In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, we talk about a new drug that might be killing more people than we thought, political overconfidence, and why you should eat bananas and broccoli if you like them, and more.
00:00:00.000Welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. You've never
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00:00:21.780favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine
00:00:26.800today. The thing that makes everything better, it's called a simultaneous sip. It happens
00:00:31.420now. Go. The technology is not working today. That's the way I like it. Well, I wonder if
00:00:44.040there's any science that looks sketchy. It turns out there is. So according to the Guardian,
00:00:51.140there's British hospitals have decided that if you give the patients way more medication than
00:00:59.200they used to, they can cut deaths by 62%. They say it's a game changer. And it might be. What is the
00:01:07.480first question you would ask if you saw a study that says, oh, it turns out if you just gave people
00:01:14.820way more of the stuff you're already giving them, that would be even better? Well, I would suspect
00:01:21.160the companies that are making those drugs you're already giving them. But somebody did some research
00:01:28.940when I posted on this and said, no, it's just a data entity. So an entity that's just trying to figure
00:01:37.180out what works and what doesn't. But the data entity is part of a bigger pharma. Do you think
00:01:44.160that anyone in that larger pharma of which the data entity is a part, do you think any of them
00:01:52.780provide any drugs that you give to people for heart failure? I don't know. But my pattern recognition
00:02:02.460says, did you see the study about, was it OxyContin? And when people were getting bad results with
00:02:11.440OxyContin, they decided that the solution was to give them way more. Whenever you see science that says,
00:02:19.180you know what? You should take way more of this medication. I just automatically say, I don't know.
00:02:28.000I'm going to need to know a lot more about who did that study. So that's the first thing you should ask.
00:02:35.440All right, here's another one. I wonder if they could have done this in a faster, more efficient way.
00:02:42.340But according to Eric Dolan on SciPost, political overconfidence worsens polarization in online debates.
00:02:50.760So apparently, if you believe you know a lot about politics, but you might be sort of exaggerating
00:03:00.440your own ability, you get extra mad when you talk to people who have different opinions.
00:03:08.000Do you know what they could have done instead of this study? They could have just asked me.
00:03:14.320Just ask Scott. Yes. If you talk to somebody who is really sure that their view of the world
00:03:20.640and politics is correct and yours is not, they will get quite worked up if you give them an encounter
00:03:27.740to what they think they believe. Yep. It's the Dunning-Kruger for politics.
00:03:35.180The overconfidence effect, they call it. Yeah. You don't want to talk to somebody who's
00:03:39.480overconfident about politics. Well, here's a high blood pressure mystery. I've always believed
00:03:47.100that high blood pressure was not fully understood. And I don't know if this explains it, but since
00:03:55.120it agrees with me, I'm going to tell you about it. So according to the University of Waterloo,
00:04:02.440generally speaking, if you had high blood pressure, they tell you to eat less salt.
00:04:07.640Does anybody have that experience? Eat less salt? And apparently that works or they wouldn't
00:04:15.540recommend it. But apparently the University of Waterloo figured out that maybe what's more
00:04:22.700important than less salt is the ratio of salt to dietary potassium. So if you eat bananas and broccoli,
00:04:34.160which have potassium in them, you might be better off than lowering your salt. Because what you need
00:04:40.540is a good balance of potassium to sodium. So I don't know if that's true. You know, half of all scientific
00:04:48.540studies are not reproducible. But I like this one because I like bananas and I like broccoli.
00:04:55.020Honestly, this is a perfect example of how people accept or don't accept science. If this is said,
00:05:04.620yeah, you've got to eat, I don't know, some kind of food I don't like. I couldn't even think of
00:05:09.940anything because I like pretty much all food. But I really like bananas and broccoli. I eat a banana
00:05:18.500and broccoli almost every day. So yeah, I believe the science because I like bananas and broccoli.
00:05:26.820Well, this one surprises me. The UK Supreme Court just ruled that transgender women are not legally
00:05:35.240defined as women, according to the Telegraph. I don't know what they are defined as, but they're not
00:05:41.920going to be defined as women in the UK. Now, doesn't that surprise you? Because I thought the UK was so
00:05:48.640cooked that, you know, they would just go for every woke thing in the world. But apparently not. So they
00:05:57.420said transgender women are not legally defined as women. Don't you wonder if there's any kind of
00:06:03.200Trump effect? You know, do you think that the things that are happening in the United States just sort
00:06:09.840of bleed over into the consciousness of other countries? I just wonder if they would have had the same
00:06:16.020ruling if things were different in the United States. All right, here's my favorite story. I just love this
00:06:23.360story. Now, I don't want to do, you know, full schadenfreude, where you feel good about bad things that
00:06:32.280happen to other people. But if those other people are bad people, I feel like a little bit of
00:06:39.440schadenfreude wouldn't be terrible, would it? So here I'm going to feel good about something that's
00:06:48.080bad for somebody who is a bad person. You remember Letitia James, who went after Trump in New York,
00:06:58.120because Trump allegedly inflated the value of some of his properties to get good loans. Now, the bank
00:07:07.220that gave him the loan said nothing like that happened. They said they'd do their own research
00:07:14.100to figure out how much the properties are worth. They don't take the word of the applicant. So there
00:07:20.560was nothing really like that that happened. But she still managed to get her away. And Trump was
00:07:27.820fined a tremendous amount of money. Now, it turns out that Bill Pulte, who his new job is a U.S. Federal
00:07:40.480Housing Finance Agency director. And that gave him apparently access to some records. And he's
00:07:49.380referred New York Attorney General Letitia James to the Department of Justice for alleged mortgage fraud.
00:07:57.820So here are the three things she's accused of. One, calling her home in Virginia, her primary
00:08:05.340residence, because that gets you better treatment. But of course, it couldn't be, because she's
00:08:12.500literally the Attorney General of New York. So she has a New York home. But the New York home,
00:08:19.020I don't know if this is the one she lives in, but she has a New York property that she says has four
00:08:26.120units. It really has five. But apparently, you get better treatment, I think, for taxes if you say
00:08:34.400it's four. So she lied and said it was five. That's fraud number two. And then I listened to Jonathan
00:08:44.480Turley this morning talking about it. And for one of these applications, she listed her father as her
00:08:52.260husband, which somehow should have gotten her better terms. I don't know how. Just saying she's married,
00:08:58.080maybe. So, and also according to Jonathan Turley, it is completely normal that these exact crimes, if they
00:09:08.100turn out to be real, that these exact crimes people are prosecuted for all the time. So it might be the ideal
00:09:17.880situation that the person who went after Trump with a bunch of lawfare was doing the same thing, you know, in a
00:09:28.100different way, but mortgage fraud, basically. So, and I would argue that hers is different than what Trump did,
00:09:39.060because it doesn't look like anybody was going to do their own work and check on her stuff. So with
00:09:46.120Trump's stuff, if he says my building's worth this or that, he would know that in that situation, the bank
00:09:53.360would check for themselves to see what a piece of property is worth. But I don't think anybody was
00:09:59.380checking that Virginia was her primary residence or wasn't. I don't think anybody's job it was to check
00:10:06.200that she had four units instead of five in a New York property. And probably nobody's job was to
00:10:12.660check to see if her husband was her father. So Trump was in a situation where he couldn't have
00:10:21.000possibly defrauded anybody, because the normal process that everybody knows, everybody knows,
00:10:27.220is that the bank checks for themselves on the value of a property. But they don't check on this stuff.
00:10:33.100It sounds like they take your word for it if he says four, four pieces of, four living units instead of
00:10:39.580five. Although I'm surprised they don't check on it, but it looks like they don't.
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00:11:46.880Well, Melinda French Gates was on CNN. We're talking about Bill Gates X. And you know,
00:11:53.820there's nothing more dangerous than a divorced billionaire because they have unlimited money
00:12:01.100and they feel like they have to do things with it. And my God, does it not work out. But one of the
00:12:07.340things that Melinda French Gates said on CNN was, quote, and this is part of the reason for her
00:12:12.760activism, that she wants to be involved and kind of an activist, because, quote, my two granddaughters
00:12:20.640don't have as many rights now as I did growing up.
00:12:24.820Now, she didn't give any examples, but I don't want her granddaughters to have fewer rights than
00:12:33.200she did. Maybe she could give us an example. Is it all about abortion? Because if you happen to be
00:12:43.020the granddaughter of Melinda French Gates, I'm pretty sure you could take an airplane anywhere you wanted
00:12:48.800to get the treatment you wanted from anybody. I don't think it's a problem if you're this rich.
00:12:55.360So, do they really have fewer rights? And then I saw somebody replying on X saying, well,
00:13:04.720her granddaughters can't have automatic weapons like she could when she was a kid.
00:13:10.100And I thought, huh, that's actually a pretty good example. We don't have the right to automatic weapons,
00:13:17.540at least as easily. So, that's probably not what she was thinking about. But I keep seeing these
00:13:25.100weird Democrat accusations without details. It's like, ah, he's a fascist. Anyway, did any of you
00:13:36.940see the recording of Joe Biden, his first speech since he left office? Oh, my God, I forgot how much
00:13:44.720I hated him. I hate him. I just have full hatred for him. Now, of course, he's, you know, he's dumb
00:13:53.160old Biden. So, he goes up when the loud music is playing. And he starts his speech while the loud
00:14:01.320music is still playing. And somehow, he was the only person in the entire place who couldn't tell
00:14:07.300that nobody could hear him because he was talking at the same time as the really loud music that
00:14:12.600introduced him. He was so out of it that he just starts talking over the loud music as if anybody
00:14:20.040could hear that. It was like, oh, God. And then he did his angry dementia lying. See, let's see. Here's
00:14:29.800some of his best ones. He said that Trump is going to cut your Social Security. There's no evidence of
00:14:36.720that whatsoever. And Trump says exactly the opposite. And so did Doge. But he just gets
00:14:43.020up there and he just says it, you know, like it's a fact or something. And you forget what
00:14:48.660a liar Biden is, like just a shameless liar, because that's not true. But if the ex-president
00:14:57.820says it's true, people are going to think it's true. Just shameless. And then he basically said
00:15:06.180that Doge is moving fast and breaking things. And oh, sure enough, they're breaking things.
00:15:13.280And it says they want to break everything so they can steal from their friends and get them lower
00:15:18.800taxes. Like that doesn't even make sense.
00:15:21.840What exactly are they going to break to give their friends lower tax rates? How does that
00:15:30.020even work? Is there something in the government I could break? Like if I figured out what it
00:15:35.520was, they would give me lower taxes? It's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous lying. And
00:15:42.360it's old man yelling at the son. Oh, my God. I'm so glad he's not president.
00:15:51.820anymore. Well, as you know, President Trump and his administration have a little battle with
00:15:58.700Harvard. So before giving Harvard the funding that the government normally gives it for research,
00:16:07.420and some say that research is super valuable and provides way more value to the economy
00:16:13.600than the annual funding. I don't know about that, but that's a claim.
00:16:19.160But what Trump wants is he wants them to get rid of their DEI and work harder against anti-Semitism
00:16:29.720and have hiring and standards that are based on merit as opposed to DEI. But Harvard has decided
00:16:42.100that it will fight this. And it got two really good lawyers. And so they're going to fight it. And their
00:16:50.240argument is, we're a private business. And you can't tell us what to do or say. It's up to us who we hire
00:17:01.460and why. And it's up to us what we say or allow people to say and why, because we're private. To which I say, you know what, I agree with that. I agree with that. So I think the funding should be entirely based on whether it's good for the public. So if they want to be terrible,
00:17:24.520I feel like they have a right to do that. I feel like they have a right to do that. I do feel that this is a bit of an overreach for the government to tell this private entity how they should be operating.
00:17:38.260Now, I do think the private entity is operating in a terrible, destructive, just horrible way. But they do have the right to be horrible. It's not illegal. Now, the DEI part is illegal. But they argue that they should be able to have their own standards and blah, blah, blah. But here's the funny part. So Trump did this extended post on truth.
00:18:05.140And he's just so wonderfully insulting that I just want to read the whole thing, if you don't mind. So this is Trump on Harvard. Harvard lost its way, defund it. Trump says, everyone knows that Harvard has lost its way. They hired from New York, Bill de Blasio and Chicago, Lori Lightfoot at ridiculously high salaries and fees. Two of the worst and most incompetent mayors in the history of our country.
00:18:35.140To teach municipal management and government. Now, I never heard that before. Had you heard that Harvard had hired the two worst mayors in the history of the country to teach the rest of the students municipal management and government?
00:18:56.400That doesn't even seem like it could be true, does it? But if it is true, it's funny. And then Trump goes on.
00:19:08.360He says, these two radical left fools left behind two cities that will take years to recover from their incompetence and evil. Harvard has been hiring almost all woke radical left idiots and bird brains who are only capable of teaching failure to students and so-called future leaders.
00:19:29.600Now, I agree with everything. Now, I agree with everything he's saying. But, you know, there are certain rights you gotta accept. He goes, look, just to the recent past that they're plagiarizing president, who is so greatly, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States Congress.
00:19:48.340When it got so bad that they just couldn't take it anymore, they moved this grossly inept woman into another position, teaching rather than firing her on the spot.
00:19:59.980Since then, much else has been found out about her, but she remains in place. Many others, like these leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard. And because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning and should not be considered on any list of the world's great universities or colleges.
00:20:24.660Harvard is a joke, Harvard is a joke, teaches hate and stupidity, and should no longer receive federal funds. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
00:20:38.340Now, you might disagree with, you know, something that Trump wants to do, but he's the best writer we've ever had.
00:20:51.360You know, you know, I used to think that probably Thomas Jefferson was the best writer. I mean, he wrote most of the, the, I'm sorry, what was it? The, what is the thing that's not the Constitution? The, well, you know, the thing, the thing. I'm going to go full Joe Biden here.
00:21:16.600I'm on some pain meds. I'm on some pain meds. They're slowing down my brain quite a bit, but I don't think it was Jefferson. I think it, I think it was Trump. He's the best writer.
00:21:26.440All right, let's check in on AI. Apparently, Grok, Declaration of Independence. Yes. Thank you. So yeah, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, most of it.
00:21:40.820And that was pretty good. Sometimes I like reading the Declaration of Independence just for the writing. And I'll read it like three or four times. And every time I'll be like, wow. Wow. How do you write that? Just, just amazingly written, amazingly written. But when I read, when I read Trump, it's also magic. So it would be hard to compare them.
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00:22:24.520Well, Grok has a new capability. Now you can take your, your documents that are in Google drive and drop them in and it will fully interact with your documents. You can ask it questions and have it, you can have a help at it.
00:22:42.520It can summarize. It can refine the presentations. And if that works, I'm going to be using it today because I've been waiting for this. The problem had always been, you know, chat GPT for a long time has been able to handle a file.
00:23:00.600I don't, I don't, I don't know if I could do Google drive, but you could upload a file.
00:23:06.080The trouble is that it would hallucinate what's in your file.
00:23:12.920So the thing I want to know is if Grok is going to hallucinate what's in the file.
00:23:19.760If it doesn't, this would be a gigantic move forward.
00:23:23.940I'm like, this would be a really big deal.
00:23:26.460So I'll test it out later, let you know.
00:23:28.240Did you know that Apple, of course, they turned their, their SIRI, I don't want to say it so it activates your devices, but they turned it into an AI version.
00:23:42.280And apparently it's just the joke within Apple.
00:23:46.260Even the Apple employees think that their own AI, which is barely AI, is ridiculously bad.