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 1.00

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 0.71

00:20:45.960 actually know a lot about another person and you know all their flaws and they know a lot about you 0.99

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 0.69

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 0.70

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 0.98

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 0.95

00:29:35.280 would have had to fire his whole damn staff only one of them got caught every one of them did 0.96

00:29:41.320 something that would be you know roughly equivalent to this level of you know bad behavior if you can 0.98

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 0.97

00:32:28.280 we're worried about those pesky russians interfering with our elections and undermining our faith in our 1.00

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 0.98

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 0.94

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.98

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 0.96

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 1.00

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 0.96

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 0.72

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 1.00

00:52:10.760 at acting but seriously did anybody is there anybody in this country who was so stupid that they would watch 0.99

00:52:19.880 those days of presentations and at the end see that little fake emotional thing and imagine that that 1.00

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 0.96

00:54:20.520 the darker skinned color to is the character that i had decided to depict as an idiot 1.00

00:54:27.900 that's right so my decision was that the second character would be the idiot and dilbert would call 0.97

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 0.98

00:54:40.660 this data can only can mean only one thing and then dilbert says actually it can mean any one of 0.98

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 0.64

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 0.97

00:56:40.580 character so stupid when all of the other characters you know are smarter now first of all 0.95

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 0.99

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 0.98

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 0.99

00:57:25.800 i introduce one character who's got browner skin who's an indian american 0.98

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 0.71

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

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Summary

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