Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 843 Scott Adams： Taking Questions on the News and Coronavirus

00:00:00.000 Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody 1.00

00:00:08.340 come on in we might have fewer viewers today because i'm taking questions why does that

00:00:16.820 make sense i don't know what it does good morning it's time for coffee with scott adams

00:00:22.840 and i'm scott adams and you are so lucky because you are in the right place at the right time

00:00:30.000 that's important too and all you need is a cup or mug or a glass a tank or chalice or stein a canteen

00:00:36.180 jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and get ready

00:00:43.080 for the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip

00:00:48.620 go

00:00:49.420 that's some good sipping right there so how many of you watched the press conference in which

00:01:03.520 president trump went to the cdc i think put on his make america great again hat in his windbreaker as

00:01:12.780 presidents do when they go to situations like this and disasters and i don't want to say that

00:01:20.540 the president did everything wrong in that press conference but i think it was the worst press

00:01:27.480 conference i've ever seen from a president gotta say um so if i'm being objective

00:01:35.340 uh i'm reading a comment here and i i want to read it but i'm not going to uh if i'm being objective

00:01:46.360 that was the president's worst performance at a press conference i think um i don't even know where to

00:01:55.320 begin to say all the things that were not ideal about that i don't think it'll make any difference

00:02:01.380 you know it's a political season so we yak about every every appearance of the candidates but

00:02:07.940 somebody says they loved it are you kidding how could you how could you have watched that and felt

00:02:16.700 good about it um again i don't think it's a big deal i just don't think he hit his he didn't he didn't

00:02:22.420 hit the notes and here's what i mean by that uh i i think it was uh cn cnn who's calling it a

00:02:30.980 muddled a muddled performance and it was kind of muddled uh there was a one point that i i just

00:02:41.080 i couldn't watch it anymore i had to turn it off because uh he was talking about the uh testing in

00:02:48.220 south korea and somebody in the audience said that there was testing in south korea and he you know

00:02:54.040 he cut them off and he said there's just sampling and and uh you could see the guys behind them the

00:03:01.260 experts going oh don't say that no and the president insisted to the reporters no you just heard from

00:03:10.420 the experts i just heard them too they just say they're not testing in south korea they're sampling

00:03:15.360 on those roadside tests you can apparently you can just drive up and they'll take your sample

00:03:21.480 but that's not what the experts said they just said that the roadside stuff was where they get

00:03:29.180 the sample and then they send it to some center where it's very rapidly tested so it is testing

00:03:35.640 and the president said no i was here i heard it myself i'll tell you they're not testing they're

00:03:42.820 sampling and that was just wrong and to watch his experts standing behind him and you could you could

00:03:49.120 watch their faces just dying and they were like oh that's exactly opposite of what we said we said

00:03:56.520 they're testing they're just sampling there um so that was less than ideal and then we talked about

00:04:03.440 the uh cruise ship that i don't know if it's unloaded yet but as of yesterday i had americans on it

00:04:10.040 they were trying to decide whether to treat them on the ship or to take them on shore and the president

00:04:15.980 starts talking about how he's he's going to let them make the decision the experts will make the

00:04:21.320 decision about what to do so that part's good but then then he says uh that he doesn't want it to

00:04:29.120 affect his stats because the united states has a very low infection rate and if they get off the boat and

00:04:36.120 get onto the you know onto shore that by definition raises the infection rate because now they're now

00:04:42.640 you know in the united states and i thought to myself well that's just the worst thing you could

00:04:48.880 have possibly said i mean really you're talking about your stats there's infected americans possibly

00:04:58.320 at the risk of death floating just offshore of the united states and you're going to tell us about your

00:05:04.920 stats i'm i'm really really trying hard not to curse i'm really trying hard because you know most of

00:05:15.900 you know i'm i'm still on the this prednisone stuff that makes you uh it causes you to maybe have a

00:05:23.120 little more anger or or flash angry more than you would and i am right on the edge of just exploding

00:05:31.640 right now but because i can recognize it i can hold it back it's only because i know it's the drug

00:05:37.700 if i thought this was an honest reaction if i thought the thing i were feeling and thinking right

00:05:44.120 now were actually a reflection of exactly how i'll think and feel when this drug wears off

00:05:49.460 i'd be exploding right now i'd be on fire because my hair is on fire right now

00:05:55.160 and so i'll just say it calmly because i want to swear the president was talking about his stats

00:06:03.400 while american citizens were floating offshore possibly infected now i think the stats matter

00:06:11.860 i'm not even going to take that away from them the stats matter it matters to how we think about it

00:06:18.320 it matters to there might be some extra risk well there would be obviously if you bought if you

00:06:23.260 brought them onto the mainland some of the doctors could be infected of course that's the risk so

00:06:28.820 it wasn't um it wasn't crazy to say that there's some reason that he would prefer it but he's going

00:06:36.340 to let the experts say it so he didn't actually say anything that was technically wrong or would cause

00:06:42.260 the wrong action so he didn't do anything that would cause the wrong action that's important

00:06:47.540 but man that's just not the way to talk about it don't talk about your stats um

00:06:53.900 what was the other stuff he did the other thing he did was he started bragging about how he's a

00:07:01.220 a natural scientist because his uncle is

00:07:04.460 but really the that was the time in the middle of a natural disaster to talk about your your uncle's a

00:07:14.120 genius at mit but maybe you inherited it genetically i mean i know that you know he's it's joking and

00:07:22.500 hyperbole and he doesn't literally mean he that he inherited genius genes he was just trying to tell

00:07:28.480 people that he understands the situation but really wasn't the way it wasn't the time

00:07:33.880 somebody says you are working off a fake basis use your words use your words it's okay just tell me

00:07:45.580 what your point is you don't have to just scream in capitals that there's something i'm missing

00:07:52.660 i'm going to take some uh calls in case you have some opinions on stuff we'll talk about the

00:07:58.780 coronavirus we'll talk about all kinds of stuff and uh um let's just yeah oh and he said he said

00:08:09.620 that something was perfect like his ukraine phone call i mean it was it was interesting all right

00:08:17.180 let's see who wants to talk let's go to matthew matthew matthew matthew matthew come to me matthew

00:08:30.140 all right matthew doesn't want to talk let's try somebody else sorry about the technology may or may not work

00:08:38.900 well

00:08:39.620 guest can you hear me hello guest can you hear me can you hear me

00:08:49.740 no

00:08:52.760 cliff can you hear me yes i can can you hear me do you have a question for me

00:08:59.800 yeah i really appreciate uh the questioning period i've been dying to ask you

00:09:05.340 what your prediction is for the the durham investigation what'll come out of that

00:09:10.380 i'm sorry the which investigation the durham investigation that yeah well you know the the

00:09:19.180 legal stuff i don't follow as closely as a lot of other people so if you if you wanted uh

00:09:24.800 guesses on that something like dan bungino would be would be a better uh place but i'll give you a

00:09:31.720 very general one my general one is he's going to say some people were naughty and nobody's going to

00:09:37.780 jail what do you think

00:09:39.640 well i'm i'm thinking just the evidence that's out there scott that there's going to be some there has

00:09:48.180 to be some people indicted well i agree with you that there will be clear evidence of people doing bad

00:09:55.780 things and here's my prediction that we the lay people will look at it and say yep that's clearly

00:10:01.840 clearly a bad thing i guess that person's going to get indicted

00:10:05.200 and then unless they're not famous you know some lesser famous people could always get indicted

00:10:10.960 but i don't think any of the big names will get indicted i just think we don't live in a world

00:10:15.340 where the people in the news can indict it at least the you know the the main ones

00:10:21.300 now you know if you had something like a manafort that's just a different situation i mean it's a

00:10:27.680 different level but i don't know the all of this gray area seems to go in favor of the the players

00:10:32.840 at least on the other side so we'll see but thanks for the question

00:10:37.060 let's see what else we got here i was expecting coronavirus questions we'll see if we get any

00:10:44.360 lynn lynn lynn lynn can you hear me

00:10:50.740 i'm having a little trouble hearing you let's see if i got a volume control

00:10:56.920 can you hear me now i do not um what's your question lynn so the crew members on that ship

00:11:05.440 they're actually not u.s citizens they are not they are all those crew members come from other

00:11:12.620 countries i think that that's probably one of the reasons why he doesn't want them

00:11:16.720 all right lynn i can't hear you unfortunately you're talking very slowly or the technology is not

00:11:22.700 working so i i apologize i couldn't hear the question and i if i'd asked you to repeat it i

00:11:28.180 wouldn't have been able to hear it so let's see if i've got a better uh connection with somebody

00:11:32.780 if uh if i put you on speak loudly at the very least um if you would

00:11:38.820 timothy timothy let's see if we can get you on i'm sorry lynn i didn't mean to cut you off i just

00:11:46.480 couldn't hear you uh okay that one didn't work let's try paul

00:11:51.160 probably should have a producer screening calls like like important people do oh i think i actually

00:11:59.420 added two of you can is that can anybody hear me

00:12:02.600 no all right so the technology is just not going to work for us today

00:12:09.020 so i guess i won't be taking questions after all but i'll take your questions on your comments

00:12:14.960 you're saying that some of you could hear the the caller i just couldn't hear it so it didn't work

00:12:20.540 i would have to hear it for it to work um she said the cruise ship people are not americans

00:12:29.320 um i'm not totally sure that that makes a difference there had to be americans on it

00:12:35.900 um i don't believe that you're saying that they're all not americans so that doesn't make much difference

00:12:41.780 um lynn said the crew members aren't u.s citizens doesn't matter you know in this

00:12:49.820 in this situation we're gonna have to kind of we're gonna have to be a little flexible

00:12:56.700 all the old rules are gone all right

00:13:00.300 somebody says it takes about 30 seconds after i add them to hear them well that wouldn't be a very good

00:13:07.560 user experience um maybe that's just today um favorite homebrewed coffee i don't really have

00:13:18.040 strong coffee preferences

00:13:19.960 amazon is jacking up the price on their giant dried beans maybe not it's probably not amazon who's raising

00:13:29.580 the price the way amazon works is that people have control over posting their goods and the people

00:13:36.380 who are posting on amazon the people who have been pre-approved to post must be the one who are

00:13:42.260 doing the gouging um there's not really any chance that it's amazon itself so don't think it's amazon

00:13:48.700 amazon is as as far as i know has been acting very responsibly in this uh situation they've told their

00:13:57.360 staff to stay home so i see the recommendation today is that people like me should no longer go out in

00:14:03.280 public i've told you before how i live in the future accidentally um here's another way i live

00:14:11.840 in the future i was telling you before in the on the topic of uh facial recognition that i've already

00:14:19.320 lived in a world in which there was facial recognition it's because i'm a little bit famous

00:14:25.160 if you're a little bit famous and you go out in public people recognize your face it's like facial

00:14:30.620 recognition but only for me i walk outside and i go to the store i go to safeway and people say hey

00:14:37.680 simultaneous sip dilbert hey so i've lived in the future where people know who i am and even what

00:14:45.340 my job is and a lot about my biography just by looking at my face the rest of you are going to

00:14:52.240 discover that world so someday maybe when you go to stores or parties or whatever everybody will

00:14:59.640 recognize you by your face because they've got an app likewise similarly analogously um i'm uh i'll be 63

00:15:10.320 in june which means i'm in the the over 60 group that are at risk but i wouldn't be a risk being

00:15:18.020 perfectly healthy and on the youngish side of the old people unless i had a respiratory problem

00:15:23.660 but i have a respiratory problem so i do have a history of asthma and my sinuses of course are a

00:15:31.740 war zone so the recommendation from the cdc for me is i'll never go outside into crowds again

00:15:40.120 think about that because that's your probably your future um except i don't think it'll last in your

00:15:47.540 case so i'm in the future i actually can't go to public places where there are a lot of people

00:15:54.040 if i want to follow the government's advice and i am going to follow the government's advice

00:16:00.980 for two reasons if it were only my self-interest i i i'm not kidding about this i kind of want to get

00:16:08.220 it over with i'm i'm definitely a pull the band-aid off kind of guy all the way i mean to my core

00:16:14.560 i'm a pull the band-aid off guy if you've got some bad news for me i want it right now if it's

00:16:21.860 going to hurt i want it right now if it's going to kill me maybe let's just get it over with let's do

00:16:28.360 it so selfishly i actually kind of want to get the coronavirus and that's not even a joke now i don't

00:16:36.360 want to go infect myself i'm not going to be an idiot but if it's going to happen anyway and i had 0.73

00:16:41.860 a choice i'd rather sooner than later i'd rather get to the other side of it whether i'm dead or alive

00:16:46.920 let's just get it over with and that's just a personality thing i'm not not saying that you

00:16:51.640 should adopt that uh but there's a second and far far bigger consideration if i end up in an icu

00:17:02.540 somebody else isn't and we're going to have some shortages so keeping myself healthy is um 100%

00:17:12.420 in my case just you know speaking personally in my case it's really close to 100% about protecting the

00:17:20.900 country because if the country crashes because the health care system crashes from from quantity

00:17:27.360 i would be part of that so i'm going to do what i can do to follow the cdc's directions you know maybe

00:17:34.720 i get infected maybe i don't but i'm going to follow the directions and lower my risk and i'm going to do

00:17:39.460 it for patriotic reasons because if it were just for me honestly i i would get the flu i would i would

00:17:47.220 just let's say let's do it let's uh let's dance so i'm not expecting to die and i'm not expecting

00:17:55.780 any of you to die but i'm telling you that um we're in the new world for me it started today

00:18:01.720 so for me today is the first day that i will restrict my outdoor active my external activities

00:18:09.500 severely somebody says don't be fatalistic you might not get it well i think that's true might

00:18:18.040 not get it but the only way people like me might not get it is if everybody else gets it by everybody

00:18:24.780 else i don't mean everybody i mean a big possibly majority section of the country has to have it

00:18:31.560 so that they can't get it again if they can't get it again then i can be around them with a low risk

00:18:38.980 so the only way the old people will be safe in the future is when most or a lot of the young people 1.00

00:18:46.560 actually get it don't have symptoms because young people don't have as much of a problem with it

00:18:51.820 and reduce the number of ways it can get to me later that's the only way to kill the thing

00:18:57.040 so i've said before that i'm reasonably sure based on observation of what we're seeing here

00:19:03.900 that the government's plan is not to prevent it and i don't think you should go through life

00:19:10.120 thinking that is the plan because these things don't really have that quality of being preventable

00:19:16.080 they get they get compared to um you know the other things like what were the other things the

00:19:23.020 SARS and the and other stuff but they don't really act the same this one might be the kind

00:19:29.280 that just spreads faster those other ones didn't spread that fast they didn't have that quality

00:19:34.520 but this one spreads fast and it seems to kill people now there is a question look that i would

00:19:40.900 like to put forward to you you ready for this i'm going to give you the biggest mind mind

00:19:49.160 word i'm not going to say imagine i was saying two words instead of one the first one starts with

00:19:55.480 mind the second one starts with f and it's coming at you right now

00:20:00.540 here it is we can't tell the difference between a virus that's extra deadly and one that's extra safe

00:20:12.160 do you believe that can do you believe that we can tell the difference even even at this stage

00:20:20.300 with all the testing and everything we've done do you think that we can tell the difference between

00:20:25.280 a virus that's extra deadly and one that's extra safe well in order to know the difference here's

00:20:33.320 what we would need to know then you can ask yourself do we know it we would need to know how many people

00:20:38.660 are infected that don't have much in the way of symptoms do we know that we don't do we correct

00:20:47.700 me if i'm wrong but aren't we finding it in 80 countries do you think it it spread in the last few

00:20:54.800 weeks to all those 80 countries and that we caught it in 80 countries i don't think so why is it that

00:21:03.180 here's another mystery that might be related uh africa doesn't seem to have much of a problem with it

00:21:10.040 and people aren't sure why it's a mystery so africa doesn't have a problem that's a pretty big deal

00:21:17.260 so there are two things here that would give you at least possibility for optimism but i do not

00:21:26.000 encourage optimism if that sounds weird i don't encourage you to be optimistic i'm simply giving

00:21:34.060 you the the lay of the land i'm just telling you the odds and right now if i had to guess

00:21:40.020 i would agree with the president who believes that the death rate for this virus might continue to get

00:21:47.500 adjusted down and there's an obvious reason for that the obvious reason is we're not good at

00:21:53.880 testing for it and as soon as we can test we're going to find a lot more people presumably who have

00:22:00.540 it who didn't have much in the way of symptoms so it could be that this is already the biggest most

00:22:06.580 widespread flu you know that we've seen if if it's extra mild so let me make my case about how you can't

00:22:16.420 tell extra mild from extra bad if it's extra bad people are dropping like flies and you can tell you

00:22:25.120 think you know because people are dying you'd be saying oh my goodness more people died from this than

00:22:31.120 died from the other stuff so that would be a good good indication that's extra deadly more people are

00:22:37.280 dying but what if it's also simultaneously more people got it that part you don't know

00:22:45.860 you know what what if it's the most viral thing that's ever been in the history of humanity

00:22:50.540 and it's spreading like and you know just crazy but nobody's testing for it and the symptoms are

00:22:56.440 so mild that people aren't even noticing if that's true and we haven't ruled that out yet it would

00:23:02.800 actually be one of the most mild flus in terms of percentage in other words if you get it your odds

00:23:07.840 of dying are just as low as any other flu it's just the more people would have it now the more people

00:23:13.500 having it plenty big problem plenty big problem but it might suggest that that there's a way for

00:23:21.980 it to end because if so many people get it if it's super super viral many people will get it and then

00:23:29.080 that will prevent the people who would have the worst symptoms from being able to get it more easily

00:23:34.320 because it would be stopped by all the people had immunity

00:23:37.020 how will people get out the vote well

00:23:42.140 sorry

00:23:43.860 uh given that people like me just got the word to stay indoors and given that this virus is likely

00:23:52.140 experts think might subside a little during the warmer summer season

00:23:56.220 but then it might come roaring back in november uh november is polling time

00:24:03.800 so could we see fewer elderly people voting i would say there's a hundred percent chance you'll see

00:24:12.360 fewer elderly people voting in november

00:24:14.860 and i only thought of this just now now who does that benefit i actually don't know

00:24:22.420 because if it's biden against trump which one of them gets the old vote do you know i don't know

00:24:29.520 here's another factor there seems to be some kind of difference between uh liberals and conservatives

00:24:37.280 in terms of their their gag factor or their their ickiness factor now i've seen that i'm not sure i

00:24:45.180 totally buy the science you know there have been studies that say this that conservatives would be

00:24:50.580 grossed down as stuff more easily than liberals is that true i don't know so but i'll just throw that

00:24:58.300 out there as something that studies have shown to be true i'm a little skeptical of it but let's say it's true

00:25:05.640 what does that say about election turnout if you're a conservative are you more um more freaked out

00:25:13.980 by the coronavirus and therefore you're more likely to stay home maybe i don't know i don't think

00:25:21.560 anybody has a handle on that so yeah in the comments you're saying the mail-in vote but here's the thing

00:25:27.700 the the older citizens i'm guessing are also not the people who were mailing in uh votes well let me take

00:25:36.780 that back of course there are lots of older people who are mailing in votes but i have to think it's not

00:25:42.100 the majority and that's the group that's the hardest to change to turn into a new thing it might be easy

00:25:50.080 for them to stay home on election day but it might be hard for them to fill out forms and you figure

00:25:55.880 out how to mail in stuff and you know do paperwork and stuff well i think there's probably going to have

00:26:03.380 to be a push for mail-in elections and uh as i'm thinking about this wouldn't it make sense to start

00:26:10.500 now and have the government start pushing for mail-in votes wouldn't that make sense and wouldn't it

00:26:18.160 maybe let me also ask this wouldn't it make sense maybe to move the election to october

00:26:23.460 huh is that possible could you move the election up because we know with fair amount of certainty

00:26:32.520 that the virus is going to you know come down a little in the summer and then rage back in november

00:26:38.920 why wait till november that might be the very worst time to have an election it might be now the one

00:26:45.460 thing about an election that's different from other things is people aren't coming necessarily

00:26:49.420 from out of town to do it so most of the people who vote will already be in that town

00:26:54.140 so that doesn't make it so bad as it would if it were an international conference for example

00:26:59.520 all right uh so uh having put that out there i don't think that we know at this point whether

00:27:10.360 this is an extra mild flu or an extra terrible one we just know that a lot of people are dying

00:27:15.940 now if you took the cruise ship for example and you say to yourself scott scott scott we do know this

00:27:22.200 is the bad one because look at the cruise ship it's like a little laboratory and there were uh

00:27:27.920 how many people have died on the cruise ship now give me a give me an updated number but the number

00:27:33.060 who died on the cruise ship is obviously far worse than people the number who die on a cruise ship

00:27:38.980 normally right number of people who would die on any given cruise ship is how many

00:27:43.900 well let me ask you how many of you know the answer to this question how many old people die

00:27:51.620 on a cruise ship in ordinary circumstances how often does that happen do you know what the answer

00:27:59.840 is about once a week about once a week an old person dies on uh i think each cruise ship i'm not

00:28:09.900 even talking about all of the cruise ships in the world i think on each cruise ship you get a you know

00:28:14.900 one or two a week you know it's it's a big number actually and it's because obviously they don't have

00:28:21.940 you know the high-end health facilities on the cruise ship and it's older people so it's you know 0.94

00:28:27.280 everything the everything that you need to to kill people in one place so uh what would it mean if there

00:28:35.500 were say 10 of them on one ship does that mean that that that that really was a bad situation well

00:28:42.280 it depends how if they were not on the ship would they have gotten to health care more more quickly

00:28:48.600 um is it simply because they were in close quarters would a regular flu just the ordinary flu if that

00:28:55.860 many people had it in that many in that closed spaces would it have been the same i don't know

00:29:01.240 so yeah i'm seeing all kinds of numbers six twenty six forty five thousand single kinds of weird

00:29:10.340 numbers in the uh in the comments so i don't know what it is but the point is uh you could have you

00:29:19.020 could have another explanation for why there were a bunch of people dead on one ship that also had a

00:29:24.740 lot of coronavirus so that you can't completely rule out that there's something about that that was

00:29:30.940 unusual um but it certainly is a gigantic red flag so that said you should certainly treat this like

00:29:39.980 it's a deadly disease you should all you should all take completely seriously the cdc's warnings you

00:29:45.820 should do what they say uh but there is some possibility that this will will be far less of a

00:29:54.200 problem in the end than we thought and in fact that's if i had to bet on it i'd bet on it now i'm betting

00:30:00.360 that it's going to be less of a problem than we think not because of the virus itself being

00:30:05.400 less of a problem what i think is that when you focus the entire world on a problem

00:30:12.320 well let me back up i'm going to take a second simultaneous sip because i just woke up

00:30:20.480 and i really need it please join me

00:30:23.360 that one without the introduction so i want to give you the good news

00:30:32.120 and it's of course awkward to give good news in the heart of a crisis

00:30:38.260 but there is something good happening and it has to do with where the world's at

00:30:45.480 in 2020 compared to let's say the spanish flu spanish flu happened when the world was not that

00:30:51.300 connected we didn't have internet and our medical facilities were primitive etc and we're seeing

00:30:58.300 something really different happening here and here's the way i would describe it

00:31:03.760 um have you noticed that because we're all connected and talking about this coronavirus

00:31:10.540 that i believe this is the first time we've ever had a planetary threat that everybody agreed was a

00:31:19.800 planetary threat and it's here right now can anybody fact check me on that now you're going to say

00:31:27.000 oh world war ii was a planetary threat well not really i mean it affected i don't know half the world or

00:31:35.260 whatever directly and all of it indirectly but it was it's a kind of a different situation right

00:31:42.180 but we did see the world pull together to defeat nazi germany and and the japanese ambitions at the time

00:31:50.120 but we've never seen it like this we've never seen where the citizens are all connected i'm connected to

00:31:59.340 you right now so that my thoughts are going into you you can watch in real time as your thoughts are

00:32:05.360 merging into me and i've said this about twitter and social media in general we have formed a god brain

00:32:14.820 because the the brains of the united states are no longer what they were in 1918 during the spanish flu

00:32:22.000 in 1918 it was a whole bunch of individual brains here's a scientist doing what a scientist does

00:32:29.420 maybe he can talk to some other scientists by the telegraph i don't did they have the telephone in

00:32:34.480 1918 i don't know my history well enough when it was when did everybody have commonly have telephones

00:32:41.120 it wasn't 1918 right so what were they doing telegraph write a letter to the other scientists to

00:32:47.040 to to coordinate so what we have now is wholly completely entirely different than anything we've

00:32:56.980 ever seen before we've never been this connected and we've never had a global threat that was immediate

00:33:02.960 like this one and you're just watching the entire civilization 15 billion years of evolution coming

00:33:13.960 together where as one the the citizens of earth have decided that on this question we're all on the same side

00:33:25.220 never happened before even global warming is just a controversy but there's not really a controversy about

00:33:31.780 this thing we're all on the same side we have a mortal threat we'll probably lose millions

00:33:39.020 you know worldwide it's going to change civilization we don't know how yet but it's coming

00:33:46.420 and you and i are completely connected right now i'm not separate from you we are mentally psychologically

00:33:55.980 absolutely absolutely connected that's not happened before and one of the things that that does is it

00:34:01.820 allows the what i call the god brave to be activated and you're seeing it right now you're seeing a new

00:34:11.840 form of intelligence emerging while you watch maybe there's never been anything more impressive

00:34:19.140 in all of human history than what's happening now that you don't even notice because it's so natural

00:34:25.800 you you simply have evolved into it your brain is now tapped into the collective now you might have

00:34:33.740 to be on twitter or watching television or on the phone or something for that to be active at the

00:34:38.480 moment but we're all connected right now and we have focused not a bunch of little individual

00:34:44.980 people with individual brains but we're forming a god brain now i'm not saying we're going to be a

00:34:52.200 religion or competing with your actual god if you prefer i'm saying that in effect we have now summed up

00:34:59.400 we are for the first time a cumulative brain focused on one problem one global problem at the moment

00:35:09.560 we are not one yet we're not but we're forming it fast anything that we learn about the coronavirus

00:35:17.280 in tennessee is going to be in wuhan in 60 seconds well you know as soon as it takes somebody to type it

00:35:26.860 the smartest people in the world are no longer on the sidelines in 1918 do you think the very smartest

00:35:35.300 very best people were all working on something to do with the flu no first of all they didn't have

00:35:42.320 any tools it was more of a primitive time and secondly you couldn't even find the smartest people

00:35:47.600 you couldn't find them i i turn on twitter and i see a message from uh you know balaji srinivasan

00:35:56.960 now if you don't know balaji just think one of the smartest people in the entire freaking planet earth

00:36:03.620 literally and then i go down there's a you know some messages about the coronavirus some advice from

00:36:11.500 naval ravikant again i literally speak of naval as the smartest person i've ever met true and you go

00:36:21.120 then list and you're watching all the smartest people in the world jump in and they didn't used

00:36:28.780 to be able to do that because if you were the smartest person in the world here i'm just speaking

00:36:33.660 hyperbolically but if you were super smart and you could be super useful in 1918 what could you do

00:36:40.420 you could do nothing you couldn't do a single thing but now you can and if people are jumping in

00:36:48.200 people are volunteering people are going into the fight we're not we're people aren't running away

00:36:55.160 people are going right at this thing and and a lot of and people are doing what you see me doing

00:37:02.520 essentially i mean what i did you you watched it in real time you saw me look at this feel part of it

00:37:09.640 you know i'm i'm threatened personally but all of you are as well and you can watch as i try to figure

00:37:17.900 out how to be productive now i think the best way that i can be productive is to um be part of the god

00:37:24.820 brain and to bring you voices like naval to retweet um useful things threads and such to inform you to

00:37:35.020 to keep your spirits up i've actually thought that one of the most useful things that i could do

00:37:41.580 naval went to your high school i'll bet you've got some good stories i'd like to hear those

00:37:47.880 um so one of the things that i think i can do is simply help people to know what to do if there

00:37:56.320 wasn't anything you knew to do now most people have already gotten a gotten a hint that they should

00:38:00.980 bring in some supplies etc i really think you're not going to need them i don't think anybody's going

00:38:06.060 to go hungry i don't think the power is going to go off i don't think the electricity is going to go

00:38:09.580 off i think that that all that stuff would be fine and it has to do with the fact that 80 of us will

00:38:14.540 always be healthy at any time and 80 of us can do 100 of the work if you've ever seen any big company

00:38:21.420 20 of the people could stay home on any given day and it doesn't make any difference

00:38:25.560 80 is fine and we'll always have 80 so things will keep running though the economy will just take a hit

00:38:32.700 for a while so you'll be fine but what i recommend is that you take advantage of this disaster you've

00:38:42.860 heard the saying never let a good disaster or a good crisis go to waste this is one of those times

00:38:48.820 so yesterday i was taking my long walk in the sun which i recommend to all of you i believe that all of

00:38:55.260 you should be doing the small things you can do to stay uh as healthy and to keep your immune system

00:39:01.420 just you know as good as it can get so one of those is light exercise as opposed to heavy exercise

00:39:07.660 at the moment light exercise should be your goal not building muscles you want light exercise to stay at

00:39:14.780 maximum fitness in case in case your body is attacked we need you you are all soldiers in this war against

00:39:23.020 this this invader uh and by the way naval says this the united if you were to take bets on the

00:39:31.740 coronavirus think about the odds would you ever bet against human beings in a war against any other

00:39:40.860 living object on earth well probably not because human beings have essentially conquered 100 of the

00:39:48.700 species except for this one and and we're going hard at this one too so if you were going to bet

00:39:54.860 against humans in in the field of battle of earth well don't bet against humans we're pretty pretty good

00:40:02.940 at this stuff and secondly you'd also have to bet against the united states who has ever won money

00:40:09.660 betting against the united states well that's a tough bet i suppose anything can happen but if you think

00:40:16.300 there's going to be a meltdown of society uh you know and the kind that really could get to you um

00:40:23.580 i don't know we're pretty good at this stuff so anyway my point is stay healthy take a walk and um i felt

00:40:30.380 yesterday healthier than i've felt in a long time because i'm really i'm serious about getting enough sleep

00:40:38.060 getting light exercise eating right doing everything i can to lower my stress which i'm hopefully uh i can

00:40:47.180 be part of that for you so there you go um what about alien life forms well maybe these maybe viruses are

00:40:57.580 from another planet did you know viruses are not alive that isn't that doesn't that just blow your mind

00:41:05.500 that a virus is correct me if i'm wrong i think i'm right on that right i don't think a virus is a

00:41:11.820 living thing you just can't stop it from spreading um curiosity is making it harder to sleep that's

00:41:22.380 interesting how do you grade our government's response thus far very good question and i'll give you an answer

00:41:30.300 that number one and certainly the most important thing you should keep in mind it's not your

00:41:38.460 government doing stuff for you you're in on this you're not an observer so it's like you know i feel

00:41:47.660 as if somebody in the stadium said hey you know i'm watching this football game how's the team doing

00:41:53.420 and i'm the referee and i'm looking at you and sitting in the audience and i'm saying

00:41:57.020 dumb ass you're on the field get out of the stands so if you're asking yourself is your 0.95

00:42:04.540 government doing a good job it's a fair question but let me ask you this what the hell did you do

00:42:10.380 today what did you do and i mean that seriously you the person who asked that question whoever asked

00:42:17.100 is the government doing its job i asked the same question to you did you do your job did you did you

00:42:23.260 exercise did you wash your hands every day did you tell somebody to wash their hands did you help an

00:42:27.500 old person what'd you do because i did stuff and i'll do stuff every day um but here's here's the

00:42:36.940 thing you really can't tell if the government's doing a good job or not and part of the reason is that

00:42:41.660 we're shielded from the people doing the work by the people doing the talking so if mike pence or

00:42:49.500 president trump gives a press conference that i don't think is an a plus press conference what

00:42:55.180 does that tell us about the people doing actual work nothing nothing at all it doesn't i do think

00:43:02.780 that um putting pence in charge was a good move from the outside now again you have to be really

00:43:09.420 close to these situations to know what really is a good idea and what's not to know what worked and

00:43:14.700 what didn't what makes a difference what's a big difference what's a small difference we're all

00:43:19.180 way too far away from it you and i cannot tell if the experts at the cdc are doing their job we

00:43:26.380 can't tell do i think that they probably are doing it yes do i think that they'll make some mistakes of

00:43:33.180 course do you think do i think that ultimately their their game will improve and rapidly yes that's that's

00:43:41.420 everything everything is about not what happened already everything that matters is what we get to

00:43:48.540 quickly and how quickly we get to it if they can take it from where we are to a better place and

00:43:55.100 get there fast and nobody could really predict rates and changes and what's going to happen and

00:44:00.540 the surprises that are coming but but the real the real uh the real play here is how quickly they get

00:44:09.740 better smarter and more effective it's not what they've done so far it's how quickly they can improve it

00:44:15.100 it we don't know that because they're still ramping if i had to guess again going back to the god brain

00:44:23.660 hypothesis that we are sort of forming into an entity in which the best ideas anywhere will reach

00:44:31.580 the place they need to go and we've never had that so if you have a situation where a hundred percent of

00:44:36.940 the planet is in the fight and if you're not you should be even in your own way you need to be in

00:44:42.620 the fight time to join um our our capability as a as a civilization it's unparalleled i mean it's like

00:44:53.740 nothing nothing that anything has ever existed and if you tried to ask yourself how good could we be

00:45:00.060 you know once we're ramped up we're not there yet but how good will we be by summer at this stuff

00:45:07.660 and the answer is you're going to be probably amazed you will probably be amazed at the capability of

00:45:16.300 humans so go humans we're pretty darn good at this and remember it's not you you know it's it's not you

00:45:23.660 and me we're not the ones who are making these big scientist decisions and stuff but you can be

00:45:29.580 pretty sure that the smartest people in the world are joining the fight everybody's off the sidelines

00:45:35.260 now the people who have capability are jumping in because they know they need to so this is the

00:45:40.780 fight of our lives it's the first in my opinion first planetary risk it has incredible implications

00:45:51.900 for the future maybe in some good ways bad ways too but there are going to be some good things that

00:45:58.940 come out of this and i even think that there are some analogy issues that are coming out of this one

00:46:05.740 one is that the virus is going to affect immigration not just directly because people want to close their

00:46:12.620 borders to reduce the risk of the virus obviously it'll have that effect but secondarily the way we think

00:46:19.180 about um hard to identify risks uh and it's just gonna it'll influence everything from climate change to

00:46:28.780 immigration so i think the world will be a different place once we get on the other side of this which we 0.65

00:46:33.740 will and uh somebody says somebody survived meningitis well you're tough you can come live with me whoever

00:46:47.260 survived meningitis uh i like tough people all right um will this virus affect trump's reelection

00:46:57.740 yes yes it will um it's the biggest story so the biggest story is always going to affect the

00:47:05.660 election it's hard to say whether it's good or bad yet um somebody in the comments is saying musk

00:47:14.060 says this is all dumb what he said was i saw his tweet he got over a hundred thousand retweets on it

00:47:19.980 so elon musk said yesterday on twitter that the uh all of the coronavirus panic is dumb so he said the

00:47:29.820 panic was dumb um and we don't know exactly what he meant by that so i'm not going to comment on that 0.59

00:47:39.100 because if you don't know what he meant it's hard to agree or disagree um

00:47:44.140 um i'm seeing other people in the comments who survived meningitis well we got a tough crowd here

00:47:56.220 look at that somebody says i survived ebola i don't think that's true but it's funny well a lot of

00:48:02.780 people survive meningitis and what do i have some kind of a audience that is all meningitis survivors or

00:48:09.820 something yeah you know i've said this before and i'll say it again that when you try to judge whether

00:48:20.860 your president is doing a good job it doesn't matter if it's this president or another president

00:48:29.340 well i'm not going to finish that thought

00:48:31.820 oh i will finish thought so whether if you're uh trying to judge a president one of the things you

00:48:40.540 should do is um oh my god i just forgot my thought again i'm watching your comments and trying to do

00:48:48.300 trying to multitask but my point is you need the right president for the right situation there's no

00:48:53.180 such thing as a good president um there are definitely such things as bad presidents but within the good

00:48:59.660 presidents category you need the right president at the right time and sometimes a president is well

00:49:06.220 suited for one task but not another no president is more suited for negotiating with china than trump

00:49:14.220 in my opinion we've never seen anybody who was more perfectly suited for that job because he can treat

00:49:19.820 them nice and treat them tough at the same time it's kind of tough very few people could do that

00:49:24.540 that and he had the will to do it and you know the the risk profile to do it so trump is the ideal

00:49:33.580 president for dealing with trade and china but is he also the ideal president to deal with a a virus

00:49:42.540 outbreak my guess is no if i'm gonna be honest i'd rather have obama as a president right now for the for

00:49:51.820 this i know i probably just lost half of my half of my audience by saying that all i'm saying is you

00:49:59.340 can't say that a president is is good or bad it'd be more accurate to say that a particular president

00:50:05.820 is well matched or not well matched to a particular challenge this isn't it's obvious i think at this

00:50:14.460 point that this is not president trump's strongest suit but i don't know it matters because he did what

00:50:21.180 he needed to do he put pence in charge and he's not holding back any authority meaning that there's

00:50:27.260 nothing there's nothing that's a problem because the president hasn't made a decision and there's

00:50:32.940 nothing a problem because the president made the wrong decision so the president is getting it done

00:50:38.940 he's just not the perfect fit but i do think as far as i can tell he's getting it done i don't think

00:50:44.380 there's a problem at all all right um somebody says he's a fast learner well okay i gotta dump on him

00:50:55.900 one more time for his press conference and i hope i hope that at least if you don't like that i hope

00:51:03.420 that at least it builds my credibility for the future because you can't just you can't say everything's

00:51:08.780 good sometimes there's a little bit mistake trump said at the press conference yes that he found out

00:51:15.900 four or five minutes ago meaning when he found out yesterday that he had just found out that the

00:51:21.660 regular flu flu b or whatever it is just the regular flu might kill 18 000 to 45 000 or 77 000 globally in a

00:51:32.220 year and he said he just found out yesterday that the regular flu could kill that many people

00:51:39.340 and i thought to myself you need to get off the stage right now

00:51:45.740 because we all knew that i mean i think we all knew that if he just found out that the regular flu

00:51:53.180 if he just found out yesterday that the regular flu kills tens of thousands of people a year

00:51:59.340 that does not inspire confidence now again i want to say this as clearly as possible

00:52:04.700 i think all the things he's doing are good he closed the airports fast he put pets in charge he's

00:52:12.300 he got more money than he asked for you know so i don't think he's botched anything

00:52:17.100 i don't think there's anything in here that you have to worry about there's nothing that's being

00:52:22.940 poorly managed from the at least from the executive level i don't see any signs of it but the way he

00:52:28.220 talks about it he's just not the best person to be the spokesperson for this specific problem he's just

00:52:35.500 not well suited for it and uh maybe pence is all right too bad pence is boring because he's going to be

00:52:43.820 talking about this a lot um let's talk about biden's brain

00:52:49.020 what are the democrats thinking what are they thinking and this that's not a rhetorical question i'm so curious

00:53:01.260 about what's going on in their minds i talked to my most uh or let's say most uh

00:53:08.780 emotional democrat trump hater friend who i've tried to avoid for the last four years because it's

00:53:17.100 difficult to be with people who hate trump that much if you know because it's an emotional thing

00:53:23.580 but i checked in with him to find out if he was backing bernie or sanders and the reason i checked

00:53:29.260 in with him is because he's a really smart guy now what does a really smart guy went to a you know ivy

00:53:36.060 league college pays attention very well informed what does somebody who's well informed and very smart

00:53:41.580 say when their team has been reduced to bernie sanders and joe biden i was really curious

00:53:50.540 and what he said was he's going to back biden um because you know he'd like to be buddige but you

00:53:57.980 know he's not an option anymore so he's going to back biden and he said and i quote he would rather

00:54:03.420 vote for a stack of old magazines than trump and i thought to myself well i guess you are

00:54:12.220 it looks like you are going to vote for a stack of old magazines because joe biden if you were going

00:54:18.060 to describe him in a humorous analogy stack of old magazines might be pretty pretty good as an analogy

00:54:26.860 and he's going to take that choice and i think to myself but that does mean you can tell right

00:54:36.380 it does mean you can tell that biden's brain is not quite working and you're going to vote for him

00:54:42.780 anyway how interesting is that not in a good way um so now here's the second part that i wanted to

00:54:55.340 bring up it's one thing to look at your candidate and say you know i'm a little worried but we'll

00:55:00.460 be okay it's another thing to look at your candidate and then listen to trump who has clearly signaled

00:55:08.220 correct me if i'm wrong trump has clearly signaled that if biden is the nominee he's going to go after

00:55:15.100 his brain right he said it now directly he said that he's talked about joe being in the old folks home

00:55:22.460 and you know and there's something not right imagine trump being freed to brand that mercilessly

00:55:33.900 by the time joe gets to the election booth he might not get any votes this would not be close

00:55:42.300 do the democrats not understand that biden is not going to be close

00:55:49.020 trump hasn't even started on him and he's already got the entire country talking about his mental

00:55:55.660 illness it's not going to be close please do they not see this can you not give us a good a good

00:56:03.580 contest and i think bernie of course had no has no chance of winning because of his policies but biden

00:56:13.020 he's literally mentally incompetent and even his own team knows that it's not going to be close

00:56:19.740 if biden were running any kind of a conventional candidate

00:56:25.340 maybe somebody would not have mentioned the obvious that he's losing it but trump will there's

00:56:32.780 nothing that's going to stop trump from absolutely grinding that into the dirt and the best part is

00:56:38.860 the match-up because the one thing you you know that trump has as a not the one thing but one of

00:56:44.620 the big things that people complain about is that he has a speaking style that makes people say oh you

00:56:51.340 know he's not speaking like a like a sane person but you put trump next to biden on the stage and only

00:56:59.420 one of them is going to look sane it's not going to look good all right uh that's about all i got for

00:57:05.260 today it's always great to talk to you so go forward be part of the god brain you're all part

00:57:11.660 of the fight against this planetary invader um i'll be i'll be talking to you from my bunker

00:57:19.980 where apparently i will be locked in my bunker for the next i don't know year so i'm on lockdown

00:57:26.060 and i will talk to you all later

00:57:35.660 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 07, 2020

Episode 843 Scott Adams： Taking Questions on the News and Coronavirus

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