Episode 846 Scott Adams: Which Presidential Candidate Might Survive to Election Day, Social Distancing
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
149.31657
Summary
Scott Adams talks about the coronavirus crisis in Italy, the lack of health care in the United States, and why the president should not be holding a rally. He also talks about extreme social isolation and why it s a good idea.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. That's why you're here. Best
00:00:17.540
part of the day. Yeah, it is. It really is. You think those parts of the day where you're
00:00:23.340
off having all kinds of adult fun are the best parts, but no, no, it's right here. This is the
00:00:29.620
best part. And all you need to participate is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice
00:00:37.080
or a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like
00:00:43.180
coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the
00:00:48.280
thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. Go.
00:00:54.120
Hmm. Now that's how to do some social distancing. Right? Am I right? There's some social distancing
00:01:08.060
right there. Let's talk about all the stuff in the news. So over in Italy, I saw a thread
00:01:18.200
from, I guess it was a doctor in a hospital over in Italy where they're being hit hard with
00:01:23.340
the coronavirus. And apparently it's night of the living dead. Bodies piling up. Whatever's
00:01:33.540
the worst you could imagine. That's happening in the Italian hospitals right now because
00:01:39.120
of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, some as yet publicly unnamed individual was shaking hands
00:01:46.720
at CPAC, including with all kinds of senators and politicians. And we have a president who's
00:01:54.620
been shaking hands and apparently is still going to have his rallies. Here's my opinion.
00:02:02.700
As of around today, this is sort of a tipping point for me. I think it's irresponsible to have
00:02:10.120
political rallies. Because if you're looking at what's happening in the other countries and you
00:02:16.160
really ought to, because it's not good. But if you look at Italy, for example, they're in a world of
00:02:24.180
hurt. And it's because the medical resources were overrun. Now there are people saying to me,
00:02:31.760
Scott, Scott, Scott, don't be so panicky because, you know, it just affects old people and, you know,
00:02:40.280
most people will just get a cold. Well, yes, except that in Italy, there's no health care services
00:02:48.860
anymore. It's just for one purpose. Their entire health care system, at least the high-end stuff,
00:02:55.120
you know, where you've got a hospital, just doesn't exist anymore. So if you break your leg,
00:03:01.480
in three weeks, do you know what your health care plan is in the United States? Limp.
00:03:12.540
Right. If you break your leg in three weeks in the United States, there's a good chance that your
00:03:18.520
health care solution will be the limp. Because there won't be any health care. And it might last
00:03:24.960
for a couple months. Now that's the situation in Italy. And that's the situation if we don't keep
00:03:31.460
it under control. But will we keep it under control? It turns out that South Korea is actually
00:03:37.420
getting a handle on theirs. And they're not doing extreme social distancing. They must be doing a lot
00:03:43.480
of it. But it's less extreme than some other places. So we do see some progress in South Korea.
00:03:50.580
China allegedly is getting a handle on it. But we don't know what that really means.
00:03:55.420
Japan is doing better than Italy because they have a lot more hospital resources. So Japan is not
00:04:05.360
overrun yet. They're doing better. But they're having some issues there. Apparently, and I'm hearing
00:04:12.760
also from people in Japan, social media is great because you can hear individuals telling you what
00:04:18.580
their actual life is like. And there was one person in Japan who says that there's plenty of goods in
00:04:25.080
the stores. And people are just just immediately went into extreme social isolation. And it seems to
00:04:32.980
have worked. So here's what we know. We know that extreme social isolation is absolutely effective.
00:04:41.440
And we know we're not doing it. And we know that the President of the United States is modeling not
00:04:51.700
doing it. And the people he's competing against to be the next President are not doing it.
00:05:01.780
I don't know how much longer we can put up with that. Do you? Because let's put it this way.
00:05:07.760
You know, on one level, you know, it's up to the President, whether he has a rally,
00:05:13.360
you know, it's up to Biden, it's up to Bernie. You know, it's not up to us. Is it?
00:05:20.380
No, it's up to us. It's not up to them. It's not up to them. Don't let it be up to them.
00:05:27.760
We're sort of in this together, right? The President doesn't get this to decide to have a rally,
00:05:32.940
and then there's a rally. We have to decide too. All right? Everybody has to decide or else
00:05:39.240
there's no rally. If only one person decides there's a rally, then there's a rally of one
00:05:44.720
person. So I'm not sure we should continue to allow, and allow is the right word, because we
00:05:51.880
can stop it. We can stop it today. I don't think we should allow our politicians to continue to do
00:05:58.660
rallies, given that we know exactly what works, social isolation, and we know exactly what doesn't,
00:06:08.540
continuing business as usual. It's not a mystery anymore. We know. And we know that if we don't
00:06:14.180
get it early, it's going to get us. So I think it's completely irresponsible, and I would go so far
00:06:24.440
as to say, if we have another week of rallies, you know, maybe this week's sort of an edge case,
00:06:30.420
but if next week we're still doing rallies, we don't have anybody running for president who's
00:06:35.260
qualified to lead us, at least in this situation. Let me say that as directly as I can. If President
00:06:42.780
Trump next week, you know, this week again, it's on the edge, but by next week, if they're still doing
00:06:48.980
rallies, and things are still worsening in the coronavirus global situation, none of them,
00:06:55.340
none of them are qualified to be president, unfortunately. That's my opinion. So let's talk
00:07:05.540
about some other stuff. The dumbest thing that I hear in politics lately is coming from Bernie Sanders
00:07:14.800
and people who say the same thing. And they say that President Trump doesn't believe in science.
00:07:21.860
Now, I don't think there's anybody who doesn't believe in science. What does that even mean?
00:07:28.460
There's nobody who doesn't believe in science. Now, of course, they'll point to climate change,
00:07:34.020
but that's because the critics can't tell the difference between economics and science.
00:07:39.980
What President Trump called a hoax, he wasn't saying, I'm a scientist, I've looked at the science,
00:07:47.440
blah, blah, blah. He was talking about the Paris Agreement and the economic implications, which
00:07:53.080
clearly were pretty sketchy. Now, was it hyperbole? Who knows? But, you know, we can't read his mind.
00:08:01.940
But the point is, there's no point at which the president didn't believe in science.
00:08:07.880
That's different than not believing scientists, and it's different from believing that scientists
00:08:14.300
might have a control of the science, but no control of the economic implications, which are
00:08:20.380
the part you actually do something about, you know, beyond inventing stuff.
00:08:24.860
So, it is so dishonest to call anybody anti-science. It just bugs me more than other stuff.
00:08:36.860
You know, it's different than other lies, because you could say, this person did X, maybe it's a lie.
00:08:43.300
Maybe they did not do X. That's just a plain lie. That's bad enough.
00:08:47.500
But, to blame somebody for doing something that isn't a thing is sort of like a double lie.
00:08:56.300
It's a lie on a stupid. It's something like blaming your opponent for dematerializing and
00:09:04.260
traveling to another planet by his thoughts and throwing a revolution on the other planet
00:09:09.060
and returning by beaming himself back to the planet. Okay, that was a terrible example.
00:09:14.980
But the point is, it didn't happen. And it couldn't happen. So, blaming something for
00:09:22.000
something that doesn't even exist is just the height of political stupidity, and people
00:09:26.860
are buying it. All right. Let's talk about Joe Biden, because I think we have to.
00:09:37.020
As the New York Times put it, I read this somewhere, I think on Fox News site, quote,
00:09:44.780
prominent Democrats began publicly insisting that the ticket, the Joe Biden ticket, include
00:09:51.940
a woman, preferably a black woman. All right. So, now it's being widely reported that the important
00:10:00.460
Democrat people want a black woman on the ticket with Joe Biden. Well, who's that going to be?
00:10:06.360
Now, some people say, no, it can never be Kamala Harris because she attacked him at the debate.
00:10:12.640
Well, it turns out there's a backstory. Turns out, and I was just learning this in its depth today,
00:10:20.340
I was aware of the story that I'm going to tell you, but I didn't know the depth of it. It's the
00:10:25.240
depth of it that makes the difference. Turns out that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's now deceased son,
00:10:33.600
Beau Biden, were really close, and not just professionally. They were close. They talked
00:10:41.080
to each other all the time. They were both attorney generals at different places, and so she was sort
00:10:48.180
of close to Joe Biden because of that, and apparently they've rekindled whatever that was,
00:10:53.120
and they got past whatever happened at the debate. So, does anybody doubt that she's the first choice
00:10:58.960
now? Are we at the point where, you know, Stacey, it's not going to be Stacey Abrams. If it's Stacey
00:11:05.180
Abrams, I don't know anything about anything. Because I've watched her act, and it's so weak,
00:11:13.940
I can't believe that the people in charge, you know, the Democratic leadership would allow that,
00:11:21.080
and I don't think that's the winning formula anyway. Somebody says, okay, you were right in the
00:11:27.940
comments. That's all I wanted to hear. I would like to remind you that I made the most ridiculous
00:11:35.780
prediction you've ever heard. The first ridiculous prediction was that I could pick the candidate
00:11:44.560
back in 2018, when there were lots and lots of people running, and I peered into the crowd,
00:11:51.300
and I said, I think it's going to be Kamala Harris. And then, when she suspended her campaign,
00:11:59.740
this is the fun part, I said, I still predict it will be Kamala Harris. What would be a weirder
00:12:08.220
prediction than predicting the person who dropped out of the race
00:12:12.280
was going to get the nomination? Was that the most unpredictable prediction you've ever heard
00:12:19.780
in your life? Well, let's see if it happens. I think everybody would agree at this point if
00:12:27.460
whoever the vice president pick is, is going to be the shadow president. So, I'm technically wrong,
00:12:34.100
and, you know, my predictive bet, I lost money. Because they're very specific what it means to be the,
00:12:40.160
you know, the presidential candidate, obviously. But in effect, I kind of got this right, I think.
00:12:46.340
It's looking that way. Now, if she doesn't get nominated, I'm wrong. Just flat out wrong. But if
00:12:51.680
she does, it would be my best prediction of all time. I'm pretty sure. Here are some things that
00:12:58.880
people are saying about Joe Biden. Dr. Jill Stein, you know her for ruining Hillary's chances,
00:13:07.060
because she was working with the Russians. No, not really. But that's what people are saying.
00:13:11.940
And so she ran in 2016, and got some votes, and people say it's siphoned them away from Hillary.
00:13:17.380
Probably did. And so Jill Stein is out saying directly that Joe Biden has, you know, mental decline.
00:13:25.960
Jill Stein, in public. Did I mention it's Dr. Jill Stein? Medical Dr. Jill Stein? Harvard-trained
00:13:37.160
medical doctor Jill Stein is saying in public, okay, now it's just obvious. I'm paraphrasing. But
00:13:45.620
basically, she's saying, she's kind of implying that you don't need to be a medical doctor to see this.
00:13:51.220
I tweeted another medical doctor, and I've been reading some other folks weighing in, who are
00:13:59.320
actual experts at working with dementia patients and Alzheimer's people, or at least they say they
00:14:05.440
are. On Twitter, you can never be 100% sure if anybody is who they say they are. But people who are
00:14:11.140
professionals are saying in public, unabashedly, that it's obvious there's a problem. Now, do you
00:14:20.120
remember when people were saying this about Trump? And do you remember there was just a tremendous
00:14:26.240
blowback from medical professionals, as they should, to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know,
00:14:33.940
medical ethics, medical ethics. We do not diagnose people who are not our patients. You don't diagnose
00:14:41.600
from a distance. Well, do you? Let me give you an example. Suppose you were a doctor, and somebody
00:15:03.460
showed you a picture of an automobile accident, and there was a headless body over here, and then a very
00:15:10.840
clear picture, no doubt of what you're seeing, the actual head, which has been severed, 10 feet from
00:15:17.660
the body. The doctor sees this picture, and the person on the scene says, what should we do, doctor?
00:15:26.800
Should we give them CPR? And the doctor looks at the picture and says, no, I'm not there, but I think it
00:15:36.120
would be unnecessary to give CPR, because you see the head is not actually attached to the body.
00:15:44.240
Probably dead. No, certainly dead, because head is not attached to the body. Now, would that be an ethical
00:15:53.720
failure? Because the doctor's not there. The doctor has not examined the patient. The doctor is simply just
00:15:59.660
looking at a picture. Would that be unethical? No, because the head is missing. It's obvious. You
00:16:08.800
don't have to be a doctor. A person within a head is dead. And we haven't reached that point with Joe
00:16:16.940
Biden, where he's a headless corpse. But we have reached the point where medical professionals are
00:16:26.080
willing to say in public, okay, just look. Am I right? We've crossed that line where it's no longer
00:16:35.320
medically unethical for a working professional, a medical professional, to say in public, yeah,
00:16:42.100
just look at that. That's obvious. That's a big deal. Because the medical profession did not cross
00:16:49.520
that line with Trump. Am I right? And when somebody did, the other medical professionals
00:16:54.720
poured in and said, whoa, too far. And people walked it back a little bit and tried to tap dance.
00:17:03.320
Well, you know, I'm not saying for sure, that sort of thing. But we're not seeing that this time.
00:17:08.380
It's different. All right. Did you see the video of the Biden rally, in which there were some
00:17:14.820
protesters, I forget what they were protesting, but they held a big sign up. And Joe got a little
00:17:21.360
flustered. Did you see how he handled it? If you want to see who's not going to be your next president,
00:17:28.860
you have to watch that video. Watch Joe Biden try to not be Trump, because Trump would have said,
00:17:35.860
get those bums out of here. And the security would take him out. And Trump would tell jokes,
00:17:42.380
and the crowd would love it, and it would be part of the show. That's the way Trump handles it.
00:17:48.680
How did Joe Biden handle it? Well, he needed to be different. So he had to handle it in some way
00:17:53.380
that's not Trump-like. So he starts saying, that's all right, let him go, leave him there. And as he's
00:18:00.240
saying that, the security guards are coming in and grabbing the guy. And then Joe Biden taking control,
00:18:05.860
of the room is like, okay, just let him go. He says, this isn't the Trump rally. We don't need
00:18:11.020
to do that. Just let him stay, let him stay. And here's the funny part. The security guards
00:18:17.100
absolutely ignored him. It was like he wasn't there. And these big, beefy security guards just
00:18:24.160
grab these guys and lock them up and just start dragging them out of the room, you know, on their
00:18:28.700
feet, but they're pulling them out. And you watch him, and Joe is, even as they're being taken out,
00:18:35.340
Biden is, it's all right, just leave him there. And I thought I was seeing in my mind, like
00:18:44.000
one of those expired, what do you call it, a dandelion, when it's just the little white
00:18:50.080
stuff that blows away in the wind, an old dandelion. It looked like an old dandelion up
00:18:54.900
there on the dais. Just, there was nothing there. There was no leadership. There was no power.
00:19:03.100
There was no control. It didn't look like he was in control of himself, much less the
00:19:10.080
room. He did not control the room. And wow, is it obvious. It is so obvious that there's
00:19:17.920
no leadership skill there whatsoever that you could, I don't know how you could watch that
00:19:22.640
and then vote for him. That'd be hard. All right. Let's see what else we got here.
00:19:31.820
Well, looks like Russia is trying to attack the United States with oil prices. So I'm learning a
00:19:38.420
little bit more about this situation. So if you're not up on it, it goes like this. So every country
00:19:43.660
that produces oil produces it at a different cost, partly because of the technology they use,
00:19:49.340
and partly because of how they're getting the oil. So it's expensive to get it in a shale.
00:19:54.600
It's less expensive in some other ways. Russia, as it turns out, both through investment and luck
00:20:02.140
about the type of oil they have, has maybe the lowest, possibly the lowest production costs,
00:20:09.600
or it's right in that category somewhere. And they've decided to start a price war because the U.S.
00:20:18.280
shale business in particular had been so good that it was taking market share from Russia and
00:20:24.400
everybody else. And we replaced Russia as the biggest producer. So Russia wants to find out how
00:20:31.880
to get his money back when oil prices are low. We're already low. So Russia was already in trouble
00:20:38.860
because prices were low-ish, but they decided to go right at OPEC and Saudi Arabia by lowering them
00:20:45.380
and starting a price war, which Saudi Arabia immediately matched. So we're in a price war.
00:20:53.340
And if the price war continues, it will bankrupt the shale-producing parts of our energy industry,
00:21:01.260
which is pretty big. It's going to bankrupt them. And this is really aggressive because the intention
00:21:08.900
of Putin, according to the people who know what they're talking about, his intention is to bankrupt
00:21:14.720
him. It's actually a direct, obvious, you know, nobody's hiding the plan, but it's all legal because
00:21:20.680
it's business, right? In business, you're allowed to do whatever you want. If it's legal, it's legal.
00:21:27.640
And lowering your prices is completely legal. If Russia can do it, they can do it. So they're going to
00:21:34.920
take out our shale business, which is a continuation of this theme which you've seen under Trump,
00:21:42.880
which is that all war is economic war. Let me say that again. I would say that the Trump doctrine,
00:21:51.800
which has never been named that, I'm just going to name it that myself. Let's call it the Trump
00:21:56.800
doctrine of war or the Trump war doctrine. Now, of course, I'm putting, I would be putting words
00:22:02.920
into his mouth. So this, this is not coming from the president or anything like it, but by observation,
00:22:08.780
I would say that Trump believes that all war is economic war and that if you simply treat the
00:22:16.480
economics as the war, well, it's still war. So, so Russia basically just declared war on the United
00:22:23.280
States, but I think we declared war on them first by taking over their primary business. Now, here's the
00:22:31.540
problem. A lot of smart people think the price of oil may never go up high again because there's
00:22:39.100
just so much of it and we're so good at getting it. And, you know, the economy is slowing down this
00:22:43.920
year anyway. And, you know, then there's green energy and we've got new developments in nuclear
00:22:49.780
power, et cetera, coming online all the time. But the problem is that Russia's income is selling
00:22:57.240
weapons and oil pretty much. You know, Russia is, is sort of like a, a criminal enterprise that sells
00:23:06.420
oil and weapons. And if they can't sell oil and weapons and make money, the whole country is in
00:23:14.080
trouble. And guess what they can't do right now? Sell weapons and oil and make money. So the only
00:23:21.900
two things that they can do, but because there's not a major war that most of the big wars seem to
00:23:28.020
be winding down. Now, I don't know this for sure, but it seems like that would be bad for the arms
00:23:33.560
business, the Russian arms business. Now it could be that they have a robust business, even in peace
00:23:39.400
time as people are, you know, arming up. I don't know the details there, but I have to think that a
00:23:45.100
peaceful world is bad for Russia because they sell arms. And obviously the oil situation would just put
00:23:52.580
them out of business if it stayed low. So this is a really, really big change coming. And it gets, it
00:24:02.800
kind of speaks to this question, which I've been asking for a long time, which is why are we enemies with
00:24:08.560
Russia? You know, I've been saying this forever. Why don't we just say, hey, Russia, you know, if we
00:24:14.340
get along, we're both, we're both better off. It's obvious. So let's just get along. You can see we do
00:24:20.360
it with our other allies. When we get along with them, we all get rich. When we don't get along, we
00:24:25.220
don't. So let's just get along. And I always wonder why wouldn't that work with Russia? And I think we
00:24:31.620
just got the answer. The answer is they can't sell their oil if we're selling our oil to the same
00:24:38.420
people. In other words, Russia can't really coexist with the United States being a gigantic oil
00:24:47.700
producer because they need all of that money to stay alive. So I'm not sure that they can be our
00:24:55.200
economic partner because they have to compete with us so directly. It's way more directly than other
00:25:01.940
countries compete with us and on that important industry, the energy. So maybe there's just nothing
00:25:06.960
we can do there with Russia. We'll just always be enemies until one of us gets out of the oil
00:25:11.880
business, I guess. I think it comes down to that. So I think Russia, well, let me say it
00:25:21.820
directly. Based on the current trajectory of things, the Russian state is doomed.
00:25:28.600
Right? Because they can't survive low gas oil prices, and it doesn't look like anything is
00:25:37.220
going to change to the low oil prices. So that doesn't mean that they're actually doomed because
00:25:44.080
people are pretty good at scrambling and surviving and doing what they need to do. But the trajectory
00:25:49.800
for Russia is doom, just if nothing big changes, and I don't see anything big that's going to change.
00:25:57.940
So that's a big problem. It might make them flexible, but it might make them the opposite.
00:26:04.300
Gavin Newsom did something that shocked and amazed me yesterday. The governor of California,
00:26:11.100
a much maligned, much criticized governor. And for context, there are people like me who've been
00:26:18.740
saying critical things about the homeless situation and nuclear energy and some other things.
00:26:27.460
But with this coronavirus stuff, he was giving a press conference, Gavin Newsom was, and he was asked
00:26:32.360
whether President Trump and the administration are helping him. And he gave an unabashedly positive
00:26:40.080
response and essentially said, everything that we've asked them for, everything they promised they
00:26:45.600
did, which is a big thing to say in politics. It was very clearly supportive of the administration's
00:26:54.440
efforts on coronavirus. And it wasn't hedged. You know, it would be easy for a politician to say,
00:27:02.580
well, you know, for once they're doing something right, you know, to kind of hedge it. Or to say,
00:27:08.620
you know, well, we're not getting everything, you know, want to keep the pressure on, but we're
00:27:12.960
getting a lot. That would have been easy to say. But he didn't. He didn't. Gavin Newsom stood in front
00:27:19.760
of the world and he said that the federal government is absolutely doing everything he needs, everything
00:27:25.760
he's asked for. And I thought to myself, that's some good leadership there. I like to play a fair,
00:27:34.340
you know, because I've criticized this guy quite a bit. I'm not sure he needs to be our mayor. I'm sorry,
00:27:40.560
I'm not sure he needs to be our governor much longer. But this was really strong leadership.
00:27:47.440
That was exactly what I wanted to see him say to make me feel the way I needed to feel and do the
00:27:54.060
things I need to do. He made me feel that the government is effective. And I'm sure that there
00:28:01.360
must be tons of little hiccups and problems. And don't you think that the reality is that things
00:28:07.940
never move as smoothly as the politicians say when they say things are going well? But just for him
00:28:13.740
to come out and give this little bit of positive reinforcement that the governments and the state
00:28:18.920
is working well together was powerful. It was useful. It was right. It was good for the common good.
00:28:25.560
It was not political. It was pure leadership. And I appreciated it. So thank you, Gavin Newsom.
00:28:32.460
Great job. There's a bunch of free technology platforms for people who are going to work at
00:28:40.000
home. So you're seeing the, and again, this is beautiful and inspiring to watch that the country,
00:28:48.700
the United States, the citizens are just sort of jumping in and saying, what can I do? And you're
00:28:54.760
seeing the tech companies do this. And I tweeted around a list of technology platforms that are
00:29:01.040
good for working at home, like Dropbox and WebEx and those kinds. So if you're in a company and you've
00:29:08.620
just been told to work at home and you don't know what all the good tools are for doing that,
00:29:13.380
you know, how do you share files and how do you work remotely and stuff, look at my Twitter feed for
00:29:18.620
the list of Twitter platforms that are free. They're free during the crisis. So you got that
00:29:26.740
going on. All right. So let me give you an update on demonetization and YouTube. So I complained
00:29:39.680
yesterday that I'd learned from Google. So this, what I'm going to say now is not my opinion or
00:29:45.680
guessing. This is actually from my contact at Google, who, who is the right person for this,
00:29:51.780
not just an employee at Google, but the person who does this job, who is my contact. And I've been
00:29:58.380
assigned this contact because I was complaining about demonetization and they were demonetizing
00:30:06.260
any reference to coronavirus. And I believe they still are, but they have now, they've,
00:30:13.380
they've stated publicly now that they recognize that that's an issue because most of the coronavirus
00:30:19.220
coverage is people trying to be helpful. All right. I'm doing nothing talking about coronavirus
00:30:26.580
except trying to be helpful. So the demonetizing has two impacts, but one of them is a little,
00:30:35.080
I'm a little uncertain of. So my Google contact told me yesterday something that I believe I don't
00:30:42.760
understand correctly or I disagree with, or there's something going on that I need to figure
00:30:48.600
out. But anyway, she said that demonetizing doesn't change how many people see it, but I'm almost
00:30:57.260
positive. That's not true. So, so I'm going to verify that. And I think maybe we're talking about
00:31:03.380
different things because here's, here's what, what I believe to be true. I believe that the
00:31:10.460
recommendation engine favors monetized content because why wouldn't it, right? Why wouldn't
00:31:21.280
it favor its own monetized comments? You know, if it's going to suggest things for people to see
00:31:26.500
things, which are monetized are by definition things that are great for YouTube, right? Somebody says
00:31:36.340
they're thieves, but I don't, I don't think there's any evidence that ads are playing that people are
00:31:41.740
not getting paid for. I don't think that's going on. I've, I've not seen any evidence of that. I think
00:31:47.200
they either show ads or don't show ads. They don't show the ads and then keep the money. That's the
00:31:51.440
opposite of, it wouldn't make sense. The reason that Google demonetizes things is on behalf of their
00:31:59.680
advertisers. If Google made all the decisions with nobody else giving input, they would monetize
00:32:05.720
everything. Why the heck wouldn't they? If they're going to allow the content on their platform at
00:32:10.740
all, of course they would monetize it if they could. So be careful about who's, who's Google
00:32:17.540
making a decision and who's the advertisers making a decision. I have confirmed because the experience
00:32:23.140
I'm having is identical to what David Pakman is experiencing on YouTube. I just saw an update from
00:32:29.220
him and his experience. He's, he's a anti-Trump left-leaning guy and his demonetization experience
00:32:36.440
is identical to mine. So if you're thinking, Oh, Scott, Scott, Scott, they're blaming the advertisers,
00:32:42.580
but really it's Google that's doing it. There's no evidence of that. The evidence is that the liberals
00:32:50.400
and the conservatives are both being demonetized because of the content. If you mention politics or
00:32:57.400
the coronavirus is just automatic. So we're trying to work through that, but there appears
00:33:03.180
to be no solution to that. As far as I can tell. Somebody says it's both the advertisers
00:33:09.920
and the Google bias. That's a speculation that I don't see evidence of it, but neither can
00:33:18.360
I disprove it. Can't prove a negative. Somebody says Google has proven to be biased in search
00:33:25.240
engines. Yes, but this isn't search engines. So I'm not saying they're not biased. I'm just saying
00:33:31.120
I don't have any evidence that would lead me to say that given that liberals and conservatives are
00:33:37.300
both affected. Uh, what's going on with your show with Christina? We have, uh, AB tested that and rejected
00:33:46.260
it. So Christina and I were going to do, do a separate, you know, thing with the two of us.
00:33:52.460
And we, we filmed a few and played it back to see if we liked what we saw and we just didn't enjoy
00:33:58.940
doing it enough. So I think if it had been bad, but we loved doing it, we probably would have done
00:34:06.460
it until we could do it well, but it was bad and we didn't love doing it. Uh, a lot of it has to do
00:34:13.340
with just two people trying to schedule the same thing at the same time and agree on it.
00:34:18.000
And it, it just added the level of relationship complexity that we didn't need. So we tried it.
00:34:25.240
So that's always my strategy. My strategy is if you don't know, give it a try. Worst thing that
00:34:31.420
happens is you get embarrassed and you don't do it. Oh, but separately, um, Christina will be
00:34:37.460
producing more piano solos. So she's, she's working on her, uh, working on her repertoire,
00:34:46.000
building up her number of songs. So every day I go downstairs and she's practicing Chopin and
00:34:52.400
she's working up to list. I guess he's the hardest one to play. Um, so yeah, she's, she's super gifted
00:35:01.620
watching, uh, watching, uh, Christina play, uh, Chopin, which I've just learned is among
00:35:08.340
the hardest of all, uh, pieces to play. It's really remarkable. I just look at it. I go,
00:35:14.460
I don't know. I don't know how anybody could do that. It's just seems impossible. Somebody
00:35:20.860
says Corona meeting wedding. Well, here's the thing. We were, you know, we're engaged and
00:35:25.840
we're, uh, talking about our wedding plans. So we have not finalized anything, but of course
00:35:31.440
all of our plans were built around some kind of travel. And one of the main places that
00:35:36.840
we're planning to travel this year, or at least I was, I was going to tell her about that later,
00:35:41.680
but it was Italy and Italy of course is off the list as is travel basically. So, uh, here's
00:35:52.620
the good news. Here's the good news. Um, this coronavirus is bad for extroverts.
00:36:01.440
But it's not bad for everybody. If you know what I mean, introverts and people who didn't
00:36:08.160
like crowds anyway, are just saying, are you serious? I just got an excuse for being exactly
00:36:13.900
the way I want to be anyway. And the answer is, yeah, you did. You just got an excuse for
00:36:20.180
being exactly the way you wanted to be anyway, which is stick to yourself. Keep your, keep your
00:36:25.300
numbers low. So, um, we don't have a plan yet, but you are right. It probably will be
00:36:32.840
a coronavirus wedding, which means, do you, do you know that awkward part where you don't
00:36:38.360
know who to invite? I think we might be able to avoid the awkward part where you don't know
00:36:44.720
who to invite because that's coronavirus. We'll invite, we'll invite nobody or just
00:36:51.020
a few people. Anyway, we'll work that out. Um, yeah, introverts are kind of winning in
00:37:01.520
this. I have to admit that I'm, I'm sort of a converted introvert. Um, I would say that
00:37:09.000
I'm genetically inclined to introversion, uh, and I like lots of, lots of alone time. I
00:37:16.140
need lots of alone time. I need hours every day where I don't see other people or else I
00:37:20.720
get a little squirrely. So I have the periscope wedding. Oh my God, that's a good idea.
00:37:31.300
Ah, that's a good idea. I don't think I could convince Christina, but I'd do it. If it were
00:37:37.480
up to me, I'd do it. I don't think there's any chance she would agree to it, but that is a damn
00:37:42.620
good idea. I'll bet you, I'll bet you're going to see a bunch of video weddings, right? Because
00:37:49.760
nobody wants to go infect all their own relatives. That's the worst thing in the world. Uh, so,
00:37:56.980
um, like I said, I'm, I'm going to be enjoying my alone time. I think I'm going to, after reading
00:38:03.360
the experience in Italy, which was, um, really scary, uh, I think I'm going to be doing a lot
00:38:09.240
of social distancing. I told you that it's helpful to have a project. So if you two are
00:38:15.280
going to be social distancing, and I hope that you do, um, you should have a project and
00:38:21.740
the project is not something you're working on all the time, but just something that you
00:38:25.620
have as a, you know, a fun thing that you want to improve, a system you're working on.
00:38:32.160
And in my case, I've decided to work on, uh, my arms. And again, it doesn't matter what
00:38:39.580
it is, just something you always wanted to do that you wouldn't have had time to do before
00:38:43.880
because of your busy life, but now you're going to be home a lot. So my, my, you know,
00:38:49.060
my, my goal is I'm going to try to work on my muscles. So you, you can look at it before
00:38:54.840
and after. So I'm telling you now that three months from now, since I'll have so much time
00:39:02.280
in my home gym, I hope to make a muscle and it's bigger. And then I'm going to say, ah,
00:39:08.260
well, I was locked up for three, three months, but look at these guns. Now, of course, that's
00:39:14.560
a vain and not very important objective. You might want to learn a language. You might
00:39:20.780
want to pick up a skill, take, take an online class, but take advantage of it because I'm
00:39:26.940
not entirely sure we're worse off by, by pulling back and maybe, you know, having a little alone
00:39:33.440
time, maybe learn to meditate. I hear that's good for your, uh, your body. All right. Um,
00:39:40.000
uh, you could periscope and what? So the, the AJAC program. Um, yeah, I think I would just
00:39:57.780
be doing my own thing here. Uh, working on yoga, writing, math, and quilting. Very good.
00:40:07.980
Very good. So I think we'll, uh, you know, I'm inch size. I don't know. Um, I'm just looking
00:40:20.460
at, uh, I'm just looking at your comments. All right. Thanks for the comments and, um, I