just workers in general,

00:47:21.840 mostly. So did I get that wrong? No. Again, reading comprehension is very important. When Elon says

00:47:30.100 we wouldn't be a great country without H-1B visas, is he talking about the future or the past?

00:47:37.520 That's the past. He's saying that the way we got here is with H-1B visas. Is he correct? Yeah. Yeah.

00:47:46.680 He's correct in terms of the GDP and the big companies that got created and how we can fund

00:47:54.260 our military. Is it true that Americans lost some jobs because of the H-1B visas? I assume so.

00:48:02.460 I assume so. Here's what people who are not good at analysis often get wrong. What has been true up

00:48:12.260 until now doesn't need to be true in the future because things change. So I told you yesterday that

00:48:19.360 my opinion of how many people should be let in with their valuable skills has changed since Biden's

00:48:26.200 term. Before Biden, I would have said, Hey, anybody who's additive, bring them in, you know,

00:48:35.180 and additive meaning they had some skill, they could pay their taxes. They could, you know,

00:48:41.720 their kids would do well in school and become productive citizens. So to me, it seemed like

00:48:46.640 business as usual, let in anybody who can add and make sure you don't let in anybody who's going to

00:48:51.780 be a drag on the system. But after watching 25 million illegal people come in recently and Biden

00:49:00.460 opening the borders, I think you have to, the history no longer, the history no longer informs

00:49:06.460 what you should do. At this point, given especially that MAGA had a very strong opinion about immigration

00:49:15.240 and won, it wouldn't matter what my opinion was. So if my opinion was, yeah, we should just take

00:49:22.420 everybody who looks like they could add, but MAGA won and MAGA definitely doesn't want that because

00:49:28.300 they don't want these people competing with American jobs. I would say, yeah, MAGA should get what they

00:49:33.380 want because that's what winning is. That's the whole point. So it wouldn't matter even if I thought that

00:49:40.120 we're not living in the past. It can be true that the H-1B visas made us the strong country we are

00:49:48.180 at the cost of some number of American jobs, which is important. But it's also true that we don't have

00:49:55.740 to look to that to figure out what to do going forward. I think the safe thing is that we're always

00:50:01.540 better with the 0.01 top engineers. Are we better off if we bring in an optometrist? The optometrist

00:50:10.020 will just take the job from an American optometrist, maybe. I don't know. So it's a different question

00:50:16.080 from what it used to be. And when Elon makes big comments about things, you're going to have to

00:50:23.160 add your reading comprehension to know what he's really saying.

00:50:26.240 All right. There's also the... There's so many elements to this.

00:50:39.980 The other thing you need to know is that this is probably a short-term conversation

00:50:44.460 because nearly all the jobs we're talking about in which a foreign worker would take an American job,

00:50:50.920 those are all going to be gone in 18 months. So the job goes from the American to the Indian,

00:50:57.360 and then the Indian job will go to the AI, guaranteed. So it's not like India permanently

00:51:04.500 took the jobs. There was only 18 months left of those jobs. So we were at the end of the cycle

00:51:09.960 for anybody who could have those kinds of jobs that AI is going to easily take.

00:51:15.520 So yeah, so you have to put it in context. It's still important.

00:51:20.920 But it's important for maybe 18 months. We have a much bigger problem with AI than we do with

00:51:26.540 foreign workers. And then in the middle of that is the fact that you're ordinary,

00:51:32.660 not top 0.01% engineers, you're ordinary people. If they were white and they were male,

00:51:39.400 they were being discriminated against and they didn't get any jobs. The other issue that...

00:51:44.300 which is obviously something I care about. And the other issue that people pointed out

00:51:50.840 is that if you hire enough people from one demographic group and they get into management,

00:51:56.860 that they start hiring only people in their own demographic group. Now, the examples given were

00:52:03.100 people had a bunch of Indian and Indian American people got into management and then they noticed,

00:52:10.040 hey, they're just hiring more Indian people now. Is that a real thing? I assume so. Because that

00:52:17.840 would be universally true. If you had a lot of black people in management, do you think that they would

00:52:24.480 hire more black employees than some other group? Probably. Probably normal. If you had anybody of any

00:52:32.360 demographic group in charge, LGBTQ, you name it, women. Let's say most of them were women in management.

00:52:38.940 Do you think that they would hire more women than a group that didn't have mostly women in

00:52:43.720 management? It's not good. It's discrimination, but it's also universal. So it's not just that the,

00:52:53.960 you know, Indians are getting into management and squeezing out the white people. It's everybody

00:52:59.040 who's in management is squeezing out everybody else except white males. White males try to squeeze

00:53:06.060 out white males because that's how they get ahead. We get ahead by eating our own. Unfortunately,

00:53:14.100 that's the only way we get ahead. So it's universally true. Anyway, did you know that,

00:53:26.480 oh, and then we were also conflating the hiring of Indian workers and foreign workers in general

00:53:35.380 with the issue of offshoring, which is separate. And all right, so here's my questions for you.

00:53:42.740 So my take on the H-1B visas and how to fix it, how to fix the immigration in general,

00:53:48.780 is that we need to get a team of somewhat independent economists who will tell us what's

00:53:55.380 best for us and who the winners and losers would be with any given change to our immigration

00:54:02.760 stature. So here are questions that I can't answer, and I have a background in economics,

00:54:09.980 economics. But I want to see if you can. If you can't answer these questions,

00:54:15.660 spoiler, you will not be able to answer these questions. But if you can't answer these questions,

00:54:22.380 then consider the certainty with which you hold your opinion. Consider the certainty, all right?

00:54:30.640 If you'd nail these questions, which you will not because they're impossible,

00:54:35.380 then you should have a firm, confident opinion. But if you can't get them,

00:54:42.320 maybe you should just say, I'm not so sure. All right? Question number one.

00:54:49.260 Would we be better, America, under the current situation?

00:54:54.620 We bring in foreign workers at lower wages, in many cases, than American workers, lower wages,

00:55:03.440 and subsequently, because the wages are lower, it helps the industries that are hiring them to be

00:55:11.060 more successful. And then the stockholders of those companies have more money, and then they spend

00:55:18.260 it. And because there's more money in the system, people can invest in new businesses and startups

00:55:26.020 and create jobs. So if you bring in foreign workers, and before you get mad at me, this isn't the only

00:55:34.860 question. So you'll get a question that you like in a moment. So low wages gives you more successful

00:55:43.280 companies, which gives you a better economy. Better economy gives you a stronger military,

00:55:50.580 and protects the country. The cost of that, though, would be American workers would be displaced,

00:55:58.800 because they would be replaced by some number of low cost foreign workers, but wouldn't be everybody.

00:56:04.420 It would be certain industries, certain kind of jobs. And then those people would be by necessity,

00:56:12.040 trained for other jobs. Right? So that's one world. So the one world, I guess that would be the

00:56:19.100 current world, right? So we bring in the low cost foreign workers, gives the company some better

00:56:26.900 chance to succeed, but it's at the cost of American workers. All right, so that's one situation. Now

00:56:35.200 compare that. Compare that with the opposite, that we don't bring any low cost employees in,

00:56:46.140 and we just keep American workers. So what would that do to your costs for goods? It would increase

00:56:54.900 them. So you'd have a job, but everything would cost more, and probably a lot more, because labor is a

00:57:01.500 big part of everything. So you've got a job, but there's way more higher costs. Is that good for you,

00:57:11.880 or bad for you? It's good for you. It's way better to have a job than it is to have prices that are

00:57:18.920 perfectly low like you like. You'd rather be employed. So if you're the worker who loses the

00:57:24.280 job, it's definitely better for you to keep the job, even if it means that some prices are higher.

00:57:31.380 But the prices are higher means that your companies will eventually go out of business,

00:57:36.940 because if they're competing against international companies, they might hire the low cost employees

00:57:43.980 and then out-compete you. So if you protect the employees' profits, you probably cripple the business

00:57:54.160 and in the long run, go out of business. Now, is that better?

00:58:00.640 So what I'm suggesting is that even the top economists could not answer these questions.

00:58:10.600 Is the country in general better off when there's pressure on employees who are not competitive in

00:58:18.380 the world market have to leave and build skills to make them competitive? It's a dog-eat-dog cruel,

00:58:25.860 and I'm not recommending it. I'm just asking, is that better?

00:58:28.300 The answer is you can't tell, because would you rather be an unemployed person in a vibrant and

00:58:37.080 growing economy or an employed person in a constipated and dying economy? Which would you

00:58:45.960 prefer? In the short run, you'd prefer to be employed. In the long run, you're way better off

00:58:53.700 being unemployed in a vibrant, growing economy, because you can learn some new skills and then

00:58:58.980 jump into the vibrant economy and do better than you were doing before. So to what degree

00:59:05.560 do these abusive H-1B situations, which bring in these cheaper workers, to what degree do they hurt

00:59:14.200 you in the short run? They're terrible in the short run because Americans lose jobs, and I don't like that.

00:59:19.840 But do Americans lose jobs in the long run, or do they retool and get better jobs?

00:59:28.580 Well, I would argue that America has been doing pretty substantial immigration since its founding.

00:59:36.880 And while immigration has gone up pretty consistently, so has the number of jobs.

00:59:45.900 Now, does that surprise you? So for every, well, maybe, you know, maybe the depression was different

00:59:53.520 or something. But generally speaking, immigration goes up, and the economy in general goes up, and the

01:00:00.340 number of jobs go up at the same time. And that's not a coincidence, because we're bringing in lots of

01:00:05.760 people to add more vitality to the thing. So here's the thing. If you're a high-level economist,

01:00:13.440 and you're disagreeing with how I'm setting this up, well, you've got a good point, because you're

01:00:18.580 a high-level economist, and I'm not. I just studied economics. If you're not an economist, and you have

01:00:25.360 a strong opinion which of those two things is better for America, not just the worker in the short run,

01:00:32.080 we can all agree that in the short run, the worker is just getting screwed. No argument about that.

01:00:41.040 But does it put a productive pressure on the people who got screwed? Productive means they say,

01:00:48.640 damn it, I guess I need a new skill. And they go out and learn a new skill and get a new job.

01:00:53.100 I don't know. See, the point is that if I don't know, and I've studied a little bit of economics,

01:01:02.620 if you studied no economics, you probably should be less confident than I am. I'm not confident that

01:01:10.540 I know the answer to these questions. I could tell you where my bias would be, but I'm not confident I

01:01:16.700 know the answer. If you're confident that you know America's better off if we don't bring in

01:01:23.020 people who are additive, I don't know where you would get that, because it's not in any data,

01:01:29.180 and it's not supported by any experts that I'm aware of. But it's a very common opinion. So,

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01:01:49.580 richer than you think. Here's what I think. Given that we don't know the answer to that question,

01:01:56.060 there's a theoretical question, which is, which way should we go? But I would argue that that

01:02:03.020 question may have been answered, because the voters said, this is how we want it. They said,

01:02:08.380 we don't want foreign workers. I still think we'd be smart to take the 0.01% engineers.

01:02:15.100 But if you say, we don't want anybody else, just those 0.01% engineers, I would say,

01:02:21.740 you might be right. You might be wrong. But one thing I know for sure is that you had a process and

01:02:28.700 you chose. So you might be right, you might be wrong, but we are a country that allowed you to

01:02:34.540 compete on this issue. And you won. You won. So if the way it goes is that we tighten up all

01:02:43.580 immigration so there's no foreign workers, it raises prices in the United States, my prices go up.

01:02:51.020 I'm okay with that. If you are. I mean, it's what you voted for. And I live in a country where I

01:02:57.740 respect that. So even if I'm kind of leaning in the direction of, you know, I'm not so sure you're

01:03:03.500 exactly right about this in the long run, I'd still say you earned your right to try it your way.

01:03:11.500 Let me see if there's an analog. Let's see if this teaches us anything. Now, analogies,

01:03:17.980 of course, don't make arguments, but let's see if it deepens your understanding. In your view,

01:03:23.740 are unions in the United States good or bad? Let's see in the comments. How many of you think that

01:03:31.580 unions helped the United States? And how many think it hurt?

01:03:38.300 The answer is it depends. There are certainly industries such as telecom where there's a strong

01:03:45.820 union and yet still strong profitability. So strong union, good wages, strong profitability,

01:03:53.980 good for the country. Everybody wins, right? But are there other industries? Let's say the car

01:04:01.660 industry. I know, I know Musk has fought against some unionization. Others have too. Amazon, I think.

01:04:09.900 Does every, well, let me make this distinction. If you have a company that's almost a monopoly,

01:04:17.580 like telecom is because there's, there's a limit to how much spectrum is available. So telecom companies

01:04:24.460 are kind of close to being monopolies. You know, they own their spectrum and nobody else can use it and

01:04:30.380 et cetera. So if you have huge margins, then you can afford to have strong unions and strong employees.

01:04:39.740 Everybody wins. If you have small margins, such as what you might see in the Amazon,

01:04:46.380 or let's say the grocery business, then it wouldn't take much of a union increase in,

01:04:54.300 you know, increase in wages to put you out of business. So I would say that unions are good if

01:05:01.260 you've got a giant margin and they're bad. If you're so close to the margin that your entire

01:05:07.820 company will go underwater if you pay people, you know, union wages. So it depends. And, and I think

01:05:15.020 this, uh, I think that's how you should look at the foreign worker thing too. There gotta be,

01:05:21.580 there just have to be situations where everybody's better off, like an individual company or industry.

01:05:27.740 Let's say agriculture. Um, I do think it would be really hard to get Americans to fill some kinds

01:05:35.820 of jobs. Are we better off if we just say, all right, let the foreign workers, you know, pick the

01:05:41.500 fruit they want to, we don't want to. So there are probably situations in which for pockets of the

01:05:49.180 country, we'd rather have some foreign workers temporarily for some specific things. And there are

01:05:55.980 other places where guaranteed it's bad for American workers and we're not getting enough from it.

01:06:02.460 So if you wanted to say, forget all that nuance, this country is for Americans. Well, that's what

01:06:09.500 you got. You, you voted for that and you got it. I respect that. So I won't argue against it.

01:06:16.860 I will just tell you, I don't know if economists would be on the same side.

01:06:19.580 So one way or the other. Anyway, there's a, uh, did I cover all that? So here's just my summary of

01:06:29.500 that. Um, I did not see anybody online who disagreed with me. So I debated people angrily all day. I

01:06:39.180 didn't see anybody disagree. I saw people who imagined I was talking about H1B visas being great,

01:06:45.260 which I didn't. And they were mad. Um, I saw people who didn't understand that the 0.01% of top

01:06:52.460 engineers wouldn't add enough to the country to make any difference to employment. But I didn't see

01:06:58.700 anybody who said, I understand your argument and I disagree. I didn't see it. The only ones I saw were

01:07:05.660 the unrepentant racists who said, you can't add one more brown person to America. And I don't know how

01:07:12.380 many of them were idiots and how many of them were trolls. I don't know.

01:07:19.900 But on another topic, um, climate change dispatch, Kenneth Richard is writing, Richard is writing,

01:07:26.620 there's a new study, um, that since 2013, uh, that all the warming comes from increased absorbed

01:07:34.140 solar radiation, not CO2. So the idea here is that we've been looking at CO2 and it wasn't really

01:07:40.700 the thing that was driving anything. Now, I don't know if that's true. Um, cause I can't,

01:07:46.380 I can't look at a scientific study and know if it's true. What I do know is that when you read

01:07:50.620 through it, just get a sense of the complexity in figuring out what the climate is doing. So I'm

01:07:58.060 going to read, read you some words that I don't understand and you won't either,

01:08:01.340 just to get a sense of the assumptions that go into climate models, right? So it's a new study

01:08:08.780 published in journal science contends that the decrease in cloud albedo, whatever the hell that

01:08:14.940 is, and the consequent increase in ASR, whatever the hell that is, or absorbed solar radiation.

01:08:20.620 Oh, I guess that's what ASR is. Uh, blah, blah, blah. These numbers, blah, blah, blah. I don't understand.

01:08:25.420 Again, decade, according to era five, I don't know what it is. And Cirrus, I don't know what it is

01:08:30.380 respectively, explains the warming over the earth last decade. Anyway, point is that the total number

01:08:40.140 of assumptions that go into climate models is just through the roof. You can't have lots of

01:08:45.020 assumptions and also complexity and also a model that's telling you what the future is.

01:08:50.060 It is so far from something humans can accomplish that someday we're going to laugh that we had all

01:08:58.780 these climate models and we believe that they were telling us something. Now, I don't know what's true

01:09:03.980 or not true about climate change. I do know the models are bullshit. That much I know for sure.

01:09:11.980 All right. There's a study, uh, study finds says the hidden power of words, how language influences

01:09:18.780 reality. So depending on the words you use to describe a thing, it will change how you react

01:09:24.540 to it and what you see as your reality. Um, I think they could have saved some money on that study

01:09:33.980 because it's exactly what everybody already knows. You know, usually I say you should have just asked

01:09:39.820 Scott. This is one of those studies where I think you could have asked anybody. A random stranger on

01:09:47.500 the street. We're thinking of spending a bunch of money on a study, but I just want to see if maybe

01:09:51.820 you know the answer. Uh, do you think that the words you use to describe things change how people

01:09:57.260 think about them? And the random person on the street who's let's say he's a homeless person and

01:10:02.460 he's deeply on drugs? Ah, pretty sure it does. Ah, pretty sure it does. Really, you could have asked

01:10:11.100 anybody. Nobody would have gotten that wrong. All right. Um, of course, we love to talk about this

01:10:22.140 topic of how Democrats have more mental illness than Republicans and by a lot. Now, it's funny if you

01:10:29.420 talk about politics because then you can say, oh, the reason you're, you disagree with me is that you

01:10:34.300 have mental illness. Maybe that's some of it, but just imagine these two frames. If the only thing you

01:10:41.980 knew about Democrats and Republicans was the following thing, which one, which one would you

01:10:48.860 predict would be sad and have mental problems? One group believes that identity politics

01:10:55.260 means that your, your future is doomed to whatever your identity allows. And there'll be discrimination.

01:11:04.140 Can't really do much about it because your identity versus the people who say that merit is what matters.

01:11:13.100 You can always learn new skills and try harder and you'll do fine. So one group thinks that you're

01:11:18.620 doomed because of your identity. And the other group says, nobody's doomed. You just have to do the right

01:11:23.820 things and it's obvious and we'll tell you what to do. And everybody who succeeded did the same

01:11:27.740 thing. And if you just do what everybody does, you'll probably be fine. One of those is very

01:11:32.940 optimistic. You'll be fine. The other one is doom. Oh, you're, you were born in this ethnic group. Oh,

01:11:41.900 oh, I guess there's nothing that will ever go right for you. Oh, we'll have to change the law to make you

01:11:48.780 survive. And then of course there's the, you know, looking at the world versus looking at yourself all

01:11:55.500 the time. That also is a big factor and how sad or crazy you are. All right. What is racist about

01:12:04.700 wanting a white country? Really? What is racist about wanting a white country? Did you actually write that?

01:12:15.820 What? Here's what you mean to say. You didn't say it, but I'm going to, I'm going to interpret what

01:12:22.620 you meant to say. Racism isn't always bad. See, that's what people don't want to say in public.

01:12:31.820 If you're discriminating against somebody for their race or some immutable thing or religion or sexual

01:12:37.180 preference for job offers or romance or friendship or club entry or anything, that's all bad. I don't like

01:12:44.540 any of that. But are there any situations in which race is a factor in a way that we all agree? Oh,

01:12:52.220 that makes sense. Yes. Yes. When it comes to large group comparisons, well, let me put it this way.

01:13:04.460 This is my favorite example. If you're, if you're a young black family and you're trying to decide where

01:13:10.540 to move, what city to move to, would you find it safer to move to a place that has at least a good

01:13:19.100 solid, you know, 20% black population. So you'd find lots of people who are like you and,

01:13:24.060 you know, would understand you and, you know, would be more likely to invite you to do something if you

01:13:28.940 think that's how it works. Probably. Now, suppose I said, do you want to pick the city that is known to

01:13:35.660 have the highest KKK population in it? And they're all white. Would you pick that? No.

01:13:46.860 No. Would it be racist? Would it be racist to say, I don't want to live in that all white

01:13:52.300 place because there's a whole bunch of KKK people in there? Well, yes, it'd be a little racist. Would it

01:13:59.580 be wrong? Would it be wrong for a black family not to live where there's 20% KKK? No, that would be

01:14:07.660 completely reasonable. So we conflate, you know, individual discrimination against a person, which

01:14:16.780 is probably bad all the time. It's not good for the person doing it or the person who gets it done to

01:14:21.420 them with any kind of group dynamics, which definitely make a difference. If you were a

01:14:29.980 white person and you were looking for a job, would you apply to a company that had no white people in

01:14:36.860 management? I wouldn't, because it doesn't look like a good bet. But would that be racist? Yes,

01:14:44.300 of course it would. You're making a decision based on race. So the first thing we have to learn to grow

01:14:51.660 up is that racism against individuals is not the same topic as racism to protect yourself from

01:15:00.060 statistical harm. It's just not the same conversation. Anyway, so I think what happened

01:15:08.780 with the MAGA dust up and Elon Musk and me should come out productive, right? If we are true to our

01:15:17.980 beliefs, we will say, hey, that was a good fight. We all got smarter. How many of you learned something

01:15:24.860 about the foreign worker debate that you didn't know until this week? I did. I learned some things.

01:15:32.300 I wasn't wrong about anything because there were things that I didn't know about that I didn't weigh in

01:15:36.780 and have an opinion on. And then when I got informed, I said, oh, I agree with you.

01:15:42.940 Once I was informed, I said, I wasn't talking about that. I wasn't ever talking about H-1B.

01:15:47.980 But if all the people who know about it say it's a problem going forward,

01:15:52.220 I take that as information. I incorporate it. But I don't believe I've disagreed with anybody except

01:16:00.780 the people who say that adding one more brown person to the country, even if it's Einstein,

01:16:05.340 Brown-Einstein is bad. That's just not a sensible worldview.

01:16:17.260 Tahoe says the election means no more. Okay. Now, did that comment address any useful thing?

01:16:25.740 So let me ask the question. If you knew you could get the 0.01 engineers, would you say yes to them?

01:16:34.300 If you knew that nobody else would come in? And I understand that's not the current situation.

01:16:39.500 So let me ask the question in the comments. If you knew, and we don't know this, but hypothetically,

01:16:44.940 if we did, that you could limit it to just the top 0.01, and it's from everywhere. It's not just India,

01:16:51.020 right? It's from everywhere. Would you say yes to that?

01:16:53.980 How many would say no to that?

01:17:01.340 Because I think if you say no to that, I mean, that's just pure racism.

01:17:07.100 And it's not one that makes sense. I've even told you that. So we've got to know.

01:17:14.540 So there's some people that say adding one Einstein who could change the economy and improve the world

01:17:21.660 would be mistake if he's brown. But so far, only the jester has said that.

01:17:30.860 Right. All right. So it looks like my audience is on the same page.

01:17:34.460 So I'm trying to find, is there anything that anybody disagrees with me, except the question of

01:17:41.020 whether or not it's bad to add even one extra person who's not American?

01:17:44.700 Uh, it's still racism, even if it applies to Norwegians. Yeah, that's fair.

01:17:56.540 Uh, uh, uh, until what?

01:18:05.900 Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.

01:18:07.900 I've been visualizing my match all week.

01:18:10.220 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.

01:18:16.700 Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.

01:18:22.140 Everything was taken care of under one roof, and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.

01:18:26.540 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.

01:18:30.060 But you got there on time.

01:18:31.660 Intact Insurance. Your auto service ace. Certain conditions apply.

01:18:40.220 Uh, so I think here's what I, I think is the, the central lever on this conversation.

01:18:49.820 Uh, let me see if I can capture the feel of the room.

01:18:54.700 The feel of the room is if you start talking about the 0.01 engineers,

01:18:59.740 you think you're talking about that, but necessarily because of our bad way we do everything,

01:19:05.660 it opens the door to, you know, mass immigration that you didn't want.

01:19:09.900 Is that correct?

01:19:11.980 That do I, have I captured all of your views that you should lead with our systems are broken?

01:19:20.380 And then if you say, if we could fix them, it'd be great if we brought in the 0.01.

01:19:24.940 But if you start with bringing the 0.01, it looks like you skipped the more important question,

01:19:30.540 which is, wait a minute, wait a minute. How are you bringing in that 0.01? Are you using

01:19:34.460 the same broken system that will bring in a million people that we don't want?

01:19:38.620 Right. So this is a problem with social media. So if you see me comment on, you know,

01:19:44.780 one element of an argument, you might make assumptions about what else I'm believing,

01:19:49.980 but that's always dangerous. So I think, here's what I think. Bottom line, I think this was all

01:19:57.260 positive. I think this was all positive. I think that most of the racism that Elon and I were responding

01:20:04.220 to online, most of it might be trolls. And, and the rest of it, there was some small minority of people

01:20:12.220 that, you know, are just something we have to deal with.

01:20:22.700 What's this?

01:20:26.780 Then some people thought that Elon insulted all of MAGA, which never happened. So a lot of it is

01:20:34.460 thinking that he said something he didn't say. In my case, thinking I said something I didn't say,

01:20:39.020 or believe something I didn't say. But when you look at what people actually said,

01:20:43.740 I think we're basically on the same page. There's probably more complete agreement

01:20:51.500 on this question than almost any question in America right now. But we pretended that

01:20:58.620 it was something else. And what I feel from that was that the energy, the energy from that conversation

01:21:04.780 was from the people who have the H1B issues. And I think we all heard it. So if you were in that

01:21:12.460 conversation, you definitely heard, we don't like the H1B. It's being abused. It's taking our jobs.

01:21:19.180 Got it. Got it. I never disagreed. I wasn't up, I wasn't up to speed. And when I wasn't, I didn't talk

01:21:25.500 about it. But now I'm up to speed. Now, I saw somebody smart, I won't name names, say, oh, but

01:21:34.060 the H1B system is different from the system we used to bring in those 0.01 engineers. Now,

01:21:41.820 they are different systems. But I'm also informed that all of the systems are abused. So if they're all

01:21:51.580 abused, it doesn't matter that the top engineer system is a different system than H1B, they both

01:21:58.140 need to be changed. Now do the NFL.

01:22:10.300 Well, the NFL, I think, is a pure meritocracy. Why are we complaining about that?

01:22:14.620 We shouldn't be importing anyone. So you would be opposed to bringing in the person who could

01:22:25.660 create the next billion-dollar unicorn and create 10,000 jobs for American workers? Because that one

01:22:32.620 guy is taking nobody's job? See, yeah, I think we all agree. All right.

01:22:41.340 Anything other than one system is corrupt. Well, maybe everything that reaches a certain size is

01:22:51.020 corrupt. My take is that you can have non-corruption with really, really small things,

01:22:59.660 such as, you know, two people getting married and not lying to each other. It can happen.

01:23:04.380 But as soon as you get to something big, like the entire finance field, that's always corrupt.

01:23:11.740 Health care, always corrupt. Big food, corrupt. Big pharma, corrupt. Big oil, corrupt.

01:23:19.820 So when you reach a certain size, it's 100% problematic. There might be some exceptions.

01:23:27.340 I'm thinking of something that would be like, you know, one of Elon Musk's companies. They may not be a

01:23:37.100 totally corrupt organization. But generally speaking, everything big morphs into something bad.

01:23:43.980 All right. So here's your bonus question for the day. You ready for this?

01:23:48.380 What would be better for America, the American system to have no restrictions? Let's say no regulations

01:23:59.900 and total freedom or strong guardrails so that there's freedom, but it's freedom within the guardrails.

01:24:11.100 Do you prefer a no guardrails free for all and that the freedom gets you the best life for everybody?

01:24:19.020 Or do you believe that the guardrails are necessary because there are too many bad elements in the world

01:24:24.860 that would take advantage of them? So in the comments, I want to see you pick between these two.

01:24:32.620 Complete freedom, no guardrails, or freedom within guardrails. Which one do you prefer?

01:24:41.020 Total freedom, no guardrails?

01:24:43.660 Total freedom, right?

01:24:49.340 Laissez-faire. Is that total freedom?

01:24:52.460 Yeah.

01:24:59.100 Well, I would argue this.

01:25:01.980 The legal system puts lots of

01:25:04.140 lots of guardrails on what you can do within capitalism. Do you like having a legal system?

01:25:11.900 Do you think capitalism would work if we didn't have a strong legal system?

01:25:16.620 Because the legal system is telling you what you can't do in the other system. It's a guardrail.

01:25:25.180 Well, the answer is obvious.

01:25:27.020 If you got rid of the justice system, it wouldn't matter what you were doing in the economy, it would fail.

01:25:36.060 Because crime would just destroy trust, it would fail.

01:25:39.980 So the guardrails of having laws, in my opinion, are essential. I'm not aware of any modern

01:25:49.420 civilization that worked without a justice department. Are you? Is there anybody who

01:25:56.380 succeeded within a justice department? Now, there would be the question of the

01:26:02.140 guidelines and regulations. I suspect that some guidelines and regulations are additive.

01:26:10.140 And some of them are negative. And Trump would like to get rid of the ones that are negative.

01:26:14.460 But do you think that there are no rules that are worth pursuing? Let me give you one example.

01:26:24.060 A bank is required to put their loan offer in the form of an APR. An APR is a calculation that

01:26:34.300 banks have to do the same way. So when they say, we'll give you a loan for

01:26:38.380 this rate and the starting thing in these phase, you can't really compare it to another loan.

01:26:43.900 There's a different down payment, a different fees, different starting point, different calculations.

01:26:49.260 And so banks were using that confusion to make it look like they were giving you the good loan

01:26:55.420 when it was just the bad loan. You couldn't tell the difference. And then the government said, no, no,

01:27:00.460 you have to calculate it all the same way. And then you can know for sure which one will cost you more

01:27:05.020 money between banks. Was that a good idea or a bad idea?

01:27:08.300 Because it allowed you to trust your bank. And when it comes to banking, trust is the primary requirement.

01:27:23.180 So there's some people who say no, they'd rather not be informed. What about ingredient lists on food?

01:27:33.260 Do you think food should be required to have ingredients listed?

01:27:41.820 See, here's the problem. If you had a world where information flowed, let's say, efficiently,

01:27:49.580 then information could do the job of these guardrails and laws and procedures.

01:27:54.940 So if somehow I knew which bank was giving me the best loan, I wouldn't need an APR.

01:28:02.380 But there is no way for me to know. There is no way. Because the incentive is for all banks to lie.

01:28:09.340 If you took that away, all banks would lie. I worked for a bank. All banks would lie

01:28:14.780 if they could get away with it.

01:28:15.900 So I would say that the trust, which makes the American system special, because remember, in human

01:28:26.220 history, trusting strangers was the thing you didn't do. Our economy is based entirely, well,

01:28:33.020 that's an exaggeration. It's based very much on the fact that we found a way to trust strangers.

01:28:39.420 And the way we trust them is, if you screw me, I'm going to sue you. And we've got this legal system

01:28:44.060 that will take care of you. So we replaced trust with guardrails. If you didn't have trust, your

01:28:52.380 economy would fall apart. There's no way around that. There's no low trust economy that's raging,

01:29:00.540 I don't think. I don't think there ever will be. So if you look at, say, the Ayn Rand view of the

01:29:07.500 things, your maximum freedom gives you maximum happiness, you're looking at a technique that has

01:29:14.780 never been tried anywhere and never can be successful because it would fail immediately.

01:29:23.260 That's my opinion. I don't think it's a coincidence that nobody has ever done a full freedom,

01:29:30.860 high output, successful anything. It's never happened in the history of the world.

01:29:38.940 All right. But generally speaking, we should lean toward freedom whenever it's a jump ball.

01:29:46.300 So I would agree with you that if you can't see the reason for the restriction or the obstacle to

01:29:53.500 freedom, if you can't obviously see what the benefit is, and you can obviously see the benefit

01:30:00.300 of a Department of Justice when it's working properly. It's very obvious. But if they say,

01:30:05.180 hmm, I think you should all use these pronouns or something, you might say, it's not really obvious

01:30:11.020 how that's making me better off. So that's a debate. I would lean toward freedom when it's just an

01:30:19.340 opinion which way is the better to go. But if it's just really obvious, like the Department of Justice,

01:30:24.300 I'd rather have the guardrails. All right. That's all I got for you today. I'm going to go talk to the

01:30:32.860 locals people privately. I went on way too long, but it's Saturday. Remember, Owen Gregorian will be

01:30:39.020 doing us spaces after we're done. So I'll be fast on the after show with locals. We'll let Owen take

01:30:46.540 it from there. I assume Owen will be up and live like fairly quickly on X in spaces right after we're

01:30:55.580 done. So go in privately to locals, and I'll see you Rumble and YouTube and X tomorrow, same time.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 28, 2024

Episode 2703 CWSA 12⧸28⧸24

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