Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 25, 2020


Episode 995 Scott Adams： Psssst. I Think We Won The War. Take a Look at the #GoldenAge of Education That is Coming


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

159.82887

Word Count

2,640

Sentence Count

186

Misogynist Sentences

3


Summary

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, it s starting to look like we re all going to win in the end. Here s what I think is going to happen, and why it s going to be the best year of all time.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody. As we bring the curtain down on another day in the era of coronavirus, I have nothing but good news for you today.
00:00:20.000 Lots. Lots of good news. Way too much light. Let's get rid of some of that. Hold on. Oh yeah. That's way better. So I take it as my solemn responsibility to make you all happier.
00:00:45.400 We don't have Snickers in the chair. Boo on the ground. Boo, say hi to the audience. Not interested? Okay. Fine, fine, fine.
00:01:03.940 Well, apparently she wants to be on camera here, so you'll be seeing her do a walk by. There we go.
00:01:09.940 Here's what I wanted to tell you tonight. I feel like we won. And I'm talking about the virus. Have you been watching the pictures of people going out and just having a good time outside?
00:01:28.640 It feels like we won. And here's what I mean. In two weeks, if our hospitals are not crashed, we won. Meaning that nothing's going to stop us from reopening.
00:01:43.580 Because if what we did this weekend doesn't cause a massive spike that crashes our hospitals.
00:01:51.420 I mean, it might cause a little spike in some places. But if it doesn't crash the hospitals, we're back. We're back.
00:02:01.800 And I don't want to get ahead of it. Because, of course, there will still be lots of people dying.
00:02:12.280 There's plenty of tragedies, lots of work, a lot of people have been financially devastated.
00:02:17.340 And there's going to be a lot to do to clean this mess up.
00:02:20.640 But it's starting to look like 2021 is going to be, like, the best year of all time.
00:02:28.940 And some of the things that are going to happen are directly because of the coronavirus.
00:02:33.120 There are things that it shook up that just needed to be shook up.
00:02:38.180 For example, I would be amazed if health care costs don't plummet now that we can have doctors and telehealth across the state lines.
00:02:46.940 I mean, that little bit of change probably is going to open up competition like crazy.
00:02:52.540 So health care will clearly change to a more digital model.
00:02:56.640 I don't think there's any way that we're going to go back to full commuting.
00:03:03.040 So traffic might become less of a problem.
00:03:07.820 People will be spending less to commute.
00:03:10.800 So that'll be less of an expense.
00:03:13.280 Quality of life will go up.
00:03:14.720 I honestly think also that the lifestyle changes that people took just to boost their immune system, I asked that this morning, turns out almost every one of you did something to boost your immunity.
00:03:26.980 There's no way that doesn't pay dividends because a lot of this becomes habit over time.
00:03:32.240 So we'll be healthier.
00:03:33.700 We'll probably pay less for it.
00:03:35.480 We'll be driving less.
00:03:36.780 We'll be less stressed about all that.
00:03:39.540 And the home delivery business will be better than ever.
00:03:46.520 Stock market is looking strong.
00:03:48.380 And weirdly, even property values didn't seem to change too much.
00:03:52.520 So I want to tell you one specific piece of good news that I see coming, which is the future of education.
00:04:00.340 And a few people asked me to map out what I think is going to happen.
00:04:06.600 And because of the coronavirus and everybody rethinking the whole idea of, do I need to be on campus?
00:04:13.060 Do I need to be in a classroom?
00:04:15.400 Is there a better way?
00:04:17.000 And here's where I think it needs to go.
00:04:19.940 Now, will it go this way?
00:04:21.160 I would say the biggest wild card, and I'll tell you what I'm talking about in a minute.
00:04:26.580 But the biggest wild card is probably the big tech companies.
00:04:29.680 Because if they decide to try to control education the way, let's say, Apple tries to control iTunes, that sort of thing.
00:04:40.340 If it becomes sort of walled off in somebody's product, well, it might not be so cheap in the future.
00:04:46.980 But in a perfect world, it would be more open and competitive.
00:04:49.940 And I saw an interview with Scott Galloway, Professor Galloway, who wrote this book, The Four.
00:04:58.440 And he's a really good interviewer.
00:05:00.060 If you get a chance to Google it, Google Scott Galloway and Anderson Cooper.
00:05:06.320 He did his interview on CNN, and it was excellent.
00:05:09.820 He's really good on TV, but he also had some good thoughts.
00:05:13.140 So I'm going to tell you the thought that I thought was really insightful.
00:05:17.720 It goes like this.
00:05:19.940 The big tech companies are so large that for somebody like Apple or Google to have, let's say, a 10% growth,
00:05:28.940 they would have to eat entire industries.
00:05:32.000 They can't just launch a new product and grow 10% because they're already so big.
00:05:36.660 They need to devour industries.
00:05:39.080 But not every industry is ripe for devouring.
00:05:41.440 Some of them have low margins.
00:05:44.580 Some of them, they're already in, and lots of people are in, like health care.
00:05:48.840 And what Scott pointed out is that education is a super high-margin business.
00:05:55.560 And when I thought about that, I thought, well, that can't be right because colleges don't make that much money, right?
00:06:01.480 They're always fundraising.
00:06:02.420 They're barely making ends meet.
00:06:05.040 Isn't college sort of the opposite of a high-margin business?
00:06:09.420 And then this little thing clicked in my brain, which was, oh, not if you do it the old way.
00:06:15.160 If you do it the new way, digitally, you could drive out, what, 98% of the cost?
00:06:23.600 Think of another industry where you could take out 98% of the cost.
00:06:29.360 Now, I don't know if that's possible, but I would say easily 90%
00:06:33.120 because you're going to get rid of some room and board and, you know, the classrooms
00:06:37.260 and most of the professors, the administration.
00:06:40.980 I think 90%.
00:06:42.280 So if you've got an enormous industry, the education industry, it's also a mess.
00:06:49.720 I mean, there's nobody who thinks it's good the way it is, right?
00:06:53.320 So it's a mess.
00:06:54.640 It's enormous.
00:06:56.220 There are only a few big companies or big opportunities that have high margins to disrupt,
00:07:01.300 and the tech companies are going to come for it.
00:07:03.740 Because that was Scott Galloway's insight is that there's no way they're going to be able
00:07:12.340 to stay away from it.
00:07:13.220 It's too big and it's too juicy.
00:07:15.820 And especially now that everything got disrupted, the way we're thinking about college has changed,
00:07:22.480 and that's probably the key.
00:07:23.540 Because until people started really thinking about it differently, it was just too easy to do it the old way.
00:07:29.440 Let's do it the way we did it before.
00:07:31.860 So let me tell you, and once the big companies get in here and the innovation starts,
00:07:37.000 it's going to happen really fast.
00:07:39.020 And then we're going to be on the way to the golden age.
00:07:42.740 Let me tell you what I think it should look like.
00:07:45.380 In a perfect world, if I could design the future of it, it would look like this.
00:07:52.600 The first thing you would need is I would start with some kind of a comprehensive major,
00:07:59.740 a college major that would teach you all the things that are useful and none of the things that are not.
00:08:05.980 If you take a regular college major today, you're going to get some useful stuff,
00:08:11.620 but you're going to get a lot of stuff that's not that useful.
00:08:14.480 Why not have a college major that's just a uniform major for the digital world
00:08:21.360 that's, let's call it life strategy, and it's only the good stuff.
00:08:26.760 It would teach you persuasion, selling.
00:08:29.740 It would teach you a little bit about money, managing money, so you can understand that world.
00:08:35.980 And it would teach you to write, to communicate, to speak.
00:08:39.380 Basically, all the stuff that makes anybody successful,
00:08:43.140 including the strategy of how to succeed, how to build systems instead of goals,
00:08:48.400 how to increase your talent stack.
00:08:50.960 So those are the types of classes.
00:08:53.800 And now, what I'm adding to this is the idea that they would be broken into chunks,
00:08:59.220 and each of these chunks would be like a marketable product,
00:09:03.020 just like a book would be on Amazon.
00:09:05.500 So that anybody could produce any of these chunks and just go into the marketplace.
00:09:10.920 And if these boxes from left to right represent the entire course,
00:09:16.220 then each of these chunks could be parts within a class, within a topic.
00:09:22.180 But they would have to be defined by somebody,
00:09:24.680 so that anybody who's making content would know that this is exactly the content for this box,
00:09:31.020 no more, no less.
00:09:32.240 So everybody is, it's apples and apples.
00:09:34.900 Once you have apples to apples, and all the courses are kind of lined up,
00:09:40.040 and let's say a federal body or just somebody credible has created this degree,
00:09:47.200 then let's say the federal government blesses it and says,
00:09:50.540 yes, we can certify that if you finish these classes,
00:09:54.080 you get the degree in life strategy major.
00:09:57.220 Now, if you need a skill on top of that,
00:10:01.300 and it's not something like lawyer, engineer, or doctor,
00:10:05.700 you know, very specific stuff,
00:10:07.520 your big companies will teach you the extra skills,
00:10:10.720 but they want to know that they've got a good base,
00:10:13.180 and that's what the life strategy major would give you.
00:10:15.780 You still need more on top of that, but that gets you started.
00:10:19.180 Now, once you've got a competitive market where anybody can have a bestseller,
00:10:23.120 there are a number of things you want to make sure that you're accomplishing
00:10:28.280 so that this is a good, robust market.
00:10:31.740 Number one, each of these things should have no introductions.
00:10:35.340 When you click on it, it should be a lesson,
00:10:38.820 not let me tell you about how I became a teacher,
00:10:42.420 not give me the history of people who have given classes
00:10:46.140 and tell you why they used to be bad,
00:10:48.220 but now they're going to, ah, just start teaching.
00:10:52.540 And then even within the chunks,
00:10:54.540 there should be some easy indexed clicks
00:10:57.400 so that you can find the places within the chunks easily identified.
00:11:02.060 Boom, go right to it.
00:11:04.320 Next, you need to be able to track performance.
00:11:07.320 You want to be able to keep track of students
00:11:09.540 so you know which of the classes they took on their journey,
00:11:13.740 and then you could measure how they did on tests
00:11:16.200 so that you would be able to say,
00:11:18.360 oh, whoever took this class almost always did better on tests,
00:11:23.100 so that would get a higher ranking.
00:11:25.240 Maybe they could charge more in the future.
00:11:28.600 Of course, eventually there will be augmented reality and virtual reality.
00:11:33.680 This is guaranteed.
00:11:36.020 Because what would be a better way to teach history, for example,
00:11:38.840 than putting you in the middle of it,
00:11:40.760 having you actually there in some historical event?
00:11:43.840 You wouldn't forget that, because you're a visual creature.
00:11:47.120 If they plop you right in the middle of history,
00:11:49.680 you're going to remember history.
00:11:51.200 You were there.
00:11:52.300 You remember your own life when you're there.
00:11:54.120 It will be just like that.
00:11:56.020 Now imagine teaching somebody to be a mechanic of some type
00:12:00.200 or anything that you work with your hands.
00:12:02.860 Now nobody needs parts.
00:12:04.800 Nobody needs an engine to work on.
00:12:07.380 Nobody needs a physical thing.
00:12:08.660 You could just manipulate them in the virtual reality world
00:12:12.900 until you learn them.
00:12:16.820 And of course, that assumes that there will be sort of Hollywood models
00:12:19.880 for these chunks, these classes,
00:12:22.520 that it will be teams of people,
00:12:23.940 just like a Hollywood film would bring a team of people together.
00:12:28.760 You would have bestsellers.
00:12:30.140 You'd have reviews, of course,
00:12:31.700 so you know which ones are the good ones.
00:12:34.480 Now here's the interesting part.
00:12:36.280 But these chunks, these classes, could live anywhere.
00:12:41.240 So one of them might be on the Udemy,
00:12:43.800 one might be on Khan Academy,
00:12:45.900 one might be on your website that you made all by yourself,
00:12:49.040 one might be on YouTube.
00:12:50.600 So as long as you've got pointers to them,
00:12:52.520 it doesn't matter where they live.
00:12:54.540 And if you wanted the good one, let's say,
00:12:57.680 well, maybe you need a subscription to Udemy
00:13:01.440 or one of the other online sites.
00:13:03.380 You might not need to take every one of their classes,
00:13:06.920 but because that one class is so highly rated
00:13:09.600 and that's the chunk you want,
00:13:11.800 well, you don't have to pay the premium.
00:13:13.920 You could get the less expensive version.
00:13:16.100 But if you want,
00:13:17.540 you might have to go to Udemy or someplace else
00:13:19.880 and sign up to get it.
00:13:21.340 But we're not talking big money.
00:13:23.480 We're still talking in the range of, you know,
00:13:25.280 $100 a month to get a college education.
00:13:27.700 And, of course, you need to solve for testing
00:13:31.880 and grading of papers and such.
00:13:34.760 I'm pretty sure that you could find a way
00:13:36.340 to distribute all that.
00:13:38.120 Maybe you can have somebody
00:13:39.340 who actually watches people take a test digitally.
00:13:42.460 It'd be easy to cheat unless somebody's in the room.
00:13:45.580 But between facial recognition,
00:13:48.220 monitoring what's on your keyboard,
00:13:50.880 checking to see if you stole your paper
00:13:52.980 from some other document,
00:13:54.300 because it's pretty easy to check now
00:13:55.540 if you plagiarized and some kind of monitoring
00:13:58.880 while you're taking a test might be enough.
00:14:02.000 I don't know the exact system that would work,
00:14:04.400 but you'd have to solve for testing.
00:14:06.940 I think we could do it and grading.
00:14:09.100 And then I can imagine an app
00:14:11.540 that would let people who are on the same path
00:14:14.620 get together locally in little pods.
00:14:17.880 Let's say a dozen people.
00:14:19.660 It doesn't matter what the number is,
00:14:20.820 but let's say a dozen people.
00:14:22.300 They just look at their app and they say,
00:14:23.820 yeah, I want to take chunk number three of this class,
00:14:27.480 see who's taking it.
00:14:28.880 Oh, it looks like there's somebody a few miles away.
00:14:30.860 They're going to have a watching party.
00:14:33.300 I'll go meet some people
00:14:34.320 who are doing the same thing I'm doing,
00:14:36.160 get my networking in.
00:14:37.580 What's the worst thing about not going to a physical college?
00:14:40.820 You don't meet anybody.
00:14:42.440 So with this model,
00:14:43.920 you're still watching it on a screen,
00:14:46.820 but you have the option of a meetup
00:14:48.940 with a dozen other people
00:14:50.460 who are watching it at the same time,
00:14:51.860 and you can talk about it and help each other
00:14:53.620 and network.
00:14:55.040 So you meet people.
00:14:56.400 So this is how I see the future.
00:14:59.640 It's got to be broken up
00:15:00.900 into little competitive chunks.
00:15:04.120 And once this happens,
00:15:05.760 anybody can learn anything.
00:15:07.920 And then you're going to start
00:15:08.900 unlocking the potential of the people
00:15:13.540 who have been underserved.
00:15:15.080 Because think about how many people
00:15:16.960 in this country
00:15:19.020 have not had the benefit
00:15:21.720 of the right kind of education
00:15:23.760 and they're not going to get it.
00:15:26.560 Partly because of finance.
00:15:28.120 Partly because they don't know how.
00:15:29.660 It's hard.
00:15:30.380 They can't find it.
00:15:31.640 They'd have to travel.
00:15:32.980 There's a lot going on
00:15:34.740 in getting a college education.
00:15:36.720 Not everybody can do it.
00:15:37.860 But everybody with a phone
00:15:41.940 and a TV
00:15:42.620 can kind of do this.
00:15:46.220 So
00:15:46.500 that is the suggestion.
00:15:51.680 I want you to...
00:15:52.400 I'm going to end on this
00:15:53.200 because I want you to just have
00:15:54.300 a positive thought
00:15:56.540 about the future.
00:15:58.300 Education is going to change
00:15:59.740 and it's going to change quickly.
00:16:01.300 I think Scott Galloway
00:16:02.540 is exactly right about that.
00:16:05.160 And I think the big companies
00:16:06.680 are going to make a huge impact
00:16:08.260 really soon.
00:16:10.640 Somebody says mentors are important
00:16:12.740 and I would agree.
00:16:14.100 And it's easy to imagine
00:16:15.420 that you could work that
00:16:16.380 into the system
00:16:17.260 so that you would have
00:16:18.300 tutors and mentors
00:16:19.380 who would be associated
00:16:20.340 with each chunk of information.
00:16:23.460 All right.
00:16:23.840 That's it for today.
00:16:25.180 Somebody's asking about Snickers.
00:16:26.600 She's doing pretty well.
00:16:27.700 Thanks for asking.
00:16:28.820 And I will talk to you tomorrow.