Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3040 CWSA 12⧸08⧸25

00:00:00.000 it's about time you got in here good to see you i'm coming to you from my man cave slash garage

00:00:09.520 and uh while you're streaming in here because we're gonna have the best time you've ever had

00:00:16.880 we'll uh get ready for a show we've done the pre-show already so this is the real thing at

00:00:23.040 the top of the hour and uh how many of you want the simultaneous sip you do right you do

00:00:33.040 and if you want that all you need is i'm reading my cup it's written on the cup

00:00:38.960 uh all you need is a copper mug or glass a tanker chelsea stein a canteen jug or flask

00:00:44.720 a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the

00:00:50.400 unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better

00:00:55.120 it's called the simultaneous sip and it's happening now go

00:01:02.800 ah tremendous now for the nerds among you and i know there are some nerds uh i'm using my laptop

00:01:12.720 but i'm using the built-in microphone for the laptop apparently the using my iphone

00:01:20.240 as a remote microphone which is an option uh didn't give me quite the quality i was hoping for

00:01:27.440 that was the feedback i got and uh this is a little bit better it's not as good as the sure

00:01:35.600 you know studio microphone but i don't have a convenient way to set that up i bought myself a

00:01:41.600 uh a microphone stand that will allow me to put it on the floor and and then have the studio

00:01:49.760 microphone in front of me but that's what's happening hey you want to talk about the news

00:01:54.080 that's why you're here right have some fun hang out with each other by the way i am i am kind of happy

00:02:03.120 about the fact that i seem to have accidentally pioneered a new form of entertainment the new

00:02:09.920 form of entertainment is yeah we're going to talk about the news and yeah you might learn some things

00:02:16.400 and maybe you get a reframe and but it's more about hanging out because it seems that the biggest

00:02:23.360 problem people have um certainly at a certain age maybe at every age but certainly beyond a certain age

00:02:31.200 people don't really have friends have you noticed that they have family members they have co-workers

00:02:38.400 they have neighbors but people don't really for the most part have a lot of friends

00:02:45.360 so what i do sort of accidentally is i created this this uh i don't know kind of a i don't even want to

00:02:53.920 call it entertainment although i hope to make it entertaining but it just feels good to know

00:03:01.040 that there'll be a time a day every day including weekends and holidays that i'll be here and

00:03:08.320 that i do it for you and uh you do it for me and that just feels good so shall we begin sure

00:03:17.840 so according to uh psypost psychology news vladimir hedron is writing about this that the spice saffron

00:03:26.560 might help with erectile dysfunction so i'm reading this long article about how if you give people

00:03:35.440 saffron pills that uh they will have much better sexual function and then i get i get to the end of

00:03:43.680 the story and says however it should be noted that this was an open label study in other words the people

00:03:51.840 who had the saffron were completely aware that they were studying their sexual function and they

00:03:57.680 were studying saffron now do you think that sounds like a valid scientific study to you there's a reason

00:04:06.800 that they have you know the the blind studies this is not blind and if there's one thing i could you know

00:04:15.840 tell you as a hypnotist if you suggest that somebody's taking a pill to make them hornier they will tell

00:04:24.080 you they got hornier because people like to be horny and they like to have good sexual function 0.84

00:04:31.200 and that's half of hypnosis you know hypnosis works best when it's something that somebody wanted

00:04:38.720 and they have no resistance to it nobody has any resistance to that everybody wants to have better

00:04:44.240 sexual function so i would say that the credibility of the study would be approximately zero zero but yet

00:04:56.240 if you knew somebody who needed some extra sexual function and you gave them the pill and you told

00:05:03.200 them it would work it might it might actually work just psychologically and that would be good enough

00:05:10.880 well that's not the only spice that's good for you according to the pennsylvania school of medicine

00:05:17.600 uh the spice of rosemary might help with wound healing and reducing scars so uh

00:05:28.320 so saffron is maybe good for you and and uh then the then the spice uh rosemary is good for you

00:05:36.640 well i'll tell you what um this is just my suggestion but you might want to get some other advice on this

00:05:43.200 um if you find that medical school sounds like it's too tough and you can't get in and you don't

00:05:51.040 want to do all that homework you could just become a chef so what i do when i'm cooking

00:05:57.200 is i'll put a little bit of spice on the food and then just in case i'll put a little bit on me

00:06:04.400 now i'm not saying this is going to work every time but have you noticed that there's never a study

00:06:11.040 that says if you added this spice to yourself something bad would happen

00:06:15.280 right so if there's no downside and who knows might make your sexual performance better might

00:06:23.440 make your might make you heal better so it goes like this some for the meal some for scott

00:06:31.280 some for the meal some for scott now of course nobody wants to eat dinner with you if you're covered

00:06:36.800 with spice but that's their problem all right can you tell us a slow news day is there anything about

00:06:48.000 the content of this podcast that tells you it's a slow news day oh i think there is i think there is

00:06:56.800 all right what else is in the news

00:06:58.880 there's now according to the karolinska institute of and stockholm university there's a new drug

00:07:12.880 that looks like it might boost your muscles and curb your appetite and it might be better than these

00:07:21.520 weight loss drugs so if you wanted something that would make you lose weight while preserving all your

00:07:28.320 muscles they might have something um but probably not what what are the odds there's something in the

00:07:37.520 news that says this might work it worked in the mouse do you know what are the odds it will work in

00:07:43.360 the human if it works in the mouse not much yeah so it's fun to talk about but you wouldn't want to

00:07:52.560 bet a lot that it's gonna work out here's one that i thought was interesting again we don't know if

00:08:00.800 this is real you'd have to have a lot more science before you could convince me but there is uh there is

00:08:09.200 some good evidence that the time of day that you give somebody a treatment a medical treatment might

00:08:17.760 affect how effective it is so specifically um they found that if you give a i think it's a immune

00:08:27.120 immunotherapy for cancer a certain care it's a cancer treatment that if you give it to people in the

00:08:34.000 morning you get a much better response than if you give it to them at night now does that surprise you

00:08:41.600 again remember the odds of this actually passing other scientific scrutiny and you know five years

00:08:49.840 from now being true is not really that high you know there's probably a pretty good chance that this

00:08:56.480 won't stand up but it feels like it would like i you know i think your body is different enough

00:09:05.520 at different times of the day that i wouldn't be surprised if if when you take your medicine makes

00:09:11.040 a difference i'll bet you this is the kind of thing that ai could discover don't you think

00:09:19.520 once we get to the point that ai will monitor all the things you put in your body and then it can

00:09:26.080 compare it anonymously to all the other people putting things in their body so some of it would be food

00:09:32.880 some of it would be time of day so in other words it's just the ai is just measuring everything you

00:09:38.480 put in your body and when don't you think that that's going to have an immense impact on your

00:09:44.880 health if you knew oh this this medicine works but not if i eat a potato within an hour because there's a

00:09:53.680 whole bunch of those things where where there is a difference so imagine when ai can actually get

00:10:00.240 a wrap its little head around that how many of you have ever heard of a thing called

00:10:08.080 synesthesia synesthesia i've talked about this but not in a long time it's the

00:10:16.320 phenomenon that applies to some people but not many so it's you know maybe maybe fewer than 10 percent

00:10:24.400 um they can they have some kind of a crossover effect in their senses so for example um some

00:10:34.400 people if they're listening to music they can almost feel it whereas people like me i listen to music and

00:10:42.480 i like it but i don't feel it the same way like a real musician would so that probably probably prevents me

00:10:51.120 from being a great musician because i feel like you'd have to feel it in order to be really good at

00:10:58.640 it you know probably the beatles were all they probably all could feel it um but what i would have

00:11:06.640 to add to this is that there's a writer's version of this so not just musicians and i definitely have the

00:11:14.640 synesthesia for writers meaning that i feel words i just feel them so it's probably not an accident

00:11:25.600 that without any special training on how to be a writer i i managed to have a professional career as

00:11:32.960 a writer i think that's that might be synesthesia because i just feel things when i write them

00:11:41.280 now is that a humble brag or is that just telling you what works and what doesn't all right

00:11:52.320 um how many times have you been told that it's good to get enough sleep well believe it or not

00:11:59.040 there's another study that says it's good to get enough sleep but they go further and they say that

00:12:05.040 if you get enough sleep you're far more likely to be as active as you want to be for good health but

00:12:14.320 they say it doesn't work the other way so according to this study at flinders or flinders university

00:12:22.800 that sleep first get enough sleep then you'll get enough activity and then you have the two things

00:12:29.440 that are good for you activity and sleep but i don't believe that it doesn't work the other way

00:12:36.480 let's let's see what you say in the comments i believe that i can never get a good sleep

00:12:42.880 if i have not been active that day do you have the same same thing if i've not exercised that day

00:12:50.720 now at the moment i'm on all kinds of you know drugs and stuff for my cancer so it's different now but

00:13:00.480 in my normal healthy life if i don't get exercise i can't sleep don't you have that it can't just be me

00:13:09.360 right all right so we're gonna i'm seeing the comments that a lot of you are agreeing with me

00:13:14.160 so i would say that uh exercise helps you sleep and sleeping helps you exercise and it definitely

00:13:21.360 works both ways so some schools are experimenting with drones uh to protect against school shootings

00:13:32.320 i'm going to give you a little quiz how many school shootings do you think happen in one year

00:13:38.720 let's see not one year since 2008 in just florida alone so only the state of florida and we're talking

00:13:49.280 about shootings in the school since 2008 give me a number how many do you think there's been

00:13:58.560 well while you're guessing how many there's been the answer is at least according to this one one

00:14:05.440 uh article from the center square marilee gasser is writing that there have been uh 33 school shootings

00:14:15.040 since 2008 so that just feels like a lot doesn't it remember it's since 2008 so it's not one year

00:14:25.440 yeah your guesses are closer to a one-year guess well that's a lot but i assume that also includes just

00:14:31.600 one person getting shot so it's not necessarily mass shootings um but what they want to do is they're

00:14:39.280 testing non-lethal drones so if there's a shooter in the school the drone will uh come and distract them

00:14:47.600 so the drone will not be deadly it won't have a gun but it might have uh it might have sirens or pepper

00:14:54.560 sprays or other distraction devices because if you are a school shooter and a drone comes after you

00:15:03.040 you're gonna have to pay attention to the drone because that's the thing you don't know exactly

00:15:07.600 what it can do and it's it's going to be in your space really fast i like this idea it seems pretty

00:15:14.400 good you know it could even be better if you got rid of the humans you know if you equip the school 0.94

00:15:21.600 with listening devices and then it heard a gunshot don't you think it would be useful if the drone

00:15:29.440 immediately went wherever the gunshot was now that doesn't mean it should intervene you probably want

00:15:35.280 a human to decide whether it should intervene but it should definitely go there like it should just 0.96

00:15:41.840 as soon as it hears the gunshot it should pull into that room or as close as it can get i think this

00:15:48.720 is a definitely worth testing i wouldn't go so far as to say i know it'll work definitely worth testing

00:15:58.640 well trump is apparently going to announce a 12 billion farm aid program washington examiner's

00:16:04.800 reporting and it kind of made me wonder because i'm a farm nerd you know i uh i worked on a farm my

00:16:15.520 uncle's farm he had a dairy farm so i've spent a lot of time on a on farms and and working on farms

00:16:21.680 when i was a kid and a teenager i guess that's still a kid but uh here's what i wonder how do you make

00:16:32.320 farms unprofitable like what is it about a farm that would take it from well we've been making money until

00:16:40.080 now but now we're losing money well some of it's obvious some of it would be oversupply so there might

00:16:47.680 be a year when when everybody grows too much of one thing and then the price goes down it might be

00:16:54.960 drought or a flood so it could be bad weather in a variety of ways um it could be the rising cost of

00:17:03.600 seeds and the rising cost of fuel and i said to myself are those all solvable problems and let me

00:17:12.560 give you my prediction slash suggestion i guess i feel like we should have an ongoing um maybe government

00:17:22.240 sponsored but it doesn't need to be i guess it could be private something like a an elon musk um farming

00:17:30.800 what would you call it experiment i i know that uh elon's brother has been working on indoor farming

00:17:41.280 so i think they understand the potential here but i'd love to see it go to the next level here's what i

00:17:46.560 think it's going to look like if i were trying to solve all the problems of farming being too expensive

00:17:53.920 so i could bring down the cost of food i would build it underground so first i'd have the boring

00:18:01.680 company they can you know do underground tunnels really inexpensively so once you have a way to

00:18:08.240 inexpensively um build a tunnel then you could also redirect the sunlight from above into it so you

00:18:17.040 get all the free sunlight you could just do it by mirrors i'm pretty sure you get all the goodness

00:18:21.520 of the sun even if you redirected through mirrors so you you'd have all the free sun but you wouldn't

00:18:28.720 have any weather related problems in theory you could create your own seeds wouldn't you why is it

00:18:38.400 so hard to create your own seeds i feel like that wouldn't be the hardest thing but i don't know about

00:18:44.560 that domain so maybe seeds would be a different problem but if you could get uh oh and you'd also

00:18:52.320 have essentially free land so if you're if you're doing your farming below ground it's basically free

00:19:02.160 on top of owning the above ground so the other thing i would do is do the food processing directly

00:19:08.800 above the underground farm so it doesn't have to go very far and then along the same lines and make

00:19:16.400 sure that your underground farm is really close to the store that's going to sell the food or or

00:19:23.280 close to the consumer so you want to get rid of almost all the transportation you want to get rid of all

00:19:29.680 the risk of um weather and then correct me if i'm wrong but if you're underground and you have a

00:19:39.200 controlled environment you're not going to need um fertilizer because you just keep the bugs out in

00:19:46.640 the first place um and you're not going to need too much extra water because isn't it true that you can

00:19:55.280 recycle your water it's basically hydroponic couldn't you just um yeah so i'm not 100 sure but it seems

00:20:07.280 like if you iterated um underground farms you would eventually get to the point where they're cheaper

00:20:13.840 than anything we do above ground what do you think fertilizer isn't just for bugs well that's true

00:20:21.520 right it's not just for bugs it's for growing more efficiently but if you want to go organic

00:20:29.920 you still might prefer a smaller vegetable without any fertilizer so that i'm not sure about that trade

00:20:37.200 off anyway i don't want to obsess about that but i think we we don't know how to do it cheaper at the

00:20:43.360 moment but there should be similar to how we're doing um uh nuclear power so the government finally

00:20:52.640 figured out hey if we can figure out how to iterate nuclear power we can get to something that's that

00:21:00.000 works faster so that's what the government's doing you should do the same thing with indoor farms and

00:21:05.760 they should be underground by the way if you put it above ground then it can still get ripped up by

00:21:11.840 weather so i think underground farms are the future and then of course you'd obviously have robots doing

00:21:20.320 all the work so you wouldn't have labor you wouldn't have uh probably you could get rid of 80 of all the

00:21:27.920 costs that's just my guess uh all this farming talk means people have to do something well

00:21:38.720 you know nuclear plus hydroponics is a paradise farm all right let's move on

00:21:50.560 canada can be a global leader in reducing the harm caused by smoking but it requires actionable steps now

00:21:57.520 is the time to modernize canadian laws so that adult smokers have information and access to better

00:22:03.360 alternatives by doing so we can create lasting change if you don't smoke don't start if you smoke

00:22:10.880 quit if you don't quit change visit unsmoke.ca um you may have heard of this already but uh there's a

00:22:21.840 some company made an ai version of an actress uh called tilly norway norwood

00:22:28.560 so it's an ai actress that's been created for they haven't quite fully commercialized it yet but

00:22:37.360 but the idea is that it would be a hireable actress and uh they would try to turn it into a star

00:22:49.520 so that your ai star would be you know not eating up all your profits

00:22:54.560 uh and weirdly the smartest thing i've heard about this was a quote by george clooney who of course is

00:23:03.280 a movie star and what he said about these ai actresses and actors he said quote ai is going to

00:23:10.960 have the same problem that we have in hollywood which is making a star is not so easy and i thought

00:23:18.320 holy cow that's the smartest thing i've heard about this topic if if you can't do it with real people

00:23:27.200 and it's really hard and it's somewhat accidental because nobody knows exactly why one person becomes

00:23:34.320 a movie star and one person doesn't i mean george clooney is a seriously you know sexy guy i'm told

00:23:41.920 so you can say to yourself oh he's very sexy but aren't there millions of super sexy men uh aren't

00:23:50.880 there lots of people who could probably act as well as he can but why did we decide that this one person

00:23:58.160 is the extra sexy person well some of it is the media meaning that if people magazine puts you on the

00:24:06.160 cover and says you're the sexiest person it just sort of becomes a thing would they be able to do that

00:24:12.960 with an ai and i believe that there the problem with ai art will um will be the same problem here

00:24:24.480 that on day one if you hear that it's a ai you might be interested it'd be you know you'd be curious

00:24:31.440 how it works but eventually you just feel like it wasn't real and i don't know if you could ever

00:24:39.120 get to the point where if you know it's not real you can have the same emotional connection that you

00:24:45.440 would with a real person in a movie even though the real person in a movie would not really be real

00:24:52.640 because they're acting but i do feel like george clooney has the right take on this

00:24:59.600 that if it's super super hard to do with a human it's not going to be that much easier just because

00:25:05.600 you have an ai so i would guess 99 out of 100 companies to try to make an ai movie star will

00:25:14.400 fail so it's not not good odds all right uh according to axios president trump is betting his presidency

00:25:25.840 uh and the future of the republican party on lightly regulated fast expansion of ai

00:25:34.320 first of all do you buy that summary do you think that the trump presidency will depend

00:25:41.440 on how well he regulates ai now regulating it well might mean not regulating it much

00:25:51.760 and getting the states out of the way and giving the feds primacy over the regulation and then getting 0.95

00:25:57.680 out of the way so i kind of agree that uh that that's true but i do wonder if the public will see it that

00:26:08.080 way you know people like us that the fact that you're even watching me on this podcast probably

00:26:15.040 means you're in the top you know at least five percent of people paying attention to the news

00:26:21.360 wouldn't you say if you're watching this right now you're probably in the top five percent of just

00:26:27.680 people who care about keeping up with things so i don't know if the general public will even notice

00:26:33.600 us if trump did a good job or a bad job on ai um do you and and wouldn't we just argue about whether

00:26:45.520 he did a good job or a bad job and it wouldn't be so much you know something you could just measure

00:26:51.760 how in the world are you going to measure how well we do on ai like what happens if you know estonia

00:26:59.200 comes up with the best ai because they just have some genius who was working on it does that mean

00:27:05.440 we did a bad job or does it just mean that estonia had a genius so i don't know how you'd know if he

00:27:12.720 did a good job or a bad job unless it was just screamingly obvious and i don't think it will be

00:27:18.720 i do think that trump's doing pretty much everything right which i attribute to the fact that he's got

00:27:25.760 you know sax and a bunch of smart people advising him i don't think you'll get too far away from

00:27:32.880 something that elon musk would say you know makes sense and is sensible for the country so trump does

00:27:39.920 have just the best advisors for ai just the best will that be enough well i don't think that trump is

00:27:49.040 gonna overrule the smartest people in the world in a domain that they know a lot about and he doesn't

00:27:59.120 i think that only the trump haters think he would do that do that anybody who's actually been paying

00:28:04.720 attention knows that he loves advice from the smartest people

00:28:09.120 all right whoever is just yelling at me in all caps maybe that person can disappear if you know what

00:28:19.040 i mean all right so yeah is he betting his presidency on the future of ai sort of but i do think that the

00:28:30.240 trump administration has an advantage over other countries because with ai we're not just competing

00:28:39.600 companies against companies that we're also doing that but we're competing countries against countries

00:28:47.040 and let me ask you this so we've watched europe is just falling apart under its own bureaucracy

00:28:54.640 china is somewhat difficult for us to understand from the outside but it doesn't look like they're super

00:29:01.200 flexible about everything sometimes they can be super fast you know if the if the government says go do

00:29:09.840 this it'll happen pretty fast but is that the same as being super flexible because the united states is more

00:29:17.680 likely to allow certain freedoms you know certain freedom of speech uh the us is more likely to allow

00:29:26.240 ai to train on more sources whereas china might say oh you can't look at that

00:29:31.600 so your ai cannot train on as many things because we want to control it so i'm feeling that uh there's

00:29:40.480 something about the united states uh and maybe maybe this is just me being biased i don't know so you you

00:29:46.880 tell me am i being biased i think there's something about our dna as a country that gives us a huge ai

00:29:56.000 advantage i mean just the fact that there could be a trump who i think is very flexible business-wise he

00:30:03.600 would be the smartest i i think trump is the smartest president we've had business-wise he's here at a time

00:30:10.640 when having the smartest president business-wise is super important you know bill clinton was pretty

00:30:18.080 smart too you know got us through the dot-com era but uh yeah i i do suspect that the us is going to have a

00:30:29.120 dna advantage we're just more flexible and more willing to take more chances i think that's exactly

00:30:36.400 where we need to be to win so that's my optimism on ai all right let's talk about uh we're all following

00:30:46.560 the story maybe you're not of uh california trying to rebuild after the palisades fire pacific palisades

00:30:54.080 fire and uh i think that here's the good news according to wall street journal there is a house

00:31:01.280 that's been built yay a house so we're coming up on a year and uh one house has been built but uh you can't

00:31:15.280 live in it so one house has been built but you can't buy it and you can't live in it it's a developer's

00:31:23.440 model and if you were to go inside the developer's model and walk up to the second floor and look out

00:31:31.360 the window would you see the paradise that used to be pacific palisades or would you see a bunch of

00:31:40.320 burned down wasteland as far as you can see it would be the second one so not only can you not buy it

00:31:48.560 not only is there only one but if you stood in the second floor you wouldn't even want to live there

00:31:53.680 you'd be like why would i want to be in this this town however it's not nothing so it's not nothing

00:32:02.400 so there's a little bit of uh you know motion in the right direction i don't know how long this is going

00:32:08.000 to take but you know i'm comparing the pacific palisades to china's big projects doesn't it seem

00:32:16.480 to you like china is building things that are as big as entire states and and they can just pound 0.75

00:32:24.160 it out it's like all right we got a year let's build something that's as big as the entire island

00:32:30.000 of manhattan and then you check back in a year and they're done now we can't build a house

00:32:38.720 we can't get a house built because oh there's bureaucracy we need approvals you know what's wrong

00:32:44.080 with this story is that whenever i hear that there's a you know long delay the part i always want to know

00:32:52.320 is why you know when i when i built my own house the one i'm in it took way too long to get the approvals

00:33:03.680 in my opinion now in my case i could tell you the actual person who was holding it up because we

00:33:12.320 had one person in charge of approvals now if that one person uh woke up every morning and thought hey

00:33:19.840 i gotta get help scott get his house built probably i could have got all the approvals in

00:33:27.760 two months but i think it took well over a year but there was a name to it there was one person

00:33:35.760 who if they did not have as many tasks as they have and it was mostly because they

00:33:40.720 they were overworked but that would be a very fixable problem i would say all right this guy bob

00:33:48.080 can't do this in two months which we should be able to do it it's going to take him a year

00:33:55.440 so can we get two bobs can we get six bobs how many bobs do we need can we borrow them from another

00:34:03.920 place just for a year is there a way to un-retire some people who you know for a little extra money can

00:34:11.920 we get let's say private can we get a private entity let's say a builder to pay the approvers

00:34:21.680 with some kind of oversight so it's not completely out of control why why is it we never hear the

00:34:27.360 people i want to know the name of the person who's not getting it done doesn't that feel like that's

00:34:33.200 missing it feels like it's missing to me so if i don't know the person who's not doing the job

00:34:42.880 and i'm not talking about politicians like we can we can yell at newsome all day long but

00:34:48.240 it's not like he's sitting in an office with a stamp and he refuses to stamp something but there is

00:34:54.480 somebody there's somebody sitting in an office with a stamp and they're not stamping something

00:34:59.120 why now if you ask them i i guarantee they have a good reason they're going to say something like

00:35:06.320 well it wouldn't be safe because there's this inspection that hasn't happened well who is that

00:35:11.600 guy or gal who's that person who is it who doesn't have enough time to inspect it why don't i have 10 more

00:35:20.000 of him what what would it cost me to bribe somebody who had the right skills to come in and work for a

00:35:27.120 year i just feel like there's a whole layer here that's missing and if we treat it like it's just a

00:35:34.400 regular process and we're just yelling at it for being slow we're not really trying you know if this

00:35:41.520 were elon musk's property do you think it would take a year to get anything approved i don't think so i

00:35:49.200 mean if he had full control of every part of it no no he would just move more resources where you need

00:35:56.320 them and get rid of people who weren't doing the job and next thing you know it would be a two-month

00:36:00.960 approval instead of a year that's what i think well the government trump administration is doing what

00:36:12.080 they call a whole of government approach to try to lower beef prices now beef appears to be something

00:36:20.080 that is so uh important to the american psyche that it's different from other food would you say

00:36:28.640 that's true that if your beef is too expensive it just feels like food is too expensive so it's not like oh our

00:36:39.040 broccoli costs too much because then you just eat some other vegetable but if you really like beef and that would

00:36:46.080 describe a lot of americans uh if you can't get that at a good price that just feels like food is

00:36:53.040 too expensive so i can see why that would be you know a big uh like a big priority um it's just hard

00:37:01.200 to go from well if beef is expensive i'll just get chicken and i'll be just as happy because you

00:37:06.560 wouldn't be we just wouldn't be just as happy you could substitute almost any vegetable for another

00:37:13.200 vegetable and people would say well you know i prefer broccoli but brussels sprouts are fine you know

00:37:22.320 what are you yelling at me let me see if i can look at that comment

00:37:28.000 uh very thing at the fda it's a bureaucracy right okay

00:37:36.800 imagine if we had a all of government approach to just get rid of bureaucracy

00:37:41.440 we kind of have that but but i'd love to see it even bigger all right anyway so the whole

00:37:49.040 of government approach to make beef less expensive now what would be the first question you would ask

00:37:55.760 in that domain the first question you would ask is why is it more expensive like what happened to it

00:38:01.760 well i didn't know how many of you know why beef got way more expensive is there even one of you in the

00:38:09.520 comments don't look it up don't look it up without looking it up do you know why it's more expensive

00:38:18.560 well some of it is the normal reasons you know energy is more expensive everything's a little more

00:38:23.280 expensive but apparently mexico which was one of our bigger sources of beef um they had some kind of

00:38:32.480 disease so we're working through that it might be might be a year or two before we we have some

00:38:39.680 non-diseased mexican cows i don't know the details but there was some kind of mexican disease and the

00:38:46.240 only thing they could do is just shut down the mexican supply until that's completely under control and

00:38:52.720 probably will be in a year or two but you just have to wait because it just takes a while to grow

00:39:00.080 a cow so you're saying it's a screw worm is that what it is screw those worms in the comments people 0.96

00:39:09.360 are yelling screw worm so maybe that's the name of the name of the bug all right but uh we also could

00:39:17.200 increase the amount of beef we get from argentina i don't know if it says good but that's another

00:39:23.280 source um the government's also doing an anti-competitive probe to find out if foreign suppliers of

00:39:34.400 food in general i think but beef specifically they're trying to see if there's any anti-competitive

00:39:40.240 thing going on because if there is that would be an easy way to lower prices uh water enough would be 0.61

00:39:45.280 easy but it'd be possible i guess um and uh so it looks like so so work with me here if we knew

00:39:58.960 or we thought there was a high likelihood that beef would just drift down to a lower cost simply because

00:40:06.560 two years from now we'd have a lot more cows a lot more non-diseased cows does that not 1.00

00:40:13.520 not so this is a real nerd question nerds step to the step to the front of the class

00:40:20.880 this question is for nerds only who i love by the way you know i love my nerds i am one

00:40:28.320 um would it be possible to use some kind of futures market to lower the cost of beef today

00:40:37.360 if you felt confident that the price would be lower in the future did that make sense

00:40:44.320 so right now you can't you can't take the average cost of beef today and then take the average of

00:40:51.520 it tomorrow which would be lower but if you could it seems like you could lower the price today

00:40:59.600 with not a hundred percent chance that it would be lower in the future but you feel kind of confident

00:41:04.960 that it would be don't you think you could get enough people to invest in that kind of a futures

00:41:11.920 beef market that we could take advantage of the fact that with a high likelihood of being right

00:41:18.800 beef will probably be i don't know 40 percent cheaper in three years and so what you do is you start

00:41:29.200 charging people less today with some kind of insurance or protection

00:41:34.720 that the beef farmers would never lose because they're they're going to get you know some some

00:41:40.800 minimum payment all right nerds is there some reason that would or would not work

00:41:49.760 somebody's saying a 10-month gestation so it's about two years to grow yourself a proper cow

00:41:56.480 for eating you think it already exists you know i was wondering about that but if it already exists

00:42:02.720 wouldn't the prices be lower so the the comment i would look into first is does it exist we obviously

00:42:13.680 have futures markets for all kinds of commodities but i don't know if we have them for beef and i don't

00:42:20.240 know if you could find some way to average the future and the current to lower the price i don't know i'll

00:42:29.760 just put that out there um according to israel there are still 100 to 200 hamas fighters in tunnels

00:42:39.040 in gaza and they're not coming out but they also don't have any hostages to trade and they're running

00:42:46.800 out of food and water what do you think israel is going to do if you were in one of those tunnels would 0.91

00:42:55.200 you come out or do you know that the minute you come out you're either going to be in jail for the

00:43:00.320 rest of your life or immediately murdered not murdered because let's let's take the uh let's take

00:43:06.960 the opinion out of it you'd be killed whether you want to call that murder that would be a whole different

00:43:11.840 story but you'd be killed or jailed forever you're not going to walk away so

00:43:19.280 um what's going to happen i think that they'll have to probably just wait it out and then a year

00:43:30.800 from now there won't be anything left we'll see uh so pxf secretary of war uh he's announced that

00:43:41.520 there's going to be this federal investigation into mark kelly you know maybe they'll reinstitute him as in

00:43:47.920 the the they'll uh bring him back into the military so that they can court martial him because he's one

00:43:54.400 of the seditious six and i've got mixed feelings about that so i'm just going to give you my human

00:44:03.040 opinion and my citizen opinion we don't treat people in the military like regular citizens and most of us

00:44:13.760 are okay with that right we we acknowledge that uh people in the military have or will have greater

00:44:21.360 risk you know they've got more in the game and we we sort of allow them you know an extra let's say

00:44:30.560 privilege in society and i'm okay with that because if they take an extra risk and i'm the beneficiary of

00:44:37.760 that i think we you know we owe them no i guess that's the wrong word it would feel appropriate to me

00:44:47.040 that they get more privilege in society than i get because they're doing more that that fits for me

00:44:54.880 so then when i watch the uh the mark kelly and the seditious sex i don't like it i don't like it

00:45:02.000 but i also don't like punishing them is anybody having that same feeling that there has to be some

00:45:12.160 way we can deal with this that doesn't take a member or multiple members of the military past or

00:45:19.040 present and punish them for what i consider really somewhat outrageously bad behavior but because i think

00:45:29.040 it's outrageously bad behavior and i live in a world with you know at least allegedly free speech

00:45:37.840 i don't have to say that they did the right thing i don't have to say i approve of it but sometimes

00:45:44.640 you just can't leave somebody on the you know a wounded person on the battlefield so to speak

00:45:50.480 so what i'd like to see is something that's short of punishment but is long on education i do like the

00:46:03.200 fact that the entire public has been now accidentally educated on what is too far and what is appropriate

00:46:12.640 behavior for the military and what is a crime in that context and what isn't i feel like

00:46:20.000 educating us should be enough is anybody having the same feeling because as soon as you get me in

00:46:27.280 the business of punishing members of the military for what they said you know unless what they said is

00:46:34.160 giving away you know like secrets or something but um as bad as i think their behavior is

00:46:43.120 i'm just not cool punishing members of the military for that kind of behavior there's got to be

00:46:50.400 something in between anyway that's just a feeling um i guess uh leslie stall 60 minutes was talking to

00:47:01.680 marjorie taylor green and here's an interesting reframe if you want to call it that so marjorie taylor

00:47:09.280 green says she's not mega she is america first what do you think of that some of you are saying no mercy

00:47:19.520 no mercy really i don't think mercy is the right um i think that's the wrong frame you know we should be

00:47:29.440 looking out for our own good as well as members of the military and you know maybe it's good for us

00:47:35.840 that we're not punishing members of the military too too aggressively you know there always has to be

00:47:43.440 some kind of guardrails but anyway back to marjorie taylor green um that's a pretty good reframe now

00:47:52.480 independent of what you think of her her opinions it's a pretty good reframe because back as she says

00:47:58.560 that's more like trump's political opinions and america first is more of a philosophical position i

00:48:07.440 guess which would have impact on policies so um you may have noticed that i've never embraced for myself

00:48:17.920 the maga label has anybody noticed that that i talk about maga all the time but i don't call myself

00:48:25.680 that i don't have a mega hat i won't be getting one and i've never really embraced it because i'm not a

00:48:32.560 joiner in that way i'm just not a joiner um what are you saying about

00:48:43.520 anyway so you don't have to take sides um i'm not talking about taking sides i'm just saying that

00:48:50.400 as a reframe america first versus mega it's kind of an interesting frame

00:48:58.320 yeah i like to think of myself as an independent all right tucker carlson continues to be interesting

00:49:05.680 so you might know that people have been accusing tucker of taking money from qatar

00:49:13.200 for i guess they would assume that he's taking their point of view or maybe he's being anti-israel

00:49:21.840 and uh he his claim is that he has never taken a dime from qatar but uh he's now decided to buy a

00:49:29.680 home in qatar and and uh apparently he's doing it as just an f you to all the people who are accusing

00:49:38.800 him of taking money and his point would be uh you can't affect my freedom so if you're going to be mad

00:49:48.000 at me for being friendly with qatar i'm going to be even friendlier with qatar i'm going to buy a house

00:49:54.080 there now none of us know what he's thinking so we we'd be on you know sort of sketchy ground if we

00:50:04.080 assume we know what he's thinking we're not mind readers but i'll tell you what i think might be

00:50:11.200 going on here part of it might be that spite thing where it is just to make a point if you tell me i

00:50:19.120 can't do it i'm going to do it but here's another reason have you noticed that the people who can afford

00:50:25.440 it are all buying an escape country you know or state so you've got a bunch of billionaires

00:50:34.000 who have property in hawaii which has the advantage of being far away from the mainland in case the

00:50:41.040 mainland turns into some kind of disaster or gets into a war and if i were going to pick a an escape

00:50:52.000 country and i had you know unlimited money seems like qatar would be or cutter whatever you want to 0.74

00:50:59.040 call it seems like that would be a good escape country doesn't it so every time i see somebody

00:51:05.360 who can afford it get their escape country i get a little bit more worried about what they know that

00:51:12.480 i don't know it could it be they're just it's just risk management and and they're completely aware

00:51:20.160 that you know every country has a risk even if you're a strong country i don't know i if i had to guess

00:51:28.560 and i cannot know what he's thinking my guess is that it's as much about finding a safe place for

00:51:35.680 his family and him because remember it's getting very dangerous to be a conservative in the united

00:51:41.840 states tim pool uh says that somebody shot into his facility uh the other day like a bullet and you

00:51:51.040 know i don't have to go through the other examples from charlie kirk to trump getting his ear shot to

00:51:55.920 you know all the all the uh what do you call it the swatting so if i were tucker and just imagine the

00:52:05.360 number of death threats he gets just imagine it i'm guessing it's almost every day and some of them

00:52:13.520 are serious so if i got that many threats and i had especially if i had a family or a spouse i'm

00:52:22.480 protecting i feel like i would be doing my job as you know head of the household if i had an escape plan

00:52:31.440 you know if it gets too bad we're going to walk directly over to this private jet

00:52:36.160 and we're going to go directly to qatar and we're just going to stay there until it's safe

00:52:43.520 now that's what i'd want to see from my head of household if they could afford it and looks like

00:52:48.880 he can afford it so that's what i think is going on but some of it might be the spite thing but i think

00:52:57.920 if you looked at the spite versus the personal safety probably the personal safety is the bigger

00:53:05.200 variable but i don't think you'd want to necessarily say that out loud necessarily

00:53:12.240 all right uh i guess the new york times has an article i haven't read it but the article is about

00:53:21.920 uh ukraine corruption and how all the cronies of zelensky contributed to the you know the corruption

00:53:29.520 allegations and uh now they're asking the question where'd all the money go where'd all the money go

00:53:37.120 now here's a uh just a mental test what do you call it a mind there's a word for that a mind

00:53:49.600 experiment a mental experiment that's not the right name for it but you know what i mean so

00:53:57.280 what we know is that when the the war broke out that the united states funded

00:54:03.280 ukraine to help them attack russia would we have been better off bombing ukraine 0.99

00:54:14.080 now i'm not suggesting we do that i'm just putting it out there as a mental experiment if we had bombed

00:54:21.040 ukraine the whole thing would have been over in a week because they wouldn't have anybody on their side

00:54:26.880 and we would have killed very few ukrainians but we could have taken out all their corrupt leadership 0.92

00:54:37.600 now russia would of course you know be the beneficiary

00:54:42.080 but aren't they going to be the beneficiary anyway

00:54:47.840 so let me be very clear i am not suggesting that would have been a good idea

00:54:52.640 i'm only i'm only doing a mental thing where you can imagine it and it's actually a little bit

00:55:01.600 hard to explain why we would have been better off getting to the place we are now

00:55:07.600 because won't russia still have its way in the long run did we not spend tremendous amount of money

00:55:14.640 and did did not that tremendous amount of money go into corrupt ukrainian hands

00:55:20.240 i mean i think we should probably oh can i say this i might not be able to say this in public

00:55:29.440 um i'll say it in the least um dangerous way we should we meaning the united states should be putting

00:55:39.680 a lot of effort into tracking down and bringing a legal process to the people that we think stole all

00:55:47.520 our money the ukrainians and if we're not doing that somebody needs to tell me why because

00:55:56.640 you know we might we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars are we not

00:56:02.080 yeah so

00:56:05.600 i don't know where any of that's going but um trump trump says that uh that russia likes the current

00:56:13.840 version of the proposed peace deal and uh zelensky hasn't read it and trump's a little bit miffed

00:56:22.320 that it's only 28 points or maybe fewer at this point we don't really know and zelensky is acting like

00:56:29.040 he's not even interested enough to stop what he's doing and read it what exactly was zelensky doing

00:56:36.320 that was more important than catching up with the current version of the peace proposal what what

00:56:46.000 anyway um according to wall street journal um russia has a big problem with ai

00:56:55.120 now uh what i mean is that russia like all the major countries when ai became a thing wanted to have ai

00:57:06.240 supremacy how is russia doing in their ai supremacy i don't know if you saw their humanoid robot that

00:57:15.920 they unleashed and just fell on its face and they don't have a better one than that than the one that

00:57:21.520 fell on its face in the public demonstration um so you've got first of all the the top russian

00:57:28.240 scientists if they can get out of the country you're going to do it as soon as possible because

00:57:33.040 if you're a top russian ai scientist the worst place you could be would be russia or maybe china

00:57:40.320 but if you can get out of there and go to some other freer country you you know you'll be the richest

00:57:45.840 smartest you know most valuable person in that country so they're going to lose their best brains

00:57:53.920 and uh apparently they don't have much else going for them let's say russian ai companies this is the

00:57:59.280 wall street journal the russian ai companies attracted about 30 million dollars in venture funding last

00:58:05.520 year 30 million dollars how much do you think open ai alone just one american company how much how much

00:58:14.400 funding do you think open ai got last year the answer is six billion dollars

00:58:22.480 so the entire russia russian ai enterprise raised 30 million dollars one company

00:58:32.320 in the u.s raised six billion and do you think our ai scientists are better than theirs

00:58:38.400 if they're not they will be there's no doubt about it so if it's true here's where it gets interesting

00:58:49.520 try to try to connect these two thoughts and ask yourself why they're not already connected

00:58:55.840 don't you think that uh all the smart people are saying that ai dominance is the future so if you're not

00:59:04.800 dominant in ai you're basically toast but the wall street journal is reporting that if you look at the

00:59:12.480 funding you look at what they've done so far that russia doesn't have any chance of being ai dominant

00:59:19.600 they might make good drones but they're not going to be ai dominant now maybe the u.s

00:59:26.400 will be the dominant one maybe it's china but it won't be russia so if you believe that your entire

00:59:35.760 country is toast if you're not ai dominant does it matter if if russia conquers ukraine or even gets

00:59:46.320 another big chunk of it because all the ai people will tell you well they're basically russia is going

00:59:53.200 going to go into business anyway it's just a matter of time is that true maybe it's never been true

01:00:01.200 that if you're not ai dominant you're going to be toast i mean it wasn't you weren't toast when the

01:00:09.600 united states became uh dot com dominant right other countries still exist russia still has an army so maybe

01:00:18.640 maybe maybe we've made too much of this ai dominance thing what do you think it could be that the whole ai

01:00:27.600 thing is just so overrated that uh there's nothing there you know maybe your drones will be a little

01:00:34.880 better but that's about it i don't know so try to connect the two thoughts one is that russia is

01:00:42.880 definitely going to get everything they want from ukraine but also how does that fit with russia will

01:00:49.440 be completely toast in a very short time because they're they'll never be dominant in ai and they'll

01:00:55.760 never even be good probably they'll probably not even be average good can both of those things be true

01:01:02.640 i don't know well there's a company called uh i'll see in a moment uh called biological oh there's a

01:01:16.000 platform called the biological interface systems to cortex or bisque so there's uh developed by teams at

01:01:23.680 columbia university and it's a new form of chip for your brain now as you know elon musk has a company

01:01:31.520 neuro neuro neuro neuro link that makes a you know brain interface that's been super uh impressive so

01:01:40.720 far but allegedly and there's a big big allegedly on this allegedly this other startup slash entity

01:01:51.520 has a super impressive chip that does not need a bunch of connections to your brain

01:01:58.480 um and somehow can control more of your brain for much less cost it uses much less real estate so

01:02:06.480 basically it's a whole other higher level of brain interface now like everything in technology it's

01:02:15.840 probably overrated but it does tell you where things are going and if it's true that that neural link has a

01:02:26.480 real legitimate competitor um that should make things go a little bit faster right even even if what

01:02:34.160 happens is neural link buys the other entity and just you know takes their technology we're probably at the

01:02:40.960 point where the where the potential for these chips becomes mainstream because today if you ask me scott

01:02:51.760 do you want a hole in your skull we're going to put a chip there and a bunch of good things are going

01:02:56.240 to happen i would say no thank you why don't you go first but suppose this new technology was so good

01:03:04.800 that i knew two or three people who had the chip and they were just delighted by it and it gave them a

01:03:09.760 superpower well then i'm going to be a cyborg as fast as i can and it does look like i have to admit

01:03:19.520 i wasn't sure this whole neural link thing had you know that much of a future you know even if you

01:03:27.360 assume oh technology always improves and you know never assume it will stop approving because it always

01:03:33.600 improves even with that i wasn't really sure that we could put a chip on your brain and make it talk to

01:03:41.520 it but at the moment i do at the moment i think that this is something where the potential is hard

01:03:50.080 to imagine and imagine if you will that you had all the powers of ai automatically and it was just

01:03:59.600 in your brain you wouldn't need a phone right you wouldn't need a phone you wouldn't need a computer

01:04:07.040 maybe you could just see the things you know floating in front of you even though they're not

01:04:12.000 there so that's exciting it's exciting that there's a potentially a big competitor neural link

01:04:19.520 well here's a story you have to be careful with there's a uh there's uh let's say this is the

01:04:26.960 okiyama university some researchers found that at least in mice there's a green light so a certain

01:04:35.440 kind of light that apparently will kill cancer so if i told you that there's a type of light

01:04:43.200 that would kill cancer what would be your first reaction well if you were cnn your first reaction

01:04:51.840 would be wait a minute why does drinking bleach sound like a good idea that's a terrible idea don't

01:04:59.680 drink bleach that's what they said when trump suggested using a different kind of light to battle

01:05:07.120 cancer in your lungs now somebody else said scott scott you fool somebody that this morning in the

01:05:14.960 comments said you fool scott how are you going to get the light inside your body to which i said 0.79

01:05:25.600 same way trump was uh they were talking about a essentially a what would you call it a stent or uh

01:05:34.240 uh there's a word for it but you could put a light device down somebody's lungs and let's say somebody

01:05:41.520 had a lung cancer and let's say if you could look at their lungs from the inside maybe you could see

01:05:48.080 those cancer things yeah so is it possible that you could introduce a light with an endoscope somebody

01:05:57.760 saying could you introduce a light to the lungs and the answer is i think so here's another one

01:06:07.440 um have you ever heard of uh i think this is an existing process uh where somebody can

01:06:16.640 uh this is probably a non-medical bad analogy but i'm going to make it anyway so you know if you were

01:06:22.480 doing uh let's say getting your kidneys what's the word for that when you run your blood through

01:06:30.480 an external device because your kidneys are not working what's that called anyway so we know that we

01:06:36.160 can take people's blood run it through some kind of process some kind of medical process and then

01:06:44.000 reintroduce them to their body could you dial dialysis yes so dialysis if i understand it correctly is

01:06:53.760 taking your active blood out of your body uh cleaning it and then reintroducing it to your body is that is

01:07:01.120 that accurate what would stop you from taking the blood out of the body running it through a light

01:07:08.240 and then reintroducing it to the body because it would come it would come back to the body without

01:07:14.960 cancer now i'm not suggesting that would work i'm just saying it's not crazy that you could in fact

01:07:23.520 introduce light to at least some specific kinds of cancers um blood cancer and maybe something else

01:07:31.760 uh anyway uh i'm i'm mostly bringing this up to moxie and adam for being such a bad

01:07:41.760 such a bad reporting uh element or entity that they that they turned that into drinking bleach

01:07:49.040 at least when trump said that they turned it into drinking bleach

01:07:54.160 all right ladies and gentlemen that's all i got for you today you may have noticed that it's a slow

01:08:00.240 news week oh my god it's a slow news week but we had fun anyway didn't we

01:08:09.280 it's better than nothing

01:08:12.640 all right uh i'm gonna talk privately to my beloved uh members of the locals platform so locals i'll be

01:08:23.680 coming at you in 30 seconds privately the rest of you thanks for joining

01:08:28.480 and i will see you tomorrow same time same place for more of this

01:08:58.480 our use of the cast here to find that which we're going to be a lot more bless N

01:09:11.680 in terms of opportunity and everybody you doiggs we'll be brand off and be happy that we are

01:09:19.840 doing this and we'll see you more and we've got aität of expertise and so even again

01:09:24.240 Thank you.

01:09:54.240 Thank you.

01:10:24.240 Thank you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 08, 2025

Episode 3040 CWSA 12⧸08⧸25

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