Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 915 Scott Adams： If You Can't Bank it, Blanket! Come Feel Better.

00:00:00.000 that's better do you know it's hard to put on a blanket when you're already

00:00:19.440 sitting in a chair well now you do you come here to learn and learn you did

00:00:27.240 well this is the part of the night where all of your worries and cares will be

00:00:34.420 draining out of your body back into the earth where they belong don't push them 1.00

00:00:41.180 down into your stomach and try to bury them with food I'm just kidding that

00:00:45.940 works too but stick with me and by the end of this you're gonna feel so much

00:00:52.000 better so much better it's just gonna be crazy so let us begin talking about all

00:01:00.160 the things number one I hope that all of you are learning a new skill or working

00:01:09.880 on your fitness or learning to cook or bonding with your partner is everybody

00:01:14.740 here have you all made it a point to just at least pick one thing that's just

00:01:20.800 gonna be better because it's the one thing you can control you can control

00:01:26.120 if you learn something you can control if you try something etc and in times like

00:01:31.420 this it's good to get our mind off of things and it's good to just try some

00:01:37.480 stuff so one of the things I'm trying I'm trying lots of different stuff you're

00:01:42.280 working on my drumming working on my weight training and stuff but I signed up

00:01:47.180 for a cameo do you know what that is it's the it's the app where you can you can

00:01:53.360 have me leave a message for somebody that's sort of a gift so it's like a 30

00:01:58.520 second message from semi-famous B list celebrities like myself so you do the

00:02:04.160 cameo app and you just find me there that's what you need to know I have I have a

00:02:11.960 feeling that the zeitgeist is changing this is what I feel like the zeitgeist is

00:02:19.780 changing meaning that the way that the country feels it's almost can't you feel

00:02:27.880 like you're connected to the whole country right now in a way that you

00:02:32.240 haven't quite felt before because I find that when I think about you know the big

00:02:37.020 decision of how do you go back to to work and how do you go back to normal the

00:02:41.100 risks and stuff I feel that because I can't make that decision without literally

00:02:47.020 thinking of everyone else in the country like how do you do it because it's all

00:02:53.500 connected right so you know anything you think of it's like well we could do it

00:02:57.500 this way then you think oh well that would be really bad for restaurants or

00:03:03.300 whoever so there's pretty much no way to guarantee that anything you do is going

00:03:11.540 to be good for everybody so you just feel sort of connected because you're

00:03:14.020 worrying about everybody you're wondering what you can do how you can help it's

00:03:17.800 very connected feeling and because it's connected I feel like maybe you feel this

00:03:23.540 too it's almost like you can feel the the pulse of the public you know in a way

00:03:30.800 that you don't normally feel and let me tell you what I'm feeling and then maybe

00:03:34.880 you can validate how that feels in your end there's something about one month

00:03:41.180 that makes anything doable meaning if you say we only have to do something for one

00:03:48.020 month people will complain but you can do anything for one month if it gets pushed

00:03:55.220 out to six weeks you'll complain some more but you'll say to yourself ah it's only two

00:04:02.720 more weeks if it gets pushed out to what would be the second month there's going to be some

00:04:12.440 serious conversation and you know where we are right so so we're right in that point where

00:04:20.420 the where the flexibility of the country has reached something like a limit now let me give

00:04:28.400 you the good news if our leaders are doing everything just right it might be that the

00:04:34.960 perfect place to you know start getting back to work is when it seems like it's too late

00:04:40.600 you know to just take it right up to the red line you know you get into the red zone and just

00:04:45.820 push it more into the red zone red zone sort of like captain kirk trying to do you know warp 12

00:04:51.440 the ship wasn't built for warp 12 so it could be that we're heading right into the optimal best we

00:05:00.840 could have done you just don't know and that's the big problem isn't nobody really knows it could

00:05:05.960 be that we should have gone back to work three weeks ago which could be that the only thing that

00:05:11.480 makes sense is to you know stay stay locked out for longer nobody really knows but i'll tell you

00:05:18.160 some things we do know here are some things we know okay uh number one um i probably have the best

00:05:30.440 situation of almost anybody you know in terms of you know getting through the uh social isolation

00:05:38.720 because i'm in a really nice environment and it's where i would be anyway you know most of the time

00:05:43.120 so i'm not i'm not suffering uh at all but i gotta tell you today i lost it a little bit

00:05:51.680 so just you know those days where uh you're getting really mad at stuff and you're getting

00:06:01.300 really mad at the people online and you say to yourself i don't know if i would have been this mad

00:06:06.820 about what somebody said online and they make up excuses and i say to myself all right it's not

00:06:14.220 that i'm getting too mad it's because it's so important you know people need to think right

00:06:19.720 about the the crisis to get it right so i feel like no no i'm not overreacting i'm reacting just right

00:06:28.160 because it really is important and somebody could get killed if we get it wrong so but i realize that's

00:06:35.280 a rationalization i'm completely aware that i'm just pissed off and i'm starting to take it out on

00:06:46.140 objects and you know on nothing right and here was my first revelation i'm a pretty chill guy

00:06:56.120 and i'm i'm writing this out better than just about anybody really and if it got to me

00:07:03.940 if it got to me i mean i was ready to stage a revolution today and honestly i don't know what

00:07:15.120 it's like to be anybody else and i don't think anybody else does either right you don't know what

00:07:19.200 it's like to be me i couldn't possibly know what it's like to be you but i do know this it's way

00:07:25.120 worse it's way worse to be most of you because you're not in as good a situation so if it got to

00:07:33.000 me today i got a real like just a glimmer of how bad this must be for other people and of course you

00:07:41.000 knew it you know it's not like you didn't know it intellectually you know you hear it on the news

00:07:45.720 it's obvious but to feel it is a different it's a whole different experience and this gets me to

00:07:55.080 michigan what would you say is the most american state if you had to pick one you know out of all

00:08:04.900 the states what's the most what's the one that just is the most american and i'm not saying that's

00:08:12.700 good or bad you know you can leave your judgments at home but i think you'd agree that you know

00:08:18.040 michigan is pretty high on the list right i don't know if it's number one but when you think of

00:08:24.800 you know what makes america in the sort of traditional way right so sort of the you know

00:08:30.980 salute the flag and eat the apple pie kind of way and watching michigan um stage a revolution

00:08:39.240 today you most of you saw the news where they they got in their cars so they wouldn't be you know

00:08:45.400 infecting each other too badly and they clogged up the streets around the capital to make a point

00:08:52.300 and i thought to myself you know if the revolution is starting

00:08:57.700 michigan why not michigan's pretty darn american and americans were flexible

00:09:08.920 we're very flexible we're very flexible but we have a limit and what i'm saying is if i felt i was

00:09:17.860 near the limit i can't even imagine how you feel you know some of you so um i think that we all we all

00:09:28.900 buy into the idea that in an emergency it's better to have order and if you have at least a little bit

00:09:35.020 of trust about the people at the top it's better in an emergency just to say okay it's an emergency

00:09:40.520 just tell us what to do but as time goes by that authority gets you know pushed down so that the states

00:09:49.460 have more control and they tell the cities and the cities do their things and maybe your neighborhood

00:09:54.440 does something so that the control is being pushed down but ultimately as i like to say

00:10:01.740 ultimately the public has all the control you know we have a government and then you know they have

00:10:07.720 police and they have armies and stuff like that but they're not going to use them all right yeah if

00:10:13.860 the public just said you know let's just pick our own date we'll just pick our own date and we we know

00:10:21.400 the risk we watch tv we'll wear the mask we'll do the thing if some people don't want to

00:10:27.300 we'll work it out maybe they'll be shunned maybe they just work in places where it doesn't matter

00:10:34.240 maybe people take the risk we'll just work it out so ultimately i guess what i was feeling today

00:10:42.520 is that that zeitgeist power shift in which the government is still in control but only barely

00:10:53.940 do you feel that then i mean in a bad way you know i don't think the government is going to be

00:10:59.740 overthrown i'm not talking about that i'm talking about just on this question of when we go back to

00:11:04.240 work i think the public is ready to decide for the government because i don't think the government

00:11:14.500 has a better plan than we do do you do you think the government can give you a more detailed plan

00:11:22.880 that works for you and your family do you think they can you know prescribe that better than you

00:11:31.660 could probably not right now i also uh read the uh the mood of the country that if a few hundred

00:11:41.140 thousand people die because of this that's what it's going to be they it could happen fast it could

00:11:48.460 happen slow but probably there's no way to get to the other side without that and i think the country

00:11:54.160 is ready and it took you know if you had to say there's a silver lining it's it's really dark silver

00:12:00.300 lining in this case but the the fear and the the real pain of this economic upheaval probably was

00:12:11.240 necessary to get the citizens of the united states to say effectively what i was saying earlier today

00:12:19.160 which is i'm in the higher risk group because of my age and asthma and i'm ready to take the chance

00:12:26.820 so you know if i'm ready i don't think an 82 year old should be ready

00:12:32.480 um but you know i'm close enough to the gray area that i'd take a chance because you know my actual

00:12:39.980 odds of dying are really kind of small so i think people are ready um here's some good news

00:12:49.620 can you believe that we have too many ventilators and and way too many that's pretty good and the only

00:12:58.360 stats that i care about out of new york city because i think today the number of deaths went up

00:13:04.500 but the only one that i'm really watching is the number of hospitalizations you know how many people

00:13:11.640 are admitted to the hospital and that keeps dropping so lately day after day the number of people who went

00:13:17.800 in the hospital at all is dropping and in terms of getting back to work that's got to be the most important

00:13:24.440 one um so there's that uh i found out i keep seeing stuff all over twitter that i didn't understand so i dug

00:13:36.760 into it a little bit and candace owens was saying this and also emerald robinson uh from newsmax

00:13:47.080 they're both making comments about bill gates and his involvement in you know health care decisions

00:13:54.360 and vaccinations and stuff and i didn't realize how much hatred there was for bill gates

00:14:01.320 i had no idea so i i decided to you know sample a little of what is it that he did indeed candace called

00:14:12.360 him a uh a vaccine criminal and i thought that's that's pretty that's pretty direct accusation what does

00:14:21.800 that mean so i look at so i asked her and you know we messaged a few times and she sent me some links

00:14:27.800 to show me the the sources that would um that would show that bill gates had done horrible things

00:14:36.760 and i read them and i just didn't see it so i don't know i mean i read i read two sources that she sent me

00:14:47.000 one was snopes saying that there was no evidence of the thing and so when i pointed out to candace that

00:14:55.080 snopes this the source she sent me says there's no evidence of this charge against uh bill gates

00:15:02.680 and candace said but they don't have any evidence that it isn't true essentially well i'm not sure that's

00:15:09.480 the thing you know if there's a weird accusation it's not bill gates's job to prove it didn't happen

00:15:17.160 somebody kind of has to you know if snopes says there's no evidence so that was one of them and the

00:15:23.720 other one was i think it's true but it didn't seem to mean anything in terms of bill gates being a bad

00:15:30.680 guy and it was this that um i guess there was some situation i don't know all the details but i'll give

00:15:36.440 you the the broad strokes uh so i guess it's cheaper and easier to to test um test some meds and

00:15:44.120 vaccinations in africa because in part everything's cheaper there but probably more than that they have

00:15:51.000 relaxed standards for things so you know right away your your alarm is going off it's like wait a

00:15:57.400 minute the pharmaceutical companies go to africa because they have relaxed standards i don't know

00:16:03.800 what that means exactly and i don't know if those like relaxed standards are ones that matter because

00:16:09.160 you could easily imagine that the united states has too many and you know maybe it's just it's just

00:16:14.280 easier and maybe everybody has good intentions but let's talk about their intentions

00:16:18.760 so there was some kind of uh something got tested i think bill bill gates invested in a company

00:16:29.880 that did some testing of some vaccines and it looked like there were some pretty bad outcomes so

00:16:35.800 some of the people in the trial in africa had bad outcomes like i don't know death and just really bad

00:16:43.480 outcomes and um so

00:16:51.640 so here's the question is that bill gates fault that a company that he funded did a study

00:17:00.600 and or did a trial and it ended up hurting some people because that's actually why you do the trial

00:17:07.480 right that's the whole point of the trial is that you don't know if it'll hurt anybody and

00:17:13.320 then it does and so you stop but then there was also something about a lot of the people who were in

00:17:19.800 the trial seemed to be young and not really knowing they were in the trial so that was another another

00:17:26.680 issue and but i think that almost certainly has more to do with their parents or guardians or

00:17:34.600 whoever signed the paperwork because i guess some of the girls couldn't read or write and you know so 1.00

00:17:39.800 so you know they didn't read any kind of agreement so that part is super sketchy but i don't know if

00:17:47.880 that was bill gates's fault i mean it's kind of a stretch to connect those dots you could say that the

00:17:54.360 thing is horrible and should never happen if if the facts are accurate uh there's something horrible

00:18:00.520 there that needs to be fixed it never happened again probably but did bill gates know that the

00:18:07.640 company he funded would hire somebody on the ground who would talk to a guardian who would not have the

00:18:13.800 proper motivation maybe they should have but uh anyway africa is a tough country tough continent all

00:18:24.440 right then there's uh you know the uh small business loans so all the small business loans are coming out and

00:18:33.240 um i wanted to see what the paperwork looked like so i downloaded it and here's the here's the

00:18:41.480 economic argument you have to have in order to apply for a loan which would turn into just free money you

00:18:48.040 wouldn't have to pay it back if you can meet the requirements of using that money to retain your staff

00:18:54.200 so it's meant to retain the staff i'm not i'm not sure if that's the sba part or something else but

00:19:01.240 anyway so that's what the money's for and here's the only sentence that you have to satisfy

00:19:08.200 to say that you need the money here's the exact sentence current economic uncertainty makes this

00:19:14.120 loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant so you only have to

00:19:20.760 check the box you know then sign the document that says the your current economic uncertainty

00:19:27.000 makes it necessary to get this to be sure that you can retain people and i'm thinking to myself

00:19:35.640 that's pretty open-ended that is pretty open-ended

00:19:43.560 um

00:19:43.880 i'm looking at all the uh anti uh anti bill gates people i'm i'm fairly certain that all

00:19:56.840 the bill gates stuff well i don't know i can't say 100 but it's almost all so ridiculous

00:20:05.400 that i don't even know if you need to research it it it's in the clearly ridiculous category of of

00:20:11.880 things because you have to start with who is bill gates and yeah the only way you could believe any of

00:20:18.600 this stuff is if you've never seen a you know a documentary you never read about him never read

00:20:24.760 his biography never read his predictions so if you didn't know who bill gates was

00:20:31.240 those would be pretty you know pretty reasonable conspiracy theories but if you know who he is

00:20:36.520 they're all ridiculous all right are people gonna hate me for liking bill gates probably so here's a

00:20:47.880 point where you can check your prediction awesomeness are you ready every once in a while the news will

00:20:56.280 report something with enough certainty that you should stop and say okay now that we know what the

00:21:01.800 situation is what did i predict it would be and you should make a note of it because you don't

00:21:07.960 want to lose sight of the fact that you were right if you're right or that you're wrong because that

00:21:13.320 will teach you if you're good at this or in what situations maybe you're good at it so that your

00:21:19.320 powers get better so what we found out in the last i'd say two days is that

00:21:25.480 um there's a lot of reporting that the the virus came from the lab in wuhan but was not intentional

00:21:35.560 it was not a bioweapon probably just a natural virus that they study typically in those labs and got it

00:21:43.080 and that china covered it up now who who among you said early on before we had i think it feels

00:21:53.480 confirmed at this point the quality of the extent of the reporting the way the united states is talking

00:21:59.960 about it the way china acted it looks like it's confirmed so how many of you thought that it was

00:22:05.880 a bioweapon if you did i think you can mark that wrong at least according to the best reporting and

00:22:16.280 according to the united states right now some of you may cling to that and say it's not 100 wrong yet

00:22:23.640 but it's probably wrong now i predicted from early on that it wasn't a bioweapon so i think i got that

00:22:32.680 part right um how many of you said it came from the wet market and not the lab because if you said that

00:22:41.800 you were wrong i think i get partial credit because in the very earliest days i said yes yes yes i hear you

00:22:50.040 that there's a lab nearby and yeah i get it that that's pretty suspicious but it's not outside of

00:22:57.560 the kind of coincidence that happens all the time so it wasn't such a big coincidence assuming that there

00:23:05.960 really were bats there which at the time we thought there were bats but turns out maybe there were no

00:23:12.920 bats for sale at the wet market but when we thought there were bats in the wet market well it was pretty

00:23:19.160 reasonable to think we have two hypotheses something got out of a lab you know very possible or something

00:23:27.000 got out of that wet market and there were some you know wet bats there also very possible seemed very

00:23:33.800 possible um so i was you know i was saying hey keep an open mind until you know we know a little bit more

00:23:41.560 but as of um i don't know several days ago so before this latest round of reporting uh i had commented

00:23:51.880 that when uh china reopened the the wet markets that that was china basically telling us that it wasn't the

00:24:01.880 wet markets because they wouldn't have opened them if they thought that the world would be you know

00:24:08.520 looking at them and oh my god those wet markets they would i don't think they would have just

00:24:12.680 reopened the very thing that almost destroyed the world so it was kind of almost a public confession

00:24:21.160 that it wasn't the wet markets because it's just it's hard too hard to imagine they would have just

00:24:25.320 opened them up because it's not like they contribute that much to the economy overall so i had said that

00:24:31.720 that was a signal that it definitely wasn't the wet markets so that left the obvious which was

00:24:37.960 something accidental from the lab so i would say that i eventually eventually got pretty close to

00:24:45.320 what it looks like is going to be the answer so check your predictions how many of you predicted that

00:24:54.760 christina is texting me up the order will be here in 10 minutes so we have 10 minutes

00:25:02.440 before my door dashes here so i wanted to talk to you about models because i've been explaining this

00:25:08.120 on social media until my face is blue and this is the thing that people didn't understand until maybe

00:25:19.000 this month so i used to do a lot of prediction models for a living back in my banking days and my phone

00:25:26.680 company days that's what i did so i would you know do these complicated many variable models just on

00:25:33.080 usually just on uh spreadsheets uh but had lots of variables and stuff so i learned firsthand that

00:25:40.200 they're never accurate but sometimes you can find a range of your risk so this is the thing that people

00:25:47.000 learn today if it's a complicated model which is different than something simple a simple model

00:25:52.520 that could work if you have a really simple model that says oh every every year for the last 30 years

00:25:59.880 we went up five percent so we predict next year we'll go up five percent i mean if it's really simple

00:26:05.240 sure it might work but as soon as you get a bunch of variables such as we had with the coronavirus and

00:26:13.400 here's the the fun part we didn't know any of the variables accurately and we knew we didn't know

00:26:20.920 them accurately so we were guessing about the lethality the lethality we were guessing about

00:26:26.520 which variables really you know made a difference we thought that smoking made it worse but maybe it

00:26:32.120 makes it better we thought it was something about i don't know humidity and density and something you

00:26:37.240 know age and then maybe it wasn't maybe it's in the blood so we have these intense unknowns and then on

00:26:43.800 top of that nobody really knew how well we would do social distancing nobody really knew how well it

00:26:50.280 would work because it had never been done in this scale nobody nobody really knew how well the masks

00:26:55.320 would work nobody really knew any of that so here was this complicated model with i don't know how many

00:27:02.120 variables but had to be at least dozens maybe hundreds and here's the thing they didn't know any of them

00:27:11.320 it's not as if they had a few assumptions but the rest of them were you know pretty good estimates

00:27:15.880 they didn't know any of them and they knew they didn't know them because they knew that you know

00:27:21.640 the information was evolving even as they watched so in the situation where you just are guessing on

00:27:29.320 most of the variables because you can't really know them what are the odds that it's going to predict

00:27:34.120 the future zero it can't do that that's not a thing if it hit the future it would only be an accident

00:27:41.960 which could happen i mean it could accidentally predict the future but it couldn't do it

00:27:45.880 intentionally it's not for that and you don't even use them for that they're only for these things they

00:27:52.520 can size your risk so you try a bunch of variables and you say well these variables are here oh that's

00:27:58.520 not so bad let's try it again these variables are here that's not too bad let's try a little tweaking

00:28:04.680 of the variables again oh my god if i tweak those variables this way it's the end of the world

00:28:12.200 i better run that again uh-oh there's a whole bunch of situations that are the end of the world

00:28:17.400 you could just tweak different variables and get there so that's how you use a complicated model

00:28:22.360 to size the risk it's not telling you what the risk is it's not predicting the risk you can't do that

00:28:31.240 you can't predict the future with that many variables it's simply telling it's it's this big now here's

00:28:36.840 the key part that everybody gets wrong if it's sizing it this big and it turns out that it's just

00:28:43.800 beyond it was the model wrong no that's the part everybody gets wrong if it's just outside of that

00:28:52.760 big range that it said it's going to be almost certainly in this range and it's just outside

00:28:58.120 which sixty thousand deaths is really just outside of a hundred thousand if you're looking at a hundred

00:29:03.720 thousand to a million or two that range that's actually a bullseye you know it's about as good

00:29:10.040 as you can do and of course the models are used to persuade because the scientists the experts have

00:29:15.320 a hard time communicating so the because the complexity of what they know can't really be

00:29:22.360 communicated so they need a simplified way to tell the people who are not experts here it is and here's

00:29:29.000 how it usually goes in a in a exaggerated form the scientists will say all right here's this model

00:29:37.320 but i have to tell you we have a lot of just estimates there's so many variables i mean it's you

00:29:43.640 know there's just no way to know what the actual answer is but it was somewhere in this general area

00:29:48.840 we think this model sizes the risk so that's what the expert says and the expert tells let's say that

00:29:55.320 you know a low level uh person in the government person in the government takes the takes the graph

00:30:03.720 that came with all of that hedging and takes it to his boss or her boss and says we've got a problem

00:30:10.760 here look at this graph it looks like it looks like you know some terrible is going to happen

00:30:16.360 and all of the hedging will be gone by then because as soon as the graph gets into the wild all of

00:30:23.560 the well we're guessing on this it could be this we ran a lot of models we had to throw 10 models out

00:30:29.160 we think we feel pretty good about this it turns out that a complicated model is usually just the

00:30:35.320 expert opinion consensus hammered into a model so that they can communicate it but what they're

00:30:42.520 communicating is just the the bulk of all their testing and things that are hard to explain

00:30:49.000 the only way they can explain it and say look at this pretty picture hey hey look at this

00:30:52.840 see that graph goes up you see goes up that's all you need to know look graph goes up goes up

00:30:59.880 remember that i don't want to overwhelm you so when people got mad because they said hey

00:31:08.200 we thought those predictions were going to be accurate or at least far more accurate and now we're

00:31:15.000 disappointed and now all the experts are liars and idiots to which i say well you only had your 0.90

00:31:22.680 yourself to blame and now that you know that complex models of that type are not even intended to

00:31:30.600 predict the future they don't have that it's not even an option now that you know that you have

00:31:37.160 advanced to the next level so in this simulation game your challenge was to understand this and now that you do

00:31:46.760 you may advance to the next level experts with complicated graphs are trying to persuade you

00:31:55.320 now that doesn't mean they're wrong and it doesn't mean they're dishonest it only means the only way they

00:32:01.560 can communicate their awesome intelligence which could be right could be wrong but it's still awesome

00:32:07.160 intelligence the only way they can communicate it is by lying with a little graph if you know what i

00:32:14.360 mean it's the only way you can get from here to there so if you if you're if you feel like you want

00:32:20.200 to blame the experts for lying to you give them a little credit it's the only way they can communicate

00:32:28.840 with people who don't know what they know haven't seen what they've seen haven't haven't you know lived

00:32:35.560 and breathed the full you know scope of the thing so they can be pretty sure that there's a big problem

00:32:42.280 ahead but they might need a little bit of a lie a little bit of a graph that's a little too neat

00:32:49.800 to sell it to the public so once you know that you've got to the next level congratulations you've gone to the

00:32:55.400 the next level and by the time we get out of this coronavirus situation i expect you will have

00:33:02.680 advanced several levels up in awareness in the simulation congratulations and your reward will

00:33:11.320 be an extra good night's sleep tonight when you're drifting off you're going to remember my voice and

00:33:18.520 you're going to remember that i told you that it was going to be a really good night's sleep

00:33:23.480 and as soon as you think that you're going to think wow it's like i'm just sinking into the mattress

00:33:30.760 i'm just sinking into the pillow and you'll feel momentarily heavy and then you'll just

00:33:38.600 right to sleep have a great night

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 16, 2020

Episode 915 Scott Adams： If You Can't Bank it, Blanket! Come Feel Better.

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