Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 798 Scott Adams： The Clearview AI app that Identifies Criminals, With David Scalzo, Plus Impeachment

00:00:00.000 bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in we got a good one today it's gonna be

00:00:07.420 it's gonna be lit it's gonna be off the hook it's gonna be amazing today we're gonna have

00:00:13.560 a special guest which i'll introduce in a moment but first things first right that's right first

00:00:21.340 things first and i think you know what's coming up first um we're a little low on followers for some

00:00:30.940 reason so let me see if there's uh i think i've got a bug here i'm gonna tweet going live

00:00:39.360 going live now on paris i'm gonna tweet that out because i think the notification failed or

00:00:48.800 something well happy weekend and i think i know why you're here at least part of the reason you're

00:00:56.980 here yes i do it's because you'd like to be here for the simultaneous sip i usually wait for a thousand

00:01:04.220 people but is everybody watching the uh maybe you're watching the impeachment or something

00:01:09.220 somebody says i didn't get a notification yeah i think there's something wrong with the notifications

00:01:15.340 and it might have something to do with having a guest on so i don't know exactly but we're going

00:01:22.360 to find out anyway first first if you'd like to participate in a simultaneous sip all you need

00:01:30.960 is a cup or mug or glass a tank or chalice or stein a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind

00:01:35.640 fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the

00:01:43.080 dopamine to the day the thing that makes everything better simultaneous sip go

00:01:47.220 yeah yeah that's a good one yep just as good as i thought now if technology is working

00:01:58.200 and i believe it is i'm going to activate my guest and give you a little uh let's see i'm gonna pick my

00:02:08.560 guest and we're going to be talking to david scalzo founder and managing partner of kirinego i hope i

00:02:19.500 am pronouncing it correctly if you're wondering why we're going to be talking to david scalzo

00:02:24.580 it's because he's an investor in a company called clearview ai which is all over the news front page

00:02:32.160 of the new york times controversy everywhere it's the app that allows law enforcement at the moment

00:02:39.720 law enforcement is using it to take a picture of anybody could be a dead body a john doe a person on

00:02:46.440 the street that they've stopped and it will tell you tell the police who it is it will give the

00:02:51.740 identification from a photograph scary we'll find out david can you hear me i can hear you good

00:03:00.700 morning how are you doing scott i'm i'm doing great good morning now i'm correct that you are

00:03:06.240 an investor in clearview ai right yeah absolutely yeah we're uh we're venture capitalists uh the name

00:03:12.680 of our firm is kieranaga it's actually japanese uh name japanese term but uh before we get started

00:03:19.060 i just want to say you know i'm an engineer by training and when you're an engineer by training

00:03:23.820 you know there's two people in the world you have a man crush on one is elon musk and the other is scott

00:03:28.860 adam so you know i i really appreciate the fact that i'm able to be here with you today

00:03:34.060 well well thank you uh i did notice from your biography that you've got two degrees in engineering

00:03:39.780 engineering and then engineering management and then you've got a an mba from a top school in the

00:03:45.500 country so you're sort of an example of what i talk about in terms of talent stacks you know you've

00:03:50.880 you've combined uh different skills together so that you've just got a greater view of the world which

00:03:57.080 brings us to clearview ai you put money into that your firm did tell tell us uh well first

00:04:04.380 describe what the app is doing today so that we can get a little bit of context here absolutely so

00:04:11.900 there is an explosion of digital information out in the world uh more and more people are being

00:04:17.340 are connecting to the internet and everyone or a lot of people are posting information it could be

00:04:22.920 information on academic journals it could be uh videos of uh it could be people doing tiktoks

00:04:28.800 um it could be philosophy sports religion charity everything people are putting on there and some of

00:04:34.680 the most powerful tools for humans to improve ourselves to be give a happier healthier life

00:04:41.100 is using things like search engines like google for instance to search for words and find where

00:04:48.820 those certain keywords come up on the internet so what clearview does is something very similar

00:04:54.220 you take a picture a photo of a person and then it directs you to links essentially all across the

00:05:01.300 internet showing where that person shows up in various contexts so so in short it's a search engine for

00:05:09.580 faces so that you can put an identification with the face absolutely absolutely which is now let's talk

00:05:16.480 about the the social implications but but tell us where it's being used how many people are using

00:05:20.920 it who's using it who who who has access to it is it the public or is it just police force yeah so

00:05:27.620 right now it's a startup and whenever you do a startup you know startup 101 whether you're at

00:05:32.200 harvard northwestern stanford business school is you target a specific industry vertical someone who is

00:05:38.500 a super user and where they're using right now is law enforcement so there's over a thousand

00:05:44.000 independent uh independent law enforcement agencies and so this is everything from the federal

00:05:48.660 government all the alphabet agencies to state police departments to county sheriffs who are elected

00:05:54.120 directly by voters to um local municipal um police officers and they're all making independent

00:06:01.060 decisions to use clearview now is there uh it's not limited to the united states right well right now it is

00:06:08.940 but um you know the technology is definitely powerful enough and broadly enough to uh to be

00:06:13.820 used elsewhere as well all right so how give us some uh use cases tell us what uh crimes are solved

00:06:21.220 why do police like using this thing well if you think about a detective any crime show you watch what's

00:06:27.880 the number one thing they want to do they want to generate leads who are possible suspects and then they

00:06:32.840 want to track them down using their skills and they use credit card data and cell phone data and all

00:06:37.940 sorts of other information fingerprints so what clearview does is it helps them generate leads

00:06:43.480 more quickly so if you have a suspect in a human trafficking child exploitation case and you only

00:06:50.180 have a photo of someone you can use clearview clearview the photo and then it will show where that person may

00:06:57.640 be in uh on the internet whether they have a twitter profile or a facebook profile or whether they're

00:07:03.800 uh you know at some sort of basketball game and that generates leads and ideas for the police officers

00:07:09.820 and detectives where it's exceptionally powerful is when you're working with um gangs whether they are

00:07:16.760 um uh terrorist networks whether they are drug cartels whether they're mob gangs and where you may have

00:07:22.960 an inkling of one person in the game but you may not know the the other five six seven people and so if you

00:07:28.900 take a group photo then what you can do is identify the other people or at least give you some leads

00:07:34.300 and then of course our law enforcement will follow those leads and determine whether uh they're you

00:07:40.440 know whether the person should be uh implicated or not all right leads are fun but how many cases have

00:07:46.320 been solved tell tell us about uh any happy endings that we know about so far well the new york times

00:07:53.140 article um specifies one where the indiana state police have really talked about where um they um

00:07:59.560 busted a whole network of um unfortunately individuals who were taking advantage of children

00:08:04.220 um and so uh getting those people off the street is very good there was another one in uh in florida that

00:08:10.660 they talked about where a person had a certain type of tattoo and that tattoo was then uh being was able

00:08:17.420 to be matched uh based on that those are some examples now what what's what types of crimes are the ones

00:08:25.660 that are most likely to be usefully solved well it's it's clearly the most vile crimes out there right

00:08:33.320 it's uh you know it's the um the child exploitation the human trafficking the domestic violence the uh

00:08:39.820 the drug the uh the um um drug cartels terrorists those are the ones more likely to be solved but

00:08:48.300 it's also you know for shoplifting petty thieves assault subway gropers is one where um it's used a

00:08:56.000 lot where you have a grainy photo of someone that's uh you know pickpocketing on a subway um those are

00:09:01.600 those are different types of things where clearview can be used all right i'm watching the audience the

00:09:07.280 audience is going crazy in the comments because they want me to push you on the social risks so

00:09:14.580 let's talk about that so accepting that i would imagine law enforcement would be drooling over this

00:09:20.840 product because it allows them to identify somebody who may not want to identify themselves

00:09:25.700 or it might be in a situation where you're not necessarily in a conversation with them

00:09:29.940 but now they've also kind of be used to identify let's say a dead body that doesn't have

00:09:36.220 identification it would do that right oh it could it could be helpful in that you know what um i've

00:09:41.980 talked to paramedics and emt people and a lot of times what you have is someone who

00:09:45.680 has had a heart attack or who has fallen ill and you know unconscious and you who is this person do

00:09:52.300 we have any context and so uh to be used with uh paramedics would be great well what if somebody

00:09:58.420 is i just saw a question a really good question go by in the comments what if somebody was an

00:10:02.920 undercover undercover cop and and the bad guys got this app could they find their undercover cops

00:10:08.640 dot potentially sure absolutely so so there are uh like every new technology there's going to be the

00:10:16.360 the good and the bad now people are asking where did the data come from are you scraping only from

00:10:22.320 public legal sources do you have secret sources where do you get your database of faces from

00:10:28.560 so we have to you know let's start out what i talked about there's an explosion of digital

00:10:33.140 information that people are voluntarily putting up on the internet right and so there's millions of

00:10:38.540 faces up there and people have public personas on facebook on linkedin on tiktok on instagram uh in

00:10:46.260 addition to all the other places that information's put for instance almost every single uh work uh employee

00:10:52.440 corporation out there has a public facing website that has the pictures of for instance all the

00:10:58.440 lawyers in their firm or all the consultants in their firm or their leadership so what we do is we

00:11:03.420 index all that public information and then just connect the dots essentially link it all together

00:11:09.080 so it is only public sources now there are other things that are public sources and that the government

00:11:14.100 wants to get out those informations are like the most wanted list where they you know we we link that

00:11:20.380 together they have um the center for uh child exploitation and trafficking we link those stuff we link those

00:11:27.760 together but it's all publicly available information um that is helpful to everyone so i um i noticed that

00:11:35.900 i saw a story that the new jersey is the new jersey police department decided to not use it to ban it

00:11:42.240 is that do i have that information right so there was a pronouncement by one of the ags of something to

00:11:48.540 that extent but let's let's take a broader view you know there's autonomous vehicles that are taking photos

00:11:53.760 there's going to be fedex uh that drones flying over our heads that are going to be taking photos

00:11:58.040 the best thing we can do is get this technology out to everyone because what it does is it increases

00:12:04.700 transparency and when you increase transparency you increase trust with people and when you have

00:12:09.920 trust you increase the opportunity more meaningful relationships now here's what's going on in in

00:12:15.680 new jersey and you know this is obviously very early so i don't want to sound too hyperbolic on

00:12:21.540 how this happens but let's say they ban this technology and they um only allow government

00:12:29.000 to use it what's going to happen is you're going to have a two-class you know a hunger games type

00:12:33.480 society where the private where the the politicians can live in security and the rest of us wander among

00:12:40.740 thieves and exploiters and so what will happen in new jersey is more people will move to places where

00:12:46.440 it's safer like north carolina and florida um and we'll you know that is the dystopian future when

00:12:52.260 it's actually banned if we allow it to be used freely i creates a better society for all of us all right

00:12:58.580 let me let me uh let me tell you my uh personal uh stake in this in the sense that as a semi-famous

00:13:06.780 person my my reality is that when i go in public people recognize me by face quite often especially

00:13:15.020 since i've been doing the live streaming so pretty much everywhere i go there's going to be somebody

00:13:18.960 who recognizes me by face but they also know because i'm a public figure they know something

00:13:24.620 they read about me that could be bad usually not true something you know something about my background

00:13:30.640 my education my career so i've lived in this world you know 20 years ahead of the rest of you for a long

00:13:37.720 time and so you're probably wondering what would it be like if every time i went out in public

00:13:43.800 you know we're going to assume that this technology creeps into the public because it's inevitable

00:13:48.480 wouldn't you say it's inevitable that the public will have this tool well peter diamantes says there's

00:13:53.940 going to be a billion internet connected sensors in the next five years which means we're going to know

00:13:59.740 everything at any time in anywhere um and so it is inevitable that this digital information will be

00:14:08.460 out there um so let's continue yeah so let's uh just complete the thought so if you're wondering

00:14:15.400 those of you watching this you're wondering about yourself right you're thinking okay what does this

00:14:19.960 mean to me you know what would happen to me how would it feel what's life like if every time i went out

00:14:26.220 anybody who saw my face could know also my biography and the answer is that's my life that's exactly my

00:14:33.780 life every time i go outside people recognize me i don't recognize them and they know my whole

00:14:39.540 biography and they and they can treat me differently if they if they choose to i'm sure some people

00:14:45.460 discriminate against me because they think oh he said good things about the president that one time i

00:14:51.060 you know i've got to be mean to him so i've lived in that world and i got to tell you

00:14:55.520 doesn't make much difference so here's here's the weird thing about it if i could snap my fingers and

00:15:01.920 change it and make all of my privacy come back i don't know if i'd care you know believe it or not

00:15:09.760 if you had asked me would i choose this i probably would have said no i want my privacy because everybody

00:15:15.240 that's everybody's first reaction right there's nobody who wants to give up privacy if if you ask

00:15:21.500 them but nobody asked me i just lost my privacy because of my life choices and it didn't make any

00:15:29.700 difference i can tell you i go through life and it makes absolutely no difference now if let's say i

00:15:35.200 had a criminal record um would it make a difference to me if people i i interacted with knew i had a

00:15:44.220 criminal record but i i paid my time i'm clean with society what do you say about that world where

00:15:51.480 somebody who really has paid their debt followed the rules but now it's going to follow follow them

00:15:57.000 around in a way that it couldn't have before what about that person what do you say to that

00:16:01.460 yeah so those so the question is whether information should be hidden from people and then the second

00:16:08.860 part is whether it's relevant to decision making or or being left alone and so we're against

00:16:14.380 discrimination it's very simple so we have laws in this country for instance that have statues of

00:16:19.900 limitations for instance let me let me stop you right there nobody cares about the laws in the real

00:16:25.800 world people are going to react the way they react and they don't give a fuck about the law

00:16:30.180 so you know people are either going to kick you out of the restaurant or not or or give you bad

00:16:36.480 service and dirty looks or or not hire you but they won't say it's because of your criminal record

00:16:42.020 although what what is the law on that is the current law that if you have a criminal record you have

00:16:49.060 to disclose it or you you can choose not to what is the law on that well i i i'm not an expert in

00:16:55.740 here and it very much depends on context let's say let's say you're applying for a job if you're

00:17:00.540 applying for a job can the employer ask that question i don't know what the current law is on

00:17:04.560 well david coke and charles coke of coke industries very famously have an initiative called ban the

00:17:10.820 box where they want to make it illegal for employers to ask that question because they want

00:17:15.220 to encourage people who have had felonies or prison sentences and have reformed to be able to be

00:17:22.460 on a level playing field and get hired based on their skills and and and you know initiative

00:17:28.140 rather than being uh discriminated against because they have to disclose something that may have

00:17:33.400 happened a long time ago what what if their crime was uh let's say a sex crime you know let's say they

00:17:39.000 had uh raped somebody don't you think that the other i'm putting this on you like you have to solve

00:17:45.160 all of the world's uh moral and ethical dilemmas but uh would the employees of that company have a

00:17:52.340 right to be to know that somebody who had a history of let's say sexual assault which is unique it's not

00:17:59.140 like anything else um should they have a right to know that hey scott i'll just say these are very

00:18:06.960 complex issues that a lot of people need to think about but i'll put it this way you know based on your

00:18:11.640 writing that humans are biased right that we that we take information and we filter it through our

00:18:16.980 own lens and decide how to interact so the question is do we hide what people concede we try to manipulate

00:18:23.960 their bias so they act a certain way or do you give them all the information all the data points

00:18:29.940 so that they can have a better sense of how they want to make a decision and we're of the belief that

00:18:36.440 transparency is better for everyone than trying to manipulate people by hiding information so so let

00:18:43.060 me let me do what uh i always caution uh people to do which is to show both sides because typically

00:18:49.380 these conversations one somebody's an advocate for one thing or the other so they're just going to say

00:18:54.500 the costs or just going to say the benefits so if i could list the benefits it would be massive

00:18:59.960 improvement i mean really substantial improvement in law enforcement catching people who need to get

00:19:05.860 caught so that would be one benefit another benefit would be um more information people would simply

00:19:12.280 have better more information deeper information about other people that could protect the people

00:19:17.980 who get the information it could be bad for the person whose whose privacy has been given up because

00:19:23.940 they might want to hide some things until later but certainly good for the person who who's getting the

00:19:29.060 information that person has benefited at somebody else's expense but and and you make this point which

00:19:34.840 is fascinating and i'm trying to think throughout human history can anybody come up with an example

00:19:41.460 where more transparency was worse and i think the the worst case scenario which you hinted at

00:19:49.040 is that when somebody has full privacy and somebody does not that that's your very worst situation

00:19:55.820 especially if the people have the privacy or the government and the people who do not are the citizens

00:20:01.000 that's horrible but it's also just as bad if your neighbor knows everything about you but you don't

00:20:06.540 know anything about your neighbor so this is the sort of tool that sort of just opens pandora's box

00:20:12.840 and allows all of us to know way too much about each other and i've long predicted i'm i'm in writing

00:20:18.940 i have predicted this a number of times that partial uh privacy is the worst situation where somebody has

00:20:27.700 it and somebody doesn't the best situation which we may never get to people will resist because

00:20:33.220 it's just natural to resist it is where we all know enough about each other that we no longer give

00:20:39.560 a shit about each other's flaws and i know that's hard it's a hard concept to hold amen but if you

00:20:45.960 actually know a lot about another person and you know all their flaws and they know a lot about you

00:20:51.800 and they also know your flaws and they still say hey scott you want to go to lunch i am so cool with

00:20:58.620 that person i'm as cool with that person as you could possibly be because i know you you know me

00:21:04.820 if you're cool with me and i'm cool with you i'm gonna understand you're a human being

00:21:10.380 you know we've all messed up this is why in part why i have the 20-year rule and the 48-hour rule

00:21:16.800 about forgiving people's past behaviors i'm a real big proponent of judging people by who they are

00:21:23.460 right now not judging people by that thing they did that's that follows them around forever and i feel

00:21:30.180 like we all have to get to that place and this may force us there because if you think about it

00:21:36.540 you wouldn't like anybody if you knew all of their mistakes you wouldn't like anybody it would be the

00:21:45.440 end of friendships the end of hiring the end of marriage everything but if you all know that the

00:21:51.120 other is just as flawed as you are different flaws but it just exposes your humanity you say

00:21:57.320 huh i think i'm okay with that and by the way just tying everything back to president trump because we do

00:22:02.500 that um i think the fact that all of his let's say his personal life peculiarities some would say

00:22:09.900 their flaws um are so known that we're kind of comfortable with them there's something about

00:22:16.600 knowing people's flaws that allows you to get past them it's the not knowing that can be kind of scary

00:22:22.460 so given all that what what is the biggest pushback what do you think is the what do you think society is

00:22:30.340 going to gel around to say we don't you because you know there's going to be pushback what do you

00:22:35.640 think they're going to focus on as the thing that's the big expense of this well i i think the biggest

00:22:41.520 complication is when people say the word privacy it's really split into two things anonymity and

00:22:48.160 autonomy or can you be hidden and can you be free and those can be separated being hidden maybe everyone

00:22:54.880 knows everything about you but the most important thing is is just leave me alone and those are the that's

00:23:01.040 the complication and that's where we need to work as a society i'm figuring out what the rules are

00:23:05.680 about being hidden which i think is is being eliminated by technology and being left alone

00:23:12.260 which i think as a government as a society we come together and figure out what the rules of engagement

00:23:16.900 are you know we're always afraid of the unknown and one of the things i like to point out is if you

00:23:24.040 could if you could rewind to 20 years ago and i said to any one of you how would you feel if you lost

00:23:30.700 all of your privacy about where you go and what you buy you know all of your transactions and all

00:23:37.580 of your physical location what if what if that was all knowable or known how would you feel and most

00:23:43.500 people would say my god i could not live in that world but we live in that world we live in a world

00:23:48.540 where all of our transactions many of us have our dna already on some database i do i've got my dna

00:23:55.160 several databases i would think and it doesn't really make much difference i still wake up drink

00:24:02.200 my coffee have my periscope and unless i'm committing a crime and somebody's looking for me it makes no

00:24:07.780 difference so i think we're approaching a time when crime might just go away because we would give up so

00:24:14.720 much privacy not to every single person but at least to the government and law enforcement should

00:24:20.180 they want to check and i'm looking for the costs you know i keep looking for the tragic societal costs

00:24:28.420 of either me who has no privacy when i go outside people know who i am and the government knows

00:24:35.580 everything i buy and everything they could probably tell everything i browse all of it and it doesn't

00:24:42.140 seem to make any difference in my life now i don't know how unique that is i guess it's but if i were

00:24:48.060 involved in criminal activity it might make a pretty big difference but i'm not so um i think

00:24:55.380 for most of you you would be more afraid than you need to be it's just natural to be afraid of the

00:25:00.980 unknown and it's natural to be afraid of giving up any kind of privacy but uh what what would you say

00:25:06.600 is the the most valid uh argument by the people who say hey there's some costs coming at us some

00:25:13.240 societal costs what what is their best argument on the other side i like to ask this to to see how

00:25:19.940 um see how unbiased you are yeah i think the best argument is always about historical data you know

00:25:26.360 what happens if someone accused me of something i didn't do or was found um innocent what happens if

00:25:32.040 it's a long time in the past um is that information readily available should it be available what friction

00:25:38.240 is there and then who controls the past right who decides whether data can be erased or not shown

00:25:44.120 and who shows um you know who decides what can be shown and that is a very difficult question to

00:25:52.720 answer and a um and there's there's a cost to to doing it both ways there's a cost to letting people

00:25:59.420 see everything that happened in the past and there's a cost to allowing some group to manipulate the

00:26:05.400 past about what can be shown so there it's not an easy answer for that one so so i'm seeing uh some

00:26:12.720 good questions going by here in in the comments uh people are saying what if you're not a multi-millionaire

00:26:18.200 i assume that's i assume that's directed at me you know and pointing out that i don't have as much to

00:26:23.980 lose so i would imagine if you were trying to you know get a foothold in life get you know get a job

00:26:30.220 after some bad situation in your past that would be pretty devastating but what how do you see that

00:26:36.880 evolving do you think there's some people who will just be just totally left by the side of the road

00:26:41.860 by this kind of technology because just no nobody will nobody will interact with them because of

00:26:47.020 something they did in the past so i have three teenagers and they upload hundreds of photos every

00:26:52.960 week and they're interacting with hundreds of friends and instagram and tiktok and snap

00:26:57.460 and it's interesting that they realize most of the stuff is transitory and even dumb and they do

00:27:03.760 allow their friends to evolve and change positions and they're still friends with them kind of like

00:27:09.100 what you said is that they can be authentic and vulnerable and out there without having long-term

00:27:16.020 biases against these friends and the other thing that people need to understand is most people don't give

00:27:21.840 crap about you or all your flaws they really don't i mean i think we all like to have this huge ego that

00:27:28.880 i am so important and that anyone knows that i did something wrong 10 years ago they're gonna care

00:27:35.100 most people don't care and if someone does care find a different friend it's very simple yeah let me give

00:27:40.840 you two two other filters to look through certainly that's that's one of the most important things that

00:27:47.100 people don't care about you so much but let's say everybody knew that um that you were a furry you

00:27:54.540 know you i'm just making this up let's say they do that you like to dress up in animal costumes sure

00:28:00.160 now now your neighbors would immediately say oh i don't know if i can let the kids come over there

00:28:05.660 anymore because you like to dress up in animal costumes but here's the thing people never never think

00:28:11.060 about all of the other people who dress up in animal costumes would also be able to identify you

00:28:17.760 and next thing you know your life is 10 times better because you don't care too much about your neighbor

00:28:22.740 who doesn't like your habit you just met a hundred friends that you're hanging out with and they all

00:28:27.300 have the same interests so the first thing is if you're the only person they know has some weird

00:28:33.620 you know or let's say unusual i'm not even going to call it weird let's say a non-standard

00:28:37.460 practice you can find all the other people like you and suddenly life's actually better not worse

00:28:43.620 the second thing is i'm going to give you this real life example my late stepson when he was uh

00:28:50.020 i think he was 18 or so i got him one of the greatest jobs you could ever have which is a job

00:28:55.740 at a dj company and he was going to be an apprentice to be a dj kind of a cool life etc he lasted one week

00:29:03.220 on the job because somebody sent his boss a picture of somebody else who had taken a photo

00:29:08.900 and put it on snapchat in which he was in a room with some marijuana paraphernalia and the boss quite

00:29:15.720 reasonably i don't disagree with the boss at all said i don't want any employees who have this kind

00:29:21.540 of a picture on social media and he fired him it was a great job lasted one week and got fired now

00:29:27.940 imagine if he also knew what was happening with his other employees what he would have found is he

00:29:35.280 would have had to fire his whole damn staff only one of them got caught every one of them did

00:29:41.320 something that would be you know roughly equivalent to this level of you know bad behavior if you can

00:29:47.940 call it that and i would say that probably my stepson would have kept his job if your technology was

00:29:55.740 ubiquitous i would agree with you yeah i mean what did what did the boss do when he was in college

00:30:00.980 and uh high school you know what if there anyways i agree because because remember the boss did not

00:30:07.500 fire him for his behavior he fired him for being caught in his behavior it was very specific he it

00:30:14.880 wasn't a moral it wasn't anything moral ethical or anything he just said that's that's not the

00:30:19.980 reputation i want associated with my company because we deal with the public he would have soon found out

00:30:25.540 that was pretty standard with all of his employees i think all right so uh give us give us some uh

00:30:31.280 wrap up here i've got a few more topics i want to share with my peeps so look i know i know on your show

00:30:37.700 you talk a lot about america and great and and the reason why america is the greatest and the most

00:30:42.840 prosperous is because of our bill of rights and the first amendment rights says we do not have to be

00:30:48.400 hidden to be free we do not have to be hidden to say what we want to share ideas to share

00:30:54.080 information and to be with people and so if we just embrace that and understand that that's why

00:30:59.540 we're the greatest we don't need anonymity we can be free because of those bill of rights and clear

00:31:05.640 view helps us you know make a happier healthier safer place i would even go so far as that it might

00:31:14.600 help even race relations because you're going to start seeing people for what they do instead of

00:31:21.600 your first impression but that's that's maybe a little little too optimistic so thank you david

00:31:28.340 scalzo tell us again the name of your investment firm uh kieranaga partners spelled k-i-r-e-n-e-g-a

00:31:37.820 a-g-a yep a-g-a sorry no problem and where can they find you on twitter uh at scalzo underscore david

00:31:46.940 all right thank you so much for joining us and uh we're gonna talk about some other topics and i'll

00:31:54.140 talk to you later all right that was fun um this this topic fascinates the heck out of me because

00:32:01.760 it's going to change everything but let's talk about some other stuff let's talk about impeachment

00:32:06.800 and adam schiff and all that stuff um scott jennings wrote an interesting piece for cnn in which he

00:32:15.860 notes that adam schiff is essentially doing putin's work because if what if what we were worried about

00:32:22.200 is that russia was trying to undermine trust in our system and that's what we're worried about right

00:32:28.280 we're worried about those pesky russians interfering with our elections and undermining our faith in our

00:32:35.280 own system and as scott jennings points out is there anybody who's eroding faith in our system faster

00:32:42.760 than adam schiff i mean that's all he's doing so we can't really care about eroding faith in our system

00:32:51.540 if we're all engaged in doing exactly that i mean even just watching it you're part of that

00:32:57.340 um and as uh joel pollack pointed out uh the democrats are literally obstructing their own

00:33:06.760 their own election because the democrats by forcing this impeachment vote have taken uh several of the

00:33:14.400 people running for president as democrats off the field and they they basically are ceding iowa

00:33:21.020 to the people who are not already employed you know joe biden and uh and buddha judge

00:33:27.180 so it turns out that being unemployed just turns into a big advantage for running for president if

00:33:33.180 you're a democrat so i don't think we can claim that there's any kind of moral superiority going on

00:33:40.500 with any of this impeachment stuff because everybody involved is doing nothing but chasing their own

00:33:46.060 political game you know in lawsuits how if you sue somebody and i don't know if this works in every

00:33:53.640 case but if you sue somebody and it turns out that you're wrong and the other party wins they can

00:34:00.340 often if not always i don't know how this works but they can often recoup their legal fees so in other

00:34:06.580 words there should be a cost to impeaching and failing you you feel me if you impeach and win

00:34:14.360 then the the side that starts the impeachment wins politically and every other way i guess

00:34:18.840 and but what if they try to impeach and fail what if they fail should there be any blowback

00:34:27.080 any any any cost to that and i think maybe there should be because tucker carlson always says this

00:34:37.040 and i swear i probably heard tucker carlson say this for a solid year because it's one of those

00:34:42.840 things he says regularly and every time i shook my head and i said to myself tucker tucker that's crazy

00:34:50.180 you know i agree with a lot of stuff you say but that's crazy and here's what he says

00:34:55.080 he says that every time the democrats accuse the republicans of doing something it's because they

00:35:01.620 themselves are doing it and i thought to myself there's no logical reason that's true and i haven't

00:35:08.480 really noticed it and it's sort of a crazy thing to say and then i started paying attention

00:35:15.160 and i don't know what causes it i don't know if there's a cause and effect i don't know if it's a

00:35:21.940 perceptual thing but damn it's consistent we're watching it again it is just time after time after

00:35:31.240 time it is exactly that the democrats are complaining that trump has put our system at risk by degrading

00:35:41.180 its you know trust and integrity but it's what they're doing they're spending 12 hours a day

00:35:49.160 eroding our trust in our system they've actually just destroyed part of the constitution while we

00:35:56.640 were watching you know that part of the constitution that said impeachment was a a real solemn thing

00:36:03.100 they just took a real solemn tool probably the most one of the most important maybe the most important

00:36:11.100 it could be the most important part of the constitution that there's a way to remove the top person

00:36:15.900 and they've they've degraded it they've turned it into a joke

00:36:20.820 you can't make a cleaner argument that they're doing actively at this moment the thing they're

00:36:27.840 accusing somebody of doing you've never seen a cleaner example that i i wish i could tell

00:36:33.020 why you know when tucker says it it makes me think that it's actually a strategy

00:36:40.440 no he doesn't say that but it but it feels like a strategy even if it isn't just the way it plays out

00:36:48.080 all right and so i ask you this if shift's claim is that the only reason that trump did what he did

00:36:57.540 with ukraine asking them for the investigation the claim is that the only reason it was done

00:37:03.080 was for his personal political benefit the only reason now that borders on crazy

00:37:11.060 because there's obviously something to be worried about if your next president might have some blackmail

00:37:18.980 material or some corruption entanglement anything that's a problem over in ukraine so obviously

00:37:25.060 there's a little bit of interest or or should be um but what is the standard for how much a decision

00:37:35.480 by a government official how much of it is politically motivated in other words personally

00:37:41.000 beneficial versus good for the country what if it's 90 10 what if it's 90 for their own good

00:37:48.700 and 10 for the public can they be impeached what if it's 99 and one what if one percent of it

00:37:57.280 is for the public good yeah it's good for the public too in some trivial way but 99 of it is just

00:38:04.660 for me personally is that the standard 50 50 what if it's 49 49 51 the point is there is no rational

00:38:15.040 logical way to make a standard for how much you know what percentage of the reason is personal

00:38:23.040 versus what percentage of the reason is good for the public and certainly with this uh biden and

00:38:29.420 burisma situation it is trivially easy to show that there's some national interest i mean you could

00:38:38.360 argue how big that national interest is but i don't think you can argue it exists it clearly exists let

00:38:46.060 let me prove it to you let me prove that there's some national interest in the burisma biden thing

00:38:52.740 here this is an absolute proof right i'm a citizen of the united states i have an interest in knowing

00:39:00.480 what happened with burisma and biden i'm not lying absolutely honestly i'm interested in knowing that

00:39:08.180 because i think it could be important if i had to guess probably not that much but i'm interested i would

00:39:15.420 like to eliminate that as a risk now can it be said that there's a national interest yes i just proved

00:39:22.660 it i proved that one out of 300 and whatever 60 million americans is legitimately interested in that

00:39:30.800 question would it matter if there are two of me does it make a difference if there's there are a million

00:39:38.920 people like me at what point can you say you've satisfied the question of national interest because

00:39:47.560 i'm part of the nation i just said i had an interest so there's some percentage that certainly has an

00:39:53.360 interest so my point is you could not create a standard where you're trying to parse out what

00:39:58.880 percentage is national interest and what percentage is personal and that's the entire case their entire

00:40:07.200 case is that that's a standard which they can recognize and act on and it can't be done it is rationally

00:40:14.900 logically impossible to parse those out now did our founders know that to be the case yes they did they

00:40:23.340 designed a system in which that those those decisions of what percentage was personal and what percentage

00:40:32.020 was for the nation they designed a system where that doesn't matter does not matter because you can vote

00:40:39.640 and you can you can change it to uh lawyers just said mind reading

00:40:45.960 is there somebody i would love this to be true so i'm just saw in the comments and i assume that that means

00:40:54.680 that the impeachment defense has started have are you talking about officially as part of the defense

00:41:02.200 did they blame schiff of and their side of mind reading is that what happened i'll have to check on

00:41:07.760 that but it looks like somebody's saying that um all right we'll look for confirmation there anyway so

00:41:16.100 it's a it's a standard that can't be enforced which is what percentage was for your own good um

00:41:22.240 let me ask you this there are two things that people say just like it's certainly true

00:41:32.060 and it could be but i'm going to push back on both of them one is that russia wants to undermine

00:41:40.320 the trust in our system so that's one claim another claim is that china has this strategy of something

00:41:49.180 called total war in which it's not just military but they're in a current war with the united states

00:41:55.880 goes goes this line of thinking in which they are trying every possible avenue to damage the united

00:42:02.300 states and lessen us for their own benefit and that total war would include everything from

00:42:08.980 spying and stealing intellectual property sending us fentanyl you know you name it it's like

00:42:15.140 everything you know messing with our elections just everything it's all on the table so so the the

00:42:22.540 two claims are that russia and china are two biggest rivals in terms of military prowess that

00:42:30.880 they're engaged in a current war with us and i say i'm not convinced i'm not convinced now i do believe

00:42:42.720 that all the things we talk about are you know they're probably relatively true russia probably hacks us

00:42:49.560 china does all the things that it's been said but do they have do they have a some kind of a

00:42:57.700 comprehensive plan or strategy that starts at the top it only counts if it's the leaders of the

00:43:04.400 country who want to do this it are the leaders of the country saying to themselves uh-huh if i can

00:43:11.760 degrade trust in the united states by 20 russia's gdp will go up what how do they connect the dots

00:43:21.440 can somebody explain to me what a rational putin or a rational president chi what would they actually

00:43:31.220 be thinking in which this would be smart because i can't think of it now if they were really dumb

00:43:39.380 people then you could explain it you'd say oh they're so dumb they think they're going to put the

00:43:44.980 united states on a business with their clever tricks and then once we're on a business they'll have all

00:43:50.100 our they'll take over and they'll have all our resources and then they'll be richer or something

00:43:54.220 do you think they're thinking that i mean it doesn't pass any kind of a sniff test we are clearly in a

00:44:02.000 world of abundance meaning that we don't really have shortages of stuff we just have systems that

00:44:09.200 are not optimized to get that stuff to the right people in some cases but we don't really have a

00:44:14.500 shortage of anything and so when you move from a world in which you have shortages of stuff and

00:44:21.460 maybe you need a war because if you don't have food you don't have resources maybe you need a war

00:44:26.500 but if everybody can get everything they want which is our current world if they if they play their

00:44:33.180 systems right and they work their economy right what reason do we have to be anything like an enemy to

00:44:39.940 china or anything like an enemy to russia and and vice versa there simply is no reason there isn't

00:44:47.840 and it seems to me that somebody like a president trump could change the frame on this and let me

00:44:54.520 suggest a frame i believe that the united states russia and china have a common enemy maybe more than one

00:45:02.320 and the common enemy is anything that disrupts the system in other words anything that could put

00:45:09.480 any one of the three of us in a business is something that all three of us probably ought to fight

00:45:14.240 against for example how about a major pandemic wouldn't we be on the same side i think so don't

00:45:23.120 you think russia and the united states are going to fight as hard as we can to help china stop this

00:45:29.520 latest coronavirus thing i think we will we got a common enemy there there's no such thing as one

00:45:35.520 side wins in this thing what about climate change now some of you say it's a hoax blah blah blah but

00:45:41.980 you can at least agree that you want cleaner environment and cheaper energy so don't we have

00:45:48.860 a common interest there to make sure the planet doesn't get destroyed don't we have a common interest

00:45:53.680 in making sure that a terrorist state doesn't attack any one of us don't we have a common interest in

00:45:59.980 that uh what if aliens attack we definitely have a common interest there so my point is that we

00:46:04.780 should reframe what russia china and u.s care about and we should be on the same team instead of spending

00:46:12.720 all our money and wasting it being enemies of each other why don't we find some common enemies

00:46:19.420 you know some we can fight on the same team for because there's just no strategic

00:46:26.200 advantage to being enemies and picking in each other like this if it's happening some of it may

00:46:33.620 be fake news i would also like to know what is it the united states is doing to russia and doing to

00:46:42.900 china that we the public don't know about are we poking them just as hard as they're poking us and

00:46:48.760 what's our reason has anybody ever told us our reason is it revenge is it to make sure they don't

00:46:55.900 poke us so hard you know we'll poke you if you poke us so that's how we keep you in check what's the

00:47:00.580 reason i mean maybe there's a good one i'm not even saying there's no reason i just i feel like i should

00:47:06.220 know it as a citizen of this country can somebody explain to me why the the countries that absolutely

00:47:13.120 should be on our team fighting with us as hard as they can against common challenges why are we at

00:47:21.300 each other just doesn't make any sense i think maybe that'll change maybe we'll rethink that

00:47:28.200 um let's talk about schiff a little more he's talking about uh future crimes of the imagination

00:47:34.740 so schiff wants to get rid of president trump according to his uh eloquent speeches that he's

00:47:42.160 been giving to the senate he wants to get rid of president trump not so much because of what he's done

00:47:48.180 because what he's done has no measurable impact so everything he's done so far or is alleged to do

00:47:57.660 everything that schiff and team alleges president trump has done if you added it all together you

00:48:04.720 couldn't you couldn't fill a tablespoon there's no measurable negative in anything the president has

00:48:13.940 already done and so the democrats knowing that there's no measurable damage at all are trying to

00:48:21.860 make the case that it's the future somebody says you're kidding no i'm not kidding do you see any

00:48:29.800 measurable harm that has come from the president's actions nobody's even alleging any nobody has made

00:48:37.280 the case nobody said we lost this money we lost this deal we we got attacked none there's there's zero

00:48:45.420 alleged cost and so they have to make the case that this president is just going to get worse

00:48:52.820 we're going to encourage him we're going to be encouraging this president to future unspecified

00:49:00.240 bad behavior what could be less american is there anything less american than publish than uh trying

00:49:08.180 to remove somebody from a job for the future potential problems i don't think the country is going to buy

00:49:15.040 that but maybe they will um so this is how schiff argues it he said quote can you have the least bit

00:49:24.240 of confidence talk about trump that he'll stand up and protect our national interest over his own

00:49:30.060 you know you can't which makes him dangerous to this country really

00:49:35.680 you don't trust that the president who will be watched more than anybody has ever been watched

00:49:44.980 including when he made the phone call he had all kinds of witnesses and he released the transcript

00:49:51.180 it's the most transparent presidency you've ever had in your life he has already lost all of his

00:49:57.400 all of his uh privacy essentially uh so am i are any of you worried about

00:50:04.700 the president doing something so purely um personal that it would damage the country

00:50:11.580 because i don't think he has any incentive for that what incentive does the president have to do a

00:50:18.900 bad job as president i mean let me frame it that way to show you how ridiculous it is so schiff is

00:50:29.660 arguing that in the future the president would be in a position in which he would choose he would

00:50:37.060 rationally choose according to schiff what is good for trump personally and is bad for the country

00:50:44.200 can you see any any imaginary world in which president trump could even imagine a situation

00:50:54.960 where doing the worst job you could do as a president would benefit him personally

00:51:01.040 because because he would allegedly be doing this selfish thing how do you even what kind of world is

00:51:08.960 that the president is watched all the time if he did something that was purely for him and had no benefit

00:51:15.900 whatsoever not even one that you could argue that would be terrible for his legacy why would he do that

00:51:23.180 it doesn't make any sense all right uh the funniest thing about it was when schiff was getting

00:51:29.360 choked up with emotion did and and uh all of the uh the shift shift lovers on cnn and other networks

00:51:38.760 were saying that his his uh presentation was emotional and passionate and they were saying that that was a

00:51:46.640 positive because he was so passionate and emotional and i looked at it and all i saw was a bad actor

00:51:53.080 trying to act like he was emotionally distraught did any of that look genuine to me yeah he almost cried

00:52:01.840 to me that didn't even look slightly believable now i hope he's better at writing screenplays than he is

00:52:10.760 at acting but seriously did anybody is there anybody in this country who was so stupid that they would watch

00:52:19.880 those days of presentations and at the end see that little fake emotional thing and imagine that that

00:52:25.740 was real could anybody imagine that was real oh my god i don't think so

00:52:30.940 um i would like to defend myself from uh the future problems i'm going to have uh i have a i have a crime

00:52:42.460 in progress right now crime against humanity uh let's see if i can show it to you it's better as a visual

00:52:50.360 so in order to understand this what you have to know is that uh i after the dilbert comics are drawn

00:52:59.200 they are sent off to my syndication company who has i think it's a third party that they

00:53:05.880 higher and the third party adds the color so you can see that the strip well you can't see it but

00:53:12.820 let me see if i can lower the temperature on this so you can see it take it way down

00:53:18.380 um and so all the characters are filled in with color as you can sort of see here

00:53:27.000 so i actually don't see the the colored version until it runs so the first time i see it uh colorized

00:53:35.220 is when it runs in on the internet and in papers and i was tweeting the sound today

00:53:40.840 and i noticed that whoever adds the color had decided that the character who's talking to dilbert

00:53:48.700 should um you know display some diversity because most of the characters are generic white people

00:53:54.880 except for ashuk the intern and they decided to add a little diversity now i think to myself

00:54:00.900 good choice you know especially when i have you know one of the non-regular characters

00:54:07.440 let's let's have that character as you know somebody who's not a generic white guy

00:54:12.900 show a little flavor in the strip that's a good idea right except the person they decided to add

00:54:20.520 the darker skinned color to is the character that i had decided to depict as an idiot

00:54:27.900 that's right so my decision was that the second character would be the idiot and dilbert would call

00:54:36.340 him out for being an idiot i'll read you the comic so the character comes up behind dilbert and says

00:54:40.660 this data can only can mean only one thing and then dilbert says actually it can mean any one of

00:54:46.560 about seventeen things and then the other character says then why can i only think of one

00:54:52.480 and dilbert says please don't make me answer that now of course uh you may find some correlation with

00:55:01.360 current events in this but i promise you i was not the one who decided that the dumb guy

00:55:07.220 would have the darker skin can we put that on the record not me all right so i have accidentally

00:55:14.620 been turned into a racist by somebody i don't know who decided to colorize that comic so there you go

00:55:21.980 um the simultaneous simultaneous sip did happen but i'm sorry that some of you missed it

00:55:31.420 um why are why are we using leftist framing yeah well i'm just telling you what the public is going

00:55:43.080 to say all right um it's all right no big deal well those of you who say it's no big deal don't know

00:55:54.680 the history uh the cartoonist experience when i introduced ashuk the intern so if you follow the

00:56:02.580 dilbert strip you know that the intern is named ashuk a-s-o-k which is the less common spelling

00:56:08.900 it's usually a-s-h-o-k but i knew somebody i worked with who spelled it differently a-s-o-k so i named my

00:56:17.820 character after that and now ashuk was uh born in india but he's uh an american citizen in the east strip

00:56:26.080 and uh as soon as i introduced that character what do you think happened that's right the african

00:56:33.580 american community attacked the newspapers and said why is this why is this african american

00:56:40.580 character so stupid when all of the other characters you know are smarter now first of all

00:56:48.280 it wasn't and isn't an african american character so the the basis of the complaint was wrong it was

00:56:55.640 a somebody born in india who's an american citizen now secondly it's not the dumb character in the strip

00:57:04.280 i make a comic strip in which all of the characters are acting dumb on different days sometimes they're

00:57:11.060 all acting dumb it's only a comic about dumb people it's that's all it is everybody in the comic except

00:57:18.460 dog were i guess it was not even a human is dumb it's a whole comic about dumb people now what do i do

00:57:25.800 i introduce one character who's got browner skin who's an indian american

00:57:33.720 and the african american community tries to get me canceled for not even talking about them in any way

00:57:42.100 whatsoever now many people have asked and actually a lot of a lot of black fans of the strip say can you

00:57:49.900 add can you add an african american character i would love to i would love to do you think that

00:57:57.960 i'm perfectly happy having a comic strip with a whole bunch of white people in it in 2020 absolutely

00:58:03.840 not i am not happy with that it isn't because the strip is designed to sort of you know mirror

00:58:11.700 civilization and it doesn't you know if you go to silicon valley are you going to see a bunch of only

00:58:17.740 white faces in the in the technical staff no you are not you're not going to see only a bunch of

00:58:23.860 white faces you're going to see you're going to see the whole world represented there so my strip is

00:58:28.860 completely out of touch with the real world on diversity i would love to fix that can i no we don't live

00:58:38.020 in a world in which i can introduce a character easily who would be an african american regular character

00:58:44.080 and have any bad flaws because to to make a comic character interesting they have to have flaws

00:58:50.180 it's the flaws that make it a comic you know dilbert is is socially inept and he's a you know

00:58:58.040 he's a little too trusting he's gullible you know he's got his flaws alice is angry and combative

00:59:04.140 and wally's lazy and ashuk i tried to give ashuk the intern the least objectionable flaw

00:59:11.920 i mean it's the the least smallest little flaw human can have in experience because he's young

00:59:20.820 that's it ashuk's only flaw is that he's not yet very experienced because he's young

00:59:28.900 and still i almost got canceled for that little flaw so imagine me introducing a a black character into

00:59:36.840 the strip and i just think i'm going to have a good time i'm adding a little diversity

00:59:41.100 trying to give people what they want and the first time that black character

00:59:45.800 exhibits any kind of a flaw doesn't even matter what it is i'm canceled that's it so that's the

00:59:52.640 world we live in you could have your diversity or you can have your outrage but you can't have both

00:59:57.640 i can't give you both that's all for today talk to you tomorrow

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 25, 2020

Episode 798 Scott Adams： The Clearview AI app that Identifies Criminals, With David Scalzo, Plus Impeachment

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript