Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 979 Scott Adams： Buggy Imperial Prediction Model, Reverse Leadership, and Carrier Wave for Persuasion

00:00:00.000 and suddenly a great calm fell upon the internet because it was time for coffee with the scott

00:00:14.500 adams without coffee evening edition yes once again we meet here in this digital playground

00:00:23.460 where i will take your mind in strange and wonderful directions oh yeah you're going to

00:00:30.920 learn something your your your body will be alive have i oversold it yet well let me see let me see

00:00:41.560 if i can meet this lofty claim i in the next in the next 60 seconds if you're not enjoying yourself

00:00:51.880 i lied so that's that's my uh my promise to you and the clock's already started in 60 seconds

00:01:01.520 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

00:01:07.480 guest to help you with some affirmations you might recognize him you are more beautiful than a

00:01:14.680 blossoming flower on a warm spring morning it's true you are could we hear another mr president

00:01:21.520 some of us build walls but you tear them down you too you tear them down by being yourself you make

00:01:29.760 america great again just be yourself let your inner beauty shine outwards just like mine does just like

00:01:38.040 his does uh i would like to thank john and julie mosley mosley mosley or is it mosley you should

00:01:48.480 really send a pronunciation guide with your name john and julie because we don't know if it's mosley

00:01:55.040 mosley or mosley possibly mosley but i'd go with mosley if i were you there is a weird and wonderful

00:02:04.500 thing happening you know timing is everything i i tweeted that there's a guy who's been building his

00:02:11.820 trying to build his own outdoor drive-in theater for 10 years and he's just about done and now it's

00:02:19.040 time for outdoor drive-in theaters so he works on this thing for 10 years and when he's about ready

00:02:25.020 to be done suddenly the world really needs an outdoor drive-in theater so you can't there's nothing

00:02:32.600 you can do that's as good as getting lucky timing wise um i think i told you yes uh probably yesterday

00:02:40.900 or maybe this morning uh that i got lucky with a stock pick there's nothing that substitutes

00:02:47.720 for luck all the preparation in the world is not ever going to be as powerful as luck now you can

00:02:55.680 manipulate your luck by going where there's more of it i talk about that a lot but you can't change

00:03:00.660 luck itself you can simply go where there's more energy more chance for luck to find you you can

00:03:07.020 certainly do that so here's where i'm going with this so in 2013 i wrote this book i had a failed

00:03:13.060 almost everything and it made sort of a modest impact but i don't think it was the right time

00:03:20.860 because you know things were starting to look good we're we're entering a pretty good period

00:03:26.300 economically and i think people didn't really think i need to really shake things up or do

00:03:32.460 things differently as much but here we are now in these uncertain times and people are asking the

00:03:39.020 question what do i do now what's next and um so i think that that's caused some kind of a renaissance

00:03:50.600 because everywhere i go it seems people are now mentioning this book and they're mentioning two

00:03:56.220 concepts from it the talent the idea of the talent stack and systems over goals and one of the ways i

00:04:02.680 tell you that you can you can tell if an idea is going to be viral you know if an idea is really going

00:04:10.200 to catch on or grow so that could be an idea or it could be a product and the thing you look for is

00:04:16.180 always the same thing you look for what people are doing with their physical body don't don't listen

00:04:22.540 to their words you know you can't read their thoughts but you can watch what they do with their body

00:04:28.180 so if somebody uh for example writes a book that's based on my you know ideas they're actually doing

00:04:37.160 something that's physical they're writing a book if somebody passes around makes a video so a number of

00:04:42.860 people made videos uh talking about the ideas in the book and tim ferris was nice enough to

00:04:49.600 give a big shout out when he was asked you know what's the best somebody asked him recently what's

00:04:54.720 the best career advice and he just gave my career advice you know he he gave me credit for it and he

00:05:00.780 wrote about me in his book tools uh for tools of titans or for titans tools of titans and now if you

00:05:09.640 don't know the name tim ferris i mentioned him specifically because he would be probably the

00:05:15.980 leading person right now in terms of career advice so if he if he chose to highlight what was in this

00:05:23.420 book it's pretty important um so so i promised you that i wasn't going to do just a commercial like

00:05:31.940 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

00:05:38.540 i would also give you some value and here's the value there has never been a better time

00:05:46.680 to improve your talent stack you still have time you've got probably a lot of you maybe you got

00:05:55.920 weeks more a month more and i'm hearing every day i think i think today five or six people told me

00:06:05.980 that they changed their life by changing their talent stack or using systems versus goal that's

00:06:12.560 five or six people just today told me it changed their life and they use those very words by the

00:06:17.720 way that's not that's not my exaggerated version of it they they almost to a person they say it

00:06:23.400 changed my life turned my business around that sort of thing so uh i would say it's one thing to know

00:06:30.280 that there were some tools and it's one thing to have the opportunity it's another thing to have

00:06:35.580 the opportunity to use them that's kind of perfect i mean this is the time there there are a lot of

00:06:42.060 people who are going to emerge from this thing with superpowers and you could be one of them let's talk

00:06:47.360 about the uh this story is so expected except by people who have never done models i guess so the

00:06:57.920 imperial college model that was the prediction model that said there was going to be dire consequences

00:07:03.640 with the coronavirus half a million people dying i think just in great britain so it was a it was the

00:07:10.640 scariest of the models and to some extent it probably influenced the the shutdown lockdown uh strategies

00:07:19.360 but we don't know how much because you know there's there was a lot of other information but it was

00:07:24.240 probably one of the bigger factors people think and today uh we find that their code was released

00:07:30.160 so a lot of people said hey you know given that we're maybe running the entire planet based on this

00:07:37.840 model do you think you could do us a solid and show us the computer code they that produced it what do

00:07:46.000 you think happened when the experts looked at the computer code if you don't know this story

00:07:50.860 just fucking guess just fucking guess what do you think happened when the experts looked at the code 0.90

00:07:59.340 uh let me read you a few comments and and if you didn't know if you didn't know this was true before

00:08:09.020 you knew it was true then you didn't talk to somebody who's done this kind of work in the real world

00:08:15.100 uh let's see here's a comment uh so experts have derided the coding uh called it a buggy mess that

00:08:23.500 looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming shall i go on

00:08:33.180 allow me to continue uh quote in our commercial reality we would fire anyone for developing code like

00:08:40.940 this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust said blah blah

00:08:47.420 some data expert uh

00:08:52.700 and then this is the best part i don't know if you'll fully appreciate maybe you have to have

00:08:58.380 some experience with software to fully appreciate this next part because it's a little bit nerdy but

00:09:03.980 this is something you don't want to hear about your software uh quote there

00:09:15.740 i don't know if i can read this uh there appears to be a bug in either the creation or reuse of the

00:09:22.220 network file if we attempt two completely identical runs only varying and that the second should use the

00:09:30.540 network file produced by the first the results are quite different

00:09:38.700 so basically you can run the same you can run the same data through it and you get a different answer

00:09:47.420 so then there's your there's your prediction model that just determined how to run the world

00:09:53.100 and the funny thing is the funny thing is there there's a slice of the population which i count myself in

00:10:06.060 who have simply had experience in this world we fucking knew this i didn't have to see the code 0.93

00:10:13.980 we fucking knew this yeah no no examination of the of the source code necessary and i think i've been 0.95

00:10:25.260 warning you how long have i been warning you

00:10:29.980 all right uh i think i have a hypothesis for uh a mystery that i've been noodling on for a while

00:10:36.140 and the mystery is this we have so many so many states and so many countries all with their own

00:10:43.420 leaders doing various different things to battle the coronavirus wouldn't you say that generally

00:10:50.940 speaking it doesn't seem to make any difference who the leader is right because they all seem to be

00:10:58.620 somewhere in the range and and when they're not in the range there's a reason you know like oh they

00:11:04.140 got some old people or you hit a nursing home before they caught it but generally speaking the mystery

00:11:11.500 that's the the part that's a mystery to me is it feels like everybody's performing somewhat similarly

00:11:18.140 which makes me think that leadership isn't a thing

00:11:22.780 but here's what i realized today here's my new hypothesis try this out this is such a unique

00:11:29.740 kind of crisis that it's a bottom-up leadership um by necessity in other words when when the experts

00:11:39.500 come to the leader of any country the leader says i don't know what to do seriously i've never managed

00:11:46.460 a coronavirus crisis tell me what to do the experts then would go about the task of telling the leader

00:11:53.500 what to do but i believe the nature of experts you know generally speaking there will be exceptions

00:12:01.900 but the nature of experts is that they probably coordinate and probably it took a very probably a

00:12:08.620 very short amount of time for all of the experts in all the countries to check in with all the other

00:12:13.980 experts the world health organization the cdcs you know probably a lot of people checking in with america

00:12:19.900 to say all right we we think we got this but what are you doing let's just make sure you know is that

00:12:25.580 the same thing europe's doing you know what are they doing in china so what you would expect because it

00:12:32.460 was an expert driven solution is that the experts would be managing the leaders and not the leaders

00:12:39.980 managing the experts which is a more typical situation in normal business and normal government

00:12:46.380 right mostly the leaders are telling the experts what solution to come up with

00:12:53.500 but but because this close off guard and our leaders are not virologists or anything like it

00:12:59.260 i think leadership became somewhat unimportant because the leaders were all listening to the experts

00:13:07.500 the experts were all talking to each other and so they had different you know resources so some of

00:13:12.780 them said we got hydroxychloroquine we don't have ventilators you know so let's play it this way we've

00:13:18.700 got old people we don't let's play it this way but it the coronavirus doesn't seem sensitive to leadership

00:13:26.780 and i think that's why because it was a bottom-up like a reverse leadership situation just a theory

00:13:32.700 all right here's my weirdest new theory uh and as i say too often if you if you have enough experience

00:13:42.460 in different domains which is part of having a talent stack you can see the world more clearly

00:13:49.900 and there i've now combined three of my experiences to see one new thing more clearly and i'm going to run

00:13:57.580 this by you now you've heard a very you've heard an early version of this but this is the more complete version

00:14:03.740 the early version i wasn't happy with it it goes like this and first of all my experience at the phone company

00:14:10.620 uh and and putting together basically digital signals that crossed wires not not personally putting them together

00:14:18.620 but i was in the lab and we're always dealing with sending carrier signals across the line

00:14:23.180 so the carrier signal is just sort of the the baseline signal that gets manipulated so that

00:14:30.220 when you read the manipulations on the other end you know what got sent but it's a carrier signal

00:14:36.140 um and now and as you know i'm learning to play drums and you of course know that i write about

00:14:41.820 persuasion a lot well those three things sort of came together and i finally realized this

00:14:48.140 let's call it a hypothesis the persuasion when you're persuading other people has a carrier signal

00:14:58.140 meaning that there's something that that connects people from a distance it you know could be in the

00:15:04.540 same room but at you know a distance from you in the room and that thing is vibration but the vibration

00:15:13.420 comes in different forms it could be singing it could be instrumental it could be music it could be

00:15:18.620 chanting it could be the pledge of allegiance it could be praying um and all of those things have the

00:15:26.860 same quality which is that people find the the same vibration if you look at a church for example it's

00:15:34.300 actually built for good acoustic vibration so when the choir is singing everybody in the church is vibrating

00:15:43.020 now is it a coincidence that in every large organization where persuasion is important

00:15:49.100 they're trying to get you to be let's say more committed to the organization more religious maybe

00:15:54.780 more patriotic maybe you've joined a cult maybe you went to a concert and they're just trying to make

00:16:00.940 you like the act so you'll buy the albums in all cases you're part of a group that is being influenced

00:16:07.580 by vibration but the vibration here's the fun part the vibration is not the the influence the vibration

00:16:17.260 is just setting up the carrier signal so once everybody's on the same vibration now you can do

00:16:22.780 the persuasion so it's really just making the connection just like a phone call the line is

00:16:27.580 connected but you still have to send something and the sending can be the lyrics of the song

00:16:35.340 it could be the words of the pledge of allegiance or the you know the national anthem it could be

00:16:41.740 whatever you're chanting but i think it also could be melody you could put melody on top of vibration

00:16:47.660 and by the way this is where music comes in because it took me a while to figure out that the beat of a

00:16:53.340 drum is actually just a vibration it's just a slow one if somebody's singing it's the literally the air is

00:17:02.700 vibrating at a higher rate uh but if you're beating a drum bum bum bum bum bum it's still a vibration

00:17:09.820 it's just super slowed down so it's all vibration and all of it affects us the same way which is it

00:17:15.500 just connects you you say okay i'm vibrating at the same same pitch same frequency let's say as these

00:17:22.860 other people and then the persuasion goes right in it is not it is not an accident that every group that

00:17:30.620 wants to i'm going to say brainwash but it's not always for bad intentions but they are trying to

00:17:37.260 persuade brainwash convince and once you see that pattern it's it's kind of amazing um

00:17:47.900 and that's also have you ever noticed that music is better when you're with your friends

00:17:52.140 have you noticed that uh for me the only music i really loved in college was the music that i saw

00:18:01.980 somebody else enjoy at the same time in the same room and until i saw somebody else enjoy it

00:18:09.900 i didn't enjoy the music and i think what it was is i would see somebody else sort of matching the

00:18:15.820 you know matching the music and vibration and between the music and the other person then i would

00:18:21.100 sort of you know match the vibration as well so that too was just persuasion i just didn't know it

00:18:27.340 at the time so those were my comments for today um does anybody have a question which they would like to

00:18:39.740 ask me uh just looking at your comments here and by the way does is anybody feeling better about the

00:18:48.700 the lockdown i mean other than the obvious financial panic is anybody feeling that we'll get past this

00:18:57.740 stock crash what are the odds of a stock crash you know the stock market

00:19:01.980 is i think completely irrationally priced and yet rationally irrationally priced it's the damnedest thing

00:19:10.700 because the by all by all accounts the stock market should be lower but it's a future it's a future

00:19:20.220 looking indicator so it's clear that the people who have the money to invest believe the stock market's

00:19:27.100 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

00:19:35.820 right or they're wrong it's that they're making it so so the people who are booing the stock market

00:19:42.940 they're not they're not just guessing that it will be good they're making it good and so if people

00:19:49.900 keep the stock market high enough all right it's lower than the high but it's still still in that

00:19:55.820 acceptable you know bottom of the acceptable range if you keep it there then the people who own stock are

00:20:01.260 going to feel like they can spend money and pretty soon we're going to really need people to spend

00:20:06.460 money to to get things going so as long as we can keep that stock market sort of even artificially

00:20:13.340 high it creates the opportunity for people to spend in a way they wouldn't have if they had been

00:20:19.500 afraid that they were losing their stock value

00:20:24.700 somebody says the stock market is is priced for a trump win i think that's true

00:20:29.180 yeah uh face masks equals carbon dioxide is that another story there are all these crazy stories

00:20:39.820 about your your face mask is going to kill you and i i think it's just a uh it it's just something 0.54

00:20:48.460 about the fact that there always has to be another side to every story you know if the main story was

00:20:53.900 um air is good you know if let's say if you can imagine that tomorrow there was some magic technology

00:21:02.380 that cleaned all the pollution out of the air like all man-made pollution and just tomorrow just cleared

00:21:08.940 it all out of the air it would take about a week before you'd see a story that says doctors claim

00:21:16.060 they're removing all the pollution from the air is lowering your immune spots because now you're just not

00:21:21.500 used to it now if you walk into a room that's got a little bad air pollution in the room well you're

00:21:26.700 going to get sick because you didn't toughen yourself up with that pollution so there's there's probably

00:21:31.980 not anything that there won't be a story on the other side so when i look at the mask stuff i just

00:21:38.460 think that of course there's a story on the other side but as long i'll just stick with this as long as

00:21:44.060 it still makes sense to sneeze into your elbow mask makes sense that's it that's the whole argument right

00:21:51.100 there uh any chance for kamala to be vp i think so um although doesn't it seem like we should have

00:22:00.860 known by now i don't know what biden's waiting for there might be lots of lots of maneuvering in the

00:22:06.940 background you have to assume that people are trying to figure out what to do in that whole biden

00:22:12.220 situation uh the sorrento thing well i i would uh put the sorrento um claim of a cure oh let's with

00:22:25.020 emphasis on claim i would demote that to sort of all the other stories of things that might save the day

00:22:32.700 uh i i don't know that it has a special place but it was it was promising for about a day

00:22:41.820 somebody says i've had asthma is very difficult wearing a mask yeah you know what i'm expecting

00:22:48.220 here's what i'm expecting i think that someday you can have some like a mouthpiece or maybe a

00:22:53.660 mouthpiece that also covers your nose that's just sort of like a mouth nose thing and it'll have some

00:22:59.820 electronics in it maybe you'll have a far uv light so that the air that's coming in and out of your

00:23:05.740 mouth is just actually disinfected on the way in and out and maybe we'll just always wear them you

00:23:13.420 you just you just attach it to your face and you'll just breathe better it'll clean the air

00:23:20.700 oh snickers is old and she's she's a little limpy today but she's been pretty active

00:23:27.340 i tried to make her not active but it's hard you know stacey abrams is going to be vp i don't think

00:23:34.460 so i think that would be the least likely choice well elizabeth warren is pretty unlikely 0.98

00:23:42.940 um

00:23:45.100 sorrento never claimed a cure well um i will only say what the what the news report said

00:23:53.500 the news report reported that the ceo specifically called it a cure so whether that actually happened

00:24:02.380 or that was fake news well who knows um have i found any science backing the masks well at this

00:24:13.260 point would you trust any science about the masks the only thing i'm completely sure of

00:24:18.700 is that it blocks droplets if it blocks droplets and that's basically the whole problem

00:24:26.780 i think they work

00:24:31.660 um can mars be colonized by humans inevitably you know i think the colonization of mars you know

00:24:37.660 elon musk is right there it's not really a question of if we'll colonize mars it's not really an

00:24:43.740 the if question we're definitely going to colonize mars it's just going to you know how long does it

00:24:49.180 take vaccine still long shot i think so i think vaccine is still a long shot and i'm a little puzzled

00:24:58.940 by all the optimism that's being shown uh but man do i love the trump plan of having the military deliver

00:25:06.380 it you know should we get one that works that is just that's just such a good show i just hope the

00:25:15.900 military doesn't mind doing it yeah i don't imagine that they would mind given that it would be saving

00:25:21.340 lives but uh i wouldn't want to use them for the wrong purpose but it feels like the right purpose just

00:25:28.300 my own personal feeling about it um funniest book i've ever read good question probably maybe a dave

00:25:38.540 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

00:25:55.020 kind of i don't know their relationship really i think you'd have to know how they feel about each

00:26:00.860 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

00:26:19.260 a lot of a lot of old famous people dying just because of this weird situation not necessarily

00:26:26.620 because they got coronavirus but it feels like they're coming in waves now don't they you know

00:26:33.340 i'd said one of the things that uh young people are going to experience is that because there are so

00:26:38.540 many famous people in the world and those famous people are sort of you know reaching a certain age

00:26:44.860 that there should be we should be reaching a point where a famous person or three dies every day

00:26:52.780 just because there are so many of them right isn't it inevitable that we'll get to

00:26:58.780 three or four famous people dying every day not because there's more death but because there's

00:27:03.900 just so many damn famous people

00:27:05.340 what false flag will be between now and november well uh you you almost have to wonder if they're

00:27:17.660 going to try some russia thing again because man do they like their russia pranks uh for a false flag

00:27:25.180 though good question lots of opportunities i don't know hey by the way have you seen kim jong-un lately

00:27:33.340 i don't know how long we have to wait before we see kim jong-un uh

00:27:41.900 my my guess is that he's still alive or we know it by now

00:27:46.700 but it is funny that we're not going to see him for a while

00:27:52.620 florida is perfect weather to kill the virus maybe so

00:27:55.980 uh when am i getting married to christina uh we'll we'll get married on may 2nd

00:28:04.780 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

00:28:23.420 to do it as soon as it's safe and practical but we don't know when that is um

00:28:35.740 i could see elon musk getting a space force contract yeah baby could be man i can't believe

00:28:43.820 ruth ruth bader ginsburg is hanging in there she is she is a trooper 0.96

00:28:49.740 and it makes you wonder how much she's actually participating in the decisions you know she

00:28:57.180 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

00:29:07.500 uh my guess on kim was different well my guess my guess on kim so remind me my guess on kim was that

00:29:15.180 uh he was i'm trying to remember how many times i changed my opinion on that all right somebody's

00:29:23.420 got to remind me but the longer you go you know you have to modify your opinion but uh but here's

00:29:32.300 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

00:29:41.580 my opinion my opinion is that the video and the photo could well be faked which is different from

00:29:47.820 saying he's dead or alive but if it's fake it would at least mean he wasn't doing well so there is

00:29:55.820 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

00:30:13.020 in control and maybe he's sick and they don't know which way it's going to go

00:30:17.740 that might be a reason to throw us a little fake video by a little time see how it plays out and we

00:30:25.820 might be in that phase but um i would just put percentages on it at this point i don't think

00:30:31.500 you could say he's dead or alive yeah phyllis george died at 70 today which is way too young

00:30:42.860 you know for those of you who are young wait till you get to the the age where all the people your

00:30:48.220 age are dying every time you turn around yep somebody exactly your age died i'm not not 70 but

00:30:56.620 eventually that's gonna happen all right i don't have much else to say so i'm going to end it here

00:31:03.500 keep it short and sweet and um i hope that i talk to you again soon and i will see you in the morning

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 17, 2020

Episode 979 Scott Adams： Buggy Imperial Prediction Model, Reverse Leadership, and Carrier Wave for Persuasion

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