Episode 1379 Scott Adams: CNN Makes You Dumber, UFO Mystery Solved, Capitol Insurrection HOAX

Hot atoms. The very best part of every day. No exceptions. And today will be extra, extra good, because it always is. And all you need is a cup of Margaret glass, a tank of gels, a slide of canteen jugger 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. Everything. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it's going to happen right now. Go. Oh, yeah, that's good. Oh, I hope it was just as good for you. Well, let's talk about all the fake news. Let me ask you a question. Was any of the news today real, like any of it? Sometimes I wonder. Let's get into it. So Fox News is reporting that CNN had a guest on nine different Times who, according to Fox News, was just making up a story about Ron DeSantis, Governor DeSantis pressuring people to fudge the data on coronavirus. Now, reportedly, there's no truth whatsoever to this. According to Fox News, CNN had her on nine times. Nine times. And apparently there's just no truth to it. There's no substance whatsoever. And Chris Cuomo had her on at least five times or exactly five times. And that was in the context of talking up his brother and talking down Florida. Just completely, completely unethical behavior. According to Einstein, the simultaneous sip is not simultaneous because of different frames of reference. Well, I hate that you're going all Einstein on me, but you're technically correct. So what do you make of the fact that CNN had basically a liar on nine different times? So you totally trust the rest of the news? Right. Just because this part of news was absolutely, totally fraudulent. And I have to wonder, what does that tell you about the things that you can't know whether it's true or not? Because when you can tell, when you have the ability to look into a story and know for sure what was true at the end, then you can look back and see how the coverage was. But is it a coincidence that whenever we can verify a story, it's false? Are you worried about that? That whenever you can verify it for sure it's false? But all of those other things that you can't verify because there's sort of differences in the science or the interpretation or the opinion or the facts are not clear. Oh, that's all true. Yeah, that's all good. But those few times when you can actually check and find out for sure if the story was true or false, they're all false. It's probably just a coincidence, right? All right, I'm exaggerating because obviously it doesn't. Not all the stories are false. Steve Cortez made me laugh today. I think he's learned. Learned a few tricks from President Trump in how to insult people. Well, I don't know if he made this up, but he referred to Dr. Fauci as a fascist gnome. A fascist gnome. How do you not laugh at that? I mean, that's, that's virtually Trump level cleverness. Now, I don't know if he made that up, but if he did is pretty funny. And I guess Dr. Fauci admitted that he may have worn his mask a little longer than the science required indoors anyway, just to sort of try to be consistent with the CDC's recommendation. So we do know that Dr. Fauci seems to have made at least a little bit of a distinction between what is scientifically correct and what is a messaging priority. So is that wrong? Well, I'm not going to be as harsh on Dr. Fauci, the fascist gnome, because I think his job is partly science and partly messaging and partly persuasion. And if he was doing exactly that, you know, science plus persuasion plus messaging, I'm okay with it. You know, I get, I totally understand the criticism that he departed a little bit from the science and that hurts his credibility. But if your job also is messaging, I'm going to give him a pass on that. Origin of COVID have I read it by Nicholas Wade? I have not read it. This is the second time I've heard about it in two days. So I'm hearing good things about it, but I don't know anything about it. I also don't know that it matters. Does it? Does it matter? Say we knew for sure that there was a gain of function testing on the virus and it came out of the Wuhan lab. Then what? Then what? Nothing. Right. Then what is nothing? There's no difference. It's information which we're curious about, but it doesn't have any function. Because don't you think that it's a guarantee that the big laboratories somewhere are doing gain of function testing? I think so. Do you think the United States isn't doing any gain of function testing? Really? Really. You think Russia isn't doing any. Really North Korea? Well, I don't know about North Korea, but if they could, they would. So I just don't know that it makes any difference if we know it or not, because I think we can say without doing any research that is happening probably in all the major countries, labs, probably. So if we found out for sure, does it make any difference? I mean, maybe we try harder to not let one out, but I have to feel, I have to feel that we always try hard to not let out a deadly pandemic virus. I just don't know what would be different now. If somebody has a suggestion of what we would do differently, maybe we'd put more pressure on China or something, but what difference would it make? Are they going to respond to more pressure? They're just going to say we didn't do it. If we could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a weaponized virus that came out of the Wuhan lab, what would China say? No, it wasn't. That's the end of it. That's the end of the trail. Yes, it was. No, it wasn't. But yes it was. Look at all of our evidence. Yeah, you probably made it up. No, seriously, it's really good evidence. Look at it. Look at our evidence. Yeah, I think he made it up. We live in a world in which facts just don't make any difference for stuff like this. So it'd be great to know. I mean, just out of curiosity, but has no function. MSNBC host Ali Velchi has declared that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as apartheid. And of course there's a little pushback on that, as you might expect. And part of his argument is that the Israelis are gobbling up land that used to belong to the Palestinians and that they're using legal tricks and, you know, national defense and lots of, lots of rationalizations to gobble up land and put settlements there. Now I feel as if that characterization at least of the gobbling up land seems fair. Right. I'm. In case you're new to my live streams, I'm very, very pro Israel and their right to defend themselves. But I think it's a fact that they're gobbling up land and building settlements and stuff very intentionally, very strategic. And as I always say, I can't criticize any country from doing what is available to them to improve their situation. We do it, any country would do it. So you can complain, but it's not going to stop anything. People, countries are supposed to follow what's in their best interest and Israel is clearly doing that to the possible detriment of other people. But that's how it works, unfortunately. Now here's my take on this. Whether or not the apartheid claim, you know, fits the facts, there's clearly some stuff going on over there that's better for one group than another. Right. We can certainly agree that not everybody is in the same situation. Right. Whether you label it apartheid, that's just the politics of it. But my take on this is that as long as Hamas has a stated plan of destroying Israel, Israel has a free pass. Let me say that again. If somebody ever in your life says my plan is to kill you eventually, to like, just kill you eventually, I might not do it today, but eventually I'm going to do everything in my power. It's my top priority to kill you. Suppose there was somebody in your life who said that and they meant it. They're not bluffing. It is actually their plan to kill you someday. Do you have a moral and ethical, let's say a moral. Moral and ethical right to kill them first? Yes. Yes, you do? Absolutely. If somebody is making a credible threat that they will kill you, maybe not today, but eventually, and you believe it, and they have a history that proves they do this kind of thing. Yes. You are ethically and morally completely within your right to slay them where they stand, even if they haven't lifted a hand against you. Now, you would go to jail forever. Right? I mean, it's murder. So it's not legal or even close to legal, but it is morally and ethically completely fair. Completely. Now, this is a hypothetical situation that doesn't really exist in the real world. There are not people who make credible claims that they will someday kill you. Except for a stalker, I suppose, in which case you can kill the stalker. And if you put me on the jury, I'll let you out. But I don't. I don't recommend killing a stalker. Let me say it again. If you kill a stalker and I'm on the jury, you're in good shape. Don't worry about it. But if I'm not on the jury, you might have to worry about 12 other people convicting you. So I don't recommend it. But let me say unambiguously, if you ever kill your stalker and I'm on the jury, you're not going to get convicted as long as the facts support that it was a real threat and a real stalker. If you kill them, I'm okay with that. I don't recommend it. Don't do it. Let me be clear. Do not kill your stalker unless you're in immediate danger. So it's not advice, but I don't like stalkers, is what I'm saying. And likewise, I don't like Hamas saying that they're going to destroy Israel eventually, no matter what they do. And as long as that's their position, I'm okay with Israel doing anything they want. Yeah, I mean, within. Within reason. I mean, you know, if they tried to literally kill everybody in Gaza, I wouldn't be afraid in favor of that or anything close to it. But I don't think they have any ethical or moral problem whatsoever. Legal problems? Yes. You know, they have to deal with that separately. But no, no moral or ethical problem to just gobble up that land. The Hamas has just made it easy for them to do it. Apparently there's a group of science deniers advising the White House. Interesting turn of events, wouldn't you say? Let me give you some details. There's something called the White House's environmental justice advisors. Environmental justice advisors. And they're opposing both nuclear energy and carbon capture projects. Do I need to say more? You could not be more anti science that opposing the two things that pretty much all scientists say are required and way better than the alternatives. Carbon capture, if we become more efficient at it, it's not quite there yet. And nuclear power. And the Biden administration is pro nuclear power. Right. So their own advisors are advising them against something they know to be unwise. The advice is unwise and the Biden administration knows it. So I'll give credit to the administration for knowing that this is unwise. But how do they justify, how do they justify having advisors who are anti science? I mean, obviously anti science. You can't get much more anti science than being against nuclear energy or carbon capture because science is in favor of those very clearly and unambiguously. The New England Journal of Medicine has a little article in there saying that when the two dose vaccinations were tested, apparently they tested the efficacy of the second dose soon after the first. So when they did the trial, they didn't wait as long for the second dose as we are in reality. And the importance of that is that apparently you can do some magic with the numbers. I'm not sure I totally trust the analysis, but I'll just tell you what they came up with, which is that the first dose might have been way more effective than we thought because the first dose was still increasing in protection at the time that they gave them the second dose. When they were testing the efficacy of the first dose, it was closer to 50%, but it was still increasing. They didn't really test the efficacy of the first dose. This is the important point. The efficacy of the first dose of the two dose treatment wasn't really analyzed because they're sort of in a hurry and they made a little bit of an assumption that the second dose would be important. So they, they kind of stuck them together a little close. But apparently you can use some statistics and math and analysis and, and untangle the, untangle that situation. And when you do, it makes the first dose look like it's almost 93% effective. When it reaches its peak now, it might not last as long. And that would be an argument for the second dose. But here's my argument. I feel as though we're going to get to herd immunity way sooner than the experts are saying. Here's why. Sorry, something just set off my security camera. But it was a bird. We're good. Nobody's attacking the house. So here's my argument. The experts are saying that we might need 75 to 85% people to get vaccinated. Do you believe that? Do you believe that we'll need 75, 85% of the people to get vaccinated to have herd immunity? Well, here's what I think. Now that we know the first dose is as effective as it is in some states, we're getting pretty close to 60% of people who had the first dose, at least the first dose. Now if this were a generic pandemic where all people were affected sort of similarly, children got it as badly as middle aged people, as badly as adults, or the elderly will always get it worse. But if it were more spread out, then that 60%, 70% herd immunity thing makes sense. Right? But what happens when you have a situation where you get almost all of the vulnerable people vaccinated? Which is where we are right now. Right. We almost probably have all of the old people vaccinated. Now the people who are unvaccinated are mostly children who don't really have a risk, which is different from other pandemics. If you add to that the fact that the first dose we're approaching 60%, it's like 50, 60% in most states. I think we're there or just right. Almost there. Because if you added to the 60% the children who don't make a difference and you added to that the people who have natural immunity, maybe it's not as good as the vaccination. Maybe it is. And then on top of the people with natural immunity, you add the people because they had the virus. Once you add the people who have some kind of cross reactive immunity, other types of coronavirus apparently gives you a little bit of immunity. I feel like maybe we're there, like right on the Edge where it's just going to fall off a cliff any day now. Now, I'm not saying you should throw your masks away or anything else. I'm not telling you anything. I'm just saying that if I had to guess, I'm going to guess that we get to something like a functional herd immunity because of this weird situation of getting all the vulnerable people first and the kids don't really need it. I feel like we're right on the, right on the cusp of herd immunity, if not already there, you know, I mean, when you HEAR the Texas 0 deaths yesterday, we might be there. So I'm going to be a little more optimistic than the experts, but I like that the experts are not as optimistic as me. It'll maybe it keeps people getting vaccinated and maybe that helps. I know some of you disagree. Rasmussen did a little poll in which they were testing the knowledge of Americans and they were finding out that the people who watched CNN and MSNBC were the least informed of these three groups. People who watched Fox News were more informed, at least on the three questions that I'll tell you in a minute. But somewhere between Fox News, who are the most well informed, and CNN and msnbc, who are the least well informed, there was a category in the middle. People who don't watch the news. That's right. People who don't watch the news, or at least television news, were better informed than the people who watch CNN and msnbc. So in order, in the order of which one informs you best, there would be Fox News. Those viewers were the best. People who didn't watch any fucking thing at all. They were number two, and at the bottom was CNN and msnbc. So if watching their news makes you dumber, it's a mental health problem. Now, what's the definition of a mental health problem? Well, the definition is not just that you're different. The definition is that it affects your life in a negative way or somebody else's life in a negative way. That would be a mental illness. Do you think that the people at CNN and msnbc, the, the people who watch it and are becoming less and less well informed, do you think that that has any impact on their happiness or anybody else's? Of course it does. Of course it does. The CNN viewers think they're on a planet that's going to burn up by the time their children are, you know, in the Middle Ages. They think the whole planet's on fire. They think that there was an insurrection at the Capitol, just like a few months ago. The CNN viewers are definitely experiencing mental health problems because the information that they get is panicking them and is not true. Let me give you some details here. So the questions that they asked were on, let's see, health insurance, income tax rates, and the debt, I think were the three things. And in each of those, Fox News viewers were way more informed, relatively speaking. A lot of people still didn't know anything. Turn off the news. Yes, Maple. Bob, so you know it sounds like I'm joking, right? When I say that CNN and MSNBC give you brain damage and or mental illness. I'm not joking. I'm not even a little bit joking. It's funny. Yeah. Should we regulate CNN like heroin and cocaine? I don't know. There are a lot of people who do cocaine who aren't complaining as long as they have enough money. But the people watching the news, the wrong news, definitely getting their dumb. Getting dumber. And apparently the viewers of NBC, ABC and CBS similarly were under informed. So I feel like this is a real thing that has to be addressed. Here's what I would love to see. I would love to see this Rasmussen poll become a permanent ongoing feature in which we simply report whose viewers are the least informed. Because right now we check who has the most viewers and fortunately it's Fox News because they're the best informed. So isn't it good that there are more of them? But we should be tracking this. We should track it every month and find out whose viewers are the least informed, because that should tell you something. How would you like to be an MSNBC or CNN viewer and to learn that your group is the least informed, least well informed anyway? Would it make any difference? No, probably wouldn't. You would still just do whatever you do. All right, I've got a UFO update. So we've seen several kinds of UFOs, and I feel like we have an answer for all of them now. So one of the kinds of UFOs was this triangle. It was like this green floating triangle thing. Do you remember that one? We all saw the video and apparently that can be reproduced with a camera lens of a certain type that actually has an aperture that closes down to that triangle. So the triangle one is nothing but a light in the sky, probably another aircraft, that the camera aperture makes it look triangular in certain cases. And that can be reproduced. All right, so number one, the flying triangle has been debunked. All right, so take that one off of your list. We know how that was done. It's just the way the lighting works and the aperture number two, you've got the ones where they, you can actually see like a photo of something metallic and, and other ones that seem to be buzzing around in the vicinity of military assets. Well, there's another theory that these are actually terrestrial drones. Now I'm going to talk about the ones that defy physics next. So we're not talking about them yet. That's coming up. These are just the ones that are. Hey, there's something here we can't explain and it seems to be buzzing around our stuff. The thinking is that those are actually surveillance drones that some of our normal earthly adversaries are using to collect data. So the thinking is this, if you send a drone toward a military asset, say American Navy or pilots there, the American assets will respond. So they'll respond as if it were a threat or as if it were something they need to look into. Now that response is information that enemies would like to know. So the thinking is that they're sending drones against our assets and that the drones themselves have some electronic surveillance equipment and that they're looking for a response and then they're measuring the response so that if there ever were a real attack, they could anticipate what the American military would do. And I find that explanation very good for maybe some of it. Yeah. We'll talk about the speed next. Speed's coming up. So those that do not look like they're violating physics could be just drones that are unidentified. Now. What about the shape that they don't seem to have a form of propulsion? Right. We see just a shape and it's oval. It always seems to be oval. There's an explanation for that. It's infrared. The infrared is not going to necessarily show you the full shape of the thing. The infrared is going to show you where the heat difference is. And if it's a bird, it looks like an oval. Yeah, the cigar shaped object with no propulsion is what a bird looks like on infrared because you don't see the wings. So it looks like there's no propulsion. But the, the bird's body is a different temperature than even its own wings. So the body shows up as an oval because it's an indistinct object and the wings don't show up. And it's just that. So you got your birds that look like that on infrared. They look like ovals. Now what about the defying physics? So the defying physics things has also been debunked. And what it is is that if I can do, let's see if I can Do a visual representation of that. I will use. All right, I'll use my wedding ring here. As the unidentified object, this remote control is the airplane flying over it and looking at it. The airplane's camera has to change direction. It's looking directly down, and then as the plane goes by, it's looking backwards. Looking backwards, Right. So the perceived speed of the object will be altered by the, by the speed of the plane and the angle of the camera. And apparently you smart people have looked into it and have determined that just the normal speed of the plane as, as is shown on the screen of the UFO video. You can just look at the actual screen with the, with the UFO on it and it says the angle and the height and the speed and you have all the information you need right on the screen that if you were smart enough to do the math, you could calculate that it's a bird and that it's not defying physics, it's just a artifact of the camera moving and the angle moving quickly at the same time as the object is moving in another direction. Right. So Stardust is saying the effect is called parallax. I believe that's right. So I believe that is every part of the UFO sightings explained. Sorry, sorry, I hate to ruin it for you, but I don't think there are any UFOs. Now you add people, lying people, misremembering any number of things. And, and you've got some interesting stuff. Now here's one I've. I wonder, remember you saw the drone that seemed to splash into the water and I joked about it being a bird. It's probably a bird. But let me ask you this, is there any such thing, wait for it as a submarine launched drone? Because I'll bet there is by now, or at the very least, we're definitely trying to make one. Because what could be more useful than a submarine that can launch a drone? I can't think of anything that would be better than that, can you? That would be the obvious, most obvious, most likely thing that you would want to invent is to pair a drone that you could launch from your submarine. Now, does that mean that that was a drone going back in the water and returning to its submarine? Could be, but more likely a bird just trying to get a fish. But it could be. So everything you say about speed is that parallax thing and it has to do with the camera angle. And it's not, they're not really moving like that. It just looks like it. All right, I got the idea that, that it's at least some of them are drones from enemies from Tyler Rogue away in an article in the Drive. So I'll give them credit for that. There's a report today that the Pentagon has a shadow army of 60,000 people in a secret force with 900 billion budget. 900 billion. I hope I'm reading that wrong. 900 billion, is that right? That can't be right. I just copied and pasted this from an article. But really, 900 billion, that can't be right, right? I feel like that could be 900 million. But it says billionaires. But I don't believe that we're spending almost a trillion dollars on a secret army and we're just finding out about it. Can the Pentagon hide a trillion dollars a year? What? I'm a little confused by this reporting, but apparently this secret force are people who are like a force multiplier for intel agencies, but they don't report on the payroll so that they. They're basically people who are just pretending to be regular people. And if they were caught, they would have no connection that could be determined to intelligence agencies except by their activities, I guess. So I had two responses to this. Number one, I'm kind of glad we're doing this because obviously China is. Other countries must be doing it. So I would think that this is something very useful for our national defense. But it sure is scary. It's kind of scary to find out that your government is doing this stuff, but we probably need it. I'm not going to complain about it. I don't know enough about it. So I think we, we should start calling the Capital Insurrection stuff a hoax, and we should just append the hoax to it like we did with, you know, the drinking bleach hoax and the fine people hoax and the Russian inclusion hoax and the other hoaxes. So I think that someone needs to write the book of hoaxes for the last several years because there are some really interesting stories about how all these hoaxes came about. But there's a short video clip on Rumble that I tweeted, retweeted this morning, and it's a clip showing the Capitol Police talking to a couple of the protesters that you've seen on video, including the Viking horn guy. So the guy standing next to the Viking horn guy has got a little. Some kind of a loudspeaker system. And he's telling the other protesters or whatever you want to call them, he's telling them, okay, the police will work with us, the Capitol Police. And you can see the Capitol Police standing Right next to him, having a civil conversation about what they could or could not do. And the police were essentially telling them that if they would agree to be peaceful, that the Capitol Police would sort of let them peacefully protest as long as they didn't break anything, basically, which I think was good policing. I feel like the Capitol Police took the energy out of the protesters in exactly the right way, at least what we saw on video. You know, I told you. Oh, I didn't tell you. On locals, I gave a lesson on how to defuse a fight using hypnosis. And I noted on this video that the Capitol Police were using the same technique. And the technique is you bring your own energy down. So the Capitol Police were not saying to the protesters, you don't do this. If you do this, I'll kill you. You know, if you do this, you're in trouble. That would have just sort of ramped things up. The Capital Police were just having a conversation. You know, if you. If you do this, we'll. We'll let you do this. You know, don't do this, but, you know, do this. Completely controlled their energy. Really good in terms of persuasion and police work. Really, really good. Just. Just drain the energy out of it. And. But when you see the clip, it's so clear. I mean, it could not be more clear that at least this group of protesters had nothing on their mind except being heard, nothing else. It wasn't an insurrection. They weren't trying to hurt anybody. They weren't trying to take over the Capitol. And it's completely clear that this group, you know, some of the ones who were most famously photographed, had no bad intentions, right? Now, that doesn't say that other people were as free from bad intentions at all. All right? Ashley Babbitt was going through a window. And as tragic as that is, and I know you don't like this, I think it was a good shoot, meaning that it's. She shouldn't have been shot. Right? Like, we all wish the whole situation had been different, but I think that the. The police officer who took that shot has been cleared. And I agree with that, actually, because if people are coming in with that attitude into the Capitol, they bring it on themselves, really. I mean, I just can't have any. I don't have any more sympathy for Ashley Babbitt being shot than I would for somebody resisting arrest being killed. I care about them on a human level, but because they so. So broaded on themselves, I just can't. I can't make that my issue, really. But certainly now And I guess part of the story is John Solomon was reporting that the Pelosi and the House are going to vote on some kind of 9, 911 style commission to probe the January 6th, what they call terrorist mob attack. Let's see, just got an emergency text here. I gotta solve this right now. Somebody's, somebody's really. Oh, got it. All right, Problem solved. I'm a problem solver. All right, let's see what else we got going on here. Kind of a, kind of a slow day. That was one I wanted to talk about today. Does anybody have any questions? Yeah, I'm a problem solver. That's what I am. I'm a problem solver. So I don't know if you've seen this, but there, there does seem to be more and more, let's say, feeling that our government is not the right tool for the last part of the pandemic and that the public is going to have to just take a bigger responsibility for ourselves as well as others. Number one, there does seem to be some question about the efficacy of the first shot. So there is some question whether that, you know, 93% is real or not. And I think we need to wait on that. Okay. Apparently I did not solve that emergency and it is such an emergency that I have to stop right now. Like right now. So I have to end this. But I will talk to you tomorrow.