Episode 980 Scott Adams： I Create a Bubble Reality of Positivity For You to Live in Until a Least Monday
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
151.38991
Summary
In this episode, I teach you how to create a bubble reality out of the process of imagining that the news is true. And then I do a tweet that teaches you exactly what that looks like, and how to make it work.
Transcript
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Well, it's the best part of the day. Yeah, it's the best part of the day. It's called
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Coffee with Scott Adams and the Simultaneous Sip. And if you have not discovered already
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how much better your day is when you do this, well, you're in for a good surprise, aren't you?
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And in order to enjoy today, this will be one of the best. One of the best. All you need to enjoy it is,
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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
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a stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like
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coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing
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that makes everything better, including the damn pandemic. It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it
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Well, as I promised you on Twitter and in the title of this periscope, today I will create a bubble
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reality around you. This will not be reality itself. We don't have access to that. But I will create a
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bubble around you that will make you feel better all day. Will it last? We don't know. It might last
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Monday. It might last longer. But your little bubble reality will be based on the following concept.
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Are you ready? I'm going to create a bubble reality entirely out of the process of imagining that
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the news is true. That's it. Instead of imagining that the news is fake, I'm just going to tell you
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the actual news. And at least for today, we're just going to pretend it's true. And when I say the
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news, I mean any news about studies, could be news that comes through the internet, could be just a
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rumor. But we're going to treat it like it's real, just for today. And I want to create a little bubble
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reality in which things are going to be really good. You ready? First, I'm going to teach you a new
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skill. Now, this is a continuation of a skill that you've been taught before. So we're going to start
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out with something useful. And you're going to say to yourself, wow, that was kind of useful. I've
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already gotten something good out of today. It goes like this. I've taught you the six dimensions of
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humor. And if you need to brush up, just Google my name and six dimensions of humor, and you'll see the
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six dimensions. And the idea is that you have to use any two of the six to make a joke. So while I've
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taught you that, and it doesn't matter which two, and it's better if you use more than two, but two is
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enough. So the dimensions are, and I can never remember them off the top of my head, but it's like
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cute, recognizable, clever, bizarre, naughty. There's a sixth one. But the idea is you want to use as many
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as you can. And I did a tweet in which it will teach you exactly what that looks like. So here's the
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tweet, and then I'll tell you the technique behind it, because it's already got 4,500 retweets,
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which in my world would be a lot. So the tweet was this. I like it when Congress wears masks.
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Most of them should be ashamed to show their faces, and if you plan to rob the public, it helps to dress
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for the part. Now, the first thing you need to know about this joke is that I almost didn't write it,
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because I thought of it, and then I wrote it down, and I looked at it, and I said, you know,
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this is not really edgy. It's just sort of, it's sort of just right down that fat middle where I'm
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just saying what people want to hear. You know, and I thought to myself, I'm a professional. I feel
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like, as a professional, I could do better than this joke. And then you know what happened?
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And then I thought back to a moment in 1990, when I was giving a presentation to a bunch of newspaper
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editors, and I was talking about the new Dilbert comic that was relatively new at the time. And
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no, it wasn't 1990. It was, yeah, it was, about 1990. And I was telling them, you know, how great
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Dilbert was so that they would add it to the newspaper. So basically, it was like a marketing
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event for me, but I was a speaker at an editor's event. I was just making sure that they knew who I
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was. And at the end of my presentation, a man I didn't recognize stood up in the question period,
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and instead of a question, he had a comment. And his comment was that my cartoon, the samples
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that I'd shown him up front, he said, what you have there is a cartoonist's cartoon. And
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he went on to explain, he said, it's a cartoon that would only, that would only appeal to other
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cartoonists. Can you imagine that? I'm standing in front of all of my customers.
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And a guy gets up and tells me that I have a cartoon that would not appeal to anybody in the
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audience. The only people would appeal to is another cartoonist. Said that in public,
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while I stood in front of a room full of my customers.
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Now, I, of course, did not appreciate this when it happened. And afterwards, I went to my editor,
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and I said, was it my editor or somebody was in the room? And I said, can you tell me who that guy is?
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Who is that guy? Because I don't like that guy. That guy did not make my day good.
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And she said, that's Bill Keene. Bill Keene. You ever hear that name? He was the creator of the
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Family Circus, one of the most successful comics of all time. So he was a legend in the industry.
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Now, whether or not you care for his comic or not is irrelevant to the point. And then I realized that
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I had not just been insulted in front of an entire room full of my customers, but that I had been
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insulted by one of the most famous cartoonists in the history of the planet Earth in front of all of
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my customers. Now, when I learned who he was, I said to myself, this is not a good guy. He's not a good
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guy. However, as criticism goes, I learned what he meant. So I came to understand what he meant when
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I said I had a cartoonist cartoon. What he meant was, and here's the fun part, I count this as the
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best advice, probably in the top three, of the best advice I've ever gotten. Indeed, that day,
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Bill Keene made my career. He actually turned me into a successful cartoonist that day. Because
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that advice stuck with me, and it never left. And I'm going to tell you how it plays into this tweet
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in a moment. And the advice was this. If I write cartoons that appeal to me as a cartoonist, I've lost
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the fact that I'm not like other people. Whatever it is that made me the cartoonist probably also made
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my sense of humor develop in a slightly different way than most of the public. So if I'm creating a
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product for the public, as opposed to creating something to amuse myself, I should not be creating
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it with all the elements that are designed to amuse myself. And as a professional cartoonist,
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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
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most insightful thing I've ever heard. I've never had anybody say anything that devastatingly insightful
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about the nature of what I was doing. And when I realized fully what that meant, that I'm developing a product
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for other people. And then my ego was in the way. It's an ego problem. My ego made me draw comics for
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myself, because I said to myself, you know, essentially, well, if I like them, anybody's gonna like
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them. Right? Once I got that, and I also realized that the customers, the, you know, the readers were
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asking for Dilbert to be more in the office. And at the time, he wasn't. He wasn't spending much time
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in the office. It wasn't really an office place comic too much. So I said to myself, you know,
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I don't really love it when he's in the office, because that's actually my day job. I still had a
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day job. And the last thing I wanted was to have a comic that was sort of my mental escape
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to be the same as my day job, because that's what I was escaping from. But it's not what the
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customers wanted. What the customers wanted was my shared, let's say my shared pain of being in a
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cubicle, because I still was. And that's what they wanted. They want to say, hey, I'm in a cubicle,
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you're in a cubicle. Let's talk about that. And so when I managed to take Bill Kean's advice,
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eventually, and managed to start writing for the audience, I realized that I wasn't writing stuff
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that would necessarily be exactly what I'd want. And this tweet that I sent out that, as I said,
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went viral. I almost didn't write it, because I said to myself, you know, it's not the tweet
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Do you know how hard it is, as an artist, to create art? And I'm going to say that a tweet or
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anything you write, if you're an artist, is art, in a sense. Do you know how hard it is to create art
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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
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tweet. This tweet, I personally dislike. But because of experience, and because of the, I will say,
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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.
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But I'm not writing the tweet for myself. I'm writing it for other people. So I'm going to
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write a tweet that I know other people will enjoy. I wrote it. Bam. 4.5,000 retweets. Let me give you
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the end of the story about Bill Kean. So I was, and of course, I was one of the, you know,
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the young cartoonists at the time who made fun of family, the family circus for being, I always say
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circle. Is it family circus? Circus, right? I would make fun of it because it wasn't cool.
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And I thought, hey, I'm a, I can make these edgy cartoons. Why can't Bill Kean? Why can't he make a
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cartoon that's edgy and cool the way I would like it? And then you look at his sales. One of the top
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cartoonists in the whole freaking world. Number of clients all over the world. He drew cartoons
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for other people. And when I got to know him a little bit, because he was, he ran, there was a
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big cartoon society and he was big in that. And he was the host of all the cartoon events that were
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like the Oscars. And so I got to know him a little bit and realized that he wasn't anything like
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the person who stood up. In other words, he wasn't a dick. He was actually a really nice guy,
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like a really nice guy. And, and I guess it was tough love, basically. It was the most useful advice
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I've ever gotten. But it turns out that his own personality and his own sense of humor
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wasn't anywhere close to the product he created. He had learned to create a product for his customers
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that I'm pretty sure he didn't like himself. Once you got to know him, you'd see how different
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his sensibilities were than his actual product. And then I'd say, oh, I get it now. You learned
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to make a product for other people. I get it. Now I see how this works. So, and then, and then the,
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at the end of the story, Dilbert became, you know, financially successful and got a lot of
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attention in the mid-90s. And there was this one event called the Rubens. And the Rubens were like
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the Oscars for cartoonists. And I'd never won anything as a cartoonist. And I think I'd been nominated
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and lost once before. And so one day I get, I get nominated for the two top awards. So within my category,
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the top awards would be the best comic strip. So that would be the top of the comic strips.
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But then there's an award above all the other cartoonist awards. So then you're, you're also
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could get an award for the best of all cartoons of any kind. So those are the two best awards.
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So I got nominated for both in the same year, the two top awards. And I wasn't going to go
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because by that time I was like, eh, you know, I got nominated last time. I, I rented a tuxedo. I
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took my ass across the country, spent two days at this event, and then I didn't win. It was just
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sort of depressing. So I decided I wasn't going to attend because I just didn't care that much at that
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point. And Bill Keen calls me home. So, so now we're, we're going to complete the story here. So
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it's years later, I'm now a famous cartoonist, one of the most famous cartoonists in the country.
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This is years after Bill Keen, you know, insulted me, but gave me the best advice I've ever gotten.
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And, and he calls me at home and he says, uh, now by this time, you also have to know that we'd done
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a cartoon trade where we had also communicated and we'd, uh, he drew my comic for a day and I drew
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his comic for a day. It was part of a big national thing. So we already knew each other and I'd come
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to like him as a, as a person because I, I got to understand him a little better. And then I was
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like, Oh, okay. I get it now. And he calls me at home and he says, you know, you've been nominated
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for the two top awards in cartooning, the, you know, the greatest honors you could ever have in
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cartooning. And we understand you're not going to attend. And I told him why I go, yeah, you know,
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it was just disappointing last time. And yeah, I'm busy. And that's just, doesn't, I don't,
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I just don't want to do it. And then Bill Keen said this, it was one of the coolest things
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anybody's ever done. He said, uh, you know, there was this guy, um, I forget who it was. He goes,
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and he got nominated and he also didn't go. And then when he didn't go, he ended up winning
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and, and he always felt bad because he went and he didn't win. And of course I knew that. I mean,
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I knew if I went and I won, which I wasn't expecting, you know, I knew I'd feel bad,
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but I figured, eh, I don't care that much. And then Bill Keen says this, he goes, you've been
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nominated for the two top awards. If you don't come and if you won, you might be twice as unhappy
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as he was. And I said, what? And he said, you might be twice as unhappy. And I said, got it.
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Okay. Got it. In other words, Bill Keen already knew that I'd won. And he knew that I'd won both
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awards and he was making damn sure that I, that I didn't miss it. All right. So, so that
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was the, that was the, the sort of the wrap up of that. So Bill Keen, um, uh, he came
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through. Um, so that's that. Here's a question for you. Uh, here's a suggestion for you. Do you
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ever wonder about your digital assistants listening to you all day? So your digital assistants are,
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you know, listening to all your conversations allegedly, or are they actually listening?
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Is your phone listening to you? Is my Amazon digital assistant listening to me right now?
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Well, you worry about that, don't you? So here's my recommendation to you. Here's what I do
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randomly during the day. I confess the crimes that I didn't do because if I could get enough
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body of work into the digital assistant, then someday when it finds it, it accuses me of a
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crime I did do. And they check the records and they say, look right here, we were recording
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you the whole time. And that we found this record and it says you, you did kill, you did kill
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that guy. And I'm going to say, really? Oh, really? You, you believe that because I said
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it in the room and it got picked up on my digital assistant. Well, if you'll go back and check
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the records, I believe you'll also find my confession for killing JFK. I believe you'll
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also find my statement that I have DNA from Bigfoot. You will also find that I went fishing and
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caught the Loch Ness Monster. So let's put them in context, shall we? So that's my advice to
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you all day long. You should just admit to crimes. Occasionally you should scream as though you're
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doing a domestic abuse situation. You know, you should, you should stage every possible crime
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that you might later be accused of. So you've got a big body of fakes. And then somebody
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says, well, it's right there on your own, in your own voice. Oh yeah? Let me show you
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something else that's in my voice. Context, bitch. All right. There is some breaking news.
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The Epoch Times apparently has an article on this. It turns out that, speaking of surveillance,
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it turns out that maybe Flynn was not unmasked. What? Yeah. It turns out that maybe Flynn was
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not unmasked. According to the transcripts, there's some indication that they got the Flynn
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transcripts directly from the NSA. You know, the NSA that's sucking up everybody's conversation
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everywhere, allegedly. Well, it turns out if you get it that way, there's no unmasking to
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do because nothing is masked. That's right. You can just, apparently if you're in the government
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and you've got, you say you've got a reason, apparently somebody has access to raw, unmasked
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footage of every American in every conversation, presumably, and they just had to ask for it.
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Do you believe that? Do you believe that this whole time that we've been lied to, I'm going
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to say lied, that we've been lied to about the idea that our government would be so guarded
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with our privacy that the government itself had put up rules so that even the government
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couldn't look at who the people were unless they had, you know, special legal process to
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do it? Turns out, none of that was true. Sure. How hard would it be if you wanted to know
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who the masked person was? Apparently you can just go to the NSA and just say, well, I
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don't want to go through the masking process. Just tell me, just give me the, give me the
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transcript. Somebody says that is in Snowden's book. Well, we certainly know, we knew from Snowden
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that everything was being collected. Here's the part I didn't know. I didn't know how easy
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it was for the government to get access to it. Meaning that I didn't know what situations
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would present themselves. I thought it was more of a terrorist kind of a situation. I
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assumed it was more of a people we thought were pretty guilty situation. You don't really
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think of it in terms of a sort of a political situation, do you? So if you haven't lost all
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trust in your government yet, that should do it. So I think we should treat as a fairy
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tale, the idea of masking. Should we, should we as citizens, we're now informed citizens,
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right? As informed citizens, should we even act like masking is a real thing? Because it's
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not. I mean, apparently it's not. We've, we've been completely lied to this whole time. So let's
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watch that story develop. All right. So I promised you I would create a bubble reality in which
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you can live in it happily. The bubble reality will last at least today. And I'm going to
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build this bubble reality using nothing but the news, including stuff that comes across
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the internet. And I'm just going to treat it all like it's true. Okay? Just going to treat
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it all like it's true and watch this bubble reality form around you. Might not be permanent,
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but you'll like it today. Number one, have you noticed that for every business that is actually
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open, and of course that isn't that many, doesn't it seem like a lot of the businesses
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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
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there aren't that many open. That is really good news. Pretty much everything that's open
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has plenty of demand. So as long as demand is driving reopenings, that's good news. And
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as I've said, half of the country or something like it didn't actually lose money. Something
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like half of the country made money somehow because they still got paid, but they didn't have
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much in the way of expenses for three months. So weirdly, half of the country is ready to spend.
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And I feel like when businesses reopen, they're going to be surprised. Were you surprised that the
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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
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overbooked. People have money. Not everybody. It's like half, half the country. But the half that has
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the money, they're looking to spend that money. That's good news. So that's the first part of your
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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
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experts who sort of understand that world of printing money and monetary policy and debt,
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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.
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So we did. Have you noticed what's missing? Here's a dog that's not barking.
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Where's the dog barking on television where there's an economics expert, an economist, who's saying,
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yeah, I know it's an emergency and we printed all this money, but we're definitely doomed because of
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that. Where's that guy? Where's that woman? Right? Isn't that conspicuously missing?
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It's conspicuously missing. It's conspicuously missing because every situation has a person on
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the other side. Name one other situation in the news that doesn't have an expert on the other side
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saying that, you know, it's all doom. You can't do this. It's a big mistake. Have you seen one
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economist, an actual qualified person, go on the news and say, look, I got to raise my hand.
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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,
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they have an incentive to try to get another big one right. So I'm always a little distrustful of the
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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
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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
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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
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
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?
00:39:02.880
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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note. Somebody's asking me if I can tell you a dirty joke. I can, but I'm not going to do it
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today. And I'm going to leave it there. Take that good feeling into the rest of your day.
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Be aware that you've created a subjective reality, but you can enjoy it for today because what were
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you going to do about the coronavirus today anyway? Might as well enjoy your day. That's all