Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 959 Scott Adams： Join Me in My Fortress of Garagitude

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in. It's time for the evening edition of No Causing with Scott Adams.

00:00:14.320 No Causing with Scott Adams

00:00:44.320 I told you before this little lockdown started that I never liked to let a good disaster be wasted.

00:00:55.560 Of course, that's the oldest saying in the books, but how many of you took it to heart?

00:01:00.800 So, I had a few objectives for this lockdown.

00:01:05.620 One was I was going to learn some new skills.

00:01:08.600 Now, I had been already practicing the drums, but I wanted to see if I could take it to another level.

00:01:12.740 And I was working on my biceps, which somebody asked me if it was photoshopped.

00:01:22.740 So, I just decided to focus on this one body part because I never had a good bicep.

00:01:27.520 So, it's not like everything else is good, but I thought, hey, I'm going to have 60 days locked up.

00:01:35.640 I'm going to have a biceps when I get out.

00:01:38.620 So, I did that, and most of you know that I put my content on the Locals platform.

00:01:46.920 So, there's a subscriber platform.

00:01:49.060 I've got lots of different stuff there.

00:01:52.760 So, that's like a new line of business in a sense.

00:01:54.960 And I hope that all of you are doing something similar.

00:02:00.380 I mentioned it on Twitter.

00:02:04.420 So, if somebody says we built a house, very good.

00:02:10.000 Learn to cook.

00:02:12.120 Well, that would be good if you did that.

00:02:14.020 So, all of you should try to come out of this with a skill.

00:02:17.340 The AirPods are connected, or at least they should be.

00:02:26.980 You can all hear me, right?

00:02:29.880 So, I let the abs go to heck because Christine actually likes me heavier, which is very convenient.

00:02:37.960 So, she actually asked me to gain weight.

00:02:41.560 So, give up a little on the abs to get a little bit on the arms. 0.55

00:02:45.280 See what that looks like for a while.

00:02:47.980 Try it out.

00:02:49.240 So, here's my advice to you.

00:02:52.480 Here's a little life advice.

00:02:55.700 And I know most of you already do this.

00:02:58.280 But all I'm going to add to what you already know to do is how extreme to do it.

00:03:06.360 And one of the reasons that I took up the drums, especially later in life, is that I have absolutely no musical ability whatsoever.

00:03:13.920 So, the first thing I could do by taking drums is I could fill in a blank spot in my social understanding of things, which is a little bit about how music works, which I never had any interest in before.

00:03:28.900 Secondly, my fiancee, Christina, is a gifted musician, and he gives me something to talk about, and, you know, we can compare notes on musical things, and it's like a whole new topic of things to talk about.

00:03:42.580 So, that's fun, too.

00:03:43.260 But actually, the biggest reason that I did this is to work on my dexterity, just, you know, my actual coordination, and to exercise a part of my brain that I'd never exercised before.

00:03:58.100 So, this is another lifelong practice, that if there's a part of your brain that you don't use, just sort of excited a little bit.

00:04:06.940 And so, this is completely outside of my talent zone, my experience zone, and that's part of what's appealing about it.

00:04:15.920 So, it keeps me sharp, makes me learn a new thing, keeps me interested.

00:04:20.080 And the other big benefit, and I talked about this with skill stacking, is that if you add two skills together, it's more than just twice as good to add that second skill.

00:04:34.260 Because it sometimes makes you think of new connections that you wouldn't have thought of before.

00:04:39.880 And one of the things I wanted to explore is the connection between music and persuasion.

00:04:46.080 It should be no surprise to you that music can be persuasive, because it can literally change your mood, and it can do it in the moment.

00:04:58.800 So, since music is persuasive, but if you don't, let's say, control it and manage it, it's persuasive randomly.

00:05:08.560 Could you learn something by learning music that would have some crossover with persuasion?

00:05:14.060 Now, these are exactly the kind of things you accidentally discover when you start layering skills on, which is, really?

00:05:21.800 What does cooking have to do with mountain climbing, and then suddenly there actually is something in common?

00:05:27.700 I can't think what that would be right now, but you get my point.

00:05:31.700 So, here's the theory that I've been working on.

00:05:34.600 And by the way, when I learn a new thing like this, unless I'm doing it for money, and I'm really serious about getting to that confidence quickly, I prefer to learn it as inefficiently as possible.

00:05:49.320 And I know that sounds weird, but rather than get an instructor, obviously I could pay somebody to sit next to me, and I would get better faster.

00:05:57.780 But I don't want to do that.

00:06:00.040 I want to just learn the rules, which is, this is how you read the sheet music.

00:06:05.280 And I want to know how to hold the sticks, what everything sounds like, and the basics.

00:06:11.720 But after that, I want to sort of figure it out myself.

00:06:14.900 You know, there's layers and layers and layers of drumming, seemingly infinite layers of things that you wouldn't even know are things.

00:06:25.580 You know, just the technique and how to play in ways that make you feel different things, etc.

00:06:33.920 So, here's what I'm finding.

00:06:37.800 I'm finding that I think there's something about pattern and then disruption of pattern that is very related to persuasion.

00:06:50.820 And I don't quite have a working theory on this, but it's something like this, that your brain is a pattern recognition machine.

00:07:01.420 And so music has a very special hook to your brain because music is pattern.

00:07:06.720 And if it were not pattern, you would not recognize it as music.

00:07:10.760 So you've got a pattern recognizing machine, and then you've got this sort of input, which is the music.

00:07:16.740 And I think, and I'm just working on this sort of very early hypothesis, it seems as though there's something about your brain recognizing there's a pattern and then having it violated and then wanting a pattern again.

00:07:34.100 And just as you're wanting it, it comes back.

00:07:37.780 So there's something about teasing you with repetition, mixing it up, and then teasing you back with repetition.

00:07:45.980 So it's sort of like getting you in the groove, mix it up, get you back in the groove, mix it up.

00:07:52.080 Indeed, drumming is exactly that.

00:07:55.080 In fact, there are two parts of drumming, and they're exactly those two things.

00:07:59.680 There's, there's, there's the, you know, just the beat, which is repetition.

00:08:06.680 And then when you're, you're playing this about, you might throw in something different.

00:08:17.360 It's a little bit different.

00:08:20.080 Now you're interested, because there was just a little bit difference in the pattern, and suddenly you're interested.

00:08:25.620 Like, what?

00:08:26.100 So I got your attention.

00:08:28.680 So attention is almost entirely a violation of pattern.

00:08:33.320 Because you can't pay attention to everything in your world.

00:08:36.060 You, you just get used to the pattern.

00:08:37.800 Oh, my chair is always there.

00:08:40.020 The light is there.

00:08:40.740 The floor is there.

00:08:42.180 So it's the violations of the pattern that get your attention.

00:08:45.020 And therefore, music has those two parts.

00:08:47.460 So the other part that's not the repetitive beat, so this is the repetitive beat.

00:08:55.840 And then there's the fills.

00:08:58.560 It's called F-I-L-L-S. 1.00

00:09:01.040 And that's where you break the pattern and you might go.

00:09:05.960 Now, it turns out that the fills can be just about anything.

00:09:09.780 And that was one of the things that was hardest for me to learn, because I thought, okay, tell me the rules for the fill.

00:09:17.920 And my drum teacher was like, well, you could do this or that.

00:09:21.760 And I'm like, okay, I know you could do those things, but what's the rule?

00:09:25.880 You know, is it always three and then one?

00:09:28.240 Do you have to use a certain set of drums in a certain order?

00:09:32.080 And it turns out there's just no rules, as long as you keep with the timing of the music.

00:09:37.060 So you have to stay with the timing.

00:09:39.620 But otherwise, it's just as good as...

00:09:46.540 Now, is any of this, is any of this real?

00:09:52.700 I mean, is there really a connection between persuasion and pattern recognition and music?

00:10:00.400 I don't know.

00:10:01.660 But I know that it's fun to think about.

00:10:04.700 And there are a thousand connections that you don't expect that can hit you at any moment.

00:10:11.320 Let's talk about things that are happening.

00:10:17.360 I saw the best dad joke on the internet today.

00:10:21.060 Do you know Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator?

00:10:26.040 Very smart, successful investor type.

00:10:30.740 And he tweeted this.

00:10:34.140 He said, I got a haircut just before quarantine started, but I'm starting to think I should have gotten two.

00:10:42.000 But I'm pumped.

00:10:43.040 Now, you would recognize that as sort of a dad joke.

00:10:46.740 And I don't think he was trying to make it anything else.

00:10:49.620 I'm a big fan of dad jokes.

00:10:51.880 I think it's a genre.

00:10:54.020 And as long as you know that's what you're getting, same with puns.

00:10:59.100 Puns are, some say, the lowest form of humor.

00:11:01.480 But if you know that's what you're doing, that's your genre, well, that could be fine.

00:11:07.300 So, here's my point.

00:11:10.220 The joke is funny for this rule that I keep teaching you.

00:11:14.740 And every time you see another example of it, it'll be more real to you.

00:11:20.920 And it's this.

00:11:22.140 The thing that makes something funny, usually, there could be exceptions to this, but it's like the most, the closest to a universal rule of humor.

00:11:31.820 It's something that almost makes sense, but doesn't.

00:11:36.920 In other words, your brain wants it to make sense, but it knows it doesn't.

00:11:40.680 And it tries to reconcile it.

00:11:42.640 And that little disconnect between it making sense almost but not is what causes your reflex, the left reflex.

00:11:51.160 So, that's why the Paul Graham joke works so well, because there's like a broken logic to it.

00:11:59.580 It's like, well, yeah, if you need twice as much haircuts, why don't you just get them in advance?

00:12:04.720 Oh, wait, that doesn't work.

00:12:06.340 And so, when you realize that it doesn't work, that's the left.

00:12:10.640 I would argue, and I have before, that politics is largely replacing humor as an entertainment source.

00:12:19.380 So, there used to be more humorous movies and TV shows, but they've largely been replaced by reality.

00:12:27.800 But not every reality, not everything is funny.

00:12:31.700 But the reason that Trump is so hilarious to some of us, those of us who can't, it's funny to those of us who are not afraid of him, basically.

00:12:44.200 So, if you get that you're in on the joke, he's in on the joke, he knows other people know he's in on the joke, and the joke is on other people, if you get that, it's hilarious.

00:12:56.640 But here's why it works.

00:12:59.180 When Trump calls George Conway moon face, it just shouldn't be happening, right?

00:13:07.880 You know, your understanding of the world is suddenly broken.

00:13:13.460 It's like, he's the president of the United States, and he just called somebody moon face in public.

00:13:21.180 Wait, we're not done yet.

00:13:23.380 It happens to be the husband of one of his closest advisors.

00:13:27.500 And then your brain just goes, I don't know what I'm seeing.

00:13:30.400 My brain can't make sense of the fact that he's trashing the husband of one of his closest long-time advisors, Kellyanne, and he's not supposed to be calling people moon face, and none of it makes sense.

00:13:46.460 And then you laugh.

00:13:48.340 So, the reason that Trump has replaced humor is that he breaks logic all the time.

00:13:55.740 He just does what you're not supposed to do, and I, frankly, find it hilarious, but I do understand that other people are troubled by it.

00:14:04.620 Have you ever seen the show Veep, V-E-E-P?

00:14:09.540 It was Julie Louis-Dreyfus, and she played on Showtime, I think, for HBO, I forget, Showtime.

00:14:17.700 She played a vice president, and it was a comedy, but a running joke through the entire series, which was quite great, by the way.

00:14:25.740 If you get a chance to binge watch it, totally worth it.

00:14:29.340 But a running joke is that she was a female vice president, and she swore like a wounded sailor. 0.98

00:14:37.860 And she would swear in, like, ways that you didn't even know could be done, like, even things that I've never thought of.

00:14:45.540 You know, curses that I don't know if they made up in the writing room, or I just haven't been on a merchant seamanship or something.

00:14:53.840 But I haven't been exposed to, apparently, all of the filthy things that you can say when you're mad.

00:14:59.840 But that's what made the show work.

00:15:02.140 Because, again, it didn't make sense.

00:15:03.720 Like, why is a person in that job talking like that?

00:15:09.420 So look for that when you try to be humorous yourself.

00:15:13.400 All right.

00:15:14.460 I'm laughing again at the president's deft move on this coronavirus task force thing.

00:15:23.180 So you know the back story.

00:15:25.180 He said he wanted to disband it maybe at the end of the month. 0.99

00:15:29.220 There was a big outcry because people said, no, you're, you know, you fool. 0.98

00:15:35.280 The task force is all we have. 0.99

00:15:38.540 And, you know, we need that.

00:15:40.180 Give us that task force.

00:15:42.160 Now, of course, it was never as if the functions were going to go away.

00:15:46.820 It wasn't as if Fauci was going to stop answering phone calls.

00:15:51.180 You know, I think everybody probably still gets paid about the same as whatever they were doing before.

00:15:56.540 But they would just, you know, would have presumably been distributed to other areas and then kept doing what they're doing.

00:16:04.220 But there was an outcry.

00:16:05.880 So the president gets all this criticism for maybe ending the task force. 0.98

00:16:11.500 And what does that magnificent bastard do? 0.99

00:16:14.080 And you can hate him all you want for any number of other reasons. 0.99

00:16:20.440 But when he does stuff like this, you just have to shake your head and say, I didn't even see that coming.

00:16:25.960 I did not see that play.

00:16:28.200 He decides when they ask him about it that he'll reinstate the task force, but wait for it.

00:16:35.360 This is just the best thing ever.

00:16:38.480 He decides that he's going to reinstate the task force, but he may change the people on it over time.

00:16:46.300 Okay, that makes sense.

00:16:47.660 It's still the same task force, even if you exchange some people here or there, right?

00:16:52.980 Fair enough.

00:16:54.100 And then he adds that their mission will change to more about opening up the economy.

00:17:00.440 Now, if you haven't caught this move, what exactly is a task force, if not the people and the mission that they have?

00:17:10.640 And he just said, I'm going to give the task force back to you.

00:17:14.640 The only thing that will be different are the two things that make it a task force, which is who's on it, potentially anyway.

00:17:21.040 And he didn't say he was going to remove everybody, but that's like the main thing, who's on it, and what's the mission?

00:17:28.100 That's what makes the task force.

00:17:30.060 So he's basically said, yeah, I'll give you what you want, and then he has the complete option to change it, and he just told you he was going to.

00:17:37.840 So, but it gets better.

00:17:40.880 This is the deft move.

00:17:42.020 He framed it as like they were so popular, he used the word popular, that he brought them back, and I'm going to add this word, like an encore of a popular act.

00:17:55.940 And I thought to myself, oh, my God, that's so good.

00:17:59.360 They were so popular that he decided to bring them back for an encore.

00:18:04.320 That is really good, isn't it?

00:18:06.820 But wouldn't you admit that that simple framing of, no, I didn't make a mistake, you know, and correct me because everybody told me I was dumb, because that easily is what their frame would have been?

00:18:18.160 He's like, no, it was so popular.

00:18:20.320 Man, I had no idea how popular it was, so I brought them back for an encore.

00:18:26.120 I think you have to appreciate that.

00:18:28.100 All right, here is my better argument for why I think we should not rely on testing to save us, and it goes like this.

00:18:40.740 And these are rules you've heard before from me, but now I'm going to apply them to the situations so you can see how they work.

00:18:46.900 One is that whenever you have a situation where there's a huge upside potential gain, if somebody does something, let's say illegal or shady,

00:18:54.880 there's a huge amount to gain, usually money, and there's lots of people involved that could all take advantage of this same opportunity,

00:19:03.820 so you don't have to worry about, you know, maybe there's one honest person, because there's so many people that somebody's going to take advantage of it,

00:19:11.400 because there's a big upside, and then here's the key, almost no chance of going to jail.

00:19:17.600 When you have that situation, huge upside, lots of people involved, no chance of going to jail, you always have fraud.

00:19:25.460 Not sometimes, not that one time, always.

00:19:30.140 So that's my rule.

00:19:31.940 Now, look at the situation where the government was trying to get all these 100 or so different testing companies and manufacturers

00:19:39.720 to tell them the truth, what they could and could not do,

00:19:45.220 and the government sort of had to believe them, because there wasn't that much they could check.

00:19:50.940 So what do you think those 100 companies promised?

00:19:54.840 Do you think that they promised what they actually thought they could do,

00:19:58.680 or did they exaggerate a little bit, like 10 times as much as they could probably do?

00:20:04.800 Because there was no penalty.

00:20:07.820 And whoever said that they could do the biggest number was going to get the most attention.

00:20:12.960 So if you thought you could do 10,000 units a month, you'd be dumb not to say 100,000.

00:20:18.800 Say, yeah, we're positive we can do 10,000, but I'm very confident we can get to 100,000.

00:20:25.440 We'll ramp it right up there.

00:20:26.380 Even if you don't know how you would do that, the only thing that makes sense is to promise it.

00:20:33.160 Because suppose you don't deliver.

00:20:35.220 Well, then you still sold 10,000 units a month.

00:20:38.600 You're still ahead, and you've probably got more attention because for a while they thought you were going to make 100,000.

00:20:44.360 So you go, like, to the top of the list to get funded because you're bigger.

00:20:50.560 The bigger ones would get more funding.

00:20:52.340 So, of course, it's a 100% chance that there's massive fraud in what these companies told the government they could do because why wouldn't they?

00:21:02.900 There's no penalty.

00:21:04.220 All they have to do is say, we tried.

00:21:06.520 I mean, I swear I thought we could do 100,000.

00:21:08.740 We just hit a roadblock.

00:21:11.680 Huge upside, no downside.

00:21:13.660 Lots of people involved.

00:21:15.780 No way the government got good information from that group.

00:21:19.020 Next, the public is largely confused by what the politicians and experts have been telling them about the tests.

00:21:26.960 But they're confused because there are different kinds of tests used for different purposes.

00:21:33.420 So it all ends up sounding like one big thing.

00:21:36.400 And then when the president says stuff like all the states have sufficient testing to accomplish phase one, that sounds to you, your uncritical brain, it sounds like, okay, they've been working hard to get testing.

00:21:51.600 And now the federal government is saying that there is enough testing for phase one.

00:21:57.060 Well, why wouldn't there be enough testing pretty soon for phase two because it sounds like they've got things rolling now, right?

00:22:05.700 This is what your brain is saying.

00:22:06.900 And so probably we have either very close or maybe the tests we need to test our way out of this because we've heard that testing is the key, right?

00:22:18.880 All the smart people say so.

00:22:20.940 It must be true.

00:22:21.820 But here's what you miss.

00:22:24.940 And it took Bill Gates to explain it for me to say, oh, God, is that what's happening?

00:22:30.480 And it goes like this.

00:22:32.220 If you're going to try to test your way out of it as opposed to simply, you know, doing what you can in the hot spots, it's very different.

00:22:41.380 Trying to test your way out of something is a lot of testing.

00:22:45.400 And here's the key.

00:22:46.800 It has to be almost immediate.

00:22:49.020 And people have to be able to get two or three tests.

00:22:51.820 You know, even if they don't have symptoms.

00:22:54.160 So if you want to test your way out of it, you're talking 20 million tests a day or something like that.

00:22:59.800 And they all have to be the instant kind.

00:23:02.360 We don't have anything like that.

00:23:04.520 What we have is the bare minimum that somebody can get tested.

00:23:08.980 They mail it away.

00:23:10.020 Three days later, it might come back.

00:23:12.080 In the meantime, you've walked around in your community spreading it.

00:23:15.300 Oh, I guess you should have been quarantined three days ago.

00:23:18.560 Now, I'm sure there are other ones, too, that are faster.

00:23:20.800 But don't be fooled, because test is not test.

00:23:25.860 There's all these different ones.

00:23:26.960 There's the serology, the testing for the antibodies are completely different tests than the others.

00:23:32.540 So there's that.

00:23:36.400 And here's the other way that you know that testing will not get us to the other side.

00:23:43.740 You've got 50 governors, smart people, Democrats, Republicans.

00:23:49.960 And you've got tons of leaders, the president, the task force, you know, lots of experts.

00:23:56.520 Here's something that none of them are telling you.

00:23:59.960 None of them.

00:24:00.440 Well, they're not saying.

00:24:01.440 I'm not saying there's truth to it.

00:24:03.760 They're not telling you this.

00:24:05.280 And it's that, as any governor said, for example, if we just wait X number of weeks, whatever X is, by then we'll have all the testing we need to be able to really test everybody and then just test our way out of this thing.

00:24:23.040 And do the contact tracing with the testing, of course.

00:24:26.840 So has anybody said, and remember, there's 50 governors, all these experts, there's the president.

00:24:33.780 There are a lot of people who should know how close we are to having enough tests to test our way out as opposed to just test a few people who come into the office, which is good enough for the phase one. 0.95

00:24:47.120 The reason that nobody has said, you know, you idiots, if you just give us two more weeks, we'll have all the tests we need, is because nobody has any idea that that could possibly happen.

00:25:01.000 We are not close to, let's say, the Bill Gates-described standard of being able to test so much that you can actually get on top of the virus and really basically just beat it. 0.98

00:25:13.080 We're not even close.

00:25:14.520 Nor will we be close.

00:25:15.960 It's very unlikely, in my opinion.

00:25:19.040 Now, none of us know what we don't know.

00:25:21.600 So it could be that there might be some kind of company that's in a garage that's just invented something that will ramp up like crazy, maybe.

00:25:33.440 But we don't know that.

00:25:35.040 So if you don't know that magic will happen, somebody suddenly appears and solves your problems, you can't really make it a plan.

00:25:42.360 So Ben Shapiro had this very well-written tweet, I think I mentioned this before, I tweeted it, in which he was describing the fact that we have no articulated plan.

00:25:55.680 Now, I would say we do have an articulated plan in the sense that when you don't articulate anything different, status quo is kind of the plan.

00:26:06.400 So, yeah, and Ben used the literary term deus ex machina.

00:26:12.300 I think it's pronounced machina.

00:26:14.640 It's not machina, right?

00:26:16.960 Deus ex machina.

00:26:18.580 Now, somebody will correct me in the comments, but it's a, is it Greek or Latin?

00:26:27.500 Latin or Greek, which is it?

00:26:29.380 But it's an old saying from the old days of plays when they were bad at writing plays.

00:26:37.640 Somebody says Greek.

00:26:38.760 So let's say, let's, let's say it's Greek.

00:26:40.640 And they would write these Greek plays and the stories were poorly written so that they get to the end of the play and the hero had a problem that just couldn't be solved.

00:26:50.540 And there was nothing that happened in the play so far that could sort of, you know, help that happen.

00:26:57.220 So the device that they use, the writing device, so it looks like it's Latin, but maybe, maybe it was used by the Greeks, I don't know.

00:27:09.640 So the, the mechanism that the writers used is this deus ex machina, which was basically God from the machine is what it means.

00:27:18.140 And it, and basically it would just, some super character would just appear at the end who had nothing to do with the story up to that point and would just solve the problem.

00:27:30.140 And, and so in, in modern day script writing, it would be considered a, an obvious writing mistake to require a deus ex machina at the end.

00:27:43.820 Because that means you wrote it so poorly, you couldn't solve, solve the story without introducing a new character at the end, which is just lame, right?

00:27:53.200 Yes.

00:27:53.440 I am the magic person that appears at the end.

00:27:56.560 So that's what Ben was making that comparison to our coronavirus plan.

00:28:02.800 And I liked it.

00:28:03.560 It's a good one, except not everybody knows what that term means.

00:28:06.280 And it's good because what exactly are we counting on that will be any different than today?

00:28:15.380 What would be different tomorrow from today?

00:28:19.620 We won't have a vaccine tomorrow.

00:28:21.660 We will, doesn't seem to be any therapeutic that's going to blow us away because we would know about it.

00:28:26.940 If there were any of the, I don't know, how many therapeutics are being tested, if any of them were like really good, we would totally know about it.

00:28:36.380 And they would have already stopped the test and it would be a big news story.

00:28:40.740 So you can be pretty sure that none of them are a whole lot.

00:28:45.140 Maybe some of them reduce virus or something.

00:28:47.900 You saw that remdesivir doesn't even change your, your death rate.

00:28:51.040 But, I mean, that's not much of a therapeutic.

00:28:55.080 So, anyway, I think that the plan at this point is that we will gingerly tiptoe in the next few weeks, see what happens.

00:29:06.520 And herd immunity is the play.

00:29:10.120 But I don't think anybody in government can say that out loud, right?

00:29:15.200 They really can't say out loud, well, we're going to see if everybody knows.

00:29:21.040 They just can't say that a lot of people will die.

00:29:24.200 So, intruder alert.

00:29:30.400 Yeah, that is Snickers.

00:29:32.140 She's outside now.

00:29:36.060 All right.

00:29:39.160 The app is making my hands moving so fast.

00:29:43.140 Somebody said it's just a hoax anyway, right?

00:29:46.460 Well, nobody ever said that coronavirus was a hoax except the people who thought it was like the virus, like the regular flu.

00:29:54.960 I think every, is there anybody who still thinks it's only like the regular flu?

00:29:58.780 Now that we know that the regular flu was never, never 50,000 or 80,000 a year, that that was just made up, that the actual real number of people who died from the flu, the regular flu, basically close to zero.

00:30:13.580 A few thousand a year.

00:30:14.980 That's it.

00:30:15.240 Your dog is barking back.

00:30:23.000 All right.

00:30:25.320 Does anybody have any questions?

00:30:26.900 I want to see if my earbuds work for this.

00:30:31.140 Let's see if Alex has a question.

00:30:35.020 Alex, you're going to be surprised by suddenly being connected to the world.

00:30:39.060 I don't think so.

00:30:40.100 Hey, Alex.

00:30:40.780 Can you hear me?

00:30:41.180 Good, how are you?

00:30:46.320 Good.

00:30:47.800 And I'm not sure that my earbuds are working.

00:30:53.620 I've never connected a while ago.

00:30:55.280 All right.

00:30:56.900 Do you have a question for me?

00:30:58.920 I didn't have a question.

00:31:00.960 I love all your periscopes and kind of gives me a little bit of faith in humanity when I get to see your smiling face two times a day.

00:31:08.460 Well, good.

00:31:10.100 I'm glad I helped in that small way.

00:31:13.740 But thanks for saying aye.

00:31:15.940 Yeah.

00:31:16.260 Thanks, Scott.

00:31:17.180 All right.

00:31:18.620 Caught it off guard.

00:31:20.540 All right.

00:31:20.960 Well, I don't think I have much else to talk about.

00:31:23.480 But I would encourage you all to take this opportunity to do what you can to improve your skills.

00:31:33.400 The slaughter meter is still at 200%.

00:31:37.720 Think about this.

00:31:40.860 What is President Trump's one area where he actually beats Democrats every time?

00:31:46.640 What's the one thing he beats Democrats at every time?

00:31:50.880 Handling the economy.

00:31:53.060 Right?

00:31:53.900 It's the one thing that forever people said, ah, we don't like this.

00:31:57.360 We don't like that.

00:31:58.300 But, you know, it's actually pretty good for the economy.

00:32:01.520 And if over the next few months, the way it looks like it's going to go, is the president will be busy himself trying to ramp up the economy, he's really going to be in his sweet spot, if you think about it.

00:32:17.220 Because I don't think anybody will blame him for ruining the economy.

00:32:21.760 He's not going to take the hit for that.

00:32:23.220 But people are going to say to themselves, who do I want to revive this thing?

00:32:29.440 You know, if I'm going to do CPR in this economy, who do I want to do that?

00:32:33.740 Do I want the guy who's done it before, who knows how to breathe energy into a thing?

00:32:39.880 Or do I want the guy who needs CPR himself, if you know what I mean?

00:32:46.120 Now, have any of you, yeah, it's the economy.

00:32:50.360 So, if you just straight line this out, which is a huge mistake, right?

00:32:56.080 If there's anything you would ever learn, that making a straight line prediction is just dumb because there are too many things that will change in a complicated situation.

00:33:05.220 And so, the slaughter meter is a dumb measurement because it imagines nothing will change, but of course it will.

00:33:13.860 Nobody saw the coronavirus coming, right?

00:33:15.920 So, it isn't useful for prediction, but it's sort of a fun device to say if everything went like this, how would it end?

00:33:22.800 And I would say that given that we're not going to want to play around with the economy, the voters are going to have a strong preference for the person they trusted the most.

00:33:32.600 And they might put everything else off.

00:33:34.460 I mean, I think the voters are going to say, you know, in a normal situation, I'd be caring about, you know, this, this, and this, and this, and this, and this.

00:33:45.460 But at the moment, I really care about the economy, and if we don't get that fixed, all the other stuff is going to break.

00:33:52.740 So, it's going to turn out to be basically a one-variable election.

00:33:57.680 I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean?

00:33:59.460 I mean, it's going to come down to who can handle the economy best, and if Trump has goosed the stock market, you know, another, let's say another 10% by November, it's, it's just a, it's a base clearing home run.

00:34:15.140 Because nobody is going to want to take a chance on ruining the economy when they just have a little taste of what that feels like.

00:34:23.060 You know, their, their, their appetite for risk is going to be very low.

00:34:27.820 All right.

00:34:33.280 It's a pandemic. 0.86

00:34:35.320 Yeah, I, I've been trying to ignore, there's some pandemic thing people keep sending me, and I know it's stupid, so I don't want to look at it, but I know I'll have to, because everybody's going to ask me about it. 0.51

00:34:47.460 Did I see the Duke U prediction for a quick recovery?

00:34:53.320 I did not, but here's what's, here's what is so different about this situation.

00:35:02.620 I called my local bike repair store, and I wanted to get a chain put on a bike, and bike stores, bike repair stores, are open because they're, they're essential, because it's transportation.

00:35:14.980 And, uh, I thought I could take my bike in and maybe get a new chain on it, and it turns out that the wait, the wait time at my local bike repair is two months.

00:35:27.740 They have so much business.

00:35:29.860 And then I said, well, do you have any, you know, certain kind of bike I was interested in?

00:35:33.720 And they, like, we, we have, like, no inventory. 0.96

00:35:37.000 They sold all their damn bikes, and they've got a two-month waiting list for repairs. 0.97

00:35:41.920 And how many other companies are in their situation? 0.99

00:35:47.100 Because there must be a whole bunch of, uh, startups that made money, you know, they make, they make things for coronavirus testing or whatever.

00:35:55.600 Uh, everybody makes paper products, a lot of the grocery business.

00:35:59.300 Amazon.com made a killing.

00:36:01.860 DoorDash probably did well.

00:36:03.160 So it's a weird kind of economic problem in which some number of people just did better, which I don't think that's ever happened before, right?

00:36:14.440 If we ever had a severe economic downturn, including the Depression, in which something like half of the people made money, right?

00:36:25.500 Because all the people who just got their regular paycheck, but they had to work at home or whatever, and that's a lot of people.

00:36:33.160 You know, fortunately, it's a lot of people.

00:36:35.000 They got their regular pay, and they didn't spend any money for three months.

00:36:38.860 So there should be a lot of spending coming back online faster than we've ever seen it happen before.

00:36:45.340 So I'm very much in the fast recovery, um, camp.

00:36:52.240 Um, somebody in the comments says, uh, that, uh, Timmy says that he sells hot tubs and they're all sold out and waiting for, and waiting for the factory to make more.

00:37:03.060 Yeah.

00:37:04.060 So, I mean, Netflix doing great.

00:37:06.340 I mean, there's just a lot of people who made a ton of money.

00:37:10.100 Uh, I wasn't one of them.

00:37:11.340 I got, you know, I'm getting, I'm getting pretty well, uh, beaten up in this, but I'll be fine in Walmart.

00:37:18.880 Um, yeah.

00:37:23.080 Uh, somebody just hired a tree service.

00:37:26.080 Yeah.

00:37:26.580 All right.

00:37:26.980 So anyway, I think the economy will come back fast is my guess.

00:37:31.760 And, uh, think about how much money Walmart made.

00:37:35.920 Somebody said, yeah, how much money did Walmart make?

00:37:39.140 Think about that.

00:37:41.340 All right.

00:37:43.040 Uh, do I, so he says, do I have any ghosts, UFOs, or paranormal stories?

00:37:48.820 Yes, I do.

00:37:50.440 Would you like to hear a good paranormal story before bed?

00:37:55.740 I know, I know you do.

00:37:57.540 I know you do.

00:37:58.900 All right, here he goes.

00:37:59.860 When I was studying to be a hypnotist, I was in early twenties, and there was somebody in the class who was also studying to be a hypnotist, who said that she was a psychic and that she did psychic readings and she could see the future.

00:38:16.960 Now, of course, I'm a pretty skeptical guy.

00:38:19.960 So, I thought, huh, yeah, you're a skeptic, you're a psychic, I'll bet you are.

00:38:28.040 Now, why don't you come over, make some predictions, we'll see how you do.

00:38:32.900 Now, my excuse was that my hypnosis professor, if you could call him that, had told us that one of the types of people you can identify that tend to be good subjects for hypnosis are people who claim to be psychics.

00:38:48.440 Now, he said he didn't know why, it's just something you'd notice over time, that if somebody claimed to be a psychic, they could be hypnotized very deeply, very quickly.

00:38:58.580 It was just an anecdote.

00:39:00.460 So, I said, hey, well, if, you know, the teacher says that works, you say you're a psychic, why don't you come over, I'll practice on you and I'll hypnotize you and bring your tarot cards.

00:39:10.740 So, she brings her tarot cards over to my place.

00:39:14.420 And I said, all right, let's do a little test.

00:39:17.740 So, I hypnotized her.

00:39:19.540 So, she was on the other side of the room, smallish room, but she's on the other side.

00:39:23.700 There's nobody else there.

00:39:25.260 You know, it was just my own place, nobody else there for sure.

00:39:29.440 And her eyes are closed and she's laying on her back on the other side of the room, all right.

00:39:34.060 So, she can't see anything.

00:39:35.660 If she did, I'd know.

00:39:37.020 She'd have to turn toward me to see my direction. 0.82

00:39:40.420 And I said, I'm going to pick some cards out of your tarot deck, you know, shuffle them.

00:39:44.520 I'll pick them.

00:39:45.360 And you tell me what card I picked.

00:39:47.740 And so, she said, all right.

00:39:50.880 So, I picked a card.

00:39:52.160 And, you know, I forget the weird little tarot cards.

00:39:54.900 It's like a, you know, I don't know, a joker doing this or somebody doing this.

00:40:00.620 So, anyway, I picked a card.

00:40:01.700 And I said, what card am I, did I pick?

00:40:03.960 And she describes it in great detail the wrong card.

00:40:09.580 So, I thought, I knew it, fraud, fraud, fraud, but I didn't tell her she was wrong.

00:40:17.560 I just said, all right, we'll do another one.

00:40:19.760 So, I said, I'm going to another one.

00:40:21.920 Describe this one.

00:40:23.180 And she describes it again with great confidence, but wrong.

00:40:26.860 I'm like, all right, 0 for 2.

00:40:29.860 I picked five cards in a row.

00:40:32.760 She got all five of them wrong.

00:40:36.140 So, there's no such thing as psychics, right?

00:40:40.140 But here's the thing.

00:40:42.520 She got all five of them right, just out of order.

00:40:50.860 Not making it up.

00:40:52.720 She got all five right, but out of order.

00:40:57.200 And of 70-whatever cards in a tarot deck.

00:41:00.460 Now, I don't know what the odds of that are.

00:41:02.560 What are the odds of that?

00:41:04.020 Pretty darn low, right?

00:41:05.080 So, then I started regressing her to her previous life. 0.85

00:41:12.120 Now, I don't believe in prior lives.

00:41:14.040 I'm just going to tell you the story.

00:41:16.020 So, she described in detail one of her prior lives.

00:41:20.360 And she was a guard at a World War II concentration camp.

00:41:27.320 And in her hypnotized state, she knew who she was,

00:41:32.440 but she didn't know her own name or what she looked like.

00:41:36.640 But she knew she had some kind of ID or photo or something.

00:41:40.300 So, in her hypnotized state, she pulled out the, you know,

00:41:43.360 the photo and the ID and described in detail

00:41:46.860 who she was in a World War II.

00:41:50.420 Now, you know, it's not like I believe that.

00:41:53.660 I'm just saying what she said.

00:41:55.380 And so, I led her through a number of questions about the psychic state.

00:42:03.240 She explained that she got the cards out of order

00:42:05.820 because in the psychic state,

00:42:07.680 she can't tell the difference between things that are going to happen

00:42:10.860 and things that have already happened.

00:42:14.180 I thought, well, that's interesting.

00:42:15.580 I mean, it's kind of complicated for a psychic.

00:42:18.780 I suppose that gives her more ways to be right.

00:42:20.520 But her story was that time doesn't exist in the psychic realm.

00:42:25.220 So, what has happened and what will happen,

00:42:28.120 that's only a difference that we recognize.

00:42:31.080 But she didn't.

00:42:32.920 Okay.

00:42:33.620 Sure.

00:42:34.220 Whatever.

00:42:34.960 So, I started asking a few more questions.

00:42:36.940 Got kind of excited.

00:42:38.360 Asked her about Atlantis.

00:42:39.680 And she had an answer to that.

00:42:41.340 And I didn't let her finish an answer.

00:42:44.860 I sort of talked over her.

00:42:46.520 You've probably seen me do that with my guests on here.

00:42:48.740 And I'm sort of an interrupter.

00:42:50.880 And I interrupted her.

00:42:54.180 And then she said, slow him down.

00:42:59.480 And I said, who are you talking to?

00:43:03.900 And she said, your spirit guide.

00:43:07.920 Now, here's the funny thing.

00:43:10.080 As soon as she said, slow him down,

00:43:12.600 and I recognized that she was talking to someone else in the room,

00:43:15.560 I felt every goose bump and every hair in my body just went boring.

00:43:22.100 And I could feel an entity behind me.

00:43:28.360 A benevolent entity.

00:43:30.000 And she described my spirit guide, she called it.

00:43:37.880 And she described it as someone who is present

00:43:41.100 and had been with me a long time

00:43:44.140 and was very fond of me

00:43:47.000 and considered me, I think, a young soul.

00:43:51.460 And so, as an old soul, my spirit guide was, you know,

00:43:56.300 trying to give me a little boost.

00:43:58.820 And here's the funny thing.

00:44:00.920 The moment she said that my spirit guide was in the room,

00:44:06.100 I had a vivid memory of a dream,

00:44:10.000 or was it,

00:44:12.400 that I had when I was maybe 10 years old.

00:44:15.360 I was in my bunk bed,

00:44:18.540 top bunk,

00:44:20.120 and I rolled over in bed,

00:44:22.680 middle of the night,

00:44:24.220 so that I was facing out toward the room,

00:44:27.240 and I could feel a presence.

00:44:29.560 And I opened my eyes,

00:44:31.300 and there right in front of my face

00:44:33.080 was an old man's face.

00:44:36.260 You know, an old man 1.00

00:44:37.220 standing there,

00:44:38.780 just right in front of my face.

00:44:41.080 And, of course, my eyes went,

00:44:42.700 oh,

00:44:43.780 strange old man in my bedroom.

00:44:46.480 And as I watched him,

00:44:48.800 and he was not as scary,

00:44:51.340 he was benevolent.

00:44:53.420 And he faded while I watched him

00:44:55.980 and just disappeared.

00:44:58.140 Years later,

00:44:59.480 when the psychic said that my spirit guide was in the room,

00:45:03.140 that picture,

00:45:04.660 out of nowhere,

00:45:06.300 popped into my head,

00:45:08.260 and I connected those two stories.

00:45:10.580 And I said to myself,

00:45:12.280 I don't believe any of this stuff.

00:45:16.200 But if I do have a spirit guide,

00:45:18.460 I think I've already met him.

00:45:21.340 And

00:45:21.820 that was probably the freakiest thing

00:45:25.780 that ever happened to me.

00:45:26.840 Now, after this,

00:45:28.800 because I could actually feel the presence,

00:45:31.960 after this,

00:45:33.300 she made a number of predictions.

00:45:35.580 She told me when my car would break down,

00:45:37.980 and it did,

00:45:38.660 how do you predict

00:45:42.400 when somebody's car is going to break down?

00:45:44.660 I mean,

00:45:45.760 cars can go pretty far

00:45:47.860 without breaking down.

00:45:49.580 Could have been a coincidence.

00:45:51.300 Then I told her I was going to play soccer,

00:45:53.460 and she told me I was going to get a knee injury.

00:45:56.080 And I was like,

00:45:56.740 oh,

00:45:57.020 don't say that.

00:45:58.040 And by the way,

00:45:58.940 I've been playing soccer for years and years and years,

00:46:02.320 and I've never had a knee injury.

00:46:04.280 So,

00:46:04.940 it would be pretty weird if this was like the one day I,

00:46:08.560 and I got a knee injury.

00:46:10.780 Now,

00:46:11.480 did I get a knee injury because it was in my head,

00:46:15.180 and I did something to cause it?

00:46:17.420 I don't know.

00:46:18.020 Maybe.

00:46:19.100 Could be.

00:46:20.400 Could be.

00:46:21.040 But this was one of the many experiences I had

00:46:25.300 on my journey to understanding reality

00:46:28.580 in terms of filters.

00:46:31.480 I no longer believe that we humans

00:46:34.200 evolved to have the kind of brains

00:46:36.800 that could understand reality

00:46:38.740 because we never needed to.

00:46:40.980 We can all live in our own reality.

00:46:43.300 You can believe the psychic was real.

00:46:45.780 I can believe she wasn't.

00:46:47.880 And yet,

00:46:48.420 our lives are exactly the same.

00:46:50.080 So,

00:46:50.340 we can live in different realities,

00:46:52.160 and we know this for sure

00:46:53.460 because it's happening right now.

00:46:55.560 And so,

00:46:56.500 I don't look at that and say

00:46:57.880 it was true or it wasn't true.

00:47:00.700 It was a filter.

00:47:02.780 If it had predicted

00:47:04.060 what was going to happen,

00:47:06.760 and indeed it did,

00:47:08.660 on several occasions,

00:47:09.860 she accurately predicted things

00:47:11.940 that were seemingly unlikely.

00:47:15.260 Maybe not that unlikely.

00:47:17.440 Maybe she was just good 0.99

00:47:18.520 at doing a cold read.

00:47:20.240 So,

00:47:20.640 I can keep my filter,

00:47:22.360 which is that it was probably luck,

00:47:24.360 or maybe I have selective memory about it.

00:47:28.060 It was coincidence.

00:47:29.420 I can keep that,

00:47:31.120 and she can keep hers,

00:47:32.960 that every bit of it was real,

00:47:35.060 and we can live in the same world.

00:47:37.080 So,

00:47:37.440 if you release on what is true,

00:47:41.180 which is really hard,

00:47:42.660 because you have to essentially

00:47:44.580 subjugate your own ego,

00:47:47.360 because your ego wants to know

00:47:48.940 that you figured it out.

00:47:51.180 Your ego wants to feel like,

00:47:53.400 yeah,

00:47:53.700 I know reality.

00:47:55.060 These other people don't. 1.00

00:47:56.580 These clowns are, 1.00

00:47:58.160 they're all confused. 0.99

00:47:59.100 than me?

00:48:00.280 Yeah,

00:48:01.000 I figured out reality.

00:48:03.120 So,

00:48:03.620 you have to get your ego

00:48:04.540 out of the way

00:48:05.320 to finally understand

00:48:07.360 that you don't know anything

00:48:08.220 about anything.

00:48:09.620 But sometimes,

00:48:10.960 a filter is more predictive

00:48:12.480 than another one,

00:48:14.100 and that's the best you can do.

00:48:16.120 So,

00:48:16.760 that is the thought

00:48:17.860 which I will leave you

00:48:18.880 with today.

00:48:21.320 And,

00:48:22.760 and I will see you

00:48:26.880 in the morning.

00:48:28.960 Tonight,

00:48:29.520 you're going to have

00:48:30.000 an amazing night of sleep.

00:48:32.420 Really one of the best.

00:48:35.300 Maybe not the best,

00:48:37.320 but a really good one.

00:48:39.280 Oh,

00:48:39.460 maybe not every one of you,

00:48:41.140 but many of you

00:48:41.980 are going to have

00:48:42.400 a great night tonight.

00:48:44.300 So relaxed,

00:48:46.160 feeling optimistic,

00:48:47.200 things are heading

00:48:48.480 in the right direction.

00:48:50.260 I'm going to leave you

00:48:50.960 with that thought.

00:48:53.020 See you in the morning.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 07, 2020

Episode 959 Scott Adams： Join Me in My Fortress of Garagitude

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