Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 980 Scott Adams： I Create a Bubble Reality of Positivity For You to Live in Until a Least Monday

00:00:00.000 Well, it's the best part of the day. Yeah, it's the best part of the day. It's called

00:00:16.680 Coffee with Scott Adams and the Simultaneous Sip. And if you have not discovered already

00:00:21.980 how much better your day is when you do this, well, you're in for a good surprise, aren't you?

00:00:30.000 And in order to enjoy today, this will be one of the best. One of the best. All you need to enjoy it is,

00:00:40.660 do you know? Do you already know? I think you do. It's a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or

00:00:46.160 a stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like

00:00:51.800 coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing

00:00:57.880 that makes everything better, including the damn pandemic. It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it 0.98

00:01:04.600 happens now. Go.

00:01:11.080 Well, as I promised you on Twitter and in the title of this periscope, today I will create a bubble

00:01:18.100 reality around you. This will not be reality itself. We don't have access to that. But I will create a

00:01:26.360 bubble around you that will make you feel better all day. Will it last? We don't know. It might last

00:01:33.700 Monday. It might last longer. But your little bubble reality will be based on the following concept.

00:01:41.180 Are you ready? I'm going to create a bubble reality entirely out of the process of imagining that

00:01:50.140 the news is true. That's it. Instead of imagining that the news is fake, I'm just going to tell you

00:01:58.520 the actual news. And at least for today, we're just going to pretend it's true. And when I say the

00:02:07.360 news, I mean any news about studies, could be news that comes through the internet, could be just a

00:02:15.300 rumor. But we're going to treat it like it's real, just for today. And I want to create a little bubble

00:02:23.340 reality in which things are going to be really good. You ready? First, I'm going to teach you a new

00:02:32.940 skill. Now, this is a continuation of a skill that you've been taught before. So we're going to start

00:02:39.440 out with something useful. And you're going to say to yourself, wow, that was kind of useful. I've

00:02:45.060 already gotten something good out of today. It goes like this. I've taught you the six dimensions of

00:02:51.000 humor. And if you need to brush up, just Google my name and six dimensions of humor, and you'll see the

00:02:57.700 six dimensions. And the idea is that you have to use any two of the six to make a joke. So while I've

00:03:05.240 taught you that, and it doesn't matter which two, and it's better if you use more than two, but two is

00:03:10.100 enough. So the dimensions are, and I can never remember them off the top of my head, but it's like

00:03:15.620 cute, recognizable, clever, bizarre, naughty. There's a sixth one. But the idea is you want to use as many

00:03:28.320 as you can. And I did a tweet in which it will teach you exactly what that looks like. So here's the

00:03:35.740 tweet, and then I'll tell you the technique behind it, because it's already got 4,500 retweets,

00:03:44.000 which in my world would be a lot. So the tweet was this. I like it when Congress wears masks.

00:03:50.780 Most of them should be ashamed to show their faces, and if you plan to rob the public, it helps to dress

00:03:56.860 for the part. Now, the first thing you need to know about this joke is that I almost didn't write it,

00:04:05.180 because I thought of it, and then I wrote it down, and I looked at it, and I said, you know,

00:04:09.240 this is not really edgy. It's just sort of, it's sort of just right down that fat middle where I'm

00:04:19.060 just saying what people want to hear. You know, and I thought to myself, I'm a professional. I feel

00:04:26.340 like, as a professional, I could do better than this joke. And then you know what happened?

00:04:32.480 And then I thought back to a moment in 1990, when I was giving a presentation to a bunch of newspaper

00:04:45.460 editors, and I was talking about the new Dilbert comic that was relatively new at the time. And

00:04:51.580 no, it wasn't 1990. It was, yeah, it was, about 1990. And I was telling them, you know, how great

00:05:02.040 Dilbert was so that they would add it to the newspaper. So basically, it was like a marketing

00:05:06.040 event for me, but I was a speaker at an editor's event. I was just making sure that they knew who I

00:05:12.460 was. And at the end of my presentation, a man I didn't recognize stood up in the question period,

00:05:19.040 and instead of a question, he had a comment. And his comment was that my cartoon, the samples

00:05:27.500 that I'd shown him up front, he said, what you have there is a cartoonist's cartoon. And

00:05:35.400 he went on to explain, he said, it's a cartoon that would only, that would only appeal to other

00:05:41.600 cartoonists. Can you imagine that? I'm standing in front of all of my customers.

00:05:49.040 And a guy gets up and tells me that I have a cartoon that would not appeal to anybody in the

00:05:53.500 audience. The only people would appeal to is another cartoonist. Said that in public,

00:06:00.640 while I stood in front of a room full of my customers.

00:06:04.760 Now, I, of course, did not appreciate this when it happened. And afterwards, I went to my editor,

00:06:13.140 and I said, was it my editor or somebody was in the room? And I said, can you tell me who that guy is?

00:06:18.820 Who is that guy? Because I don't like that guy. That guy did not make my day good.

00:06:24.600 And she said, that's Bill Keene. Bill Keene. You ever hear that name? He was the creator of the

00:06:34.560 Family Circus, one of the most successful comics of all time. So he was a legend in the industry.

00:06:42.620 Now, whether or not you care for his comic or not is irrelevant to the point. And then I realized that

00:06:50.680 I had not just been insulted in front of an entire room full of my customers, but that I had been

00:06:58.300 insulted by one of the most famous cartoonists in the history of the planet Earth in front of all of

00:07:05.140 my customers. Now, when I learned who he was, I said to myself, this is not a good guy. He's not a good

00:07:17.060 guy. However, as criticism goes, I learned what he meant. So I came to understand what he meant when

00:07:26.240 I said I had a cartoonist cartoon. What he meant was, and here's the fun part, I count this as the

00:07:34.060 best advice, probably in the top three, of the best advice I've ever gotten. Indeed, that day,

00:07:42.740 Bill Keene made my career. He actually turned me into a successful cartoonist that day. Because

00:07:52.780 that advice stuck with me, and it never left. And I'm going to tell you how it plays into this tweet

00:07:59.820 in a moment. And the advice was this. If I write cartoons that appeal to me as a cartoonist, I've lost

00:08:08.280 the fact that I'm not like other people. Whatever it is that made me the cartoonist probably also made

00:08:14.980 my sense of humor develop in a slightly different way than most of the public. So if I'm creating a

00:08:22.180 product for the public, as opposed to creating something to amuse myself, I should not be creating

00:08:29.140 it with all the elements that are designed to amuse myself. And as a professional cartoonist,

00:08:36.140 he could see it right away. He could see in my cartoons that I'd written them for myself. And I had. It was the

00:08:43.820 most insightful thing I've ever heard. I've never had anybody say anything that devastatingly insightful

00:08:52.180 about the nature of what I was doing. And when I realized fully what that meant, that I'm developing a product

00:08:59.740 for other people. And then my ego was in the way. It's an ego problem. My ego made me draw comics for

00:09:09.040 myself, because I said to myself, you know, essentially, well, if I like them, anybody's gonna like

00:09:16.340 them. Right? Once I got that, and I also realized that the customers, the, you know, the readers were

00:09:24.460 asking for Dilbert to be more in the office. And at the time, he wasn't. He wasn't spending much time

00:09:29.560 in the office. It wasn't really an office place comic too much. So I said to myself, you know,

00:09:34.860 I don't really love it when he's in the office, because that's actually my day job. I still had a

00:09:38.960 day job. And the last thing I wanted was to have a comic that was sort of my mental escape

00:09:44.620 to be the same as my day job, because that's what I was escaping from. But it's not what the

00:09:51.480 customers wanted. What the customers wanted was my shared, let's say my shared pain of being in a

00:09:59.020 cubicle, because I still was. And that's what they wanted. They want to say, hey, I'm in a cubicle,

00:10:04.520 you're in a cubicle. Let's talk about that. And so when I managed to take Bill Kean's advice,

00:10:11.160 eventually, and managed to start writing for the audience, I realized that I wasn't writing stuff

00:10:17.320 that would necessarily be exactly what I'd want. And this tweet that I sent out that, as I said,

00:10:25.180 went viral. I almost didn't write it, because I said to myself, you know, it's not the tweet

00:10:32.180 that I would like.

00:10:36.980 Do you know how hard it is, as an artist, to create art? And I'm going to say that a tweet or

00:10:43.300 anything you write, if you're an artist, is art, in a sense. Do you know how hard it is to create art

00:10:49.180 that you don't like? Do you know how hard that is? It's very rare. And I just did that. So this is a

00:11:00.420 tweet. This tweet, I personally dislike. But because of experience, and because of the, I will say,

00:11:09.180 the gift that Bill Kean gave me, I was able to do it. So I was able to say, all right, here's my ego.

00:11:19.600 But I'm not writing the tweet for myself. I'm writing it for other people. So I'm going to

00:11:24.400 write a tweet that I know other people will enjoy. I wrote it. Bam. 4.5,000 retweets. Let me give you

00:11:32.180 the end of the story about Bill Kean. So I was, and of course, I was one of the, you know,

00:11:39.100 the young cartoonists at the time who made fun of family, the family circus for being, I always say

00:11:45.000 circle. Is it family circus? Circus, right? I would make fun of it because it wasn't cool.

00:11:52.620 And I thought, hey, I'm a, I can make these edgy cartoons. Why can't Bill Kean? Why can't he make a

00:12:00.580 cartoon that's edgy and cool the way I would like it? And then you look at his sales. One of the top

00:12:07.360 cartoonists in the whole freaking world. Number of clients all over the world. He drew cartoons

00:12:14.540 for other people. And when I got to know him a little bit, because he was, he ran, there was a

00:12:21.380 big cartoon society and he was big in that. And he was the host of all the cartoon events that were

00:12:26.180 like the Oscars. And so I got to know him a little bit and realized that he wasn't anything like

00:12:32.220 the person who stood up. In other words, he wasn't a dick. He was actually a really nice guy, 0.98

00:12:39.200 like a really nice guy. And, and I guess it was tough love, basically. It was the most useful advice

00:12:46.540 I've ever gotten. But it turns out that his own personality and his own sense of humor

00:12:51.900 wasn't anywhere close to the product he created. He had learned to create a product for his customers

00:13:00.580 that I'm pretty sure he didn't like himself. Once you got to know him, you'd see how different

00:13:07.360 his sensibilities were than his actual product. And then I'd say, oh, I get it now. You learned

00:13:13.180 to make a product for other people. I get it. Now I see how this works. So, and then, and then the,

00:13:19.960 at the end of the story, Dilbert became, you know, financially successful and got a lot of

00:13:25.920 attention in the mid-90s. And there was this one event called the Rubens. And the Rubens were like

00:13:33.720 the Oscars for cartoonists. And I'd never won anything as a cartoonist. And I think I'd been nominated

00:13:40.920 and lost once before. And so one day I get, I get nominated for the two top awards. So within my category,

00:13:49.680 the top awards would be the best comic strip. So that would be the top of the comic strips.

00:13:55.640 But then there's an award above all the other cartoonist awards. So then you're, you're also

00:14:00.140 could get an award for the best of all cartoons of any kind. So those are the two best awards.

00:14:05.980 So I got nominated for both in the same year, the two top awards. And I wasn't going to go

00:14:11.900 because by that time I was like, eh, you know, I got nominated last time. I, I rented a tuxedo. I

00:14:19.820 took my ass across the country, spent two days at this event, and then I didn't win. It was just 0.99

00:14:27.060 sort of depressing. So I decided I wasn't going to attend because I just didn't care that much at that

00:14:33.560 point. And Bill Keen calls me home. So, so now we're, we're going to complete the story here. So

00:14:41.200 it's years later, I'm now a famous cartoonist, one of the most famous cartoonists in the country.

00:14:48.020 This is years after Bill Keen, you know, insulted me, but gave me the best advice I've ever gotten.

00:14:53.500 And, and he calls me at home and he says, uh, now by this time, you also have to know that we'd done

00:15:02.140 a cartoon trade where we had also communicated and we'd, uh, he drew my comic for a day and I drew

00:15:09.620 his comic for a day. It was part of a big national thing. So we already knew each other and I'd come

00:15:14.520 to like him as a, as a person because I, I got to understand him a little better. And then I was

00:15:20.420 like, Oh, okay. I get it now. And he calls me at home and he says, you know, you've been nominated

00:15:25.000 for the two top awards in cartooning, the, you know, the greatest honors you could ever have in

00:15:30.320 cartooning. And we understand you're not going to attend. And I told him why I go, yeah, you know,

00:15:36.880 it was just disappointing last time. And yeah, I'm busy. And that's just, doesn't, I don't,

00:15:42.160 I just don't want to do it. And then Bill Keen said this, it was one of the coolest things

00:15:48.240 anybody's ever done. He said, uh, you know, there was this guy, um, I forget who it was. He goes,

00:15:54.840 and he got nominated and he also didn't go. And then when he didn't go, he ended up winning

00:16:02.820 and, and he always felt bad because he went and he didn't win. And of course I knew that. I mean,

00:16:11.820 I knew if I went and I won, which I wasn't expecting, you know, I knew I'd feel bad,

00:16:17.640 but I figured, eh, I don't care that much. And then Bill Keen says this, he goes, you've been

00:16:23.300 nominated for the two top awards. If you don't come and if you won, you might be twice as unhappy

00:16:33.580 as he was. And I said, what? And he said, you might be twice as unhappy. And I said, got it.

00:16:48.940 Okay. Got it. In other words, Bill Keen already knew that I'd won. And he knew that I'd won both

00:16:54.520 awards and he was making damn sure that I, that I didn't miss it. All right. So, so that

00:17:03.480 was the, that was the, the sort of the wrap up of that. So Bill Keen, um, uh, he came

00:17:11.360 through. Um, so that's that. Here's a question for you. Uh, here's a suggestion for you. Do you

00:17:24.500 ever wonder about your digital assistants listening to you all day? So your digital assistants are,

00:17:32.440 you know, listening to all your conversations allegedly, or are they actually listening?

00:17:37.520 Is your phone listening to you? Is my Amazon digital assistant listening to me right now?

00:17:43.740 Well, you worry about that, don't you? So here's my recommendation to you. Here's what I do

00:17:50.400 randomly during the day. I confess the crimes that I didn't do because if I could get enough

00:17:59.780 body of work into the digital assistant, then someday when it finds it, it accuses me of a

00:18:06.940 crime I did do. And they check the records and they say, look right here, we were recording

00:18:12.320 you the whole time. And that we found this record and it says you, you did kill, you did kill 0.68

00:18:18.700 that guy. And I'm going to say, really? Oh, really? You, you believe that because I said

00:18:24.520 it in the room and it got picked up on my digital assistant. Well, if you'll go back and check

00:18:29.740 the records, I believe you'll also find my confession for killing JFK. I believe you'll 0.91

00:18:36.160 also find my statement that I have DNA from Bigfoot. You will also find that I went fishing and

00:18:43.240 caught the Loch Ness Monster. So let's put them in context, shall we? So that's my advice to

00:18:54.180 you all day long. You should just admit to crimes. Occasionally you should scream as though you're

00:19:00.960 doing a domestic abuse situation. You know, you should, you should stage every possible crime

00:19:08.700 that you might later be accused of. So you've got a big body of fakes. And then somebody

00:19:15.260 says, well, it's right there on your own, in your own voice. Oh yeah? Let me show you

00:19:21.000 something else that's in my voice. Context, bitch. All right. There is some breaking news. 1.00

00:19:31.100 The Epoch Times apparently has an article on this. It turns out that, speaking of surveillance,

00:19:40.820 it turns out that maybe Flynn was not unmasked. What? Yeah. It turns out that maybe Flynn was

00:19:50.300 not unmasked. According to the transcripts, there's some indication that they got the Flynn

00:19:55.940 transcripts directly from the NSA. You know, the NSA that's sucking up everybody's conversation

00:20:02.820 everywhere, allegedly. Well, it turns out if you get it that way, there's no unmasking to

00:20:11.240 do because nothing is masked. That's right. You can just, apparently if you're in the government

00:20:18.440 and you've got, you say you've got a reason, apparently somebody has access to raw, unmasked

00:20:27.440 footage of every American in every conversation, presumably, and they just had to ask for it.

00:20:37.000 Do you believe that? Do you believe that this whole time that we've been lied to, I'm going

00:20:44.520 to say lied, that we've been lied to about the idea that our government would be so guarded

00:20:53.260 with our privacy that the government itself had put up rules so that even the government

00:20:58.700 couldn't look at who the people were unless they had, you know, special legal process to

00:21:03.900 do it? Turns out, none of that was true. Sure. How hard would it be if you wanted to know

00:21:13.520 who the masked person was? Apparently you can just go to the NSA and just say, well, I

00:21:19.040 don't want to go through the masking process. Just tell me, just give me the, give me the

00:21:23.520 transcript. Somebody says that is in Snowden's book. Well, we certainly know, we knew from Snowden

00:21:31.340 that everything was being collected. Here's the part I didn't know. I didn't know how easy

00:21:36.500 it was for the government to get access to it. Meaning that I didn't know what situations

00:21:41.920 would present themselves. I thought it was more of a terrorist kind of a situation. I

00:21:49.720 assumed it was more of a people we thought were pretty guilty situation. You don't really

00:21:54.720 think of it in terms of a sort of a political situation, do you? So if you haven't lost all

00:22:02.520 trust in your government yet, that should do it. So I think we should treat as a fairy 1.00

00:22:09.800 tale, the idea of masking. Should we, should we as citizens, we're now informed citizens,

00:22:17.460 right? As informed citizens, should we even act like masking is a real thing? Because it's

00:22:23.900 not. I mean, apparently it's not. We've, we've been completely lied to this whole time. So let's

00:22:31.360 watch that story develop. All right. So I promised you I would create a bubble reality in which

00:22:36.440 you can live in it happily. The bubble reality will last at least today. And I'm going to

00:22:42.940 build this bubble reality using nothing but the news, including stuff that comes across

00:22:48.180 the internet. And I'm just going to treat it all like it's true. Okay? Just going to treat

00:22:54.100 it all like it's true and watch this bubble reality form around you. Might not be permanent,

00:22:59.220 but you'll like it today. Number one, have you noticed that for every business that is actually

00:23:07.920 open, and of course that isn't that many, doesn't it seem like a lot of the businesses

00:23:13.520 that are open have more demand than they can handle? Think about it. If you were to open

00:23:19.980 a restaurant today in my town, you would have way more demand than you can handle because

00:23:25.840 there aren't that many open. That is really good news. Pretty much everything that's open

00:23:32.500 has plenty of demand. So as long as demand is driving reopenings, that's good news. And

00:23:38.900 as I've said, half of the country or something like it didn't actually lose money. Something

00:23:46.700 like half of the country made money somehow because they still got paid, but they didn't have

00:23:52.040 much in the way of expenses for three months. So weirdly, half of the country is ready to spend.

00:23:58.320 And I feel like when businesses reopen, they're going to be surprised. Were you surprised that the

00:24:05.340 cruise ships are already overbooked for next year? The cruise ships. If you were to guess one thing

00:24:13.520 that should not be overbooked for next year, top of my list would be cruise ships. But even they are

00:24:20.700 overbooked. People have money. Not everybody. It's like half, half the country. But the half that has

00:24:27.700 the money, they're looking to spend that money. That's good news. So that's the first part of your

00:24:33.860 bubble I'm going to form. The first part is that the recovery is looking pretty good. It's looking

00:24:41.900 pretty good. You know, the potential recovery. The other thing is, weren't you panicked about all this

00:24:48.460 money we're printing? Hey, we can't just print trillions of dollars. But the more I hear from

00:24:55.380 experts who sort of understand that world of printing money and monetary policy and debt,

00:25:01.700 it turns out that maybe we can. It turns out that in this very unique situation, which is unlike any

00:25:09.920 other situation, it might be the only situation where you can actually print trillions of dollars.

00:25:16.020 So we did. Have you noticed what's missing? Here's a dog that's not barking.

00:25:22.940 Where's the dog barking on television where there's an economics expert, an economist, who's saying,

00:25:30.240 yeah, I know it's an emergency and we printed all this money, but we're definitely doomed because of

00:25:36.540 that. Where's that guy? Where's that woman? Right? Isn't that conspicuously missing?

00:25:43.880 It's conspicuously missing. It's conspicuously missing because every situation has a person on

00:25:50.000 the other side. Name one other situation in the news that doesn't have an expert on the other side

00:25:57.100 saying that, you know, it's all doom. You can't do this. It's a big mistake. Have you seen one

00:26:04.100 economist, an actual qualified person, go on the news and say, look, I got to raise my hand.

00:26:11.000 All this printing of money? Boom. Six months from now, we're doomed or whatever it looks like.

00:26:18.620 Somebody says, Peter Schiff. Well, I'm going to reserve my comment about that. Well, no,

00:26:25.380 I'm going to give a comment about that. What you have to watch out for is somebody who's famous for

00:26:30.460 making a right call in the past. All right. If somebody's made the correct call in the past,

00:26:38.020 they have an incentive to try to get another big one right. So I'm always a little distrustful of the

00:26:45.180 person who got that big call in the past right and became famous for it. You know, it's sort of the

00:26:52.040 person I trust the least. Now watch out for the people also who don't know the difference between

00:26:58.600 printing money and debt. So everybody says Peter Schiff. Yeah. Peter Schiff is Mr. Doom.

00:27:06.520 So I haven't seen him on television. Has he been on CNBC? So anyway, since we're building a bubble

00:27:13.960 reality, we're going to ignore Peter Schiff. And I'm going to say that it does seem to be to me that

00:27:19.700 the majority of economists are not panicked about it. Otherwise, you'd see them on the TV.

00:27:24.060 So the first thing is we probably can print money. It'll have some costs later, but it looks like

00:27:30.420 at the moment it looks like we can handle it. We'll have plenty of demand. We've got plenty of

00:27:36.160 people ready to spend. Here's the other good news. There has been a burst of entrepreneurial energy

00:27:43.060 that you're really going to see coming to fruition. You can already see all the seeds,

00:27:49.700 things. But people have rethought everything. From the bottom up, people have rethought,

00:27:56.220 you know, how do we commute, learn, do online education, everything. And there's going to be a

00:28:02.360 burst of entrepreneurial energy, maybe like we've never seen. Maybe since the internet was new,

00:28:10.200 but even that was slower than what we're going to see. This might forever be referred to as some

00:28:18.300 great entrepreneurial wave. You know, I think historically we'll look back and say something

00:28:25.720 happened in 2020 that wasn't just the virus. There was something about the whole way we think about

00:28:32.380 risk, the whole way we build businesses, the whole way we operate as a civilization. And that is going

00:28:40.000 to drive an amazing amount of economic activity. Now let's talk about the health parts. All right?

00:28:49.700 So, so far I've made my argument that the economy is actually going to be not just good, but if I had

00:28:58.460 to put a bet on it, it'll be good in a way we've never even seen it that good. I believe that the golden

00:29:05.000 age is about to be unlocked and that this is the third act to the golden age. It's the thing that

00:29:12.660 made you say, my God, I don't know if we can get there. Everything just fell apart, but it didn't

00:29:19.080 because we can actually rebuild this and pretty quickly. And all the parts are there. So let me

00:29:26.300 talk about the health part. And here's the fun, the fun part. Oh, and also I'll throw onto the economic

00:29:32.900 part that we'll certainly be pulling our supply chains back from China. The pulling of the supply

00:29:39.380 chains back and the reinvigoration of manufacturing in this country is guaranteed to be a long-term

00:29:47.100 economic benefit. I mean, it's really, it's almost certain that that's going to be a good thing.

00:29:53.640 So you got that going too. All right. Here are some things I've seen today. So I saw a thread that I

00:30:02.180 tweeted. You can take a look at it. It's in my Twitter feed in which there was a recent study

00:30:07.600 that said hydroxychloroquine didn't make any difference. And this individual, I don't know

00:30:14.400 much about him, but he dug into the study and found out that you had to really try hard to make it look

00:30:21.280 like it didn't work. And the trick that they used, I don't know why, but the trick they used to make the

00:30:27.780 hydroxychloroquine look like it didn't work was they lumped together two types of different

00:30:34.380 outcomes. People who got put on ventilators and then people who actually died. So people who went

00:30:41.120 on ventilators and didn't die were added together with people who did die. What? Why would you add

00:30:49.300 together people who didn't die with people who did die and try to come up with a result?

00:30:54.440 Well, now, remember, if somebody else looked at this critic, they might say, no, the critic is

00:31:01.200 wrong. The study was right the way they did it. But that's not what we're doing today. Today, what

00:31:07.840 we're doing is I'm forming a bubble reality in which this is true. So what's true just for the bubble

00:31:14.840 reality, not the real reality. We can't see that one. But the bubble reality for today is that the

00:31:21.080 studies saying hydroxychloroquine don't work are bogus. And here's a perfect example, because the

00:31:29.200 study itself clearly shows it did. All you have to do is take the ventilated part out, leave the people

00:31:37.080 who died, and suddenly you compare it and 89% of the people without hydroxychloroquine died, but only 60%

00:31:46.080 who had it died. 60% versus almost 90%. And that's in the study that says hydroxychloroquine

00:31:57.140 doesn't work. And it's only because they did this weird thing of adding together people who lived with

00:32:03.300 people who didn't live. What? What? Why would you do that? Well, apparently people who know what they're 1.00

00:32:12.020 doing have an argument for why that might have sort of made sense, but other people are going to say it

00:32:16.560 doesn't. So let us accept in our bubble reality that hydroxychloroquine does work. And this study

00:32:23.700 actually was the worst situation, which is they waited until people were already in bad shape.

00:32:30.060 So this was only for people who were in bad shape. And the whole point of hydroxychloroquine is that you

00:32:35.360 add it to the zinc, you give it to people early, and they don't get bad in the first place.

00:32:40.580 So the first part of the bubble, I'm going to say that hydroxychloroquine reduces deaths by 30%.

00:32:47.380 Is that true? Doesn't matter. Because this is a bubble reality. Does it seem like it could be true?

00:32:55.800 I'd say absolutely yes. If you told me that the truth is that hydroxychloroquine, if administered early

00:33:03.640 on, reduced ultimate deaths by 30%, I would say to you, that feels true. It's not proven true by

00:33:14.040 science, and that's what you have to wait for. But we're in a bubble reality today. We're just going

00:33:18.300 to feel good for today. So it's true for today. All right, so that's 30% benefit right off the top

00:33:25.240 there. Then, another study out of Northwestern University. Researchers looked at data from 10

00:33:34.320 countries, and they found this correlation. Turns out that wherever there's low vitamin D,

00:33:40.420 they have bad outcomes. So have you ever heard that before? That's right. Turns out that there's

00:33:47.080 another study showing a very strong correlation. And in fact, the correlation is so strong,

00:33:53.820 something like 50% more likely to have trouble if you've got low vitamin D. 50%. Now, again,

00:34:03.800 you have to watch out for the correlation versus causation. So just because people had low vitamin D,

00:34:09.720 it doesn't mean that's what caused them to have problems. Could be a correlation. But given that we

00:34:15.800 know vitamin D is so, what is it, implicated in your entire immune response and good health in

00:34:27.040 general, I'm going to accept it as true. So now we have two things we're accepting as true for today

00:34:35.080 anyway. One is if you boost your vitamin D, and I expect all of you have done that by now. All of you

00:34:43.700 should have looked at your vitamin D, said, what's my situation? Is my skin light or dark? Am I in the

00:34:49.840 sun? Where do I live? Can I supplement? You should have all done that by now. So you've all taken your

00:34:55.480 vitamin D by now, or you'll do it by the end of today. And you've lowered your risk by 50%.

00:35:01.460 Does the science say that? No, no. The science does not say that. But it's suggesting it.

00:35:09.300 It's sort of hinting. Maybe it might be in that direction. So now we've got a 30% reduction from the

00:35:16.900 hydroxychloroquine. We've got a 50% reduction in risk from just vitamin D. Two cheap, widely available

00:35:26.380 things. All right? How's your bubble so far? You've got an economy that almost certainly will recover

00:35:32.640 ridiculously well. I mean, I think 2021 is going to be for the history books, honestly. I'm very much

00:35:42.220 with Trump on that. All right, here's another one. It turns out that there's a blood test you could do.

00:35:54.700 And if you find that people have a certain kind of blood

00:35:58.620 situation, I guess it's their LDH. With 90% accuracy, you can study people's LDH and their, I don't know,

00:36:09.860 HSCRP. It's another marker in your blood. And with 90% effectiveness, they can tell if you're going

00:36:17.580 to have a bad outcome. 90% effectiveness, they can test your blood ahead of time, before you even have

00:36:25.160 the coronavirus. And they can tell if you're in the 10% who's going to have a bad problem.

00:36:32.100 Now, how hard is it to test your LDH? Probably most of you already have that test, right?

00:36:40.740 So somebody says LDH is indicative of comorbidity. Well, I don't know about that.

00:36:45.320 That certainly could be true. But suppose it's true. Remember, today is bubble reality day.

00:36:53.580 We accept all studies as true just for today. Let's say it's true that we have a simple blood

00:37:00.760 test, which in fact, I think most people have already taken. I think I could get on,

00:37:05.140 I think I could log on to my healthcare account and see my LDH, right? And I know it's in a good

00:37:11.180 range, so I'm not worried about it. So now you have your LDH, which even if changing your LDH

00:37:20.200 doesn't change your risk, it tells you if you have risk. And then allow, oh, look at my Twitter

00:37:26.360 feeds. So if you're looking for any studies or anything, the ones I'm mentioning, I tweeted today.

00:37:32.300 So it'd be toward the top of the Twitter feed. So you got that, all right? So you got vitamin D

00:37:41.520 cuts the risk in half. You've got hydroxychloroquine, maybe cuts the risk of risk by 30%. You've got

00:37:50.240 these new blood tests. We're going to imagine that they work even if they don't. We're going to say

00:37:55.640 that they won't, that won't tell you what to do. I'm not suggesting that if you improve your LDH,

00:38:01.820 you'll have a better outcome. That's, that's not demonstrated by anything, but it could tell you

00:38:07.040 if you have a risk. So it could tell you who to hide and who can go back to work. Imagine if you

00:38:12.920 could know with 90% effectiveness, who can go back to work. Big difference, right? How about this?

00:38:20.880 There's another study that came out. And again, all studies are true just for today. They said

00:38:27.940 universal mask wearing would reduce the transmission by 80%, which would make sense for why some Asian 1.00

00:38:38.060 countries did so well, right? It turns out that the, let me make, I'm going to make a generality

00:38:45.400 that is unfair and racist. I'm going to do it anyway. You're okay with that? Everybody okay?

00:38:54.040 I'm going to say something that sounds racist.

00:38:58.380 Just see if you can deal with it. Okay.

00:39:02.880 Asian countries, my guess, and I'm looking for a fact check here. So if you want to just say,

00:39:08.600 Scott, Scott, Scott, what kind of an idiot are you? That's just a racist stereotype. 1.00

00:39:12.460 That's not true at all. So fact check me on this. Culturally speaking, would it be as comfortable

00:39:20.900 for somebody in, let's say, Japan or Singapore or Hong Kong, would it be as comfortable for them

00:39:26.760 to go in public without a mask as it would for an American? Because I'm thinking not, right? I'm 0.73

00:39:35.620 thinking if you went outside today in South Korea, or you went to some public place without a mask,

00:39:42.460 I don't know how long you're going to last. Because I would think that the social pressure

00:39:47.640 would be so extraordinary that their compliance with masks is very high. Now that's the racist

00:39:54.660 part, right? Because like, why, you know, why would I say that about this? So my statement

00:39:59.940 is more, it should be taken as cultural, not racist. I'm hoping you're all adult enough to

00:40:05.900 know the difference. But the American character, by, you know, a historical norm, the normal

00:40:16.380 American, when they hear that the law or the rule is you have to do something, what does 0.98

00:40:22.260 every American instinctively want to do the day they're told they can't do something? The

00:40:29.840 moment you hear that you're not supposed to do it, if you're an American, you say, I'm

00:40:35.720 going to do some of that. I'm going to do that. What do you mean I can't do that? Have

00:40:40.960 you heard of freedom? Have you heard of the Constitution? What do you mean I have to wear

00:40:45.240 a mask? How about I'm not going to wear a mask? Because you told me I have to. How about

00:40:50.380 that? How about I'm not only going to not wear a mask, I'm going to go on TV without my

00:40:56.500 mask. I'm going to tell other people not to wear a mask. I'm going to, will I die? Yeah,

00:41:01.140 I might. Yeah, it might kill me. Might actually be dangerous for other people too. But freedom,

00:41:08.780 but freedom. So am I right to say that the American character just automatically rejects

00:41:16.840 authority? And so you wouldn't expect a good, you know, as good an uptake of masks. All right,

00:41:22.820 let's put it together. So Americans certainly can wear a mask if we decide we want to. Are 0.52

00:41:28.820 you in? Americans will reject being told by the government to do anything, just automatically.

00:41:36.180 We reject it. But we certainly will do things we think are good ideas, right? If our government

00:41:44.320 just told us something that's a good idea, and we looked at it and said, well, that's just

00:41:49.180 a good idea. We'll do it, even if it's hard. Here's another thing that's part of the American

00:41:55.900 character, I'd like to say. I mean, nothing's universal, right? But it's part of the American

00:42:01.240 character. If you say, Americans, you're going to have to do something that's really hard.

00:42:08.380 But you have to do it, because it's the only way to get by. It's really hard. What do Americans do?

00:42:14.840 They say, can we do it right away? It's really hard. People are going to die. Can we get started

00:42:21.700 now? We never run from this stuff, right? Americans go at danger. You tell an American that there's a

00:42:30.180 problem, we run at it. If you tell us something's hard, we say, can we start now? If it's hard, we

00:42:38.600 should start right away. Get over with. So put it all together. Masks, 80% effective. Let's say

00:42:46.800 the American public buys into the truth of it. Now it's not the government telling them to wear a mask.

00:42:52.420 That's different. Government tells me to wear a mask? Maybe yes, maybe no. But if the data tells

00:42:59.680 me to wear a mask, and it's hard, I'm going to wear a mask. I don't care. It's hard. I'm an American.

00:43:08.140 You know? If it's hard, I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to do it sooner, because it's hard.

00:43:13.680 All right. So you got your hydrochloroquine, takes 30% off, allegedly. You got your vitamin D,

00:43:21.400 50% off. You got your blood test, it'll tell you 90% likelihood. You got your mask, it'll be 80%

00:43:27.460 effective. You've got your social distancing. You've got your reopenings happening. You've got

00:43:33.100 your New York. New York is looking at Memorial Day. Memorial Day is 12 days away, 13 days away.

00:43:43.500 Can you make it two more weeks? Can the public make it two more weeks without everything breaking?

00:43:50.900 We can. We absolutely can. I'm very much a big fan of what I would call the productive friction

00:44:00.880 in society. The most productive friction you've ever seen is the conversation between going back

00:44:10.760 to work sooner and not going back to work sooner. When I see people fighting hard on both sides of that,

00:44:18.420 really digging in to make their argument for both sides, that makes me happy. If you're saying to

00:44:25.380 yourself, oh, I wanted one side to win, I don't think that's your most enlightened view. Your best

00:44:33.680 situation is that those two sides are fighting you down in public, and you're slowly moving in the

00:44:40.460 direction that makes sense. You want a productive friction there. You want people on both sides of that

00:44:47.940 argument. And you want really capable people arguing both sides. That's what we need. You don't need a

00:44:55.700 winner. You need a fight. Because when this is done, you want to know that this was totally rinsed out,

00:45:06.260 turned around, turned inside out. You want to know that we fought over it. You want to know that the

00:45:11.340 best people were involved. You want to know that we disagreed. You want to know that we turned over

00:45:16.800 every rock. You want to know that we really fought over this. Then, then if we fought over it, it's

00:45:25.660 more credible. Even if we got it wrong, you know, we'll always argue that we should have done it a

00:45:30.920 different way. It's our, that's also part of our national character. We'll always argue that it was

00:45:36.120 wrong. But the fighting is what makes it credible. And I would argue that the, the fighting, if you

00:45:43.980 will, has been really a credit to the population. I would say that the way, let me give you some

00:45:56.560 context. Early on when this, when this situation was breaking, a very smart person in my world was

00:46:05.000 telling me this could go to the point where the military is just running the country, a complete

00:46:12.120 breakdown of society. Could have happened. It was entirely possible that the direction this would go

00:46:20.140 was a complete breakdown of civilization. That was not out of the question. But how did, let's just talk

00:46:29.500 about Americans because I just have more knowledge of that group. Let's talk about Americans. How did

00:46:36.560 Americans respond when put in this situation that if they'd acted wrong, civilization would have been

00:46:46.480 destroyed? They had protests. How many, how many people fired their weapons at protests so far? The

00:46:56.740 protests about opening up? Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero people. How much, how many stories of something

00:47:06.980 like violence have you heard from a protest itself? Not, not from individuals being arrested in ways that

00:47:13.120 you wish you'd never seen, but at the protests? How about zero? How many people have gone hungry

00:47:21.320 because other people who were not willing to do whatever they needed to make sure that the hungry

00:47:27.720 got fed? Zero. Zero. Have you heard of anybody who starved? Because the people who were not starving

00:47:37.640 did the right thing. They said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. We've got a whole bunch of people who might

00:47:43.980 starve. Drop everything. We've got to feed people. And we succeeded. If you look at the, at each challenge

00:47:53.560 that this is presented, can you get enough ventilators? Can you get enough PPE? Can we get

00:47:58.760 money to people? Can we feed them? Can we keep them alive? Can we keep the, can we keep the hospitals

00:48:04.460 from crashing? Guess what? We succeeded on every one of those things. Every one of those things we succeeded

00:48:16.200 at. Handily. We succeeded with room to spare on everything. Now, of course, testing, you know, just takes a while

00:48:26.920 to get up and running. I'm not going to be the guy who says that we failed at testing. It is unambiguously

00:48:35.380 true there should have been more. It should have been in terms of we wish there had been more. I'm not

00:48:41.540 going to say should have been. Because you just, some things just take a while. And I would guess that the

00:48:46.560 things we're doing for testing are incredible. And I would say that when this is done, we're close

00:48:55.080 enough to the end game now, where I'm going to make you a prediction that I will live and die by,

00:49:02.540 and I feel completely confident of this. We're close enough to the end, the end line, with enough

00:49:09.040 stuff opening up and something that looks like a plan. We're close enough that the odds of civilization

00:49:16.400 just going to hell now in these last few weeks, zero. Zero. Our risk of total collapse, in my opinion,

00:49:29.720 had just reached zero. And the reason is we're too close to the end line. Nobody gives up the race

00:49:36.320 when they're a few steps from the finish line. Because we have plenty left in reserve. We're not even

00:49:43.160 close to beating. I mean, we're basically climbing on top of this virus like nobody's ever climbed on

00:49:49.900 top of anything. You know, I mean, we're, you know, we're getting on top of this thing, and it's

00:49:56.980 working. So here's the thing. I declare that the economy has a hundred percent chance of recovering

00:50:04.820 in a spectacular way. 2021 will be the time that we see that that comes true. I declare that the

00:50:13.160 combination of all these little things we're doing to beat the virus are right at the point where we're 0.58

00:50:20.240 just going to climb on top of this freaking thing. And I think that, I think that the, you know,

00:50:27.840 once we're on top of it, it's going to look good. All right. So that is my bubble reality. Economy

00:50:36.240 made it. I'm declaring, I'm declaring, this is a big deal, by the way. If this doesn't make you feel

00:50:44.220 good, you know, you're not in the bubble yet. But get in the bubble with me. It is my opinion that the

00:50:51.020 risk, you know, the catastrophic risk to the economy is actually over. It's actually over.

00:50:59.180 Certainly a risk to how quickly we come back. Tons of risk for individuals who need to be,

00:51:05.860 you know, we need to do what we can to make sure everybody who got the worst of this, you know,

00:51:10.700 gets a hand up. But do we know that we are those people? Have we learned that we will take care of

00:51:19.920 each other? Yes, we have. We have learned that if people need this ongoing help, we have learned

00:51:29.240 unambiguously that the rest of the country, the rest of the world, apparently, will do what it

00:51:35.820 needs to do. So your risk of starvation is zero. Your risk that the economy will be catastrophically

00:51:44.500 damaged? I put it zero. The risk that we won't open up in some kind of a staggered, faltering

00:51:53.680 fashion over the next three months? Zero. We are going to open up. And I would say unambiguously,

00:52:03.080 and this is the part that I'll add, that science has not caught up to me. So I'm going to get

00:52:07.940 ahead of science here, right? Those of you who want to stay outside the bubble, you're welcome

00:52:13.040 to it. And outside the bubble, you'd say, ah, I need those. I need those reliable clinical

00:52:18.780 tests where I really know what therapeutics work. Okay. But there are enough things happening

00:52:26.560 from who knows, maybe the Sorrento cure is real. You know, probably not. But there are enough

00:52:34.120 things going on that I think we're going to have it. Now, I'd like to say again, because

00:52:39.840 I just can't get this out of my head. The president has promised, you know, this, this

00:52:45.480 warp speed project to get to a vaccine. And while I have great, great doubt about whether

00:52:54.320 a vaccine is possible, the fact that all of the experts seem to be so, so optimistic about

00:53:02.560 it. For today's purposes, I'm going to say you couldn't have that many experts tell you

00:53:09.540 that we're going to have a vaccine with so many people working on so many different flavors

00:53:14.280 of it. It's very unlikely we're not going to have something like a vaccine. So I'm going

00:53:20.120 to, for the purpose of your feel-good bubble, say there will be a vaccine and that this warp

00:53:27.660 speed thing does look like exactly the right thing. Every now and then, your government does

00:53:34.040 something where you say to yourself, hey, you should, okay, that's exactly what you should

00:53:38.460 have done. And this warp speed project is exactly what we should be doing. I like it a lot. But

00:53:46.240 the best part I like, here's the part that Trump understands better than any president has ever

00:53:53.340 understood it. He knows the show. He understands that our psychology is what drives the economy

00:54:00.700 and that the show, in other words, everything, the spectacle he puts on, is part of what drives

00:54:07.800 our psychology, which is what drives our economy. So if you want a good 2021, how do you want the public

00:54:16.400 to feel? Well, you want to feel positive. You want to feel optimistic. You want to feel patriotic. You

00:54:25.000 want to feel like you're building, like you're, you're, you're coming back from something. You want

00:54:30.080 to feel victorious. So what does the president come up with? That the, the day we have enough of this

00:54:36.700 vaccine, let's say we get the vaccine, we're going to say it does happen because this is optimism day.

00:54:41.300 Okay. He's going to use the U.S. military to deliver it using every plane, train, not train, but every

00:54:50.140 plane, boat, and truck. Now, what will that do to your psychology? How will you feel watching the U.S.

00:55:03.140 military deploying to, you know, every town and city in the United States with life-saving vaccines

00:55:14.360 that are designed for the most vulnerable first, taking care of the seniors first and vulnerable

00:55:21.640 populations? How will you feel when that's the news? Because the news, it's going to be very visual,

00:55:29.560 which is what the president does best. I mean, he knows visual. He's just so good at that.

00:55:35.540 How are you going to feel about that? Somebody says, I feel the country is broke.

00:55:42.640 I'll bet you wouldn't because the, the country is, even the news will frame this as a, as a positive

00:55:49.460 development. I've got a feeling that you are going to feel so good about this, that that good feeling

00:55:56.080 will actually boost the economy, that it would be that effective. Rarely, rarely could you ever

00:56:03.920 imagine there could be a, let's say an event or a spectacle or something that could have that much

00:56:09.640 effect on the national mood. But that, you know, whoever came up with the idea of the military delivering

00:56:15.820 this, it's just brilliant. It really is. I'd like to think it was Trump because it's, it's right in his

00:56:22.940 wheelhouse. All right, so that's, that is what I wanted to tell you today. All right, how many of you

00:56:38.360 feel happier because at least, at least now, you've got a little optimism?

00:56:46.940 Do I think that Zoom records all conversations like the NSA? Well, I don't know if it records all

00:56:58.900 of them, but it wouldn't be hard for it to look for keywords and record the ones that had the right

00:57:04.140 keywords. So I don't know, but any, and, and I think that Zoom is trying hard to get it, to get their

00:57:11.900 product to not go through any Chinese servers. So by now, maybe they've accomplished that. I don't

00:57:18.200 know. So it could be that Zoom is turning things around. We'll see. I hope so. Zoom, Zoom is one of

00:57:26.220 the just coolest American companies, if I'm being honest. If you had to look at just the product,

00:57:33.360 if you say to yourself, all right, Zoom as a product, it's really, really good. I got to say,

00:57:39.400 because I use it quite a bit. And if you've used any other thing, you know, like Skype,

00:57:45.700 for example, Skype's pretty good. Skype's good. Zoom's better. Oh, good. I'm looking at your

00:57:53.600 comments and it looks like many of you are enjoying the bubble reality. Good. Good, good. Well,

00:58:03.480 it looks like that worked. All right. Then I think what I'm going to do is leave it on the positive

00:58:08.860 note. Somebody's asking me if I can tell you a dirty joke. I can, but I'm not going to do it

00:58:15.040 today. And I'm going to leave it there. Take that good feeling into the rest of your day.

00:58:23.140 Be aware that you've created a subjective reality, but you can enjoy it for today because what were

00:58:30.420 you going to do about the coronavirus today anyway? Might as well enjoy your day. That's all

00:58:35.540 for now. I'll talk to you tonight.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 17, 2020

Episode 980 Scott Adams： I Create a Bubble Reality of Positivity For You to Live in Until a Least Monday

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