Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 919 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About All the Things. And I Take Your Questions.

00:00:00.000 Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. 0.99

00:00:02.560 Bum-bum-bum-bum.

00:00:07.900 Hey, everybody. Come on in here.

00:00:11.120 We got coronavirus stuff to talk about.

00:00:15.140 I know, surprising.

00:00:17.480 Are we ever going to have any different news?

00:00:21.140 Do you notice that all the other news just sort of stopped?

00:00:25.000 Even the news that it shouldn't be stopping?

00:00:26.940 you know things you would you would assume would not stop everything's stopping

00:00:32.700 well let's talk about what's happened all right dj dr fung juice good to see you

00:00:43.360 um all right here's some things that's happening the biggest news is there's this

00:00:51.080 study out of stanford that's not peer-reviewed and it uses a testing kit that is not fda approved

00:01:01.680 so those are the two caveats and it seemed to show that there was more more people had the

00:01:09.100 antibodies in at least santa clara county in california than previously believed maybe two

00:01:15.100 to five percent which would suggest that the amount of infections is way more than we think

00:01:21.060 which which if there are way more infections than we knew about because they were asymptomatic

00:01:29.080 it would indicate that the actual death rate of the people who get it could be in the vicinity of

00:01:37.380 wait for it the regular annual flu oh don't start celebrating because you don't want to be one of

00:01:46.940 those people who says that 10 times 1 is different than 1 times 10 here's what i mean what is worse

00:01:54.900 a virus that kills most of the people that get it uh but doesn't spread very far or a virus that

00:02:06.080 doesn't kill very many people at all just barely a fraction of the people who get it

00:02:11.720 ever die but it's really viral which one's worse

00:02:17.800 and the answer is it depends it depends how viral the one is and it depends how deadly the other one

00:02:27.320 is and how not viral it is but there are two variables so we have determined that the coronavirus

00:02:33.520 maybe maybe is less deadly as a percentage but by all uh reason you would also assume that it's

00:02:45.480 probably more viral than a normal virus so the death count could still be you know six times higher

00:02:52.440 all things being equal uh even if it's only the same amount deadly as the flu but

00:02:59.960 there's more to this story there's always more to the story did i mention that the study is not

00:03:06.620 peer-reviewed well that's one thing to consider did i mention i think i did that the test is not fda

00:03:15.980 approved which doesn't mean it doesn't work just there's one less reason for you to be comfortable

00:03:23.360 with it now as a balaji srinivasan says on twitter there are a couple things you should at least be

00:03:30.600 aware of number one the way they recruited people is they ran facebook ads to bring people in now

00:03:39.660 if you saw a facebook ad to test just to see if you had coronavirus and didn't know it

00:03:46.920 and you had had symptoms at some point let's say the last several months because how many of us think

00:03:55.000 we had the coronavirus quite a few of us right and most of us didn't but a lot of us thought we did

00:04:01.620 but anyway people who might have had the symptoms and thought you know i wonder what that was wouldn't

00:04:08.360 you think they would be a little bit more likely at least statistically more likely to answer the ad

00:04:14.940 because if you were sure you didn't have it well you might you might volunteer for the study because

00:04:21.880 you're just a good person and you want the study to do well and it's good for society but you would

00:04:27.680 be a little bit more likely if you suspected you'd had some symptoms so one thing to look at is that it

00:04:38.040 could be it's not a random sample it could be the people's self-selected for their own suspicion

00:04:44.560 that they had something and maybe they're more likely to you know doesn't mean most of them are

00:04:50.000 right because we know that most of them probably don't have coronavirus even if they think they did

00:04:55.160 but it could bias bias it just enough to get this small difference of a few percentage

00:05:00.780 but here's the other thing uh apparently the known the known inaccuracy of the test so these tests tend to

00:05:13.220 be not perfect so that's a a problem that goes across all of these tests and this particular test

00:05:20.600 there's some indication that the the number of false positives is roughly in the range of

00:05:28.380 exactly how many people they found

00:05:31.180 so one possibility and maybe the peer review would get to the bottom of this one possibility is that

00:05:42.380 the amount of false positives completely explains the the result like the good to all of it

00:05:50.060 i mean that's a possibility now i'm not saying that's for sure what's going on here i'm just saying

00:05:56.080 that balaji pointed out that you have to at least consider that if you know the accuracy of the test

00:06:02.600 has you know this you're sort of in this low few percentage range and that's also the number

00:06:09.800 that's also the range that you found extra people with coronavirus well you got to at least ask the

00:06:15.400 question so i would say that i would not put um i would not put strong weight on that stanford study

00:06:24.520 that would indicate a lot more people have it and that therefore it's less not any more deadly than

00:06:31.260 uh uh seasonal flu which is bad enough of course so that's a maybe that's a wait and see well we keep

00:06:39.960 getting more anecdotal and half study and preliminary study information on remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine

00:06:48.000 in a perfect world there is non-conclusive information that if you're really bad off the

00:06:56.620 remdesivir does a good job and there's also inconclusive information that if you give somebody

00:07:04.520 the hydroxychloroquine really early they never get to the point where they would need anything else

00:07:11.120 so in a perfect world we have both so you can imagine the given the hydroxychloroquine early

00:07:19.800 and it reduces the number of people who ever need to be hospitalized but if they are hospitalized

00:07:25.600 then the remdesivir comes in and um does the rest now of course it's not going to save everybody

00:07:32.360 but you can imagine that with all of our mitigation if you added that to you know testing

00:07:40.640 and you know maybe some people have some antibodies that make a difference we don't know

00:07:46.080 um maybe the um the convalescent blood serum thing works who knows but now we've got a number of tests

00:07:55.580 they all have the same quality have you noticed that every all of our tools have something in common

00:08:03.220 they just sort of work a little bit right that none of them are a you know a kill shot it's like well

00:08:11.640 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

00:08:18.440 little of this maybe a little this kind of testing a little bit of taking temperature and you really

00:08:24.220 have to sort of add it all together and we don't really have all the assets in place even to do

00:08:30.000 all this stuff we're only getting to the point where we can do enough testing getting to the point

00:08:35.980 where we could do a real uh you know that's just getting to the point where we can be confident about

00:08:43.480 these drugs being useful and not deadly but we're we're sort of just a few weeks away from a lot of

00:08:49.840 stuff at least in terms of knowledge um but the timing is going to be beyond interesting uh not in

00:08:59.880 a good way because as you know several states are beginning to rebel so people are starting to

00:09:07.600 protest and i think at least in the case of michigan it's because there was a little bit of a

00:09:12.860 ridiculous overreach about what people could and could not do you know i think people are willing

00:09:19.100 to obey obey the direction of their government if the government has a plausible reason you know 0.73

00:09:28.620 if your government says look this is going to be really hard i know it's going to be a burden it's

00:09:33.360 going to be a sacrifice but here's the reason you're doing it and it's a good reason then the citizens

00:09:39.240 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

00:09:45.980 because the sacrifice tends to be not uniformly distributed so you can imagine the citizens saying 0.98

00:09:51.640 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 0.98

00:09:57.300 other people are not so much but i see the point you know i can see the argument that the government's

00:10:05.060 making that's not what happened that's not what happened i don't think people could see the the

00:10:12.980 argument for why they couldn't walk in the park i don't think people saw the argument for why they

00:10:18.680 couldn't buy i don't garden seeds i'm not even sure that story is real but people thought it was real

00:10:24.340 so i guess that makes it real enough um so because the government did not make an argument that the

00:10:31.160 people could say yeah i see what you're going for that makes sense they lost credibility and now we

00:10:37.800 have protests in the streets how bad will the protests get well i think there's a real productive

00:10:45.380 tension happening right now and the productive tension is this there's no right answer the people

00:10:54.120 have preferences and those preferences often fit their situation so certainly a young person who needs

00:11:00.400 a paycheck well you have a different opinion than a rich old person etc so you know you have this

00:11:07.920 power and preference battle that's playing out but i would argue there's very it's a healthy competition

00:11:16.720 so i believe that the people who are pushing to open up have good intentions and um it probably is good

00:11:25.220 to push the government to keep that pressure on um so i'm in favor of the protests only not only

00:11:32.600 because i think they're legitimate but because it helps the process puts a little pressure on the

00:11:37.680 government and i think that's good now what do you make of the fact that the congress can't figure out

00:11:46.420 how to vote on the rest of the money that's needed to to finish up the paycheck protection program

00:11:53.120 so a whole bunch of companies that are just like the companies that did apply early and got money

00:11:59.140 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

00:12:04.900 can we put up with that these businesses are going to just be decimated because the government

00:12:12.880 decided they wanted to tweak the bill and add some things and make it better and then other people

00:12:18.160 disagree i don't care i don't care what the reason is you know chuck and nancy you got reasons i don't

00:12:24.740 care i don't care all i know is that you could have voted for whatever those checks could be going

00:12:32.420 out and people could be getting helped it's not happening that's what i care about i don't i don't

00:12:38.100 want to i don't want to hear about the excuses the reasons how you're making it perfect and you know

00:12:43.900 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

00:12:49.200 say about that when your government is being uh credible and transparent and honest you can say

00:12:57.840 to yourself i will sacrifice for that because that makes sense but when your government is not meeting

00:13:04.240 the the minimum level of competence and i think you can say that about congress right now the minimum

00:13:10.580 level of competence is for them to vote for the thing that wait wait for it they all agree on

00:13:17.160 it would be one thing to not be able to get something passed when there's actual disagreement

00:13:23.060 but they can't pass a bill that they agree on because they're trying to some of them are trying to put

00:13:30.040 some extra stuff on it but the stuff they agree on they can't get voted in in an emergency

00:13:36.060 in an emergency they can't vote on the things they agree on that's the lowest level of expectation

00:13:46.440 you know beyond showing up you know i suppose you know good attendance would be the basic thing

00:13:52.760 but after attendance or whatever the digital version of that is after that the minimum is that you should

00:14:00.520 be able to vote for the things you all agree on if you can't get that done well anyway the point being

00:14:06.980 there is some point at which a government reduces its credibility to the point where the citizens

00:14:14.100 will not and should not heed its guidelines and i would argue we're getting perilously close to that

00:14:23.400 and i would go further and say that if you were one of the one of the businesses that couldn't get in

00:14:29.860 you know couldn't get your money while other people did and the government is just forcing you to stay

00:14:35.900 closed and is giving you nothing in return i think that from an ethical perspective you have the right

00:14:44.040 to reopen your business now of course that could give you some legal problems etc but i would i would go but

00:14:51.920 i would buy your product i will go in your store so if anybody opens up in uh in violation of the

00:14:59.140 government's requirements you can count on having at least one customer so i any store that wants to

00:15:06.320 violate the um the government's guidelines specifically because they didn't get the ppp

00:15:13.040 i'm going to say that is ethically acceptable and i'm assuming that they would take some you know steps

00:15:20.200 wear masks and do the smart stuff and i would say that i would buy their product now i don't expect

00:15:26.680 that to happen and here's the problem there are a lot of ways that the public can protest that might

00:15:32.380 be meaningful but when the when the choke point is businesses and their physical businesses it doesn't

00:15:40.460 take much police to shut down a business it takes a lot of police to shut down let's say a million

00:15:47.660 people protesting but if you're just one store owner it's just one policeman who walks in and says you

00:15:55.720 know this is a violation i'm going to write down your name and you're going to get a gigantic fine

00:16:01.960 and if you don't pay your fine you'll have bad credit yeah if you have bad credit you're out of

00:16:08.120 business and the store owner is like ah i don't want to deal with this and the cop says and you better

00:16:14.180 get a lawyer and the store okay i'm out what can i just close you know can you can you throw away

00:16:20.260 the ticket if i just close and the cop will say yeah that's all i really want so it takes a very

00:16:26.220 small enforcement arm to make enough of a threat to close down all the businesses so as a practical

00:16:36.260 matter i don't see anything like a mass protest where people just open their businesses against the

00:16:42.020 government's wishes but if it does happen i will be happy to shop there i just don't know that it

00:16:49.900 can all right it looks like uh some kind of big decision may have been made by the democrats to

00:16:59.080 get rid of biden because even cnn turned on them so cnn's got a big article about his the allegations of

00:17:05.920 of him uh me tooing a alleged victim uh back in the 90s and apparently a number of uh top democrats

00:17:17.340 are being asked to comment on it you know bernie sanders and elizabeth warren and stuff so it turns

00:17:23.340 out that it's not embargoed anymore so the democrats it looks like the let's say the uh the protective

00:17:32.120 coding that the democrats have you know their media the little protected media situation it looks like

00:17:39.340 there's some kind of decision that must have happened now i don't know if they had a meeting

00:17:43.460 about it but maybe collectively they've just decided that they are going to talk about this

00:17:48.580 and for all practical purposes if biden wasn't already you know hopelessly impossible in terms of a

00:17:56.140 candidate this is kind of the final nail in the coffin so there might be something afoot it's already

00:18:03.280 it is signaling to us that the people who would need to support a biden candidacy are indeed not

00:18:12.120 all right um

00:18:16.540 c so i guess uh trump went after nancy pelosi so you you probably all saw the footage of her

00:18:26.640 showing her uh big expensive refrigerators and all the ice cream she's eating while while everybody's

00:18:33.780 dying in the streets and of course it was super tone deaf and she wasn't reading the room and stuff

00:18:38.880 but more importantly where is she isn't nancy pelosi the sort of person you're supposed to be hearing

00:18:47.100 from in an emergency you know i'm glad that we're hearing from the task force and i'm seeing i'm glad

00:18:52.360 we're seeing plenty of trump and and fauci and all those people and i think by the way they're doing

00:18:57.460 terrific in terms of communicating with the with the public in terms of time spent uh i still think

00:19:04.960 they're terrible at communicating the specifics but uh where's nancy pelosi i mean there's it's sort of

00:19:15.120 conspicuous and it's missing now let me bring you back bring you back do you remember how worked up i

00:19:24.040 was when i would be watching these task forces task force meetings and they would spew uh raw numbers

00:19:31.420 of how many ventilators they made and how many gloves and stuff and i i kept screaming that's

00:19:37.220 useless unless you tell us how many you need it it means nothing to us to say how many you made

00:19:43.100 how many you bought how many delivered it means nothing how many do you need is that most of it is

00:19:49.280 okay so you heard me say that a million times so now we find out that we somehow increased production

00:19:56.600 enough to make three times as many ventilators as we needed and we hear that there were smart people

00:20:05.480 in the administration president trump certainly was among them who said i don't think you need so

00:20:11.600 many ventilators right this is the story we're hearing that there were people who would be getting

00:20:17.020 you know in the administration the task force they get these requests from the states for you know

00:20:21.960 thousands and thousands of ventilators and they would say no i don't i don't think you need all

00:20:26.860 those ventilators you know first of all because it's just way too many and secondly maybe we could

00:20:33.440 you know move them around to places that need them so you don't all need your own amount now here's

00:20:39.120 here's the problem we're hearing now that president trump and others knew it was too many ventilators

00:20:46.740 if the public had known that let's say that the the task force had given us you know more transparent

00:20:54.160 numbers here's how much they say that they're going to need here's how many we have is it not likely

00:21:01.540 that we would have seen it too would the public not have said wait a minute why are you asking for

00:21:06.960 all those ventilators that doesn't seem to add up i think we made too many ventilators because we did

00:21:14.540 not have a managed situation and when i say managed i like to use my little saying that

00:21:20.240 if you're not measuring things you're not managing it because if you if you're not measuring what

00:21:26.240 happens when you do this change what happens when you do this change well you're just randomly doing

00:21:31.080 things and you don't know if what you're doing is working and so the next time you have to do

00:21:35.540 something well you don't know what works so you just randomly do more things so if you're not

00:21:40.620 measuring everything you're not doing anything and we were not measuring the supply compared to the

00:21:46.460 need of this ventilators and other stuff so now are you surprised in the end are you surprised that

00:21:54.100 when we didn't measure it we came up with you know the wrong number by triple or something no that's what

00:22:03.340 happens that's an unmanaged process now the the the worst case would have been if it had been in the

00:22:10.460 other direction what if we had gotten to the peak and we didn't have even 10 of the ventilators we

00:22:17.380 needed i mean could have gone that way right and the public wouldn't have known until it was too late

00:22:24.760 so by having us having the public less informed i think i think maybe that was a lost opportunity

00:22:32.860 because i think the public probably would have pushed things closer to the the need if you know what i mean

00:22:39.960 you know that the the number requested probably would have been a little more realistic if there

00:22:44.200 was more visibility on it in general just uh i don't know that that's true by the way i'm just

00:22:49.460 going to say that in general if you don't have transparency and you're not measuring stuff

00:22:54.840 it should look exactly like this that you made way too much stuff that's that would be one of the

00:23:02.220 things you'd predict but in this special case maybe it doesn't matter that they made too much

00:23:08.260 because you can't have too much because you can share it with other countries and we have a moral

00:23:12.280 obligation to do that if we can because we have better manufacturing abilities so uh

00:23:18.400 scott is much more optimistic must have had a conjugal visit from christina

00:23:24.140 christina is probably watching this periscope right now so uh let me just say how much i love her

00:23:33.640 and she's the most beautiful woman in the entire simulated multi-sphere all dimensions space and time

00:23:44.560 um well it looks like uh oh did you all see the video of uh cnn and i think i mentioned this this

00:23:57.120 morning but you have to watch it because there's another video in the same uh of the same interview

00:24:02.300 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

00:24:23.760 watched it several times because you're watching sanjay who you know if you've if you've been watching

00:24:29.840 cnn for a long time as i have you know you have a lot of respect for him as a medical professional

00:24:35.820 and a you know stray shooter right so he's he's this smart scientific minded rational guy you know

00:24:44.420 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

00:24:55.480 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

00:25:23.000 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 0.78

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 0.56

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

00:28:53.760 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

00:29:08.480 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

00:29:23.960 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

00:29:39.320 yes what is your question

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 0.72

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 0.99

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 1.00

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

00:35:36.100 hi

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

00:38:38.780 bill bill do you have a good question for me

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

00:41:12.640 all right let's try

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 0.95

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

00:48:51.520 david do you have a good question for me

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

01:01:41.120 you

01:01:52.160 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 18, 2020

Episode 919 Scott Adams： Let's Talk About All the Things. And I Take Your Questions.

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