Episode 1459 Scott Adams: News, Persuasion and Coffee

Well, everybody on YouTube and locals today. I started the stream at the same time. I had been trying to start the local stream a little early to give you a little extra, but I find that detracts from the, let's say, the crispness of the beginning of the show. So it was started at the same time, but for locals people. I'll stay a little bit after and look at your comments and answer some questions, but how about everybody else? Would you like to make this one of the best days ever? Because it's starting to shape up that way. I mean, already it's looking like one of the best days. And all you need is a cup of mug or a glass of tanker gels or canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better. Yeah, you know what it is? It's called the simultaneous sip. And it happens. Now go. Oh, that's some good stuff. Well, here's the weirdest thing about me. It's a long list, but here's one of the weirdest things about me. For all of my life, I've seen glimpses of my future, sometimes decades before that future happened. For example, I saw myself as a famous cartoonist. I saw myself talking to lots of people in some context I didn't know. I saw where I was going to live. I saw the house I was going to live in. I saw a lot of stuff that happened exactly like I imagined it. But some of it, you say to yourself, well, that's just because you worked hard at your goal. You knew what you want, you wanted, and you got it. But some of them were really weird. Like, one of them was that I would someday be invited to the White House to chat with the President, right? And then that happened. I actually got invited to the White House to chat with the president. Now, did you see that one coming? I didn't, but there was one. There's one thing about my future that was this really clear vision that was ridiculous. And it just happened. Just ridiculous. And I realized that it already happened. Actually, it happened some time ago, but it's happening again right now. And here's what it is. Keep in mind that I have no musical ability. Let's all agree with that. I've been trying to teach myself to play drums. And I have a drum teacher now, and I think my drum teacher would agree that I'm nowhere near being able to play a whole song. Or having any real musical talent whatsoever. None. But despite that, I've always had this vision in my head that I would be a song lyricist. Maybe not writing the melody or stuff, but doesn't make any sense because I have no experience in the. In the realm. But it turns out I'm already a song lyricist, and I didn't do anything, didn't take any work. So Akira the Don, some of you know him from Twitter, creates music by taking people who do podcasts, you know, your Jordan Petersons, people like me, and then turning their. Their language that they use in their live streams or their podcast, basically exactly what I'm doing now. And he takes samples out and turns it into the. The vocals that accompany the music. And he just came out with a whole bunch of new ones. They're not. They're not released to you yet, but I got to preview them. And I'll be damned. He's invented a whole new genre. It's a legitimate, entirely new genre. And I feel like it's going to get bigger because almost everybody I know has heard it, likes it. It's just really sort of good stuff. So what he does is he tries to take. And by the way, this is the same technique the Beatles used. I'm a big student of the Beatles. Yeah, Meeting wave is where you'll find it. I'm a big student of the Beatles because of their work process. How is it that they got such consistently great results and other people didn't? And I'll tell you what the first trick was. They didn't have any rules about what was in and what was out. If something sounded good, it was in. That's it. A lot of the music wasn't even musical instruments. It was distorted sounds and putting microphones in the wrong place in the piano and adjusting things so they didn't sound like they normally did, using the feedback instead of the music. So a lot of what the Beatles did was they'd come in and they say, all right, this is my Beatles accent. All right, do you have any ideas for a song? And then one of them would say, yeah, I've got this little bit. It'll be several lines and some music. And they say, that's all I got. I got this little bit. And then somebody else would say, well, I've got this little bit, and my bit has nothing to do with your bit musically. Well, let's put them together, because then you'll have two bits that we like. And then they would put together a whole song that was basically nonsense, made up of just parts you like. And then it sounded great. And in, in one way, Akira, the don who does these meaning wave things, is doing the same thing because he's taking the good bits out of what people are saying in podcasts, you know, both me and other people, and putting them to music. And should they. I mean, the words were not written to be in the song, but if it sounds good, why not? So I think he's sort of borrowing a system from the Beatles in the sense of if it sounds good, it's music. So there you go. One of my lifelong, I guess you say visions of something that would happen in my life. The least likely thing that could ever happen in life. My, my life is happening. It's happening in a big way. It's just weird. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis is doing the best impression I've ever seen of a G rated Donald Trump. Imagine if, if Trump didn't say, you know, things like bullshit and stuff in public, and imagine that he was just toned down to be the G rated version. Well, he'd be Ron DeSantis. Here's what Ron DeSantis said about Biden wanting, I guess, passports or whatever for vaccinations. And DeSantis said, I don't want to hear blip about COVID from you until you do your job and secure the border. That's right. I don't want to hear blip from you. In fact, if I could extend this thought, Ron DeSantis. Governor DeSantis, I don't think you'll mind if I extend your thinking a little bit and say if you don't secure the border, you can take your bip and just shove it up your bip. You can suck my bip and hope you step in. Bip. So go Bip. You bip everybody who looks like you and bip, the horse you came in on, Bip. All of you. So that's the G rated version of Trump. And it makes me wonder, do you think the G rated version of Trump can get elected president? Because in a weird way, it's what we all want, right? Didn't you all say, damn it, if we could just get the good parts of Trump, the parts you voted for, without all the controversy, wouldn't that be good? Well, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe. Maybe there's a. It's a package for a reason? It could be that all that non G rated stuff, all that provocation is part of the show, but the show is part of the work. You got to put it on the show to get the work done sometimes. And that's something that Trump knew better than anybody. All right, I would like some T shirts. Don't send me these T shirts. This is just for fun. I would like one T shirt that simply has this message written really big, and I want a bunch of them so that I can wear them every day. And it should say, my face does not indicate my mood. You've heard of something called resting bitch face, where some people just look like they're unpleasant with their normal face? Well, I have some version of that, apparently, where no matter what relationship I'm in or where I am, somebody's going to ask me if I've got a big problem. Who died? Why am I so angry? What made me so upset today? And usually I say something like this. What? I'm in a good mood today. Just like yesterday and the day before. I'm actually usually in a good mood, but my face doesn't know it. Apparently there's some miscommunication with my face because from, you know, face down, everything seems pretty good. Pretty, pretty good. So I want that one. I also want one shirt that has nothing but the message. You are misinterpreting my opinion again. That's it. Just. You are misinterpreting my opinion again. I'll just wear those every day. I don't think I would wear anything else. I'll wear them to the store. I'll wear them. I'll wear them on Live stream. All right. Now, there's probably nothing you want more than for me not to talk about anything involving the pandemic, right? Somebody says, move your phone away from the speakers, but I don't have any speakers on, and I don't think that's. I don't think you mean that. All right. But there are some really interesting things that have happened recently that. So here's the thing. I'm not going to talk into wearing masks or vaccinations. I think I'm pretty much with my audience at this point. This point. So as of today, but maybe for different reasons. I think many of you who are watching this would say, don't make us wear masks, because masks don't work. Whereas I say, don't make us wear masks, Although they probably work a little bit, and in some cases, you probably want them if you're around old people or something. So we may disagree about whether masks have any effectiveness whatsoever, but I don't think we disagree at this point that, you know, if you're vaccinated, at least you're kind of done with it and if you're not vaccinated and you have the chance to get vaccinated, I don't care if you wear a mask. Why do I care? You know? And, and I also think that the sooner I get the virus, the better because I'm vaccinated. So I'm at my peak resistance right now and I feel like I'll probably get it anyway. So I think my lowest odds of having long Covid are if I get it now. So that's where I'm at. So I think I agree with most of my audience at this point, but for different reasons. We just got here a different way. But here are some of the things that are new. Did you know what's the difference between an FDA approved vaccine and an emergency use vaccine? Anybody? Anybody? How many of you knew the difference? Because one of the big complaints, and it's a good one, is that the vaccinations are not FDA approved. That means something, right? Doesn't that mean something? So what's the difference between FDA approved and what we've had so far? Well, Dr. Sanjay Gupta answered that question on CNN and if I can be objective for 15 seconds, this is really good. So CNN did good work here via Sanjay Gupta, who often does good work. And so I'd like to give him a shout out. This is the first time I've seen this. So this is like news that I wanted to see. I was actively asking this exact question and he answered it. It goes like this. So the difference between emergency use and FDA approval is two months of data for the emergency use versus full approval would be six months. Now don't you want to see six months? You do, right? But let me ask you this. If you had six months of data, would you feel comfortable with that? Because I guess the FDA is okay with six months. Would that be enough? Because the six months tell you that the long term risks are fine. Let me block a few people here. Anybody who's talking about moderate audio is going to get blocked. Hide that user. Give me a moment. Just going to hide some more users. Okay, so I think that the FDA approval is useful because six months is probably a lot better than two months. But how much difference do you think there would be between the two months data and the six month. There we go. There's another one. Hide this user. Everybody who's using the word crackling and the audio, we're just blocking you all. And I know it's true. I'm not arguing whether it's happening or not. I'm just Blocking you for saying it anyway because it's ruining the show. So anymore anybody else want to get blocked? I'm just blocking people on YouTube now. Anybody else? Okay, we're good for a while. So here's the other stuff. Apparently there's a whole bunch of paperwork and lawyer stuff and then there's review of manufacturing facilities, which I imagine would be easy because they're already manufacturing discussions about how it'll be marketing, et cetera. So a lot of it is paperwork and lawyers. But there's also the six month thing. Now. We've already had six months, right. Don't you think that we have, don't you think that we have enough information that the FDA should at least have all the data? Right. Do you think that if the FDA had seen six months of data, which they've certainly seen by now, don't you think from the real world, if they saw a problem, we'd know about it? Right. They wouldn't wait for the full cycle to go through. They say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Our six month data shows a problem. I need a confirmation on that. But let me just put out the thought that we already know if the thing is safe for six months. So can somebody fact check me on that? Send me a tweet or something? Do we have six months already? Because the vaccines have been out and would the FDA have already told us if that data showed problems? I feel like we're already there. So the question, the part where people say, hey, we need FDA approval, you're waiting for lawyers. I need a fact check on that, please. But just fact check this. If you're waiting for FDA approval, the only thing you're waiting for is lawyers, has nothing to do with safety anymore. Give me a fact check on that. I think that's true that you think you're waiting for the FDA to approve it, but you're actually just waiting for lawyers. Has nothing to do with safety at this point. So if that put that factor into your variables. I tweeted this because I feel as though the United States is on a strategy that can only end in disaster and knows it, but doesn't know how to get out of it. And it looks like this. So I said there are two things. The best way to beat the virus and the variants is a rapid pace of vaccination. So if you could imagine that you could snap your fingers, boop, and everybody was vaccinated. It's impossible, of course, but if you could, would that stop the virus and all the variants? And the answer is yes, yes. If everybody got vaccinated by magic all at once, the variants of the virus would be stopped. But the best way to destroy civilization might be a sluggish vaccination pace. In other words, vaccinating slowly might be the very worst thing. Or too slow. If you vaccinate too slow. There's some thought and there's also some disagreement on this, but that that alone would spark evolution of variants. So correct me if I'm wrong. The ideal is that the government wants to vaccinate fast, which might work. The reality is that they're vaccinating too slow because there's resistance to vaccinations. So are we not on a path that largely guarantees the destruction of civilization itself? If things went the way it looks like they're going, is that really a strategy? And is the only hope of beating this? Persuading more people to get the vaccination like really, really fast is our only hope. Persuasion. At least in terms of the strategy. Now let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a moral and ethical question and I'm going to use your opinions to guide my actions. Are you ready for this? I don't believe that good persuaders have worked on the question of vaccinations. I think it's mostly scientists and politicians and stuff doing the best they can to persuade people. But I don't believe anybody good has worked on it. Somebody who really has deep skills at this. But I have some skills. If we got to the point where we knew for sure this was true, that fast vaccinations would end the pandemic. But slow vaccinations, the path we're on, would destroy civilization. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it would just be the worst case scenario. I'm not exaggerating a little bit. I'm exaggerating a lot. But just say it's the worst case scenario. Is there a point, Is there a point where people like me, who could be more persuasive, especially with a platform, when does it become my responsibility and obligation to talk you into it? Does that ever happen? That's a serious question. Because it's a question that I'm going to have to deal with. And it's life and death, right? It's literally life and death. Okay, Karen, Karen, you will be deleted from the channel. Her name was actually Karen. That's funny. So here we go. We've got this situation where I've got an ethical dilemma because this is a Spider man problem. The more influence you have, the More responsibility you have. So I'm sort of accidentally in a responsible position that I didn't want, because I don't want to be responsible for your health, not even a little bit. Do not want to be responsible for your decisions or your health. That's the last thing I want. But if we're on a path to destruction and the only thing that looks like it could stop it is talking other people into getting vaccinations really fast, what the hell am I going to do? It's really a problem. Yeah. And I'm certainly sensitive to the argument that under no circumstance is it persuasive. But here's the counter argument. Are you ready for the counter argument? If we accept, and I think everybody does, that talking somebody into getting a medical procedure is kind of unethical. They need to make their own decisions. You don't want to influence that too much if you're not a doctor. But at the same time, here's the counter argument. You're all being persuaded all the time. You're not really making up your own decision. It just feels like that your decision is the product of the forces that are influencing you. And a little bit about your brain architecture and experience. Mostly it's about your influences. I would say at this point, maybe 80% is influences. So you're being persuaded. So if I persuade you, you're still being persuaded. If I don't persuade you, you're still being persuaded. So it could be that the unethical thing happens no matter what you do, because you're not really making up your own decisions. News is persuading you, social media, your friends, you're basically being talked into it. You just don't know it. So if I persuaded you, you'd know it, and then it would be my fault. Right. So I would have to live out my days knowing that I had killed people. Because, you know, nothing is so safe that somebody isn't going to die from it. Somebody's going to be telling me that, you know, their daughter or son died because of some damn thing that I talked him into. All right? So that's just a dilemma I'm dealing with right now. Let me ask you this question. I asked this on Twitter. If you are currently unvaccinated, so this is only a question for unvaccinated people. Would you agree to get vaccinated if Biden agreed to secure the border as part of the deal? Now, you could answer this question in the comments as well, but the way it was answered by just my Twitter followers, so very Unscientific and biased poll. 28% when I checked last said yes. 28% said yes. Do you believe that now? Of course, it's. Again, it's very unscientific. It's my followers, etc. But that was way more than I expected. Did you think it would be that high? That's close to 25%. Okay, you're funny. You're funny. But maybe you're not wrong. We'll see. Here's how I take this. One of the big lessons about persuasion and one of the things I try to do in these live streams is, is always teach you something about persuasion. Because if you're picking that up just sort of by watching this content, you're going to be way ahead in life. So here's a lesson on persuasion. It takes a different approach for every person. Right? People don't get persuaded by the same approach all the time. If you want to persuade 100 people, you might need 10 different techniques. You know, you're lucky if you can get 10 people with a technique. So if you were trying to convince people to get vaccinated, it looks like there's a substantial pool of them who would respond to a deal. They take a deal because you've got this weird situation where you're asking people to take a personal risk. So here's the framing where it all makes sense. Wait, there's somebody else to block here. All right, Hide that user. All right? And your mic is not shirt. Yeah, my mic is on my shirt. We'll get rid of you. Hide user. All right, so here's how I would frame this in the context of the pandemic. The government is asking you to sacrifice for the collective. Am I right? So the argument is not just it's good for you, but that it's good for society. That's why you should get vaccinated. Even if you're not worried about yourself, it's good for society. What argument does that sound like you is breaking up? Will hide you. Oh, let me get my sign out. Sorry, hold on. So I know that. I know the audio is not fine for some of you, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Not going to do anything about it, because whatever it is, it's not something I control. So here is the. The lesson. I keep getting interrupted by every. Who wants to talk about the audio? I know you're trying to help me. Please stop. Just stop. I'm just so pissed off, I can barely even talk. Do you know some problems? Yeah, I'm Starting to heat up because there are some problems that are not big problems, but they are so persistent that the little problem just gets out of control. Oh, that's a good. That's a good idea. Somebody says, just turn off YouTube. That would solve my problem. All right, so the point is that you're being asked to get your vaccination for society, not necessarily for yourself. That is socialism. It's socialism. Am I right? Do you think that it's a coincidence that a lot of Republicans don't want the shot? Some of it is they don't trust the government, don't trust whatever, and that's fine. But don't you think that on some level, getting shots for the benefit of other people is socialism? Doesn't it feel like that? And you're seeing all the Democrats, it seems like, tell you you should do it because they like their socialism doing things for the collective. And the Republicans just have sort of a. Just a natural aversion to not taking care of yourself first, which, by the way, is a way better system. Take care of yourself first. And that's usually the best thing for other people. This might be an exception. It might be, but here's why. I think making a deal for closing the borders in return for vaccinations could actually convince maybe 20 or 30% of Republicans. Why? Because it's a deal. It's no longer just socialism. It's a deal. And how many Republicans really, really, really want the border to be closed? And does it seem fair that you should be sacrificing for the collective while the border's open? How can you ask me to sacrifice for the collective when you're not? I need you to sacrifice for the collective a little bit. Then talk to me. Right. If your government isn't doing the most basic hygiene for the country. Don't ask me to sacrifice for the country if you're not even trying. You know, we need to be in this together. So that's why the idea of a deal where Biden just says, all right, all right. If the only way we're going to get past the pandemic and get enough people vaccinated is for me to close the border tight. I hate doing it. It's against everything I believe, but I got to do it, would you get vaccinated then? A lot of people said, yes, that's never going to happen. But it's an interesting persuasion lesson, I think. All right, here's something that pisses me off a lot. Yeah. So I'm hearing that there's static on YouTube, but it's clear on Locals. Looks like something on my end, but it's probably not. All right. Anyway, I know if. If you have my phone number and you want to text me in the middle of the live stream, it does help me, and it really pisses me off at the same time. So thank you for helping me. You really pissed me off at the same time, but thank you. I mean, I appreciate it. Rapid testing. So a year ago, the smart people were saying that if we had rapid testing, even if it was less accurate, it would squash the virus because we could just be testing the hell out of it, and then we could. Even if it wasn't as accurate as other tests, we. We'd still get on top of it. Now it's a year later, and the vaccinations don't seem to be enough. Where is my rapid test? I know somebody who has Covid symptoms who has to wait three days for a result. Three days. Hey, YouTube, we're done with you. Too many people complaining about the sound. If you want to go over to the Locals platform for the rest of this, go to Scott adams.locals.com or see my tweet where there's a. Where there's a link. And you can go over to Locals. Normally it's a subscription service, but I opened it just for this video, so you can see that with. No, without any commercial content and apparently with. Without whatever audio problems you're having. So, goodbye to YouTube. All right, YouTube's gone. So somebody needs to go to jail. Let me say that again as clearly as possible. Somebody needs to go to jail for the fact that we don't have rapid testing because maybe there is something completely legal that happened that's keeping this from being widely available. Well, I don't think so. It almost has to be something illegal to have stopped something so obviously useful from happening. It's doable. It's useful. It would stop the biggest problem in the world. We know how to do it. It's straightforward. There's no real argument about the math of it, and we don't have it. Tell me one reason that doesn't have to do with illegality, bribes, pharmaceuticals, preventing it, whatever. Tell me one reason that we don't have that. It's not because of crime. It's got to be crime. Somebody needs to be in fucking jail. And I'm talking about, like, serious jail. I'm talking about, you know, 30 fucking years because somebody is doing something that is killing hundreds of thousands of us and crushing the economy, and it's got to be somebody doing it for money, because nobody's going to do it for any other reason. Right. Even incompetence can't get you there. It can't be explained by incompetence. Politics can't be explained by science, can't be explained by money. It's got to be crime. And why is there not even a story about it? Where is the press doing the story about how we would be past the problem already, or at least we'd be handling it much better if we had rapid testing and we don't. Where's the news? Why am I asking this question? All right, here's the maybe good news. Monoclonal antibodies. We now know that a subcutaneous shot, which would be a really tiny needle, so it just gets it in your skin, it doesn't have to go too deep into your arm or anything. So unlike the regular shots, it would just be a tiny little prick, let's say. And I guess the results are just amazing. It just really just knocks out the COVID If you already have symptoms, it just whacks it out. And your odds of being hospitalized, if you get that in time, within 10 days, I guess your odds of being hospitalized just drop to practically nothing. Now, here's my question. For those of you who are afraid of getting the vaccine, would you be afraid of getting the monoclonal antibodies? And why would one be different? Is it because it's different technology? Is it because the monoclonal antibodies have been around longer and used in different context? Because my understanding is it would be a cocktail. It would be at least two of them, I think maybe two of them mixed together or something like that. And isn't that something that's never been used for this? I need to look into it first. Yeah. So my question is, how many people who would not want to get a vaccination are going to end up infected? And then when the doctor says, well, you're infected, our best treatment is these monoclonal antibodies, are you going to say to them, whoa, I didn't get the vaccination because I wasn't so sure about them. You better not give me the monoclonal antibodies either. I'll bet zero people will say that. About zero people will say that. I'll bet almost every person who said no to the vaccination will just sort of routinely say yes to what the doctor says you got to do. Now, if you're actually sitting in the doctor's office with COVID that's been tested and the doctor says, If I put this in your arm, your risk goes to zero. If I don't, you're going to have a really hard time and maybe you might die. Are you going to have him put the monoclonal antibody in you? Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. Every fear you had about the vaccination will just go away, and then they'll give you this other thing that also hasn't been approved by the FDA for this. It's been around long enough that I wouldn't worry about it, but it's kind of the same question. If you've got six months of data on the vaccinations, which we do, because it's been used for that long, it would have been great if we had six months before we started to use them at all. But we have six months now, and if the FDA isn't stopping it with the data they've already seen, I would say that the vaccinations and the monoclonal antibodies would be be roughly similar risk. Would you say they're both things that have been around long enough that if there were problems, we'd know it and they're still kind of newish for this application? Seems like a fairly similar risk to me. All right, California recall election for the governor is going to have mail in ballots. Can we have an election without Covid, please? Please, can we have an election without any pandemic, just once, please? Well, I don't know what that's going to do to the California election, but let me make a guess. If Gavin Newsom wins, which I think most people expect he will, will the Republicans feel that the election was held fairly? Huh? Let me predict the future. No, they think it's unfair. So we're basically creating, just recreating the big lie situation, as the Democrats like to call it. All right, that's all I've got for today. I will figure out what the hell is wrong with my audio situation. I will tell you that I have two separate systems. Yeah. Somebody's saying it's the splitter. It's really the only common system. But do you really think the splitter is the problem? Do you? Somebody says it sounds like RF interference. You know, one thing it could be. Oh, you know, let me test it. I'm gonna test it on you. Right? So I've got my phone here. Let me tell you, see, if I put it somewhere, if I can create the problem. All right, so I'm going to put my phone right next to possibly low battery. Now, I don't have a low battery on anything. Everything's plugged in except my phone, and that's fully charged. So you don't hear anything if I get near you with the phone. Right. Turn the phone off, somebody says, well, the sound is good. Right now the reason I'm using my phone is because none of my printers in the house work too loud. Next time it happens to turn off the phone. I can't because I don't have any printers in the house. They all stopped working and it's the only way I can see my notes. So impedance matching is not good with a splitter. Well, I'm. My impedance is the same. It goes to the same equipment. Yeah. The most obvious thing to do is I'll just use two microphones and if that's a problem, I'd be surprised. I don't think I have loose connections because I've got these high end connections. I've checked them all. I might throw my printer off the balcony. So the crack was only on YouTube. Swap the mics. Well, there's one mic going to both systems, but I'll do two mics tomorrow. I wonder if it has to do with which system turned on first. That could be it. Swap the outputs. Well, it's got to be something that's common to both systems. All right, that's all for today and I will talk to you tomorrow.