Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 3062 CWSA 01⧸04⧸26

00:00:00.000 all right sound is now turned on as it turns out that when i lean i got it i got it

00:00:15.120 that was a terrible way to start when i lean my phone against the screen which i

00:00:21.600 do before the show it sometimes hits the microphone button off the only button

00:00:28.720 that you wouldn't want to turn off all right does everybody see me everybody hear me sound is back

00:00:36.160 it's back i was just teasing you although you couldn't hear it that i've got a mind-blowing

00:00:43.440 thought today that i've never seen i've never heard but it blew my mind and it might blow your

00:00:51.200 mind too so wait for that but first how many of you would like to do a simultaneous sip

00:01:00.400 there's a time yeah let's do that um because i know why you're here you're here for the simultaneous

00:01:06.480 sip all you need is a copper mugger glass of tankers chalice inside the canteen jugger flask

00:01:12.560 a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the

00:01:19.680 parallel pleasure of the dopamine here today the thing that makes everything better

00:01:23.760 it's called simultaneously it happens now

00:01:33.440 oh extraordinary so so good well speaking of mind blown uh some of you know but if you didn't know

00:01:44.240 yesterday owen gregorian held a spaces event that's the audio that's the uh the audio feature with an axe

00:01:53.040 where people can volunteer to talk and so audio only and the topic was despite the fact that venezuela

00:02:01.280 had just been taken over um the topic was about me so he owen generously did a entire spaces uh that

00:02:11.520 lasted and here's here's the amazing part it lasted six and a half hours uh and people wondered scott

00:02:21.040 did you actually listen to that yes i did now i couldn't listen to it all live i was dipping in

00:02:28.720 and out because i had people coming in and out and nurses and a bunch of medical stuff so uh but

00:02:35.600 after it was done and i had you know some serious pieces of uh of my own time um i listened to the

00:02:45.360 whole thing and i was blown away um people saying very nice things there were tears there were compliments

00:02:54.400 but i wanted to especially call out some people i'm really proud of and that's the people who were

00:03:02.160 terrified about public speaking and here's the key they did it anyway they did it anyway

00:03:10.000 now i hope i may have been part of your journey to realize that embarrassment or freedom from

00:03:19.280 embarrassment is a superpower and i saw a number of people mention that as a superpower

00:03:24.640 and i will tell you i was watching people who have obviously acquired that superpower

00:03:31.600 do things that they were clearly uncomfortable with and it all worked out it all worked out

00:03:39.440 so to those of you who were frightened but did it anyway here's to you second sip

00:03:48.400 and if you were concerned about reciprocity uh another thing i talk about a lot uh boy did you pay it off

00:04:00.720 wow well anyway um owen is planning on a another different topic uh he's going to follow after the

00:04:09.680 show he'll do another spaces and by the way owen was amazing if if you want to hear somebody be a good

00:04:17.040 host if you want to see how it's done listen to it listen to owen just amazing anyway he'll do a second

00:04:25.680 one after the show uh but this one will be more about not about me it'll be about venezuela i think

00:04:32.960 probably some other things will come up but the venezuela will be at the top of the top of mind

00:04:38.080 all right all right i'm going to start by blowing your mind now here's my challenge that's a pretty

00:04:48.640 big claim right and i'm going to add a thought to the universe that as far as i know has never been

00:04:55.040 there before it goes like this oh i should also warn you the topic i'm about to talk about a lot of you

00:05:04.160 do not like but i'm going to convert to the people who don't like it the topic i'm about to introduce

00:05:12.080 i'm going to make you like it so that's my second challenge you're going to like something you didn't

00:05:17.920 like before ready all right so as i've been telling you ai may have reached some kind of plateau in how

00:05:28.880 well you can train it with just brute force and giving it more training material and i was reading

00:05:36.720 in some publication let's see in tech crunch that this is the year that maybe ai people figure out

00:05:47.920 that they've reached some kind of a plateau and they can't get much better just by adding more training

00:05:54.480 material and more more data center so the response to that which is already happening is some startups

00:06:02.560 trying to create virtual digital worlds that look and act like our world so that an ai can live in it 1.00

00:06:12.880 and learn to operate the way human would and also learn general intelligence the way a human would

00:06:20.720 now that necessarily means that these digital worlds will include characters based on humans because if

00:06:29.200 you want the ai to be a uh intelligent like a human the thinking is that you have to train it in an 0.99

00:06:36.960 environment in which it experiences the world like a human but because you can't you know unleash a bunch of 0.97

00:06:44.880 stupid ai's into the real world they'll build an ai virtual world and the characters within it almost 0.99

00:06:53.600 certainly would have to be programmed to believe they were not characters so they would have to be 1.00

00:06:59.600 programmed to believe they were original base reality right so i believe this will be the year

00:07:08.160 that ai um and these virtual realities will make it really obvious that if we're not if we're not

00:07:16.640 already a simulation the odds are tremendously high that we probably are can't know for sure

00:07:25.520 no way to know for sure but the odds will be a billion to one trillion to one that we're we're not real

00:07:32.960 now so my next question now i'm getting to the good part i haven't got to the good part you're going

00:07:42.160 to like it so people say to me but scott what does that imply about a creator you know the obvious

00:07:51.200 question is who made the original and i've been saying for years that obviously there was some advanced

00:07:59.040 intelligence don't know what it is it might be it might be your version of god it could be just a

00:08:06.160 higher civilization but definitely it would have to be an advanced civilization that was smarter than us

00:08:14.240 that knew how to create this simulation now you ready for the good part

00:08:20.640 is it true or not true that in what we think is our base reality

00:08:25.280 we're trying to create in the form of intelligence that would be smarter than us

00:08:32.480 smarter than us so this this actually opens up the possibility that we're a simulation created by

00:08:41.920 a species or entity that's not as smart as us

00:08:46.640 that's what i'm adding it's obvious there's something that was more intelligent than us

00:08:54.960 could create a simulation that that fooled us into thinking we're real but since we know we're already

00:09:02.400 trying to create an ai that's smarter than us it's entirely possible that we're created by an entity

00:09:09.360 that has advanced intelligence but not as smart as us because we've already surpassed it i'll bet nobody

00:09:19.120 said that before all right it gets better um so if it's true that the ai experts are going to make these

00:09:30.880 various training worlds don't you think there will be lots of them there's not going to be one

00:09:37.440 because every every ai startup that wants to create its own little environment will have to do their

00:09:44.160 own so very quickly you would have more simulated environments might be two or three or more than

00:09:53.040 whatever your base reality is now the other thing people ask me is uh why is this not compatible with

00:10:00.560 christianity and i say probably is there's probably nothing i said this incompatible with christianity

00:10:09.920 um you know you could imagine god created it it was the base reality and created it all

00:10:16.320 and there's nothing to rule that whatsoever and other people will say what does that imply about souls

00:10:24.240 well i don't think we know what a soul is so it kind of depends how you define it if you defined it

00:10:32.560 one way um you know it probably is real and we have one if you define it some other way

00:10:40.320 maybe not so real what about free will well here again it depends how you define it there's a

00:10:49.280 definition of free will in which it definitely exists if you just say free will is the ability to make a

00:10:56.640 choice if you stop there yeah it definitely exists because we well the ability to make a choice and not

00:11:05.600 know why you know not know the the real mechanism of it so that could easily be true that you have free

00:11:13.360 will if you define it that way if you defined it another way maybe you wouldn't and then lastly here's

00:11:20.400 the part you're gonna like um whenever i talk about this simulation and especially when i talk about

00:11:27.920 my own uh impending uh death um many of my christian friends and christian followers say to me scott you

00:11:38.400 still have time you should convert to christianity and i usually just let that sit because that's not an

00:11:47.440 argument i want to have um i've not been a believer and uh but i also have respect for any christian who

00:11:57.360 goes out of their way to try to convert me because how would i believe you believe your own religion

00:12:03.760 if you're not trying to convert me so i have great respect for people who care enough that they

00:12:11.440 want me to convert uh and then go out of their way to try to convince me so you're going to hear for

00:12:18.960 the first time today that it is my plan to convert so i still have time but my understanding is you're

00:12:29.040 never too late and on top of that uh any skepticism i have about reality would certainly be instantly

00:12:38.480 answered if i wake up in heaven um i do believe that the dominant christian theory is that i was i

00:12:46.160 would wake up in heaven if i have a good life yeah i don't necessarily have to you know just state

00:12:53.200 something in advance and so to my christian friends yes it's coming so you don't need to talk me into it

00:13:04.160 i am now convinced that the risk reward is completely smart if it turns out that there's nothing there

00:13:13.520 i've lost nothing but i've respected your wishes and i like doing that if it turns out there is something

00:13:20.560 there and the christian model is the closest to it i win so with your permission

00:13:28.240 i promise you that i will i will convert but i probably won't spend much time in that phase

00:13:39.440 so don't expect it to happen today okay but the argument made argument accepted

00:13:48.000 all right let's talk about the news is your mind blowing it

00:13:51.280 did i blow any minds i will find out about that later i saw a post by chamath uh palahapatiya

00:14:03.920 whose name i have trouble pronouncing and he was pointing out that back in september there was a

00:14:11.440 it was a bipartisan unanimous bill in the california legislature to require more reporting on the cost and

00:14:19.600 income data for the homeless so the idea is that both every single democrat and every single republican

00:14:28.720 in california um agreed how rare is that can you think of any other any other time that every democrat

00:14:40.320 and every republican in california agreed and they agreed to do this more rigorous testing uh or

00:14:49.200 rigorous auditing i guess or or checking on the expenses and this is obviously based on all the

00:14:55.200 alleged fraud and then as chamath points out uh governor newsom uh vetoed it now his reason for

00:15:06.320 vetoing is that he believed that there were already existing laws that would cover it now are we

00:15:14.560 supposed to believe and by this by the way this is back in september he vetoed it um are we supposed to

00:15:20.560 believe that that newsom was the only democrat who knew that the laws already existed and nobody talked

00:15:28.800 to him they went through all that work you know the democrats went through all that work

00:15:35.120 to be behind this 100 percent and that he vetoes it and chamath asked the the obvious question why

00:15:46.720 now i saw post response to this from a post on x called problem problematically non-compliant

00:15:55.440 and uh in this post he said this is the evolution of a dilbert filter complexity laundering

00:16:03.040 so this is based on something that may be inspired in terms of the thinking he said gavin's pretending

00:16:10.160 other complex bills that nobody will understand much less enforce already accomplish the same thing

00:16:17.440 how many times have i told you that uh fraud always hides its complexity so here both the democrats and

00:16:26.720 republicans tried to come up with this you know way to control expenses that would be easy to understand

00:16:34.640 but gavin newsom hid behind the complexity of the other things he thought would do the job

00:16:43.520 this is a case of it looks exactly like what it is like you don't have to wonder why he did it they did it

00:16:50.640 obviously to cover somebody's tracks well i think we're in a phase of you know civilization where the

00:16:59.760 smart assumption is that he's doing this to cover some kind of fraud don't know don't know for sure

00:17:08.000 and the reason i don't know is that hiding things behind complexity works it works really well

00:17:20.320 yeah can you predict the fraud you can well here's a

00:17:25.520 story non-story so mayor momdani the so-called communist mayor of new york

00:17:32.640 city he said he called trump to file a complaint about the arrest of maduro

00:17:40.240 who would do that so he called trump and he said he quote i registered my opposition

00:17:46.480 i made it clear we left it at that now is that just performative is that purely theater and is it

00:17:57.440 purely for the purpose of making it look like you know he can fight back against trump there was no

00:18:04.320 value in that whatsoever i'm kind of surprised uh that trump took the call but so you watch on one hand

00:18:12.400 you watch trump pull off this amazing military slash legal um operation which was probably fair well not

00:18:21.840 probably it was very hard to pull off and everybody in the world's impressed but you got this one

00:18:28.320 communist mayor who wants to register his opposition i made it clear you did nothing

00:18:36.880 all right there's two quotes of the day uh i'm going to call them my court of the day

00:18:43.280 one from eric weinstein and he posted on x this made me laugh this morning he said i've never been entirely

00:18:50.960 sure if international law actually existed

00:18:56.800 isn't that a great way to put it i've never been sure if international law actually existed

00:19:01.920 well my observation is that whoever has the power gets what they want so yeah on some theatrical

00:19:12.480 performative level there's something like international law but anybody who can ignore it does

00:19:19.280 ignore it this is a really an international law it's a funny question and then i thought that was

00:19:31.040 going to be the court of the day but i saw one by bad hombre also an x and uh bad hombre posted this

00:19:40.000 has kamala set up a bail fund for maduro yet

00:19:45.680 has kamala set up a bail fund for maduro yet now those are just good comments so i love i love a war

00:19:53.600 that no americans get killed and it generates a bunch of good memes and funny quotes these are two of my

00:20:02.080 favorites today all right um here's what i keep saying is working which is that trump creates assets

00:20:13.760 out of nothing and one of the assets he's creating out of nothing is the idea that um he does what he

00:20:21.440 says he'll do if you watch the press conference yesterday you saw rubio he just kept hammering that one

00:20:28.320 point we have a president who does what he says he'll do he does what he says he'll do and i thought

00:20:33.760 he was maybe maybe hitting that one point too much but uh if rubio is learning persuasion either by

00:20:43.680 just association or whatever else from trump he knows that repetition is persuasion so he just repeated

00:20:52.000 and repeated and repeated this president does what he says this president does what he says that's

00:20:56.960 probably not because rubio is a bad public speaker because he's a good one it's probably because he

00:21:04.560 understands the value of repetition and he's watched trump do it a million times a million times so uh and

00:21:12.480 then of course other people pick it up you know the conservative independent media the the people who

00:21:19.760 comment and stuff like me we pick that up and it's just automatic because we've been persuaded that

00:21:26.320 that's an important thing to think about um so thinking about how this created an asset so

00:21:35.120 trump has already threatened iran that if they shoot protesters that we would get involved he wasn't

00:21:43.120 specific but it suggested that yeah we'd put enough uh maybe military or cia muscle into it that it would

00:21:51.920 take out the regime now if trump had not already created this asset the asset that people believe he

00:22:00.800 does what he says he's going to do and he's really he's done great on that uh would would ran maybe think

00:22:08.640 twice or would ran say ah it's another joe biden he created an asset and nothing that's one of the

00:22:17.280 things i always teach you before trump goes into any negotiation it feels like there's this point where

00:22:24.560 he always creates that asset if you think about the tariffs for example um he created an asset out of

00:22:32.080 nothing it became a tool slash weapon that just didn't exist before you just made it so that's a

00:22:40.400 good persuasion i would guess and i hope i'm not wrong about this that china will not attack taiwan as

00:22:49.600 long as trump is president now maybe it wouldn't have happened anyway but when when china watches uh

00:22:57.440 our military take down the entire country in 10 minutes they're gonna think twice about doing

00:23:04.160 something with taiwan that uh trump would you know be violently opposed to so probably

00:23:15.280 this is having a big difference now he's also extending this new new york post is reporting that

00:23:22.000 that maybe you heard this already he's so he's already threatened colombia and what did he say uh

00:23:30.960 oh sorry one of the side effects of whatever i'm doing is i get burpee um so he's talking about

00:23:41.120 colombian president uh petro who also has some kind of cartel connections and he says quote uh he has cocaine

00:23:50.880 mills talking about the president of colombia he has cocaine mills he has factories where he makes

00:23:57.680 cocaine and yeah i think i stick by my first statement he's making cocaine and then he says 1.00

00:24:04.160 here's the kill shot he says they're sending it to the united states so he does have to wash his ass 0.99

00:24:11.600 i i tell you often that trump is so good with swearing that he only uses it judiciously but when he does it 0.99

00:24:18.880 really makes you focus on that thing he said it so instead of instead of saying a boring thing like 0.99

00:24:25.360 yes you know i hope he cooperates in the future he says he has to wash his ass as soon as you throw ass 0.99

00:24:32.720 in the sentence people pay attention and i imagine that uh the colombian president is uh practicing his run 0.99

00:24:42.000 to his safe room yeah they probably got a stopwatch like all right uh president of colombia can you make

00:24:50.160 it to the safe room in 37 seconds because unfortunately that's all the time you're gonna have

00:24:57.360 and maduro i guess almost made it but he didn't then trump says about mexico um talking about the

00:25:06.000 president of mexico sheinbaum he goes we're very friendly with her she's a good woman trump told uh

00:25:12.560 i guess fox and friends he said and quote but the cartels are running mexico she's not running mexico 0.99

00:25:21.040 okay again would mexican presidents be afraid of trump if he had not created this asset of if i say

00:25:30.480 i'm coming for you i'm coming for you probably not so now it creates the option at least i don't know

00:25:38.160 how this would work but at least the option that we could somehow work with mexico to get past the

00:25:44.480 fact that their leader is a cartel plant i know we'll see so i would call this as trump called it the

00:25:53.120 donro doctrine he was trying to see if he could make that sticky so instead of the monroe doctrine

00:26:00.080 doctrine which basically said the united states will dominate our hemisphere stay out of our hemisphere

00:26:07.200 he suggested this should be called the donro doctrine which i kind of like

00:26:14.560 now the big surprise to me yesterday about venezuela is that trump says we

00:26:22.000 meaning his military and uh well we be in the united states let's say uh are going to run venezuela

00:26:31.520 what how are we going to run venezuela

00:26:36.560 but if you recall one of the biggest mistakes in iraq the second iraq war was that we took out the

00:26:46.000 entire government and then everything fell apart and so people say if you had left some of the corrupt

00:26:54.560 government in place there would at least be stability and then maybe you could work toward you know a

00:27:00.480 better government or something so i don't think that if if it were anybody but trump i don't think that

00:27:09.440 they would have the assets going back to prior conversation i don't think they would have the

00:27:14.320 assets to um to run the country uh without using the locals so one of the it looks like the current

00:27:27.120 vice president who would have been maduro's vice president the person you could probably trust the least

00:27:32.960 uh is going to be under the let's say under threat from the us so rubio and hegseth and uh i think

00:27:43.200 raisin kane general kane uh i think they're going to be working with working with the existing corrupt

00:27:52.240 um venezuelan government now when i say working with surely that means co-opting meaning it's not an equal

00:28:03.360 it's not an equal uh situation that whatever venezuela does they do at the risk of the us sending in more

00:28:11.680 military and taking out the vice president now if you were the if you were that new vice president or

00:28:18.400 not new but the person running the country at least on paper um wouldn't you assume there would be a

00:28:26.480 bad play to just reproduce the maduro um situation because surely you would be taken out because trump

00:28:37.840 does what he says he'll do so by now uh there have been some threats

00:28:42.960 threats i assume like really really good threats and that maybe even some bribes but it's probably

00:28:52.640 the only way that we can get to some kind of a stable pro-american venezuelan government

00:29:00.480 so it seems to me that trump has learned from the iraq experience and i don't know if anybody's

00:29:07.920 tried it exactly like this where we say yeah we're going to work together but really you're going to

00:29:14.320 do what we tell you to do it might work um so i i would say it's the best play we don't know if it'll

00:29:24.240 work or how it'll work but i think i think it's the best play now the remaining question i have

00:29:31.120 is do we leave any military assets uh around the government buildings in other words is the vp of

00:29:40.480 venezuela already under the gun you know is the is the i guess there's probably some kind of presidential

00:29:49.520 palace or something do we have military presence where the actual physical people of the government

00:29:57.520 work and could we control them if we had removed all of our military even the special special forces

00:30:06.240 etc would we be able to control them so nobody's asked this question yet the the press is not asking

00:30:14.240 the right questions the right question is do we have any physical assets as in special forces

00:30:22.720 that are now the security security security security for the new vice president now remember we'd been told

00:30:33.120 that maduro was being protected by cuban um military am i right i'll take a fact check on this if i'm wrong

00:30:42.080 but my understanding is that maduro didn't even trust his own people enough to have them be his security

00:30:49.520 and that he did trust cuba because cuba and venezuela have a symbiotic relationship so could it be that

00:30:59.600 the first thing the americans did is say cuban gone cuban gone cuban gone until there was no security

00:31:08.320 and then they said we we are now your security so if you don't do what we want you got no security

00:31:14.880 so i think that might be what's happening but that's speculation well you would not be surprised to

00:31:22.640 hear that there are lefty leaning protests about the venezuelan action in four different states and as

00:31:31.120 wall street apes um posts on x that uh immediately at least the independent journalists figured out that

00:31:41.040 they were all paid and organized by the same entity because they had the same signs different cities

00:31:48.640 uh it's obviously organized protests by somebody and then wall street apes also 0.92

00:31:55.680 um points out who it is so it didn't take long um so apparently the hands-off venezuela protests

00:32:04.960 have been funded uh by a an ngo of course funded by an ngo that hides that hides the uh the badness

00:32:15.600 you you launder through an ngo but it's an ngo called the people's forum which has received over 20

00:32:23.440 million dollars from one billionaire now the billionaire it turns out lives in china

00:32:29.520 right so the money is coming from a pro chinese billionaire do you remember when you would have

00:32:39.120 thought wow i'm surprised a lot of people disagree with this venezuela thing because it worked out so

00:32:44.960 well now we instantly know that it's a fake demonstration and that some billionaire or billionaires

00:32:54.480 are behind it boom so that didn't work and we're in a whole new world people uh again thanks to the

00:33:07.920 elon musk the mike bends the uh and the other players who have uncovered how the ngos work we can

00:33:15.680 just instantly go to the answer is it real no is it being paid for by a billionaire yes what what

00:33:23.120 country backs the country backs the billionaire in this case china it's like takes 10 seconds but as

00:33:29.840 i've said before you know you and i are probably in the bubble where this is easier the average normal

00:33:37.120 person or voter still probably thinks it's real and that's what we got to do we gotta gotta fix that

00:33:44.960 uh you heard me speculating and wondering uh what if there's a real reason behind the uh behind the

00:33:56.720 attack on venezuela so the legal justification is drugs and i do believe that trump is serious about

00:34:05.680 stopping drugs but the real question is is that the only reason and i don't think any of us thinks

00:34:13.760 this is the only reason some would say is because of oil um etc but i saw an opinion by cynical publius

00:34:23.760 on x um who i think captured my thinking well no i'm not going to say that it added to my thinking

00:34:33.920 um i don't want to pretend that i had this thought as clearly as cynical publiuses but he said he's

00:34:41.440 monitoring the venezuelan situation and there's so many questions yes um but the strategic reason

00:34:49.040 for bringing down maduro has become abundantly clear um it wasn't abundantly clear until i read

00:34:57.520 the next part of his opinion he said while we ostensibly captured maduro based on legitimate and

00:35:03.920 was sending u.s drug charges from 2020 the real reason for the military operations this morning is

00:35:10.960 that neutralizing maduro's venezuela had become a strategic imperative for the usa meaning that maduro and

00:35:20.560 venezuela were becoming a central hub for all the people we don't like so he was nurturing relationships

00:35:29.200 it says cynical public with russia has blood and ran and uh and was already be going to be part of

00:35:38.000 china's uh belt and road initiative so if you were looking for the one reason that we went after

00:35:45.600 venezuela you would miss it would be one of those missing the forest for the trees the forest is that we

00:35:53.360 can't have somebody who's actively anti-american and actively courting our enemies while also being a

00:36:00.720 presence in our hemisphere you don't need more reason than that that under the don roe doctrine

00:36:08.960 you don't need a better reason to take them venezuela that they've simply become a

00:36:13.840 um something become too important to our enemies to let them you know have free reign um but i've seen

00:36:25.280 in the comments you're you're prompting me but that was the next thing i was going to talk about

00:36:29.600 apparently uh rasmussen poll notices this that trump has posted um he's posting videos of

00:36:39.120 allegations of venezuela being part of uh rigging our election and what rasmussen poll points out is

00:36:49.440 that's not the sort of thing he was doing before and it could be that the bonus on top of the bonus

00:36:57.120 beyond the strategic and oil and everything else is that trump can save the new regime hey new regime

00:37:07.120 here's the deal if you help me prove that venezuela was behind the rigging of our elections you're going

00:37:15.280 to have a much better time of it as america figures out who's in charge and we work with you to you know

00:37:22.000 rebuild venezuela so once again it seems that trump has built an asset that didn't exist so uh if you

00:37:32.640 went back a year trump could not have asked venezuela to help him figure out did uh dominion or anybody

00:37:40.640 else through some kind of uh connection with venezuela did they make any difference to our elections

00:37:48.080 but now having taken control of the government he can say that government you're going to help me find

00:37:55.120 out what happened and they'll probably have to do it because the people who we'd be talking to would

00:38:02.720 not necessarily be guilty like personally guilty but they would know that if they work with them

00:38:09.200 they'd be giving up something that didn't have any value to them anymore which is some knowledge about

00:38:15.040 something may or may not have happened but if they give that up things are going to be a lot better for

00:38:21.200 them nobody else could have done that he created the asset of nothing i mean not nothing he attacked

00:38:30.000 him over over through the country but if this is a signal that trump is going to go hard at the election

00:38:38.800 integrity and he's going to go hard at it through this more control of venezuela that would be quite a 2026

00:38:47.520 wouldn't it that would change everything and i think that's coming

00:38:58.240 i saw a post today on x by fisher king and he said it's striking that in the realm of foreign affairs

00:39:08.000 where potus has real power big things can get done meanwhile domestically we keep running up the debt and

00:39:15.680 everything is broken um that's a good point where trump has the most of let's say the most uh freedom

00:39:27.280 he gets the best results where he has the least freedom because democrats are always on him for

00:39:34.400 domestic stuff it's hard to get anything done and that would work you know no matter who's the president

00:39:40.160 the other team is going to stop you from being effective um so case in point uh apparently unusual

00:39:49.760 whales is reporting that the u.s raid to capture maduro was actually leaked to the washington post and

00:39:56.720 the new york times but both publications decided it would be too risky to publish it

00:40:03.040 um because it would be dangerous for the troops however somebody put very large bets

00:40:12.320 on the day that venezuela would be uh attacked and they placed them on polymarket where i believe

00:40:20.960 i'll take a fact check on this but i believe polymarket allows you legally

00:40:25.600 or another way to say it was there's no reason you couldn't make an insider bet so somebody who had

00:40:34.320 insider knowledge made a shit ton of money by picking the exact day of the attack

00:40:40.800 that probably is related to whoever was leaking as well

00:40:44.080 all right you all know michael schellenberger uh one of the best independent journalists

00:40:55.840 in the country an amazing writer amazing uh does amazing work but he's warning us and i don't think

00:41:04.640 we're watching this closely enough that we're in an absolute free speech crisis

00:41:09.680 so apparently the eu australia and brazil uh had a meeting with stanford recently to coordinate global

00:41:18.560 censorship strategies against americans what what we we know that they had a meeting and that the the

00:41:29.120 deal was they're trying to censor american free speech well the reason this is a big problem

00:41:36.240 is that censoring free speech is probably the beginning of every you know anti-democratic thing

00:41:43.200 you can imagine it's the most authoritarian thing i can imagine because everything bad comes after

00:41:49.360 censoring free speech right if you tried to do something bad but free speech was still in existence

00:41:58.080 there's a good chance you could cash it and get enough people involved to stop it but if you

00:42:04.320 stop free speech in america you could kind of control america and you would have to you know make

00:42:12.400 it look like you're trying to uh do the opposite you'd have to make it look like you're improving free

00:42:18.800 speech by getting rid of the bad parts the bad parts now the bad parts are what the free speech is for

00:42:26.880 the bad parts are the part where people don't like it and often isn't true but if you don't have the

00:42:33.120 freedom to speak uh all bad will happen and as michael schellenberger points out here are the approval

00:42:41.440 ratings of some of these countries involved so macron has macron of france has a 15 15 percent approval

00:42:52.720 what and he's good this guy with a one five approval in his own country is going to come and tell us

00:43:00.320 you know what kind of free speech we have or don't how about germany's mers their leader has a 20 percent 0.93

00:43:09.120 approval britain's prime minister 25 percent approval now these are the clowns that are trying to figure

00:43:18.640 out a way to have european pressure on american platforms to the point where the american platforms have

00:43:27.040 to say all right all right you know we'll go out of business if we don't deal with you so we'll have

00:43:32.240 to start censoring our own people and uh that's like the beginning of the end so uh as schellenberger

00:43:44.000 points out accurately uh we are in a free speech crisis because they might be able to pull it off

00:43:51.120 you know i don't know what the response is i think the response is if you have trump as a president he 0.64

00:43:58.800 will say um at some point if he hasn't already here's the deal you clowns need to stay away from

00:44:06.080 our free speech and if you don't all bets are off all bets are off because i would consider this one of the

00:44:14.800 biggest um strategic defense issues in the country it's a bigger risk than china attacking us it's a 0.84

00:44:23.600 bigger risk than russia attacking us because i don't think they will but this is definitely happening 0.84

00:44:31.520 so you know the thing you have to worry about is not the one that sounds worse on paper it's the one

00:44:37.280 that's actually going to happen and it looks like they're coming after us so i would expect

00:44:42.560 at some point trump to use his assets which is he does what he says he'll do to at least postpone

00:44:50.960 this but my god you know and and the the the weapon that the uh these other countries have

00:44:59.600 is that they can find us they can find an american company like x i think they're trying to find x

00:45:06.960 140 million dollars or something so they do have a tool but their tools are the leaders of their

00:45:14.960 countries too in other news that i find fascinating but you don't uh china's got this gigantic effort to

00:45:25.600 try to improve batteries so you china big country so they've got this massive new project 0.87

00:45:33.760 is your government backed uh but also some big companies and they're trying to advance um solid

00:45:41.520 state electrolyte batteries now uh i tell you all the time that different laboratories in different

00:45:50.640 countries they're all working on better batteries but imagine if if there was some big breakthrough

00:45:56.800 you ideally from an american company it really changes everything it makes your robot lasts a lot

00:46:04.480 longer makes your car go farther but more importantly think about the national security benefit of getting

00:46:14.000 as many people as we can off the grid and onto batteries so if you have a battery that's good enough and

00:46:21.440 economical enough then every every residential house and every business too could be off the grid

00:46:30.080 at least where the sun shines enough so imagine if we get into some kind of war and the first thing

00:46:38.160 the enemy wants to do is turn off our power if enough residential um entities if enough of them have battery

00:46:47.920 then they can't turn us all off so maybe you don't have a battery but maybe your neighbor does so you

00:46:53.360 don't have to freeze to death you know you can still charge your phone so at some point the economics of

00:47:00.240 batteries are just a major major security issue and then this makes me wonder i i never really hear

00:47:11.040 what tesla is doing with their plans for next generation batteries uh i hear stories about incremental

00:47:18.960 changes but it makes me wonder if tesla and i assume it's true actually what makes me wonder if tesla has

00:47:26.240 some secret project that would leapfrog all these other battery wannabe people because that would be 0.95

00:47:34.640 huge speaking of tesla makes me think of elon which makes me think of this story that apparently um

00:47:44.640 that neural link is going to enter mass production in 2026. so apparently the neural link that's the

00:47:51.920 uh i'll loosely say it's a chip that they put in your brain that's not really the right explanation

00:47:58.560 but loosely it will do things like respond it will restore function to people who are disabled in a

00:48:07.600 variety of ways so they might be paralyzed but then they would be unparalyzed they might have vision or

00:48:14.560 hearing problems but that would fix it and i imagine there'd be a whole bunch of things

00:48:20.880 that could be fixed by neural link which apparently they've sort of gotten to the next level of

00:48:25.920 development on but here's my insight what happens when the people who have the neural link chip are not

00:48:36.000 just restored back to as good as the normal i'll say the normies i don't want to insult anybody accidentally

00:48:43.920 um what happens if you've got the chip and you only got it for fixing one problem let's say your

00:48:51.760 problem was hearing so you get the thing and you could hear now that would bring you up to what the

00:48:58.240 sort of the average baseline human can do but once you've got the chip in you what would stop it from

00:49:05.600 adding extra powers why not connect it to ai why not allow you to control things at a distance just by

00:49:14.560 thinking it are we entering a stage where you would rather hire somebody with a chip in your head

00:49:22.240 because they can do everything a normal person can do but a whole bunch of things that normal normal

00:49:29.200 people can't do you know if you were hiring a programmer would you rather have one who has a chip in his head

00:49:36.880 and can just think the code and the code disappears or do you want to stick with somebody who has to type

00:49:43.760 it in run it by ai test it that's a bad example but um it seems to me it's inevitable that the people

00:49:53.920 with the neural link implant would be better better than employees who didn't have it right what what

00:50:05.120 would be the counter argument to that and then do we get to the point where uh and this wouldn't

00:50:11.280 happen right away but a point where people just optionally get a chip because they too want to get

00:50:17.040 the full cyborg power probably won't be legal you know probably there'll be some regulation that says

00:50:26.160 you can only do it if you're trying to fix a problem but eventually eventually it's going to be

00:50:33.040 do you have a chip or do you not have a chip oh i wouldn't even want to marry somebody who didn't

00:50:37.520 have a chip that's coming remember you may have heard me doubt the uh the story that murder is at a

00:50:50.000 20-year low or went down 19 or something so zero edge has an article that uh is likewise as i did

00:51:00.080 questioning whether the real the real thing is bad data so did murder go down because trump did a good

00:51:07.280 job how um or is it the cities were manipulating the data and it's all bad uh i've been saying for some

00:51:18.560 time that all data that's important is fake and murder rates kind of important data so according to the

00:51:27.120 scottam's rule that all data that's important is fake i think it's just fake data i just don't think

00:51:34.640 it's real so i'm glad there's at least one entity that agrees that we don't know if that's real

00:51:40.880 all right there's a couple more uh tesla things so apparently tesla's optimist robot and i think this

00:51:55.280 is coming from elon is going to be uh active in law enforcement now the robots would not have weapons

00:52:04.480 and they would not do violence but they would somehow assist human crime fighting so he doesn't

00:52:13.520 say specifically how but he says no guns no tasers you know completely unarmed uh it would focus on

00:52:21.920 humane containment and non-violent intervention designed to de-escalate not dominate uh and it

00:52:31.680 would be ai-powered patrols with zero aggression so it'd be way to sort of control things so do you think

00:52:41.280 that um optimist will be a a guide let's say an assist in avoiding crime i think it would be

00:52:52.720 because if you look at human psychology it seems to me there's a high likelihood that if you put a

00:52:59.200 robot into a dangerous situation that the criminals would say oh that robot is watching us so if the only

00:53:07.760 thing the robot did was say go into the dangerous place and look around that alone probably would

00:53:15.280 decrease the amount of crime so it could be that the robot is more like a uh security camera that can

00:53:23.360 walk right the problem with existing security cameras is that they're in one place um so if you needed

00:53:31.840 the the visibility to be behind the door or something well maybe it can knock down a door and just walk in

00:53:38.560 and start to start taking that video so i do believe that this is a doable thing but um i want to clarify

00:53:47.600 something that i said uh at a prior podcast um i said i didn't think that robots were ready to be like

00:53:58.320 butlers where they can learn any skill and then you just teach them what you want and they can go do it

00:54:04.320 uh and somebody clarified to me i think that's correct that the initial wave of robots will be

00:54:12.320 single purpose and probably factory so the uh the optimists robots that they're going to start building

00:54:21.840 at the scale is not because they're smart enough to do what robots should do if they were you know

00:54:31.680 ideal they're just smart enough to do a single purpose thing such as learning what to do in a

00:54:37.120 specific warehouse or factory and then that would make sense with this idea that the optimist could also

00:54:45.680 be good for security it would be closer to a single purpose than it would be to a general purpose

00:54:54.960 uh then elon says he said this in an ex post that optimists will eliminate poverty

00:55:02.160 and provide universal high income for all now do you think he learned to talk like that from trump

00:55:08.800 right because doesn't that doesn't that sound more like something that trump would say because it

00:55:21.280 feels like an over claim it feels like a salesperson approach uh but it's also optimistic as hell

00:55:29.280 and i think that this is an example of how musk is learning from trump just as rubio is so we're

00:55:38.320 starting to see people pick up the trumpian way of communicating where it doesn't have to be i don't

00:55:46.320 know a hundred percent true it just has to make you feel a certain way and ideally act a certain way

00:55:54.480 that is productive and good for the country and i'm all for it so you know the old me would have said

00:56:02.960 now come on that's too much of a claim eliminate poverty eliminate it really really but now i think

00:56:11.520 it's just a style of communication that's very effective and making me feel right and act right

00:56:18.640 and i'm okay with that it works all right um as i said after the show which is basically now

00:56:31.520 um owen gregorian will be firing up by new spaces and this will be more about the news more about

00:56:39.040 venezuela and uh you should all join if you don't know how to find it uh go to my feed on uh on x

00:56:50.160 i'm pretty sure i reposted it this morning or just do a search for owen gregorian and you'll see it at

00:56:57.440 the top of his x speed you'll see the link to go to the spaces and i remind you that spaces is a

00:57:04.080 feature on x that allows people to speak but not be seen and uh you'll see one of the best hosts

00:57:13.200 you've ever seen um owen gregorian does an amazing job all right people uh let me go back to my first

00:57:23.120 talk about the simulation did i accomplish my goal of blowing your mind yes or no

00:57:33.920 it'll take me a minute for your comments to catch up

00:57:39.600 but i want to see if i accomplish my goal

00:57:41.600 i think there's a delay of maybe a minute

00:57:52.720 between you posting the comments and before it shows up here only because there's so many of them

00:57:58.240 what do you think mind's blown yes there we go your comments just caught up absolutely yes yes good

00:58:16.320 yeah i got a few nopes in there more yeses than no this is that's the most you could hope for right

00:58:23.200 well you'll be thinking about that i i think it's hilarious once you realize that we could be created

00:58:32.640 by a less intelligent entity than us and that the that we're the ai and we're already smarter than our

00:58:42.000 creator as was intended to be what lower intelligence you're watching it right now if if we succeed

00:58:55.440 meaning the startups in creating a virtual environment in which the ai learns to be smarter than us 0.90

00:59:03.040 and that's the whole point we're not creating we're not trying to create an ai that's dumber than us

00:59:09.200 so if we have the infrastructure which is these virtual worlds then we already see like right now

00:59:20.080 we see that what we think is our base reality will be quickly less intelligent than what the the outcome

00:59:29.200 of the ai research is so you don't have to ask um could it happen it's happening right now

00:59:36.880 it's happening right now it's the whole point the whole point is to build a virtual reality in which

00:59:45.840 the characters within the reality our future ai is smarter than us and whatever this is

00:59:55.200 does that make sense but once you once you grok that not literally grok but understand it it's kind of

01:00:03.680 mind-blowing and mind-blowing and again it does not rule out god it doesn't rule out uh that we're

01:00:10.720 created by a superior intellect doesn't rule that out it's just you know the point of it is a less

01:00:18.560 intelligent entity creating a more intelligent entity

01:00:21.360 god is the author of the simulation can't rule it out yep depends how you um except that it's possible

01:00:36.640 that the god is less smart than us well that would depend how you define god so if you do it in the

01:00:45.600 traditional way then uh there's nothing to prevent the god created the the entire thing cannot be ruled out

01:00:59.040 all right i know that's all you need of that um and i will uh i'm gonna go private with my beloved

01:01:06.480 my beloved local subscribers the rest of you i hope you got something out of this

01:01:13.920 and remember to join owen on spaces all right locals coming at you privately

01:01:36.480 uh

01:01:41.440 uh

01:01:46.000 um

01:01:48.640 um

01:01:49.920 um

01:01:52.760 uh

01:01:53.920 Thank you.

01:02:23.920 Thank you.

01:02:53.920 Thank you.

01:03:23.920 Thank you.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 04, 2026

Episode 3062 CWSA 01⧸04⧸26

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript