In this episode of the highlight of human civilization, Scott Adams talks about a recent study that suggests a link between children with chronic physical problems and their mental health, and increased risk of developing schizophrenia. Plus, a new theory about why warm parents are more likely to have good social skills.
00:07:59.760Those might seem like our golden years.
00:08:02.300According to American Psychological Association, people, the people who are at the extremes of the political right and the extremes of the political left, their brains work a similar way.
00:08:18.000And that similar way involves getting way more physical sensation, in other words, emotions, from politics.
00:08:31.120So the people who dominate the extremes, either the left or the right, they feel politics.
00:08:37.420Like if you show them some new political story, they might be elated or they might be disgusted, but they really feel it.
00:08:47.260You know, just like a stomachache, they would feel it.
00:08:49.840Whereas the entire middle of the country, the ones who kind of care what happens in the news but it doesn't affect them physically, it's just something they heard.
00:09:00.500They don't have the same brain impact or body impact.
00:09:08.160No, because as I've tried to teach Ben Shapiro, the facts don't care about your emotions.
00:09:18.740So your feelings are, of course, what drives everything.
00:09:23.820So it makes sense that the people who are extremists, either right or left, is because they feel something that's a reward.
00:09:34.080So if they get, you know, revulsion from looking at what the other team is doing, but it's still sort of a competition and you like your team and you can't wait to talk to them about it, about that thing the other side is doing that's so bad.
00:09:51.540And you would expect that those people would have a suicidal empathy and TDS and you'd have, what do you call it when the soccer mom wants to be a hero by supporting her trans child?
00:10:11.500So all of those things probably come from the same phenomenon, which is the people who don't have a physical sensation from thinking about politics, they're not doing any of the crazy stuff.
00:10:27.280So they don't have TDS so much or those other things.
00:10:34.600Speaking of TDS, I saw a clip of CNN where Scott Jennings was roasting, somebody said.
00:10:42.240Jennifer Welch, I guess she's one of the anti-Trumpers that was on the panel, that Abby Phillip show.
00:10:49.600And she claimed that Trump obviously has dementia and that he, and one of the ways, you know, is that he performed oral sex on a microphone.
00:10:59.040So can you believe, and I'd have to say that she looked like, you know, just the way she talked and acted, she looked like one of those people who really feels something physically from the news.
00:11:18.700I mean, she looked like she was having a physical response to just even thinking about Trump.
00:11:23.960And Scott Jennings said, after she was done with her little rant that sounded literally crazy, he just says, if this is a democratic strategy, congratulations, America.
00:11:39.000You've already elected Republicans as far as the eye can see.
00:11:45.120If your reason for not liking Trump, the top of the list is that he has dementia because he tried to perform oral sex on a microphone, which, by the way, I do not remember that story.
00:12:04.880But I don't remember the story of him trying to have it out with a microphone.
00:12:10.320So when the Democrats talk like that, you know, not every Democrat, of course, but when one of them talks like that, do you say to yourself, well, there's just a competing opinion I should take seriously?
00:12:26.480Or do you say to yourself, what is wrong with you?
00:12:30.740Like, it looks like you have a mental health problem.
00:16:05.920It doesn't seem like they would have done 100,000 messages back and forth.
00:16:09.940But there were 100,000 emails, and some number of them were about back and forth with Ehud Barak.
00:16:17.000So, I think Ian's leaning toward the hypothesis that Epstein was definitely a Mossad or Israeli asset of some kind.
00:16:27.980I find it difficult to imagine that if his relationship with Ehud Barak was that close, it's hard to imagine that he didn't have some kind of working relationship.
00:16:45.180But there are now several, let's say, movies on one screen about Epstein.
00:17:03.840Another one would be maybe let's call it the Mike Benz hypothesis that Epstein might have been an expert at moving large amounts of money around in ways that can be concealed.
00:17:18.320And that that made him a valuable person to all these high-level people.
00:17:22.940And it was mostly just him and maybe a few people he pulled into it that were doing the sexual stuff.
00:17:59.080And then the other would be that he wasn't doing anything illegal, but maybe he had, you know, one or two billionaires who found him valuable and paid him large amounts of money.
00:18:13.880So, there's sort of a partial third movie there where he's not as guilty except for the sexual stuff that I would say, obviously, he was guilty of.
00:18:26.740So, that Epstein situation, we'll never know, I say.
00:18:31.660Well, apparently, there was a rumor going around on X today that President Trump was dead, but he's not.
00:18:44.460But the rumor was going around, and partly because I guess we haven't seen him in a little while, and he has no scheduled public appearances this weekend.
00:18:54.020Now, he also hasn't taken a vacation since he started, and no summer vacation, which is a little unusual.
00:19:04.160So, it wouldn't surprise me if he's just going to do a little golfing this weekend.
00:19:10.560And, you know, I mean, it's a holiday weekend, so maybe he's just golfing, hanging with friends, and that's all the vacation he needs.
00:23:10.160But then I saw that the Post-Millennials writing about this, that apparently when Biden was in charge, the Republican, 97% of Republicans were dissatisfied.
00:23:26.160So only 3% of Republicans at most said they were satisfied when Biden was in charge.
00:23:34.460So I feel like what this is really measuring is the effectiveness of brainwashing.
00:23:43.200I feel like that's what it's measuring.
00:23:47.400You've probably seen the man on the street or person on the street interviews, where somebody who's just playing around, because we'll go up to a stranger and say,
00:24:01.960here are three policies that, let's say it was under Joe Biden, three policies that Joe Biden's doing.
00:24:26.860And then the interviewer will say, okay, those are all Trump's policies.
00:24:32.620And the person on the street always goes into full cognitive dissonance.
00:24:37.520And they're like, ah, oh, well, maybe I should do a little more research, right?
00:24:43.580So it has been proven, certainly to my satisfaction, that people's impression of whether things are going in the right direction has everything to do with what other people told them.
00:24:57.220Their opinions were literally assigned to them by the party and by the fake news.
00:25:02.080So, yes, there is, all you can take out from is the country moving in the right direction.
00:25:12.640The only thing you can take from that is that one side is winning and everybody on the other side is going to say, oh, yeah, it's all going to hell.
00:25:21.080If you took, let's say you made a list of all the things that Trump is doing that people would agree at least is getting some kind of result.
00:25:35.900How hard would it be to take all of his policies and just put them in a Democrat and then have all the Democrats salute it because it's coming from a Democrat?
00:25:46.960And the answer is, there might be an exception, but I feel like 100% of what Trump is doing or proposes doing, 100% of it, it feels like, could have come from a Democrat not too long ago.
00:26:04.520I would say 100% of it could have come from Bill Clinton.
00:26:11.200That wasn't, that's not ancient history.
00:26:14.220But something like everything he's doing would be compatible with, a lot of it is compatible with Obama, right?
00:26:21.220Obama didn't love crime and he didn't love an open border and he deported quite a few people.
00:26:56.880Can't you, can't you easily imagine that a Democrat president had been the only one who ever came up with tariffs and said, yeah, you know what, tariffs.
00:27:08.660And then the Republicans would say, oh, of course you're in favor of a tax.
00:27:14.600But instead the Republicans came up with it, Trump.
00:27:22.120So even something as basic as a tariff, I guarantee you if a Democrat had been the only one to support that, like Trump was a little bit, the only one, Democrats would have fallen in line and said it was genius.
00:27:38.080Well, the good news is that gas prices are lower than they've been for the weekend since 2020.
00:27:52.980So last year they were $3.29 and the year before $3.77 on average.
00:28:56.680I fell asleep because it seems like every single freaking day there's another story about an appeals court who tried to block Trump from doing what Trump wants to do.
00:29:08.260Now, specifically, the judge said that Trump's tariffs are unlawful, but not every tariff, but only the tariffs that were put in place after Trump had, what did he do?
00:29:57.160And then the appeals court said, that's no emergency, so you don't have the power to do that.
00:30:04.740Attorney General Pam Bondi said, yes, we do, because he said it was a national emergency, and we have that power.
00:30:12.220And I saw Tom Fitton did an analysis of the actual language of what Trump's allowed to do, and there was a pretty good argument there, pretty good argument that if you allow that he had the power to declare something an emergency,
00:30:33.080So I think you'd have to accept that he has that power, and it's not up to you to disagree with it, he just has that power.
00:30:45.560And then if he does, there's a good argument that tariffs would be well within the normal range of tools that he would have at his disposal if it's an emergency.
00:30:56.620So even though it's not specifically mentioned as a power, it's sort of a common sense interpretation that it would include at least that kind of a power.
00:31:08.180So we'll see, see what the Supreme Court does.
00:31:11.700That would be, even though it's not every one of his tariffs, I don't know how he did the other ones, but maybe Congress has to give him that power first.
00:31:24.700Apparently Missouri, according to Politico, Aaron Pellish is writing that Missouri is going to look into redistricting in a special session, sort of like California is doing.
00:31:39.400If so, they think they would pick up one GOP seat.
00:31:44.520But apparently we're not hearing much from other Democrat states.
00:31:49.020So we thought that there would be, what would happen is it would set off some mutually assured destruction where every state would gerrymander until everything was ridiculous.
00:32:00.280Well, it's already gerrymandered enough that it's ridiculous.
00:32:09.040But it looks like the Republicans may be willing to go all the way on this, no matter what the Democrats do.
00:32:18.340So it looks like the Republicans are going to pick up a bunch of, even if the Democrats went hard at it, they have fewer states that aren't already gerrymandered.
00:32:27.140So the Republicans would come out ahead.
00:32:29.820But I wonder if the other Democrat states are trying to lay low just to make sure that it doesn't become an all-out gerrymandering war, which they know they would lose.
00:32:42.000So it could be that even though people think that California will sort of match what happened in Texas, that if all they do is match it, maybe that's enough.
00:33:00.780If we could get away with just matching it, that's our best case scenario for a Democrat.
00:33:06.120But if we go out there and say, we are Vermont, I don't know which states are in play, but go out there and say, we're Vermont, and we're going to join California in gerrymandering.
00:33:19.080Well, all that's going to do is guarantee that every Republican state does it.
00:33:25.120I think every Republican state or most of them are going to do it, just in case and just because they can.
00:33:31.540But if you're a Democrat, you might say to yourself, why don't we just, you know, shut up about this and let California be our answer that it just matched Texas.
00:33:45.900As long as you're matching, there's not as much argument that you've got to, you know, fight it to the last district, I guess.
00:33:54.800So, I'm just wondering if Democrats are trying to lay low and see if it blows over.
00:34:18.800Are any of you following the story about the statins, you know, the drug statins?
00:34:24.800I remember some years ago, it was quite a while ago, that my doctor did whatever test, what is it for, so the statins are to lower your cholesterol.
00:34:38.980And when my cholesterol test came back and it was already as low as you'd want it to be, I remember my doctor saying, oh, you know, if your cholesterol were higher, I'd put you on a statin.
00:34:53.420And then he told me that the studies were so positive for statins in unrelated areas that he said that if he could, he would put every one of his patients on statins, even if they didn't have any cholesterol problem.
00:35:14.840I mean, it was just so good for your health in just so many different ways.
00:35:19.420And the science was so clear that he would just put everybody on statins if it were up to him.
00:35:24.900Now, time goes by, and the current thinking, and I don't know if it's, I don't know what's real, all right, so I just know what I see on social media.
00:35:37.260So, I can't claim to know that any of this is true, but people are saying really, really bad things about statins.
00:35:44.380I don't know if you've noticed, but now there's some indication, and again, I'm not going to say that I know that any of this is true, but there's some indication that having a low, having low cholesterol makes you a higher chance of getting diabetes.
00:36:07.140So, we've got 92 million people on statins, and many of them don't even have any heart disease.
00:36:16.200They're just told their cholesterol is too high.
00:36:19.820And because of that, they may or may not be giving themselves a higher chance of getting a blood sugar disease.
00:36:29.180Now, again, I'm not your doctor, so you should not take any medical advice from me.
00:49:27.600And at the risk of sounding unkind, how good would the robot surgeon have to be before you would prefer it to the DEI surgeon?
00:49:42.440You know, you know that all of you are thinking, all right, now that we've demonstrated for sure that DEI has resulted in way less qualified people getting accepted into medical school, it's not like it used to be.
00:49:59.900Like it used to be if you got through medical school, I really did trust that you knew what you were doing.
00:50:05.580Now I don't, because the criteria changed.
00:50:10.720And this has nothing to do with anybody's race or gender.
00:50:14.180It's just if you change the criteria and really focus on something other than merit, well, everybody knows how that turns out.
00:50:23.920So I don't have to be like an expert or do any research.
00:50:28.040I just have to know how good the robot is.
00:50:30.420And when the robot gets to the point where they say, this is definitely better than people, and we're probably right on the cusp of saying that, that it's better than people, then why would you ever go with a human again?
00:50:45.580So I think the surgery job might be one of those that is untouched by the machines for another, could be several years.
00:50:59.420Then there's going to be a point, sort of like self-driving cars.
00:51:03.940They'll be like, oh, well, you know, they're not really making much of a dent, but then suddenly it'll be nothing but self-driving cars.
00:51:11.640It's going to be nothing but robot surgeons.
00:51:15.580Because, you know, once they're just way better than humans, why?
00:52:09.480Do you think that when they get together, Xi and Putin and Kim, that they're like, ah, my bud, ah, bro, and that they just really like each other?
00:52:21.160I think Kim probably feels like they control him too much.
00:52:26.600You know, they have too much influence on him.
00:52:28.580So he probably hates them both, because they're like undue influence on him.
00:52:33.520But, you know, he has to get along with them, so he'll pretend.
00:52:36.580Putin probably hates President Xi for the same reason.
00:52:39.900President Xi probably hates Putin for the same reason.
01:04:51.900Not that you like it, or not that I like it, and it certainly doesn't matter what you and I think about the ethical and moral nature of anything that's happening there.