Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 977 Scott Adams： Ego Management, SPOX Level Absurd, Talent Stacks and Fun

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody. Come on in. Did you ever have one of those days when all the little stuff

00:00:10.560 just doesn't seem to work right? Well, having one of those, but I'm going to be out of it

00:00:16.120 soon. Watch this. If that printer makes a noise now. Print. Print. Well, let me tell you what

00:00:33.080 kind of a day it's been. Do you have these days where every little thing doesn't work?

00:00:40.720 I had this weird day where everything that was big and important worked really well today.

00:00:48.360 So on all the big parts of my life, sort of a crazy good day. But every little thing didn't work.

00:00:57.220 Every device didn't work. Didn't have a battery. The printer's not working. Neither computer's

00:01:03.680 working. I'm trying to print out some notes. I was just having some popcorn with Christina.

00:01:08.980 And, you know, it was like we popped this corn in the special little popper and I'm like

00:01:14.280 really looking forward to it. And the popcorn goes on the floor. And I'm thinking, it's one of those

00:01:21.600 days. But it won't last. Have you noticed that you get in those, you have those days when you are not

00:01:29.280 relaxed? So watch this correlation. This will be the freakiest thing you've ever heard, right?

00:01:35.160 Now, right now when you hear it, it won't be freaky when you first hear it, maybe.

00:01:40.840 But eventually, you're going to have a moment when you think back to it. And it's going to go like

00:01:45.000 this. When your environment is not conforming to you, you know, every little thing doesn't work,

00:01:53.960 is out of place, is just off one, it's out of paper, the battery's gone, the car's out of gas,

00:01:59.020 and it all hits at once. It always happens when you're in a certain frame of mind. And that frame

00:02:06.520 of mind is if you're tense. When you're tense, everything goes wrong. Now, ask yourself this

00:02:13.740 after you've watched it for a few years. This will take a few years to sink in. After you've watched

00:02:19.040 it for a few years, ask yourself if you're making it happen. Now, when I say make it happen,

00:02:25.540 I don't necessarily mean at the real level of reality, but maybe the bubble that you put

00:02:32.460 around yourself can either be a happy one or not happy. Maybe you just always have the

00:02:37.600 same amount of problems that you just don't notice. Have you ever noticed that? You have

00:02:42.440 the same amount of problems, but sometimes they don't bother you. Sometimes you just put

00:02:46.980 paper in the printer. Sometimes you just put gas in the car. Go on with your day. So ask

00:02:54.020 yourself, how much of it are you bringing on yourself? All right, we've got a bunch of

00:02:57.380 cool things to talk about. How many of you saw my obnoxious posting that I just did? Let's

00:03:06.340 put something in front of this light. There we go. Much better. So I posted a picture of

00:03:13.080 Snickers on Twitter, and there's more to the story. So that's the fun part. It'll lead into

00:03:19.220 something else. So the picture shows me reaching down to pet Snickers. And you may have seen that

00:03:26.760 there was sort of a big reaction to it. And of course, that was somewhat planned. So there

00:03:31.780 were two elements of this picture, besides Snickers, who's popular. There are two elements

00:03:37.260 of it that tell a story. One is that people quite rightly said, hey, are you really showing

00:03:44.960 that because your arm looks muscular in the picture? And the answer is, yes. The second

00:03:51.780 part of that is, hey, are you sort of humble bragging because you have an elevator in your

00:03:57.360 house and you took the picture into the elevator? And the answer is, I didn't really think about

00:04:01.900 that. That was just where the lighting was good. But I didn't think it was a problem.

00:04:08.160 Now, here's what you want to learn from this. If you want to build a following on Twitter,

00:04:16.300 or if you're in some creative world, or even if you're in the business world, the person

00:04:21.340 who stands out is the one who gets all the attention. What are, and let me tie this to another

00:04:28.700 point about ego. Now, knowing that I would be mocked for putting that there, was it worth

00:04:36.220 it? Because I knew that people would say, hey, you, you arrogant, whatever. Are you just

00:04:41.580 bragging because you were working out during the coronavirus? Now, since I knew that it would

00:04:47.620 be that kind of reaction, and the trolls would be all over me, and they'd mock me, and they'd

00:04:51.900 say bad things about, you know, my fiance, everything that actually happened. And of course, I knew

00:04:57.320 that would happen. Why did I do it? So why did I do it if I knew I was going to get people

00:05:05.040 worked up? And people would be like a little jealous that I have an elevator, and they might

00:05:09.780 be, you know, you think you're so arrogant. And the answer is, the answer is because it

00:05:17.700 works. It's a little bit of wrong. So Dr. Carmen Simon, I talk about her sometimes. She's

00:05:24.740 an expert on memory. If you want somebody to remember you, or to remember your PowerPoint

00:05:30.740 slides, or to remember anything about you, or to remember your product, to remember just

00:05:38.260 anything, the only way to do that is novelty. And the best kind of novelty is when somebody

00:05:44.400 processes something as a little bit wrong, but not so wrong that you have to do something

00:05:50.040 about it. So when people saw that picture, it was very much designed so that when people

00:05:57.120 say, this is bothering me a little bit, and I don't know why. I don't know that this was

00:06:03.960 really appropriate for him to do that. Is he trying to make me think that he's showing

00:06:10.740 the muscle, or is he trying to make me think that it's accidental? So I created a situation

00:06:17.020 with this picture entirely intentionally, in which you would have many questions. And

00:06:23.520 it just, you know, brings energy my way. Now, there are three people that I want you to

00:06:30.640 consider, and I'm going to give you a strange thought. One is me, one is President Trump,

00:06:39.640 and the other is Mike Cernovich. I like using Mike for lots of examples. He fits into lots

00:06:45.880 of examples for some reason. And think about what, if you were to think of the three of

00:06:50.900 us, what qualities would you imagine we have in common? Now, I'm not looking for compliments

00:06:56.940 like blah, blah. I'm looking for a negative quality. What seemingly negative quality would

00:07:05.100 be common to me, President Trump, and Mike Cernovich. Now, no positive qualities. Obnoxious. Good.

00:07:15.120 You're going in the right direction. Ego. Arrogance. Brag a lot. Good. Abrasive. Bragging. Braggarts.

00:07:25.460 Ego. Cocky. That's the word I was looking for. So all of those words are in that same general.

00:07:32.000 All right. So I guess I shouldn't have been worried that you wouldn't know what I was talking

00:07:36.700 about. I guess I didn't have to worry that you wouldn't know what we had in common. All

00:07:43.840 right. Here's the, here's the kicker. I would propose to you that when you look at the three

00:07:52.300 of us, or individually, and you say, there, there's a show off. There's somebody who has an ego

00:07:59.440 problem. Or there's something wrong with their ego, or they need to feed their ego, or they

00:08:05.660 have thin skin. I would suggest to you that it is exactly the opposite. And that what the

00:08:14.380 three of us really have in common is we can do any fucking thing in the world right in front 0.85

00:08:19.060 of you. And we don't care. That's what we have in common. And that is exactly the opposite

00:08:25.380 of an ego. An ego would have prevented you from doing the picture I just talked about.

00:08:32.380 Because you would have said to yourself, Oh, somebody is going to think I'm kind of a douche.

00:08:37.360 Did that stop me? It did not. It did not. Because I wasn't worried about what anybody thought

00:08:44.060 of me. Because it's not an ego thing. So I would say that Trump and Cernovich and I operate

00:08:52.440 on almost an energy level, which is, if you can move energy where you want it, that's all

00:08:58.840 you need it to do. If you're worried about the details, you're worried about the wrong stuff.

00:09:05.220 And that when you see somebody who can embarrass themselves in front of you, time after time

00:09:11.520 after time, do you think that Trump is worried about being embarrassed? I mean, he does more

00:09:18.940 more things that bring him more scorn and criticism than anybody you've ever seen in your entire

00:09:24.460 life. He seems to be able to brush it off. Now you say to yourself, but Scott, there is

00:09:29.960 so much reporting that President Trump is thin skinned. And it really gets gets in his head.

00:09:36.760 And when he gets criticized, he's really angry and stuff. Really? Who is it who's inside

00:09:44.040 his head who knows that? Let me give you an alternate explanation for everything you see

00:09:49.240 with Trump. He's competitive. Explains every observation. If you're competitive and you have

00:09:58.000 a bad day, let's say the bad day is you had bad headlines. So the news didn't go your way.

00:10:05.440 If you're simply competitive, how do you feel about it? Pretty worked up. You might swear,

00:10:12.120 you might get angry, you might raise your game, it might be part of like building yourself up to

00:10:16.580 perform better. But a competitor gets angry about being behind on the score. Is that ego?

00:10:25.480 Well, is it ego to be competitive and say, all right, but this is the game. If we're all

00:10:32.940 competitive, then you have capitalism. If we're all competitive, you have, you know, a democratic

00:10:38.120 system. There's nothing wrong with being competitive. I even tell my, I even tell the leaders of other

00:10:43.720 countries, you should be competitive, because I'm going to be competitive. So if you listen to

00:10:50.020 the way Trump talks about competition, it's very clear that he sees things as competition,

00:10:55.540 which is a very different model than my ego has been damaged. My God, I'm thin-skinned. I must lash

00:11:03.180 out. That's just, that's just the CNN, MSNBC, you know, baloney story. So I would suggest to you

00:11:11.660 that being able to take a great deal of criticism is sort of a superpower. And that I am fully aware

00:11:20.480 that some, I don't know, large percentage of the people watching this just got really turned off

00:11:25.500 by me. Does it matter? No. Because I would prefer, especially since this is an entertainment medium,

00:11:33.420 that whatever energy that created, I prefer the energy. So few people loved it, right? I'll bet a

00:11:43.740 few of you loved it when you heard me twist the ego thing around to just competition. Some of you

00:11:49.720 said, oh, that's not for me. I don't get this guy. Totally good trade-off, because I'll always take the

00:11:56.420 positive energy, let the negative energy go elsewhere. Let me talk about some people who are really getting

00:12:02.660 the talent stack thing right lately. If you haven't watched, if you're not watching Dan Bongino this

00:12:09.200 week, oh my God, you're missing the show. Oh, so Dan Bongino, of course, I would say one of the,

00:12:18.880 one of, if not the most capable person for explaining everything about the, you know, the legalities and

00:12:26.960 the ins and outs of the Obamagate, you know, Russia collusion, et cetera. But because you've,

00:12:32.660 but because events have gone his way, it's especially good. And today, I saw it today. I don't know if,

00:12:43.860 I think I ran today. I won't give away his latest thing, but he sounded discrepancy in this whole

00:12:49.920 unmasking thing that you have to hear. Now, he doesn't yet have, nor does anybody, I think, have the,

00:12:57.820 the direct evidence, like the thing. But man, he's so close. He's so close that he can see it and smell

00:13:07.200 it. And he's sort of a predator. You know, I think some people are just predators. And because he's so

00:13:12.820 close to his prey that he's been, you know, he's been basically, you know, stalking this prey for,

00:13:19.040 what, three years or something. And you can see his eyes are gigantic because he's almost there.

00:13:24.700 He's almost there. Anyway, what I want to say is, Dan Bongino impresses me on a whole bunch of levels.

00:13:34.080 But the main one is that he's, he's, it's clear from just observation, I think you'll agree with this,

00:13:39.720 that he's built a talent stack that's ridiculous. Because he isn't just, you know, good on TV. He's,

00:13:46.100 you know, he's obviously into fitness and stuff. So it keeps his energy high. He knows how to, you know,

00:13:51.240 be fit. It gives him charisma, gives him, gives him everything you need on TV. You know, you could

00:13:57.180 obviously, you can see he's learning like politics. He's, he's added that on top of his analysis of,

00:14:02.560 you know, police enforcement and how the government works and stuff. He's just watching and layering.

00:14:07.720 He's just layering skill on top of skill. And you just see him doing it in real time. And I just go,

00:14:14.340 well, that's exactly how you do it. Like, if you want to be something in this world,

00:14:21.320 and I take it he does, you say to yourself, what's it cost? I've told you this before,

00:14:26.080 the best advice you'll ever get, something I heard from some rich guy, I can't remember his name.

00:14:32.660 He said that if you want to be successful, find out the price, and then pay it.

00:14:38.040 Now you think to yourself, well, can it be that easy? No, the hard part is paying it. That's the

00:14:45.320 hard part. It's easy to know what to do. The hard part's doing it. But apparently Dan Bongino can do

00:14:52.060 it, because it doesn't seem to be too hard for him to just keep building those skills on top of skills

00:14:58.260 on top of skills. So it's just, it's a pleasure to watch, honestly. Now, if you were to pick,

00:15:03.820 if you were to say, what was the one thing that Dan Bongino does better than anybody else?

00:15:08.740 That's the magic. Nothing. The magic is nothing. But you put together that combination,

00:15:15.300 and who could do the show that he did today? Maybe nobody. Maybe nobody. I mean, Hannity's got an

00:15:24.960 incredible talent stack as well. But he's sort of a little different vibe. So he found a way to make

00:15:32.460 himself special, make himself provocative, build skills, bam. Let's talk about Kaylee McEnany.

00:15:42.060 Kaylee McEnany. I can never remember her name. She's got one of those names that sounds too much like

00:15:47.800 other things that I have to really go through my categorization in my head where I store names.

00:15:54.420 I go, oh, that's one of those. It's one of those, but spelled different. Which box did I put that in?

00:15:59.160 And then I have to reassemble her name every time I try to think of her. So she should change her name. 0.91

00:16:04.720 That's my advice. So is it my imagination? Or is she just next level? Am I right? Have you,

00:16:14.880 have you watched her first several appearances? Now, I don't think Trump has ever made a better hire

00:16:23.640 than that. You know, it took him a while to narrow down. And by the way, I think I thought all of his

00:16:30.060 prior press secretaries were great. Like, you know, Sarah Sanders, great. I thought they were all great.

00:16:36.040 I didn't have a problem with any of them. But she's a little bit next level. And I was trying to figure

00:16:42.500 out exactly why. And I think it comes back to the talent stack. Because if you're trying to look for

00:16:47.960 that one thing that she has, again, I don't know, is there, I don't think there's one thing

00:16:54.420 that she's the best at. But man, did she put together a package of individual talents. The one 0.58

00:17:00.960 I haven't seen before is she has some kind of level of super preparation and organization. So she's got

00:17:09.740 some kind of a, I don't know, a book of talking points or something. Except instead of being dumb

00:17:15.860 talking points, it's like kill shot after kill shot. Like normally, they have just talking points.

00:17:22.900 Well, the president sure loves the country. He loves the country. Yes, he does. And anything you say

00:17:28.000 that says the president doesn't love the country. Well, that's the fake news, because he loves the

00:17:32.320 country. You know, it's just, you just think it's a bunch of nothing. But I feel like every word that

00:17:38.340 comes out of her mouth, like lands like a dagger. That's not the sound of a dagger. But I sort of

00:17:45.920 combined a angry cat and a dagger. So if you imagine a dagger that sounds like an angry, forget it.

00:17:53.220 But the point is, and I was also looking for technique. So aside from the fact that she's so

00:18:00.120 organized, that when you can see the question is asked, and you see this twinkle in her eye,

00:18:06.020 and then she turns the page, and you know what's coming. Like she's, she's created a pattern now.

00:18:12.260 Like the, I swear that I think the reporters get afraid when they see this. I'll try to,

00:18:19.000 for those of you who are watching on video, I'll try to do it. She'll be there waiting for the

00:18:22.780 question. Yeah, just smiling. And then, then she'll hear the question, and she'll know it's one of the

00:18:29.260 ones that she's got five zingers for in her prepared book. And you see this. This is just

00:18:35.500 a little smile. And then she looks down at her book. She turns one page. And that's the funny

00:18:40.540 part. She never turns two pages. She's always one page away from five kill shots. And she just looks 1.00

00:18:47.320 see you. And she goes, and then she looks down and you know, it's going to be, it's going to be five

00:18:53.280 minutes of pain for the press because she was just, she's just slaughtering them. It's just not even 0.99

00:18:59.720 fair. And, and the thing that, well, what was the thing she did today? Oh, the thing that she did

00:19:07.140 today was, was brilliant was, so of course, Trump gets blamed for not being prepared enough. And,

00:19:12.960 you know, gosh, darn, the Obama administration left a whole detailed plan of what to do in a

00:19:18.760 pandemic. And it's all chaos. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. So Kayleigh McEnany goes out there.

00:19:25.600 And instead of doing this, which you'd expect, what you'd expect is, she'd say, no, we did pretty well.

00:19:33.700 We actually performed well. Look at our ventilators. Like, that's the normal thing, right? You just say,

00:19:39.240 no, it wasn't that chaotic. We did really well. Here's, here's several examples. No, she doesn't

00:19:45.680 do that. She says, yeah, we cleaned up Obama's mess. What? What? She completely reframes it to them

00:19:57.620 cleaning up his mess. Now, if that's all she'd said, without being able to back it up, I would have

00:20:04.720 said, all right, all right, that's just sort of a clever framing. That's, it's not that clever,

00:20:09.100 right? It's just that. But she backs it up with this. She talks about the supply chain. Now,

00:20:17.520 that's strong, because the supply chain basically was the whole problem. Not only was it the problem

00:20:23.540 getting the PPE and meds and everything else, but it highlighted a problem with China, just the whole 0.90

00:20:30.760 China relationship. So, you know, Obama not only was behind whatever was not good about the China

00:20:37.900 relationship, according to, you know, the Trump administration, but also clearly the bad guy

00:20:43.440 in terms of the supply chain and our inability to get what we needed. So, so instead of just defending

00:20:51.600 that, oh, it wasn't that chaotic. We got you all kinds of ventilators and stuff. You know,

00:20:56.480 everything was fine. She goes, full out, we had to clean up Obama's mess. And then when you think

00:21:02.460 you can't possibly support a claim that outrageous, she says, look at the supply chain and you go,

00:21:09.680 yeah, that was bigger than everything else. If you added up everything that the Trump administration

00:21:16.660 did wrong, if you took it all, added it all up and multiplied it by 10, it doesn't really come

00:21:23.200 close to equaling the massive fuck up of the supply chain being in China. I mean, there's nothing

00:21:30.540 that's really sort of, sort of like that. That's, that's fundamental. So the fact that nobody had

00:21:39.120 been able to pull that framing out yet until she, she popped it out. So this is what, here's the bottom

00:21:46.200 line. Generally when the press secretary for the president makes news, isn't it usually the reporter

00:21:54.420 who's making news, right? Because the reporter gets the trick question in and then, you know,

00:22:00.540 there's the awkward answer or the non-answer and then the reporter does a little star turn and

00:22:06.280 everything. So the press, the, you know, the whole press event is supposed to be, according to the

00:22:13.340 reporters, an event, an event for them to shine. And somehow Kayleigh McEnany has turned it into 0.55

00:22:20.400 an event for them, for her to slaughter them on camera while we're all watching. I mean, 1.00

00:22:25.380 she's basically turned that whole audience into a wet market. I hope I'm the first person who ever 0.99

00:22:30.820 said that because pretty proud of that. Anyway, so, uh, the, the, the president has made two

00:22:39.760 incredible hires recently. One is, uh, you know, Grinnell, Ambassador Grinnell, uh, as, uh, acting DNI and the

00:22:47.320 other is, uh, his new, his new Spox. So he's really on a roll for some of that stuff. Um, let me ask you,

00:22:55.720 do you believe, uh, I talked this morning about, uh, Sorrento Therapeutics saying that they have

00:23:03.200 literally a cure for coronavirus. And my thinking at the time I explained this morning was that no CEO

00:23:11.860 of a company that recently turned down a billion dollar offer. So it must be something to the

00:23:16.860 company. Uh, no CEO in that position would tell such a bold lie to the public and, and basically risk

00:23:27.180 everything unless he thought it was true, but you should do your homework on that company

00:23:34.000 because let's just say I don't own that stock anymore. Now it's not because I have any specific

00:23:41.020 reason to distrust them, but after, uh, you know, after owning the stock for a few hours

00:23:47.940 and, and looking at it go up, I said to myself, do I want this free money, which is laying on this

00:23:55.260 table? Or do I want to find out in a few weeks that this wasn't quite what I thought it was?

00:24:01.360 Because if you were to look at the big picture and say, okay, how often are things not the way

00:24:06.440 you think that they should be, or they don't turn out the way that you hope? Well, that's most of the

00:24:11.560 time, isn't it? Sort of most of the time things don't work out right. So anyway, I got out of that

00:24:16.900 stock. Don't take any advice from me on financial stuff. I'm just giving you full disclosure because I

00:24:24.660 mentioned it this morning. I think it would be fair to say that. What do you think about these

00:24:28.480 Trump vaccines and they're going to deliver them with the military? They got a great name project

00:24:33.480 warp speed. Here's the, here's the thing I like best about the plan. I do like that. It's sort of

00:24:39.680 a Manhattan project for vaccines because doesn't that feel right? You know, hasn't everybody been

00:24:46.280 saying since the beginning, whenever there's a crisis, somebody says, well, let's do a Manhattan

00:24:51.680 project of something. I'm sure there's a Manhattan project that will fix everything. And there's

00:24:58.260 something about knowing there's a Manhattan project that makes you feel like you're getting

00:25:03.580 some progress, right? So, so Trump does this Manhattan project called project warp speed, where

00:25:12.380 they're going to, you know, the government is really going to go in and make sure that the vaccines

00:25:18.060 are produced in volume, even before they know they're tested and they work. So pretty impressive.

00:25:24.360 But here's the best part. The best part is that the president has, if this works, you know,

00:25:31.380 and I, I'm a little skeptical that we'll have any kind of a working vaccine that quickly, but

00:25:36.720 let's say it does. If it does, what he's got lined up is that the military, in his words,

00:25:43.880 he's going to use every plane, plane and truck and I don't know, boat or whatever to deliver

00:25:49.660 it. So he's got the military lined up to just like blanket the country with the vaccine. Now

00:25:56.680 there are probably other ways to deliver vaccine, wouldn't you say? Probably other ways to do

00:26:03.500 that. Like FedEx can get it to you tomorrow, can't they? I mean, it can't be that hard to

00:26:10.380 deliver a lot of vaccine with just our normal existing things. But yeah, you're ahead of me.

00:26:18.200 You're ahead of me. What does the country need more than that? Like what would be cooler

00:26:26.040 than the military delivering the freaking vaccines? I don't care what that costs. Like, you know,

00:26:35.300 that's the sort of thing where I'd say to myself, oh, shouldn't we price that out? Because,

00:26:38.820 you know, FedEx is pretty reasonable too. But in this case, no, no, we should not price that out.

00:26:45.800 The military needs to deliver this. It's just so perfect. It's just so perfect. I don't know what

00:26:51.500 they think of it. If they don't like it, then I'll change my mind. But I do love that visual. And

00:26:57.760 it's good for the country. It's just good for the country. Suicide is down in Japan. Remember I 0.95

00:27:06.280 predicted what I call the Sherrill theory, you know, Sherrill's law, that when there's anything

00:27:14.180 that's just a big change, people will pause what they were going to do anyway. And I thought that

00:27:20.780 if the lockdown was brief, you might actually see a reduction in suicide. Obviously, the longer it goes,

00:27:28.660 that's going to reverse. And I'm sure we've gone long enough now that there's probably a crossover

00:27:34.000 point. We're probably past it, unfortunately. But in Japan, suicides went down. And I think

00:27:43.440 I'm the only person who predicted it was even possible. So we'll see if that holds in the

00:27:48.000 United States. There's too many things that are different, but it would be worth looking

00:27:51.240 at it. So I was thinking of zooming instead of periscoping. I think I can do that, right?

00:28:02.680 I think I can zoom and it still goes to periscope. I have to look into that. Because what I want

00:28:09.560 to do is some split window stuff. And I'm not sure if we're there yet. All right. Those were

00:28:16.800 the comments I was planning to make. And what do I think of the LA mayor? You know, I don't think

00:28:25.160 he's killing it. I don't think he's killing it. You know, I don't live in Southern California. So

00:28:29.860 I'm not close to that situation. Anybody have any questions? Anything else you'd like to?

00:28:37.780 Oh, I'm sorry. I promised you something and I didn't deliver. So let me deliver. I promised to

00:28:45.620 tell you why, in a tweet, I said that tonight I would tell you why even ugly musicians have groupies.

00:28:52.940 Now, the obvious answer, why an ugly, let's say an ugly male musician, just to keep the visual. 1.00

00:29:00.160 Now, obviously, they might be successful and rich and talented. And those things would

00:29:04.600 would appeal to people. But there's something else I figured out in the process of playing drums.

00:29:12.580 Now, I've talked to you a lot about how when you add talents to your talent stack,

00:29:17.940 sometimes the talents will have some weird intersection that opens up a door. And you can

00:29:23.340 see something clearly that you wouldn't have seen if you had one talent or the other. But when you

00:29:28.580 mash them together, it's like, oh, you put these two together. What am I seeing? And what the two that

00:29:34.280 I put together intentionally is, you know, I know persuasion, and I know what persuades. And one of the

00:29:41.540 big elements of persuasion, one of the biggest, by far, is pacing and leading. Pacing meaning matching

00:29:49.060 your bodily rhythms, your breathing, your motion, your posture, matching you in any way, matching the

00:29:57.000 way you talk. So you pace somebody that way, just match them. And then they more easily can be

00:30:02.700 influenced. Because once they get comfortable with your same rhythm, then you can sort of lead them.

00:30:08.240 That's the pacing and leading. And that's what music is. So music basically is the musician is

00:30:16.020 pacing the audience until he can lead. And once he can lead, well, your defenses are down.

00:30:22.800 And the groupies are coming. So my insight here, and obviously it does make a difference that

00:30:33.260 they're famous and talented and whatever. So those things are attractive as well. But I'm pretty sure

00:30:38.920 that there's something about the music itself that makes musicians uniquely attractive to people

00:30:46.200 because they've been paced. Now, here's the trick. It's the same problem with, you know,

00:30:51.520 hypnosis as it is with music. You have to first match people. But how do you match all kinds of

00:30:58.780 different people who are in different moods and different modes? Well, the beauty of it is that now

00:31:04.460 we have music that people self-select. So people are selecting music that already matches their mood,

00:31:10.520 their mood, or maybe one that they want to get into. So people are already pacing with the music.

00:31:15.760 They do that themselves. And if you were, let's say, a DJ, and you're reading the crowd,

00:31:22.700 you would want to start out with what kind of music feels like the mood of the crowd. If you can hit it,

00:31:29.060 then you can take them to the next level. So the DJ is trying to match you with your rhythms and your

00:31:36.040 beats and your moods and the vibe. And then once you've been matched, then he can take you to a

00:31:41.220 higher level. And that's, you know, a successful show. So that was an insight that I would not have

00:31:48.900 had except for the marriage of the fact that I'm learning drums now. And when I'm feeling the beat

00:31:55.640 and the pattern, I'm thinking to myself, hey, this is just persuasion. It's all just pacing and leading.

00:32:01.920 And, you know, it's clear when you've studied persuasion.

00:32:09.600 You should do group hypnosis, somebody says. You know, it doesn't work as well.

00:32:15.640 It does. You can do a little bit, but because everybody's in a different place,

00:32:20.740 hypnotizing a group is kind of hard. The only thing you can do that works is relaxation, I would say.

00:32:26.660 You can get a group to relax all at the same time.

00:32:29.120 Do I have musical rhythm? I'm trying to find that out. I would say there's no indication of it.

00:32:37.120 There's no indication that I have rhythm. But when I use my metronome and I, you know,

00:32:43.940 if I pay attention, I can match it perfectly. But how hard is that? I mean, everybody could do that,

00:32:49.220 I think. Somebody says, I'm stuck on the toilet. Can you help? I can. So what you want to do is

00:32:57.420 make sure you've got a nice seal and then flush. And that'll cause a suction action 0.99

00:33:05.620 that once it reverses will cause higher pressure pop you right off.

00:33:15.100 Well, it's worth a try.

00:33:16.160 Someone was saying Starbucks is not taking cash. I would imagine that's true.

00:33:24.440 I can't imagine anybody will be taking cash pretty soon.

00:33:28.580 Do I dance like Elaine? Pretty much.

00:33:33.360 Do I know Anthony Cools? I do not.

00:33:36.520 Is Elon Musk a master persuader? Totally.

00:33:39.800 Yeah, he's his own thing. I don't think that he would conform to a lot of the base technique that I talk about.

00:33:48.420 But yeah, he's operating on another level.

00:33:55.720 The military will deliver the kill shot.

00:33:59.760 Very good. I'll give you credit for that.

00:34:02.300 All right. That's all we got for now.

00:34:03.620 I'm going to go do something else.

00:34:05.460 And I hope that you have an amazing, amazing day.

00:34:10.620 And I'll talk to you soon.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 16, 2020

Episode 977 Scott Adams： Ego Management, SPOX Level Absurd, Talent Stacks and Fun

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