Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 28, 2020


Episode 941 Scott Adams： I Overslept. Come Sip With Me.


Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

150.27478

Word count

7,055

Sentence count

543

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, host Scott Adams talks about the time he was wrong about a viral video about the coronavirus outbreak, and how he got hounded on social media by people who thought he was an idiot.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. Yeah, it's part of the best
00:00:20.620 part of the day. Well, I can't tell you how hard I've been laughing this morning. If my
00:00:27.720 eyes look like they're, if they're red, it's not from crying, it's from laughing. Rarely
00:00:34.200 do you get such a clean wind as I had this morning. You know, sometimes you wake up and
00:00:41.180 you wake up and you think, ah, what's today going to be like? Because yesterday, I was
00:00:47.660 getting hammered yesterday. And then last night, I was just getting hammered on social media.
00:00:52.600 Now, let me tell you why if you missed the show. But I'll do that after the simultaneous
00:00:58.180 sip. Yeah, it's after the simultaneous sip. And all you need is a cupper, a mugner, a glass,
00:01:04.360 a tanker, a chalice, a steiner, a canteen, a jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it
00:01:07.380 with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the
00:01:12.240 dopamine. At the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the
00:01:17.120 coronavirus. It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens. Now, go.
00:01:26.820 Ah, oh, where was I? Oh, yes. I was talking about how much fun I was having this morning.
00:01:35.960 So, yesterday and last night, just to catch you up, before I get to the good part,
00:01:41.520 I swear to God, I couldn't be any happier this morning. If you wonder what it's like
00:01:48.480 to see me looking so happy that I can't stand it, this is what it looks like.
00:01:55.300 I know it won't last, but man, am I going to enjoy it this morning.
00:02:00.140 So, I'm having sort of a shadow of the feeling that I felt, a weaker version.
00:02:06.200 When Trump won the election, and I went from the dumbest guy in the whole world,
00:02:14.500 that I spent a year and a half being the dumbest guy in the whole world, until he won the election.
00:02:21.360 And then, I was the smartest guy in the world. You know, at least for an hour. It felt like that.
00:02:28.340 So, yesterday, I had criticized this viral video that was going around the internet. Most of you have
00:02:34.860 seen it by now. There was a Dr. Erickson, and some other doctor, mostly Erickson, I think, was talking.
00:02:41.060 And he was an ER doctor. And he had his own statistics and arguments about the coronavirus.
00:02:48.360 And he said, basically, his argument was, hey, look at my numbers. According to my numbers,
00:02:57.980 coronavirus is sort of overblown. Let's get back to work.
00:03:01.960 Now, people sent it to me, and I ignored it, and they sent it to me, and more people sent it to me,
00:03:08.240 and I still ignored it. Because there are lots of stuff on the internet to look at.
00:03:12.280 You know, in the beginning, I didn't think it was important. It was just one of many things that
00:03:17.060 people sent to me. But then people started DMing it. It's like, oh, my God. You know,
00:03:23.100 they're sending it to me directly. I'm getting it through. I got it through LinkedIn. I got it.
00:03:28.100 But everybody's sending me this video. So all right, I'm going to look at it. So I listen to
00:03:34.340 the doctor. I get about five minutes into it. And my head is on fire. Because everything he says
00:03:41.100 sounds to me, not being a doctor, not being an expert, not being an epidemiologist. But it sounded
00:03:49.440 to my cartoonist brain like it was all BS. Like it didn't even sound a little bit credible.
00:03:57.460 Everything he said sounded either under-informed or reckless. I use the word reckless. It sounded
00:04:04.400 like he was comparing the wrong things. It was like he was bad at math. I mean, it was just a hot mess.
00:04:10.900 Yes. So I made the mistake of publicly disagreeing with two experienced doctors who were on the front
00:04:20.840 line of this crisis. How do you think that went for me yesterday? How do you think it went when I
00:04:28.660 disagreed with two doctors who had a viral video who were saying exactly what people wanted to hear?
00:04:34.840 See, that was the problem. The trap, if you will, the trap, somebody says your ego is huge. Whoever
00:04:44.540 said that, please don't leave yet. Whoever just made that comment, your ego is huge. You have to stay.
00:04:50.560 You have to hear the end of the story. You'll be so disappointed if you don't. So all day long,
00:04:56.580 I was hammered for being the idiot cartoonist who would dare to disagree with doctors, professional,
00:05:03.020 real, real, qualified doctors. And all day long, people said to me, and all night, they said,
00:05:08.800 oh, Scott, tell us about your doctor degree. Oh, where did you get your virology experience,
00:05:16.820 Scott? Because you know, you're a cartoonist. These are professional medical doctors. Went to medical
00:05:24.520 school. You're not an idiot like you. Now, to make things worse, because I like to do that to myself
00:05:32.500 sometimes. When I'm in hot water, sometimes I like to add some hot water to the hot water.
00:05:39.460 I don't know why. It's like a character defect. Honestly, it is. I'm not proud of this at all.
00:05:44.680 When I get in a lot of trouble, my first instinct often is, I'm in a lot of trouble. I'm really exposed
00:05:52.280 here. How could I make this a lot worse? I swear to God, I think like that. And it's part of it is
00:05:59.120 because I want to see if I can get out of the trap. I want to see if the trap is so bad that it looks
00:06:05.160 like I can't get out. And then just to see if I can, you know, it's sort of like going to one of
00:06:09.780 those escape rooms. You know, you go to an escape room where they, they, you have to figure out how to
00:06:16.000 escape. Well, you do it just because it's hard. That's the whole point. That's why you climb a mountain,
00:06:22.080 because it's hard. So after being beat up roundly for making medical opinions, I doubled down and I
00:06:29.760 said, you know, the last time we had this conversation, we meaning the internet, my critics
00:06:36.180 and me, it was over the question of face masks. Does anybody remember that? I bring it up too often
00:06:43.160 because it's too much fun. When it was the cartoonist against the entire medical community,
00:06:48.540 the Surgeon General, World Health Organization, Fauci saying the masks were not effective.
00:06:55.580 And I like an idiot said, no, allow me to overrule the medical opinion of every professional on the
00:07:02.820 planet with my cartooning degree. I don't have a degree, but you know what I mean, my cartooning
00:07:08.280 experience. But who was right? Well, I was, I was right. And every medical professional in the world
00:07:15.980 who probably wasn't wrong, I think they were lying or they were trying to protect the supply.
00:07:22.540 So based on the fact that I was right once, just, just realize how dumb this is. Okay. This is the
00:07:30.200 beauty of how, how, how fun this is. If you don't realize how stupid I was, you're not going to fully
00:07:36.240 appreciate how it turned out. All right. So like an idiot, I overrule the highest doctors in the world
00:07:43.600 publicly, um, you know, very vigorously, but I got lucky. I got lucky on that one, right? Because it
00:07:52.440 turns out that I'm pretty good at spotting bullshit. So you don't need a medical degree
00:07:58.880 to spot obvious bullshit. That's actually a separate skill. So when people were saying, Scott,
00:08:06.540 Scott, Scott, you don't have a medical degree. They were actually, they were reading the wrong book
00:08:11.780 because the book they should be reading is not the medical book. It's the spotting bullshit book.
00:08:19.300 Because if you're a bullshit spotter and you saw the doctor say the face masks don't work.
00:08:26.300 Well, the bullshit detector was on, you know, 10 bullshit detector. So then these two doctors come
00:08:34.880 along. I watched this video for five fricking minutes. I told people I bailed down after five
00:08:41.120 minutes because it was lacking so much credibility that I couldn't stand it anymore. And then what
00:08:46.860 did people say? Scott, man, how can you have a confident public, you idiot in public? You're saying
00:08:56.980 this. How can you have a confident public opinion about medical professionals? You're not a doctor
00:09:03.660 and worse, you fricking idiot. You didn't even watch the video. Are you kidding me? You only watched
00:09:10.760 five minutes of five minutes of this long video. And that was enough to conclude that you're the
00:09:15.980 expert, Scott, and these medical experts are not. Good try, Scott. So I woke up this morning. You also
00:09:26.700 heard that the video got taken down by YouTube. And a lot of people said censorship, censorship.
00:09:33.200 And I said, well, you should at least consider the possibility that YouTube also thinks it's not
00:09:40.980 good medical advice. And people said, doesn't matter. It's still censorship. We should be able
00:09:47.140 to see it even if it's not true. It's a, which is a fair argument, by the way, I'm not arguing that
00:09:52.620 point. As long as you could also see the counter argument, said people. And I thought to myself,
00:09:58.320 that's a reasonable argument. But it would also be reasonable to say that you can't scream fire
00:10:06.240 in a crowded theater. Would you agree? We've sort of accepted that free speech does exist. But you
00:10:15.960 still can't yell fire in a crowded theater because it would just be a health problem. People would kill 0.98
00:10:21.180 each other trying to get out. Similarly, analogies are always dangerous, right? But you could make an
00:10:28.100 argument that giving objectively bad medical advice during an emergency in which it's very much life
00:10:37.140 and death, that if people got the wrong medical advice, that might be like yelling fire in a crowded
00:10:44.220 theater. You could make the argument, right? So I'm not going to come down on either side of that.
00:10:49.780 I'm just going to say the argument exists, and that it happened last night.
00:10:54.480 So I wake up this morning to a statement from the ACEPAAEM. And it goes like this.
00:11:04.500 The American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine,
00:11:10.700 they sound pretty medical, don't they? They sound very medical.
00:11:14.960 jointly and emphatically condemned the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson
00:11:21.980 and Dr. Arden Masihi, the two doctors on that viral video.
00:11:27.560 These reckless, what? They used the word reckless.
00:11:31.660 Who else used the word reckless?
00:11:34.600 Oh yeah, it was me.
00:11:36.640 These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current
00:11:45.760 science and epidemiological regarding COVID-19. Fill in medical word back in that sentence.
00:11:56.000 As owners of local urgent care clinics, that would be the doctors who are on the video,
00:12:02.300 it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer-reviewed data to advance their
00:12:09.380 personal financial interests without regard for the public's health.
00:12:14.780 What? I can't even believe they said this.
00:12:18.540 Now you've seen condemnations before from professional organizations, right?
00:12:24.120 We've seen that lots of times. Some organization will say,
00:12:27.700 oh, this person does not speak for us. We condemn them.
00:12:30.480 I've never seen one condemn this hard.
00:12:33.140 This is sort of the hardest condemning I've ever seen.
00:12:37.160 It says, COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous.
00:12:41.360 Members of the ACEP and AAM are firsthand witnesses to the human toll, blah, blah, blah.
00:12:46.560 And we strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Masi as a basis for policy and decision-making.
00:13:02.200 May I simply sit here and bask in my victory?
00:13:06.940 Have you ever seen anybody win this hard?
00:13:14.900 Now, I hope you're enjoying this as much as I do.
00:13:18.580 Now, for those of you who are sort of new to this, new to the show, if you will,
00:13:24.280 one of my most frequent themes, I write about it in my books, is managing your ego.
00:13:30.300 What you're watching is me not managing my ego at all.
00:13:36.120 Like, right now, I'm doing whatever is the opposite of managing my ego.
00:13:39.740 I'm just letting it run.
00:13:41.780 Like, I just let it outside.
00:13:44.640 My ego is on social isolation.
00:13:48.160 I just decided to open all the doors, and it's just out now.
00:13:51.500 But my lesson is this.
00:13:54.140 You can let your ego out to play on these special cases, because really, how often do you get to be the biggest jerk in the world for a day and a half and then win this hard?
00:14:08.580 I mean, really.
00:14:09.480 This is a very special situation.
00:14:11.620 So I'm going to enjoy it a little bit, and then I'm going to try as best I can to remind myself of how often I'm wrong about other stuff.
00:14:21.760 So I'm going to be, today I'll be struggling to try to rein it in and get back to maybe some kind of a normal mental state.
00:14:36.020 But come on, you have to agree that me calling out these two doctors as being medically unfit in public continuously for a day and a half
00:14:47.820 while the entire frickin' world disagreed with me was kind of gutsy.
00:14:53.580 Are you going to give me that?
00:14:55.120 It was kind of gutsy, maybe stupid.
00:14:59.260 If I'm being honest, if I'm being honest, I can't really tell the difference between gutsy or stupid.
00:15:05.840 The only thing I know for sure is that it worked out my way.
00:15:08.400 So, as long as it worked out my way, I'm happy.
00:15:13.660 All right.
00:15:15.280 Oh my God, I just won't be able to stop laughing about that all day long.
00:15:20.520 I swear, I thought I was going to wake up today to another day of yesterday,
00:15:25.740 where everybody in the world would be telling me I'm an idiot because I'm trying to overrule these professionals.
00:15:32.420 This could not be more delicious.
00:15:34.500 Sorry, I'll change the topic eventually.
00:15:36.120 Here's another one.
00:15:41.260 I don't know if you can actually stroke out or have some kind of medical condition that's caused by winning too much.
00:15:50.120 Remember the president warned me, he warned all of us really, that we might get tired of winning,
00:15:56.560 but he didn't say that it might be medically dangerous.
00:15:59.660 This next topic is going to start going into the realm of medically dangerous.
00:16:08.480 You know the other thing I've been saying in public that I think everyone disagreed with me on?
00:16:14.960 Probably you.
00:16:15.800 I'll bet every one of you disagreed with me on the following point,
00:16:19.120 which is that Sweden doesn't tell you anything.
00:16:22.300 How many of you thought, well, look at Sweden?
00:16:27.740 Sweden's not doing the lockdown.
00:16:30.220 It's not so bad.
00:16:32.640 Everything's fine, right?
00:16:33.840 So we should be more like Sweden. 0.98
00:16:35.920 Who is the one person in the world who said, no, don't look at Sweden?
00:16:39.300 You think you can tell something, but it's a trick because there's just too much that's different there.
00:16:46.420 Well, so today's CNN has a story that basically the summary is that the Sweden experiment didn't work.
00:16:54.200 That's it.
00:16:54.940 So that's the news today.
00:16:56.780 So everybody who, everybody who was on the side of, look at Sweden, let's do what they do.
00:17:02.360 Read CNN today.
00:17:03.400 There's an article on there.
00:17:05.220 It goes into detail, compares them to the other like countries in the region, not the United States, but Norway and Finland, etc.
00:17:14.860 And it shows that they have a far higher death rate.
00:17:19.200 And their death rate is so high that there are professionals, doctors and stuff within Sweden
00:17:24.760 who are begging the country to do what the other countries are doing because they're in so much trouble.
00:17:29.980 Now, they haven't overloaded any hospitals, and it's still only like 22 out of 1,000 or something like that,
00:17:36.580 whatever the number is, 100,000.
00:17:38.840 So it's not like they're crushed, but according to the news, the news says Sweden didn't work
00:17:46.740 and it's heading in the wrong direction.
00:17:49.980 Now, you can still say the verdict is out, and I'll agree with you. 0.89
00:17:55.200 You can still say the verdict is out,
00:17:57.220 but you can no longer say Sweden works.
00:18:02.920 That's off the table, if you're being honest about it.
00:18:05.860 What you can say is, ooh, Sweden's sort of in dangerous territory.
00:18:13.500 It might still be better than the alternative,
00:18:16.820 but it's not looking good in Sweden, and it's looking a little dangerous over there.
00:18:20.500 You can say that.
00:18:21.660 That would be fair.
00:18:22.400 But you can no longer say, look at Sweden, it's working in Sweden.
00:18:27.120 That's off the table.
00:18:28.240 If you say that, you're no longer consistent with the data.
00:18:32.620 But you certainly could say it might be better than the alternatives.
00:18:35.380 So if you said to me, yeah, you know, all the choices are bad.
00:18:41.500 If we keep the economy closed, it's terrible.
00:18:44.540 If lots of people die, it's terrible.
00:18:47.220 Sweden is not ideal, but they haven't, you know, they haven't gone out of business either.
00:18:52.960 So you could keep your argument that we should take the Sweden model, 0.77
00:18:57.240 but you cannot say it's going well.
00:18:59.760 So that's off the table.
00:19:06.700 There's a story I was going to tell you that I decided against.
00:19:12.300 Rob Ryder, you know, I'll know Rob Ryder, big critic, Hollywood guy, critic of the president.
00:19:18.680 So he writes, he tweets this, and I only point it out because I would love to know,
00:19:27.200 if somebody says Scott is being paid, by whom?
00:19:31.760 Who is paying Scott?
00:19:34.600 You must be new.
00:19:37.300 So whoever thinks that somebody could buy me, you're very new.
00:19:43.100 But you're also gone.
00:19:45.780 Goodbye.
00:19:48.680 For the people who are new, you get immediately blocked for stating in public what my private thoughts are.
00:19:59.220 So if you're speculating about my private motivations or what I'm really thinking,
00:20:06.540 I block you for being a bad mind reader.
00:20:08.420 Because one of the things I learned, back when I was younger and more naive about human nature,
00:20:17.900 somebody would misinterpret what I said, and then I would make the mistake of saying,
00:20:24.940 no, no, no, you think you're disagreeing with me, but you're actually misinterpreting what I said.
00:20:30.240 So you don't realize it, but you're actually disagreeing with your own misinterpretation.
00:20:33.420 So let me correct this for you.
00:20:36.400 Let me tell you what I really did say, and then we can have a conversation about my actual opinion.
00:20:41.840 And I used to think, well, that will work.
00:20:43.980 Why wouldn't that work?
00:20:45.560 If somebody's mistaken, I correct them, and then we talk about the actual correct opinion.
00:20:51.740 That has never worked in my entire life.
00:20:54.760 And finally, I just said, why does this never work?
00:20:59.200 What's going on here?
00:21:00.980 Why is it that when somebody misunderstands what you're saying, and you correct them, it doesn't make any difference?
00:21:07.780 They still argue some other thing.
00:21:10.180 They'll just replace their old misunderstanding with a new one, and then argue the new wrong thing.
00:21:16.560 And then they can move to the new wrong thing and the new wrong thing.
00:21:19.180 But the one thing that never happens in all of the public and private debating that I've had over my entire life,
00:21:26.400 the one thing that's never happened is that people say, oh, that's what you meant?
00:21:31.980 Okay, let's have a conversation based on what you actually meant.
00:21:36.080 Not once in my whole life.
00:21:39.380 And there's a reason for it.
00:21:41.040 Now, you say to yourself, well, that can't be true.
00:21:43.680 It can't be true that not once that's happened.
00:21:46.200 Maybe, you know, maybe I have some false memory and once it did happen.
00:21:52.640 But generally speaking, the reason that people misunderstand what you're saying and then argue the misunderstanding is not because they didn't understand it.
00:22:04.080 That's the part that I missed for decades.
00:22:06.640 For decades, I thought, why are they acting so irrational?
00:22:09.620 And the reason is, it's cognitive dissonance.
00:22:12.440 So cognitive dissonance is what happens when somebody hears an argument that ruins their worldview.
00:22:20.600 So let's say somebody believed, let's say somebody believed, I don't know, that, I'm trying to think of something that we could all relate to.
00:22:31.680 It doesn't matter.
00:22:32.340 Let's say somebody believed that the moon was made of cheese.
00:22:36.340 And they believed that their whole life, and then you do a SpaceX, or you do a rocky ship goes up there, takes a sample back, shows it to the person and says, see, it's not cheese.
00:22:48.400 It's just this dirt and dust and rocks and stuff.
00:22:51.060 Now, if people were rational, what would the person who thought the moon was made of cheese do?
00:22:59.780 Well, they'd say, oh, wow, I've been wrong about this cheese thing for a long time.
00:23:04.760 But there it is.
00:23:05.760 There's the proof.
00:23:06.800 And you actually showed the video.
00:23:08.880 I know that you shot the rocket.
00:23:10.500 I watched the launch.
00:23:12.360 That's what you'd expect, right?
00:23:14.180 But that doesn't happen.
00:23:15.320 It never happens.
00:23:15.960 The person will say, well, you faked the moon shot.
00:23:18.620 They'll say, yeah, but that's not actually dirt from the moon.
00:23:23.580 That's fake dirt that you substitute.
00:23:25.780 So you can't get somebody who's in cognitive dissonance to find your point because missing the point is the only thing that mattered to them.
00:23:34.680 They have to miss the point in order to maintain their worldview.
00:23:39.920 So people will just go all over the place to avoid losing their worldview.
00:23:44.400 Anyway, I don't even know why I was talking about that.
00:23:49.820 It just sort of popped up.
00:23:50.860 I want to tell you the story that ruined me.
00:23:57.520 I think I'll tell you the story after all.
00:24:03.200 So a reasonable question that one might ask is, how did I get so cocky?
00:24:10.400 And people have been asking me that a lot lately, and it has a lot to do with me being right a lot.
00:24:15.680 So, of course, I'm cockier when I'm more right.
00:24:19.600 And when I'm more wrong about things, I tend to tone it down as one should.
00:24:24.720 But there was something that happened to me in eighth grade that is part of my story.
00:24:31.060 Remember I told you that it's good to have a story that is a story of you, so that there's sort of a personal story that is your brand.
00:24:41.200 It's sort of internal.
00:24:42.340 You don't have to share it with anybody.
00:24:44.040 But it's basically the story that describes you.
00:24:47.820 And my story, as I've told you, is that I always win.
00:24:51.780 Now, it's not true, obviously.
00:24:54.080 It's not true that I always win.
00:24:56.280 I'm sure I lose probably as much as everybody else.
00:24:59.000 You know, if you actually did a scientific study of it.
00:25:03.360 But my story is that I can come from behind.
00:25:08.700 And my story is that I can win against great odds.
00:25:12.500 Now, I have lots of anecdotal stories that that's happened.
00:25:17.220 Probably a dozen different situations in which I beat the odds in ways that just seem weird.
00:25:23.900 It just doesn't even seem possible.
00:25:25.160 I mean, the fact that I'm even here talking to you is because I beat the odds in so many ways.
00:25:31.320 It's hard to believe.
00:25:33.280 But I think it all started in eighth grade.
00:25:35.160 And here's the story.
00:25:36.880 My eighth grade teacher was teaching the class how to properly answer questions on an upcoming standardized state test.
00:25:45.800 I think it was the regents.
00:25:47.680 And he said, we'll go over some example questions.
00:25:51.940 And that'll teach you, you know, basically the style of how to answer the questions, you know.
00:25:58.180 And they were multiple choice.
00:25:59.820 And the instructor says, the teacher says, all right, now here's a question.
00:26:05.240 And the answer, obviously, is B.
00:26:08.040 So you would put B in this little box.
00:26:10.680 And I raised my hand.
00:26:11.500 I said, no, I think the answer is actually A.
00:26:15.100 And my biology teacher was like, you know, you could tell he was a little put out.
00:26:20.600 He was like, no, the answer is B.
00:26:25.080 And then he starts to go on to the next thing.
00:26:27.320 And I was like, yeah, I hear what you're saying.
00:26:31.380 But I'm pretty sure the answer is A.
00:26:33.680 Now, keep in mind what's going on here.
00:26:35.560 I was in eighth grade, and he was a biology teacher.
00:26:40.900 And it was a biology question on a standardized test.
00:26:45.440 One assumes that he also had the answer sheet, right?
00:26:49.380 So he's a biology teacher with the answer sheet.
00:26:53.600 And I'm disagreeing with him in the class and telling him he got the wrong answer on a multiple choice test,
00:26:59.600 of which this question was designed to be the easy and obvious one because it's used as an example.
00:27:05.560 To teach the class how to answer the question.
00:27:09.640 And so he said, no, no, trust me.
00:27:13.380 I'm the biology teacher.
00:27:15.860 You're the student.
00:27:17.720 It's B.
00:27:20.380 And this will tell you more about me than anything that you ever,
00:27:26.980 anything you would ever need to know about me is in this next part of the story.
00:27:31.040 And then I said, yeah, I don't think so.
00:27:36.520 Nope.
00:27:37.420 I'm not buying it.
00:27:38.840 I'm not buying that you're right because you're the biology teacher and I'm the student.
00:27:45.460 Because I'm looking at this question and I'm telling you it's A.
00:27:49.140 A few days go by.
00:27:52.400 And by the way, I asked him if he had the answer sheet.
00:27:55.240 And he said, no, I don't have the answer sheet.
00:27:58.640 But let me remind you, I'm a biology teacher with a biology education.
00:28:05.700 This is the course I teach.
00:28:08.140 You would be a student who has not learned this yet.
00:28:12.260 I say it's B.
00:28:14.140 That's the end of the story.
00:28:15.380 A few days later, the teacher comes to me in class.
00:28:20.440 He goes, I was kind of curious.
00:28:24.460 And so I hunted down the actual answer to that question.
00:28:29.600 And the answer was A, you were right.
00:28:36.260 Now, I think that ruined me for the rest of my life.
00:28:38.820 Because do you know how fun it was to be an eighth grader, have a public discussion with your teacher about the right answer to a biology question,
00:28:51.040 and have him have to admit, and he said it in front of the rest of the class,
00:28:55.860 and he had to admit that our public disagreement went my way.
00:29:02.340 And by the way, the only reason that I knew I had the right answer is because there was something about the way the question was worded,
00:29:09.780 and that I, as a good multiple choice question answerer, just sort of deduced it because of the structure of the question.
00:29:16.320 I didn't even know the content.
00:29:19.380 I didn't even know the subject matter.
00:29:23.280 I just thought the question was worded differently.
00:29:26.720 So anyway, I think that ruined me because it sort of reinforced that thing that I could disagree with authority like an idiot and still come out okay.
00:29:40.660 And you just watched me do it again.
00:29:42.900 Disagreeing with authority is really stupid.
00:29:44.780 If you ever find yourself in my situation where you want to disagree with the greatest experts in the world, don't do it.
00:29:53.180 Don't do it.
00:29:54.080 It's not going to go your way very often.
00:29:56.220 You're not going to get lucky.
00:29:57.740 I mean, I feel like there might be some luck involved here because even I can't believe that I beat the odds so often.
00:30:06.600 But I do have a history of it.
00:30:08.640 Those of you who know my story with my voice problem,
00:30:11.640 for three and a half years, I couldn't speak intelligently, intelligibly,
00:30:17.940 because I had this weird voice problem where my vocal cords would constrict.
00:30:24.840 And three and a half years of asking doctors how to solve it didn't work.
00:30:29.600 I ended up solving it myself by finding a doctor somewhere in the world who had a solution,
00:30:34.560 but I couldn't find him through my doctors.
00:30:37.020 I found him through my own work.
00:30:39.560 And now I'm cured.
00:30:41.680 So there are tens of thousands of people all over this country right now.
00:30:46.760 As we speak, there are tens of thousands of people who literally can't speak.
00:30:53.620 When they try to talk, it's like nothing comes out.
00:30:58.060 And of those tens of thousands of people, the reason that they can't get a solution
00:31:01.520 is because their doctor told them there wasn't one.
00:31:05.980 There is one.
00:31:07.760 I know it.
00:31:09.100 I had the surgery.
00:31:10.640 I'm talking to you right now.
00:31:12.140 Could you hear me right now if there were not a surgery that cured that very problem?
00:31:18.020 No.
00:31:19.060 So all over the doctors, let's say each of these people has at least one doctor.
00:31:24.260 There are probably 40,000 people,
00:31:26.940 which means there are probably 40,000 doctors who got the wrong answer on this question.
00:31:33.660 40,000 of them who their patient came in and the doctor said,
00:31:37.560 I don't know what that is.
00:31:38.920 Never seen this before.
00:31:39.960 Or they said, I do know what this is.
00:31:43.080 It's called spasmodic dysphonia.
00:31:46.300 And there's nothing you can do about it except Botox treatments that don't work that well.
00:31:50.980 So how often are doctors wrong?
00:31:54.500 In my experience, quite a bit.
00:31:59.940 Could I sing?
00:32:01.020 Which is actually a good question.
00:32:02.800 No.
00:32:03.500 But I couldn't sing before, so I don't know how different that would be.
00:32:06.380 My vocal range definitely is constricted after the surgery,
00:32:14.020 meaning that I can't do an artificial high pitch if I wanted to.
00:32:19.560 I can't go up very high.
00:32:22.460 But I can go down pretty low, as low as I could before.
00:32:26.140 But it took a little off the top range.
00:32:31.900 Somebody says, they're in the same position, got a condition the doctors can't solve.
00:32:36.160 Yeah.
00:32:37.180 Try Google.
00:32:38.940 I found a patient with the same condition on Google,
00:32:42.360 which caused me to be able to track down the doctor.
00:32:45.380 Why did Trump get mad at Kemp?
00:32:53.500 Did he get mad more so than he normally does?
00:32:57.560 I don't know.
00:32:58.800 Oh, here's a little insight on South Korea.
00:33:02.020 So let's talk about Kim Jong-un.
00:33:03.660 So the president yesterday let it slip, basically,
00:33:10.100 that he knows what the situation is in North Korea.
00:33:13.420 Well, he said that directly.
00:33:14.820 That wasn't a slip.
00:33:15.640 He said he knows the situation.
00:33:17.540 Now, that doesn't mean he's right,
00:33:19.260 but he said it with confidence that he's the president of the United States.
00:33:22.640 I think he knows the situation, but he can't be 100% sure.
00:33:26.780 And he said that he hopes that Kim gets better.
00:33:32.680 Now, would you say he hopes that Kim gets better if he thought Kim were dead?
00:33:40.040 No.
00:33:40.780 He would simply not say that sentence at all.
00:33:43.720 He would just say something like, well, I hope North Korea does well.
00:33:47.480 Or I hope things work out.
00:33:49.920 Or, you know, I'm thinking good things for the family.
00:33:53.160 He would say something generic.
00:33:55.220 He wouldn't say something about him getting better
00:33:59.480 unless he knew he was still alive.
00:34:03.700 Now, why is it that South Korea is insisting,
00:34:07.400 unique among the intelligence services and governments,
00:34:10.720 it seems that South Korea is the most contrarian.
00:34:15.240 They seem to say, we see no evidence that there's anything wrong.
00:34:20.220 How does that make sense?
00:34:21.400 Isn't South Korea the most likely to know what's going on?
00:34:26.200 Right?
00:34:27.200 There's no doubt about it.
00:34:28.660 South Korea, well, maybe China,
00:34:30.620 but South Korea is probably the most in the know about what's happening there.
00:34:35.400 And they say,
00:34:36.580 we don't see anything,
00:34:38.640 nothing to see here.
00:34:40.300 Why could that be?
00:34:41.560 Why would they say there's nothing to see
00:34:43.260 and all the other ones say there is?
00:34:44.560 Because it should be obvious to you.
00:34:47.820 It should be obvious
00:34:49.200 why South Korea's answers are contrarian.
00:34:53.540 And here's the answer.
00:34:55.160 South Korea has to live with North Korea. 0.93
00:34:58.500 We get to say anything we want
00:35:00.480 because we're safely on the other side of the world.
00:35:03.340 You know, Kim Jong-un isn't going to come after me.
00:35:06.080 And the president is also being very, very diplomatic.
00:35:11.080 He doesn't get credit.
00:35:12.140 He doesn't get enough credit, I don't think,
00:35:14.900 for being as good a diplomat as he is
00:35:17.340 when he wants to be.
00:35:19.460 It's when he doesn't want to be
00:35:21.060 that people get, you know, concerned.
00:35:23.060 But when he wants to be a good diplomat,
00:35:25.900 he's maybe the best I've ever seen.
00:35:28.140 And I would say that North Korea is the best example of that 1.00
00:35:31.160 because I think President Trump did things diplomatically there
00:35:34.720 that just probably weren't even possible for someone else.
00:35:37.860 I think he just has a skill
00:35:39.900 that allows him to do some situations better than other people.
00:35:43.960 And that was one.
00:35:44.920 You could argue that there are other things he's not as good at,
00:35:47.420 but this one he's better at.
00:35:49.300 So here's why South Korea would play it differently.
00:35:54.740 What would happen if South Korea
00:35:56.740 broke the news that North Korea had a change of leadership?
00:36:01.200 How would North Korea react to that after the fact?
00:36:06.220 Not good.
00:36:07.860 North Korea is not going to be happy
00:36:10.540 if South Korea breaks news about North Korea.
00:36:14.400 You see that, right?
00:36:16.060 If South Korea says,
00:36:17.540 yeah, we know what's going on up there
00:36:19.620 and it looks like he's dead or he's in a coma,
00:36:24.380 oh my God, North Korea is going to say,
00:36:26.740 what the hell are you guys doing?
00:36:28.240 We're keeping this quiet
00:36:30.100 because we want to keep this quiet.
00:36:33.240 You South Koreans are the people
00:36:34.640 we want to someday unify with.
00:36:36.400 Why are you doing this?
00:36:38.020 Why are you telling our secrets
00:36:40.260 when you know we don't want you to do that?
00:36:43.300 You know we don't want you to do that.
00:36:45.320 We're keeping a secret.
00:36:47.040 That's not an accident.
00:36:48.720 We're intentionally keeping a secret, South Korea.
00:36:52.000 We're supposed to be,
00:36:53.120 you're the guys we're supposed to be able to work with.
00:36:55.940 You're the guys we're trying to make peace with.
00:36:57.700 Why are you doing this?
00:36:59.920 It would be the most impolite
00:37:04.120 and disrespectful thing 1.00
00:37:06.700 that South Korea could ever do.
00:37:10.500 So ask yourself now,
00:37:12.300 if you're the head of South Korea
00:37:13.820 and breaking this news,
00:37:16.140 even if you do know the news,
00:37:17.800 would be so inappropriate,
00:37:20.500 diplomatically, politically,
00:37:22.840 even personally.
00:37:24.480 Even personally.
00:37:25.300 Because, you know,
00:37:26.140 he's going to have to deal with the family
00:37:27.520 or whatever's left
00:37:28.680 or maybe Kim himself.
00:37:30.460 So they're going to be dealing with the family
00:37:32.020 or some member of the family, probably.
00:37:34.360 You want to be as good as you can be
00:37:36.840 to set the stage
00:37:39.060 because they're going to have a rough transition,
00:37:41.360 probably, in North Korea.
00:37:42.640 If the news is right,
00:37:44.140 they're going to have a rough transition.
00:37:45.980 It's risky.
00:37:46.780 South Korea doesn't want to be part of that.
00:37:50.140 The last thing that South Korea wants, 0.85
00:37:52.620 the last thing South Korea wants
00:37:54.440 is to be brought into some kind of a fight
00:37:58.040 that they don't need to be part of.
00:37:59.800 So they're wisely just staying out of it.
00:38:03.040 Now, there are two situations
00:38:04.420 in which South Korea would say,
00:38:06.920 we don't see anything happening.
00:38:09.200 One is if there's nothing happening.
00:38:12.420 And two, if there's something happening.
00:38:14.380 You should expect exactly the same response
00:38:16.940 from South Korea
00:38:17.820 just so they can stay out of the drama.
00:38:21.700 That would be the right play.
00:38:24.680 TMZ verified sources.
00:38:28.940 Somebody says,
00:38:29.980 okay, Scott, is Kim alive or dead?
00:38:32.760 Well, if the president can be taken
00:38:35.660 as someone who knows the answer to that,
00:38:39.580 not 100% sure.
00:38:42.260 And if he knows the answer,
00:38:45.020 then the answer is
00:38:46.000 he was still alive as of yesterday.
00:38:49.080 Because that's what the president
00:38:50.480 indicated quite clearly.
00:38:54.280 But we don't know
00:38:55.300 if the president knows either.
00:38:57.500 So I would say the odds of,
00:38:59.660 and there seems to be more reporting
00:39:01.640 about an April surgery.
00:39:05.560 We've heard two stories.
00:39:06.700 One of the stories
00:39:08.420 is that he might have been injured
00:39:09.760 when one of the missiles was tested.
00:39:13.000 And then another one is
00:39:13.840 he maybe had heart surgery
00:39:15.240 that went wrong.
00:39:16.580 And I'm thinking
00:39:18.200 the missile test story
00:39:20.080 where maybe he was injured
00:39:21.720 in a missile accident
00:39:23.540 sounds to me
00:39:25.380 like the least likely situation of all.
00:39:28.440 Because if a missile blew up
00:39:29.840 on the launch pad,
00:39:30.840 we wouldn't know that.
00:39:32.740 We'd probably have satellite pictures.
00:39:34.320 By now we'd have a picture
00:39:36.200 of Kim Jong-un's entourage
00:39:38.920 and there'd be a satellite picture
00:39:41.780 of the ground
00:39:42.740 and you'd see where the explosion was.
00:39:45.820 I don't know.
00:39:46.600 I think there's very little chance
00:39:48.260 that it was an explosion.
00:39:51.120 Yeah, it's Schrodinger's Kim Jong-un. 0.54
00:39:54.360 He is both dead and alive
00:39:57.140 at the same time
00:39:57.980 until proven otherwise.
00:39:58.980 Isn't coronavirus
00:40:03.320 an obvious probability?
00:40:05.620 Not in terms of communication.
00:40:08.360 So it is speculated
00:40:10.240 that maybe Kim
00:40:11.040 is just hiding out
00:40:13.180 from the coronavirus.
00:40:14.940 But that wouldn't explain
00:40:16.360 why he doesn't show up on video.
00:40:18.380 It doesn't explain
00:40:19.620 why he wouldn't be
00:40:20.540 issuing statements
00:40:21.980 in his own name.
00:40:23.580 It wouldn't explain why
00:40:25.060 it just wouldn't explain it.
00:40:27.700 Because if he were staying,
00:40:29.860 if he were lying low
00:40:31.680 because of the coronavirus,
00:40:33.040 I think he'd just say so.
00:40:35.980 Because every other leader
00:40:37.320 is doing it.
00:40:39.200 So I think coronavirus
00:40:40.460 is maybe a contributing factor
00:40:43.700 in some way to the story,
00:40:45.660 but I don't think
00:40:46.100 it's the story.
00:40:46.780 What about the New York Times
00:40:50.780 reporter, Davey?
00:40:52.600 Well, I haven't heard anything
00:40:54.320 since my curse-laden opinion
00:40:59.480 of that situation.
00:41:06.940 What's the difference
00:41:07.720 because the Kims 0.87
00:41:08.560 are just figureheads?
00:41:10.780 I think they're figureheads
00:41:12.180 who do have their fingers
00:41:13.380 on the nuclear buttons.
00:41:15.180 Are you a fingerhead
00:41:16.840 if you're the one
00:41:18.660 who controls the nukes?
00:41:19.880 I don't think China
00:41:20.920 controls North Korea's nukes.
00:41:23.440 I mean, I wouldn't say
00:41:25.400 it's impossible,
00:41:26.800 but it seems pretty unlikely.
00:41:31.100 Kim can't admit
00:41:32.020 that he's susceptible
00:41:32.840 because the public
00:41:33.820 views him as a god.
00:41:35.420 Well, if he wants
00:41:36.040 to keep his god-like aura,
00:41:40.600 all he has to do
00:41:41.280 is appear on video.
00:41:42.820 Say, hey, here I am.
00:41:43.860 How are you doing?
00:41:46.140 He doesn't have to admit
00:41:47.340 that he's hiding
00:41:47.860 because of it.
00:41:49.060 So the fact he's not on video
00:41:50.220 tells me that he's in bad shape.
00:41:53.180 All right.
00:41:54.720 Somebody says,
00:41:55.480 Kim likes to be in the news,
00:41:56.920 so maybe he creates
00:41:57.880 the stories for himself.
00:41:59.000 I doubt it.
00:42:01.200 Do you think
00:42:01.600 his military is trapping him,
00:42:03.320 keeping him from making
00:42:04.320 a deal with Trump?
00:42:05.600 You know?
00:42:07.480 Let me say.
00:42:08.320 Let me say that
00:42:09.960 of all the hypotheses,
00:42:12.300 that one would be
00:42:13.400 the second strongest,
00:42:14.840 I think.
00:42:15.360 I think the first strongest
00:42:16.460 is that he's legitimately sick. 0.77
00:42:19.260 But if I had to pick
00:42:20.360 a second choice,
00:42:22.060 second choice would be
00:42:23.280 that he's under house arrest.
00:42:25.720 Yeah, that would be
00:42:26.540 second choice.
00:42:27.320 But I think that's really low,
00:42:29.240 low on the scale.
00:42:31.300 But it's still second choice.
00:42:32.600 He can't be seen
00:42:38.020 because that will ruin
00:42:40.220 the weight loss reveal.
00:42:42.840 So maybe it's
00:42:43.680 a weight loss reveal.
00:42:48.780 I thought at one point
00:42:50.000 he was kidnapped.
00:42:51.020 Yeah, I don't think so.
00:42:53.740 He fell off a white horse.
00:42:56.480 I'd hate to be the surgeon
00:42:58.000 who botched that surgery
00:42:59.200 if that's what happened.
00:43:00.620 Now, let me ask you this.
00:43:01.680 If you're the surgeon
00:43:02.660 and you've got Kim Jong-un
00:43:05.160 on your operating table,
00:43:06.960 you know that one little slip
00:43:08.620 of the scalpel
00:43:09.700 could end his regime,
00:43:11.860 but it might kill you too.
00:43:13.600 It might even kill your family.
00:43:15.360 But you've got the shot.
00:43:18.820 Do you think it's possible
00:43:20.080 that there could be
00:43:20.860 a top surgeon
00:43:21.780 who would be willing
00:43:23.220 to risk his life,
00:43:24.360 maybe his family's life,
00:43:25.540 to kill Kim Jong-un
00:43:27.000 on the operating table?
00:43:29.400 And I would say
00:43:30.160 probably not
00:43:32.400 because I think that
00:43:33.540 by the time you get chosen
00:43:34.900 to be Kim Jong-un's
00:43:36.000 personal surgeon,
00:43:37.140 they've done a lot
00:43:38.180 of checking
00:43:38.580 and they've got
00:43:39.540 your family on,
00:43:40.820 you know,
00:43:41.020 your family is
00:43:41.740 already surrounded,
00:43:44.400 you know,
00:43:44.700 so your family
00:43:45.280 will be killed
00:43:45.900 if you make a mistake.
00:43:46.820 So it's hard to imagine
00:43:49.360 that the surgeon
00:43:50.700 would do it intentionally,
00:43:52.240 but it's not impossible.
00:43:53.940 Not impossible.
00:43:55.540 I mean,
00:43:56.200 maybe you could say,
00:43:57.400 well,
00:43:57.660 I'll make it look
00:43:58.380 like a mistake.
00:43:59.980 You know,
00:44:00.160 nobody's going to blame me
00:44:01.140 if it's,
00:44:01.680 you know,
00:44:02.660 people die.
00:44:04.420 All right.
00:44:05.420 Somebody says
00:44:05.980 North Koreans 0.96
00:44:06.500 are brainwashed
00:44:07.380 to not try.
00:44:09.280 Well,
00:44:09.760 the thing with brainwashing
00:44:11.140 is it doesn't affect
00:44:12.020 everybody the same way.
00:44:14.060 The one thing
00:44:14.640 you could be sure of
00:44:16.060 is even if you accept
00:44:18.160 that North Korea 0.95
00:44:18.960 is the most brainwashed
00:44:20.580 population on Earth,
00:44:22.440 it's still not 100%.
00:44:24.140 Brainwashing doesn't 0.90
00:44:25.500 work that way
00:44:26.180 because the brains
00:44:26.780 are too different.
00:44:28.000 You can't do one kind
00:44:29.080 of brainwashing
00:44:29.780 and get every person
00:44:30.880 because their own
00:44:32.140 individual brains
00:44:33.140 and situations
00:44:33.960 will make them,
00:44:35.060 make some people
00:44:36.280 immune.
00:44:39.240 All right.
00:44:39.580 North Korea surgeon
00:44:43.640 never dealt
00:44:44.320 with fat people
00:44:45.160 before.
00:44:46.380 Now,
00:44:46.620 that is an interesting,
00:44:48.360 that is a really
00:44:49.520 interesting hypothesis.
00:44:51.840 Think about that.
00:44:53.480 There are literally
00:44:54.340 probably no other
00:44:55.860 fat people
00:44:56.380 in North Korea.
00:44:58.440 So,
00:44:58.800 the North Korean surgeons
00:44:59.780 who probably
00:45:00.660 not practice
00:45:01.720 anywhere else
00:45:02.580 might literally
00:45:04.480 have never worked
00:45:05.360 on an overweight
00:45:06.000 patient.
00:45:07.080 That's actually
00:45:07.840 a really good
00:45:08.720 observation.
00:45:09.580 I don't know
00:45:10.300 how much
00:45:10.640 extra hard
00:45:11.360 that is.
00:45:12.320 Maybe once
00:45:13.800 you get through
00:45:15.080 the upper layer,
00:45:17.000 maybe it's all
00:45:17.440 the same on the
00:45:18.000 inside,
00:45:18.400 so I don't know
00:45:18.740 if that makes
00:45:19.120 a difference.
00:45:25.020 All right.
00:45:25.700 Hands shaking
00:45:26.340 so badly.
00:45:29.380 Yeah.
00:45:30.180 I can imagine
00:45:31.040 that his hands
00:45:31.600 would be shaking
00:45:32.220 badly if he were
00:45:33.140 operating on a god.
00:45:34.660 On the other hand,
00:45:35.620 if you thought
00:45:36.100 you were operating
00:45:36.720 on a god,
00:45:38.080 would you be worried
00:45:39.000 that he would die?
00:45:40.620 What kind of god
00:45:41.400 dies from an operation?
00:45:46.860 Another surgeon
00:45:47.760 said he was nervous
00:45:48.760 about working
00:45:49.380 on an obese patient.
00:45:51.700 So,
00:45:52.060 maybe that is a thing.
00:45:57.720 Got to be another
00:45:58.620 fat person in North Korea?
00:46:00.380 There might not be.
00:46:01.140 Because,
00:46:02.160 you know,
00:46:02.440 well,
00:46:03.140 there might be
00:46:03.520 in the elite,
00:46:05.120 but how many times
00:46:06.140 have we seen
00:46:06.640 pictures of Kim Jong-un
00:46:08.180 with other elite?
00:46:11.240 Lots of times.
00:46:12.100 Have you seen
00:46:12.560 one other elite
00:46:14.520 that has a weight
00:46:16.160 problem in North Korea?
00:46:17.800 I think we would have
00:46:18.880 seen at least one,
00:46:20.300 but we didn't.
00:46:21.160 We didn't see anybody
00:46:21.880 who was even
00:46:22.300 average weight.
00:46:23.000 They're all underweight,
00:46:23.900 100% of them.
00:46:24.720 different complications
00:46:27.860 after surgery,
00:46:28.800 right?
00:46:29.280 That is true.
00:46:34.100 Well,
00:46:34.580 yeah,
00:46:34.760 he's a smoker,
00:46:35.560 too.
00:46:36.980 Obviously,
00:46:37.500 he was not exercising.
00:46:46.220 Yeah.
00:46:46.620 All right.
00:46:48.080 So,
00:46:48.360 that's all I got
00:46:48.720 for today.
00:46:49.140 And I will
00:46:50.180 talk to you
00:46:53.380 tonight.
00:46:55.300 Join me tonight.
00:46:56.300 I'll see you then.