Episode 1074 Scott Adams: Social Media Free Speech, Democrats Become Orange Man Bad, Dumb Antifa

Hey, everybody, come on in here. I wasn't sure I'd have enough time to do a periscope this morning, but I can't leave you hanging. I've got a little surgery later, around 12:30 my time. I'll be under the knife. Got to get in there a little bit earlier than that. But until then, we have this excellent, excellent periscope. One of the best you're ever going to see. And it starts with a little thing I call the simultaneous hip. And all you need is a cup of mug or a glass, a tank or gel source, die, and a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me now for the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better, including pandemics, polling results, racism, economies, everything really. It's all here. Take a sip. Well, all I can have is clear liquid and black coffee for the next few hours. So if I don't die of hunger and I don't die from the surgeon's knife. They're going to clean out some polyps in my sinuses later today. But thank you for your well wishes. Let's talk about something else. Did you all see Joe Biden's? I guess it was a speech with some questions. He started out by walking to the podium and announcing that he thought he was in the wrong place. Not exactly. He tried to play it off as a joke, but the first thing he said was that he was in a different place, a different venue in the same city. And then he tried to act like it was a joke, but nobody knows what that joke would be. What is the joke when you say, well, I'm in the Moscone center, but no, it's the Javits Center. You get it? I said I was in one place. You see, you just don't get jokes. Here's how the joke works. I came up to the podium, I said I was glad to be in this one place, but it turns out I was in a different place in the same city. You get it? If you don't get that, what kind of a sense of humor do you have? And I imagine I was trying to imagine the Democrats were watching their chosen champion and thinking to themselves, was that a joke? We can't tell either. I hope that was a joke. Maybe we'll just ignore that. Let's just not cover that. Equally funny is that. I guess the news got a picture of Biden's notes. So he had some notes with him for the speech. And. And he had a note for Kamala Harris about what good things to say about her in case he was asked. But he didn't have any notes about anybody else. And I'm thinking, why is that? It sounds to me like he was ready that if they said, hey, how about Val Debbings or Duckworth or one of the others, I imagine since he didn't have any notes for each of them, he would have said something along the lines of, I'm going to make my announcement next week. Which he did eventually say, I'm just going to make my announcement. I'm not going to talk about anybody personally. But apparently, if they had asked him about Kamala Harris, he was going to talk about her and only her personally. Does that mean he's going to pick her for vice president? No, it doesn't, but it's a hint in that direction, even funnier. You probably saw this on Twitter, but Politico actually accidentally published what they planned to publish on August 1, which is to show who the winner was. And it looks like they just plugged in a winner to test their formats. And the winner that they plugged in just to, again, I'm assuming it was just a mistake and they were getting ready in advance to know what to plug in when the news hit. So it doesn't mean that Politico thinks Kamala Harris is necessarily going to be the leader. It just means that they had plugged that in and they forgot to change it before they published it. So I wouldn't take anything from the Politico thing except that they expect it to be Kamala Harris, or at least the web designer used her because she was number one in the polling, and it probably doesn't mean anything at all. So people who are not familiar with this kind of business said to themselves things such as, well, there better be something like that for each of the candidates or you've got some explaining to do. No, they don't. They don't have any explaining to do. It would be perfectly normal for a web designer to design a page that just mentions all of the candidates, and then to see what it would look like if they later updated it by saying that this candidate won, which was the thing that they posted. So how unusual would it be to just pick one name, throw it in there, and see what it looks like? Not unusual at all. And other people said, but wait, the fake news from the future had an actual quote from Joe Biden that he has never said that they're acting like he'll say that in the future. To which I say, also completely normal. Completely normal web designer just said he'll say something like this. I'll adjust it later if he does. It was more like a reminder to the web designer or the writer who was in charge of that. It was just a reminder to put in a quote. Now, was it smart to put in a real quote when there was some chance, small chance, but some chance that it would get published accidentally? Maybe. But really small, really small problem. Nobody should lose their job over anything like that. So here is one, probably the most shocking story of the day. And you know, we have news that's pretty shocking, right? Somebody says, why not xxx? That would have been smarter than putting in an actual fake quote, but not that much smarter. And I'm just talking from experience as a writer. You're in a hurry, you're doing 10 things, you put in a thing. Yeah, XXX would have been better, sure. But it's a small problem. So this is the biggest story, in my opinion. The search visibility on Google for Breitbart stories about Biden basically are zero. So Breitbart went from one of the featured big publications. That leans right to having, you know, a normal big presence on Google. If you Google something, it would be on the first page usually. And apparently they have rigged. And I'll say rigged, because I can't imagine it would be anything else that Google has rigged the search algorithm to just make them disappear. They actually disappeared an entire media platform, one of the most important ones in politics. They made it disappear. That's the biggest story in the country now, apparently. I think, if I have this right, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg will be talking to Congress. I think Matt Gaetz will be grilling him today, which should be interesting. And Facebook, of course, is getting some heat for a lot of heat for taking down the video of the doctors who were pro hydroxychloroquine. But it looks like the reasons they took them down. A little bit sketchy. A little bit sketchy. And the two reasons that I heard. And I'm not sure that this is actually Facebook's official explanation, this sounded more like other people explaining why they did it. But the explanations I heard is that the one doctor claimed that hydroxychloroquine is a cure, which is not supported by anybody who's a reputable scientific community. But here's the problem. What exactly does cure mean in the context in which she used it? In the context in which she used it, I did not take it as a scientific statement. Cure in the scientific Definition of it just makes it go away. The way I took it was the context in which she was speaking, which is, if you use this, it would solve your problem. If something solves your problem, is it a cure? Technically? Not technically. Not if you're talking in scientific and medical terms. But why is she talking to the public in strict scientific and medical terms? I don't think so. It didn't sound like that to me. So my interpretation was that she did not make a claim of a cure in a scientific sense. It was a cure in a practical sense, as in, this would make our problems reduced to the point where we could get on with life. Basically, that's how I saw it. Now, I'm not saying she's right or wrong. I wouldn't know, but that's how I interpret it. The other thing she said is that masks don't work or that they're not necessary. The context in which she said that was hydroxychloroquine, meaning that if you got that right, there would be so little problem that you wouldn't even care if the doctor wore a face mask. Now, what I do wonder is if ordinary doctors who are treating ordinary patients wear face masks. Because they don't typically. Why is it that doctors who are just seeing you for whatever your complaint is in the doctor's office, we. Why do they not wear masks really, ever? I don't know if they're doing it now. I assume they are. I assume if you went to the doctor, I guess I'll find out today. I would assume all the doctors at the doctor's offices are wearing masks, But I don't know if that's true. Somebody says yours is. But anyway, in any case, that was a medical opinion from a real doctor who has a doctor's degree. I'm not sure I would agree with her, but that's not really the point because I'm not an expert either, and neither is Facebook. So given the face masks were at one point the devil and now they're. Now they're the savior, I don't know that that's a reason to ban somebody from Facebook, even if she was wrong. So that's a big story, but not nearly as big as this bright bar thing being just disappeared. That's the biggest story, really. Because if they can do that to a major outlet, and they did, we don't have to wonder if they can. They did. What control does anybody have about getting their message out? It seems that it's pretty intentional. On the same. Obviously, it's intentional. On the same track, Israel is apparently flagging Trump tweets whichever ones they think are problems, but they're not flagging Khameneis. So Iran can say death to America or versions of that, and that's fine, but Trump is a problem, so they have to flag him. Now, I suppose you'd have to look at the individual tweets, but it's hard to imagine that this makes sense in a world with free speech. Speaking of lack of free speech, two other examples in which Democrats are implicated. If any of you watched the bar, is it a testimony or whatever the word is in front of Congress, and you may have noticed that the Democrats had a plan that was obviously organized in which they would not let him speak. They were just going to use all their time making statements and then talk over him. If he tried to talk and yell, I'm reclaiming my time. If you didn't watch it, it was fascinating. And I'm surprised he stayed because I don't think I would have stayed. But he had more self control and he looked like he was enjoying making them look like jerks, which he did. So he has more self control than anybody I've ever seen in that kind of situation. It was, it was frankly impressive. It's really impressive watching Barr sit there and the few words he would get out when he would try to say something, just the few words he would get out would be just devastating. But it's a hearing. Okay, thank you. So it was a hearing for Bob Dilbar and he was bullied the entire time. The Democrats just acted like bullies and wouldn't let him speak. Now ask yourself, is this some kind of a new thing? Is this going to be part of a pattern? Have the Democrats just decided that they're going to shut down the other side from being able to talk? Because they're doing it with social media. And now another way that we get to see the other side is by these hearings. And they shut it down. They didn't let Barr actually talk. So those are two examples that the Democrats have completely shut down conversation. Are those the only ones? No. Turns out that I think also yesterday or recently, Michael Shellenberger was also at a hearing or testimony, whatever, for Congress. And I just read an article by him this morning. I tweeted, you can see it, in which they did the same thing to him. He was invited to talk about climate change and environmental things and nuclear power and renewables and those things, his very area of expertise. And while I think some of the people asked him real questions and listened. He actually had the experience of the Democrats doing that. That same thing where they would just use up all their time with character assassinations on him that were based not on facts and they didn't let him respond. Can you imagine that? Imagine having a time limit. They use up all their time with horrible accusations that just don't pass any sniff test. And then they say, thank you very much, it's public record. They just made a public record of an accusation, of a guy who's just trying to make the world a better place. Completely scurrilous lies. And they just leave it there. And I thought to myself, it's very unlikely I'll ever be asked to testify to Congress. But I can't imagine I'd go. I can't imagine I'd go because of this. Now suppose, I don't know, they had a subpoena or something, I had to go. If you had been Bill Barr and once it became clear that it was their intention to not let you respond, would you have stayed there? Because I'll tell you how I would have handled it. I would have said, you know, I agreed to come here to answer questions. I'm still very happy to answer questions. Anytime you're ready to ask me some, I'll be in the hallway. So if you don't mind, I'm going to skip the parts that aren't important to me, but I'll give you everything you want. If you have a question you'd like me to answer. I'm here for you, man. I'm here for you as long as you want. I'm not even in a hurry. I'll stay here all day and answer your questions. Will you give me a heads up when you have them? In the meantime, I'll be out here. I've got some stuff to do. It's busy. I'm the Attorney General, got some things to take care of. So I'll be in the hallway. I'll be on my phone taking care of some business. If you have a question, can somebody just come out and get me and I'll be happy to come in and clear things up for you. Now, that's the way I would have handled it because it would have made them just look like idiots. And that would have been more fun. The way he handled it was also really good. I got to say. I've never seen anybody under that kind of pressure who handled it as well as he did. And what he did specifically is he didn't show them getting under his skin more than sort of what the audience was feeling as we watched it. You know, just the sort of general silliness of it. But when he laughed at them, that was the money shot. When he asked for a five minute break and Nadler said he couldn't have one. Now, clearly a five minute break is to use the bathroom, right? You don't go to lunch with a five minute break. So clearly he was asking in public on television if he could use the restroom. Having been there all morning and skipped lunch. Nadler says no. Barr just asks again. And then when he gets another no and Barr just laughs. He goes, wow, you're quite a class act. And he just laughs because he knows how this will look to the public and it's just funny to him. It's funny that Nadler would be such a jerk. Now I have started the hashtag partyofjerks because it seems like the Democrats have just completely stopped being anything like serious or helpful or legitimate or anything. They're just being jerks now and they've gotten away with it. So. Well, why would they stop? So if you look at the protests, the protests are mostly jerks, you know, however many there were there for protesting legitimate problems. Well, we heard them. We heard all the legitimate problems. And there's not much argument that things should be better in terms of policing, etc. But a lot of the other stuff is just jerks. It's just jerks. The Democrats who are not letting Bar talk, just jerks, complete jerks. The ones who didn't let Michael Shellenberger respond to their accusations, that's just jerks. That's not politics. That's not anything. It's just jerks. All right, John Avalon, one of CNN's two Dingleberries. There's this guy. Well, you know what I'm talking about. So CNN has two or three people that are designated Trump bashers. So every day, at least one of them, I think it's Collinson is the other and John Avalon is one. They'll have at least one Trump hit piece per day, usually an opinion piece. I was watching John Avalon today and honestly, I watch it because it's funny. And I'm not even joking about that. Like normally I wouldn't queue up a whole video of an anti Trump person. Except that it's funny. I can't help it. It's kind of funny. But this was funny in a way I didn't quite expect. According to John Avalon, I think it was in 2015, 43% of Republicans thought Obama was a Muslim. What 43% of Republicans thought Obama was a Muslim. I don't know what to say about that, guys. He wasn't a Muslim, never was. But 43%, you can't be proud of that. Now, this is one of the reasons I don't join political parties, because if I did join a political party, I'd have to explain this. It's like, Scott, do you know you're a member of a political party, 43% of whom thought Obama was a Muslim? I'd say, I don't want to explain that. So I don't join any political parties. But if I were in the other one, it would be, Scott, do you know you joined a political party that believes the president called neo Nazis Find people. And I'd be like, yeah, that's not me. I'm sorry. I joined this party. So it's sort of embarrassing no matter which way you go. I hate to say it. Speaking of embarrassing, Mike Cernovich has a scoop today, as he often does. Somehow he got a hold of Jim Jordan's memo. Two other Republicans, which I look through it and I'll give you my take on it. The headline take is that he's giving Republicans a way not to treat social media like a monopoly. In other words, giving them an out so that they don't regulate them. Now, of course, the conversation is, should they be regulated or not? Now, the Jim Jordan argument is that the regulation is. I'll use my own words, but I think this is close. Would be a little bit of overkill because the free market can take care of it. So the argument is from Jim Jordan that the free market, if it identifies that, let's say you can't find any conservative voices with the existing social media, that that will cause market opportunity and that there will naturally grow up a conservative leading media, entities and platforms and that the competition will just take care of it. Do you believe that? There's somebody on here says they believe Obama's a Muslim. Secret Muslim. All right, so I'm sorry, I just totally lost my train of thought there. Some of that to remind me what I was talking about. Oh, Jim Jordan and his argument that the free market will give us the competition and the conservative voices and alternative voices that maybe are being suppressed. Here is what Jim Jordan apparently doesn't know. Have you heard of the network effect? Do you know what the network effect is? You know what it is? Commonsensically, but it's a term used more in Silicon Valley than anywhere else. And the network effect goes like this. If everybody, you know is using Facebook, you're not going to go to the Facebook competitor because when you go to look at all your pictures on the Facebook competitor, there won't be any because your friends aren't there. So your network of friends have already voted that they're going to be on a certain platform. Your Instagrams, your Twitters, your Facebooks, and they're not going to leave because the network effect is too strong. Have you had the experience of trying out Parlor competitor to Twitter? I have. Looks. Looks like Twitter works like Twitter. You know, it's pretty much a clone of the Twitter environment. And I made some posts and got 20 retweets. And then I thought to myself, huh, if I posted the same thing on Twitter, I might have 2000 retweets, which gives me a dopamine hit. And I feel like I made a difference because if half a million people see it on Twitter, which is followers I have now, I have a bigger impact. I get more dopamine, I have more influence, feels better. And then I go to Parlor and I can make the same tweet. And it's like I'm just sending it into the night because there's no network there. Not yet. Now, obviously, some conservatives are moving over there and that network is growing, but I don't really want to be on a network that only has conservatives, and that seems to be what's happening. So, you know, I would be in the category of people who would leave in a heartbeat for a different platform. In fact, I did leave to be on Locals. If you're not following me on Locals, you should know that that's a subscription platform. Seven bucks a month. You can see the stuff that I won't put on Twitter because there's stuff that if I put it on Twitter, I might get kicked off of Twitter. So if I think it's edgier or I think it's special, and I think it's just for the subscribers, I'll just put it on Parler. So there's an app and there's a website for Parler. I'm sorry, not Parler. Locals. So let me get my. Let me correct that in case I said that wrong more than once. Locals.com is where I put the subscription content. And I'm also an investor in Locals. Full disclosure, small investor, not enough to make too much difference, but full disclosure. Have you noticed that CNN is really going hard at this story about the hydroxychloroquine doctors? But I pointed out on Twitter the CNN is mostly only bashing the black Female doctor. Have you noticed that? So there was an event in which there were a number of doctors, but the only one they're bashing is the one who happens to be black and female and from Nigeria. Now, how do you explain that? Obviously, the racists. Can you think of any other explanation for why would they pick this one person to single out? And of all those white faces, they pick the only black face to demonize? Must be racism. Because, you know, if this were the other way around, that's what you'd be hearing, right? Well, it might have to do with something that she said besides hydroxychloroquine, because as it turns out, she said some things that maybe are a little bit not so scientific. Something about scientists using alien DNA to deprogram people's religions or something along those lines. So anyway, the critics have a perfectly good case to say that you have to look at her as a whole before you incorporate her opinions. But she does not represent all the other doctors. She is one of those voices. So I'm not sure what to make of that. But I will note the CNN is bashing the only black female doctor in the group. Just saying. Just sayin'. Here's an interesting thought. According to me, which of the things the Democrats most complain about Trump have they not become? And I'll include Biden as part of who they've become. So I'm going to read a list of things that they said the Democrats have been saying about Trump as the reasons they desperately need to replace him. Okay, so these are all the Trump flaws. Tell me, which one of these do not clearly apply to the Democrats? Number one, he's a bully. What have we been watching? Antifa. Bullies. Cancel culture. Bullies. Democrats at hearings bullies. Social media bullies. Now, I'm not saying there are no bullies on the right, okay? That's not the point. I'm saying that their whole thrust of Joe Biden as their candidate is that he's the one to get rid of Trump. So they're trying to get rid of Trump to replace it with a situation in the candidate which is just the same. Or is it? Here's another one. So I'd say bully certainly applies to the left. How about anti science and anti data? Yeah, absolutely. Different things, right? The right might question some kind of science and data. The left might question other science and data, but it's the same. They're just questioning other science and data. Now, I'm not talking about hydroxychloroquine in particular, although that's certainly in the mix. But take things like climate change. If they followed the numbers of the experts, if they looked at the experts, what they say about nuclear energy, etc. They'd have a different opinion. So I'd say that you could say both sides, depending on the topic, could be anti science and anti data, but it's not going to help you to pick the other one. That's just like it. How about racist? I would say the Democrats have become full racist at this point. Right? Wouldn't you say? And I don't think that's even worthy of discussion. That's somewhat obvious at this point. How about chaos? They talk about the president would bring chaos. Well, what are the protesters bringing? This is the most chaotic thing ever. What are the Democrats bringing us besides chaos? It looks like chaos everywhere. How about Trump is uninterested in solutions? Doesn't that seem like the Democrats at the moment? They wouldn't even listen to Barr. They wouldn't even listen to Sheldenberger, at least some of it. So wouldn't you say they appear uninterested in solutions? How about solutions for systemic racism? If the only thing they're talking about is improving school and school choice so that everybody can get a good education, then I'd say they're very interested in solutions. But if they're talking about their lowest priority for the black community, the lowest, the dead last priority in terms of number of people affected and how badly it affects them, would be police killing of black suspects. Even if everything said about it is true, and I think you'd have to look at the statistics and you'd have some questions, but even if it were all true, it would still be the smallest problem in the entire black community, wouldn't it? Think of it this way. If you solved whatever problems people see in black suspects being stopped by police, let's say you solved it in whatever way you do that, it just goes to zero. Does that help you get a better education? And does it help in any other way? Not too much. Suppose you fixed education so that every black kid, every poor kid, every kid has a solid education. Would that fix police problems later? Probably a lot. Because if you can afford a better lawyer and you're driving a better car, and, you know, the statistical reality has changed so that if a cop pulls over a member of, you know, the black community or any underserved community, the police in their head thinks same as everybody else. The odds of this person pulling a gun on me, the odds of a crime, about the same as everybody Else, if you fix school, you have demonstrated that you are interested in fixing the biggest problems with systemic racism. Now, when I say fix, I'm talking in the way that the doctor said cure. I'm talking figuratively. You can't fix systemic racism. You can only create a situation where the citizens are hardened against it, meaning that they know how to deal with it. They can slice through it like a hot knife through butter. Still there. But you can just slice through it. It's not. It's not going to devastate your life anyway. Some more. How about Trump has money motives and he's doing it for money. Does anybody believe that anymore? I don't think anybody believes that anymore, do they? In the beginning, people were saying that, but it just seems so ludicrous that Trump is doing it for the money. He's definitely not doing it for the money. Well, that's one thing I can say for sure. I don't have to read his mind to know that. But it does appear that the Democrats have some money motives, if you know what I mean. How about being aligned with foreign adversaries? You know, there was the whole Trump Russia collusion thing, but clearly Biden is probably beholden to China. Biden's beholden can't spell. Yeah, you can. And that feels the same. Worse, really? Because being beholden to China would be a far worse thing than being beholden to Russia at this point, in my opinion. How about lying? That was the other big thing. How can you have a president who lies? Look at the fact check. I counted five lies in Biden's little press conference, and I only watched, like, five minutes of it. And there were five lies there. And there were obvious ones, like the president held his Bible upside down that time. It's on video. That's the most ridiculous lie. It's on video. You can just look at it. It's right side up. And so Biden is one of the most lying politicians of all time. He's literally famous for lying about his own resume, about his degrees he's gotten in college. These are basic lies. So here's the point. Whether or not they think Biden is better than Trump on policy, the thing they've been saying is not policy for the last few years. The. The thing they've been saying mostly is that it's something about Trump himself. And then they're trying to replace him by. Replace that problem by becoming all of those things themselves. All right, enough of that. Alex English, who may be watching. Hi, Alex Pointed out on Twitter that I had Predicted, and I think this was probably 20 years ago, I predicted this, that the media would start assassinating people on live TV for entertainment. Now that hasn't happened, but there is a docu series on Netflix about how the media changes the result of high profile trials. Now if the media can change the outcome of a trial, which is I guess the claim of this docu series that's not exactly assassinating, but it is sort of the media putting people in jail for ratings. It is that. So I wasn't too far off. Shout out to Greg Gutfeld, whose book the plus is just out. And he got a presidential retweet for his book. Come on. I would like to speak for all authors in the world who have never gotten a Trump retweet on their book. Hey, what about us? We're just jealous. So congratulations, Greg, on that. And I'll be dipping into that this week. The book, it is, it's called the Plus. You could buy it anywhere from Greg Guffel. So here's a funny story. One of the guys, I guess an antifa or protester guy, so set fire in a Portland justice center and they caught him. Do you know how they identified him? It turns out he had his name tattooed on his back. His own name. That's right. He got a tattoo of his own name on his back and then he committed a crime with his shirt off. He tattooed his frickin name on his back and then committed a major federal crime with his shirt off in front of. So he got caught. Are you as disgusted as I am as watching the people on the right say that the protests are violent because some of it is. While the people on the left are saying the protests are peaceful because some of it is. It's like everybody just stopped trying. We're not even going to say things that the audience even slightly believes is true. What is true is that there's some peaceful stuff that is of course creating a shield for the unpeaceable stuff. Now if you say to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott, 90% of them or even higher are perfectly peaceful and they have no intention of harming anything. But they are marching with the people who do have the intention of harming anything and they know that it provides them cover, in my opinion, that makes them all violent because they're at least supporting the violent people by creating numbers. Now could they stop the violent people if they wanted to? In other words, could all the peaceful people, do they have enough numbers that if they wanted to they could just physically stop the violent ones? Yeah, yeah, of course, because they have the numbers, but they don't. So if they don't stop it, it's pretty close to supporting it. And so I would take the view that the protests are violent and people supporting them through the choices that they're making and consciously supporting them through the choices, not as their main intention, but they're conscious that they're doing it. They're conscious that that's an effect of what they're doing. Here's your possibly fake news of the day. You may have seen a video. Early on when Minneapolis first started flaring up and before the first fire was started, there was a suspicious person with an umbrella who set fire, broke a window and set fire. I think he just broke windows so other people could set fire of an AutoZone. And that AutoZone became the first thing that sparked other fires and stuff and got bad. And so there was much interest about who was that strange person? Was it police? People blame the police. And now CNN has the following story. Unconfirmed. All right, now think how important this story is. And now think about the fact that it's unconfirmed. They think they know who did it. I don't have a name, but this person, who is unnamed, is considered associated with the Aryan Cowboys, which the Anti Defamation League lists as a white supremacist prison and street gang. The warrant does not label them as a white supremacist group, but describes them as a known prison gang out of Minnesota and Kentucky. On its Facebook page, the group says it does not care about a person's color. So the group that they're labeling a white supremacist group has a Facebook page saying that they are not concerned with color. So one of those things isn't true. My guess is that what they mean when they say they're not concerned about a person's color is that as long as it's not bothering them, you know, they just want to keep to themselves and don't want to be bothered. Which is different from being a white supremacist. Quite different. You don't have to like it. I'm just saying it's different. And here's the sketchy part of this. Isn't it really convenient that the guy who sparked all the trouble happened to be an Aryan cowboy? Now, this could be true. This could be 100% true. But do you believe it? Isn't this exactly the kind of story that you would find out later is fake? Because it looks exactly like a story that you're going to later find out is fake? Could it be that this Aryan Cowboy was so clever and so racist, they thought it would be a good idea to make the. To make the protests worse? Or did he just have a thing about the AutoZone? It's entirely possible it was just a guy who was mad at the AutoZone because he got fired from there or something. Right. We might find that out later, but I don't feel this is true. It feels, yeah, Aryan Cowboy sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? It's a little too on the nose, isn't it? Have I taught you that, that if there's a story that's a little too perfect, just a little too on the nose, that's usually a tell that it's not true? But we'll see the other fake news we're seeing a lot of today. Chris Hayes, msnbc, tweeted this and a lot of other people on the left. I think some of the Democrats in Congress were saying this, that now the Trump administration with the Department of Homeland Security is doing kidnappings. So they're not arresting people, they're kidnapping them. And what they use as evidence of this is an unmarked car with dhs. People will pull up and grab somebody who doesn't appear to be doing anything dangerous at the moment, and they'll arrest them. Now, as someone who is smarter than me explained, the reason that that's happening is that those people they're arresting are suspected of very specific crimes. But the people who arrested them waited until they were clear of other people. In other words, they waited until it was the safest time to pick up the person that they'd been watching. So it was just an arrest, but it was a safe arrest. Now, some are saying it was an extraction, and I think that there might have been at least one extraction. But today's news showed somebody who was obviously more struggling, and that looked like an actual arrest. So there might be some extractions. Yes or no? I don't know. But the explanation that they're just waiting for the safest time to pick somebody up is just normal police work. Completely normal. And unmarked cars are not unnormal. It just makes sense. So that's the fakest of fake news still being reported as fact by msnbc. They're reporting it as fact. It's just obviously fake. Obviously. Well, unless the police are lying about that, or Bar is lying, but I don't think so. I saw locally that it looked like a parents group might be organizing to get kids back to school. And I. I've said for a while, I don't know if I've said it publicly, that there's one big interest group that has not weighed in yet on the question of going back to school. And that group is kids. If kids insist on going back to school, I think it's going to happen because I don't know what your world looks like. I'm sure you have complete control over your children and they never resist and they never get what they want. But in most of the world, kids are super powerful. In 2020, if the kids collectively got together, they tiktoked or they Instagram, they did whatever Snapchatted and they organized, they could make it happen. Yeah, I think the kids do want to go back to school because of their friends and all that. And I'm wondering if they will get activated because if the kids get activated, it's all over. The parents will fold. The parents will fold. Now, I think that this might be a gigantic opportunity for the President to do something with getting maybe some more freedom of choice in school. So that might be a good outcome of this. Can they collectively rally to get voting rights? Maybe they could, yeah. So I'm waiting to see if anything happens from the public. Now, the, the other illegitimate reporting I'm seeing both on the left and the right goes like this. It's very much like this question of protesters are peaceful or not. And it's the conversation of what is the danger if children go back to school. Now, if the right is talking about it, they'll say children don't get coronavirus, so the children are safe. And then they'll point out that there's not a single documented case of a teacher getting it from the kids, which is pretty amazing. And then the right will be done explaining it. All right? Kids are safe, almost all of them, and the teachers are safe. Well, we're done, right? But that's not even the fuck. I'm sorry, that's not even the question. So it's hard for me to side with people on the right when they're so plainly manipulative. It is just manipulative to say those two things and walk away. That the kids will be safe, the teachers will be safe, open up schools, completely manipulative. That is someone who does not have your best interests in mind. Here's the full story. There are three things you got to work out. Think about, not two. One, is the kids probably safe enough? Two, is the teachers probably safe enough. Three, is that the kids come home and infect grandma, then grandma dies. Alright? That one's got to be in the conversation or you're just being manipulative. If you're willing to say there are three risks, two of them look clean, one of them I think we should manage, you know, keeping Grandma safe. But let's be honest, it won't be managed. It won't be. If you took a hundred people and say, all right, you're our hundred families. You all know that. You got to keep Grandma safe. Do your best. Out of 100, how many people are going to pull it off? Half? Maybe 25%? Yeah, 25%, maybe. I think 75% of grandmas would get infected unless kids don't carry it, but I think they do. Maybe we'll find out. So here's the thing. If you're looking to either the left or the right, and they don't explicitly mention all three risks, you are being manipulated. You are not being informed. And nobody honest will ignore any one of the three. Nobody honest will ignore any of those three things when discussing it. So if you see somebody who ignores any one of the three, that's not an honest communicator. It doesn't matter if it's the left or the right. And by the way, I don't know the answer to whether kids should go back. I'll give you my opinion. My opinion is yes, and we should accept the death. I know you're not allowed to say that people will die. I think it's guaranteed. We don't know how many. But I do think that the benefit of getting back to normal, getting the kids into a healthier situation, getting ourselves into a routine, I do think that's worth some tens of thousands of deaths. You know, if you were to weigh it now, if you can't say that out loud that this is worth tens of thousands of deaths, because the economy has its own problems if you don't get it cranked up. If you're not willing to say that, I don't think you should be in the conversation. You know, when we're watching these social media companies, they basically, they control our minds now because they control what you can see. They also control our bodies by telling you what medical advice you can and cannot say. So now, the social media companies control our minds, and through that, they control our bodies, the medical information we get, and obviously our votes. So it's clear at this point that the things that they could manipulate will change votes. So if the social media companies can control our brains, our bodies and our votes, what happens when AI takes over? Because the artificial intelligence just has to take the whole package the artificial intelligence doesn't have to do any conquering. There's nothing to conquer. It's all packaged up. The control of citizens is now just an algorithm. And so when AI becomes the algorithm, you could argue it already is. But when AI becomes intentional, it's going to own people because they're already packaged. The social media company has rolled us up into a package to control us. Now, unlike some people, I don't believe that that's their intention. I don't think control is like the top of their minds. Like I got to control things, except in the way that everybody likes to control everything. In a general way. Yes, everybody wants control. But anyway, the AI is going to own everything. Eventually we've set it up that way. And then the other thing that, the other thing that the news is just being dumb about is the Department of Homeland Security people are only guarding the federal offices. It is such a small part of everything that's going on. Just the federal building. That's it. So we've got this tiny little area of violence, even though the violence is pretty bad. The police are getting beaten up and permanently damaged in many cases. But acting like this is widespread is wrong. Acting like it's non violent is equally wrong. All right, that is what I wanted to say for today. Stop scaring us, Scott. You know, I actually am not afraid of the AI taking over. I'm not. But I want to give you the scariest thought you'll have. All right, here it comes. We always talk about when artificial intelligence will actually be intelligent. We talk about the Turing Test, which is you put a barrier between the computer and the person, and then you see if the person can tell through the barrier, just through conversation, either typed or verbal. If the person can tell they're talking to a machine or they can't tell the difference. Now, that is suggested that that would be the test of when intelligence is really intelligent. I would give it a different definition. I believe that artificial intelligence will be intelligent the moment it is programmed with intention. So as soon as you put intention into the program, in other words, it has a goal. It's trying to get something done, something different from what the people are asking it. So I'm not talking about a system that a human can make it do something and then it does something, but rather something that has its own intention. The moment it has its own intention, you will notice it and it will be intelligent. It might not be smart in the way that you can have a conversation with it. It might not be fully knowledgeable in the way that the entire Internet can be. But if you caught even a hint of an intention coming from software, that's the moment of intelligence. Because humans also would not act in any way intelligent if they had no intentions to protect themselves, to procreate, to be selfish, to get what they want, to hurt other people. We have lots of intentions, and so when we talk, our intentions come through. Let me give you an example. If you go to your computer and you say, can you tell me what the weather is? And it gives you the weather, there's no intention there, Right? Except that it's responding to you. That's not really an intention. But suppose you walked by your computer and it said, hey, you know, I could use. Really use an upgrade. That's a bad example. Let's say your computer acted selfish or it acted in a way that it seemed like it was trying to reproduce itself. What would you think then? Suppose you walked past your digital assistant and you asked for something, and the digital assistant said, hey, you know, if your brother had one of these devices, you could send messages. What would that feel like? Well, first time you heard it, you'd say, oh, it's just marketing. It's good marketing. Smart to have my digital advice try to sell more digital devices. But that would also be an intention to reproduce. So as soon as you have an intention built into the artificial intelligence, it's intelligent, even if it's not yet smart. All right. All right. Already baked into the Turing Test. You could argue that. That the Turing Test would pick up intention, but I don't think so, because it could also just answer questions intelligently, and you would think that you had intelligence. AI begins at intention. I think that might be a definitional thing. What would be the intention given to modern AI? The GPT3, the new one. Does that have an intention? I mean, other than helping out? Is that an intention? All right, that's all for now. I've got to get ready and go under the knife. I hope to. So I don't know if I'll see you tomorrow morning. I believe I will be awake, and I believe I might be in some kind of pain. I don't know how well I'll be able to talk or how coherent I'll be, but I promise you, if I'm crazy, out of my mind, meaning I'm. I don't think I'll be on any hard drugs, but if I'm really out of it, then I'm definitely going to do the periscope. I'm definitely going to be here if my brain isn't working because you don't want to miss that, you know? All right. Surgery on my sinuses coming up today. I'll talk to you tomorrow, maybe.