Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 816 Scott Adams： Bloomberg's Odds, Mayor Pete's Military Service, Types of Nationalists, Nuclear Families

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's going to be one of those days, you know, one of those days where

00:00:15.360 stuff happens and we talk about it and we laugh and then we go on and have an amazing day.

00:00:21.140 And how does the day start? Oh, look what I did. I don't know if it looks the same on your screen,

00:00:27.840 but somehow, magically, I have placed my coffee cup where on my screen it looks like all the hearts

00:00:35.340 are coming out of the coffee cup. Can you see it or is that just on my author's screen?

00:00:43.820 How cool is that? Let's call that a coincidence. Remember that for later because that's part of

00:00:50.680 my topic today, coincidence. But first, before we get to the topic, you know, if you want to enjoy

00:00:56.900 the little thing called the simultaneous sip, I recommend you get a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:01:03.000 a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite

00:01:07.780 liquid. I like coffee. Look at those hearts coming out of that coffee. Put it up to your lips and get

00:01:15.820 ready for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything

00:01:20.140 better. The simultaneous sip. Go. Oh, so people are saying it's backwards on their screen. Yeah.

00:01:32.100 How about this? How about that? On my screen, it looks like the comments are coming out of the cup

00:01:37.920 now. But if it's backwards, it looks like hearts are coming out of the cup in theory. All right.

00:01:48.440 Let's start with the funniest story of the day. The funniest story of the day is watching Bloomberg

00:01:55.520 get eaten alive by his own team. There's a trending hashtag this morning called hashtag Bloomberg is

00:02:06.920 racist. Now, it turns out that there's an audio has surfaced, an old audio, in which Mike Bloomberg is

00:02:18.320 is talking about how he concentrated his resources as New York City mayor to fight crime. And let's just

00:02:27.300 say that it's subject to interpretation. So there are two legitimate ways that you could take what he

00:02:37.560 said. Now, I'm not going to give you his exact words. You can you can see them on the news everywhere

00:02:42.140 today. But if you were to put a positive spin on it, and I'm not saying this is my opinion. I'm just

00:02:49.680 saying it's another one of those situations that's two movies playing simultaneously on one screen.

00:02:56.360 So the most positive spin you could put on this Bloomberg audio that surfaced is that he was talking

00:03:03.180 about how he wanted to concentrate valuable public resources, you know, something of value,

00:03:10.520 in low income communities that needed it the most. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? You know, if

00:03:18.040 there's a low income community, and they need a public resource, Mike Bloomberg apparently delivered

00:03:24.460 in the form of law enforcement. Now, who needs the most law enforcement? Well, people have the highest

00:03:31.060 crime rate, right? So the positive way to interpret what Mike Bloomberg said on the audio that surfaced is

00:03:39.380 that he was taking public resources, much of it came from people with money who would pay taxes,

00:03:45.700 transferred it from the rich to the low income places, where it would be the most benefit, and

00:03:51.620 they needed it the most. That's pretty great. Wow, Bloomberg is quite the guy. Well, that's the positive

00:03:58.160 spin. That would be one of the two movies that's playing. But that's not the one that inspired the

00:04:04.920 hashtag. Hashtag Bloomberg is racist. Here's the other movie. Looking at exactly the same facts,

00:04:15.000 exactly the same audio. Here's the other movie. He focused on arresting minorities, which is pretty 1.00

00:04:23.640 obviously racist. Canceled. So you have to follow, if you want a good laugh, follow the hashtag and just

00:04:33.300 see the comments. And it goes without saying that Republicans and Trump supporters are having a lot

00:04:40.480 of fun with this and are really, you know, blasting it out there for maximum effect. But at the same time,

00:04:46.660 the Democrats who are the most likely to be, let's say, offended or most likely to be watching the

00:04:55.560 movie where it's the worst possible interpretation, they're getting pretty mad. They're pretty mad at

00:05:03.000 their Mike Bloomberg. Now, if it turned out that all of those people who appear to be Democrats who are

00:05:09.820 mad at Mike Bloomberg for what they would say is racist policies, if it turned out that they were

00:05:16.040 really trolls, and that they're actually just, you know, Republicans who are pretending to be

00:05:22.140 offended Democrats, we wouldn't know the difference. And so I don't think you can automatically trust,

00:05:29.620 you know, the weight of commenting on social media, because you're going to see lots of fake,

00:05:36.280 fake political identities on both sides. All right. So this made me wonder, how could somebody do what

00:05:48.480 Mike Bloomberg presumably intended to do, which was reduce crime in the places where you needed to

00:05:57.000 reduce it the most? How could you do that without simultaneously being labeled a racist? Now, I always

00:06:04.820 talk about systems being better than goals. The goal is to be fair to everybody and have no racism.

00:06:12.560 And another goal is to reduce crime. And apparently, we haven't figured out a system where you can get

00:06:19.820 one without offending in the other way. So here's my suggestion for a system, something that you couldn't

00:06:28.160 have done even a few years ago. But the technology would allow this. And I'll just, this is just

00:06:33.320 brainstorming. Don't, you know, don't imagine necessarily that this is my preferred way to go,

00:06:40.660 just brainstorming. Suppose you said that you're going to, you're the mayor, and you're going to assign

00:06:47.560 police resources based on two criteria. Number one, how much crime there is in that neighborhood.

00:06:54.340 So it's just sort of a formula, right? If there's this much crime, we'll put this many police officers.

00:07:01.820 And then what if you added a second element? You give everybody a neighborhood app, maybe it already

00:07:08.500 exists, but something that would allow people to say, I live in this neighborhood. This is my identity.

00:07:15.080 You'd have to say who you are, so you could be, you know, verified as a resident. And you'd have,

00:07:22.860 let's say, three or four choices for how much policing you prefer in your neighborhood. So if

00:07:29.420 you lived in a pretty safe neighborhood, you'd say, you know, I don't want to see the police unless we

00:07:34.360 call them. So that would be the lowest level. If it was a little more dangerous neighborhood,

00:07:39.040 just a little bit more, you might say, you know, it wouldn't hurt to have a car come by every now

00:07:45.740 and then. That would be similar to where I live. Where I live, there's a little bit of crime. And it

00:07:51.820 probably is useful to have a cop car go by every now and then just to remind us that they exist. But let's

00:07:59.060 say at the highest level, you'd have the option if you're a resident of a community, you could say,

00:08:04.360 give me the maximum. I'm a law-abiding citizen and all this crime does nothing for me.

00:08:11.000 It does nothing for me. I'd rather have more police and less crime. So then that would give

00:08:16.800 the mayor two objective things. First of all, they'd have to be a higher crime neighborhood

00:08:22.000 to get more police. That's the only fair thing to do. You don't want to have a lot of police in a

00:08:27.320 low crime neighborhood just because that's where the rich people live. And then the second thing is,

00:08:33.220 did they request it? And you could actually show the community, look, I got two things. I got a high

00:08:40.200 crime and here's the community actually requesting it. You know, by a majority, they've requested the

00:08:47.020 highest level and the highest level corresponds to this many police officers roughly. So I think

00:08:53.280 Mike Bloomberg's instincts, and again, I'm not a mind reader, so I'm not going to say what his private

00:09:01.640 interior thoughts are. But if the, let's say the objective is to reduce crime, you need to go where

00:09:08.560 the crime is unless they don't want it. And I would think if a community really had a serious problem

00:09:15.420 with more, with more police presence, there should be an option to have less of it. And then as long as

00:09:22.400 people have an option of moving, which of course, not everybody has. Here's another, here's another

00:09:28.980 trade-off. Suppose a high, high crime community could vote again using an app. So you'd have to

00:09:38.700 connect everybody. So you've got the, the will of the people expressed in a way that you can measure.

00:09:43.880 Suppose they said, we'd like public surveillance cameras with facial recognition

00:09:50.180 so that if criminals come into our neighborhood, police know it. And maybe that's a trigger

00:09:58.300 for how many patrol cars are in the neighborhood. Let's say the cameras picked up an unusual number of

00:10:05.820 criminal elements. Suppose you saw two or three criminals on the same street corner or in the same

00:10:11.640 car as they're parked at a, parked at a light. Well, maybe the police say, let's, let's take a

00:10:18.280 drive through. So you could imagine a number of systems that would give you some kind of objective

00:10:24.500 data, some more intrusive than others. Yes, I know you don't want your privacy. You don't want your

00:10:31.400 privacy violated that way. But the point is, we could probably come up with systems that would make

00:10:38.260 nobody look like a racist and still would put the law enforcement resources where they're,

00:10:43.720 where they would have the most impact. Anyway, so that's the first idea. Let's talk about predicting

00:10:53.020 Bloomberg's odds. You know, there are a million ways to predict what's going to happen. Everybody's got

00:10:59.020 their own little variable. This variable is the one that predicts everything. In truth,

00:11:03.720 there probably, there probably is no such thing as one variable that is too predictive because it's a,

00:11:11.220 it's a big soup of variables. So I don't think anybody's good at predicting any of this stuff,

00:11:15.220 including me. But let's talk about the theories of predicting for Bloomberg. One theory that I see

00:11:23.320 Mike Cernovich tweeting about, and it's a strong one, is that the amount of money that Bloomberg has is

00:11:30.220 so powerful. In other words, if he weaponizes his, his money or a portion of it, we can't really quite

00:11:37.980 even imagine, we probably can't even imagine how much influence that can have. And we see his poll

00:11:45.160 numbers going up because he's, he's spending, you know, enormous amounts of money on that. Now, working

00:11:51.960 against that, that the theory that money can buy you anything, including the nomination, and then

00:11:58.820 including, including winning in the general election, that's a pretty strong theory. If you

00:12:06.080 were going to make a prediction that was based on one and only one variable, that would be right up

00:12:12.160 there. I think a smart person could, could put some money on that. But it's not a one variable world.

00:12:19.720 We got other stuff going on. And, you know, will that amount of money be enough to, let's say,

00:12:27.420 legally bribe the people in all the ways that our society lets you legally bribe people, you know,

00:12:33.760 by opportunities and suggested, suggested lack of economic opportunity if you write a bad, bad,

00:12:42.520 let's say a bad article about Bloomberg. So a lot of subtle and direct and indirect ways the money can

00:12:48.740 influence things. But mostly it can brainwash. You can literally brainwash people with money.

00:12:56.140 How? You just repeat your message enough until it just becomes truth. Repetition, repetition

00:13:03.840 translates into truth if you do it enough. And he has the money to do it enough.

00:13:08.540 All right. But the other theory, and here would be another example of using one variable to predict.

00:13:18.500 This, the issue of whether Bloomberg has a problem with the black vote, let's say in particular,

00:13:25.960 because of his policies, his crime fighting policies and his record in New York City.

00:13:31.500 How likely is it that that one variable, especially when it's being promoted by not only the Republicans,

00:13:40.880 but it's being reported, you know, promoted by anybody in the Democrat side who has a problem with

00:13:46.200 that sort of thing? And there are a lot of them. So is that enough that all of the money in the world

00:13:53.040 can't help you? Which of those would you bet on? Would you bet on his, I don't know, whatever billions

00:14:00.680 he ends up spending? You know, a couple billion? He could if he wants. Or would you bet on the fact

00:14:06.920 that the Democrats are so predictable with their, with their approach to things, they're going to see

00:14:13.100 another old rich white guy. And they're going to see this, this vulnerability as, at least in their

00:14:19.500 point of view, it would look like a vulnerability. And they're just going to tear him apart.

00:14:25.560 Well, let's say it gets to a brokered convention. Do you think, do you think that the, the Democrats,

00:14:33.840 if it got to a brokered convention, do they have the option of picking Bloomberg? Or do they,

00:14:40.760 in other words, could they get away with that? Or would it rip the party apart? Because I got to think

00:14:47.680 two thirds of the people in the Democratic Party would say, um, we're not exactly the brand that

00:14:55.260 picks the old white billionaire. And why would you pick him to run against an old white billionaire 0.59

00:15:01.620 who's got, you know, accusations, they're going to sound a lot like, you know, the Bloomberg ones.

00:15:07.580 It feels like the worst matchup you could ever have. So if the Democrats picked the guy who,

00:15:16.020 I think you could make an argument, he's one of the worst matchups. Because he's, in order to get

00:15:22.900 Mike Bloomberg, you'd have to start with Trump and remove everything that's interesting. You know,

00:15:29.380 you make him boring, make him shorter, make him more black and white instead of orange, you just have

00:15:34.400 to remove all the interesting stuff. And then you'd get, you'd get Mike Bloomberg, but he's older.

00:15:39.800 However, he hasn't, he hasn't quite, you know, debated on the national stage with, you know,

00:15:46.680 national topics. Trump's had a lot of practice. Bloomberg has never been, you know, up against

00:15:54.560 somebody like Trump, who, again, has had a lot of practice by now. So I would say that the odds of

00:16:05.280 a brokered convention picking Bloomberg, that seems unlikely, because I think it would rip the

00:16:12.540 party apart. But suppose, suppose Bernie didn't get quite enough support to get across the finish

00:16:20.060 line, and it's a brokered convention. What would happen if he didn't get picked?

00:16:26.860 If Bernie has the most support, but it's still not enough, and it gets to a brokered convention,

00:16:34.480 and they pick anybody else, what are the Bernie supporters going to do?

00:16:41.560 Well, after they complain and protest and try to rip the party apart, they're not going to show up.

00:16:48.000 They're not going to go to vote. And if they don't even show up, they're not going to automatically,

00:16:53.020 you know, click for the House of Representatives and the other Democrats. So if they don't pick

00:17:00.260 Bernie, they'll probably lose the House. If they do pick Bernie, in my opinion, he has no chance of

00:17:10.360 winning the presidency, because at least half of the Democrats are going to understand, and certainly

00:17:16.420 Trump would make them understand. You realize half of you Democrats are going to be worse off,

00:17:21.900 and Bernie's telling you this directly. You know, he's not even disagreeing with this point. He's going

00:17:28.220 to raise the taxes on people who have money and transfer it to people who, in some cases,

00:17:34.300 made decisions you think they shouldn't have, let's say, student loan, or didn't work hard enough,

00:17:39.180 in your opinion, to get a job that has health care or whatever. So I think there's just a ton of

00:17:47.320 Democrats who are not going to, you know, give Bernie enough support, no matter what they thought of

00:17:53.440 the president. So if they do pick Bernie, they can't win the presidency. But they might get enough

00:18:02.480 people to, well, yeah, they still might get enough people to show up to vote. So it might not be so bad

00:18:10.960 for the House of Representatives. All right. So we'll see what happens. And I wonder if Bloomberg

00:18:17.980 would be a good match with Kamala Harris, because Bloomberg has the, you know, the same problem. 0.99

00:18:23.520 But then that would be sort of, you know, two people who are tough on crime. Yeah, I don't know

00:18:29.740 if that would work. That would be probably a bad, bad matchup. All right. There was a Wall Street

00:18:37.180 Journal article that was kind of critical of P. Buttigieg and his military service, in the sense,

00:18:46.020 not critical of the service per se, but critical of the fact that he may be, let's say, explaining it

00:18:52.660 in a more, in a hyperbolic way. So the reality, apparently, is that he got commissioned in through

00:19:04.760 some, you know, special way that you don't have to go through boot camp and you get, I think maybe

00:19:11.140 it guarantees you cushier assignments, mostly work behind the desk. But he did spend seven months in

00:19:17.260 Afghanistan, including, you know, leaving the compound and vehicles and stuff. And it's a pretty 0.99

00:19:22.920 dangerous place. So some people say, oh, you know, that will, that will take one of the main things

00:19:29.740 about the Buttigieg argument away. You know, he'll take away the, you know, the great respect that his

00:19:36.660 military service automatically gets. If you imagine that he just sort of snuck in the side door and

00:19:42.820 didn't do what other people did and got an easy assignment. That's what some people say. I'm not sure

00:19:49.900 that's going to, I don't think that's going to make a difference. Because the vast majority of people

00:19:56.360 did not serve themselves. And if you didn't serve at all, you're still pretty impressed by somebody

00:20:03.320 who spent seven months in Afghanistan, and I don't care what they were doing. All right? If you were to 0.52

00:20:09.340 compare how much service I've given the country, compared to Buttigieg, who actually went to Afghanistan

00:20:17.480 and was there for seven months, and doing useful things, just as it turns out, not that close to the

00:20:24.080 bullets. But you're always close to something dangerous if you're in Afghanistan. So I think the 1.00

00:20:29.420 average person is going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're in the military, if you are a Marine or

00:20:35.560 somebody in your family is a Marine, I get that you're going to rank people by, you know, the level

00:20:41.520 of honor. But I think people are going to leave that to the military and military families. And everybody

00:20:47.800 else is going to say, you know, that's not my opinion to make, because he did more than I did. So I just don't

00:20:55.740 think that's going to count against him too much. But it was interesting to learn exactly what the situation was

00:21:00.680 there. And, and of course, if he ended up getting the nomination, and he ran against Trump, his military

00:21:07.760 service, no matter where it ranked in the, you know, in the valor and bravery category, it's going to look

00:21:15.540 good compared to anybody who didn't serve. So, but Buttigieg's big problem is that I didn't know if it was

00:21:26.640 just a fluke, that he had that extended debate performance in which he talked nothing but jargon.

00:21:35.100 It was just all this empty consultant talk. And I thought to myself, oh, he just had a bad moment.

00:21:41.840 And he was trying to catch himself, but never quite caught himself. But he's, he's so good.

00:21:48.500 You know, verbally, he's just so good that he, you know, did a good job of covering given that he had

00:21:54.940 no ideas apparently to answer. At least nothing, nothing useful to say to that question. And I think that's

00:22:03.440 fatal. Can you imagine, and I said this before, but can you imagine somebody animating an empty suit,

00:22:12.180 and then just putting over at the audio? And then just putting over at the audio of his jargon

00:22:22.060 talking, it would just be devastating. You'd see a little suit with no hands and no head.

00:22:26.660 And it would just be like this. And then you hear the audio of him talking.

00:22:29.980 It would be pretty bad. All right. Speaking of coincidences, here are two stories that happened

00:22:43.400 recently. There was a man who broke into a Budweiser brewery and got arrested in St. Louis.

00:22:50.320 It was a Budweiser brewery. It was a Budweiser brewery. The man who was arrested for breaking into the

00:22:58.200 Budweiser brewery, his actual name is Bud Weiser. That's right. Somebody named Bud Weiser got arrested

00:23:12.360 for breaking into the Budweiser brewery. In other news, I saw an article, it doesn't matter what it's

00:23:22.100 about, but it referenced the CIA. So it was an article about the CIA doing some stuff. And it referenced

00:23:29.760 somebody who is commenting on the CIA's activity. And the person commenting was a historian. His name,

00:23:38.100 his last name is Covert. C-O-V-E-R-T. That's right. A guy named Covert was talking about the CIA. Now, both of

00:23:49.600 these coincidences were just today. Or at least I saw them today. They didn't occur today. And I point that out

00:23:57.700 because we're so easily fooled by coincidence. And let me give you this example. What are the odds that you will

00:24:06.780 win the lottery? Very, very low, right? One in, I don't know, 10 million or 100 million or something.

00:24:14.320 So the odds that you would win are infinitesimally small. What are the odds that someone will win the

00:24:22.100 lottery? Pretty high. You know, depending on what kind of lottery it is, you're either guaranteed or

00:24:28.140 it won't take too many iterations before you get a winner. So the odds of somebody winning are close to

00:24:34.060 100%. The odds of you winning are close to zero. Now let's talk about the coronavirus,

00:24:41.860 which seems to be released, coincidentally, near a weapons, a weapons, bioweapon facility in China.

00:24:53.800 Coincidence? Well, we don't know. It's certainly enough to raise a flag. It's certainly enough

00:25:01.620 for you to get suspicious. It's definitely enough to ask more questions. Certainly enough not to trust

00:25:09.400 whatever China's official answer is, no matter what it is, unless they say it did come from the

00:25:14.560 bioweapons lab. So your suspicion is well-founded. But keep it in perspective. Any complicated

00:25:22.420 situation is going to have coincidences. You know, there's probably somebody working on that

00:25:28.660 whose last name is virus or something. It doesn't matter what it is. So you were guaranteed to have

00:25:34.440 coincidences in the news, but there was a very low chance it would be the specific one.

00:25:40.600 But don't over-interpret a coincidence, is my point. There will always be coincidences. They're very

00:25:47.440 common. Here's a question that I haven't seen answered yet about the coronavirus. Wouldn't it be a

00:25:56.720 terrible weapon? If you had a bioweapon lab and you were trying to make some serious weapons,

00:26:05.420 you've heard of anthrax, haven't you? I mean, you've heard of, you know, aren't there more dangerous

00:26:14.420 viruses? It just seems to be that unless this was sort of one that they tested and discarded or

00:26:22.600 one that they were maybe taking some DNA out of it to make some other kind of virus,

00:26:29.720 there's just something that isn't quite explained. It could be explained. I'm not saying there's no

00:26:34.760 way to explain it. But I'd like to know why it seems likely that it's a weapon when it doesn't look

00:26:43.180 like a weapon. It looks like the worst weapon you would ever build. Anyway, people told me that

00:26:51.780 there is some precedent for this. And at least one person pointed me to an article about some

00:26:58.880 anthrax that got out of some lab. I forget it. I don't even remember what country it was. But

00:27:05.060 apparently we know that some anthrax once got out of a bioweapon lab. But that was anthrax. If you see

00:27:12.760 anthrax, you're kind of thinking, well, somebody knew how to make a weapon. That's a weapon. But if I

00:27:21.600 see something that gives you the flu 99% of the time, and that's it, I don't know. I'm not thinking

00:27:30.720 a weapon. But maybe there's something, I don't know. You've probably seen the videos by now of the

00:27:37.340 super scary trucks spraying some kind of fog-like spray. I think it's a combination of bleach and

00:27:47.580 water, maybe something else, that the Chinese are doing in the Wuhan district that's the most hit by 0.98

00:27:54.200 the virus. And when you see that, you probably have the same reaction I did. And Jack Posobiec tweeted

00:28:04.820 this. And Hugh Riley commented, I think his tweet said, it's just a virus, people. But you see them

00:28:14.580 dealing with it like it's the worst plague. They're all wearing the hazmat suits and these trucks that

00:28:21.140 you wonder where they came from. Where did they get all these? Where would you go to get devices

00:28:27.320 that you can fill with this combination of bleach and water, and then it will spray in the right

00:28:34.740 amounts to spray your streets? If you wanted to find one of those in the United States, could you do it?

00:28:42.900 Do we have those? Do we? I mean, does, you know, if I went down to City Hall and I said,

00:28:52.520 can I borrow your gigantic truck with a spray cannon on it? And they say, well, what do you want to put

00:29:00.060 in it? And I'd say, I don't know. I just want one that sprays anything. And they'd say, sure. You know,

00:29:08.040 you can just rent this truck down to Home Depot. All right. So I got questions about that. Now,

00:29:14.680 I think the interpretation is that the government of China is putting on a show. Some experts seem

00:29:21.420 to suggest that it wouldn't make any difference, at least anything that you could, you know, measure

00:29:26.880 to spray this. The bleach apparently is really watered down. So I don't think the bleach itself

00:29:33.720 is dangerous, but I don't think it helps. In other words, it just doesn't make that much difference.

00:29:38.880 So it looks like it's just theater for domestic consumption. But how does it feel to you if you're

00:29:48.400 not in China right now? It's really scary because it just makes it look like it's a sci-fi movie and

00:29:57.540 there's something that hasn't been explained yet and it's not good, but it could be just theater.

00:30:02.140 That's my guess. All right. Did you see the creepy, creepy, creepy story of the woman who was

00:30:11.480 reunited with her deceased young daughter? I don't know how old she was. She looked maybe nine years

00:30:17.480 old, just guessing, who died young. And a virtual reality company worked to build a little virtual

00:30:27.360 reality replica so the mother could meet and interact with her deceased daughter. And they

00:30:35.020 did a documentary about it, apparently. And oh my God, is it creepy. It is so creepy. Only because,

00:30:45.920 you know, a deceased child is sort of everybody's worst nightmare. And I have real questions whether this

00:30:54.600 is good for the mental health of the people doing something like that. But I think people who are

00:30:59.400 smarter than I am will figure that out. I'm just saying that's a big red flag of I'm not sure our

00:31:05.600 psychology is meant to take that kind of a hit. You know, I don't know that our brains are sufficiently

00:31:13.160 wired to see somebody come back from the dead because we didn't evolve to ever see that.

00:31:17.360 You know, millions of years of evolution, we never saw it. And it's the most emotionally damaging thing

00:31:25.320 that you can imagine, death of a child. So what's it do to your head when that person appears and you

00:31:33.380 can interact with it? So I've got questions. I don't know if it's bad, but I've got questions.

00:31:38.240 But my comment on this is not so much about that specific application. That just gets our attention.

00:31:46.560 But the fact that this virtual reality technology, which I've sampled enough to really have, you know,

00:31:55.740 lived inside it for a while, it's going to change everything. In your lifetimes, people are just going

00:32:04.720 to be living in that augmented reality, virtual reality. There's nothing that's going to stop that

00:32:10.160 because it's so good. Now, they have to solve a problem with the headaches. A lot of people get

00:32:16.460 headaches wearing the 3D goggles. And when I say a lot, I think most, actually, I do. And I rarely

00:32:23.280 get headaches. I don't have any motion sickness problems. But virtual reality just kicks my ass. And

00:32:29.300 I've got, you know, motion sickness after, you know, 15 minutes of that. But they'll solve that,

00:32:35.280 I'm guessing. And at that point, our social interactions, our education, our work, every

00:32:46.540 single part of that is going to move into the virtual reality world, because it's better. You could go to

00:32:52.700 work without, you know, combing your hair and putting on your work clothes, because it might be a

00:32:58.780 virtual office. And if all you need to do is interact with other people, otherwise, you're just as good

00:33:04.160 working at home. Well, people are going to have virtual reality offices, so they can do all their

00:33:09.900 interacting and casual contact. Anyway, that's coming. 100% that's coming. That's one of those

00:33:18.040 predictions that you can say with complete confidence. I don't know how long. All right. Here's a tricky

00:33:25.900 little topic. I'm going to try to navigate this. I only had about three hours of sleep last night. So if I seem

00:33:35.380 like I'm a little slow this morning, it's true. So there are several types of nationalists.

00:33:48.040 And in the political realm, people like to conflate things so that they can damn you with words.

00:33:56.420 And they can read into you opinions that you don't have so that they can criticize them. And the word

00:34:03.800 nationalist is one of those. It gets used in a lot of ways. And I would like to suggest that there are several

00:34:10.120 flavors of nationalists and that it's useful to know the difference. And I would put it this way.

00:34:18.120 You've got your white nationalists who want the United States to stay as white as possible.

00:34:26.320 Now, I've never met that person. I believe they exist because people say they exist and it's a big

00:34:34.480 world and there's somebody who believes anything. But as much time as I've spent in the last several

00:34:40.800 years talking to Trump supporters, Republicans, conservatives, I mean a lot. I've never actually

00:34:46.920 met one who in a private conversation would say, yeah, you know what I want. I'm a white nationalist.

00:34:54.440 I've never heard of that. But I believe they exist. So that's one flavor. There's another flavor that

00:35:01.700 gets confused with the first type that I would call, and this is just my own word for it, let's call

00:35:06.560 them IQ nationalists. Now, the IQ nationalists have a belief that IQ is really predictive of how a

00:35:17.280 person will do in their life, how well a business will be run, how well your country will be run.

00:35:22.880 So if you focused on that and said, let's bring in the smartest people. So let's have some kind of a

00:35:28.700 system where we're getting the programmers and the STEM people, the medical people, the scientists.

00:35:35.780 So we'll kind of, you know, not, we won't measure their IQs, but we'll make sure we get the people

00:35:42.640 who have passed some kind of, you know, test of college or education or training. So that's another

00:35:50.040 group. Now, in that group, they, of course, are accused of being racist, but they are open to just

00:35:56.920 talent. So there are people who say, I didn't even, I don't care where they come from. But if you're

00:36:03.460 bringing in people from other countries, you're going to get more brown people than anything else, 0.95

00:36:08.500 because that's what the world looks like. So the IQ nationalists would probably, if they got their

00:36:13.860 way, increase the number of minorities coming into the country, minorities meaning non-white, 0.98

00:36:20.720 just because that's what the world looks like, and they only care if you're smart.

00:36:26.620 Then there's another group, and again, this is my label. I will call them selfish nationalists.

00:36:33.460 Who, who their main thing is, remind me why I'm giving my money to some other country,

00:36:39.380 or people from another country. They're just selfish. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. 1.00

00:36:45.940 Being selfish is what makes capitalism work. It's what makes democracies work. People, people get to

00:36:53.400 vote and act on their self-interest. And if you built the right kind of system, it all works out.

00:36:57.860 And we have. So the selfish nationalists are completely respectable. And they would just say,

00:37:06.160 it doesn't matter who you're talking about. Sorry, my cat's going to make an entrance. If you see a

00:37:11.620 tail go by, yeah, that was boo. So the selfish nationalists don't care who their money is going 1.00

00:37:19.160 to. It doesn't matter if it went to British people or went to Chinese immigrants. It doesn't matter who 0.82

00:37:27.300 it goes to. They just would rather keep their money. So they would rather not give it to people

00:37:32.600 coming from other countries. But again, that's not about race. That's just, it wouldn't matter who it

00:37:38.440 was. Why would I give my money to anybody? Why can't I keep it? And then this last category,

00:37:45.480 I would put myself in. I would call it a system nationalist, as opposed to a goal. Systems are where

00:37:54.840 you've developed a system that gets you the best result. But you don't know exactly where that ends

00:38:00.040 up. But if it's a good system, like capitalism, like a democratic system, it will get you to a good

00:38:05.940 place. And a system nationalist, that's what I would call myself, would say that you need a good

00:38:15.180 immigration border control. But that's just the first question. What you do with it, once you have

00:38:25.780 good control of your own borders, all you've really done is taking control away from the people who are 0.99

00:38:31.240 coming in illegally, and given the control to the people who live in the nation, the other people 0.99

00:38:37.120 who are already citizens. Now that's a good system. In my opinion, if everybody had a good system where

00:38:44.500 they get to control internally, how much immigration and what type, that would be good. I would love to

00:38:51.720 see immigration controlled by an algorithm that's based on economics. So let's say you had a board of

00:39:01.280 economists who come up with a set of rules. And they say, now that we've built good border security,

00:39:08.100 so there aren't that many people who can get through illegally, we kind of have control over our own

00:39:12.460 borders. Then separately, you say to yourself, what kind of people do we need to fuel our economy?

00:39:21.140 And you can crank it up when you need more workers, and you can crank it down when you need fewer of them,

00:39:28.020 because we're suffering in this country. So if you see it as a system, it's more about what works best.

00:39:35.440 And it should work best in the long run for everybody. So I would say that's what I am. I like

00:39:43.680 good systems. You know, the president talks about, you know, being in friendly competition with other

00:39:50.400 countries, being a good system. And I would agree with that. Sort of what makes capitalism work.

00:39:55.800 All right. President Trump has floated the idea of having the death penalty for drug dealers in this

00:40:05.780 country. And he talked again about China having the death penalty and etc. I'm still skeptical that

00:40:15.220 China is really cracking down on fentanyl. Really, really skeptical. Because as I said too many times,

00:40:23.160 we know the top guy, the top dealer, we know his name, his picture, and therefore, of course,

00:40:29.820 China can find him. If 60 Minutes could find him, you know, in China and interview him, yeah,

00:40:37.800 the Chinese government can find him. That guy, as far as I know, is still walking around free.

00:40:42.360 As long as that's happening, they're not taking it too seriously. All right, David Brooks,

00:40:47.920 writer, David Brooks, wrote a big article, was it in the Atlantic or Vanity Fair or someplace? Some

00:40:57.960 high-tone magazine in which he talks about the nuclear family not being good for everybody,

00:41:04.940 which I agree with. I agree with that. I've been saying it for a while, but I like the fact that

00:41:11.320 somebody else wrote an article about it because I can deflect blame on somebody else because I know

00:41:16.200 how much you hate that idea. Now, his explanation and framing, if you will, is pretty identical to my

00:41:24.840 own. And the idea is this, that the nuclear family is a great idea for some types of people,

00:41:34.520 mostly people with money. Because he noted that the old family structure was more extended. You'd have

00:41:42.680 cousins and grandparents. You might have the hired hand working on the farm. So you'd have like this

00:41:49.540 almost a tribe within a family, a very extended, lots of kids, etc. It was mostly an economic support

00:41:56.960 system. And then you also had lots of family units connected to other families and sort of networks

00:42:03.160 of families. So the family unit, when it worked best, was also really connected and a lot of people

00:42:14.360 were involved. So it was the number of people involved that made it work. You could always find

00:42:19.020 somebody to help you with this or that. But the way it's evolved is that families get smaller.

00:42:26.220 You know, it might be two parents and a kid. You know, two parents and two kids. So once you get

00:42:33.780 small and isolated, you're not really connected to your other families necessarily, it doesn't work

00:42:39.240 as well. And it doesn't work as well for people who don't have money because they can't get nannies

00:42:43.820 and tutors and drive the kids everywhere they need to go, etc. So, and I don't know if you suggested a

00:42:52.240 better situation, but I think it's worth looking at. I think that anytime you say one size fits all,

00:42:58.840 you're probably wrong when it comes to human beings. I'm completely willing to believe that

00:43:05.260 the nuclear family is a great solution for a lot of people. And maybe we'd even be better off with 0.85

00:43:12.760 more of it. I accept that. But there's still going to be a big chunk of the public, maybe a third,

00:43:19.360 you know, a big chunk, that it's just never going to be the best solution for a variety of reasons.

00:43:26.920 All right. Here's an update on my YouTube demonetization. So some of you know, I take

00:43:34.940 these videos and they're uploaded later to YouTube. And they get demonetized. In the past, they've been

00:43:42.920 instantly demonetized, which allows them not to, well, it causes them not to recommend it automatically.

00:43:50.140 So it doesn't get the visibility. And then by day two, it's no longer today's news, which is what I

00:43:56.060 usually talk about. So I was getting killed that way. Now, it isn't, it isn't just because I say

00:44:02.500 things about Trump. Apparently, people on the left and the right were having the same problem. But I have

00:44:07.920 made contact with Google's team that deals with this. And I'm now on a, they now have me sort of on a

00:44:17.560 test program, where I self rate the content, which is diabolical. Because the way it works is that

00:44:26.520 instead of being sort of automatically banned, because you talked about, you know, some keywords that get

00:44:32.780 flagged, that's the old way. And that guaranteed, I would get flagged every time. Instead of that,

00:44:38.460 you're on the automatically not flagged. But you have to self report, and they check on you to make

00:44:44.820 sure you're not fudging the system. So I ended up self reporting myself, and I think I'll probably

00:44:51.520 self report this one as well, to partially demonetize it. Because there's something honest

00:44:57.740 about that, which is, even though I think I would love a world in which I could say whatever I want,

00:45:05.320 as long as I meant well, you know, I'm not trying to hurt anybody, I mean well, that I could talk about

00:45:11.240 any any content I want, not get demonetized. But I sort of understand that advertisers want to

00:45:16.620 associate with certain types of content. And so it's a free world. If the advertiser says,

00:45:22.000 don't associate me with these keywords, what's Google, Google going to do? So that's a it's a work

00:45:30.720 in progress. But I wanted you to know that Google is working with creators who are having this problem.

00:45:36.740 And right now, they're just doing some tests. But you might see more of this. All right. Have you seen

00:45:43.680 the broom challenge? I don't know if you call it a challenge. But there's this viral thing, where

00:45:50.160 apparently, and I hate to tell you, it's a prank, that there's one day of the year, the prank goes,

00:45:58.020 where you could set your broom, just set it up, and then let go, and it'll stay up. And the prank

00:46:05.160 goes, that's because the gravitational pull is different on this one special day of the year,

00:46:10.220 it's the only time your broom will stand up. Now, of course, you hear this, and you say it's today,

00:46:15.260 I better go test this today, because this isn't going to work tomorrow. So you run and you grab

00:46:20.460 your broom, and you stick it in the floor, and you go, ah, ah, it works. Because it turns out,

00:46:26.860 it works every other day. It works every day. But you've only tried it once, because people told

00:46:34.840 you it's only going to work today. So all day long, you're trying it. And it's like, ah, they're right.

00:46:39.160 This thing's working. It's incredible. So as pranks go, very good. A plus. Prank.

00:46:49.960 All right. That's about all I wanted to talk about today. We will be watching New Hampshire.

00:46:59.080 And if there's one thing I can tell you about New Hampshire, and you can take this to the bank,

00:47:02.980 about the primaries there. Whoever wins New Hampshire, or doesn't win, in other words,

00:47:10.180 the results from New Hampshire will be terribly important to the total outcome in the end.

00:47:17.460 And it won't. Those are the two things you're going to learn today. It totally matters, unless it doesn't.

00:47:26.520 Unless it doesn't. It's the most important thing in the world, except, well, it might not be.

00:47:33.160 So everybody, all the pundits are going to have to give their opinions, because that's what they do

00:47:38.860 to sell advertisement. So you're going to see lots of opinions, but people are just guessing.

00:47:45.100 You know, we've never had a situation where you've got a Biden who you know isn't going to do well

00:47:50.120 in the first few, but he's leading the polls. That's weird. Well, maybe we've had that situation.

00:47:55.820 But that, you know, it's less common. And then, have we ever had a situation where

00:48:00.420 somebody with, what, $60 billion, or whatever Bloomberg has, is waiting out the first four?

00:48:07.800 We've never seen that. So anybody who says that the New Hampshire results are, you know,

00:48:14.760 somehow determining the winner, except it might eliminate a few people, that's possible.

00:48:20.760 I wouldn't expect it to tell you much. But it's going to be fun to watch just the same.

00:48:25.340 That's all I've got to say for today. You go, have a great day, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 11, 2020

Episode 816 Scott Adams： Bloomberg's Odds, Mayor Pete's Military Service, Types of Nationalists, Nuclear Families

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