Episode 956 Scott Adams: Come Sip the News
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
151.98193
Summary
It's Cinco de Mayo and Scott Adams is here with the hit of the day: The simultaneous sip. He talks about the new coronavirus death model, and what it means for the chances of catching the killer bug.
Transcript
00:00:13.620
It's time for a special Cinco de Mayo episode of Coffee with Scott Adams
00:00:19.980
featuring the simultaneous sip, which I would say in Spanish if I could, but I can't.
00:00:41.540
I mean, unless things completely go off the rails.
00:01:08.300
All it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a sign, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:01:19.420
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dope bean hit of the day.
00:01:23.360
The thing that makes everything better, including the damn pandemic.
00:01:53.620
It turns out that I've developed two different fan bases, I think.
00:02:11.720
So the new coronavirus death model, that's right.
00:02:18.240
I said a death model, has been revised upwards, of course, because we're reopening some of the country.
00:02:27.580
So what do you call it when things go exactly the way everybody assumed they would go?
00:02:37.680
And if things go exactly the way everybody said they should go, will go, can't really go any other way, that's called news.
00:02:58.380
So I guess 134,000 looks like it's not just the minimum.
00:03:07.680
I think that it's maybe where they actually think it will be.
00:03:12.340
It's a little unclear if that's the new minimum or that's just the prediction.
00:03:22.940
And apparently it's predicted to kill 3,000 people a day by June 1st.
00:04:02.840
Of course, the model probably takes into account the summer months and something magic about summer that makes us get less of the virus.
00:04:16.980
So I don't know if 134 is really the low end, the middle, or the high end anymore.
00:04:27.160
So I would say it's pretty close to where I just assumed it would be there, right?
00:04:40.800
Well, of course, they're trying to cram it down the president's throat so that he will be responsible personally for every death that happens because we reopened the economy.
00:04:52.120
And as I watch this forum, you can see it just sort of coming together.
00:04:58.620
You know that what's going to happen, for sure, is that governors will open some states.
00:05:06.240
But CNN doesn't really mock governors because it's not a good model for television, I guess.
00:05:13.560
They prefer to mock the head of the federal government.
00:05:18.120
So Trump is going to get blamed for everything, no matter what the governors do.
00:05:24.880
And watching this take shape is so disgusting to me.
00:05:29.580
I think I've reached a new level of just contempt for CNN's coverage.
00:05:37.740
I'll just say for their coverage rather than make it personal.
00:05:44.280
You know, and I'll say this a million more times.
00:05:46.560
Nobody knows how to make the right decision here.
00:05:50.180
I don't even know if there is a right decision.
00:05:52.760
There are just two ways that people are going to die.
00:05:55.140
Is there a right decision when there's just two ways people are going to die and you've got to pick which one?
00:06:00.660
To put pressure on the leaders, let's say the governors and all the decision makers,
00:06:08.060
throw Fauci and Birx in there too, they're leaders and decision makers in this context,
00:06:14.220
to put that pressure on them that these deaths are sort of going to be on their hands is so low and so contemptible.
00:06:25.260
Now, I wouldn't say that they've actually done that.
00:06:29.880
You just see it taking form because what else are they going to talk about?
00:06:34.360
They're going to talk about who the leaders killed, right, with their decisions.
00:06:39.940
Well, he made this decision and now Aunt Sally's gone.
00:06:43.800
And here's the people on this page and here's all the names and their faces.
00:06:49.180
And they all died because of the decisions made by these Republicans or whatever.
00:06:58.480
There's nothing more important than that we as a country understand that there's no right decision.
00:07:04.240
So if you're hamstringing your leaders to make any decision because you're ready to just eviscerate them no matter what,
00:07:18.160
You know, I think everybody has to get a pardon in advance for whatever happens.
00:07:23.380
I'm talking about the governors, the experts, the politicians.
00:07:26.940
I mean, we just have to find some way to be okay with decisions that can't be good.
00:07:39.400
So somebody's going to die and our leaders have the very unenviable task of doing it.
00:07:56.980
But I'm glad I don't because whoever makes it is going to be accused of murder for just doing their job.
00:08:04.240
Just trying to help the country, trying to get the country to a better place.
00:08:08.740
No matter what anybody does, no matter what their intentions are, no matter how smart they are, even if they make all the right choices, they're going to be accused of murder.
00:08:23.140
So that's the situation we put our leaders in, and then we ask them to make good decisions for us.
00:08:30.940
And by the way, we are going to accuse you of murder.
00:08:36.920
We're going to accuse you of mass murder, no matter what you do.
00:08:42.380
I just don't want to live in a country like that.
00:08:47.140
Sean Hannity, surprised in a way, he's actually requesting that the armed protesters in Michigan reconsider the military garb.
00:09:01.180
And Sean Hannity's argument, I think, is completely solid, somewhat unexpected, which is the fun part of the story, but solid argument.
00:09:13.340
And his argument goes like this, that if you put a show of force on against police officers, that's a very dangerous situation.
00:09:25.040
Because the police, they kind of have to maintain their own control, right?
00:09:38.640
They've got to exert that they are the ultimate force of control.
00:09:44.780
The last thing you want is people saying, well, police, yes.
00:09:55.400
So you could easily see it sliding in the wrong direction.
00:09:58.880
And so I think Sean Hannity is making a very, it's a hard call.
00:10:03.820
Because even Dan Bongino came on his show right after and said,
00:10:07.160
I don't know, Second Amendment, freedom of speech.
00:10:15.380
Do you tell people to stop doing completely legal things in this country?
00:10:27.480
What gives anybody the right to throw the laws away?
00:10:41.880
As long as they follow the Constitution, why shouldn't we?
00:10:50.920
And I think Hannity's got a good, you know, long history of supporting law enforcement.
00:10:56.780
And so he's being consistent on that and confesses that it's a very hard call to do anything that would be even slightly anti-Second Amendment.
00:11:06.440
You know, he's got to concealed carry himself, as he reminds us.
00:11:14.640
And I don't think anybody's opinion should sway you, because this is so subjective.
00:11:20.760
You know, I'm not going to tell you my opinion is right or not right.
00:11:25.220
But under these very, very specific conditions, meaning that the next time something comes up, don't ask me to be consistent with this.
00:11:38.000
So, anything I say about this should not ever be generalized in the future to any other situation.
00:11:46.080
The people with the guns are there to support the Constitution.
00:11:57.300
They're, in fact, there to support the government.
00:11:59.740
They're literally there to support the document, if you will, the Constitution, that binds us all together.
00:12:10.560
You know, ultimately, the form of our government defined by the Constitution allows a structure in which the police can get paid.
00:12:17.700
So, are the protesters dangerous, or are they protecting the system?
00:12:35.020
Oh, somebody smart on television said that when you've got a gray area, somebody was saying that their father gave them this advice.
00:12:46.440
That when you have a gray area, and, you know, one direction is maybe safety, and the other direction is maybe freedom, but it's a tough call, that you should always bias toward freedom.
00:13:01.620
And that, in the long run, you end up better that way, if you bias toward freedom.
00:13:09.600
I've never seen a situation where the armed militia types have ever fired.
00:13:19.180
If you look at all the times that the same types of people, the ones who, you know, are into that lifestyle, the militia, the guns, etc., they're very anti-shooting.
00:13:40.620
What's the last thing any of them with a gun actually wants to happen?
00:13:44.760
The last thing any of them want to happen is to shoot anybody.
00:13:54.000
So, it's hard to get into the minds of strangers, which I just did, and so that, you know, I probably shouldn't have.
00:14:01.480
But if I were to say, okay, let's treat them as mindless, we don't know what they're thinking, yeah, I'd say you don't want guns and police officers in the same place.
00:14:10.260
So, if you ignore their internal mental state, and maybe that's the smartest play.
00:14:21.600
Lots of guns, police, put them in the same place, nothing good can happen.
00:14:25.080
That's a pretty adult opinion, and I would respect him for that opinion.
00:14:30.960
But I've got to say, I'm leaning in the other direction.
00:14:38.200
I'm leaning, if they're there to protest for their freedom, I don't know, if the whole point of it is freedom,
00:14:47.500
then, how do you take their freedom away when they're protesting for freedom?
00:14:59.200
And you take some more of their freedom away while they're protesting for freedom?
00:15:07.760
Well, I mean, nobody's tried to take their guns away.
00:15:11.620
But, I guess I would lean toward letting them do their thing.
00:15:20.300
Apparently, there's a Chinese drone maker, of the smaller drones, the kind that law enforcement would use.
00:15:27.960
And this gigantic Chinese company just dropped their price or donated some of them.
00:15:33.520
And they're putting their drones in lots of different local police forces.
00:15:37.900
And part of what the drones are doing is flying around and looking for social distancing violators.
00:15:46.040
Do you feel comfortable that there's basically a Chinese-made computer?
00:15:53.840
Because, you know, each of the drones has a little intelligence in it.
00:15:58.100
There's a little computer in those drones from China that's flying around and collecting information on our citizens.
00:16:08.720
What does it know just by flying around and being part of the police force?
00:16:18.580
You know, could the drones be modified to collect information we don't know they're collecting?
00:16:26.140
Could anybody ever take advantage of any of the, I don't know, administrative or data that gets sent up to headquarters?
00:16:43.000
You've got a Chinese-made computer that they're giving away to local law enforcement?
00:16:54.380
No, you can't let that company into the United States.
00:16:57.700
Apparently, Homeland Security has already banned them from Homeland Security.
00:17:01.940
But the local police force is like, hey, free drone.
00:17:13.300
So they're accepting all these Chinese spy drones.
00:17:16.920
They're not made exactly for spying, but you know what I mean.
00:17:24.860
Do you think the United States has any companies that make some drones?
00:17:30.540
I think the United States has companies that make drones.
00:17:44.060
In fact, let's just get rid of everything we buy from China.
00:17:46.760
If there's any substitute in the United States, I don't care if it costs more.
00:17:59.480
There's a Massachusetts golf course owner who's going to defy the state's lockdown and
00:18:05.800
And this is a way more interesting story than it sounds like as a headline, because the family
00:18:12.960
that's reopening, I guess it's family-owned golf courses, the family that's doing this
00:18:17.940
in defiance of the state just lost a family member to coronavirus, just lost a grandmother
00:18:28.700
So whoever the representative of the family was saying, believe me, we get it.
00:18:33.440
Like, we're not in any, you know, we're not confused about how deadly this is.
00:18:42.920
And we still want to open up the golf course, you know, partly because it's something you
00:18:46.880
could social distance a little bit easier than most, but also because there's no choice.
00:18:58.160
So I would say I support this Massachusetts golf course.
00:19:10.860
But if they reopened the next day, I'd try to go golf again.
00:19:15.280
When the police would come, they'd send me home.
00:19:17.940
And then maybe some other businesses would try to reopen.
00:19:20.620
Maybe there would be too many businesses for the police.
00:19:56.140
So do you think anybody's going to have some civil disobedience about closing down the economy for another month?
00:20:03.400
So I put some questions, or I put a tweet on Twitter and told people to ask me questions, and I would answer them.
00:20:21.980
And, by the way, are you seeing that every day we get conflicting data about hydroxychloroquine?
00:20:29.000
I feel as though every day somebody says, hey, it's great, this trial.
00:20:36.700
And then 10 minutes later, yeah, you know, here's all the reasons why it probably doesn't work.
00:20:42.160
And I feel like we can't get any good information.
00:20:45.980
What was the last thing we learned about that was actually true?
00:20:49.580
Have we learned anything that's true about the coronavirus?
00:20:56.940
Is there even one thing about the coronavirus, one scientific or other data fact, that actually turned out to be true?
00:21:06.580
From the viral amount of it to what it was, the spreading to humans, do masks work?
00:21:21.520
We didn't have enough of stuff, and then we had too much of stuff.
00:21:29.500
Now, I'm not too harsh about getting things wrong in a context of a pandemic,
00:21:35.360
because your first actions were, you know, just guessing, really.
00:21:42.180
I'm looking for my own tweet in which I ask people to ask me questions.
00:21:47.300
If you would like to ask me a question, that's where you should have put it.
00:22:04.820
If I had to bet on it right now, I'd say 70% no would be my bet.
00:22:13.300
Number one, I think that the Democrats will do everything they can to not have a debate.
00:22:32.180
And I think that the Democrats know that that's a losing proposition.
00:22:36.120
So, they'll use the coronavirus to avoid it, I think.
00:22:55.080
And there's somebody, and I know this user, because we interact a lot on Twitter.
00:23:00.140
But this is somebody who's like really following.
00:23:07.300
How could you get all the way to May and not know at least the argument for why healthy people are being locked out?
00:23:17.260
They'll go out and get it and bring it back and kill grandma.
00:23:20.480
Now, you could argue that that's not a good enough reason.
00:23:23.380
You could say that the costs are greater than the benefits.
00:23:28.200
But to ask why are healthy people being quarantined?
00:23:37.620
All right, and so we're seeing people criticizing Trump on the 60,000 expected deaths.
00:23:54.640
Well, yeah, the numbers are all over the place, and everybody speaks imprecisely about them.
00:24:03.800
So I was looking, I was reading CNN, looking at it, and I realized that the CNN report doesn't tell me if that's the low estimate, the likely estimate, or the high, or what.
00:24:14.760
When you've got a vast range, and they give me one number, I don't know.
00:24:28.800
So that's the New York Times Project, where they were going to write a long series about institutional racism and how it all came from slavery, etc.
00:24:37.760
And I guess they got the Pulitzer Prize for that, which Pulitzer Prize is like six people sitting in the living room who saw 0.001% of the creative stuff that got created that year.
00:24:56.240
The most useless, stupid, completely non-prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize.
00:25:04.720
I'd like to give the Carl and Jane Prize for literature.
00:25:15.280
We just sat in their living room, and we decided we'd like this book better than this one.
00:25:19.460
So we're going to give it the Carl and Jane prestigious award.
00:25:23.760
That is exactly as valuable as the Pulitzer Prize.
00:25:30.180
It's just some people in their living room, probably got together on Zoom, and said, do you read these seven books that were submitted?
00:25:48.880
And then I guess historians complained that some of the articles that came out of that 1619 project were inaccurate.
00:25:59.700
I would go further and say that they were written for naked political purposes and that we shouldn't take any of it too seriously.
00:26:09.620
Andres asks, how have you stayed motivated before Dilbert became a success?
00:26:19.760
And the answer is, for my entire life as a young person, I expected to be successful.
00:26:31.260
And successful on some kind of a level where the rest of the world noticed, you know, not just sort of successful privately, but successful in some way that the public knew about it.
00:26:53.320
I always thought, I'm going to be famous someday.
00:26:58.000
And I've told this story before that adults would tell me that too when I was a kid.
00:27:03.620
They would say, someday you're going to be really rich and famous.
00:27:10.180
I mean, I knew I thought it myself, but I also didn't know if everybody thought that.
00:27:17.140
How many of you, let me ask in the comments while I'm finishing my story here.
00:27:21.560
How many of you, when you were a kid, thought that you would be famous someday?
00:27:31.360
Now, obviously that causes you to make certain choices in your life that make it more likely it's going to happen.
00:27:40.520
But how many of you thought you would be famous when you were kids?
00:27:44.440
Because when I was a kid, I didn't know if it was just the way everybody felt.
00:27:48.120
I thought maybe everybody, you know, was optimistic and dreamed about good things.
00:27:59.720
I can tell the difference when I'm just dreaming about stuff.
00:28:16.180
I had no idea which way that question was going to go.
00:28:24.580
But if I were just based on the answers, which is very non-representative of the sample, it's just the people who wanted to answer.
00:28:31.540
Wow, there's a little, I don't know what percentage, but we can conclude from the comments that a lot of people thought that they would be famous someday.
00:28:42.420
So I guess I should take it to be nothing, you know, because it felt like it was almost a premonition.
00:28:47.360
But if everybody had the same premonition and it didn't work out for most people, I'd have to say it's just how kids feel, I guess.
00:28:54.420
So to finish this answer, how do I stay motivated?
00:29:00.480
So I don't know what it's like to feel unmotivated.
00:29:07.200
Because I've always felt like, almost like there was a problem with myself that I needed to fix.
00:29:16.120
You know, when we talk about success and motivation and things, we tend to, because we're America and, you know, we're a certain type of people, we tend to put the most positive spin on success.
00:29:28.800
And we say motivation, ambition, we tend to put a positive frame on those things, because we like to encourage people to do those things.
00:29:39.300
But when you're actually that person, and you're the person who has that ambition and has that motivation, it doesn't always feel like it's a positive.
00:29:49.980
It feels like a flaw that you're trying to fix.
00:29:53.600
Now, I don't know how many other people would back me up on that feeling.
00:30:01.140
But what I feel like is a continuous weight on me that I should have done more.
00:30:12.340
And I go to bed thinking I should have done more that day.
00:30:19.860
I just dislike the old idea of sleeping, because it takes me away from my day.
00:30:32.560
When I'm sleeping, sleeping is like suspended animation.
00:30:38.780
And sleeping has no place in my world, except, unfortunately, it's necessary for good health.
00:30:44.860
So you should do everything you can to sleep a healthy amount.
00:30:48.560
I don't want to convince anybody to sleep less.
00:30:53.700
So to answer Andre's question, I've never felt unmotivated.
00:30:56.860
So I suspect some of that is just baked into your nature.
00:31:06.080
And it feels like an itch that can't be scratched.
00:31:15.740
Because I don't know if I have the capability to be, let's say, retired.
00:31:20.940
You know, I'm at that age where everybody thinks seriously about it.
00:31:25.480
And, you know, there are many times I've thought, you know, wouldn't it be great to be retired?
00:31:32.080
What if I could wake up and just do anything I wanted?
00:31:38.220
What if I could sleep as long as I want, do anything I want when I wake up, not worry about money, and just live out my days?
00:31:47.020
You know, like a perfect free human that nobody ever gets to be.
00:31:54.160
Just wake up, do what you want, not run out of money.
00:32:09.180
You know, I know you hate me for it, because especially now when people are having a tough time.
00:32:17.420
I could just wake up and just eat and play around and just have a good time for the rest of my life.
00:32:32.380
It doesn't make me feel like I've done anything useful.
00:32:35.280
And I don't mean useful for myself, because I already got what I need.
00:32:38.760
I'm almost entirely externally focused at this point in my career.
00:32:42.680
Because if it's not good for you, not interested.
00:32:46.480
If it doesn't help someone else, no interest at all.
00:32:52.780
So my ambition, to sort of further to Andrea's question,
00:32:57.500
my ambition has changed over the years from a pure personal ambition to, you know,
00:33:03.900
I've got to get somewhere personally, to, oh, now what do I do?
00:33:15.800
And so almost immediately upon getting what I thought I wanted,
00:33:23.600
And I thought to myself, well, you know, could I run for public office?
00:33:28.100
And I thought, what would be a bigger waste of my talents than to put me in a meeting?
00:33:33.060
You know, if you've watched me long enough, you say to yourself, okay, what is it that you're good at?
00:33:40.860
What is it that you could contribute to the world?
00:33:43.580
And now you've got to go raise money and attend meetings.
00:33:48.380
It's just been the biggest waste of time ever for my specific set of talents.
00:33:52.580
So I try to find ways such as this in which I could do something that would be potentially useful,
00:33:58.980
which is why I've started to put the micro lessons on the locals.com platform.
00:34:05.860
So right now there's a lesson on how to be funny.
00:34:08.040
I think my next lesson will either be personal finance,
00:34:11.300
very, very short lesson on that for those who just don't know anything about it,
00:34:17.120
I'm going to probably do one of those today, maybe.
00:34:26.820
Shata says, what are some techniques to wake up and start the day off great?
00:34:33.460
And the answer is, if you don't drink coffee, I don't know what the answer to that question is.
00:34:39.860
One of the things that I teach, in fact, just yesterday, somebody said that this lesson changed their life.
00:34:46.660
So what I'm going to tell you now, this will be the short version of it,
00:34:52.260
but somebody just told me yesterday, it changed their life to hear this idea,
00:34:59.540
I wrote about this in my Hatterfeld, Almost Everything and Still Win Big book,
00:35:05.300
And the idea of a moist robot is that it just responds to inputs.
00:35:10.120
So if you put an input into a computer, you'll get an output.
00:35:15.140
And then if you treat yourself like that, instead of some kind of mental creature,
00:35:20.040
if you treat yourself as a mind, you don't know what to do with it.
00:35:24.140
Because you don't quite know how to manage a mind.
00:35:28.080
But if you manage your physical body, and you manage it right,
00:35:31.860
you can produce the right kind of thoughts and actions and stuff that your mind likes.
00:35:35.620
So I teach people to reprogram their mind by programming their physical environment
00:35:44.740
and their physical body, and also associating rewards with things they want their physical body to do.
00:35:53.220
So one of the things that I want to do is wake up and be productive.
00:35:58.020
If it were free and easy and didn't take any work,
00:36:02.500
wouldn't you all want to wake up and be productive?
00:36:09.800
So I use the moist robot technique to train myself like a dog.
00:36:19.940
And the treat is this protein bar, this specific one, because it's one that I like.
00:36:30.720
And delicious cup of coffee, which when combined in the same bite,
00:36:36.560
a bite of the chocolate peanut butter protein bar,
00:36:44.940
And the coffee wakes me up, it gives me a buzz,
00:36:58.820
and maybe you were a little hungry when you woke up anyway,
00:37:04.140
and it's like a taste explosion of awesomeness.
00:37:07.600
Now, it doesn't matter that you don't like these things,
00:37:10.240
because if you were doing it, you would pick your own treat.
00:37:12.680
Your treat might be, I don't know, watch a TV show.
00:37:16.900
Your treat might be take a walk in the morning.
00:37:49.940
Well, the thing you might miss is how much I like it.
00:38:19.760
How popular will pop-up drive-in movies be this summer?
00:38:41.880
And I guess the people just parking in a parking lot
00:39:31.240
that she does not look as good as her pictures.