Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 893 Scott Adams： Sip Time. Get in Here.

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody! Come on in.

00:00:13.000 It's only been 12 hours since you saw me last.

00:00:17.000 11 if you really think about it.

00:00:20.000 And I think it's time for more of this.

00:00:25.000 There's a reason you come here.

00:00:27.000 It's because it's so darn good.

00:00:30.000 Get your day kicked off in just the right way.

00:00:33.000 And might I add, not many commercials.

00:00:37.000 Have you tried watching anything that has commercials lately?

00:00:41.000 We'll talk about that in a minute.

00:00:43.000 But first, first, let's do the important stuff first.

00:00:48.000 And in order to be prepared for the important stuff, all you need is

00:00:52.000 a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein,

00:00:55.000 a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:00:58.000 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:01:01.000 I like coffee.

00:01:02.000 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hint of the day,

00:01:06.000 the thing that makes everything better, including your pandemics.

00:01:10.000 It's called the simultaneous sip.

00:01:13.000 Happens now.

00:01:14.000 Go.

00:01:15.000 Hmm, just as good as I thought it would be.

00:01:21.000 Never disappointed.

00:01:24.000 Speaking of attention spans,

00:01:27.000 Have you tried to watch anything in the form of entertainment lately?

00:01:32.000 It's really hard.

00:01:36.000 For example, I've had this experience recently and maybe you've had it too.

00:01:42.000 I'll hear of a movie and I'll say,

00:01:45.000 I got some free time because of this quarantine situation.

00:01:49.000 I'm going to watch me a movie.

00:01:51.000 And then this happens.

00:01:54.000 All right.

00:01:55.000 Where will I watch the movie?

00:01:57.000 Will it be on a device?

00:01:59.000 If it is, I've got to find a device.

00:02:01.000 I might have to plug it in.

00:02:02.000 I've got to find which device already has the app on it that I want to stream the service.

00:02:07.000 Some of my devices have different apps.

00:02:09.000 So I sort that out and then it needs to be charged.

00:02:12.000 So I've got to find my charger.

00:02:13.000 I find my charger.

00:02:14.000 And then I need my headphones.

00:02:16.000 But my headphones aren't charged.

00:02:17.000 So I've got to charge my headphones.

00:02:19.000 So I'm 20 minutes into it.

00:02:21.000 And all I've done is figure out which device I'm going to watch.

00:02:24.000 Let's say I've decided I'll watch it on the television.

00:02:27.000 So I go on the television and I say,

00:02:30.000 Which streaming service is that?

00:02:33.000 Because I got the Xfinity, but I got Netflix.

00:02:38.000 It might be on Amazon.

00:02:40.000 Is it on Hulu?

00:02:42.000 And then I start looking for it.

00:02:45.000 And then I can't find it.

00:02:47.000 And then it's like, oh, it's on the other service.

00:02:50.000 So I go to the other service.

00:02:52.000 And for some reason the password doesn't work.

00:02:55.000 Now I have to recover a password.

00:02:57.000 But I'm watching television.

00:02:59.000 So I have to go get a device to recover the password.

00:03:02.000 And then I start, you know, looking for things.

00:03:07.000 And it takes forever.

00:03:10.000 And then I start it.

00:03:13.000 I tried to watch this Tiger King thing.

00:03:17.000 So, you know, I go through the process and it's 30 minutes in.

00:03:21.000 And I haven't watched anything yet.

00:03:23.000 30 minutes of work and I have no entertainment.

00:03:26.000 All I've done is prepare myself to maybe get entertained 30 minutes later.

00:03:31.000 And do you know what happens after 30 minutes of anything?

00:03:36.000 It doesn't matter what I'm doing.

00:03:38.000 Getting ready to watch a movie, no matter what it is.

00:03:42.000 Do you know what happens after 30 minutes?

00:03:45.000 I bail out.

00:03:46.000 Because 30 minutes is way too long to spend on anything.

00:03:50.000 You know, our attention spans have shrunk so much

00:03:54.000 that I can't spend half an hour just deciding what movie to watch.

00:03:59.000 It's way too hard.

00:04:01.000 So I find that I watch very little because the setup time takes too long.

00:04:10.000 Have you tried to watch, say, an HBO show lately,

00:04:13.000 that if you try to watch it in real time and it's not recorded,

00:04:17.000 and you turn it on and that long HBO introduction comes on,

00:04:22.000 it's like there's orchestra music and there's visuals and graphics and everything.

00:04:29.000 And you just sit there thinking, I really just wanted to watch the content.

00:04:35.000 Okay, I'm not really getting anything out of the 20 minutes I have to watch the opening credits and music.

00:04:42.000 I'm very impressed with it all.

00:04:44.000 You did a good job.

00:04:45.000 I'll watch it once.

00:04:46.000 I'll watch it once.

00:04:47.000 But if it's a series, I can't watch that twice.

00:04:52.000 So my observation is that things like books and movies could be largely obsolete within just a few years,

00:05:01.000 not because they changed.

00:05:03.000 Well, they did.

00:05:04.000 They're harder now because there are more levels and options and things just to do a simple thing.

00:05:09.000 But I think our attention spans are way too short now.

00:05:12.000 I also tried to watch, I tried to do something last night that I advise you not to do.

00:05:18.000 And I reminded myself why you should not do it.

00:05:21.000 So it's, I don't know, 9 o'clock at night last night.

00:05:25.000 Had a long day.

00:05:26.000 I started to work at, I don't know, 2 or 3 in the morning,

00:05:29.000 which is not unusual when I control my own hours.

00:05:32.000 And so by 9 o'clock at night, I'm ready to go down.

00:05:36.000 But I'm thinking, yeah, I think I'll try to watch something.

00:05:40.000 So I call up, you know, it doesn't matter what show.

00:05:44.000 And I try to watch, you know, a movie a little bit before I drift off to sleep.

00:05:50.000 Now, I tell you, never do that.

00:05:53.000 Because you don't want to associate your sleeping routine and being in bed with anything entertaining,

00:05:59.000 unless it's, you know, with your partner.

00:06:01.000 Because you don't want the bed to be associated with excitement and entertainment.

00:06:07.000 You want it to be associated with sleep as much as possible.

00:06:11.000 So I violated my own rule to try to watch a movie.

00:06:14.000 And I think I got 60 seconds into it.

00:06:18.000 And I could tell my entire body was on fire.

00:06:21.000 Like with stress.

00:06:23.000 Because the whole point of a movie, unless it's a comedy,

00:06:26.000 and even comedies have this problem at least by the third act,

00:06:30.000 the point of a movie is watching somebody who's got a big problem.

00:06:34.000 And then they try to solve it.

00:06:36.000 But until they solve it, they're in danger, things are happening to them,

00:06:41.000 they're going to get killed, they're losing their money, they lose their love life.

00:06:46.000 And I'm thinking, why in the world am I subjecting myself to this?

00:06:51.000 I get that there's a payoff later, and I'll feel good when the hero, you know, survives.

00:06:58.000 But I've got to watch, what, two full hours of bad news

00:07:03.000 to get to that little good feeling that isn't going to last that long anyway?

00:07:07.000 There's no way that payoff makes sense.

00:07:09.000 There's just no way.

00:07:11.000 So I bailed out and watched 10 minutes of a movie,

00:07:15.000 and I wish I'd watched zero of it.

00:07:17.000 So take my advice, don't follow my, don't follow what I do.

00:07:21.000 All right, here's a thought experiment for you.

00:07:24.000 Now don't read too much into the thought experiment,

00:07:28.000 because I'll acknowledge in advance that it's not a real-world thing.

00:07:33.000 You couldn't actually do it, and it doesn't apply directly to the point I'm going to make.

00:07:37.000 But it's still educational.

00:07:40.000 It'll help you understand your world a little bit better.

00:07:43.000 It's not the answer, but it'll give you a little context, and it goes like this.

00:07:47.000 Imagine that instead of the coronavirus, let's say there had been no coronavirus,

00:07:52.000 and instead the government of this country, and other countries too,

00:07:57.000 has simply stated a year ago that there will be a two-month forced vacation

00:08:02.000 for everybody except essential services.

00:08:05.000 They said it's going to be March and April.

00:08:09.000 It'll be two months, everybody has to stay home, can't even go on vacation.

00:08:14.000 What would happen to the economy once we got back?

00:08:19.000 Would it be a depression?

00:08:22.000 If it were planned, it was all planned,

00:08:25.000 would you come back to a depression because you had a two-month pause?

00:08:30.000 Your intuition is kicking in right now, and you're saying to yourself,

00:08:34.000 I don't think it would be, because everybody would just go back to work,

00:08:38.000 and the worst-case scenario is that you, as long as everybody ate,

00:08:42.000 if they had enough to eat for two months,

00:08:44.000 the worst-case scenario is that people just go back to work,

00:08:48.000 they got a little debt that they wish they didn't have,

00:08:51.000 maybe some of it's forgiven, however you work that out,

00:08:54.000 but we kind of fairly quickly get back to work.

00:08:57.000 Maybe a year later, you'd probably be back to steam.

00:09:01.000 One year, I think.

00:09:03.000 Now, that's not exactly like this situation, right?

00:09:06.000 Because in this situation, there are entire industries

00:09:09.000 that are just going to be decimated, and so that's different.

00:09:12.000 So servers, for example, don't get to just go back to work.

00:09:16.000 They might not have a job.

00:09:18.000 I don't get to go back to work to what my old career was,

00:09:22.000 because I think 75% of newspapers will be out of business in a few months.

00:09:27.000 So my career will change, too.

00:09:30.000 So my thought experiment is not like the coronavirus thing,

00:09:35.000 because we didn't prepare for it in the same way,

00:09:38.000 and we can't just walk right back into our old jobs.

00:09:41.000 But here's the thing.

00:09:43.000 A lot of us can.

00:09:45.000 A lot of people can.

00:09:47.000 They can just walk back into their job like they took a two-month vacation.

00:09:51.000 So my prediction is that we'll get back to good business faster than a lot of experts are going to predict.

00:10:04.000 And I always make my predictions based on the thing that you don't see coming.

00:10:08.000 In other words, I'm not straight-lining it.

00:10:10.000 If I were to straight-line my prediction and say,

00:10:13.000 based on what we know now and if we didn't learn anything new, it would look pretty bad.

00:10:19.000 That's true.

00:10:20.000 But all of these predictions have the same problem,

00:10:25.000 which is there are all kinds of things you didn't see would happen surprisingly happened.

00:10:30.000 And a lot of it has to do with innovation and people inventing ways to solve things.

00:10:35.000 For example, I just said that restaurants couldn't possibly open up.

00:10:39.000 Is that true?

00:10:41.000 I mean, is it?

00:10:43.000 Is it true that there's no way a restaurant can open up, let's say, in a month or so

00:10:47.000 when other people can go back to work?

00:10:49.000 Because there would be people in a tight space?

00:10:53.000 I don't know.

00:10:54.000 I think that's exactly the sort of thing that could end up changing.

00:10:58.000 So I said before that since the warm weather is coming anyway, could the local towns say,

00:11:04.000 okay, okay, it's an emergency, so we're going to loosen up on some of our restaurant restrictions.

00:11:11.000 And you can put your tables outdoors.

00:11:14.000 You can put your tables in a parking lot.

00:11:16.000 You can take your dog to eat as long as it's outdoors.

00:11:20.000 We'll even put tables right out into the street and maybe close off some blocks so the restaurants can do that.

00:11:28.000 And you'll just park somewhere else.

00:11:31.000 So if you don't assume that people will figure out how to adjust, then yeah, it's a depression.

00:11:37.000 Yeah.

00:11:38.000 If nobody can figure out how to adjust, we're in trouble.

00:11:42.000 But that's not the world you live in.

00:11:44.000 In the real world, people will make massive flexible adjustments.

00:11:49.000 They'll be trying everything, and people will be watching what other people try.

00:11:53.000 They'll say, oh, that looks like a good idea.

00:11:56.000 So it's thoroughly unpredictable, but I always err on the side of saying, I think it'll be better than the worst case.

00:12:04.000 Like a lot better than the worst case.

00:12:06.000 And I'm still going to stick with that.

00:12:08.000 It doesn't mean it'll be good, but much, much better than the worst case.

00:12:13.000 I have an ongoing sort of Twitter conversation with Adam Townsend, who's now I think my favorite person to disagree with. 0.97

00:12:26.000 It's annoying to disagree with people who are dumb and don't have good reasons, 0.93

00:12:31.000 but I find it kind of exciting to disagree with people who I think really know what they're talking about and are smart. 0.99

00:12:39.000 Because it means I might learn something.

00:12:42.000 Because whatever I'm thinking, somebody smart and well-informed is thinking something different.

00:12:48.000 I better find out what that is, right?

00:12:50.000 So with all due respect to Adam Townsend, we have a difference of opinion, and it goes like this.

00:12:58.000 And I hate trying to characterize somebody else's opinion, because you never get it exactly the way they would say it.

00:13:04.000 So I'm going to say I think this is close.

00:13:10.000 But if it's wrong, I apologize.

00:13:13.000 And the idea is that closing down the economy was at least potentially unwise.

00:13:21.000 And Adam offered this clarification when I questioned it on Twitter today.

00:13:27.000 And this is what he said.

00:13:28.000 He said, I never argued against a pandemic prophylactic response.

00:13:34.000 So he never argued that we shouldn't close things down.

00:13:39.000 And then he goes on.

00:13:40.000 He said, I argued lack of economic models commensurate with trillions of dollars of shutdown.

00:13:46.000 And that we've seen imperfect data extrapolated to where it showed disaster by failing to count all of this and exaggerating all that.

00:13:55.000 So if I can summarize that, he's saying that the data that we're using to make these decisions is terribly flawed.

00:14:02.000 I think we all agree with that, right?

00:14:05.000 The data is terribly flawed.

00:14:07.000 And then he points out that there's no economic model that sort of captures all the badness and goodness of closing down the economy.

00:14:17.000 What we have instead is just sort of a scientific health model.

00:14:23.000 So we have plenty of models that show how many people die, you know, with or without social distancing, etc.

00:14:30.000 But Adam correctly points out that we don't have any kind of an economic model that tells you what happens if you close stuff down.

00:14:40.000 Now, here's where Adam and I disagree.

00:14:42.000 And I don't think we're going to be able to close the distance on this disagreement.

00:14:47.000 And it goes like this.

00:14:49.000 There's no way to make an economic model that would capture this.

00:14:53.000 Can't be done.

00:14:54.000 Now, you could build one, and you could tell the public you built one, and you could get people to believe it.

00:14:59.000 But it wouldn't be real.

00:15:02.000 The complexity of this is way beyond, way beyond what anybody can reasonably model.

00:15:09.000 It's way beyond.

00:15:10.000 It wouldn't be real close to something that, you know, the smartest person in the world with all of the best resources could even get close to.

00:15:18.000 It would just be a guess on a spreadsheet, basically.

00:15:21.000 It would be just a guess.

00:15:23.000 So the thing that Adam wants, I want too.

00:15:28.000 I would love a credible economic model so we could say, well, if you go this way, you get this.

00:15:35.000 If you go this way, you get that.

00:15:37.000 But it's not possible.

00:15:39.000 It's well beyond.

00:15:41.000 It's not even close to possible.

00:15:43.000 It's in a different zip code with possible.

00:15:46.000 If it were just hard, I'd say, well, it's a crisis.

00:15:51.000 I don't care how hard it is.

00:15:53.000 Put a team together.

00:15:54.000 Get the best people in the world.

00:15:55.000 Give them everything they need.

00:15:57.000 I don't care how hard it is.

00:15:59.000 Make it work.

00:16:00.000 But it's not hard.

00:16:02.000 It's actually just not possible.

00:16:05.000 Now, I come at this from years of experience doing financial modeling.

00:16:10.000 So it's what I did in my day job.

00:16:13.000 You hear it too much.

00:16:14.000 I've got a degree in economics and an MBA.

00:16:17.000 So I know a little bit of what I'm talking about.

00:16:19.000 I did it professionally on a smaller scale.

00:16:23.000 In my case, I was projecting what would happen to a company under different economic scenarios.

00:16:31.000 So this would be much harder because the economy has got far more variables and just that's the big problem, way too many variables.

00:16:40.000 So here's where Adam and I disagree.

00:16:43.000 I don't think that there was an option of having good data.

00:16:48.000 And I don't think there was an option or even good enough because I'm totally in favor of using, you know, directionally accurate data.

00:16:58.000 So if all of your guesses still point in the same direction, it's still useful that you studied it.

00:17:04.000 If you study it and, you know, sometimes it points in different directions, you've got another problem.

00:17:10.000 So here's what I think.

00:17:11.000 I think the whole question of, you know, closing the economy down and how long you keep, how long you close it and how you open it up and the trade off with the deaths and the politics of it.

00:17:22.000 But I don't think it can be modeled, not even close.

00:17:26.000 And it's one of those cases where real leadership matters.

00:17:31.000 That is, somebody is going to have to peer into this fog of uncertainty.

00:17:36.000 And here's what you don't get to say.

00:17:39.000 Hey, I wish there were no fog.

00:17:41.000 Well, you can wish it.

00:17:43.000 We all wish that.

00:17:45.000 But it's not real.

00:17:47.000 And if you wait, there's not going to be less fog.

00:17:50.000 I mean, maybe in trivial ways, but you're still not going to know.

00:17:55.000 So the real leadership question is, how do you make one of the most important decisions in the history of humankind?

00:18:03.000 And I think this is one of those.

00:18:05.000 You know, whatever decision Trump comes up with ultimately about going back to work will be one of the biggest decisions in all of humanity.

00:18:14.000 It's true, you know, for a single decision.

00:18:18.000 There are lots of things more important, maybe, but it was lots of people making lots of decisions.

00:18:23.000 I don't know if we've ever seen one person make a decision with this weight.

00:18:27.000 Obviously, experts will help.

00:18:30.000 So in a situation where you can't have a model that tells you what to do, there's extreme uncertainty.

00:18:37.000 It's life and death.

00:18:39.000 I mean, it's the biggest stakes you could possibly have.

00:18:43.000 What do you do?

00:18:45.000 So how do you make a decision?

00:18:47.000 Well, I'll give you some hints.

00:18:50.000 The first thing you do is look for ways you could test it small.

00:18:54.000 Ever hear me say that before?

00:18:56.000 So, for example, in this case, instead of saying, let's send everybody back to work under these criteria, you could say, how about this week?

00:19:08.000 We send everybody in Toledo back to work and we'll ask you not to do any traveling because we just want to see what Toledo looks like.

00:19:16.000 Let's just run that for a week.

00:19:18.000 Just see what it looks like.

00:19:20.000 You might have to run it for two weeks for infected people to start showing up.

00:19:25.000 But if you can test it, and I'm not sure it's practical, but it feels like it might be a little bit.

00:19:31.000 If you could test it somewhere, go ahead and test it.

00:19:33.000 Then you don't have to wonder which way to go.

00:19:36.000 Just test it.

00:19:37.000 The other thing is you can decide who takes the hit.

00:19:44.000 For example, we could say, we're going to close the economy, and if you can't eat, well, that's on you.

00:19:51.000 Then that would put the heat all on people who didn't have money, and that would be his own set of problems politically, morally, and everything else.

00:19:59.000 So you can make decisions based on who gets hurt the most, even if you don't know how it all plays out.

00:20:06.000 So for example, the government seems to have made the decision that it will put pressure on the rich, basically.

00:20:15.000 Because it's the rich who ultimately will pay any debt that we run up.

00:20:20.000 It's the rich who are being asked to retain employees.

00:20:24.000 It's the rich who are going to lose half of their net worth.

00:20:27.000 They're still going to be rich, so you don't feel bad about them.

00:20:30.000 But it looks like the government is putting so much as they can, shifting it toward the rich, shifting it toward banks.

00:20:40.000 Now, that would be a good decision.

00:20:43.000 Even if you don't know how everything plays out, it still makes more sense to put your risk in the banks.

00:20:49.000 Now, you say to yourself, my God, you don't want to put risk in the banks.

00:20:53.000 Because if the banks fail, it's all done.

00:20:56.000 But I would suggest, flip that around.

00:21:00.000 Because if the banks fail, it's the end of everything.

00:21:04.000 I mean, really, it would be.

00:21:06.000 That's why they won't fail.

00:21:08.000 Because the government will put 100% effort into making sure the banks don't fail.

00:21:12.000 We've already seen them do that.

00:21:14.000 Because that's so important.

00:21:16.000 So if you sort of move your, let's say, the risk over to the banks, you've also moved it to the place where there will be most attention to solving it.

00:21:28.000 Whereas if you said, well, let the poor people work it out.

00:21:31.000 They'll find food somehow.

00:21:34.000 A lot of poor people are not going to work it out.

00:21:36.000 And they're going to suffer.

00:21:38.000 So the closest you can get is some informed guesses, some feelings about, you have to make some assumptions without data about, let's say, the attitude and morale of the country.

00:21:50.000 Because you can't make a smart decision that the public hates so much that it blows the politics apart.

00:21:56.000 It wouldn't help to do the right thing if the public was sure it was the wrong thing.

00:22:02.000 So you've got, you know, you've got the persuasion, the politics, the guessing about what the economics would be, shifting the weight onto who can handle the pressure the most.

00:22:14.000 And then you've just got to guess.

00:22:17.000 Now, you also have to guess in a way, ideally, that you could easily reverse.

00:22:22.000 So, you know, if you make a decision that you can pull back as soon as you find out it's a mistake, well, that helps a little bit.

00:22:31.000 So here's what I think.

00:22:34.000 Since the medical experts are saying that an extra month or whatever it's going to turn out to be would make a really big difference.

00:22:43.000 But if I were modeling the economy, I'd say to myself, I'm not sure one month would make that much difference compared to the month we already left.

00:22:53.000 I don't know if it's the extra month.

00:22:56.000 You know, if you said it's an extra six months, I'd say, oh, that's too long.

00:23:00.000 But an extra month, I don't know.

00:23:03.000 I don't know if that'll actually make a difference.

00:23:06.000 So my intuition would be to keep things locked down at least for a few weeks and then start phasing people in in a way that, ideally, if you have enough test kits, you can measure whether you're doing it correctly and adjust.

00:23:22.000 But I would certainly be sending some low risk people back to work pretty quickly.

00:23:26.000 Or at least I have a plan for doing it.

00:23:28.000 I think, I don't know his first name, is it Nick Nolte at Rights for Breitbart, tweeted, why doesn't Trump hold a digital presser where he answers questions from people outside the media group think, and then he names me.

00:23:47.000 So as a person who might ask a question of the president who's not in the press room.

00:23:53.000 And I thought, that's a really good idea.

00:23:57.000 Because the questions that the press are asking are just bad questions, aren't they?

00:24:04.000 Oh, John Nolte.

00:24:06.000 John Nolte, who writes for Breitbart, not Nick Nolte, who is the actor.

00:24:10.000 Thank you for that correction.

00:24:12.000 I looked at his profile, but he doesn't list his first name on his profile, so I was guessing.

00:24:19.000 I think that's a really good idea.

00:24:21.000 Because the press are trying to ask gotcha questions, and the public wouldn't even think in those terms.

00:24:27.000 If I thought of a question to ask the president, it wouldn't even occur to me to ask it as a gotcha question.

00:24:35.000 I don't care about that as much.

00:24:39.000 I just want to know the answer.

00:24:41.000 So, that's a good question.

00:24:43.000 I'd like to see that implemented, at least a little bit.

00:24:48.000 Let's see, what else we got going on here?

00:24:54.000 Checking my notes.

00:24:56.000 Did you see that tweet by Eric Erickson?

00:25:00.000 Eric Erickson, a well-known conservative type, he tweeted a picture in which he was talking in a complimentary way about two brothers who went to school with his kids.

00:25:15.000 And the two brothers in the neighborhood are making and selling something for $20 a piece.

00:25:22.000 And then they're taking that money, and they're buying snacks for area hospital break rooms.

00:25:26.000 And I thought, wow.

00:25:28.000 That's great.

00:25:29.000 That's tremendous.

00:25:31.000 His kids got a little business.

00:25:33.000 They're selling some kind of item.

00:25:35.000 And then they're taking their money to the hospitals.

00:25:41.000 That's all great.

00:25:42.000 Until you see the picture of the item in which Erick says that he added lights to it.

00:25:49.000 So, the item was a cross, a wooden cross.

00:25:53.000 And I guess the kids were making wooden crosses and selling them to people that they could put in the yard.

00:26:01.000 And then Erick, apparently according to his tweet, he decided that maybe you could see them better at night.

00:26:07.000 So, he added white lights in a fairly dense pattern.

00:26:11.000 And then took a picture of it at night to show how good it looked with the white lights in a dense pattern around the cross that's in his neighbor's lawn.

00:26:22.000 You probably see where I'm going with this, don't you?

00:26:27.000 Because it looks like a digital version of the KKK burning a cross in the neighbor's lawn.

00:26:34.000 Now, I only know of this story because Erick Erickson was trending.

00:26:40.000 And I click on all the famous people who are trending to see if they got coronavirus.

00:26:45.000 I mean, I hate that I do that, but I do.

00:26:47.000 And he doesn't have coronavirus, as far as we know.

00:26:50.000 But he's the only person who didn't recognize that adding a burning cross to the neighbor's lawn might not come across as the charitable act that he had hoped.

00:27:03.000 Now, of course, they're not burning.

00:27:05.000 They're lit with these white lights.

00:27:07.000 But when you take a picture of something that's tightly lit at night, you know what it looked like.

00:27:14.000 All right.

00:27:18.000 I'm starting to get the kind of critic that disappeared for a while.

00:27:23.000 I'm starting to wonder if the trolls came back.

00:27:27.000 I told you that for a while my critics just disappeared. 1.00

00:27:31.000 There were there were a few weeks where I didn't get any of the like really horrible trolls, the ones that say things that make your head explode because they're so stupid. 1.00

00:27:42.000 They just all disappeared for a few weeks. 1.00

00:27:44.000 But they just started creeping back.

00:27:46.000 And I don't know if it's because they're paid trolls or or if they, you know, the crisis made them go away and act good for a while.

00:27:54.000 I don't know.

00:27:55.000 But they came back.

00:27:56.000 And one of the things that they seem to be pointing out is that my opinion should be ignored because I'm a cartoonist.

00:28:04.000 I did a long tweet thread in which I compared my predictions on the coronavirus to the experts.

00:28:11.000 You've already heard that.

00:28:12.000 So, you know that the experts were not bathing themselves in glory.

00:28:16.000 But there were a number of us who were not experts on these topics who have been right consistently from the beginning.

00:28:24.000 Now, and I would like to add this to the conversation. 0.76

00:28:29.000 So I will never tell you to ignore the experts because that would be dumb. 0.92

00:28:35.000 Right.

00:28:36.000 So I'm never going to say ignore experts as some kind of like general statement, not on any topic.

00:28:42.000 You should never ignore the experts, which is different from saying the experts are always right.

00:28:48.000 What I would like to add to the conversation is this fact.

00:28:53.000 There are also experts as spotting bullshit from other experts.

00:29:00.000 Now, that's not a college degree and it's not a job title. 0.98

00:29:04.000 You know, there's nobody whose job title is I spot bullshit from other experts.

00:29:08.000 But nonetheless, there are people who have such a clear track record of doing it in public that you would have to say they're experts. 0.91

00:29:18.000 I mean, at some point, you just say, OK, you just keep doing this over and over again.

00:29:23.000 Let's call you an expert.

00:29:25.000 For example, I like to use Mike Cernovich as my standard example of a lot of things, partly because most of you are aware of him,

00:29:33.000 partly because he stands apart from the crowd in so many ways that he just makes a good example for lots of stuff. 0.54

00:29:40.000 But Mike Cernovich has a very long track record that you could check for yourself, and it's all public, of recognizing bullshit really early.

00:29:51.000 I would say he's an expert. 0.52

00:29:54.000 Same with some other names that I mentioned, you know, Naval, Balaji, Srinivasan, Greg Goffeld, you know, Joel Pollack. 0.98

00:30:05.000 There are other people that you can watch, and you can see that they also have a track record of being able to spot expert bullshit. 0.95

00:30:13.000 I think I'm one, too. And I would say that my skill stack is what allows me to have that visibility.

00:30:21.000 I've simply been around lots of experts who are right and wrong in lots of different fields.

00:30:26.000 I'm a certain age, so I've seen enough of it. I've got a, you know, I've got a background in persuasion and economics.

00:30:33.000 So I could just look through more windows and spot BS a little bit.

00:30:38.000 Yeah, Jack Posobiec, I should have mentioned him on my list of people who see things early.

00:30:43.000 So I just put that out into the world as there are experts and they should be listened to.

00:30:53.000 That doesn't mean they're right. You should always listen to the people who are experts at spotting bullshit from other experts. 0.84

00:31:01.000 If you've listened to both the spotters and the experts, well, then maybe you have enough to form your own opinion, right or wrong. 0.71

00:31:14.000 All right. So the president, I said this last night, but it's so much fun that I have to say it again.

00:31:21.000 The president loves provocation, especially if it's the press.

00:31:27.000 I think we all know that he likes provoking the enemy press because it always works for him.

00:31:32.000 Whenever he provokes them, it seems to turn out good for him in the long run.

00:31:40.000 And his latest thing is, and I know he knows he's doing it, right?

00:31:45.000 There's no, I can't read his mind, but I think you'll agree he knows he's doing this.

00:31:51.000 This isn't, this is not accidental.

00:31:53.000 He's overselling a little bit, at least in his choice of words and, you know, the amount he talks about it, et cetera, the potential for the hydroxychloroquine.

00:32:04.000 Now, if you're new to the topic, it hasn't, it hasn't been verified by, you know, good, robust studies, but there's lots of anecdotal evidence that it's safe enough and probably useful.

00:32:22.000 So we don't know, but maybe it's useful.

00:32:27.000 And the president is sort of mentioning it.

00:32:31.000 Now, he also says the same thing I did, which is there's not proven, but he goes a little bit further in saying that he's optimistic about it.

00:32:39.000 He thinks it could be a game changer.

00:32:41.000 So even though he's very careful to say it's not scientifically proven, the other words he uses makes people believe that he doesn't care about that.

00:32:52.000 It makes, it makes people think, ah, he doesn't care if it's scientifically proven or not.

00:32:58.000 That scientifically illiterate guy, he just wants us to use this untested drug.

00:33:03.000 But of course, it's not about that.

00:33:05.000 He's not giving you medical advice.

00:33:07.000 He's doing a risk assessment using information that the professionals have provided.

00:33:15.000 So he looks at their input.

00:33:18.000 He says, well, on a risk reward basis, we don't know if it works or not, but we do know it's been used for a long time for other stuff.

00:33:26.000 And we know that for short term usage, even the experts say that the, you know, the downside is probably vanishingly small for short term usage.

00:33:35.000 So that's just a risk reward assessment.

00:33:39.000 Is the president the right qualifications to make a risk management judgment, which takes into effect or takes into account the different opinions of different experts?

00:33:53.000 And I would say, yeah, yeah, that's exactly his skill.

00:33:57.000 Remember, Trump was a real estate developer.

00:34:00.000 How many of the individual skills of all the people involved in that did Trump himself have?

00:34:07.000 Was he a trained architect?

00:34:09.000 No.

00:34:10.000 No.

00:34:11.000 You know, was he, you know, was he the guy who knew how to put up drywall?

00:34:17.000 Well, he might know how to put up drywall.

00:34:19.000 But the point is that the contractor had lots of subcontractors, a lot of skills there.

00:34:25.000 And Trump was not the expert on all of their expertise.

00:34:29.000 He was simply a guy who could pick out who was lying and BSing.

00:34:34.000 So he'd know when he needs a new expert or a second opinion.

00:34:37.000 And he was good at incorporating all this expert opinion into one executive decision. 0.98

00:34:43.000 So for all the critics who are saying, you don't know what you're talking about because you're a cartoonist, they're the dumbest people on the Internet today. 0.96

00:34:53.000 Because first of all, how did you not notice that all the experts were wrong? 0.86

00:34:58.000 And the only people who were right about, you know, substantial parts of this coronavirus stuff, the only people who were right were the people who didn't have qualifications.

00:35:08.000 But they were pretty good at spotting BS from experts.

00:35:15.000 So, yeah, so I guess my point is that there is expertise in spotting BS.

00:35:21.000 Trump has it.

00:35:23.000 I think Trump has it.

00:35:25.000 Well, let's hope he makes the right decision.

00:35:28.000 All right.

00:35:30.000 That's about all I have today.

00:35:32.000 Any of you have any questions?

00:35:35.000 Only listen to you, not about you.

00:35:38.000 Don't know what that means.

00:35:40.000 Yeah, you know, there are a lot of people who have very limited skill stacks who I think believe other people do as well.

00:35:51.000 So if you only had one skill, you probably wouldn't know how useful it is to have more than one.

00:35:59.000 Because you can only see the world through your little hole.

00:36:03.000 Mail-in voting.

00:36:06.000 You know, I think the experts have to weigh in on the mail-in voting.

00:36:10.000 Because my understanding is it's too easy to do ballot harvesting, which is you agree to carry somebody's ballot and hand it in for them.

00:36:20.000 And that sort of gives you a little bit of control over the votes.

00:36:24.000 So I would say that there's a guarantee, there's a guarantee that vote harvesting and, you know, some shenanigans will happen with mail-in votes, but it's an emergency.

00:36:39.000 You know, is there no way that we can figure out how to do voting without going in person?

00:36:48.000 Let me ask you this.

00:36:50.000 And I've said this before, but can you honestly tell me that you can't make an app to vote by app?

00:36:57.000 Now, this isn't going to help all the senior citizens.

00:36:59.000 But can you really tell me that you can't make a vote by app that guarantees that the right person voted?

00:37:08.000 Let me tell you how.

00:37:10.000 Let's say I've got a paper ballot that normally I would mail in.

00:37:16.000 But I also have an app.

00:37:18.000 And the app would let me mail it in with a guarantee that there's no shenanigans.

00:37:23.000 And all the app does is take a picture of the ballot.

00:37:27.000 Let's say you just put it on the table.

00:37:29.000 You just take a picture of it.

00:37:31.000 Boop.

00:37:32.000 Then it prompts you to turn the camera toward yourself.

00:37:36.000 And it says, you know, say these words.

00:37:40.000 And you just read the words.

00:37:41.000 And then you turn on the camera.

00:37:43.000 And you say, my name is blah, blah, blah.

00:37:47.000 Here's my social security number.

00:37:49.000 And this is my vote.

00:37:51.000 And it just gets stored.

00:37:53.000 So if anybody ever questions whether this vote is actually how you voted, they can audit it.

00:38:01.000 Just call up any vote.

00:38:03.000 Look at the vote.

00:38:04.000 Look at the person.

00:38:06.000 Contact them.

00:38:07.000 Make sure it's the same person.

00:38:09.000 And say, was this your vote?

00:38:10.000 So you could audit enough of them to know that nobody was cheating.

00:38:15.000 So here's what I'd say.

00:38:16.000 You want to pair the person's actual, you know, biometric essence, whether they do it with a fingerprint or facial recognition or whatever, as their identity.

00:38:28.000 And then check with them after the fact and make sure that what they say they voted for is actually what got recorded.

00:38:37.000 Somebody says they don't trust virtual.

00:38:41.000 Why wouldn't you trust that?

00:38:43.000 Who's guaranteeing it?

00:38:47.000 Talk about voter suppression. 1.00

00:38:49.000 No, this would be an option.

00:38:51.000 So the app would only give you an option.

00:38:54.000 You wouldn't have to vote that way.

00:38:56.000 So you probably still would have to have some mail in options.

00:38:59.000 You probably have to have some in-person options, especially for the elderly.

00:39:03.000 But it would be easy to imagine that a younger relative could come over and say, hey, you know, hey, mom, you know, instead of mailing it in or going to vote, why don't you just fill out your form?

00:39:15.000 And I'll take a picture of it with the app and then I'll point it at you and make sure that you register that way.

00:39:22.000 So that's how I do it.

00:39:26.000 Venezuela, what's your take on that mess? 0.93

00:39:30.000 Well, the Venezuela mess, I keep wondering when things are going to break, meaning how much further can Venezuela go without overthrowing their alleged leader?

00:39:42.000 So I think it's just a waiting game.

00:39:44.000 When things get desperate enough, it seems like that'll happen.

00:39:48.000 Wrong.

00:39:50.000 There's somebody on here who obviously is new, who decided that a good comment to give to me would be just one word.

00:39:59.000 Wrong.

00:40:00.000 Unbeknownst to them, that's an automatic block. 0.63

00:40:06.000 Cool, then I can hack it and punish those. 0.63

00:40:13.000 How could you hack that?

00:40:16.000 So for those of you who say it could be hacked, how could you hack that?

00:40:21.000 Now, you could hack it ahead of time, but the audit would catch it.

00:40:28.000 So the vote would just be thrown out.

00:40:30.000 I don't think you can hack it.

00:40:33.000 We'll see.

00:40:35.000 Somebody says that's a third party vote.

00:40:38.000 Well, it's not a third party vote if your grandmother puts in her social security number and your grandmother says on camera, you know, hi, I'm grandma, blah, blah, blah.

00:40:48.000 This is my vote.

00:40:49.000 It doesn't matter if somebody else is holding the phone and photographing them.

00:40:56.000 Putting the social security openly on an app.

00:40:59.000 Is it safe?

00:41:03.000 It's 2020.

00:41:04.000 Think about that question.

00:41:06.000 Is it safe to put your social security number in an app?

00:41:11.000 Let's say a government approved app.

00:41:14.000 Is there no place you've ever typed your social security number online?

00:41:19.000 Has nobody ever called you?

00:41:21.000 You've never had to put that on a form?

00:41:24.000 It's the most common thing in the world is writing your social security number down if you're dealing with the government, especially.

00:41:31.000 Um, and of course that could be encrypted, but, uh, due to Soviet Union held out for years.

00:41:44.000 Uh, threatens with a gun.

00:41:47.000 Yeah, you could threaten somebody to vote with a gun, I suppose, but you could do that with a bail-in vote too.

00:41:52.000 Relaxation tips that you use daily for tonight.

00:41:57.000 Yeah, I could do that.

00:41:59.000 Uh, I'll give you all of my relaxation tips tonight.

00:42:04.000 Random audit of millions?

00:42:06.000 No, that's not how random works.

00:42:09.000 Random means you only have to check some.

00:42:12.000 You don't have to check them all.

00:42:13.000 And by the way, you could check them all with...

00:42:16.000 Well, you could do some of the checking with facial recognition.

00:42:21.000 So you could check all the people who just lied about who they are.

00:42:25.000 You could check that.

00:42:27.000 Just run a program against it.

00:42:29.000 So, you know, you just look at the face and then compare it to the name and then the facial recognition says that's the wrong face for that name.

00:42:36.000 You could pick those up right away.

00:42:38.000 Uh, it is not safe to put your social security number in an app.

00:42:45.000 Again, it's 2020.

00:42:49.000 Your social security number is all over the place.

00:42:52.000 And certainly the government has it.

00:42:54.000 So if your app is encrypted and it's going to the government, yeah, somebody could get it.

00:43:03.000 But there are about a million other ways they can get it as well.

00:43:06.000 So, you know, if you were to just vote by mail, do you put your social security number on the mail?

00:43:15.000 Can somebody answer that question?

00:43:17.000 If you vote by mail, do you have to put your social security number on your mail-in ballot?

00:43:25.000 I'm guessing yes, but suppose it's just a driver's license.

00:43:31.000 Well, whatever it is for the mail-in, you just do the same thing for the app.

00:43:35.000 So if the mail-in requires two IDs, well, then the other one does too.

00:43:42.000 So it's just the same.

00:43:44.000 Oh, somebody had a great sleep last night?

00:43:47.000 Two out of three.

00:43:48.000 Good.

00:43:49.000 Illegals can get social security numbers, but the illegals would get caught by the facial recognition software.

00:43:59.000 So the illegal who tried to vote with the app would say,

00:44:03.000 Hello, my name is Scott Adams, and I'm voting.

00:44:07.000 And then the facial recognition app would run against it.

00:44:10.000 It would pick up his face, and it would say, You are not Scott Adams.

00:44:14.000 That's somebody else.

00:44:16.000 And that vote would be questioned or thrown out.

00:44:19.000 I had to submit my social security number for my teaching certificate.

00:44:27.000 Yeah.

00:44:28.000 It's everywhere.

00:44:31.000 Fingerprint to vote.

00:44:33.000 Why not?

00:44:34.000 I mean, you can use your fingerprint on your digital device.

00:44:38.000 So, yeah, that could be one form of identification.

00:44:43.000 Maybe you just add another one.

00:44:45.000 Somebody says it's not on form.

00:44:50.000 No, they don't ask for it.

00:44:51.000 Okay.

00:44:52.000 So here's updated information.

00:44:54.000 On the mail-in form, they do not require a social security number.

00:44:59.000 Therefore, I would also not require it for an app.

00:45:06.000 But it would be the same risk, is all I'm telling you.

00:45:09.000 Whatever risk the mail-in has, you just take the same risk with the app.

00:45:13.000 It shouldn't be that different.

00:45:14.000 How will I spend V-Coronis Day?

00:45:21.000 Is that Victory Day?

00:45:23.000 What's that?

00:45:26.000 Do you hear that?

00:45:31.000 Some kind of alarm going off in my house.

00:45:37.000 I don't know what it is, though.

00:45:38.000 It's not my fire alarm.

00:45:39.000 Hmm.

00:45:40.000 I'm going to have to sign off, because I've got a little emergency here.

00:45:41.000 I don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound good.

00:45:42.000 I'm going to take care of that, and I'll talk to you tonight.

00:45:56.000 I'll talk to you tonight.

00:45:57.000 I'll talk to you tonight.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 05, 2020

Episode 893 Scott Adams： Sip Time. Get in Here.

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