Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 985 Scott Adams： A Bubble Reality I Recently Discovered, What I Learned About Learning

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in.

00:00:12.560 It's time for the evening edition.

00:00:15.840 I thought I was going to take questions, but once again I forgot to push the right button so we won't be taking questions.

00:00:21.760 But, will we have just as much fun?

00:00:25.220 Yes we will.

00:00:26.160 I would love it if Periscope could fix that bug, so that once I start a live Periscope, I can remember to invite guests, but it's too late.

00:00:36.860 Alright, well we've got stuff to talk about.

00:00:40.400 For example, let me tell you what I found out about drumsticks.

00:00:45.420 Interesting.

00:00:46.780 I've been trying to learn drums and mostly online.

00:00:49.480 I had an online teacher for a while, and now I'm going through online self-teaching through YouTube.

00:00:57.940 And here's one of the things I've learned.

00:01:00.760 Man, is it hard to learn anything from YouTube videos.

00:01:05.240 Let me give you the beginning of every YouTube video.

00:01:11.560 And hi everybody, and we've got notes at the bottom, and here, you know, 10 years ago I heard this thing, and then I met a guy, and in 15 minutes after I'm done droning, I might show you the one little nugget of information you want.

00:01:27.900 But probably not.

00:01:28.840 You'll probably give up.

00:01:29.760 So the first thing is that the people who make these very well, they look well produced, meaning the lighting's good, the sound is good, the camera work is good, but they don't know anything about teaching.

00:01:45.200 I'm talking about the full body of YouTube videos about how to play the drums.

00:01:51.100 Now, that just happens to be this one domain I dug into, but imagine all the other domains.

00:01:56.760 Are they this bad?

00:01:57.660 Let me give you an example of how incredibly bad it is trying to teach yourself just by looking at videos.

00:02:06.140 So I found out after two years of noodling around and not being able to produce any kind of good sound, and also never being able to drum fast enough, I found out that there's a way to hold the sticks that's completely different than anything I've been exposed to so far, and that if you didn't know how to do that, nothing else works.

00:02:27.660 So for two years, I've been holding the sticks wrong, and if you do that, you just can't progress.

00:02:35.640 It's not possible.

00:02:36.560 And all I knew was that you held them light, you know, sort of in your fingertips like this, and that, you know, you were supposed to hold them light.

00:02:44.560 And I thought, well, there you go.

00:02:47.020 What else is to know?

00:02:48.580 I'm holding a light.

00:02:50.300 I'm hitting things.

00:02:52.000 But I would look at professional drummers, and I think, I don't know, it just looks different.

00:02:57.080 Whatever they're doing looks different.

00:02:58.540 And I thought, am I just old that I can't get the speed?

00:03:03.340 And I'd be like, ah, ah, I'm drumming as fast as I can, but I'm not.

00:03:08.240 I feel like I'm maybe a quarter of the speed of the people doing it on every YouTube video at every age.

00:03:14.920 It's like everybody in the world is faster than me.

00:03:17.680 And it turns out that it's not speed per se, it's technique.

00:03:23.060 And specifically, you know, if you're trying to hit it three times in a row, let's say fast, you sort of whip it down, and then the stick comes back.

00:03:33.520 But the next two hits, you're not using your arm and your wrist.

00:03:37.500 You're actually just using your fingertips to slap it down again as it bounces back the other two times.

00:03:43.840 So you're using the bounce back and slapping it with your two hands.

00:03:49.180 Now, I learned that today, after two years of looking at videos, in which this was never mentioned.

00:03:56.860 Not once have I seen it, and I even took lessons online for a while.

00:04:01.760 And not once was this critical thing, which makes everything else possible, didn't show up anywhere.

00:04:10.840 I just, I just, I wasn't even looking for it, I just chanced on it.

00:04:15.040 All right, so the point is, it's not about drumming, it's not about me.

00:04:19.420 The point is, do you know how much better online education could be if I could go right to the thing I wanted,

00:04:27.540 and it was in the order that I wanted to see it?

00:04:31.220 Can you imagine?

00:04:32.880 Do you know how much happier and faster it would have been, happier I would have been and faster it would have been,

00:04:38.140 than taking a lesson?

00:04:39.260 Because with my human instructor, you've got like the first 45 minutes is getting to know you.

00:04:46.260 And you're like, you know, 45 minutes, I could have learned quite a few things.

00:04:50.760 And, you know, then the next day, it's how you doing, you know, my equipment, let's get your equipment lined up.

00:04:56.380 And do you mind if I take a phone call?

00:04:58.700 But if you could give me a bunch of really quick videos with no introductions, emphasis on no introductory material,

00:05:10.500 I just go right to the point where it says, hold your stick like this, hit it, and then do this.

00:05:18.100 And you'll be three times faster than if you just try to hit it three times.

00:05:21.980 That's what you get is the speed.

00:05:25.260 So I don't know about you.

00:05:29.040 I mean, everybody learns a little bit differently.

00:05:30.680 But if you could take me right to the thing I need, and it's explained well by somebody who knows what they're talking about,

00:05:37.760 I could learn a lot of stuff really quickly.

00:05:40.840 It's only the boring stuff in between that keeps me from learning.

00:05:45.100 It's all the bloat.

00:05:46.940 It's the setup.

00:05:48.360 It's the waiting.

00:05:50.460 It's the get to the point.

00:05:51.920 It's the, I heard it already.

00:05:53.380 Can you get to the new point?

00:05:54.780 If I could control the exact pace of the information just by, you know, forwarding and, you know, going right to it,

00:06:02.340 I think I could learn three times faster for a lot of tasks, some things you need to practice.

00:06:11.220 Anyway, so I wanted to, oh, I saw a funny tweet today from Melissa Francis.

00:06:16.800 She said that, she made a clever tweet basically saying that Trump has the right to choose what happens to his own body,

00:06:26.160 which made me think of abortion.

00:06:28.560 So Trump has the right to choose what happens to his own body, whether it's hydroxychloroquine or whatever.

00:06:35.700 So, of course, that story continues.

00:06:38.800 The CNN acting as if, well, you know, I don't have to say anymore.

00:06:44.680 This will be the story that brings us all together.

00:06:48.820 So I called a friend of mine who is my smartest friend who also doesn't like Trump,

00:06:56.860 meaning that he's smart and he doesn't like Trump.

00:07:01.200 And for a few years, we haven't been able to talk.

00:07:04.620 We've sent messages back and forth, but sometimes I can't read them because he's just so, he seems angry and deranged to me.

00:07:11.180 And I've never really understood it because he's not just smart.

00:07:15.020 He's like, he's Ivy League, you know, brilliant guy.

00:07:18.240 And yet we saw the world so differently and I never understood it.

00:07:23.200 And so I called him today and I found out why I got to the bottom of it.

00:07:28.940 You know, rarely, rarely do you get to the bottom of things.

00:07:32.600 So here's what I found out.

00:07:35.580 He told me that his news sources are CNN, MSNBC, and New York Times.

00:07:42.080 Pretty much just those three.

00:07:45.660 I probably don't even need to finish the rest of it, right?

00:07:49.180 Those are his three sources.

00:07:51.120 How much would you know about the world if those were your three sources?

00:07:55.560 And it turns out that he was unaware that somewhere around 2016, the news stopped even trying to be anything like news, at least for the political stuff.

00:08:07.820 And it became just full out, you know, team play.

00:08:11.580 He was unaware of that.

00:08:13.720 He just thought, well, there's crazy people on the right of Fox News and stuff, and I don't look at that.

00:08:18.800 And then there's these completely reasonable people who just try to get it right, the CNN, MSNBC, New York Times.

00:08:27.060 And he argued especially that the New York Times plays it right down the middle.

00:08:30.980 I mean, they're like just good, legitimate news.

00:08:34.580 And I tried to tell him, Josh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't use his name.

00:08:38.800 I said, hey, guy, you know, you're a little bit behind the news because these major publications stopped being anything like news in 2016 or so.

00:08:56.940 So I asked him specifically some questions to test his knowledge.

00:09:02.400 And if you didn't see my pinned tweet on this, it's got like 3,700 retweets already, so people are relating to it, I guess.

00:09:12.640 So here are the following things that my friend, and keep in mind, he's well-informed.

00:09:19.160 This is somebody who reads the news every day, follows the news, you know, follows those news sources.

00:09:25.500 And here are the following things that he'd never heard of, okay?

00:09:28.740 He didn't know that you have to pair the hydroxychloroquine with zinc or it doesn't work.

00:09:35.760 And that the studies that were showing hydroxychloroquine by itself wasn't working shouldn't surprise you because it wasn't with the zinc, which is the active part.

00:09:47.960 He'd never heard that.

00:09:50.880 I'll bet every one of you has heard it, right?

00:09:53.960 He'd never heard that.

00:09:55.040 Now, if you had never heard that, you would think that those studies were somewhat reliable.

00:10:02.000 But now here's another one.

00:10:05.960 He was unaware that something like a quarter of doctors, at least according to a poll, said they would prescribe hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and zinc.

00:10:16.940 So he didn't know that a quarter of doctors would say, yeah, I'd do that.

00:10:25.100 Didn't know that.

00:10:26.840 Didn't every one of you know that there are real doctors prescribing it every day?

00:10:33.180 Literally, didn't every one of you know that?

00:10:35.560 Because the people who are sort of Trump supporters, mostly that's who's watching this probably, you see the mainstream news, but then you also see Fox News and other sources.

00:10:49.060 But if you're only watching the left and you just can't stand to look at anything else, look at the things you wouldn't know.

00:10:55.740 Here's what else he didn't know.

00:10:58.480 He had never heard of off-label prescriptions.

00:11:02.240 He didn't know that was a thing.

00:11:04.600 He didn't know that the doctor can prescribe something even though it was only approved for a different use, as long as the doctor has some good rationale.

00:11:15.280 But legally, ethically, and even as a normal process of medicine, it's very routine.

00:11:23.020 Didn't know that.

00:11:23.700 I'll bet every one of you knew that.

00:11:27.800 All right.

00:11:28.960 How about he was not aware that a lot of the frontline healthcare workers are taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc, I assume.

00:11:37.740 How many of you knew that, that they were?

00:11:41.040 Almost all of you, right?

00:11:42.580 He didn't know, had never heard this, that the frontline workers, many of them, not all of them, are taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc.

00:11:52.240 Here's the one that really blew my mind.

00:11:56.660 He was not aware that there are lots of other countries that are massively using the hydroxychloroquine.

00:12:03.280 And as I like to say, they have doctors too.

00:12:06.380 Have you heard of India?

00:12:09.380 It's a real big country.

00:12:11.260 They've got doctors and stuff.

00:12:13.600 Their doctors think it's a good idea.

00:12:16.260 You know, the doctors in India didn't come out of, you know, the bad doctor school. 0.99

00:12:22.320 And there's not all of them.

00:12:24.480 You know, they've got a pretty good educational system over there.

00:12:27.060 And, you know, Malaysia, there's a bunch of other.

00:12:30.160 But imagine that you'd never heard that.

00:12:33.420 I mean, seriously, you'd never heard that.

00:12:37.400 All right.

00:12:40.460 Here's some more.

00:12:41.280 He had never seen the Russian troll farm memes, so he still believed that it's definitely a fact that Russia interfered with the election.

00:12:55.060 So I had to agree with him that they attempted it.

00:12:58.180 So I had to find that agreement place first because he was quite adamant.

00:13:02.780 But I found the place we could agree.

00:13:04.340 I said, well, we'd agree they tried, right?

00:13:07.140 He's like, yeah, OK, we can agree that they tried.

00:13:09.540 And then I talked about whether they succeeded.

00:13:13.460 And I said, did you see the memes, like the actual memes that they ran on Facebook?

00:13:18.720 Did you see them?

00:13:19.860 And he hadn't.

00:13:22.680 But I have.

00:13:24.500 And I said, nobody who's seen them thinks that they influenced the election because it looks like a sixth grade project that didn't go well.

00:13:31.580 I mean, you just have to look at them to know that they couldn't have possibly.

00:13:35.380 I mean, not in your wildest imagination.

00:13:37.300 Could these lame little, it would be sort of like saying, I influenced the election because I sent somebody a hallmark greeting card that one time.

00:13:47.440 I mean, it's just so insanely not likely that that had any effect on even one vote.

00:13:54.740 But he didn't know it.

00:13:56.240 He thought that there was some evidence that.

00:13:58.380 I also asked him, he also argued that if 17 intelligence agencies say something's true, well, you can count on it.

00:14:09.920 I said, what?

00:14:11.980 What?

00:14:12.480 How in 2020 could you make that statement that if 17 of our intelligence agencies agreed that that makes it credible?

00:14:22.520 It's almost the opposite.

00:14:24.420 Because, first of all, not all 17 looked into it.

00:14:30.220 You know, the 17 wasn't real anyway.

00:14:32.780 They finally admitted it wasn't.

00:14:34.360 It was more like three, but it was really like one.

00:14:36.820 And it wasn't the whole one.

00:14:38.480 It was a few people.

00:14:40.180 And really, it was the one guy.

00:14:42.180 So 17 intelligence agencies usually boils down to one or two people.

00:14:47.360 And then the others either didn't disagree or they said, oh, those guys are good.

00:14:52.140 They know what they're doing.

00:14:53.980 So I'll sign on to that.

00:14:56.680 But to imagine that it is more credible, the 17 intelligence agencies looked into it.

00:15:04.840 And my friend actually believed and said so directly that he believed that they would not give their opinions,

00:15:11.960 the 17 intelligence agencies, unless they had each individually investigated.

00:15:19.880 Do you think that all 17 intelligence agencies independently investigated?

00:15:27.000 I don't think so.

00:15:28.820 I don't think so.

00:15:30.840 Do you think two of them might have?

00:15:34.940 Probably not.

00:15:37.540 If one of them did it, I'd be a little impressed that anybody did it.

00:15:42.780 But to imagine that 17 intelligence agencies mean something.

00:15:49.260 He also believes it's a fact that Russia hacked the DNC.

00:15:54.600 It might be true.

00:15:56.820 It might be true that they hacked the DNC.

00:16:00.180 But we don't know it.

00:16:02.540 Meaning that I don't know it.

00:16:04.980 I didn't see it.

00:16:06.600 And I didn't hear it from anybody credible.

00:16:08.500 So if I didn't see it myself, and I didn't hear about it from anybody credible, which is the case,

00:16:17.540 well, I don't know that they hacked it.

00:16:20.020 You know, I think I saw a story in Politico somebody sent me

00:16:22.640 that showed that some other countries tried to hack that as well, but they were less successful.

00:16:27.760 All right.

00:16:31.040 Did you hear about Joe Rogan moving to Spotify?

00:16:37.860 How cool is that?

00:16:39.120 So, well, it's not cool if you're not a subscriber to Spotify, I guess.

00:16:44.720 So here's what's fun about that.

00:16:46.960 So I guess he's taking his product off of YouTube, and I think iTunes, because he's going to be exclusive on Spotify.

00:16:54.580 So you get to hear it just by being a member of Spotify, I guess.

00:16:59.520 And, you know, people are estimating it's a $100 million deal, etc.

00:17:05.740 And I'm really interested in this because I, too, realize that YouTube doesn't have an upside.

00:17:14.540 So, you know, I moved to the locals platform, and it's also subscription.

00:17:18.040 So both Joe Rogan and I have moved to a subscription service because YouTube, for different reasons, I guess,

00:17:28.420 wasn't enough for getting it done.

00:17:31.400 So I think that's going to be a trend.

00:17:33.860 I think the trend is going to be people don't want to see ads, and ads don't work.

00:17:39.560 So both between the people who don't want to see them and the advertisers realizing they don't really work,

00:17:45.660 I think you're going to see a lot more subscription entertainment, and you're going to be happier about it because no commercials.

00:17:53.880 So good for Joe for nailing that down.

00:17:57.400 I'm really happy that that worked out.

00:18:01.060 All right.

00:18:03.640 Somebody says, willing to bet your intelligent friend can't change a tire either.

00:18:08.660 I bet he could.

00:18:10.540 I'll bet he could change a tire.

00:18:11.880 Somebody says, wrong, he's going to be on the free version of Spotify.

00:18:21.400 So is he going to be on the free version so that it drives people to Spotify and then they'll subscribe?

00:18:28.620 Anyway, Spotify is paying him, apparently, not advertisements.

00:18:34.860 So maybe we'll find out more about that as time goes by.

00:18:37.640 All right.

00:18:40.440 I'm working on a few micro lessons.

00:18:46.960 And thank you for signing up.

00:18:51.080 Change a tire.

00:18:55.240 So I'm working on a few micro lessons, but not for tonight.

00:19:00.580 Is there anything that you would like to hear?

00:19:04.620 I'm looking at your comments to see if there's anything you wanted me to talk about.

00:19:10.200 So it could be today or maybe something you want me to prepare.

00:19:13.700 So I know there's a little delay in the comments.

00:19:17.680 So podcasts are free on Spotify.

00:19:22.060 Did my intelligent friend bend at all?

00:19:26.660 Oh, yeah, let me give you the punchline to that.

00:19:29.940 So he is, you know, mentally agile, meaning that he can change his mind if the argument has been presented and it's solid.

00:19:41.840 The argument I presented was sort of mind boggling in the sense that I was telling him that everything he thought he knew about politics was wrong because he'd been listening to sources that he trusted and were literally just lying to him for years.

00:19:58.100 And how easy is it to accept that that that's happened?

00:20:03.600 I did tell him, you know, after I filled in all that information, I believe that he trusted me that the information I gave him was both available on other news sources and true and also highly relevant to the conversation.

00:20:19.020 So I do think that I shook his confidence.

00:20:23.040 I do believe that he he will rethink the sufficiency of his news sources.

00:20:33.220 I don't know if he'll change them, but I think he'll at least have that bug in his head that there was a whole bunch of stuff that was relevant to the headlines that I knew and he didn't.

00:20:44.400 And I don't think he's going to forget that.

00:20:47.520 Did I witness cognitive dissonance?

00:20:49.820 No, because it was a phone conversation.

00:20:51.620 So I think you're asking about that that tell where you see somebody's face go blank there for a minute.

00:20:57.800 So, no, I did not detect that.

00:21:02.300 Did you ever mention Elon Musk tweet about the red pill?

00:21:06.340 I didn't.

00:21:07.720 And other than it being a Matrix reference, I don't know what to say about that.

00:21:13.660 All right, the Trump slaughter meter.

00:21:20.300 I'll tell you, I think the stock market has already voted, don't you?

00:21:24.460 I feel as though that we're going to see nonstop goodish news from now until victory.

00:21:34.840 So it's not that well, it's not that we won't have any bad news, of course, because the death count is going to rise, etc.

00:21:40.400 But I feel like the news cycle went from one bad thing after another for a few months to we're more likely to hear about a new therapy or a new vaccine or a new technique.

00:21:55.120 I feel like the news is going to turn unambiguously positive.

00:21:59.580 I also feel that if we can get through this next two weeks without the death curve going up, and I think we're going to, actually.

00:22:11.020 Because everything that we're hearing about where all the problems are, I think we've largely identified.

00:22:17.200 So we know you don't want to be in a choir in a closed space.

00:22:20.480 You don't want to be in a cruise ship.

00:22:22.060 You don't want to be in a nursing home.

00:22:23.980 You know you don't want to be in a sweaty crowd.

00:22:25.920 And there aren't that many people who are going to be in those situations now.

00:22:31.780 So the odds that we're going to flatten this thing just by being smarter is really good.

00:22:38.380 It's really good.

00:22:39.540 And I've got to say that the quality of the protests has been excellent, meaning that people have been pushing.

00:22:49.040 And I call the protests a productive friction.

00:22:53.220 I think it's productive for the medical community to try to push for as much shutdown as they can get away with.

00:23:03.940 I think it's productive for the citizens to push back and say we need to live and eat and have jobs too.

00:23:11.800 So I like that fight because that's how you get to someplace that makes sense in the middle.

00:23:18.900 So I'm pretty happy about that.

00:23:20.140 Somebody says, I predict the normal flu season gets hugely flattened too.

00:23:28.160 That's a good prediction.

00:23:29.580 But the normal flu season, as we've learned, probably wasn't ever killing many people at all.

00:23:37.340 So the whole thought that the regular flu was killing 50,000, 80,000 people a year, it just was never true.

00:23:45.480 The regular flu hardly kills anybody.

00:23:50.600 And if the flu kills you, if the regular flu kills you, you are probably really close to gone anyway.

00:23:57.020 You know, the regular flu isn't killing 40-year-olds.

00:24:02.100 Somebody says the regular flu does kill.

00:24:04.380 It does.

00:24:05.640 It's just very rare.

00:24:06.900 It's not 50,000 or 60,000 in all likelihood.

00:24:09.520 Because you would know people who died of the flu if that were true.

00:24:20.900 Like clockwork, experts are releasing news saying they were skeptical of Moderna as a result.

00:24:28.600 Well, aren't there over 100 vaccines that are in some form of production?

00:24:33.300 Not production, but development and testing.

00:24:36.360 So you would expect that there are at least 100 competitors who are willing to say that that other company doesn't have the answer.

00:24:45.180 Because they don't want all the money and attention to go to whoever gets there first.

00:24:49.780 You know, they want to stall them a little bit so they can, you know, they can be up there in the final three or whatever.

00:24:58.400 Pier 1 went bankrupt, somebody says.

00:25:01.720 That doesn't surprise me.

00:25:03.200 Micro lesson idea.

00:25:06.820 How to nail the interview.

00:25:10.800 I can do that.

00:25:12.840 You want to know that now?

00:25:14.680 How many of you would like to know how to nail a job interview?

00:25:19.420 I think I could do that right now.

00:25:22.640 So here's my advice for a job interview.

00:25:25.660 First of all, there's nothing better than just being the most prepared person.

00:25:29.620 So obviously, if you've got a good talent stack, et cetera, that's the best thing you can do.

00:25:36.440 The next thing is you want to show that you have a commitment to learning.

00:25:43.520 Because the best employees are the ones that are going to learn and going to take on new stuff.

00:25:48.700 So you want to project the thought that you're a learning machine.

00:25:54.000 You've learned a lot of things.

00:25:55.520 You want to learn new things.

00:25:56.820 You want to learn everything there is.

00:25:59.460 So when you talk about your desire to learn new things, your employer just lights up.

00:26:04.520 It's like, oh, okay.

00:26:06.020 I guess somebody will be able to, like, really fill in a lot of things.

00:26:09.500 Obvious promotion.

00:26:11.340 So learning is just a key.

00:26:15.340 The other thing is they want to be comfortable with you.

00:26:19.840 So you want to know that you're not a complainer.

00:26:22.640 So you don't want to say something like, you know, when he says, why did you leave your last job?

00:26:28.260 The last thing you want to do is to say that your boss was a bad boss.

00:26:33.540 Never say that.

00:26:34.620 Never throw your old company under the bus if you're trying to get a job at a new company.

00:26:41.320 Because they would quite rightly say, that's the way you're going to talk about me when you leave.

00:26:47.020 All right?

00:26:47.620 So you want to always put the best possible spin on your last employer.

00:26:54.000 So that's important.

00:26:56.160 You also want to make sure that you've presented to them what's in it for them.

00:27:01.320 So you're not there for them to just ask you questions.

00:27:06.280 You are there to present a proposition that hiring you is better than hiring the other people.

00:27:12.160 So you've got to make a direct proposition what you can bring them.

00:27:15.980 And it has to be direct.

00:27:17.680 So one of the things you could say is, look, you know, I have all the qualifications for this job.

00:27:22.500 But I've looked into your company a little bit.

00:27:24.380 And I see you also have a little weakness over here.

00:27:26.520 That's something I can do.

00:27:28.200 Because I have those skills as well.

00:27:29.940 So if you hire me, you get a twofer.

00:27:34.060 I'll do the job and I'll be good at it.

00:27:35.780 I have all the qualifications you're looking.

00:27:37.820 Probably a hundred other guys have them too.

00:27:39.820 But the other thing I'm going to bring you is I can do this other thing.

00:27:43.780 So if you can find somebody else who can do these two things, good luck.

00:27:47.060 So that's where your talent stack helps.

00:27:49.800 But more specifically, you want to give them a concrete proposition of what your extra is.

00:27:57.380 Because the other people won't do that.

00:27:59.000 The other people will just answer questions.

00:28:02.420 Maybe ask a few.

00:28:04.000 But they're not going to be selling themselves.

00:28:06.520 So you don't want to be selling yourself too much.

00:28:09.540 But if you're saying, you get me plus these extra benefits, and that might be valuable to you,

00:28:16.720 then you've told your employer what's in it for them.

00:28:20.220 So you want to show that you're agreeable, you're easy to work with.

00:28:27.100 And by the way, sometimes I say that directly.

00:28:30.360 Actually, almost all the time I say this directly.

00:28:32.820 When I get into a business arrangement with anybody for anything, I generally tell them directly and up front that it's my philosophy to give extra.

00:28:46.020 Because it is.

00:28:46.840 So, you know, if I have a job description, I would tell my boss, look, I'm not about sticking to the job description.

00:28:57.440 I'm going to do what needs to get done.

00:28:59.940 So, you know, don't hire somebody who's just going to slavishly do the job description.

00:29:05.820 I'll do that too.

00:29:06.680 But I'm going to do what needs to get done.

00:29:09.180 You know, I'm an adult.

00:29:12.340 And so you want to sell yourself as somebody who's bigger than the job, but not so big that you will want the boss's job.

00:29:21.080 You don't want to threaten the boss's job.

00:29:23.320 That's not good.

00:29:24.420 But you want to look like you're so helpful that you're going to be the easiest person to work with.

00:29:29.820 You know, you'll be a self-starter.

00:29:31.560 You'll be teaching yourself new things.

00:29:33.360 You'll be volunteering to fill in places that nobody even knew needed to be filled in.

00:29:39.520 So it's all about presenting the extra.

00:29:43.080 Think about the extra.

00:29:45.320 And then also use pacing and leading.

00:29:48.000 So pacing is when you match the person in any way.

00:29:52.000 So let's say you walk in and you see the person's got hunting paraphernalia.

00:29:57.340 You're not a hunter.

00:29:59.260 You don't even like anything about hunting, let's say.

00:30:01.740 But you know you want this job.

00:30:03.920 So you might use language that's sort of hunting related because it almost certainly will work.

00:30:11.340 So you might say, well, you know, I was locked and loaded and, you know, I was just walking down the trail.

00:30:19.640 I was, you know, I got off a good shot or something like that.

00:30:23.780 Those are terrible examples because they sound too violent.

00:30:25.980 But the point is, if you can get a read on the person, you can adjust your language to use the type of words that would be most comfortable to them.

00:30:34.600 And they say, oh, you're one of me.

00:30:36.300 Yeah, I talk like that.

00:30:38.380 It's just like me.

00:30:39.640 So you want to match your boss without being too obvious about it.

00:30:43.580 Your potential boss, one that's going to hire you.

00:30:45.980 Somebody says, psychological manipulation.

00:30:52.540 You know, let's put yourself in the boss's position. 0.93

00:30:59.260 Put yourself in the boss's position.

00:31:01.220 And I come in for the interview.

00:31:03.100 It's, you know, not me, the cartoonist.

00:31:04.920 I'm just coming in for a job.

00:31:06.680 And I do everything I just recommended.

00:31:09.340 What would be your opinion of me?

00:31:13.240 If I did everything I recommended and you knew that I was doing it for the purpose of getting the job,

00:31:20.520 you knew that I was manipulating the situation to get the job, what would you think of me?

00:31:27.640 Well, if you're smart, you'd say, how well am I doing it?

00:31:32.420 Because if I'm manipulating him and I'm doing it well, meaning that I have legitimately offered a value proposition,

00:31:41.020 I've explained it well, I haven't made a mistake, I hire that guy.

00:31:46.640 Do I care that he's putting on a show?

00:31:50.260 No, that's why I invited him here.

00:31:52.180 I invited him here to put on a show.

00:31:54.660 That's why you're here.

00:31:55.720 So if I put on a show, and he knows I'm putting on a show, and he knows it's part of the theater and the psychological manipulation of it,

00:32:05.960 but I'm completely transparent, there's nothing tricky going on, I'm putting on a show.

00:32:13.660 That's why we're here.

00:32:14.800 And I do it well, I got the job.

00:32:19.940 So that is what I recommend.

00:32:23.000 And match your potential boss's breathing posture, sit up straight, use your body language, take up space, et cetera.

00:32:37.000 All right.

00:32:38.300 What are your best questions to ask them?

00:32:40.760 Oh, that's a good question to ask me, actually.

00:32:43.160 First of all, you should always ask them questions.

00:32:46.280 You should have some prepared.

00:32:47.640 And it should be a question that shows some insight about their company.

00:32:53.580 That's the best question.

00:32:55.180 You don't want to ask a selfish question, such as, and what kind of cubicle would I have?

00:33:00.560 Would I have a view?

00:33:02.360 Those are not the good ones.

00:33:04.260 The good questions are such things such as, I've noticed that your industry is starting to move in this direction.

00:33:11.780 But if you do, does that put you in direct competition with Amazon, and how are you going to handle that?

00:33:17.680 You ask a question like that, you got the job, right?

00:33:22.500 Because people just don't think strategically about what they're doing.

00:33:27.460 Now, that was sort of a big picture one.

00:33:29.220 It might have been a smaller question.

00:33:30.700 You could say, you know, I noticed that your production's almost at capacity, and business is good.

00:33:37.380 What do you think is going to happen when you're at capacity at this plant?

00:33:41.940 Because that shows you're thinking ahead, and you're looking at the big picture and stuff.

00:33:46.220 So the question is not about getting the answer.

00:33:49.580 The question is a way to show that you can ask a damn good question.

00:33:54.300 All right?

00:33:54.800 If you can ask a damn good question, that's very impressive.

00:33:59.980 It's one of the most impressive things you could possibly do, is ask a good question.

00:34:04.420 That really stands out, because it doesn't happen a lot.

00:34:08.980 Somebody talked about the firm handshake being out.

00:34:12.100 You know, that's true.

00:34:13.880 And it does make me wonder about the awkwardness, because the value of the handshake is it was like punctuation.

00:34:22.080 You knew where the end of the sentence was and the beginning of the sentence.

00:34:25.440 It's like, okay, beginning of the sentence, and then later, end of the sentence.

00:34:29.680 So the ceremony of shaking hands had a number of benefits, but one of them was you could tell when it was over.

00:34:38.980 What's going to happen when people can't tell if the meeting's over?

00:34:42.520 Because haven't you ever rushed a meeting up by the handshake?

00:34:49.460 You know, you'd be chatting at the door, and you're just like, okay, we're done, we're done.

00:34:54.240 You're thinking in your mind, but somebody needs to say, we're done.

00:34:58.660 And since nobody can say, well, we're done now, okay, bye.

00:35:02.620 It's just awkward.

00:35:04.240 How many times have you ever just put out your hand and said, wow, it was great to see you?

00:35:09.920 Because that's exactly the same as saying, we're done here, I've got to go.

00:35:14.460 Now we need a whole new thing.

00:35:15.900 Like, actually a new thing, a new standard for, we're done here, I've got to go.

00:35:27.260 Both palms on table.

00:35:29.000 I've got a lot of suggestions in the comments here.

00:35:32.340 All right, I'm going to go eat some dinner.

00:35:37.060 That's what I'm going to do.

00:35:38.420 And I will see you in the morning.

00:35:39.520 And you should look forward to good news, top to bottom.

00:35:47.980 All good news tomorrow.

00:35:49.660 That's my promise to you.

00:35:51.160 And I will see you in the morning.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 20, 2020

Episode 985 Scott Adams： A Bubble Reality I Recently Discovered, What I Learned About Learning

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