Episode 979 Scott Adams： Buggy Imperial Prediction Model, Reverse Leadership, and Carrier Wave for Persuasion
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, Scott Adams talks about his new book "Tools of Titans" and how it has changed the way people think about their lives and how they can make the most of their talent.
Transcript
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and suddenly a great calm fell upon the internet because it was time for coffee with the scott
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adams without coffee evening edition yes once again we meet here in this digital playground
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where i will take your mind in strange and wonderful directions oh yeah you're going to
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learn something your your your body will be alive have i oversold it yet well let me see let me see
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if i can meet this lofty claim i in the next in the next 60 seconds if you're not enjoying yourself
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i lied so that's that's my uh my promise to you and the clock's already started in 60 seconds
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you're going to say okay that was kind of fun that was kind of fun and i'd like to bring in my special
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guest to help you with some affirmations you might recognize him you are more beautiful than a
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blossoming flower on a warm spring morning it's true you are could we hear another mr president
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some of us build walls but you tear them down you too you tear them down by being yourself you make
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america great again just be yourself let your inner beauty shine outwards just like mine does just like
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his does uh i would like to thank john and julie mosley mosley mosley or is it mosley you should
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really send a pronunciation guide with your name john and julie because we don't know if it's mosley
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mosley or mosley possibly mosley but i'd go with mosley if i were you there is a weird and wonderful
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thing happening you know timing is everything i i tweeted that there's a guy who's been building his
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trying to build his own outdoor drive-in theater for 10 years and he's just about done and now it's
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time for outdoor drive-in theaters so he works on this thing for 10 years and when he's about ready
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to be done suddenly the world really needs an outdoor drive-in theater so you can't there's nothing
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you can do that's as good as getting lucky timing wise um i think i told you yes uh probably yesterday
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or maybe this morning uh that i got lucky with a stock pick there's nothing that substitutes
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for luck all the preparation in the world is not ever going to be as powerful as luck now you can
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manipulate your luck by going where there's more of it i talk about that a lot but you can't change
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luck itself you can simply go where there's more energy more chance for luck to find you you can
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certainly do that so here's where i'm going with this so in 2013 i wrote this book i had a failed
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almost everything and it made sort of a modest impact but i don't think it was the right time
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because you know things were starting to look good we're we're entering a pretty good period
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economically and i think people didn't really think i need to really shake things up or do
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things differently as much but here we are now in these uncertain times and people are asking the
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question what do i do now what's next and um so i think that that's caused some kind of a renaissance
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because everywhere i go it seems people are now mentioning this book and they're mentioning two
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concepts from it the talent the idea of the talent stack and systems over goals and one of the ways i
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tell you that you can you can tell if an idea is going to be viral you know if an idea is really going
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to catch on or grow so that could be an idea or it could be a product and the thing you look for is
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always the same thing you look for what people are doing with their physical body don't don't listen
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to their words you know you can't read their thoughts but you can watch what they do with their body
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so if somebody uh for example writes a book that's based on my you know ideas they're actually doing
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something that's physical they're writing a book if somebody passes around makes a video so a number of
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people made videos uh talking about the ideas in the book and tim ferris was nice enough to
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give a big shout out when he was asked you know what's the best somebody asked him recently what's
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the best career advice and he just gave my career advice you know he he gave me credit for it and he
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wrote about me in his book tools uh for tools of titans or for titans tools of titans and now if you
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don't know the name tim ferris i mentioned him specifically because he would be probably the
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leading person right now in terms of career advice so if he if he chose to highlight what was in this
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book it's pretty important um so so i promised you that i wasn't going to do just a commercial like
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i'd i try to make sure that if i mentioned anything that i've done that has any kind of a price tag on it
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i would also give you some value and here's the value there has never been a better time
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to improve your talent stack you still have time you've got probably a lot of you maybe you got
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weeks more a month more and i'm hearing every day i think i think today five or six people told me
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that they changed their life by changing their talent stack or using systems versus goal that's
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five or six people just today told me it changed their life and they use those very words by the
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way that's not that's not my exaggerated version of it they they almost to a person they say it
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changed my life turned my business around that sort of thing so uh i would say it's one thing to know
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that there were some tools and it's one thing to have the opportunity it's another thing to have
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the opportunity to use them that's kind of perfect i mean this is the time there there are a lot of
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people who are going to emerge from this thing with superpowers and you could be one of them let's talk
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about the uh this story is so expected except by people who have never done models i guess so the
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imperial college model that was the prediction model that said there was going to be dire consequences
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with the coronavirus half a million people dying i think just in great britain so it was a it was the
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scariest of the models and to some extent it probably influenced the the shutdown lockdown uh strategies
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but we don't know how much because you know there's there was a lot of other information but it was
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probably one of the bigger factors people think and today uh we find that their code was released
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so a lot of people said hey you know given that we're maybe running the entire planet based on this
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model do you think you could do us a solid and show us the computer code they that produced it what do
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you think happened when the experts looked at the computer code if you don't know this story
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just fucking guess just fucking guess what do you think happened when the experts looked at the code
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uh let me read you a few comments and and if you didn't know if you didn't know this was true before
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you knew it was true then you didn't talk to somebody who's done this kind of work in the real world
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uh let's see here's a comment uh so experts have derided the coding uh called it a buggy mess that
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looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming shall i go on
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allow me to continue uh quote in our commercial reality we would fire anyone for developing code like
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this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust said blah blah
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and then this is the best part i don't know if you'll fully appreciate maybe you have to have
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some experience with software to fully appreciate this next part because it's a little bit nerdy but
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this is something you don't want to hear about your software uh quote there
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i don't know if i can read this uh there appears to be a bug in either the creation or reuse of the
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network file if we attempt two completely identical runs only varying and that the second should use the
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network file produced by the first the results are quite different
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so basically you can run the same you can run the same data through it and you get a different answer
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so then there's your there's your prediction model that just determined how to run the world
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and the funny thing is the funny thing is there there's a slice of the population which i count myself in
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who have simply had experience in this world we fucking knew this i didn't have to see the code
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we fucking knew this yeah no no examination of the of the source code necessary and i think i've been
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all right uh i think i have a hypothesis for uh a mystery that i've been noodling on for a while
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and the mystery is this we have so many so many states and so many countries all with their own
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leaders doing various different things to battle the coronavirus wouldn't you say that generally
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speaking it doesn't seem to make any difference who the leader is right because they all seem to be
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somewhere in the range and and when they're not in the range there's a reason you know like oh they
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got some old people or you hit a nursing home before they caught it but generally speaking the mystery
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that's the the part that's a mystery to me is it feels like everybody's performing somewhat similarly
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which makes me think that leadership isn't a thing
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but here's what i realized today here's my new hypothesis try this out this is such a unique
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kind of crisis that it's a bottom-up leadership um by necessity in other words when when the experts
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come to the leader of any country the leader says i don't know what to do seriously i've never managed
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a coronavirus crisis tell me what to do the experts then would go about the task of telling the leader
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what to do but i believe the nature of experts you know generally speaking there will be exceptions
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but the nature of experts is that they probably coordinate and probably it took a very probably a
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very short amount of time for all of the experts in all the countries to check in with all the other
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experts the world health organization the cdcs you know probably a lot of people checking in with america
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to say all right we we think we got this but what are you doing let's just make sure you know is that
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the same thing europe's doing you know what are they doing in china so what you would expect because it
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was an expert driven solution is that the experts would be managing the leaders and not the leaders
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managing the experts which is a more typical situation in normal business and normal government
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right mostly the leaders are telling the experts what solution to come up with
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but but because this close off guard and our leaders are not virologists or anything like it
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i think leadership became somewhat unimportant because the leaders were all listening to the experts
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the experts were all talking to each other and so they had different you know resources so some of
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them said we got hydroxychloroquine we don't have ventilators you know so let's play it this way we've
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got old people we don't let's play it this way but it the coronavirus doesn't seem sensitive to leadership
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and i think that's why because it was a bottom-up like a reverse leadership situation just a theory
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all right here's my weirdest new theory uh and as i say too often if you if you have enough experience
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in different domains which is part of having a talent stack you can see the world more clearly
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and there i've now combined three of my experiences to see one new thing more clearly and i'm going to run
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this by you now you've heard a very you've heard an early version of this but this is the more complete version
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the early version i wasn't happy with it it goes like this and first of all my experience at the phone company
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uh and and putting together basically digital signals that crossed wires not not personally putting them together
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but i was in the lab and we're always dealing with sending carrier signals across the line
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so the carrier signal is just sort of the the baseline signal that gets manipulated so that
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when you read the manipulations on the other end you know what got sent but it's a carrier signal
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um and now and as you know i'm learning to play drums and you of course know that i write about
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persuasion a lot well those three things sort of came together and i finally realized this
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let's call it a hypothesis the persuasion when you're persuading other people has a carrier signal
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meaning that there's something that that connects people from a distance it you know could be in the
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same room but at you know a distance from you in the room and that thing is vibration but the vibration
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comes in different forms it could be singing it could be instrumental it could be music it could be
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chanting it could be the pledge of allegiance it could be praying um and all of those things have the
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same quality which is that people find the the same vibration if you look at a church for example it's
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actually built for good acoustic vibration so when the choir is singing everybody in the church is vibrating
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now is it a coincidence that in every large organization where persuasion is important
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they're trying to get you to be let's say more committed to the organization more religious maybe
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more patriotic maybe you've joined a cult maybe you went to a concert and they're just trying to make
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you like the act so you'll buy the albums in all cases you're part of a group that is being influenced
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by vibration but the vibration here's the fun part the vibration is not the the influence the vibration
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is just setting up the carrier signal so once everybody's on the same vibration now you can do
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the persuasion so it's really just making the connection just like a phone call the line is
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connected but you still have to send something and the sending can be the lyrics of the song
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it could be the words of the pledge of allegiance or the you know the national anthem it could be
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whatever you're chanting but i think it also could be melody you could put melody on top of vibration
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and by the way this is where music comes in because it took me a while to figure out that the beat of a
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drum is actually just a vibration it's just a slow one if somebody's singing it's the literally the air is
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vibrating at a higher rate uh but if you're beating a drum bum bum bum bum bum it's still a vibration
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it's just super slowed down so it's all vibration and all of it affects us the same way which is it
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just connects you you say okay i'm vibrating at the same same pitch same frequency let's say as these
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other people and then the persuasion goes right in it is not it is not an accident that every group that
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wants to i'm going to say brainwash but it's not always for bad intentions but they are trying to
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persuade brainwash convince and once you see that pattern it's it's kind of amazing um
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and that's also have you ever noticed that music is better when you're with your friends
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have you noticed that uh for me the only music i really loved in college was the music that i saw
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somebody else enjoy at the same time in the same room and until i saw somebody else enjoy it
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i didn't enjoy the music and i think what it was is i would see somebody else sort of matching the
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you know matching the music and vibration and between the music and the other person then i would
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sort of you know match the vibration as well so that too was just persuasion i just didn't know it
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at the time so those were my comments for today um does anybody have a question which they would like to
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ask me uh just looking at your comments here and by the way does is anybody feeling better about the
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the lockdown i mean other than the obvious financial panic is anybody feeling that we'll get past this
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stock crash what are the odds of a stock crash you know the stock market
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is i think completely irrationally priced and yet rationally irrationally priced it's the damnedest thing
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because the by all by all accounts the stock market should be lower but it's a future it's a future
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looking indicator so it's clear that the people who have the money to invest believe the stock market's
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going to be okay in the long run so are they right here's the here's the fun part it's not that they're
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right or they're wrong it's that they're making it so so the people who are booing the stock market
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they're not they're not just guessing that it will be good they're making it good and so if people
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keep the stock market high enough all right it's lower than the high but it's still still in that
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acceptable you know bottom of the acceptable range if you keep it there then the people who own stock are
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going to feel like they can spend money and pretty soon we're going to really need people to spend
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money to to get things going so as long as we can keep that stock market sort of even artificially
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high it creates the opportunity for people to spend in a way they wouldn't have if they had been
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somebody says the stock market is is priced for a trump win i think that's true
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yeah uh face masks equals carbon dioxide is that another story there are all these crazy stories
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about your your face mask is going to kill you and i i think it's just a uh it it's just something
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about the fact that there always has to be another side to every story you know if the main story was
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um air is good you know if let's say if you can imagine that tomorrow there was some magic technology
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that cleaned all the pollution out of the air like all man-made pollution and just tomorrow just cleared
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it all out of the air it would take about a week before you'd see a story that says doctors claim
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they're removing all the pollution from the air is lowering your immune spots because now you're just not
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used to it now if you walk into a room that's got a little bad air pollution in the room well you're
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going to get sick because you didn't toughen yourself up with that pollution so there's there's probably
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not anything that there won't be a story on the other side so when i look at the mask stuff i just
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think that of course there's a story on the other side but as long i'll just stick with this as long as
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it still makes sense to sneeze into your elbow mask makes sense that's it that's the whole argument right
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there uh any chance for kamala to be vp i think so um although doesn't it seem like we should have
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known by now i don't know what biden's waiting for there might be lots of lots of maneuvering in the
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background you have to assume that people are trying to figure out what to do in that whole biden
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situation uh the sorrento thing well i i would uh put the sorrento um claim of a cure oh let's with
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emphasis on claim i would demote that to sort of all the other stories of things that might save the day
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uh i i don't know that it has a special place but it was it was promising for about a day
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somebody says i've had asthma is very difficult wearing a mask yeah you know what i'm expecting
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here's what i'm expecting i think that someday you can have some like a mouthpiece or maybe a
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mouthpiece that also covers your nose that's just sort of like a mouth nose thing and it'll have some
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electronics in it maybe you'll have a far uv light so that the air that's coming in and out of your
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mouth is just actually disinfected on the way in and out and maybe we'll just always wear them you
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you just you just attach it to your face and you'll just breathe better it'll clean the air
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oh snickers is old and she's she's a little limpy today but she's been pretty active
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i tried to make her not active but it's hard you know stacey abrams is going to be vp i don't think
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so i think that would be the least likely choice well elizabeth warren is pretty unlikely
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sorrento never claimed a cure well um i will only say what the what the news report said
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the news report reported that the ceo specifically called it a cure so whether that actually happened
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or that was fake news well who knows um have i found any science backing the masks well at this
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point would you trust any science about the masks the only thing i'm completely sure of
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is that it blocks droplets if it blocks droplets and that's basically the whole problem
00:24:31.660
um can mars be colonized by humans inevitably you know i think the colonization of mars you know
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elon musk is right there it's not really a question of if we'll colonize mars it's not really an
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the if question we're definitely going to colonize mars it's just going to you know how long does it
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take vaccine still long shot i think so i think vaccine is still a long shot and i'm a little puzzled
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by all the optimism that's being shown uh but man do i love the trump plan of having the military deliver
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it you know should we get one that works that is just that's just such a good show i just hope the
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military doesn't mind doing it yeah i don't imagine that they would mind given that it would be saving
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lives but uh i wouldn't want to use them for the wrong purpose but it feels like the right purpose just
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my own personal feeling about it um funniest book i've ever read good question probably maybe a dave
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berry book or uh i'm forgetting the name yeah maybe a dave berry book back in the days
00:25:49.020
all right um will nicky haley be in the new trump administration next round i don't know
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kind of i don't know their relationship really i think you'd have to know how they feel about each
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other uh mars is a loser planet somebody says well so far they don't seem like winners did you notice
00:26:10.220
that the entire top left of cnn was people who died i'm wondering if there's going to be uh a lot of
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a lot of a lot of old famous people dying just because of this weird situation not necessarily
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because they got coronavirus but it feels like they're coming in waves now don't they you know
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i'd said one of the things that uh young people are going to experience is that because there are so
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many famous people in the world and those famous people are sort of you know reaching a certain age
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that there should be we should be reaching a point where a famous person or three dies every day
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just because there are so many of them right isn't it inevitable that we'll get to
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three or four famous people dying every day not because there's more death but because there's
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what false flag will be between now and november well uh you you almost have to wonder if they're
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going to try some russia thing again because man do they like their russia pranks uh for a false flag
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though good question lots of opportunities i don't know hey by the way have you seen kim jong-un lately
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i don't know how long we have to wait before we see kim jong-un uh
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my my guess is that he's still alive or we know it by now
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but it is funny that we're not going to see him for a while
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florida is perfect weather to kill the virus maybe so
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uh when am i getting married to christina uh we'll we'll get married on may 2nd
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oh that's right it already passed so we have to postpone our wedding date for the obvious reason
00:28:10.780
um and we're we're just sort of hanging loose to see what's what because you know you can't really
00:28:16.700
make a wedding plan i mean unless well unless you did it next year or something so i think we want
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to do it as soon as it's safe and practical but we don't know when that is um
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i could see elon musk getting a space force contract yeah baby could be man i can't believe
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ruth ruth bader ginsburg is hanging in there she is she is a trooper
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and it makes you wonder how much she's actually participating in the decisions you know she
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probably has clerks that are doing the heavy lifting but you know does it make sense for
00:29:02.060
her still to be on the job i just don't see how that makes sense
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uh my guess on kim was different well my guess my guess on kim so remind me my guess on kim was that
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uh he was i'm trying to remember how many times i changed my opinion on that all right somebody's
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got to remind me but the longer you go you know you have to modify your opinion but uh but here's
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here let me let me stick by this i don't think he's healthy and i'm remembering my opinion now so here's
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my opinion my opinion is that the video and the photo could well be faked which is different from
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saying he's dead or alive but if it's fake it would at least mean he wasn't doing well so there is
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certainly a possibility a strong one that he's you know he's uh not conscious or in control
00:30:04.700
uh probably not dead though i i feel like if he were dead we'd know it but if he's just not
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in control and maybe he's sick and they don't know which way it's going to go
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that might be a reason to throw us a little fake video by a little time see how it plays out and we
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might be in that phase but um i would just put percentages on it at this point i don't think
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you could say he's dead or alive yeah phyllis george died at 70 today which is way too young
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you know for those of you who are young wait till you get to the the age where all the people your
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age are dying every time you turn around yep somebody exactly your age died i'm not not 70 but
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eventually that's gonna happen all right i don't have much else to say so i'm going to end it here
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keep it short and sweet and um i hope that i talk to you again soon and i will see you in the morning