Episode 1042 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About All the Bad People and Funny People

Do you know what I discovered the other day? That you can use your digital assistant, should you have one. I will not use the name of the digital assistant, but it's a L E X A. I don't want to wake mine up. But apparently you can just tell it to play the podcast by the name of this. This Coffee with Scott Adams. And it just starts playing. I'll tell you, it is so much like the future. I'm just standing in my kitchen and somebody sent me a message saying, that worked. And I thought, really? Does that work? So I said, a L E X A Play Coffee with Scott Adams on Apple podcast. And boom, it started playing the the latest episode. Kind of cool. Somebody says someone else was killed in chop. I haven't heard that. But we're gonna do something that will get this morning going just right. Yeah, it's coming up. I know some of you are prepared and all you need is a cup of mug or a glass of tanker cellos or stein, a canteen sugar flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens. Now go. Ah. So I keep telling you how weird it is to be me. Today is one of those days. You know, the thing that specifically makes it weird to be me is that I deal with the news and then I wake up and then the news is about me. And like, oh, crap, the news is about me again. So I wake up this morning to, I think Omar was telling me, hey, Dilbert is trending on Twitter. Now, the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning, if the first thing you see is that Dilbert is trending or your own name is trending, it's not necessarily good news. So you don't automatically say, hey, this is terrific, I'm trending. The first thing you think is, oh, shit, I'm either canceled, Covid, or dead, As I like to play. Whenever I see anybody else trending, I say, are they canceled? Do they have Covid? Are they dead? So Dilber was trending this morning, and what happened is one of the traps that I had set had sprung. Now, if you're not me, you don't think in terms of setting traps on Twitter. That's probably just my own sick hobby, I guess, is that sometimes I like to just put a tweet out there that just sits there often in the comments. Not even a tweet, just a comment. I'll put it out there and I'll just think, well, this one could come back to me. So what I did was I had seen yesterday that Lena Dunham was trending. And Lena Dunham was trending because in our world of 2020, she's, I guess she's not a minority enough. She's a little too white and a little too connected to rich people. It turns out, especially Hollywood connections, that she was trending for not deserving her success. How would you like to twerk? How would you like to trend on Twitter and find out that the reason you're trending is that black people don't think you deserved your success? She just wakes up in the morning, is like, what's going on today? Check Twitter. Hey, I'm trending. I wonder why? And it's because nobody thinks I deserve my success. Bummer. So that sucks. So the thing that got me triggered yesterday, and this will dovetail into why I'm trending today, is there was an African American gentleman who is, based on his profile, assuming that he really is the person in his profile, and he tweeted about, essentially about Lena Dunham's white privilege. And his point was that black people don't have the white privilege. She did, because apparently she got her TV deal with nothing but, I don't know, a one page write up of a general concept. And then she had a TV deal now. So. So black people were weighing in and saying things such as, I studied film and written many scripts, I have lots of experience, but I don't get to get my own TV show because I wrote something on the back of a napkin, basically. And I was connected in Hollywood and my relatives were rich. And so I just walk into a TV deal, I don't get to do that. Now is it fair to black people that they have to work hard to get jobs in Hollywood? But Lena Dunham, with all of her whiteness, gets to just walk right into a job, doesn't even have to try hard. Now she had actually done some other things in the business. So it wasn't like she'd never worked in the business. She had a little bit of a resume. But still their point is quite clear, right? The point is very clear that her white privilege made her more likely, more likely, not necessarily guaranteed, but more likely to be related to, connected to network, to somebody who could help her with her career. And that's just what happened. So that's racism, right? And here's what triggered me. Those of you in the comments, can you. This would be A good time to cover your ears of your kids. If any kids are listening. Kids, this would be a time to find something else to do. There may be some cursing, maybe a little bit of cursing that comes out in the next, oh, 60 seconds or so. And it goes like this. As the African American folks were criticizing Lena Dunham for succeeding because of her whiteness, which was true, by the way. So that statement is completely true that as a white person, she was statistically far more likely to have a connection that would help her get something that other people couldn't get. Totally true. Also, fuck you. Fuck you, every one of you. Fuck you. Because Lena Dunham's connection didn't help any one of you, did it? How about the people who are not connected to billionaires like me, like most of you. How about fuck you, every one of you who think that some other random white person shouldn't get a leg up because. Because Lena Dunham had an advantage. Lena Dunham had an advantage. That's not a white fucking advantage. Except statistically. Do you want to talk statistically? Because I don't think anybody wants to talk statistically. All right. You want to talk about an individual? An individual doesn't necessarily have a billionaire for a fucking father. An individual has a fucking problem. That is their own fucking problem. You got your fucking problems. You somebody else has a fucking problem, too. Your problems are not fucking special. Your problems are not fucking special. Now, it's hard to say that on Twitter because it had a lot of. Lot of fucking in it. And I'd use up my character account just with. Just with fucking. So instead, I put a little trap there that ended up with me getting. That ended up with me getting trending, or at least Dilber did. And the trap was this. I put it in the comments just for context, just for context that I had personally lost two jobs in corporate America. Most of you know this story for being a white male. They told me directly. My boss told me directly two separate times, two different companies. I can't promote you because you're white and you're male, in those direct words that I threw in. And by the way, the trap is that I know people don't believe it. My experience has shown that people don't think it's true if you're black. You just don't think that's ever happened. Honestly, you have no idea that reverse discrimination was pretty much universally true. I don't know how much is true today in corporate America, but certainly to some degree. And so here's one. I threw in that I knew was going to be the red meat, because it was a conversation of film people and writers who are my natural enemies. As you know, I always joke that when somebody comes in and says something irrational to me, I just check their profile. Oh, yeah, artist. It's the artists that never have the good arguments. They're just really worked up and they never have any kind of analytical structure to anything they say is just random unkindness usually. So I threw in the fact that the Dilbert TV show got canceled because it was a white TV show and UPN had decided to become an African American centric network. The second season that I was on. Now, this is the fun part. I knew that they would think that wasn't true. I knew that they would say, scott, there's no such thing as discrimination against white people. They were just trying to let you down easily by telling you it was because of your race. Now, remember, I always kid that the artists and writers, people in the TV business, people in the arts, they don't have even the slightest bit of analytical ability to the point where it's just funny to watch them try to think. And this was what they came up with. They decided that in three separate times in my life that somebody thought the easy way to break me down, the easy way to let me down. And their belief is that I'm actually just incompetent at all those things. So that I was incompetent at the TV show, I was incompetent at my corporate jobs, and that the way the bosses decide to let me down easily was by being racist. What, in what world do you let somebody down easily by telling them their ethnicity and their gender is the problem? It's the one fucking thing I can't fix. That's the opposite of letting me down easily. Do you know what would let me down easily? You know, Scott, you don't have the training for this job. Or how about, you've made some mistakes, maybe you would be more suited in some other job. Maybe we could move you to a function where your skills and your interests are better matched. There are quite a few ways to let somebody down easily. One of the ways that's not on the list to tell them that their gender and their ethnicity is the problem. So that's what artists think when they hear my story. Now, the other thing they think is that I'm lying. Who would lie about that? And so I was just very curious, like, can you develop your theory a little bit better about how I'm lying about it for Example, what would I have to gain? Was it your theory. Was it your theory that. My theory was that by saying I'd lost three separate jobs because of my ethnicity and or gender, that I was going to come out ahead on that? Does anybody think we live in a world in which saying that in public is in any possible way good for me? No fucking way. That's good for me. And you can see it. The reason I'm trending is because I'm being attacked by people calling me a liar. Now, did I know that? Yeah, that's why I did it. I literally put the tweet there because I thought it would be funny to watch all these artists attack me for lying and making it up. And I thought, well, that will just draw attention to me. And the more attention it draws to me, the more I can say, let's have a full discussion because I think we should just consider all the elements. You've watched me long enough to know that I will go deep in listening to and taking seriously the claims of black Americans because they're all legitimate. You know, they're all based on legitimate stuff, right? So, you know, I'm anti statute because I listen. Because I listened and I said, well, you know, why does this bother you? Okay, that's a pretty good reason. That's a pretty good reason. I can see why people might want the historical advantage. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can see the other side, but I think outside with the people who say, why would you have offensive statues? I've talked about how to do reparations when most of you were just mad at me. So I've gone deep. I've talked to Black Lives Matter, tried to work out. I've offered help to Colin Kaepernick, literally and publicly to try to see, hey, you got problems, how can I help? Is there anything I could do? So I think that I've done everything I can do to understand as deeply as much the black situation in America in every sense. And if there's anything else that I need to know, open to that too, listening to all of it and take it seriously. You've seen me put the work in to take it seriously. I've worked on the. With Bill Poltay. We worked on the blight removal stuff, which is primarily for the benefit of the black community. I have some other projects that you don't know about that are entirely for the benefit of the black community. But it is also true that white people are widely discriminated against. Now, do I think you need to fix it? I'm not even saying that. I'm not saying you need to fix anything. I'm not saying I'm going to protest. I'm not saying that it wasn't even a greater good to have some discrimination in the 80s that helped to balance things out. I don't even have an argument about it. I'm just saying that that's the context. Just look at the whole context. Now I read on CNN that apparently there's some, there's a little bit of pushback against Indian Americans and the pushback is that this is CNN's opinion piece today. So this isn't me. So don't attribute the next things to me. I'm just saying what I read on CNN. It's CNN's opinion, one person on CNN, that the so called brown people from India should be siding more with, with the black people who were protesting. But the problem is that the brown people are being considered the ethnicity that are succeeding. The brown people from India in particular, their demographic group tends to do really well. And apparently they're not exactly siding with the people whose skin color matches them the most. They're, I think siding is too strong a word. They're not strongly identifying with Black Lives Matter. And that's the criticism. It's like, hey, you're brown, they're brownish. Shouldn't you be on the same side? To which I say that is the most loserish opinion I've ever heard in my life. The most loser ish opinion in the world is that Indians from India in America should be siding with Black Lives Matter because they have similar skin color. What? What? How could that not be just super racist? And that's just like an opinion piece on CNN that people just read. Oh, that looks kind. And I read it and I think this is literally the most racist thing I've seen ever. How about ever? The most racist thing I've seen ever is that you should be on somebody's side because of their skin color. Literally. Literally, that's what they're saying. What's more racist than that? Here's what I would suggest. Now I've said this before and it's the sort of thing you can't say until you're so deep into the argument that you've given yourself a little space. So part of what I'm doing is being provocative intentionally in this space where most of you would get canceled for doing half of what I'm doing. Because if I can make my freedom of speech big enough, then I can actually say useful things at the Moment. The field for free speech on this topic of Black Lives Matter, etc. Is so small that that the things you need to talk about to make it better, you can't talk about. So this is like job one. Job one is to expand the ability to have an actual conversation. Now, there are things that you could say to any black person in person that they would not be offended in as long as, you know, you were polite, your intentions were good, etc. But I find that there are things you just can't say in public that you can totally say to anybody individually and it's not even slightly offensive, which is where the danger is. Because if you, if you lose that difference and say, well, I can say this easily to my, you know, my co worker or somebody I know in person, it wouldn't be a problem at all. It's just when it goes large that, you know, the problem happens. And here's, here's the thing that needs to be said. And I've teased it a little bit, but I'm going to start pushing it harder. Why is it that Indian Americans are far more successful than black Americans? Is it because of the legacy of slavery? I don't know. Beats me. That's got to be in there somewhere, right? It's not like it has no effect. But the biggest difference among people is not skin color, it's strategy. And if we don't recognize that that's the big difference, then I think we can't really fix anything because we're not dealing with a true enough picture of the world to know where the buttons are. You're dealing with this artificial picture of the world. And here's what I mean. If you were to take the people who had the same strategy as the people who came from India, and as a demographic group, it has been reported they're unusually successful compared to, say, other groups in the same situation, what strategy do they use? Do they have a different strategy? Now, I don't like to use the word work ethic because that, that feels a little racist, honestly. Do you hear it too when you say, oh, there's a difference in work ethic? To my brain, that's just racist, I think, because that's not a strategy. As soon as you get into, oh, it's your nature to be a certain way. First of all, that doesn't apply to any individual because the individual differences are all over the place. But I just don't think that's where you should focus. It just feels like that's a. There's nothing productive if you're starting to think like that. But if you said to yourself, the Indian Americans came, had this simple strategy. Stay out of jail, stay off drugs, focus on schoolwork, and that's, you know, a few other things. But basically, that's your strategy. You know, no drugs, no crime, work hard in school. Now, I think that you should only compare the people have the same strategy to each other. Because if you compare strategy to strategy and then there's still a big difference, I would say, oh, I think you found some racism. Like, I think we've narrowed it down now, obviously there is racism. I say racism is universal. It's not limited to anybody. It's universal because your brains are pattern recognition machines. You can't really turn that off. They're just bad at it. Confirmation bias, and in reality look the same to us. So I feel like where the conversation needs to go is to stop talking about statistical differences between people with something in common with their skin color and say, how about the difference between people who used a strategy we know to succeed versus the people who used a strategy we know never works. Why are we comparing strategies that don't work to strategies that do work and concluding that racism is the problem? What's up with that? So I think the fact that we're focusing so much on race tells you that nobody wants a solution. Now, when I say nobody, I don't mean people, because individuals, of course, want solutions. If you're just a citizen minding your own business, yeah, you want a solution, you want a solution. People are saying strong families. I would say that that is untested. I think that there needs to be two models, and we only have one. The one model that conservatives sort of approve of, if you will, is it's got to be a nuclear family, strong mother and father, and then everything goes well. And I say, yeah, that's great. If you're lucky enough to have two good parents, you know, who love you, and they can give you a good strategy in life, that's great. That is the best. Nothing would be better than that, in my opinion. But it's also not realistic. You know, what's the point of having a strategy that you know can't work? Do you think you can take all the people in the world and say, all right, we've solved it. You just need to find a great mate. What if there aren't any? How often do people get a great mate? How often does divorce happen? A lot. It's because we're not good at picking somebody who's good for Us that's gonna last forever. So there needs to be some kind of other model where a kid can thrive despite having one parent. Now, which of these three things can you not do if you only have one parent? Can you not study because you only have one parent? You can study. You can pay attention. Do you have no choice but to get into crime because you only have one parent? No, you still have a choice. Do you have a choice about doing drugs in high school because you only have one parent. You don't have a choice. You got to do drugs. I only have one parent. No, it's still a choice. So there's something that tells me that while I completely accept that everything's easier if you had two loving, qualified parents, it's just not real. It's just not real. It's just not going to happen for everyone. Right. So it's a fairy tale to imagine that's some kind of a solution. It's a good ideal, you know, if you want to push it as I like more of this, that makes sense because it does seem to be a model that works, I would say, objectively. Alright, so just to follow up on the Dilbert TV show story. So then the artists who are bad at analyzing things went all CNN on me. And when I say they went all cnn, they found some information that was not the complete story and they made some fake news. And that's how I got trending. And the fake news is that they discovered that when the show was cancelled, the ratings were really, really low. So they say, Scott, you're lying. It's not because UPN decided to become an African American focused network. Which, by the way, that part nobody questions because that's in the record. You could find them saying it. It's obvious. They say no, even though it is true. The UPN was becoming an African American focused network at the time you were cancelled. The reason you were cancelled is because your ratings were low. And you've even said that. True, true. It's true. The ratings were low. And I did say that's why I was cancelled. I also didn't tell the truth about any of this stuff for a long time. So why were the ratings low? This is the part that the geniuses who are doing their little Internet sleuthing don't get. The reason the ratings were low is that I lost my time slot from the season before where ratings were good, ratings were good enough to get renewed. Now in the TV business, that's sort of binary. You're either good enough to get renewed or you're not. If you can get renewed, then you can build an audience. Because even Seinfeld had a small audience in the first season. Did you know that The Seinfeld audience was actually very small in the first season, but because they got renewed, they found their feet and their voice and they became big. Dilber, too, had actually better, probably better than Seinfeld in terms of the first season because it did well in its time slot on upn, well enough to be renewed. Then it lost its time slot, and I think it was to. Do you remember a young teen black star named Mandy? She was on the network, and I may have this wrong, but I think she was the one who took that time slot. But anyway, because her show did well at about that time, they also decided, hey, let's build something around this and make it the African American network. So losing the time slot to an African American product, which turned their focus to, hey, let's do more of this, because this seems to work. And that made Dilbert no longer salvageable. So while the problem, the proximate problem, was losing the time slot to another property, the kill shot is that it was. It no longer made sense to try to move it or promote it or make it work because it wasn't going to be there next year no matter what. All right, and that's the part that the geniuses who got Dilbert trending today don't know. It's a little bit too complicated. All right, that's enough about me. That's way too much about me. Did you all see the video of the St. Louis Gun Toting homeowners? Did you see it? It's the man and the wife. They're standing in front of some high end home and looks like Black Lives Matter and maybe Antifa were starting to gather. And before the crowd got big, you see the guy out there with his big ass gun and what is it? What was it? What kind of gun was it? Gun experts can tell me. And the wife's got a pistol and she's got her finger on the trigger, which is not exactly ideal gun safety situation because she probably had the. I'll bet she had the safety off and she had her hand on the trigger and she was pointing it at him. And apparently it was enough to make them decide that this wasn't the house they were going to vandalize. Somebody says, lawyers? I don't know if they were lawyers. Yeah, poor trigger discipline is what somebody called it. So it was an AR15. Somebody says that's what it looked like. I wanted to make sure. She came and she gave without taking. So here was my take on that. Number one, it worked. It worked. So the fact that anything works, what does that tell you about it? When something works, people do more of it, right? When something works, people do more of it. Somebody says it's AR style, and that's what I was wondering, if it's technically an AR or are there other things that look like it? I'm not enough of a gun guy to know. So here's the thing. Do you think that this is going to stop before some homeowner guns down somebody from Black Lives Matter or Antifa? Because I'm thinking it won't. I feel like there's going to have to be some pretty serious gunfire before it's over. Now, just to be clear, I'm not promoting that. I'm not in favor of gunfire. It's a prediction. It's a prediction that if you always worry about the slippery slope, well, I think the slippery slope will slip until the suburbs and the suburbs are going to shut this down, because the suburbs are well armed in the ways the cities are not. And there's no homeowner under that situation who won't take out a gun. So you should see Black Lives Matter and Antifa meeting armed resistance. And it won't always be their own house. Sometimes it'll be the neighbors. If your neighbor is being threatened, you've got a gun, you might come out with your gun. So I think guns are going to be the solution to what we're seeing, and it won't be. It looks like it's not going to be government guns because the government has been neutered by excellent psychological warfare. Psychological warfare meaning that if a government gun kills a black person during any of this, then the violence will increase instead of decrease. If a black. If a. Let's say a Black Lives Matter person or Antifa gets killed by a homeowner in the act of some kind of vandalism, America is going to be kind of happy about that. When I say America, I don't mean Black Lives Matter. I mean that all the people who have homes that don't want them vandalized, all the people who want the protesters to be reined in are going to be pretty happy the first time some of them get gunned down on somebody's lawn. Now, it looks like there's nothing that would stop that from happening at this point. Now, the story of the St. Louis People who were well armed, they had good control, they had relatively good self Control, because I think I might have fired off at least a warning shot in that situation. I don't know. I think I would have put a couple of rounds into my own lawn just to tell them it was loaded. And I think that would have hastened their retreat, but that probably would have been illegal to do. So. They're smart. The way they handled it. I don't know I could have had that much control. But here's the thing I'd like to add. Sooner or later, there's going to be a homeowner who technically breaks the law by exacting some violence on some protesters. You know that's coming, right? There will be a homeowner who kills or wounds a protester. 100% chance that's coming. I would like to say the following. Should I ever be chosen for a jury in which a homeowner is being charged with overreacting, and it would be the overreacting that would make it illegal. So something that is not clearly self defense, but it's charged as something more like murder because the person wasn't threatening them, but was on their lawn with a big crowd of people behind them shouting, we're going to kill you. So something that's a little more gray area, it's like it wasn't immediate harm, but on the other hand, it was an angry crowd that have killed other people and beaten other people to death. And they're on your lawn and you, you've got children inside and so you shot them. So you shot somebody dead on your lawn. For whatever reason, you thought you didn't have a choice. Now, let's say that it is technically completely illegal and that homeowner, under normal circumstances, should go to jail. This is what I'm declaring in public. If you put me on the jury, I'm not going to convict them, period. I'm not going to convict any property owner for any violence against any protester, regardless of the specifics. Let me say that again, while this situation is ongoing, this is not a permanent thing, because if things calm down, you want the letter of the law to be followed. But at the moment, I'm just declaring that for the benefit of the United States and as a patriot, that I would not be involved in any jury in which I would even consider a guilty verdict for anybody who defended their property with violence during this situation. Now, I don't recommend violence. Let me be as clear as I can be about that. Don't kill anybody, don't hurt anybody unless it's, you know, self defense. And you just have no choice. Don't hurt anybody. I'm just saying that's the way it's going to go. Somebody's going to get hurt. Unfortunately, we hope it's the fewest number of people. But should it happen, and I assume it will, anybody who is on that jury and is willing to convict a property owner for being a little overzealous in protecting their property, it's not going to happen with me on the jury. Not going to happen. And I don't care what the details are. I don't care if this person opened up and just started spraying the crowd. Innocent. That's it. I will not convict anybody for protecting their property. And by the way, it doesn't matter what nationality they are. I'm not saying I'm going to let all white people off. I don't care what your nationality is. If you're protecting your property. If you put me on the jury, it's at least a hung jury. Actually, if you put me on the jury, it's going to be whatever I want it to be. Because you really shouldn't put a hypnotist on a jury. Do you know one of the questions that lawyers should ask but never do? Are you a trained hypnotist? If you're a trained hypnotist, you shouldn't be on a jury, because the rest of the jury is going to just agree with you. You might as well just have one person on the jury. Now, I know you don't believe that, but trust me, I saw on Twitter today that Twitter has suspended the account of Sidney Powell. The attorney for General Michael Flynn. Does anybody know what that's about? Because when you first hear the suspension, you know, it takes a while to find out what their reason was. What was it? Somebody says, come on, man, they're lawyers. Somebody says that the St. Louis people were lawyers. I don't know. I don't know if that matters. So if your vehicle is in your driveway, that's not part of your home? No. I would also say that if that's your property, I don't care where your property is. Even if it's just your car. If somebody in a car runs over a protester while other protesters are threatening the car, put me on that jury. Innocent. I'm not even going to listen to the details. I don't care. All right, so let's find out why Sidney Powell got. Which is weird, because if an attorney is getting kicked off of Twitter, don't you think the attorney would know what she was tweeting? And what was risky and what the rules are. There's something weird about this story, and I can't wait to find out what it is. The Daily Beast decided to do a hit piece on Van Jones. Isn't that weird? Why would you do a hit piece on Van Jones? And here's the reason. Apparently he helped with Jared Kushner. He helped advise the executive order that the president signed about police. And you think to yourself, well, wait a minute, isn't that a good thing? Van Jones, working with the administration, already has a track record of successfully working with him on prison reform. Something very popular on both the left and the right, and it got passed. So isn't Van Jones a rare free thinking, a rare nonpartisan. Well, I won't say nonpartisan. Everybody's partisan. Say a non extremist, most useful guy in the country. Like actually somebody who can make something happen that matters, that helps people. That's Van Jones. Right? So they do a hit piece. Here's why they don't like Van Jones, or at least the Daily Beast attacks him. It's because he helped advise. Now, we don't know how much of the final output was from Van Jones and how much wasn't, but when he went on cnn, he said that the deal was a step in the right direction, essentially. He did not say, it's all good and we got everything that's worth getting. He said that it's a good preliminary, solid step that people on both sides should like, basically paraphrase it. He did not say when he was talking about it publicly, while he was saying it was good. He did not say that he was one of the people who advised on it. Daily Beast thinks that this is worth an attack piece to ruin his reputation in public or they're attempting to. They're failing, but attempting to because he advised on something very important, vital to the country and tearing the country apart. One of the few people who is both credible and useful and just wants, based on everything I've seen, just wants good results. Right? One of the most helpful, self sacrificing people in the entire freaking United States and they go after him and they attack him. Talk about the enemy of the people. Now let's talk about the specific complaint. So he did not fully disclose that the executive order he was saying has good parts. Wish it could be more, but it has some good parts. He did not disclose that he was one of many people that Jared Kushner got advice from. Is that fair? Let me ask you this. Do you think everybody who advises the White House brags about it in public. Do you think everybody who advises the White House wants you to know that in public? For whatever the reasons are, I say it is completely fair to not disclose that. Do you know anybody who has advised the White House and did not disclose it? Yeah. You do? Probably quite a few of them. It is very routine to advise the White House and not disclose it. Why? Well, one, you're not a dick. How about that? Because disclosing, hey, I advised the White House yesterday is just sort of a dick thing to do. Because you know what? You should let the White House present their case any way they want to. If you want to help. If you want to help the White House, how about you keep your own fucking face out of it? Right? You don't take credit for something the President's doing because you gave advice for 10 minutes in a meeting. You don't do that. No. The White House and the administration, if you consider the entire administration, they are continuously sampling for advice. I have been asked for advice. A lot of the blue check conservatives who have something to say have been asked for advice on different topics at different times. Do they all talk about it? No. No, you don't do that. That's not how it works. You don't advise somebody in the White House and then go talk about it on tv. It doesn't work that way. Now, if the story was that you were invited to the White House, the Oval Office, they took a picture, then of course, you say that you were there and you talked to the President. And when they say, what did you say to the president? What do you say? None of your business. None of your business. That's how it's supposed to work. So here is Van Jones not trying to claim credit for anything, not talking at a school about who he may have advised, exactly like you'd want him to, exactly the way you'd wish he would act. And they write a fucking hit piece on him. The only guy who's trying to fucking do something useful. Now, it made it very clear that at least the Daily Beast doesn't want a solution. I mean, you don't have to read too hard between the lines to realize that they wanted the fight more than they wanted any kind of movement forward. That's pretty obvious. All right, There's a story about a company named Perform Path, Lake Mary, Florida Company. And they've introduced an ultraviolet light. I guess you can just replace your light fixtures or your bulbs. I don't know if it's a bulb or the light fixture might be Both, but you can basically put in lighting with ultraviolet, and they're aiming at team and venues, places where you have team sports and spectators. And they're looking to basically use this UV light to disinfect the entire area all the time. Does it work? Well, hard to know. Is it expensive? I don't know, but I'm just telling you that that's out there and it could be that ultraviolet light. I'm just going to give you the most positive potential. Imagine it works. And I would think they need a little more science to know for sure. They do know that the UV has an effect on viruses. So that part is known. What they don't know is if you put it in a lot of ceiling lights in a lot of places, do you get a different result? Probably. I mean, common sense tells you it's worth trying to. Let's say it works. Could it be that we will develop technology that makes it safer against all viruses forever? Yeah, it's a specific type of UV light, not generic UV light. Thank you. This could be one of the biggest things in human development because think about all the damn viruses, from the regular cold to every other kind of flu virus. If the UV light can kill those things without hurting people, and it can basically flush it out of indoor spaces. If you can get rid of viruses indoors with just light bulbs, just make sure you have a couple of those lights in each room. If that does it. This is one of the greatest. I mean, this would be as big as when humanity learned to wash its hands with soap. This would be that big. I mean, that's pretty big. Who knows if it'll work? We'll see. Anyway, here's the scariest thought of the day. We've talked about the Yani and Laurel audios. So there are audio illusions in which you can imagine you hear something one way and then you can just imagine. Imagine it another way and you hear it the other way. So given that audio illusions are established as a thing, we know we can make people hear different things, even sending the same sound. And it has to do with how they're primed. Now imagine a bad character, a bad, let's say, a country that wants to start a revolution or a riot in another country, and they want to do it with misinformation. One of the technologies that apparently is available is to send a message that half the people will listen to, and they'll say, I don't hear anything wrong with that. And the other half will say, my God, are you listening to the same thing I am What I hear is that they're Nazis who want to take over the world or whatever it is. Whatever's the worst thing you could imagine. So if somebody created an intentional audio illusion, let's say it had somebody, somebody you thought was a good politician, but the audio illusion made it sound like they were using the N word. Now, I think of this because there's a video of Joe Biden using the N word that I heard it, and I said, okay, that didn't happen. So as soon as I heard it, I was like, okay, that's a picture of Joe Biden. His lips are moving, and I clearly hear that N word coming out of his mouth. But as soon as you hear it, you go, no, that didn't happen. That's some kind of a fake. Now, it turns out that the nature of the fakery is that it was just out of context and he was quoting someone else while condemning them. So if you know he's quoting someone else and condemning them, that changes the context. Now, should he have used the word in its natural form while condemning them? Well, remember, it was pretty far back in time when it wasn't as obvious that that would be the worst thing in the world. Should he have done it? I don't know. It's a small problem. He was. Obviously, his intentions were right and the times were different, so I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. But it reminded me how easy it would be to have a piece of misinformation in which people could. Clearly, half of the people would say, no, it's not on the video. Trump is not saying those words. And then the other half would say, ah, it's right there. We listen to it. Open your ears. You must be lying to us, because we hear those bad words clearly. So there is a potential for really bad mischief, the kind that would actually destroy a country if you use that technology. What are the odds that a pandemic would make masks mandatory at the same time that the protests really require masks to be successful? Is that the weirdest coincidence in the world, or is it a coincidence? Now, the conspiracy theorists would say that everything from the coronavirus through the statue stuff is all planned by some cabal of Marxists somewhere in the sky. Now, I don't think that's the case. I think it's an actual coincidence. I think it is an actual, just legitimate coincidence, but a really bad one. Because if people couldn't wear masks, how large would the protests be? Now, as many people said, the looters weren't wearing masks. You know, a lot of those people weren't wearing masks. To which I say they only could do what they were doing because there were so many people and there were only so many people because so many of them could wear masks. If you took the masks away from the non looters, there would be no looters because there wouldn't be many people there. And then the police would have numbers and they would just stop the looters. It's the number of people that, that gives them their power. And the only way they can get the number of people, even if a third of them are not wearing masks, the only way you can get that big number is with masks. And I would say that you can't solve this problem as long as you're wearing masks. You can't solve it as long as it's mandatory to wear masks. But here's what I would suggest, and I don't know, you could test this and see if it makes things worse or better. This easily could make things worse, but just test it out. Suppose the police could very calmly just detain a member of Antifa, not even necessarily somebody who's breaking the law. And let's say there's an anti mask law, which is the anti mask law, of course would be overridden by the need to wear masks for the pandemic. So you have two conflicting laws, but the pandemic one is sort of a particular one for a particular purpose. Could the police stop somebody and say, just for the purposes of identification, we have an anti mask law, but since I don't want you to be in danger, we'll stand six feet away, I'd like you to drop your mask and we'll just take a picture, that's all. Then you can put your mask back on and you're free to go. What would happen now? Of course they might resist. The obvious thing is that they would resist. But it does seem to me that if the rumor started catching on that the police were asking people to pull their mask down to take a picture, and if they refused, they would be arrested because let's say there's an anti mask law, which not everybody has. So it seems to me that you could at least have a shot attacking a lot of the energy out of the protests by allowing the police to take a photo of somebody with their mask down just temporarily, in the safest possible way, so that you're not putting them at risk for the coronavirus. I just put that out there. There might be something to work with there, but also could Just be a reason for a fight and cause problems? Depends. Biden says shoot the looters in the legs and then remove their masks. Going inside a bank with masks is kind of scary. So I used to be a bank teller. It was my first adult job. And let me tell you, if I were a bank teller and all of my customers were wearing masks, I would not be a happy camper because I got robbed twice when I was a teller. All right, somebody says they work at a bank. Barr said all 14 terrorist task forces have been activated, meaning that they're going after the organizers as terrorists. Somebody says it's a brilliant idea, but it will reveal that the politicians are in the tank with protesters. So one of the things I'm hearing from smart people is this, that the reason there doesn't seem to be as much focus on solutions is that the organizers don't want them. They don't want solutions. And I think that that's closer to true than not true. While it is definitely true that there are plenty of protesters who want a solution to police violence, it is certainly not true that that's what's driving the protests. It just isn't. What's driving the protests is the organizers, the tv, the social media, and it's a small group of people who are manipulating the larger group to do what they do. But the small group doesn't want a solution. They need infinite conflict to take this to, you know, to its broader conclusion, which is power, of course. And I think the, as I said earlier, the only, the only way that's going to stop. Ah. Somebody says in the, in the comments, a new Rasmussen poll says nearly 40% of voters believe Biden has dementia. 40% of voters think Biden has dementia. Now, you don't have to look at the details to know that that's divided by largely along party lines. So obviously, there are more Republicans who think Biden has dementia than there are Democrats. How much of that is just political and how much of that is confirmation bias? How much of that is cognitive distance? Well, I think you're going to see the numbers somewhere in the 20% range of Democrats who think that Biden has dementia. Yeah, there it is in the comments. Somebody saying that 20% of Democrats think Biden should be checked for dementia. Now, I think technically it's probably more about he should be checked for it as opposed to he hasn't because we're not doctors. Right. It's more about maybe we should check this out. I think that's always the underlying assumption. Now, if 20% of Democrats think Biden has dementia, and 100% of the people watching this periscope probably think it. What's up with the other 80% of Democrats? This is an interesting question. So there are 80% of Democrats who can look at Biden, and according to them, According to those, 80% of Democrats don't see a problem. Do you believe that? What would explain the gigantic difference in people seeing a problem, obviously, and people who say, no, I don't see anything? Well, some of them are, of course, lying. Wouldn't you assume? Don't you think some of them are lying because they just hate Trump more than they care about having the president who has dementia? That's got to be some of them, right? I don't know if it's most of them or just a few of them, but some of it's lying. But I like to suggest that this is the ideal setup for cognitive dissonance. Now, if you've ever had trouble understanding what cognitive dissonance is and you just wanted, like, a really clean example, this is it. This is the cleanest example of a setup that is guaranteed to create cognitive dissonance. Let me say that again. The setup that you're seeing with Biden getting this far, but yet clearly having signs of dementia is the perfect setup to generate cognitive dissonance. In fact, you could run an experiment with just if you could find some way to do an experiment with a sample of people and give them this setup, you would see cognitive dissonance half of the time. At least. At least half. Maybe 100%. I mean, it's a really strong effect. And here's the setup. People wanted to beat Trump, and it's their number one most important thing. All right? It's the most important thing. The Democrats, they've gone through this entire primary process in which the Democrats were looking for the finest, most effective leader that they could pick out of all Democrats, they came up with Biden. And now in order to get that thing they want most, they have to back Biden as their champion. What would happen to your brain if you found yourself in a situation in which you had to back a guy who obviously had dementia? Because to do otherwise violates everything you think about yourself, which is, I'm pretty good at picking, picking politicians and voting, and I'm a member of the Democratic group, and we're the reasonable ones. So obviously, we're going to pick somebody who understands science and very importantly, doesn't lie, because a big problem we have is that Trump guy keeps lying and Saying things that are wrong and some facts are wrong, and we can't have that. So we need a person who's famous for telling the truth. Oh, that's a problem. Because what are all these clips about Biden lying and lying and lying about his own resume? I mean, just crazy things. Like he's on tape saying he had three degrees when he has one. And he said, oh, I forgot, I forgot. I only have one college degree, not three. Or majors. I think it was. Was it degrees or majors? I forget. But anyway, it was some wild lie. So you're a Democrat, and you get caught in this trap. The only way you can get rid of Trump is to accept somehow that Biden is a functional person. It's the perfect setup for cognitive dissonance. So my guess is, based on my experience, that most of those people who say, no, I don't see it, are telling the truth. Are telling the truth. That most of the people. I don't know if it's 51% or 90%, but my. My experience says that by far, most of the people actually are perceiving a world in which Biden is perfectly fine. That's wild, isn't it? It's wild to know that the perceptions can be modified in real time. I mean, you, you and they. That you could stand right next to them. They could be standing right next to you and watching one of those compilation clips of Biden just mentally falling apart. And you could say, all right, well, you see it now, right? Right. You're watching the clip. You're standing right next to me. We're watching this clip. Now. You see it, don't you? Right? And do you know what they would say? They would say, no, no, I see somebody like everybody else. They sometimes fumble a word. Yeah, he's a certain age. People of a certain age maybe will reach for a word a little bit longer, means nothing. And it'll just freak you out. And you'll be like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? We're looking at the same video at the same time. He's not all there. And the other person just won't see it. And you won't know if they're lying. That's the weird thing. You just won't know if they're lying. And you'll say, I don't know if you're telling me the truth. Is it just what you want me to think is true? Because you see it, don't you? Don't you see it? Now, this is very different than when the anti Trumpers say to any Trump supporter. But you see he's not passing the fact checking. Right. Don't you see that? And we say the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, we see it. It's hyperbole. He's directionally true, doesn't care too much about the details, hasn't affected anything yet. We still prefer him over the alternative. So when you talk to Trump supporters, they seem to be completely aware of what they voted for and what they got, which is not cognitive dissonance. But you don't see too many Democrats, if any, say, you know, Biden is mentally incompetent. But I'd like a mentally incompetent president because I think it's a step up. That's a little harder to say. All right. That's all I got for you today. And let's go forth and have a terrific day. And I will talk to you tomorrow.