Episode 919 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About All the Things. And I Take Your Questions.
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
164.08017
Summary
In this episode, we talk about a new coronavirus that could be killing more people than we thought, and the problems with the new test that suggests it's not as accurate as it should be. We also talk about what we can do about the problem and what we should do about it.
Transcript
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Do you notice that all the other news just sort of stopped?
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you know things you would you would assume would not stop everything's stopping
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well let's talk about what's happened all right dj dr fung juice good to see you
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um all right here's some things that's happening the biggest news is there's this
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study out of stanford that's not peer-reviewed and it uses a testing kit that is not fda approved
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so those are the two caveats and it seemed to show that there was more more people had the
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antibodies in at least santa clara county in california than previously believed maybe two
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to five percent which would suggest that the amount of infections is way more than we think
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which which if there are way more infections than we knew about because they were asymptomatic
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it would indicate that the actual death rate of the people who get it could be in the vicinity of
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wait for it the regular annual flu oh don't start celebrating because you don't want to be one of
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those people who says that 10 times 1 is different than 1 times 10 here's what i mean what is worse
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a virus that kills most of the people that get it uh but doesn't spread very far or a virus that
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doesn't kill very many people at all just barely a fraction of the people who get it
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ever die but it's really viral which one's worse
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and the answer is it depends it depends how viral the one is and it depends how deadly the other one
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is and how not viral it is but there are two variables so we have determined that the coronavirus
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maybe maybe is less deadly as a percentage but by all uh reason you would also assume that it's
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probably more viral than a normal virus so the death count could still be you know six times higher
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all things being equal uh even if it's only the same amount deadly as the flu but
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there's more to this story there's always more to the story did i mention that the study is not
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peer-reviewed well that's one thing to consider did i mention i think i did that the test is not fda
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approved which doesn't mean it doesn't work just there's one less reason for you to be comfortable
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with it now as a balaji srinivasan says on twitter there are a couple things you should at least be
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aware of number one the way they recruited people is they ran facebook ads to bring people in now
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if you saw a facebook ad to test just to see if you had coronavirus and didn't know it
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and you had had symptoms at some point let's say the last several months because how many of us think
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we had the coronavirus quite a few of us right and most of us didn't but a lot of us thought we did
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but anyway people who might have had the symptoms and thought you know i wonder what that was wouldn't
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you think they would be a little bit more likely at least statistically more likely to answer the ad
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because if you were sure you didn't have it well you might you might volunteer for the study because
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you're just a good person and you want the study to do well and it's good for society but you would
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be a little bit more likely if you suspected you'd had some symptoms so one thing to look at is that it
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could be it's not a random sample it could be the people's self-selected for their own suspicion
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that they had something and maybe they're more likely to you know doesn't mean most of them are
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right because we know that most of them probably don't have coronavirus even if they think they did
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but it could bias bias it just enough to get this small difference of a few percentage
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but here's the other thing uh apparently the known the known inaccuracy of the test so these tests tend to
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be not perfect so that's a a problem that goes across all of these tests and this particular test
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there's some indication that the the number of false positives is roughly in the range of
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so one possibility and maybe the peer review would get to the bottom of this one possibility is that
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the amount of false positives completely explains the the result like the good to all of it
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i mean that's a possibility now i'm not saying that's for sure what's going on here i'm just saying
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that balaji pointed out that you have to at least consider that if you know the accuracy of the test
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has you know this you're sort of in this low few percentage range and that's also the number
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that's also the range that you found extra people with coronavirus well you got to at least ask the
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question so i would say that i would not put um i would not put strong weight on that stanford study
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that would indicate a lot more people have it and that therefore it's less not any more deadly than
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uh uh seasonal flu which is bad enough of course so that's a maybe that's a wait and see well we keep
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getting more anecdotal and half study and preliminary study information on remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine
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in a perfect world there is non-conclusive information that if you're really bad off the
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remdesivir does a good job and there's also inconclusive information that if you give somebody
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the hydroxychloroquine really early they never get to the point where they would need anything else
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so in a perfect world we have both so you can imagine the given the hydroxychloroquine early
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and it reduces the number of people who ever need to be hospitalized but if they are hospitalized
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then the remdesivir comes in and um does the rest now of course it's not going to save everybody
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but you can imagine that with all of our mitigation if you added that to you know testing
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and you know maybe some people have some antibodies that make a difference we don't know
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um maybe the um the convalescent blood serum thing works who knows but now we've got a number of tests
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they all have the same quality have you noticed that every all of our tools have something in common
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they just sort of work a little bit right that none of them are a you know a kill shot it's like well
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you know it'd probably help if you did some of this but you know it would also help if you if you did a
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little of this maybe a little this kind of testing a little bit of taking temperature and you really
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have to sort of add it all together and we don't really have all the assets in place even to do
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all this stuff we're only getting to the point where we can do enough testing getting to the point
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where we could do a real uh you know that's just getting to the point where we can be confident about
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these drugs being useful and not deadly but we're we're sort of just a few weeks away from a lot of
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stuff at least in terms of knowledge um but the timing is going to be beyond interesting uh not in
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a good way because as you know several states are beginning to rebel so people are starting to
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protest and i think at least in the case of michigan it's because there was a little bit of a
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ridiculous overreach about what people could and could not do you know i think people are willing
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to obey obey the direction of their government if the government has a plausible reason you know
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if your government says look this is going to be really hard i know it's going to be a burden it's
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going to be a sacrifice but here's the reason you're doing it and it's a good reason then the citizens
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look at that look at that they say ah i hate i hate that it's you know i'm the one you know not
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because the sacrifice tends to be not uniformly distributed so you can imagine the citizens saying
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i hate this i just hate that i'm the one who's going to you know take it in the in the butt and
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other people are not so much but i see the point you know i can see the argument that the government's
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making that's not what happened that's not what happened i don't think people could see the the
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argument for why they couldn't walk in the park i don't think people saw the argument for why they
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couldn't buy i don't garden seeds i'm not even sure that story is real but people thought it was real
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so i guess that makes it real enough um so because the government did not make an argument that the
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people could say yeah i see what you're going for that makes sense they lost credibility and now we
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have protests in the streets how bad will the protests get well i think there's a real productive
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tension happening right now and the productive tension is this there's no right answer the people
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have preferences and those preferences often fit their situation so certainly a young person who needs
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a paycheck well you have a different opinion than a rich old person etc so you know you have this
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power and preference battle that's playing out but i would argue there's very it's a healthy competition
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so i believe that the people who are pushing to open up have good intentions and um it probably is good
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to push the government to keep that pressure on um so i'm in favor of the protests only not only
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because i think they're legitimate but because it helps the process puts a little pressure on the
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government and i think that's good now what do you make of the fact that the congress can't figure out
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how to vote on the rest of the money that's needed to to finish up the paycheck protection program
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so a whole bunch of companies that are just like the companies that did apply early and got money
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there's a whole bunch of other ones who just couldn't get in it was too clogged up and now the money's gone
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can we put up with that these businesses are going to just be decimated because the government
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decided they wanted to tweak the bill and add some things and make it better and then other people
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disagree i don't care i don't care what the reason is you know chuck and nancy you got reasons i don't
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care i don't care all i know is that you could have voted for whatever those checks could be going
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out and people could be getting helped it's not happening that's what i care about i don't i don't
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want to i don't want to hear about the excuses the reasons how you're making it perfect and you know
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this would be the good time to do it i don't care you're just not doing your job and here's what i
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say about that when your government is being uh credible and transparent and honest you can say
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to yourself i will sacrifice for that because that makes sense but when your government is not meeting
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the the minimum level of competence and i think you can say that about congress right now the minimum
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level of competence is for them to vote for the thing that wait wait for it they all agree on
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it would be one thing to not be able to get something passed when there's actual disagreement
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but they can't pass a bill that they agree on because they're trying to some of them are trying to put
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some extra stuff on it but the stuff they agree on they can't get voted in in an emergency
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in an emergency they can't vote on the things they agree on that's the lowest level of expectation
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you know beyond showing up you know i suppose you know good attendance would be the basic thing
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but after attendance or whatever the digital version of that is after that the minimum is that you should
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be able to vote for the things you all agree on if you can't get that done well anyway the point being
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there is some point at which a government reduces its credibility to the point where the citizens
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will not and should not heed its guidelines and i would argue we're getting perilously close to that
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and i would go further and say that if you were one of the one of the businesses that couldn't get in
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you know couldn't get your money while other people did and the government is just forcing you to stay
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closed and is giving you nothing in return i think that from an ethical perspective you have the right
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to reopen your business now of course that could give you some legal problems etc but i would i would go but
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i would buy your product i will go in your store so if anybody opens up in uh in violation of the
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government's requirements you can count on having at least one customer so i any store that wants to
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violate the um the government's guidelines specifically because they didn't get the ppp
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i'm going to say that is ethically acceptable and i'm assuming that they would take some you know steps
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wear masks and do the smart stuff and i would say that i would buy their product now i don't expect
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that to happen and here's the problem there are a lot of ways that the public can protest that might
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be meaningful but when the when the choke point is businesses and their physical businesses it doesn't
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take much police to shut down a business it takes a lot of police to shut down let's say a million
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people protesting but if you're just one store owner it's just one policeman who walks in and says you
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know this is a violation i'm going to write down your name and you're going to get a gigantic fine
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and if you don't pay your fine you'll have bad credit yeah if you have bad credit you're out of
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business and the store owner is like ah i don't want to deal with this and the cop says and you better
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get a lawyer and the store okay i'm out what can i just close you know can you can you throw away
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the ticket if i just close and the cop will say yeah that's all i really want so it takes a very
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small enforcement arm to make enough of a threat to close down all the businesses so as a practical
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matter i don't see anything like a mass protest where people just open their businesses against the
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government's wishes but if it does happen i will be happy to shop there i just don't know that it
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can all right it looks like uh some kind of big decision may have been made by the democrats to
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get rid of biden because even cnn turned on them so cnn's got a big article about his the allegations of
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of him uh me tooing a alleged victim uh back in the 90s and apparently a number of uh top democrats
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are being asked to comment on it you know bernie sanders and elizabeth warren and stuff so it turns
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out that it's not embargoed anymore so the democrats it looks like the let's say the uh the protective
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coding that the democrats have you know their media the little protected media situation it looks like
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there's some kind of decision that must have happened now i don't know if they had a meeting
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about it but maybe collectively they've just decided that they are going to talk about this
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and for all practical purposes if biden wasn't already you know hopelessly impossible in terms of a
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candidate this is kind of the final nail in the coffin so there might be something afoot it's already
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it is signaling to us that the people who would need to support a biden candidacy are indeed not
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c so i guess uh trump went after nancy pelosi so you you probably all saw the footage of her
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showing her uh big expensive refrigerators and all the ice cream she's eating while while everybody's
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dying in the streets and of course it was super tone deaf and she wasn't reading the room and stuff
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but more importantly where is she isn't nancy pelosi the sort of person you're supposed to be hearing
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from in an emergency you know i'm glad that we're hearing from the task force and i'm seeing i'm glad
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we're seeing plenty of trump and and fauci and all those people and i think by the way they're doing
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terrific in terms of communicating with the with the public in terms of time spent uh i still think
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they're terrible at communicating the specifics but uh where's nancy pelosi i mean there's it's sort of
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conspicuous and it's missing now let me bring you back bring you back do you remember how worked up i
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was when i would be watching these task forces task force meetings and they would spew uh raw numbers
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of how many ventilators they made and how many gloves and stuff and i i kept screaming that's
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useless unless you tell us how many you need it it means nothing to us to say how many you made
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how many you bought how many delivered it means nothing how many do you need is that most of it is
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okay so you heard me say that a million times so now we find out that we somehow increased production
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enough to make three times as many ventilators as we needed and we hear that there were smart people
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in the administration president trump certainly was among them who said i don't think you need so
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many ventilators right this is the story we're hearing that there were people who would be getting
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you know in the administration the task force they get these requests from the states for you know
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thousands and thousands of ventilators and they would say no i don't i don't think you need all
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those ventilators you know first of all because it's just way too many and secondly maybe we could
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you know move them around to places that need them so you don't all need your own amount now here's
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here's the problem we're hearing now that president trump and others knew it was too many ventilators
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if the public had known that let's say that the the task force had given us you know more transparent
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numbers here's how much they say that they're going to need here's how many we have is it not likely
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that we would have seen it too would the public not have said wait a minute why are you asking for
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all those ventilators that doesn't seem to add up i think we made too many ventilators because we did
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not have a managed situation and when i say managed i like to use my little saying that
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if you're not measuring things you're not managing it because if you if you're not measuring what
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happens when you do this change what happens when you do this change well you're just randomly doing
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things and you don't know if what you're doing is working and so the next time you have to do
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something well you don't know what works so you just randomly do more things so if you're not
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measuring everything you're not doing anything and we were not measuring the supply compared to the
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need of this ventilators and other stuff so now are you surprised in the end are you surprised that
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when we didn't measure it we came up with you know the wrong number by triple or something no that's what
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happens that's an unmanaged process now the the the worst case would have been if it had been in the
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other direction what if we had gotten to the peak and we didn't have even 10 of the ventilators we
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needed i mean could have gone that way right and the public wouldn't have known until it was too late
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so by having us having the public less informed i think i think maybe that was a lost opportunity
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because i think the public probably would have pushed things closer to the the need if you know what i mean
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you know that the the number requested probably would have been a little more realistic if there
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was more visibility on it in general just uh i don't know that that's true by the way i'm just
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going to say that in general if you don't have transparency and you're not measuring stuff
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it should look exactly like this that you made way too much stuff that's that would be one of the
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things you'd predict but in this special case maybe it doesn't matter that they made too much
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because you can't have too much because you can share it with other countries and we have a moral
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obligation to do that if we can because we have better manufacturing abilities so uh
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scott is much more optimistic must have had a conjugal visit from christina
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christina is probably watching this periscope right now so uh let me just say how much i love her
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and she's the most beautiful woman in the entire simulated multi-sphere all dimensions space and time
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um well it looks like uh oh did you all see the video of uh cnn and i think i mentioned this this
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morning but you have to watch it because there's another video in the same uh of the same interview
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in which biden is on there in a triple screen so it's split three ways and it was anderson cooper
00:24:09.120
sanjay gupta dr sanjay gupta and biden and biden is talking and you could watch sanjay gupta in the
00:24:17.240
in the middle it if you haven't if you haven't watched this video it's really really funny i've
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watched it several times because you're watching sanjay who you know if you've if you've been watching
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cnn for a long time as i have you know you have a lot of respect for him as a medical professional
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and a you know stray shooter right so he's he's this smart scientific minded rational guy you know
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totally at the top of his game professionally and you're probably mentally in every other way
00:24:49.640
he's sitting in the middle of this three this three three part screen and biden is talking and you
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could just see him almost almost trying to send mental energy to biden i mean who knows what he's
00:25:02.120
really thinking but the way it looked is that he was almost like wishing biden to not make a mistake
00:25:07.960
and he's kind of biting his lip because it's it's starting to go off the rails and you can see it like
00:25:13.400
now of course i can't know what he was thinking but it's just as funny if you don't know because the way
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it looks is he's terribly uncomfortable being you know watched in public as biden is talking
00:25:30.160
because it's a train wreck and and both he and anderson cooper had to know it was a train wreck
00:25:37.100
and he's trying to he's trying to play it straight but if you ever want to win some money in poker
00:25:43.780
i think you want sanjay gupta on the other side of the table because i'll bet he's a great doctor
00:25:50.280
and he's you know terrific on television so he's great at his jobs i'm guessing you know at least the
00:25:55.960
one i see he's great at but i don't think he can play poker so if that was his poker face you're
00:26:04.180
going to make a lot of money off of sanjay gupta uh which is which is not which is not a criticism
00:26:10.120
whatsoever i like the fact i like the fact that you can you can read his face that's a plus not a
00:26:16.620
negative uh all right debates are going to be gold i don't see debates happening do you
00:26:25.580
do you see debates happening don't see it happening and it's not just because of the coronavirus i think
00:26:34.820
the coronavirus might make it easy to not do it but i feel as though the biden campaign or what's
00:26:43.060
whatever will be left of it will find some reason that it's just unnecessary and they'll say you know
00:26:50.460
we don't need to debate this monster this orange monster everything that needs to be said has been
00:26:57.440
already been said he'll just get up there and he'll tell some lies why should we debate with somebody
00:27:03.820
who's just gonna lie yeah so i think they're gonna have to find some elegant or even not elegant
00:27:11.000
way to not have a debate now the other alternative is that biden gets replaced before that becomes
00:27:18.020
necessary um yeah you can even see this i know this is a stretch but we're in such weird territory
00:27:29.040
that everything seems possible am i right it doesn't seem like anything's not possible anymore
00:27:34.240
so you could imagine that a debate would get scheduled and then a few hours before the debate
00:27:42.880
there'd be news that joe biden came down with a you know i don't know a flu doesn't have to be the
00:27:49.700
big one but he just gets sick but it's all scheduled and everything's set up and so what do they do
00:27:56.580
it's like it's just hours before the debate and joe biden is ill or his campaign says he is
00:28:04.200
what do you do maybe maybe you send your vice president maybe you send kamal harris
00:28:14.800
because hey show goes on and the argument is that the whole point of picking a vice presidential
00:28:22.320
running mate is that that presidential running mate is already you know on day one ready to take
00:28:28.000
over the job of president at any time well perfect case let's let's prove that this candidate can take
00:28:35.480
over the job by taking over the debates now is that likely no no but we're in territory what we're in a
00:28:44.800
this weird zone of reality where anything that does happen is also unlikely pretty much everything
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that happens from now on is just completely unlikely if you were to you know try to predict it in advance
00:29:00.720
so could it happen probably not good all right i'm going to take some questions
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because i know you like to ask your questions so let's start with alex
00:29:17.180
alex do not disappoint me come to me alex have a good question
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alex what have you done your technology has not kept up we're gonna have to go to george
00:29:31.940
george i'm counting on you to have good technology george do you have a question for me
00:29:43.780
sam harris talk about our response to covet 19 shows how we're really unprepared for climate change
00:29:55.700
how would that statement at that point of view what would you do to
00:30:01.580
winner think do that well you know there's there's a chapter in my book loser think in which i
00:30:10.820
i kind of talk about the framework for how to do that and here's the problem
00:30:14.800
if you only had one gigantic problem that would destroy the world
00:30:19.080
then you would of course be as prepared as you could be and you'd put all your money into it and you
00:30:23.860
would you know really take care of it but if you have more than one potential thing that could
00:30:28.440
destroy the whole world and i listed in my book you know published months ago that what happens if a
00:30:35.880
pandemic comes i mean that was actually an explicit example so if you'd spend all your money getting
00:30:41.520
ready for climate change what do you have left for pandemic what happens if an asteroid is coming to
00:30:46.180
the earth what happens if anything happens right there are lots of lots of unknowns big war etc and
00:30:52.920
so so that's the problem is that sometimes the best way to be prepared is to simply be rich and
00:31:01.380
flexible would you say for example i see we lost the caller but i'll keep answering the question
00:31:07.720
would you say that we were not prepared with uh ventilators i would argue that we were exactly the
00:31:16.100
right amount of prepared because we could build them as fast as we needed them times times three
00:31:21.980
apparently so could you say we were unprepared with ventilators when we ended up with three times
00:31:28.920
more than we needed in plenty of time well i would say that is prepared in other words um being rich
00:31:36.820
and capable and flexible is sort of the best way to prepare for a lot of stuff and that's what happened
00:31:43.380
likewise with manufacturing of all the other stuff we were prepared enough that we had a worldwide
00:31:48.980
system of shipping and communication purchasing you know quality control and everything else
00:31:55.600
so we were prepared in that way in a way that you could never be in uh 1918 you know were people
00:32:02.260
prepared for the spanish flu well even if they'd done everything that you could do in 1918 would you be
00:32:08.240
prepared no no you wouldn't so in 1918 it didn't matter how prepared you were
00:32:14.600
you know kind of kind of isn't going to help you because you know how much you can do but these days
00:32:21.460
being prepared might look like being rich and flexible and very capable to make do move talk to
00:32:29.560
communicate organize whatever you need fund you know vote change legislation get rid of get rid of
00:32:38.180
guidelines you know we we fairly quickly um modified our entire form of government almost instantly
00:32:45.600
into a you know task force kind of guideline you know regulation cutting you know uh buck kicking
00:32:53.880
kind of a hybrid that just didn't exist a week before that happened so i would say that i would argue
00:33:01.380
argue that we're not prepared i would say that we're prepared for more things than we've ever been
00:33:06.880
prepared for in the history of humankind because we have more capability for everything
00:33:11.480
um but i don't know how you would weigh that method versus you know the the moonshot of saying well
00:33:19.220
i'm going to guess that we have exactly one big problem i'll just put all my resources there
00:33:23.840
all right let's take another question uh let's see if judith has a good question
00:33:35.580
judith judith judith hello judith do you have a question
00:33:40.220
you're i started reading your blog back in august of 2015 and you totally cured me as the original
00:33:50.700
i was the original never trumper and you honestly and you got through to me in just a couple of posts
00:33:57.760
and i just wish you would devote your talents to curing tds in the country it's such a big problem
00:34:04.020
well you know it seems that maybe the only people who could be cured of tds are people who are already
00:34:11.560
leaning conservative to begin with because the president did go from uh you know 10 of republicans
00:34:18.600
like him to 90 whatever percent and i would argue that that's most amazing performance of persuasion
00:34:26.100
of all time i mean he just turned he turned the entire party into his party i mean you can't be more
00:34:32.220
persuasive than that and in today's world you don't really persuade the other team it's it's not
00:34:37.580
really even about that you might you know pick off a few people just enough to tip the balance in the
00:34:42.940
swing states or something but for the most part you don't cure other people they they will be
00:34:48.280
permanently like that and by the way it's not that different than when obama was in office and there
00:34:53.820
were people who were just as crazy about his secret muslim plan to to um to destroy the united
00:35:01.060
states i think was what i heard the most so it's not unique to trump uh and i don't think it's curable
00:35:08.920
people just like their teams but uh thanks for the question thank you scott all right all right let's
00:35:16.920
take another question oh wait first we'll go here and we'll do that and let's see i believe that
00:35:27.800
uh andrew has a question for me andrew looks very happy andrew do you have a question for me
00:35:39.660
oh now and i missed the last couple but i had a question on what you think of the the who
00:35:48.940
and the what trump is thinking about doing in terms of negotiating he had a very open
00:35:56.540
request on terms of he wants many things to change but didn't say specifically what
00:36:02.860
and what you think of that tactic i like it a lot you know it's every now and then trump is exactly the
00:36:12.540
perfect person for the job because i don't think another president would have done what he just did
00:36:17.720
which is how about we don't give you any more money until you fix it it was pretty decisive
00:36:22.480
and i think exactly the right thing to do now some people have tried to say oh it's different than what
00:36:27.920
bill gates wants and he's smart and so he wants the world health organization to remain attacked and be
00:36:34.420
funded but so does trump i mean trump just wants them to be functional and to make whatever changes
00:36:40.680
would be common sense meaning i mean they have to change leadership that's not optional i don't know
00:36:45.960
what else needs to be changed but i think it's exactly exactly the right move there are very
00:36:52.100
very few times when i would say um something is a hundred percent correct you know even in the timing
00:36:58.800
it's hard to get the timing right because at the very least somebody's going to say
00:37:03.540
you should have done it sooner but i don't even think he should have done it sooner to me it looks
00:37:08.720
like exactly the right decision exactly the right time decisive boom he's he can negotiate he doesn't
00:37:15.860
need to be that specific he can send his team in and say team team goes in and says you know tell us
00:37:22.160
what you're going to do and then they say that's not enough they negotiate yeah i think i think that's
00:37:27.120
i i like where that's heading i don't like where it was but it seems to be heading in a fixable
00:37:31.980
direction do you think having it open like that in terms of i i think i hope that the who can be
00:37:39.860
reformed but i almost you know in a way i wish that we did something different in terms of having less
00:37:46.020
political and having a a system that was almost like a bounty where you say oh if you come up with
00:37:53.580
a malaria drug we'll give you 50 million dollars something that's like less political it's purely
00:37:59.960
uh capitalist market uh driven yeah maybe there's room for both i don't know enough about the world
00:38:06.480
worth health organization to uh to have an opinion about how they should do things but yeah it does
00:38:14.060
seem you know it's probably worth a look from the bottom up all right thank you thank you
00:38:19.220
let's take another call here let's go to i'm looking at your names like i can tell who's going to ask
00:38:31.300
a uh a good question and i think that bill will ask a good question
00:38:45.220
well thank you i just have a quick question uh what are your thoughts on any of the trump kids
00:38:55.180
taking on the presidency in the future any of the trump kids taking on the presidency in the future
00:39:01.200
well what would be more fun than that i mean i can't even think of anything that would be more fun
00:39:06.340
uh first of all i would not be surprised if after president trump's term is over he does something
00:39:13.500
in the tv or radio realm or both so i can imagine that president trump would have some kind of a
00:39:20.980
ongoing media presence or company or association or something so he'd have a leg up you know sort of a
00:39:30.080
friendly media situation uh and then the question is uh which one would which one would run you know
00:39:37.540
would it would it be ivanka would it be don jr uh eric seems to eric seems to be less interested
00:39:45.060
in politics uh that's just from the outside it looks that way um my guess is that neither of them are
00:39:51.480
going to run i i don't think they will because i don't think it looks fun and uh they've seen seen
00:39:59.240
their father get torn apart and and i maybe they've just had enough of it you know you can't
00:40:05.120
read minds i mean it could be that either ivanka or don jr or you know eric wakes up one day and says
00:40:12.140
you know i think i'd be pretty good at this and then all bets are off because they all have such
00:40:17.060
high capability so the thing that the thing that you could never bet against them right i mean i'm not
00:40:25.880
saying that they would definitely win or or definitely wouldn't but you wouldn't bet against
00:40:29.900
them you know against anybody against anybody you know you wouldn't even have to know who's on the
00:40:34.560
other side you'd say okay it's whoever this is to be named later and they're running against ivanka
00:40:41.440
well who are you going to bet on you don't even know who the other person is and you're
00:40:45.920
automatically well i think ivanka might win this so who knows but possible could happen thank you
00:40:53.640
and don jr of course he always he always brings the uh he brings the energy he has you know much of
00:41:00.220
the gift that his father does so see he of course would you know make a huge splash so we'll see
00:41:06.660
yeah maybe baron maybe baron all right thanks for the question thank you
00:41:18.140
monica i think you're monica monica do you have a question monica i can hear you what's your question
00:41:29.540
monica okay so my question is it seems to me that you always say for a given um event there are two
00:41:37.000
different uh points of view or more that you will see the same thing happening have a completely
00:41:42.580
different interpretation so from your point of view is there anything like the truth and how can one
00:41:48.740
resolve uh or resolve coming up with that well good question so there's there probably is something
00:41:58.220
like the truth if you're talking about math or or physics or at least it's you know true enough for
00:42:03.980
our purposes but here's here's the thought experiment think of all the plants and animals
00:42:10.140
and instinct and insects in the world do any of them have a good understanding of reality and i think
00:42:17.100
you'd agree no no they're they're pretty much just going through life and reproducing and that's all
00:42:22.980
they need to do so if you think that evolution is how we got here was there any reason that we would
00:42:29.620
have evolved to understand reality when there's no utility to it because we can see every other
00:42:35.380
plant and species and you know bird and and elephant they don't really understand the reality they don't
00:42:41.560
know they're on a planet that's in space they don't know that they'll die someday they don't know anything
00:42:46.780
and it doesn't make any difference so why would we be the only species that evolved to know something
00:42:54.760
that has no value there's just no value in knowing the real the real base reality so but it makes more
00:43:01.960
sense that we evolve to imagine that we do because we can test it's easy to test that we're irrational
00:43:09.540
creatures who rationalize after the fact and once you realize that that's our normal mode that we
00:43:16.060
make these irrational decisions and then we fill in the the weird reasons after the fact and they're not
00:43:22.260
even they're not even rational most of the time or a lot of the time so once you realize that we're a
00:43:28.080
completely irrational species there's no other species plant or animal that understands the universe
00:43:33.440
and doesn't need to we don't need to because if you know i use the example of you know i go shopping uh
00:43:40.120
back when you could do things like go shopping and i'm in the grocery store and you know there's a
00:43:45.080
muslim to my left and a hindu to my right we're all in different realities you know because one one
00:43:51.980
believes that you know god is watching and judging and you know the afterlife is is the bigger reality
00:43:57.680
the hindus you know thinks maybe reincarnation i'm thinking well maybe it's all a simulation we're not
00:44:03.840
in the same reality and that extends to politics you know they're the people who think that trump is a
00:44:10.620
monster really see it like that's that's what they see and feel all the information that they're
00:44:17.340
receiving is consistent with that and yet sitting right next to them in the same room somebody
00:44:24.520
watching the same stuff is getting a completely different movie and reality so if there is a base
00:44:30.900
truth it would not be available to us because our brains there's no reason to assume our brains could
00:44:37.500
do that they're just not that tool in the same way that you would assume a cotton ball would not be a
00:44:45.300
good can opener it just isn't for that it was never made for that there's no surprise that it doesn't
00:44:51.860
work for that so there might be a base reality it's unavailable to us and so we have to act uh we have
00:45:00.100
to act like we know reality but we're just sort of guessing is that what you wanted
00:45:04.760
well there's still a collective consciousness again or a possibility of well there there's definitely
00:45:12.680
something to the fact that collectively we decide on some truths but even then there's always at least
00:45:19.220
one other camp that did not agree on that truth so um yeah i'm a big candid a big uh proponent of the
00:45:27.640
idea that reality is subjective and that's the good news because if reality is subjective you can
00:45:33.460
sort of craft it the way you want it you can you can create your own reality as long as it's consistent
00:45:39.820
with what you observe you can create any idea any reality you want for example i've created the reality
00:45:46.980
doesn't mean it's true i've created the reality that i always win that's it i just that in my mind
00:45:54.560
i've decided that that's the filter on the world is that in the end i always win oh yeah i don't win
00:46:00.440
every point but i always win the game oh yeah maybe i don't win every game but i'm definitely
00:46:06.600
going to win the match you know so so that's sort of a a fiction if you will that i've invented for
00:46:12.660
myself so i live in that world and then probably confirmation bias and selective memory allows me to
00:46:20.680
live there and i live in a world in which i always seem to win and is that true i don't know all i
00:46:30.180
know is that because i've set that filter every every piece of information that comes in confirms that
00:46:37.520
it's true even if it isn't which is the cool thing so does it hurt me to have this filter that says i
00:46:45.800
always win probably not there's probably no downside to it if it's wrong it's just a harmless maybe it's
00:46:52.360
helpful filter that makes me feel good makes me work harder keeps me optimistic makes me try harder
00:46:58.240
because i figure ah it's just one more you know one more minute and i'm going to win at any moment here
00:47:02.820
and you see how that plays out if if any of you were with me when the election happened in 2016
00:47:09.660
and i made the most ridiculous prediction in 2015 that trump would win it all and then he did
00:47:17.240
and i'm sitting there watching this unfold and you you talk about doubting reality that night and you
00:47:25.100
probably all have this same experience in some form when you're watching the the vote tallies come in
00:47:31.120
and i had created this world and i'm completely aware of the fact it's fiction i've created for
00:47:38.000
myself a fictional world in which i always win and then i did the most ridiculous prediction
00:47:45.420
put everything into it did it in public you know basically risked my entire reputation forever
00:47:52.860
a third of my income i mean i just gambled everything on the stupidest prediction in the world
00:47:58.320
why because i always win because i always win and then i won and so it seemed to reinforce
00:48:07.140
the thing i've the fiction i've created now did i cause it to happen well that would be you know
00:48:14.560
maybe uh interpretation that the simulation is something that you could steer and you're you're
00:48:20.100
a player in it or something like that so um certainly we can create our own reality within within
00:48:28.060
certain bounds you know i can't i can't will myself to fly but i can tell myself i always win and
00:48:34.100
then i live in that reality whether it's true or not anyway thanks for the question
00:48:38.200
that was probably weirder than you were expecting
00:48:44.620
all right let's see if david has a good question
00:48:56.520
hi i was thinking about i remember when you you were posting your blog posts this is back in 2016
00:49:06.080
um and i was fascinated like whoa this is weird like trump could actually win
00:49:12.160
and then following that all the way to now and then learning about persuasion
00:49:17.380
um i feel like people used to find authors and read books like what we're doing now finding people
00:49:25.060
like uh eric weinstein i think is a good example i think you are a great example and i'm wondering if
00:49:31.780
is there sort of a it seems like maybe it's because i listen to you so much but i look at everything in
00:49:36.900
terms of persuasion now like what are they trying to get me to think you know where's the dog that's
00:49:41.240
not barking it gets kind of it gets kind of addicting and i i wonder if um how do you stay
00:49:48.740
sort of fascinated uh with what you're doing without becoming bored because i find the more
00:49:55.220
i've learned from you the more boring my friends have become i don't know that's kind of sad right
00:50:00.780
but it's sort of because when i speak to like say my family now and and i i have started to use
00:50:07.340
like the sort of reframing technique and um i can tell they don't like it but i think but but what
00:50:14.260
i noticed is like two weeks later they'll start to say the same things that i said two weeks prior
00:50:19.160
and it's like it's it's it's like a it's like a a framework virus do you know what i mean and i just
00:50:25.580
wondered how do you stay um i guess interested and and and do you have plans to develop this maybe
00:50:33.560
like to go into cognitive science like this it's a it's an incredible like technology i don't know
00:50:38.280
well you you kid on so many points so let me let me hit a few of these myself number one there's
00:50:45.300
something uh very big and important happening and i know a number of people would probably confirm this
00:50:51.040
so probably probably people would agree with me with me would be you know jordan peterson eric
00:50:56.160
weinstein probably joe rogan um you know mike cernovich and and and here's the thing people
00:51:03.440
privately tell me all the time all the time that they treat me as as sort of a mentor like a the
00:51:11.460
person who who teaches them how to navigate life and it's all the stuff that the school system and
00:51:17.860
your own parents didn't know yet they couldn't teach it to you because they didn't know but you know
00:51:23.340
if you listen to i always mike cernovich is my like universal reference because he he fits so
00:51:29.560
many examples but if you listen to him you're going to get smarter there's no way around it you know
00:51:35.560
and you know you listen to eric weinstein you're just going to get smarter and i could name a bunch
00:51:40.620
of others right um so it feels like and then and then there are people who uh are teaching through
00:51:48.880
the people that bring in the other dave rubens for example joe rogan's in that category
00:51:52.780
so there they are accidental teachers and accidental mentors for a generation that got um that i think
00:52:03.360
feels like they were shorted in life strategy and i don't know if it's because the strategy got more
00:52:09.800
complicated than it used to be maybe it was obvious 200 years ago it's like yeah you're going to grow up
00:52:14.520
and inherit the farm so you don't need too much strategy but now you really need to navigate a
00:52:19.400
complicated situation it's better to have systems than goals it's better to have a talent stack than
00:52:25.200
one narrow thing so you have to you have to take a sort of a statistical more uh rational approach
00:52:32.840
to this complicated environment so the first thing is there's something big happening in which
00:52:37.840
me uh which i and a number of other people are seeming to recognize as teachers who did not intend to
00:52:46.120
be in this position we we just sort of became that way people told us what we were and then we became
00:52:51.520
it i've often said that um the you don't tell your customers what you're selling they tell you i mean
00:53:00.160
you might you might try it first and say oh i'm selling this widget but then the customers say hey
00:53:04.960
no no i really like the service that you have and i like your cafeteria you're more of a restaurant
00:53:10.680
the next thing you know you're a restaurant um when when dilbert first came out it was a generic
00:53:16.420
cartoon but my customer said no it's a workplace cartoon and i'd say no it's not he's hardly ever in
00:53:23.140
the workplace and all my customers would say no it's a workplace cartoon so i turned it into a workplace
00:53:30.960
cartoon were the customers right yeah yeah they were right i mean it was it made the whole difference
00:53:37.320
is just listening to the customer and then responding um there's a second part to this
00:53:42.540
which is uh what was the other part of the question i was sort of wondering where do you
00:53:50.860
where do you think it's heading like we went from books now we're doing oh yeah people
00:53:54.160
yeah where's heading how could this evolve i'd be real quick when you were talking about like
00:53:59.560
leaving the house i was like dude you can't die because you're the most fascinating person i'm
00:54:02.860
listening to you right now so if you go i don't i don't know i'm sure people will start popping up
00:54:07.620
because of the internet but man your knowledge it's been fun that's the thing about it it's just
00:54:12.300
really fun you know well yeah i'm not going to die um because i get to create my own reality and
00:54:17.920
that's not in it so um well you know part of what i talk about is that if you have different
00:54:24.380
experience in different domains they they're not just additive they're they're almost multiplicative
00:54:31.340
is that a word you know if if you know economics and then you you also know psychology it's not
00:54:37.940
twice as good it's more like three times as good and then then you add on top of that oh you're also
00:54:43.340
a public good public speaker it's not you know you know it's not 50 better it's it's four times better
00:54:49.980
so just learning the the math of life is important and i feel like i had a special window into that
00:54:58.020
that i i felt like almost a responsibility to talk about because my window was somewhat accidental
00:55:04.340
because i've just had a such a broad experience that i've seen things that other people haven't
00:55:09.420
seen and i thought well maybe if i tell you what i've seen you can get there faster without having
00:55:15.140
to you know have that job and stuff and i gotta tell you that when i was i don't know maybe six years
00:55:22.880
old i tried to figure out what was going on with this whole reality stuff and and really it started
00:55:29.920
that early and everything that i aimed my life at was to try to figure out reality just like figure out
00:55:37.800
what are the rules are is there some kind of user interface to reality if i knew where the buttons were
00:55:43.120
could i push them if i figured out the strategy would it be like a superpower is everything just random
00:55:49.760
and and and i i i've been a a real searcher you know i went through all the religions what's there
00:55:57.140
i looked into you know esps or anything there and i spent serious time on all these things i looked at
00:56:03.900
ghosts and you know every every kind of you know uh did the aliens build the pyramids now i'm not a not
00:56:10.540
a believer and i don't think any of the ones that i mentioned but you you become insatiably interested in
00:56:18.540
picking up stuff and then you learn stuff like you you hear warren buffett talk and he tells you oh
00:56:24.920
here are the you know three or four rules of investing and you say to yourself whoa that's it
00:56:30.080
i found a little part of the the user interface diversify buy and hold and don't sell it until the
00:56:37.620
reason you bought it changes you know and make sure you have good management just a few little rules and
00:56:42.420
then that that little part of the user interface of life got filled in and now i know that right
00:56:47.820
i have a degree also but it helped that warren buffett said it so clearly so you start putting
00:56:54.960
together these pieces when i took hypnosis suddenly i understood how people worked and there were people
00:57:01.000
were completely confusing to me because i thought they were rational and they they just kept not being
00:57:06.620
rational and i kept trying to make them rational and i thought i was rational and they weren't wouldn't and
00:57:13.120
and i could make them rational with my with my great arguments and it never worked until until i
00:57:19.120
realized that it's not even a thing you know first of all i have no reason to believe i'm rational not
00:57:26.100
all the time and i certainly am not going to convince other people because there's no rationality
00:57:31.700
to work with you know they're just people who rationalize after the fact so now you've got like this
00:57:36.940
little finance piece you're like okay i think i know all the buttons because there actually aren't that
00:57:42.380
many buttons for the whole investing world that are important there are lots of buttons but they're
00:57:47.720
mostly unimportant then you say well what about management what about economics you know do you
00:57:55.480
really follow the money and is the money really determining everything and and is it because of money and
00:58:01.640
and the the time value of money and knowing about some costs so when i took economics i learned
00:58:07.760
economics to understand reality that's why i took it like explicitly in my head now i thought it could
00:58:15.240
you know give me a number of opportunities and that was good but the main reason was i wanted to
00:58:20.980
understand how the economy works and then i learned enough you know i'm no expert on it but enough of
00:58:27.960
that so that that part of the the user interface to reality got filled in so you know i'm at a certain
00:58:35.000
age now where little by little i filled in the real estate on my screen you know just to use that
00:58:40.680
analogy yeah i figured i got the buttons and put them in and you know part of it is building the
00:58:47.220
talent stack part of it is you know seeing seeing the field part of it is just being a certain age and
00:58:53.780
um when it all started coming together there was some period i some at some point i realized
00:59:01.220
that because it's such a little increment every day you don't realize that you get smarter every
00:59:07.320
day right until you look back at you know 30 years ago yourself and you say whoa i picked up i picked up
00:59:14.920
a few tricks yeah i i saw some things and it's never been more obvious than i would say this week
00:59:22.440
because the amount of uh you know bs bs and hoaxes that we've seen around coronavirus and in politics
00:59:29.200
lately and i think you know you've probably watched me just pick out the hoaxes just right out of the
00:59:36.660
pile i mean you've seen me look into the fog and say okay that one boop let's pick this one out that
00:59:42.940
one's probably not real yeah i'm not i'm not right every time yeah but my my pattern recognition
00:59:48.540
engine just has a lot a lot of miles on it so i can just see it i don't i don't have to research it i
00:59:55.640
can just see it so that's not real boop like the the cuban uh embassy with the secret sonic
01:00:02.840
sonic yeah that was awesome now i don't have to i don't have to do research i just have to be me
01:00:10.780
and have lived in the world enough that when i hear the story about the secret sonic weapon
01:00:16.020
i i don't need to ask any more questions now now for those of you who are younger like if you
01:00:23.320
say you're 30 and you're listening to this you're probably saying to yourself hey old man that's not
01:00:28.340
a thing you can't just look at it and know you know because yeah i'm pretty smart i'm 30 i got good
01:00:34.380
grades i'm looking at it i didn't know there's no way old man you know you you don't learn that
01:00:39.580
well you do you really do the the extra vision you get with every few years of your life like every
01:00:48.360
five years you just go up a level and it's like uh it's like x-ray vision you know i've talked about
01:00:55.140
seeing around corners uh mike sort of itch is another one who has x-ray vision uh he can actually
01:01:01.400
see around the corner like he's not just straight lining the future he's he's like going down around
01:01:07.480
the corner and down and all down an alleyway he goes okay down there take a right down the corner
01:01:12.340
behind the dumpster you're going to find a surprise it's yellow and you go down there and there's
01:01:16.540
like this yellow thing you're like how the hell did you do that well he just sees more of the
01:01:20.520
field that's all so uh thank you for your question that was a fun one yeah thanks so much all right
01:01:27.580
take care all right i have uh come to the end of my time i don't want to take much more of your time
01:01:35.680
and uh i will uh see you in the morning all right