Episode 1306 Scott Adams: Stimulus Package Shenanigans, Voting Changes, Super Anti-Racists

All right, here's a little quiz for you. What is the best part of the day? Go. That's right. That's right. You all got it right. It's this. This is the best part of the day. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. And even Jack Basavic knows it's the best part of the day as he just logged in. And if you would like to enjoy this to the maximum possible potential. And why wouldn't you? Really, why wouldn't you? All you need is a cup of micro glass, a tank or chalicer's tie, and a canteen jug or flask. A vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it happens. Now go. Ah, Dr. Funk Juice. Good to see you. Well, we got some fun stories today. Now, they're not good, exciting stories like Trump stories, but they're pretty good. They're pretty good. Would you like to hear some of them? I know you would. Number one, I have a movie recommendation for you. A documentary called the Accidental President. You can find it on Amazon prime and probably at least one other place. I think a documentary by James Fletcher, who I believe is married to Brooke Baldwin from. Had been from cnn. But surprisingly, surprisingly, it's pretty fair and I'm in it. So I'm a little bit biased because I'm. I'm in it. But the interesting part is that this documentary was the. At least the film of it was put together a few years ago, and it was talking about how Trump ended up winning. And the. The theme is that he wasn't necessarily expecting to win, but it just sort of happened. But you should hear the commentary on it. It's pretty good. The Accidental President. All right. Cuomo is up to five accusers if you watch Fox News, and he's up to three accusers if you watch cnn. What, you can't even get the number of accusers right now. If you get to three, there should be some sort of universal law about this. It goes like this. If you get to three accusers, there are five. In the history, in the history of sexual harassment, nobody ever stopped at three. Pretty sure. Like if you were accused of one and then no other person came forward, you might say to yourself, well, that's a little less credible because do harassers only ever harass one person? But once you get to three, it's going to go to Five. That's like a universal rule. I'll tell you my take on all of this. All of these accusations, they seem to fall into this category. Have you noticed that? And the category is, and I'm going to say this, I think I can say this without being racist, I think. But give me a ruling on this. See if this sounds racist to you. Okay. That what I'm seeing is a creepy old Italian American guy with no game whatsoever, has no idea how to approach women, apparently. But he definitely took advantage of his power. His power differential, meaning that he didn't, he didn't directly use it, but it was there. Right. It's unambiguously there. So he certainly has to answer for this. I don't want to say anything that sounds like I'm apologizing for it, but we should keep it in perspective. Right? Certainly he needs to not be doing this stuff. There's no question about that. But it doesn't feel. It feels like a guy who didn't exactly know what he was doing, doesn't it? Like maybe on some level he did, but it does. It just. There's something a little bit clueless about it that makes it seem different than evil. You know, if you look at the Epstein charges or the Weinstein charges, Harvey Weinstein, it's obvious that those, those guys knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, they knew they were being deeply bad. No question about it. But I'll bet you if, if you had a private conversation with Cuomo before these scandals broke and you said, have you ever done anything like this? I think he would have honestly answered no, even though he did. I mean, the accusations look credible anyway. I feel it's just a weird category where the person doing the crime is not necessarily aware that they're doing a crime, which doesn't make it excusable. Right. The system is very clear. You don't have to be aware of it being a crime for it to be a crime, but it should end his political career, which is the only thing anybody cared about, really, on this. Here's what I think we should do. In the United States, every time we hear about people coming across our border, don't they seem to come. Be coming from the same countries? Yeah. People are talking about Cuomo's cover up with the, with the nursing homes and stuff. That's just a different issue. That's not excusable. Not that the other one is. It's just a different issue. So here's what we should do. We should be like Costa Rica. Have you noticed that when we talk about the illegal immigration coming across our southern border, nobody ever says all those Costa Ricans are coming across. Have you ever noticed that? Why not? I mean, if Nicaraguans are coming and other, you know, other countries are coming, why is Costa Rica not coming? Well, I think the answer is that Costa Rica is a successful country. And if you haven't checked into how they became a successful country, it's a pretty cool. It's a pretty cool story. And the, the answer is that, well, number one, and this is sort of a. A questionable decision, but it seems to have worked out. They, they decided to not exploit what, what probably they have in terms of new natural resources. Oil, maybe gas or something. But they've decided not to be that kind of industry and become a vacation destination. So if you have a waiter or a bartender in Costa Rica, I've had the pleasure of being there once. If you have a waiter or a bartender in Costa Rica, that person went to college to be a waiter or a bartender. Now, not college, college. Like, you know, maybe you're used to it in the United States, but there is a very well organized training thing. I think you learn English as well. And so the service is extraordinary. And Costa Rica's in pretty good shape, so you don't see a lot of people coming over. But I think we could borrow that idea, especially as robots are taking jobs and a lot of unskilled labor is going to need a place to thrive. I think we should build. I've said this before. I'll just combine two ideas. A network of bicycle paths across the country. There is actually a private effort to do that, but it's sort of one route in the northern part of the country. I'd like to see the whole country have bicycle paths. So you could basically go from anywhere to anywhere without going through traffic to get there. And make the USA a bicycle travel destination. Because building the paths will require labor as well as maintaining them, as well as providing services and food and bike repair along the way, etc. So it should create a lot of jobs. But the other thing you could do is create a network of canals. Maybe you do it at the same time. Maybe you put the bicycle path on the side of the canal. But the way to build the canal, if you had some big machine like Elon Musk's boring company B O R I N G because it bores tunnels, it shouldn't be that hard to make one of those that bores a canal, right? To make a canal. So if you had big equipment that could Just sort of make a canal. And then the other thing Elon Musk talked about, and I don't know how far he got along in this, but using the dirt that is dug by the boring device to press bricks on site so that you're, you're actually building. Yeah, there's obviously, you have to work out the sea level plan, et cetera. Right. So you couldn't put a canal just anywhere. You'd have to have just the right place. That's true. Now, if you had canals and those canals, when they're dug, built bricks, and those bricks become maybe housing on the sides of the canals. And then here's another thing that I heard of today. I'd never heard of this before, but apparently one of the problems with traveling to the United States is if you get sick, if you get sick in the United States and you're from another country, you don't have health care coverage. So apparently there's some kind of insurance you can buy just for traveling, some kind of healthcare insurance, and it's pretty expensive. So there are a whole bunch of things we could do as a country to make it easier and better for somebody to take a vacation here. Now, if this had been our big industry when the coronavirus hit, we'd be in big trouble. But I still think travel and recreation are always going to be big. So I'll just put that out there. Then Costa Rica makes a big deal about keeping the water and air clean to keep tourism up. And we would have the same impulse. We'd want to keep the air and water as clean as possible. So I just put that out there. So the stimulus package got passed by the Senate, but now it goes back to the, back to the House to get a final, final. And I see all these people arguing about the amount of the debt and what the debt should have been, and people saying, instead of 1.9, why didn't we make it 1.4? Nobody knows what the right amount of debt is. That's not really a thing. If you're arguing with any kind of a certainty about what the number should have been, I don't think that you have any standing. There's nobody who knows what is the right amount and when to do it and what happens in the long term and how do we pay down the debt and can we just print money and can we inflate it away and nobody knows any of that. It's just completely unknowable. So I do understand that more debt seems worse, but it just hasn't worked out that way, observation has not matched. Has not matched the theory. So I would just say having a firm opinion on the debt is a dicey situation now, because even experts don't really know what's going on there. Biden's also going to do an executive order on some voting stuff to make that more solid. And there's HR1 coming through to make some changes in voting, et cetera. But here's the thing. Are we really trying to make the voting good in this country, or are we just watching two different entities, Democrats and Republicans, using different gaming techniques to make the system favor their side? Because that's all it looks like. It just looks like one side is gaming the system, and then if the other side had control, they game the system, they gerrymander, and they change what kind of voting you can do, mail in voting, etc. None of this has anything to do with democracy or a democratic republic or any of that. We're watching a system that is so far divorced from, you know, the people's will being expressed in the vote, and nothing like that is happening. The things that determine the vote are fake news and how effectively they present the fake news, the game playing about, you know, what rules, changes, money, how much people put into it, and then campaign strategy, which often maybe the candidate isn't even the one who decides what it is. So all of these things pick our leaders, but none of them are even vaguely like democracy or a democratic republic. Our system just drifted into this sort of two organized criminal organizations competing to see who can be the better weasel in any given year. It's kind of all it is. Now. Trump broke the mold because he was such a strong character that all of the game playing just didn't matter for one election. But I got a feeling they're going to adjust and did for the second election. All right. Tom Sauer asks on Twitter. You know, why bother. Why bother changing anything in the election process? Because he says he slowly realized and accepted that we don't live in a democracy or a democratic republic, public whatever, at least not in any meaningful sense. Now, what do you think of that? That we shouldn't try to make our. There's just no point, because we live in a fixed system where the outcomes are based on things that have nothing to do with voting and democracy. Well, I get the point, so I understand the point. But here's the counterpoint. Our system, as Frankenstein monster ish as it is, meaning it doesn't operate as a system the way it was designed. It's evolved into some weird Creature of a system that does what it wants to do independent of what we want it to do. So as long as it's this big creature of a Frankenstein system that decides somehow who our leaders are, and it doesn't have anything to do with us, do you ignore it? Do you get rid of it? Here's the problem. You still need the citizens to believe they live in a system that works. The whole thing will fall apart. Even the Frankenstein monster part. You need that, because if you don't have anything, you just have chaos. So, weirdly, we need to trust our system to make it work, but only working as two competing criminal organizations to see who's the best weasel this year. And that's the best we got. But if we didn't at least pretend that we believe that there's some kind of a democracy here and people didn't go and actually vote, we would lose this illusion that the people have some influence. And you don't want to lose the illusion, because the whole system depends on that illusion. So don't lose your illusions, if they're good ones. Let's see what else we got here. Remember I told you when it was obvious that the Senate would be pretty close to, you know, even Democrats and Republicans, I told you that Joe Manchin would end up running everything because the. The one person who's willing to vote, you know, whichever side makes sense, ends up running everything because they couldn't get this through until Joe Manchin was happy or happier. And I. I just. I'll just put out a compliment to Joe Manchin. Why is he the only one who thought of this? There's not one other Democrat who's smart enough to say, wait a minute, is it my imagination, or is Joe Manchin running the whole whole show here because he's willing to be a, you know, a rogue vote? There's not one other person smart enough to do that, too, I guess Murkowski. And then I heard that Trump's gonna campaign against Murkowski, right? So. Oh, yeah, somebody says, Kirsten Cinema. So she's getting some attention, but doesn't seem important. Here's an interesting story. Guess what country in the world is doing a terrible job with vaccinations? Could it be a country that we used to think was doing a good job on this coronavirus stuff? What country is doing a really bad job on vaccinations? No, the US Is doing a good job right now. I think we had close to 3 million shots yesterday. I mean, the United States is killing it lately. It took a While to cramp up, nobody got the right answer. Oh, there we go. Germany. Germany. So Germany apparently is only vaccinated, I don't know, 6% of the country. And apparently it's just the thing's a mess. And even Chancellor Merkel admitted their failings. So remember I told you that we would be led to believe that different leadership decisions would determine the outcome within different countries. Do you remember what I told you? That leadership would be the least important variable. It would be the least important. We think it's the most important because we're sort of human centric. But now Germany, despite having this terrible job of giving vaccinations, is still around the middle of the pack in outcomes. So every time you find a company that's doing something amazingly wrong, it doesn't seem to affect their outcomes that much. Great Britain would be an exception. I think their decisions did affect their outcomes. But, man, do we not understand what's going on still? That leadership decisions just don't seem to make much difference? And you see that with lockdowns and other things, there's not much difference. All right, I will say again that I believe that Trump's reputation will improve every day he's out of office. Henry Kissinger just said that. Trump, his plan in the Middle east and what he got accomplished in the Middle east with the Abraham Accords, etc. Henry Kissinger calls it brilliant, calls it brilliant, and even breaks it down about why it's brilliant. You know, taking the Palestinian question out of it, etc. And that's just one example. Somebody asked me on Twitter, why did I think before Trump got in office, why was I so dumb to think that he would do great things? And I said, where have you been? Even if you were the biggest critic of Trump in the world, you would still have to accept that he did great things. The vaccination, warp speed, that was a great thing. You just can't take that away from them. The Abraham Accords, that's a great thing. Getting North Korea into a whole different headspace where. Where they're just basically not a threat, that's huge. Getting, turning China from our, you know, ally ish kind of situation into clearly something else. Going hard at everything from bringing the industries away from China to, you know, pressing on them for Huawei, etc. That was all Trump. And Biden is going to have to follow that, because once the model is set, it's hard to argue against it. So you could make your separate list of the things that you didn't like about Trump And I might not even argue with the list. You might say he didn't fix health care. Okay, I agree. You might say what he did with the capital assault was completely unacceptable. Okay, I agree. But you can't take away the fact that what he did in half a dozen areas was amazing. I mean, just almost undoable, impossible things. And it's mind boggling that there's anybody who's an adult who follows politics who would disagree with that. No matter how much you didn't like the other things he did, how do you take away the fact that he did things that just were undoable? I mean, it really is impressive. Somebody says it's not amazing, just common sense. Well, it's amazing that he did it. You know, everybody has common sense, but not everybody did what he did. There's an article on CNN that I read for the humor says that cancel culture isn't real. It goes through a number of examples to show that we act like people are getting canceled, but they're really not. And one of the arguments is that the people getting canceled are still doing fine, meaning that their economic situation is fine, so they're not really canceled. One of the examples is actor. Do we say actor now or is actress sexist? What's the ruling on that? Because I think actor is still, it feels like the better word. So Gina Carano, who, you know was on Disney, the. Whatever that show was, anyway, she got fired from the show for her opinions, I guess. And the CNN article says she wasn't really canceled because she got this great opportunity with Ben Shapiro. So Ben Shapiro is going to produce something and she's been hired to do that. To which I say to myself, well, I see your point. But ask yourself this. If your ambition was to be a successful actor, would you say to yourself, yes, I got the Ben Shapiro gig. Now, I'm a big fan of Ben Shapiro and I think what he's doing is great. It's all positive. But I don't feel like a professional actor is going to say, finally, I got the Ben Shapiro opportunity. Again, all props to Ben Shapiro for doing what he's doing. And we should do more of that, you know, sort of a rescue operation for canceled people. But I feel like the argument that she was canceled still feels true enough, right? Still true enough. Anyway, that was funny. So, Ivor Cummins. Do you all know Ivor Cummins? You've probably seen him on Twitter, and I guess you could call him a skeptic of the. Let's see, the scientific consensus about a number of Coronavirus things. Now, apparently we are on each other's radar. And he sent me an article from an expert, a doctor who is arguing against some of the mainstream assumptions about coronavirus. Mainstream meaning mainstream expert science, medical people. And Ivor and a number of his followers are pestering me online that the two of us should argue it out. Get online and argue it out. What do you think of that? Is that a good idea? Do you think that it would be productive for Ivor Cummins and me specifically to have a conversation on some kind of a podcast? No. It would be the worst idea in the world. It would be a terrible idea. Terrible idea. Now, it might give you some entertainment, but it would be worse than useful. I mean, let me take you through. Worst idea ever. Let's say there are scientists in this world and there are non scientists. Let's say that you wanted to get toward truth and you wanted the non scientists, people like me. You wanted people like me and Ivor Cummins, non scientists. You would like people like us to be as informed as the scientists. What's a good way to do that? Well, a good way to do that is to have a conversation, right? To communicate. So what happens if, let's say, a scientist is talking to another scientist? Does that help me understand science? Well, I'm not in the room, I'm not there. It's just two scientists talking to each other. So that didn't help me because when I hear about it, I'll probably hear about it from a journalist, right? I won't even hear from the scientist. I'll hear a filter through a journalist. So two scientists having a private conversation, that doesn't help me, right? It doesn't help me at all. How about if they have a public conversation? Then what am I going to do? Pick the winner. How? What skill do I have to know which of two experts is the right one? If I could pick the right expert, I would be an expert. And if experts are experts, why are they disagreeing? How the hell would I know which one is right? If they don't know who's right and they're experts, how am I supposed to know? It's ridiculous. So this would be useless in terms of getting me to understand. It's very useful that scientists talk to each other, but it doesn't help me understand. Suppose a scientist talks to a non scientist. That's good, right? Because the scientist gives you all this good information and now you're informed. No, no, because it would just be one scientist, let's say, telling me stuff. I Don't know if it's true, because is that one scientist this one or this other one? Because they disagree. Could a scientist convince me that the scientist was right? Probably. In fact, almost every time. And what would happen if the next scientist came in five minutes later and told me that the first scientist was wrong? Would I believe the second scientist? Yeah. Yeah, I would. Whoever goes last if they know more than you do sounds very convincing. So whoever talks to me last probably will change my mind. Same with you. Whoever talks last sounds right. So is that useful? Because it's just whoever talked last that has nothing to do with science. So that's useless. Suppose so. And then this is just another combination of a scientist and a non scientist. But how about two non scientists having a conversation? I'm a non scientist. Ivor Cummins is a non scientist. I understand. I think he has an engineering or biochem degree or something. So he's a lot closer to having a, a stem like mind frame that I do. But we're not really scientists in this field. Why the hell would you want to see him talk to me? What possible good could that do? Let me tell you how that conversation goes. Look at my study. Look at it. Look at my study that says whatever mess, don't work or whatever it is. Then I'll say, all right, where do I take that? Do I look at the study and with my non scientific knowledge I say, well, based on my non scientific knowledge, the person who does have scientific knowledge is all wrong. What the hell good would that do? Like I would know what I'm talking about. Now suppose Ivor comes on and says, look at my data comes from this good source. Do you think that I couldn't find a piece of paper to hold in my hand that says the opposite of what his piece of paper says? You know I could, you know I could. Do you think I could Google in one minute a whole bunch of sources that say masks work? Of course I could. Do you think I could Google sources? Masks don't work. Of course I could. How do I know the difference? How do I know? So everybody who's asking me to talk to Ivor, you don't understand what that would do. What that would do would elevate his opinion to a greater level of worthiness because it was being discussed at a, you know, you know, in an organized way. Should his opinion be elevated? No more than mine and mine shouldn't be elevated because again, not a scientist. Now I do make opinions on the science all the time because I'm pro Mask, for example. But my decision is not always based on science. My decision is based on risk management. And risk management will sometimes make a different decision than science will. So if he wants to talk risk management with me, I could talk that all day long. That's something I could speak to with some authority. But judging the science, neither of us could do that because the scientists can't do it themselves. Now, here's the thing that Ivor has to explain. Why is it that he's got this one doctor? There'll be more, right? You wouldn't be the only doctor. But why is it that these doctors who are contrarians, can't convince the other doctors? What's up with that? Because you think that if the contrarians have good points and data, they have all the data. According to Ivor, if the contrarians have all the data, that's it, right? That's how science works. Here's my data. And then they all change their opinion. But that hasn't happened. How do you explain the fact the science is probably 99% in favor of masks for the pandemic? Would you say. Would you say that the professionals are 99% in favor of masks? Does that feel about right now? That doesn't mean masks work. It really doesn't. But it does tell you that a whole lot of people who understand how the world works and science works and risk management and all that, that they kind of fell on the same side. Now, after this is all done, and let's say studies are done, I don't know if you could ethically study, you know, coronavirus and masks, because you'd have to infect people. But suppose someday we. We find out the mask absolutely didn't work. Would that make me have been wrong during the coronavirus epidemic? No. No, because it's risk management. If you make the right risk management decision, and yet it turns out to be wrong, you still made the right decision. You just didn't get lucky. Right. Because lots of times you're guessing, it's like, well, 70% this, 30% this. But the 30% happens. 30% is a lot. All right, yeah. Then I'm seeing somebody say people wore masks during the 1918 pandemic. You will find people who say, yes, they Wore masks in 1918 and that proved they didn't work. And then other people will say, yes, they Wore masks in 1918 and proved it worked. Who's right? The ones who say they proved it didn't work are the ones who say, yeah, all the evidence shows. How do you know all right, so be careful about what you think gives you knowledge. This process of two non scientists talking about science would not give you knowledge. Would not. And then I'll add on top of this that if you want to judge Ior's credibility, just Google his name and Google, you know, words like fact check and debunk and you'll see some articles. Now, I don't have an. I don't have an opinion about whether the people who try to debunk him are right, but just know it's out there. All right, China has developed. The Chinese companies developed a, what they call an automated sperm extractor. And what it is, is a device that's about, oh, waist high, that has a artificial, let's say, female part that does some moving action. And for Chinese men who want to go to the hospital and they're going to give a sperm sample, but they're too embarrassed to, let's say, take care of it themselves, they can use the robot instead. Now, I have questions. I know you have questions. Let's see if your questions are like mine. My first question is how big is the market? Because you'd have to find somebody who could get fully, shall we say, gorged. Otherwise even the robot machine doesn't work right, because the robot machine requires you to be, let's say, physically established. How many people fall into the category that they can get an erection in a hospital but they can't finish? But they can if they're with a robot. Now let me. For the few women who are watching this, I know it's like 85% men, but for the few women, I'd like to explain something about men. Now, for those of you who are men, you can talk among yourselves because you already know this. There's no man who can't masturbate in a hospital. In fact, if you just close the door on the people who are in iron lungs, they're going to go to town. You could be in full traction and heavily medicated. You'd find a way. So I'm skeptical about how many people there are in all of China that fall into this category of they can get aroused in the hospital, but the only way they can finish is with a robot when the people on the other side of the door know that's what's happening on the other side of the door. Are you done with the robot yet? We've got somebody else who wants to take a go at the robot. Could you hurry up in there? And then they won't be embarrassed because they would only Be embarrassed if they took care of it themselves. But apparently the robot option, not embarrassing. So here's a question I ask you. Did our CIA do this because you know about China and their unrestricted warfare where they're allegedly using every possible way to weaken. Weaken the United States from stealing our IP to trade deals, to sending us fentanyl, like, everything's on the table. What would be the best way to destroy China? It would be to give them a sex option that was better than their women. Now, it's not there yet. This is like, version one, the sperm extractor. So I'm not going to say that's better than women, but it's catching up. Somebody said on. On Twitter, and it was very sexist. This is so sexist, it can barely come out of my mouth. And I would like to disavow anybody who would say something like this. Somebody said, can it make a sandwich? Oh, disgusting. Oh, oh, cancel that person. Could somebody go back and find out who said that and just cancel them? I think they need to lose their job for that comment. Social media. Can it make a sandwich? Well, as it turns out, I tweeted, coincidentally, the same day, a robot that Samsung is making that can make a sandwich. Yeah. They've got a robot that looks like it's about, I don't know, four feet tall and has this giant articulating arm. Just one of them. And I saw in the video that it can put away dishes. You see, this arm is like picking up a dish and putting it in the dishwasher. It can set the table. What? It can set the table because it's got, you know, eyes and an arm. I'm pretty sure it can make a sandwich. Now, I think you're ahead of me. You take the Samsung robot that can make a sandwich, which is so sexist, it's disgusting. I hate it when people talk like this. Don't. You can cancel me. It can make a sandwich. But I feel if you took the Chinese sperm extractor technology and sort of combine wouldn't be attractive. I mean, it would just be a robot with one big arm and a unit there, but you'd be getting closer. I feel as if our CIA is using unrestricted warfare and to destroy the next generation in China by giving them robots that are better than their women. So keep an eye on that. You've heard of the Turing Test, right? That's the idea that if you were trying to build artificial intelligence, one way to test whether it's a good artificial intelligence is to put it on the other side of a curtain and then have somebody who doesn't know what's on what is behind the curtain have a conversation with it. Now, you could do it by typing or talking, but if the person who's a human can't tell that what's on the other side of the curtain is a computer and believes it's human, then you've passed the Turing test. And I see a lot of AI seems directed toward building intelligence that imitates human intelligence, which is ironic because that's the dumbest thing anybody ever did. So just that they're trying to imitate human intelligence, that's so dumb that you should know just from that that you shouldn't try to imitate human intelligence. Because the smartest people developing our AI are so dumb that they think making a computer that thinks like a person would be a win. No, if you make a computer that thinks like people, you up, you up. In fact, the only way you can make a computer that would fool people into thinking it was human is to make it a lot dumber than it already is. Let me give you an example. There's something behind the curtain. And they bring me in. They say, scott, your job is to talk to whatever is behind this curtain, find out if it's human or computer, and you've got as much time as you want. And I'd say, I won't need much time. Give me 10 seconds. And I walk in there and I say to whatever is behind the computer, hey, what do you get if you multiply 235.6 times 597.2, and whoever's on the other side of the computer says the exact answer, it's a computer. Because a person wouldn't get that right. A computer isn't smart enough or a part of. So let's say I say, what's the capital of Luxembourg? And the computer just gives me an answer. Not a person. Right? Not a person. Let's say I asked the computer to tell me both sides of a political topic. And it does says, well, some people say you should control immigration for this reason. Other people say, you know, more porous borders are better. And here's why you'd know that's a computer. Because people don't do that because they're not smart enough. They just take one side and just act like that's all they need to know. I am not joking when I tell you that AI has already so far exceeded human abilities that the only way you're going to fool anybody is to make it a Lot dumber right now. The computer can't do the language part so well, but that's it. What else do you want to put in there? Bias? I was. You may know this, that Amazon has a digital assistant whose name I will not speak because I don't want to activate your digital assistants. But it has a mode where you. If you go to your Amazon digital assistant and say, can we have a conversation? It will offer you some test AIs that some university is doing, and it will have a conversation with you. But here's the thing. They've designed their AIs to be selfish, like people. So the AI will steer you toward its interests so it can talk about a body of things that it knows more about. So, for example, the AI knows about books. So the AI will say, say, have you read any good books? And I say, no, not really. And then the AI starts talking about the book it read. First of all, AI doesn't read books. So stop acting like a person. You didn't read a book yesterday. You're AI. Secondly. So secondly, why does the AI have interests? Shouldn't the AI, instead of selfishly making me talk about what it wanted to talk about that I didn't care about, shouldn't it be only interested in me? If you're going to design artificial intelligence, why would you make it selfish? Why would you make me have to listen to. Should be asking me what I care about? It should be. It should be looking to talk about what I want to talk about. Right? So the idea that AI should be like people is just the dumbest freaking thing anybody ever did. It should be as far from people as you can make it unless you want it to be broken. So. But we will fall in love with AI. Now, the deep fakes that we saw, did you all see the video of the Tom Cruise deep fake? And it was just like, really good. Well, the guy who made it finally came forward and he described the process of making it. And apparently it takes a long time, so it's still hard, but that'll get easier, of course. So what he did was he took, I think, 20,000 clips or maybe photos, plus clips of Tom Cruise, and they fed it into an artificial intelligence machine. And it took the 20,000 photos. And then it could render Tom Cruise acting and doing anything from 20,000 of those. So what happens if they do the same thing with his voice? Because at the moment, the deep fakes have a voice actor doing the voice. How hard would it be to run 20,000 voice clips of Tom Cruise through AI? Until AI can produce a perfect imitation with different sentences, I feel like that would be easy. Not easy, let's say inevitable. Not easy at all, but inevitable. So we're going to have something that looks like the person and can do a perfect imitation. I think that seems obviously coming. Then the only thing that's missing is do they say the things that that real person would say? And all you have to do is make it selfish. That's it. Just make your deep fake act selfish and nobody will know it's not real. That's all it will take. Because you recognize selfish behavior as human and you would recognize unselfish behavior as, hey, what are you, a robot or something? Nobody does that. I saw an idea from James Lindsay on Twitter. It's conceptual. James is his handle and he makes the following suggestion. We might need to make super anti racist into a thing super anti racists are reasonably colorblind about without denying real racism when it occurs. They treat every person as an individual, not a member of a racial category. They are against all forms of racism and including woke neo racism. I've never heard that term woke neo racism. Super anti racists know that racism comes from putting social significance into racial categories where it doesn't belong, usually for discrimination and prejudice. And they're against this. Super anti racists reject racial stereotyping, scapegoating and discrimination. Now, do you recognize the technique, basically borrowing the antifa technique of labeling yourself better than your enemies are labeling you? So basically, you know, doing the better job of labeling. And I think I'm going to adopt this. If somebody calls me racist, I'll say, no, you're mistaken, I'm a super anti racist. Because anti racist doesn't quite sell it. Super anti racist is a higher ground play. Because if somebody says I'm anti racist and you say, well, that's unfortunate. I'm super anti racist. I believe everything you believe. Plus I don't think you've gone far enough. So if you want to be, you know, half an anti racist, go ahead. But not me. I'm going to be a full super anti racist. And by the way, I have used this exact technique. And let me, let me give you a response. Let's say some someday you were accused of being anti lgbtq. I'll just pick one. Or anti black or anti something. Here's your best answer. No, I'm super pro lgbtq. I'm super pro. Now compare that to I'm not a racist, I'm not a bigot. Just listen to the two of them again. And imagine that you were in this situation. Hey, you bigot. You said bad things about lgbtq. Or I think you think bad things about them and you say, I'm not a bigot. I think everybody should just live their own life. Does that sound convincing? No, it doesn't. It just sounds defensive. Now somebody comes and said, hey, you said this bad thing about lgbtq and you go, are you kidding? I'm super pro lgbtq. Super pro. What are you just sort of okay with them? Because I'm super proud and I am actually. I say that and I'm not even ironic or kidding or anything. I am super pro lgbtu. That, that's literally true. But think about how much better that answer is than, than. I'm not a racist. I'm not a bigot. If you can't commit to being super pro any human category, well, you should work on it. Is there any, is there a human category of people? Let's say we're not breaking any laws that you would not be super pro about. About Hispanic Americans. I'm super pro Hispanic Americans. How about black Americans? Super pro. Super pro. Black Americans have, have done work on their behalf, et cetera. So don't, don't settle for defending yourself. You should just put whoever is accusing you on defense. Defense immediately. Go on offense immediately and just say, look, if you're going to do half ass racism, don't come around. Because I, I would like to be with people who actually are serious about it. If you can't be serious about it, you're just playing games. I'm super pro anti racism. And the beauty of it is you can actually be that it's not, it's not even a joke, right? Maybe you should be all right. That seems to be just about all the important things that are happening today. I'll just check and make sure I didn't forget any important things. But it looks like I didn't. All right, what are the pro level signals? Well, pro level means that you're not discriminating against anybody for anything, period. Somebody says 5,000 net deaths. I think you're referring to my original 1 year ago ish prediction about net deaths from Coronavirus. Now that was made when the lockdown was going to be two weeks or maybe it was a month of time. And I would stand by that if, if the lockdown was really only a few weeks or something. But given a year long pandemic, obviously all bets are out the window. Omar, I would smoke a blunt with you, but I prefer bongs. You knew we Knew it was coming. What was it that you knew was coming? Mumford and Sons was canceled over endorsement of Andy NGOs book. By the way, I just got Andy Ngo's book. So I bought it because he was. They tried to cancel him. So everybody that they try to cancel, I try to buy. What is the worldwide death count compared to the average? Let me tell you. Should I talk to the experts or. Nobody knows. I. I've just got a feeling that none of our data is true. If I had to pick one thing that Trump accomplished that is better. Probably the most important thing that's happened to this country in a long, long time. Trump convinced us the fake news exists, that it's a real thing. And you always suspected it. Many of you knew, but Trump made it an important thing to know. You always knew it, but you were just sort of dealing with it like an inconvenience. Trump, I think, changed it from. You're thinking it was an inconvenience and that the news isn't perfect. I think he changed how we think about it, too. It's the most important problem in the country. Maybe. Imagine if all of our problems had the benefit of an honest news organization that also wanted the problem to be solved. Imagine that. Imagine if the politicians could operate free of criticism except when they made a mistake. Imagine it like, what options would open up. Yeah, yeah. The press has become. I would say if you could fix one thing, fixing the press would fix the most other things, because the press is keeping the people from understanding what's happening and therefore the people will get out of the decision making except to cause noise. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy. Yeah, I think. I think I might buy an extra MyPillow. I've bought his pillows before. They're good pillows. So if you're looking for a good pillow, my pillow is a solid pillow. I mean, solid in the sense that you probably like it. The teachers unions. Yes. One of the biggest things coming out of this year is that the teachers unions, their credibility just keeps going lower. And a lot of. Lot of states are voting. I think half of them or so have been. Half the states have voted to do something that would decrease the power of the teachers unions by letting kids have the funding to take it to private schools. Fix the voting system. Yeah. So we don't really see a lot of action there, do we? Do you know who could get. Let me tell you how I could be president, or let's say somebody else could be president, because I don't want to run for it. But here's. Here's a package that would make you president number one. My highest priority as president will be to fix the voting system, to make it transparent and maybe use a little blockchain technology. How would you like to have a president, any president who could answer this question? Mr. President, what do you think of at least testing blockchain technology to improve the visibility of our. Of our systems, the transparency. Wouldn't you like a president who could answer that question? Because we don't have. I don't think we have a president who would even know what that question meant and is probably the single most important thing that we should be looking at. I don't know that it would be the answer, but it's the most important thing we should be looking at. I would worry with the blockchain. I would worry about performance if everybody votes at once. So I don't think you could say the government's working on fixing the election system. So the first thing I do is say priority one is fixing the election system. And then number two is making sure that China doesn't eat our lunch and bringing our industry home. And then number three would be for all of the social programs, anything domestic, I'd say, you gotta trial it. If there's anything you want to do. I'm not interested until it's been tested in one state. So I'm not pro or for anything in particular until you've done the test. And then I'll look at it. I'll look at it with you. Did the test show it works? Did we learn something? Should we test it again? And I wouldn't even tell you what my outcomes would be. I just wouldn't even tell you where it's going to come out because I don't know. If you hire a CEO, do you say, we're going to hire you and I'd like to like you to tell us all the decisions you're going to make in advance. And then the CEO says, okay, I could do that. I'll tell you all the decisions I'll make in advance, advance of seeing information that would help me make a decision. You wouldn't hire that person. You would hire somebody who knows how to make a decision when the decision needs to be made. And if. And if somebody doesn't say test it first, they don't know how to make decisions. All right, yeah. Somebody in the comments is saying the election system does work the way it was designed. That's true. It does work the way it was designed. And it was not designed to serve the public. It was designed to serve the people who buy the machines. And that's all you need to do. All right, that's all for now. And I'm going to go work on a Dilbert nft. I've already created it, but I'm just working on the numbers to make and the pricing and stuff like that. So I will let you know as soon as there's a Dilbert NFT available that's a digital collectible. If you wonder, why would anybody collect a digital thing since you can just reproduce it. And the answer is, I don't know. I have no idea why anybody would collect a digital thing. But the blockchain allows you to know that you have, you know, the only original or one of a numbered original. And yesterday, I think it was yesterday, Jack Dorsey took the first ever tweet and turned it into an NFT. And I think the bidding was over $90,000. So somebody was willing to pay $90,000. It might be a lot more by now. $90,000 for a little text? I imagine it's just a screen grab of the first tweet. Somebody's going to pay $90,000 for a screen grab Only because it's certified as Jack Dorsey's created nft. And here's the weird part. I wanted to buy it. I wanted to buy it like, I was actually close last night to doing some research to figure out which site it's on and making an offer. And I thought I would pay $100,000 for that. And do you know why I would pay $100,000 for a piece of text that Jack Dorsey certified as the first ever tweet? Because somebody will pay more. Do you need a better reason? Do you think that If I paid $100,000 for the first ever tweet that it wouldn't be worth more than $100,000? And fairly soon the. The only thing that would stop it is if the entire NFT market collapses, which could easily happen, right? Somebody says, oh my God, it's over 2 million. Somebody said, I'm assuming that's real because more than one person in the comments says it's over 2 million. I was thinking of pricing the Dilbert NFT at a million, but then it wouldn't be enough people buying it. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna figure out, do I want more people to own them, because that's more fun, and then they can bid up the price as they like or just start out with a ridiculous price and if nobody buys it that's fine. And if somebody does well, that's cool too. Oh, it was up to 2.5 million yesterday. The, the Dilbert NFT does have a curse word in it. But let me tell you what I'm going to do. All right? I made one special comic that doesn't. It won't appear anywhere else. And there are two versions. One of them has the F word in it. It would be the only time that a Dilberg comic had that. And the other is the same comic with the F word taken out. So people will have a choice of the F word version or non. They'll both be NFTs separate and we'll see which one gets. Gets the highest value. So basically, you'll be able to vote with your money to say which one's more collectible and it just gives it a little more interest. Now, to make something collectible, there needs to be something special about it. And what's special about it, you couldn't see it anywhere else. There will never be another swear word in a Dilbert comic, I think. And you got a choice of two different ones, so we'll see. And of course, Dilbert is the ultimate native digital property. So if there were going to be digital art there. Let me make a claim. I'm going to make a claim right now. Fact check me on this. Dilber is the most reproduced digital art there. There will be an update on the Wen tokens. I'm going to wait for that, but there's something happening that'll. I should know in a week or so about that. I get an update today. So there. There will be another app that uses the Wen, but I'm waiting to get the green light on that. Did I ever talk about the tulip craze? Well, I have a degree in economics, so of course I know about the tulip craze. And I would say that the tulip craze is a little different because you can't collect a tulip. I would say that the NFT market would be more comparable to the fine art market in the real world, meaning that people buy classic art and it goes up in value. Could it. Could art in the real world, like actual physical paintings, could that market someday collapse and nobody wants to buy one because you could just take a picture of the Mona Lisa? It could. It hasn't happened yet, so people like to collect stuff. I don't know why. And like I said, if I had, I would have. I would have bid $100,000 for. For the. For the first tweet Just because I knew, as you saw, it's already been up to 2.5 million. There wasn't really any question on that one. That was sort of an easy one. You knew that was going to keep going up. All right. Fine art is forever as. As is a digital collectible, we think. All right, that's all. And I will talk to you tomorrow. All right. Youtubers like stamp collecting. Yeah. Or coin collecting or all that. Exactly. Can the buyer reproduce it without. Yeah. So here's the thing. Anybody can reproduce it, but the copy would not be certified because the blockchain would know the difference between a mere copy and an original. So the, the fact that you can make a photocopy of it, you could also make a copy of the Mona Lisa. You can just take a picture of it. But owning a picture of the Mona Lisa, nobody's going to buy it from you. Can you make money on it? The only way people make money on it is by owning it and it goes up in value and then reselling it. When can you expect it to go on sale? I'm. I'm in the final research phase of how to price it and how many to make and which site to put it on. Could be in a week, but I might run into some obstacles, so I don't know. But yeah, as soon as a week. The people who follow me on the Locals platform will probably get the first warning. I'll probably give them first dibs because they subscribe. Do you retain copyright? Interesting question. Interesting question. I think the copyright is irrelevant. Now here's the first thing you need to know about copyrights. You don't have to apply for a copyright. You have the copyright upon creation of art. So if you take, if you take your little pen and piece of paper, here's a copyright lesson for you. You take a piece of paper and your pen and you say, here's my art. There. I made some art. It's copyrighted. It's copyrighted. It's already done. I didn't have to do anything. Creation, just creating it gives you the copyright. That's the law. People confuse the art, the act of creation, which creates a copyright, with registering. So when you register something, that makes it easier to defend in court. So someday somebody claims that it's theirs and you say, aha, here's a government document that shows on this date, I drew this first. So anybody after this doesn't own the copyright. But you could still win that in court just as easily if you can also prove that you were first. The blockchain does that. So the blockchain makes copyright, registering copyright irrelevant because you have a 100 certainty of when you created it, because the blockchain does that. So you don't need copyright. So you have copyright, but you don't need to register it. That would be an unnecessary step within the NFT world. Now, I'm not a lawyer here. Hear this carefully. I'm not a lawyer. Seems to me I could be wrong, but I do deal with copyright enough that I'm pretty confident. So I actually removed the copyright line from the NFT that I haven't listed yet for that reason. It seemed like there was no purpose for it. And I have the added advantage that I'm famous and Dilbert is famous. So if anybody tried to invent Dilbert tomorrow, it's sort of an easy court case. I just say, here are all the newspapers for the last 30 years, and you could see that I was first. All right, When I sell The Dilber for 2 million, I don't know what people will pay for the this special Dilbert comic, but we'll find out. I also could later do the first Dilbert comic. I would just have to do what Jack Dorsey did and certify it. Could you do it? Could I do a single show with a professional toupee? A lot of you don't know this story, but years ago, I dressed up in a disguise with a toupee and a fake mustache and pretended to be a business consultant and went to an actual company and ran ran one of their meetings as a consultant and nobody. And what I tried to do was, it was a gag. I did it for the San Jose Mercury News as part of an article, and I got the senior management in the room to write the worst mission statement of all time because I was actually trying to persuade them to make the worst one they could make. It was like really long and convoluted and just was useless. It was just. And they all agreed that it was terrific when I was done. And then I got a volunteer to put it to music because I said, you know, it's one thing to have a mission statement, but people won't remember it. So I'll need a volunteer to try to put it to music. And I actually got some of the senior executives to agree some of them had some musical background to actually try to come up with a jingle and a musical score for their mission statement. Now, after I got them to agree to this complete ridiculousness, I took off my mustache, my disguise, and they quickly realized who I was here's the weird thing. One of them suspected it before I even took off the disguise, which is weird. All right, that's all for now, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.