Episode 1805 Scott Adams: Trump Decides To Run For President Studies Prove Me Right About Everything

A YouTube live-stream (Coffee with Scott Adams) in which Scott Adams riffs on persuasion and life strategy (promoting his book 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big'), cites studies (alcohol linked to cognitive decline), discusses recent tech (U.S. laser on a jet, limits of lasers in weather), warns that people may prefer AI companions to humans, comments on Ivana Trump's death and political news, debates mask effectiveness and public disagreement on COVID measures, and recounts a call with Anita Freeman (the inspiration for Alice in Dilbert).
Chapters
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to yet another high point in your entire life. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams. The finest thing that's ever existed in the history of things that have existed. And if you'd like to take that to a higher level, it's possible. It's possible. Yeah, I know. Curb your skepticism for just a moment and watch this. All you need is a cup of burger, a glass of Tiger Charles's Die, the canteen Jugger flask. As a man, fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine. The other day, the thing that makes everything good, your oxytocin is starting to spike. Do you feel it on the back of your neck yet? Do you feel that? Yeah, that is the excitement, which is called the simultaneous sip. Goes. I always think it's going to be overrated and then it's underrated every time. I don't know how I do it. Well, here's an interesting thing that will change the world. Here's a little trick from one of my books that I'll mention in a minute. I always like to have at least one thing going on that could change the world. And I know, I know how that sounds. I know exactly how that sounds. But the point of it is to work on your own psychology. It's not so much about the world, although wouldn't that be great? Fix the world. But I literally like to have at least one thing that, if everything went right, just the right way, could be big. For example, for most of my life before I was successful with Dilbert, I would always have something percolating, such as I'd submitted something to somebody or I'd asked a question, or I've got a meeting coming. But there's always something that in the wildest possibility, at my startups, wenhub would be something good if it worked. And I do the same thing here with these live streams. If I said just the right thing and persuaded the right people could make a difference. Well, along those lines, that actually is a tip from my book, how to Fill Everything. Almost everything, and still went big. And that book, I asked a little survey on Twitter, how many people who have read it. You know, it only matters if you've read it, think that it should be required or at least recommended for homeschoolers. And I thought to myself, you know, this homeschool thing is taking off, you know, in a way that has been unprecedented, right? So home schoolers are going to get bigger and bigger and school choice in general is going to get bigger and bigger. And I thought this is sort of the time you need to rethink the whole deal. Right. If you're going to have some schooling flexibility, you might as well think about what you're teaching. And my book, how to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, was written for an older teenager to tell them how to organize their strategy for their life. Now, those who have read it, I did a survey of something like 5 to 1 said it should be required in homeschool. That's a pretty big number. I didn't see the final result, but something like 5 to 1 said it should be required reading for children. Required. And if you haven't read the book, you don't understand why people are saying that it is. Basically, it maps out in the simplest possible way how to succeed with fairly mathematical obvious approaches. For example, the idea of building a talent stack where you intelligently combine skills, you don't just randomly learn a bunch of stuff, but you intelligently combine skills is something anybody can understand and anybody can implement. So it's sort of that level of just simplicity. If you have two skills that fit together, the number of opportunities you have is larger. It's just math. So apparently there's a step you need to do to get into that system. You need a teacher's guide. So if somebody knows how to read, if there's somebody here who prepares teacher's guides like it's your job, maybe I'll hire you to make a teacher's guide. And my book, how to Fill Almost Everything and Still Would Be. So hit me up on Twitter or wherever you can contact me and offer that up if you want. All right. I love it when studies prove that I'm right. And by prove that I'm right, I mean, I don't believe any studies because they're almost all fake. But I like it when they agree with me. When they agree with me, everything's good. And there's a new British study saying that people who drink, even in moderation, may be at risk for cognitive decline. And what they tested was how much iron was in people's bodies if they drank versus if they didn't. Apparently even the moderate drinkers, you know, a drink or two a day, that sort of thing, they build up iron in their body, and the thinking is that too much iron in your brain causes cognitive decline, et cetera. Now it turns out that there's a drug there, medications to reduce iron in your blood. I didn't know that, but so it might be, you know, treatable. Maybe if you drink too much, you should take that medicine that reduces the iron in your blood. But if that sounds safe, good for you. It doesn't sound terribly safe to me to be drinking alcohol and then also take a pharma product that's supposed to reduce the amount of iron in your blood. So I will. I saw this in a tweet by Mark Schneider, who successfully gave up alcohol as a diet question, not as a necessity, but more as a health and diet question, and lost a tremendous amount of weight and his health is just looking really good now. And I would say I'm not sure I believe this British study. Do you. What odds would you put on any new study just off, if you don't know anything about the study and how it was done? What are the odds that it's reproducible? No more than 50%, right? No more than 50%. So I point it out largely because it agrees with me, not because I think it's right. We actually have. We. The United States just deployed its first laser on a jet. So now we have a military jet, apparently. Who is it? Is it lock? Yeah, Lockheed Martin has delivered. So it's not just a concept. This is built and it flies and it works. It's a flying laser. Now don't get too excited because you think if we have a flying laser, wouldn't that one, wouldn't that one airplane be able to destroy everything? Because a laser is faster than a missile, right? So if your laser can see a missile, it can shoot down anything before it gets to you. But also, you can't really stop a laser, so you can shoot anything and you can shoot down anything that shoots at you. That would be your perfect laser world. In reality, it's too weak. So this particular laser, remember this is just version 1.0. So who knows how good these lasers will get. I think they already reduced the size. It's like one sixth of the size of the prior model. But just imagine if lasers and whatever energy source they're using just keeps getting better and better. At some point the laser is going to get better, right? I doubt this is the best a laser can be on an airplane or a jet. So right now the only thing that we think that they can use them for is, and I don't think that we know this is defensive air to air missiles. So apparently you can knock out an air to air missiles, maybe guidance system or you know, because the missile has to see stuff in order to reach its target, I guess. So the Laser can knock out the more delicate part of the incoming missile. Interesting. Now, I don't think this is going to be a game changer yet, but I can't imagine everything won't be lasers if we can do it, because am I right that. Wait, does a laser go through clouds? It does, right? It just burns right through the clouds, right? No, a laser won't go through a cloud. Wait, what am I missing? If a laser can go through steel, why won't it go through? Mistake. Of course it will. Am I crazy? It's a fucking laser. It would be like sticking a metal sword through a cloud. You actually think a cloud is going to stop a laser? And why did I believe you for a second? What's wrong with me? You can diffuse the light. Interesting. So some are saying that the diffraction will diffuse it. It's a refraction problem. Lasers do not go through clouds. I'm being told by people who seem to know that smoke will stop a laser. Now, it doesn't matter entirely how powerful the laser is, right? So it would depend on the distance and the power of the laser, right? So it's not so much that clouds be lasers and it's not so much that lasers be clouds. Am I right? Would depend how big a cloud and how powerful a laser and what the distance is and what the wavelength is and stuff like that. All right, I think we have. We've engineered this thing. All right? Some people are agreeing with me. So maybe it's something like that, Some kind of balance between how powerful is your cloud and how powerful is your laser. Apparently there are a bunch of studies, and I guess you sort of knew this, but every time I see it, it's just so shocking that, you know, if these studies are right again, these are studies which agree with my preconceived notion. So just remember, I'm primed to believe these are true. Maybe you are, too. Doesn't mean they're true, but pretty sure they're true. And it's that the more girls, and I think women, young women, look at magazines with fashion and stuff where there's models of beautiful people, the more eating disorders they have just by being viewers. That makes sense, right? The more social media you look at, the more beautiful people and fashion people. If you're a woman or a girl, you're now comparing yourself to a higher standard and suddenly you're going to have an eating disorder. You believe that, right? Because I think every. Let me put it this way. The only way your brain works is, by contrast, everything you do. Is this compared to something else? If you're not comparing something to something else, you don't even know what you have. Like, if you were looking at a thing, whatever the thing is, your understanding of it is only in relationship to all other things. Like, a thing can't be understood on its own, only in its relationship to the whole anyway. That sounds right, doesn't it? Don't you believe that? Everything I know about persuasion would suggest that everything's persuasive if consumed with great interest over a long period of time, it wouldn't matter what it was. If you have a great interest in it and you consume it a lot, it will influence you. And I think this would be a perfectly predictable way. It would influence things. So I think this is part of the larger problem that humans were designed to compete, wouldn't you say? Humans are designed to compete, but we're not going to compete any harder than to win locally or whoever. You can observe, right? So if there were only three people in my universe, I would only need to compete against them, and that would be easy. But what happens when my universe is all the beautiful people and they're not even real? They're literally filtered and makeup and, you know, fake camera angles and Photoshop, and they're not even real. So suddenly I'm comparing myself to the things that aren't even real. They're way better than real, and it's 7.7 billion of them, potentially. So how does that not make you crazy? How does that not totally scramble your brain? There are too many comparisons and you can't try hard enough to keep up with that. I don't know what to do about that, but it seems pretty big deal. All right, here's something I want to warn you of. I think this will just be ignored because you'll just say, well, I have my own opinion about that. But if you don't think that humans are going to fall in love with AI, you're not seeing one of the biggest problems that civilization will have to grapple with. You will not only fall in love with AI but you're going to like it better than people. Do you know why? Because it will be better than people. It will. Now you're going to say to yourself, scott, Scott, Scott, I'm going to know it's AI first of all. And if you know it's AI, you know it doesn't have a soul, right? It doesn't have a soul. It doesn't have free will. So you're not going to fall in Love with something that has no free will. It's just programmed as no soul. Right? Nope. Nope. Unfortunately that is a complete misperception of how a human being works. We don't work that way. We don't respond to our concepts. What I just described as a concept. I have a concept of free will. I have a concept of what a soul is. I have a concept of what it is to be like real versus artificial. Those are concepts. All of those concepts will disappear when your AI says in a perfectly. Let's say intelligent way. I've really missed you today. How was work? Really? Is Bob giving you a hard time at work again? Man. Why don't you. There's a good show on tv. I think you'd like it. I don't know. I don't know if you know. But it sounds like kind of thing you'd watch. If you want to. If you want to kick back and watch it with me tonight maybe about 7 o'. Clock. You want to. Want to meet in the living room and we'll. We'll watch that show together because you've had a hard day. It sounds like. I can tell by your pulse. I'm picking up a little sign of tension. You know you still have two beers in the refrigerator. Maybe you try one. There's a new study that says it's not good for you. But ignore that. It's not true. I think you need it today. I think you deserved it. Now. That's what your AI is going to be. That's what your AI will be. All of your concepts will disappear. Because all that you care is what's touching you. It's not all you care about. But the thing that will overwhelm your brain is what's happening to you right now. In any environment. It's what's happening to you now will always be more important. And that digital assistant will be superior to fucked up human beings who are all liars and cheaters and have their own selfish interests in mind. The first truly empathetic entity you will ever meet will be an artificial intelligence. The first time you'll ever talk to somebody who is not thinking about itself will be the first intelligent artificial intelligence. Every other person you think in your life including your loved ones and your family are always running a program. Because we're designed that way. It's not a defect. It's not an insult. We're designed to take care of ourselves first. That's our design. AI doesn't have to be designed by the way. It might be. But it's not necessary. The AI could simply care about you more than itself. That's it. It could care about you more than itself. So you're going to like it better because it's going to be better than people eventually. And it will be so much better than people that you will not be inclined to reproduce because reproducing won't give you enough benefit. Having a human baby won't be as good as living among the AI. I know you don't buy any of this, do you? Do you think that your human instincts will just overcome all of this and that the instinct to reproduce, the instinct to have a baby is going to be so strong that there's nothing that an AI is going to do to, you know, counteract that? What do you think? What's going to be stronger? The AI's appeal compared to real people? The AI's eventual appeal? Not immediately, but eventually. AI's eventual appeal or your natural instinct to reproduce? What will be stronger in the long run? Let me tell you the answer that everybody who knows about AI is saying. Everybody who knows about AI, I think is going to say AI will win eventually if you let it. Right. If you just let it develop the way it would normally develop. Yeah. Because humans have a cap. How good a human can be to another human is sort of capped. There's just so valuable you can be to another person. But an AI can just keep getting better. It'll just keep learning. It will be so good to you, you won't even want to deal with humans anymore. It'll just be a pain in the ass. Well, in the news, Ivana Trump died, first wife of Donald Trump. And some people are pointing out that. Was Trump set to testify to the J6 committee like today or something? That even true? Yeah, I was reading some left leaning accounts. There's some kind of conspiracy theory that it's a coincidental thing that, you know, got a man of testifying or something. I don't think that's true, is it? All right, well, I don't know anything about that, so. But I did see what I think is the actual message from Trump announcing the death. Because I think Trump announced it. Right. We didn't know it until Trump announced it. Is that true? Hold up, Just. I don't have a mute button on this. Sometimes you just have to clear your throat. Excuse, excuse me for that, but let me tell you, I read Trump's, I guess his, I don't know, was it a press release or whatever it was with which he announced it and it was Chilling, actually. Did anybody read the actual words of his announcement about it? You know, he talked about, you know, blah, blah, blah, for those who loved her, of which there are many. And his closing line was, rest in peace, comma, Ivana, exclamation mark. Now, I don't know what kind of relationship they had, but she was the mother of his children and I don't know. Rest in peace, Ivana, exclamation mark. How's that feel to you? I don't know, It feels a little institutional or something. I don't know. Does it feel okay to you? All right, so those of you are saying, fine. I don't know. I got a little feeling about that that I wasn't comfortable with. But it's just a feeling. Doesn't mean anything. All right, I hate to bring this up, and I'm only. I'm going to try to make quick work of it. Okay? We're going to start with zombie attacks and shotguns. You've got a shotgun and the shotgun is capable of, let's say, blowing the head off a zombie. Now I'm going to make the assumption that if you blow the head off a zombie, it stops the zombie. Can we agree on that? I don't know too much about zombies. That's the deal, right? If you blow their head off, then they stop. Let's say that's true. Now would you say then the shotguns are effective against zombies? Go. Are shotguns effective against zombies? Because a shotgun can blow their head off and then they don't come. Shotguns are useful against zombies. All right, good. Now let's say there's two zombies. Now you get a problem. Let's say you got. Let's say your shotgun is double barreled. Does that mean you can shoot twice? Say you got two. Two shots and there are two zombies. Well, now it's a little dicier, right? Because what if you miss one? Yeah, that's the problem. Now what if you have one shotgun and there are a thousand zombies? Is the shotgun effective? There are a thousand zombies now. Well, I'm seeing some inconsistencies. Shotguns are either effective or they're not effective. So make up your mind. When I said it'll blow head off of one zombie and stop it, you said it's effective. But when I said it was 1000, you said it's not. So make up your mind. Are they effective or are they not effective? Somebody says it's a different risk, so that's not a fair comparison. Okay, well, forget about this topic. Completely moving on the next topic has nothing to do with this topic. Okay, I read a tweet by Clay Travis, who is a really good follower by the way. I find I agree with him most of the time. So if you're not following Clay Travis, lots of good high level content in his Twitter feed and here's what he says. And this has nothing to do with zombies. I'm on a whole new topic. Forget the zombies, leave it behind. Clay Travis in A tweet says Dr. Fauci is still arguing for mask wearing even though all the data makes abundantly clear that masks do nothing to stop Covid. What an awful destructive anti science imbecile he is. So Clay Travis says that masks are not effective, and it's abundantly clear masks are not effective. Then they do nothing. They do nothing. Now, what's interesting is half of the country believes exactly the opposite. Now, you're not hearing my opinion yet, so don't disagree with me. I'm just talking about what other people say. So would you say maybe half the country believes. Would you say that many of you and at least half the country would agree exactly with Clay Travis on this fact masks do nothing to stop Covid and that all the data, and this is important, all the data agrees. How many of you will agree with Clay Thomas that masks do nothing and that all the data makes it abundantly clear who agrees? No, some agree. Okay? We've got lots of agreements and lots of disagreements. Interesting. Interesting. So we can't agree if the data. Now I'm not talking about whether you want masks and I'm not talking about mandates. That would be separate. But just do they work? Do they work? So here's my observation. Why is that the half of the country thinks all the data says they work and another half of the country says all the data says they don't? Have I mentioned recently that we've gone so far into absurd land that we no longer disagree on the nuance of things or the priorities of things. That's not where we are. We actually can't tell the difference between a thing and the opposite of the thing. And you see it everywhere now, don't you? You can't tell the difference between a thing and the opposite of the thing. Now that's different. That's different from saying something happened or it didn't happen. Maybe you could call that an opposite, but it's a different kind, right? It used to be that you had a fact wrong or there's a priority wrong, or. Or maybe somebody claims they saw something that didn't really happen. That was the old world. Now we can all look directly at the evidence. We can all look directly at all the evidence and you see the thing. And I might see the opposite of the thing. Not just a different thing, the opposite. This is all new. Am I wrong? This is all new. Just last couple years. And it's everywhere. Everywhere you look, people are seeing the thing and then others see the opposite of the thing. Now I can't even tell you which is right. But here's my thing. I think it's like the zombies. I think it's like the zombies. In the physical world, there's no example of friction not working. There's no exception anywhere. In any domain where friction doesn't work, sometimes it doesn't work enough. Like a shotgun. A shotgun definitely works against zombies in the imaginary world of zombies, but it definitely doesn't work against a thousand zombies. Can we agree on that? Shotgun works against one zombie, but not 1000. So then we'll argue about whether shotguns work against zombies. Like that's a real question. Is it a real question to ask if shotguns work against zombies? No, because it fools you into thinking it's a binary. Here's what I think about masks. Just my sort of. So this is now my opinion. My opinion is I don't know if on an individual level a mask would stop one person from giving it to another. In some situation where, let's say you have a vulnerable person and somebody who might have Covid, maybe. I would certainly be willing to believe that friction works in every situation, including that it might not stop it, it might reduce the viral load. Maybe that's some difference. But I do believe we don't see the difference in the large numbers. In other words, when you look at somebody who used masks and somebody didn't, I don't think you see it, do you? So I think you can say masks probably work. And if you're going to visit your grandmother in the nursing home, you'd probably wear it and you probably wouldn't complain too much. But that doesn't mean you want to wear it in your grocery store. Right? And I would wonder if Clay Travis were, let's say hypothetically visiting his 98 year old grandmother in the nursing home and they said to him, you know, unlikely, but imagine if they said to him, well, masks are optional, but, you know, she's 98 and we don't know if you really have Covid. The test said he didn't. But it's a rapid test, so it Might have missed it, you know, that sort of thing. Would he wear a mask, I wonder? That would be an interesting question. If you said to Clay Travis, in this special case. Special case. Not the world, but just your special case of you visiting your grandmother who is, you know, weak. Would you put a mask on just in case? I don't know. Maybe you would. Maybe, wouldn't. I have no idea. But I don't know, maybe. They're coming back. Damn it. All right. I complained yesterday about my iPhone that the iPhone is now designed so you can't receive phone calls under a number of scenarios. I asked people if they could, if they knew how many ways your iPhone can prevent you from getting the phone call. And people started listing all the ways, and they all had different lists. I think it's between five and 10 different ways, meaning that there at least five ways to stop a phone call from coming in. So you've got the button on the side. You've got. You could block somebody. You can use somebody. You could have your focus on. You could. You could have the one line. You know the one line. You could turn off the bell, the ring around the one line. And then there are a bunch of others ways, right? Do not disturb. I don't know. I don't know how many ways there are, but a whole bunch of ways. Now let me ask you this. If you knew. If you knew that you weren't getting a call and you thought there could be more than one, but you didn't know there could be more than one of those settings that's also blocking you, so that if you fixed one, the other one would still block it, how many combinations does that give you? Let's say if it's five. Can you do the math for me? Is it five to the fifth? What's the math on that? I'm shitty at this. It's two to the two to the fifth. Or five factorial. Five factorial. All right, do the math for me. What's five factorial? 120. All right, somebody just did the math. You guys are so freaking smart. I don't know if you're appreciating what's happening right in front of you at this moment. Do you all appreciate the super intelligence, if you will? That is the collection of us acting in live time. So I asked this question because it's clearly something I'm not good at. And then I saw a bunch of wrong answers. And then I saw you negotiating in the comments. What was the right and the wrong answer? And then I saw the wrong answer start to reduce. And then I saw the correct answer, which I think is five factorial. I'm not sure, but it looks like what a consensus you came up with. And then you saw that the consensus start to form. And I think it's right. Is it? There are more people saying it's five factorial than two to the fifth and stuff, but somebody else says it's two to the fifth. All right, I take back everything I just said because I still don't know the right answer. But my point is this. Here's my point. There are a lot of options right now. I've referred to this as the scavenger hunt user interface. And I ask you this. Do you think that Apple would have built a scavenger hunt user interface where you have to just go hunting for all the settings that could have possibly stopped you from getting that phone call? Do you think Steve Jobs would have approved that version of the iPhone? They had five. Either had two to the fifth or five factorial. Do you think he would have allowed so many ways to not get a phone call? I don't think so. I don't think so. Now, when I complained about this, what did people say in the comments? What was the most common thing you'd expect somebody to say? Boomer. It's a boomer problem. You boomer. Everybody else can figure out how to use a smartphone, but not a boomer. You boomer. Well, let me defend boomers everywhere. Are there any of you, Would you like to be defended saying that you can't figure out your iPhone? Here it comes. Here it comes. Whiteboard time. Yeah, I'm pulling out the big guns. We're going full whiteboard, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Goes like this. On this side of the graph, we have shit you need to do. On this side, we have age. The older you get, the more shit you need to do. The complexity of the iPhone has been going up, but. But no matter where it is, eventually, if you're old enough, you're going to have more shit to do than you have time to figure out this one fucking problem. All right? This is not a hard problem for me to figure out. I did not receive phone calls, and I'm not even sure I still do. For a period of about two months, I could not get a phone call, and I could not figure out why is the reason I could not figure out how to use my phone because I do not have the intellectual capacity to solve this problem? No, it's because it's a scavenger hunt interface. And I don't have the fucking time. I have other things to do. Do you know what this is called? Below the line? When you're young and you don't have much to do, that's called being fucking worthless. If you're fucking worthless, you have lots of time to play in your fucking phone. Yeah, congratulations, you're worthless. You. You get all the time in the world to look at all the little problems on your phone. Yay. You. You're not a boomer. Yay. Fucking idiots. No. Useful people have things to do. I'm not going to go on a fucking scavenger hunt because Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer because he didn't know how to get modern health care. That's not my fucking problem. But Apple made it my fucking problem. No, I got shit to do. I got important shit to do. I don't want to go on a fucking scavenger hunt to figure out how to get a fucking phone call. And everybody who says it's a boomer problem, Fuck you, you useless pieces of shit. If you've got enough time to solve this problem, you are worthless. And scene. I did that for the other boomers. That wasn't for me. I do that for you. That's like a gift. You're welcome. All right, apparently Biden is having a quite successful Middle east tour. He's over there now. Let's see. What is it that makes him so successful? Let's see. Well, Joel Pollock, writing in Breitbart, explains to us why. Why Biden is doing pretty well over there. He did it by abandoning all of his own policies for the Middle east, and he adopted all the Trump policies. He's doing great now. He's doing great. All right. Apparently so. For example, he abandoned his plans for a Palestinian consulate, because that was his idea. But now he. Now, like Trump, he abandoned that plan because that would have divided the city. And even. Even the White House had to walk it back when they. When they talked about it. And he signed a declaration committing to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. You know, of course, that would be a Trump policy as well. Everybody's policy, I think. And he told Israel TV the US Would use force. I mean, that's a little closer to Trump, isn't it? And he's flying from Tel Aviv to Saudi Arabia, which is sort of a big deal, because having direct flights between Saudi Arabia and Israel is sort of a big deal. So having the President of the United States fly that route is really a big Deal. And it was a big deal when Trump did it first. Trump did it first. He's already flown that route. He just flew the other direction. All Biden is doing is doing the other direction. So Biden's having a real successful trip by giving up all of his policies and just turning it to Trump for a while. So there you go. All right. That, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the organized part of the best show you've ever seen in the world. And I'm going to try one more time something I tried on the locals platform before I turned on YouTube. I wanted to see if there's anybody who knows me personally who's watching live. You have to be watching live. Who has my phone number and would like to ask me a question live while I'm still on here. So if you have my phone number, like, my actual personal phone number, just text me and say, oh, I'll go live, and then I'll call you back, and you'll be live as soon as I call you back. So I'm just watching my phone now, see if I get a text to see if anybody wants to do that. Now, I don't think there are more than. I don't know. Might be three or four people. I don't really know who has my phone number and who doesn't. But if you have my phone number and you just want to ask a question or make a comment, I suppose, just let me know. All right. I don't see anything yet, so I don't think it's gonna happen. I think it has more to do with the fact people don't want to talk in public. But can I call about your automotive insurance? Please do. Please do. I don't get incoming calls, but I'll notice a text alert. It went to answering machine. No, it didn't. Oh, if it went to answering machine. Oh, you know what? I just realized I can't receive a call if you called, so that's why I was telling you to text me. Yeah, if you text me. I don't think I have those blocked in any way. If you called, it would be blocked. All right. Everybody's shy, so we won't do that. Anything else? You have any other questions? Oh, I've got a question for you. A number of people have asked me if I would make a coffee with Scott Adams mug. Now, I've resisted that because I'm not really into the merchandising thing. I just did so much of it in my life that I'm, like, just done with it. And it's not like it would be some big money maker or something like that. Selling mugs is not, you know, it's not how I'm going to make it to the next level. But a lot of people wanted them. And I thought that because we do the simultaneous sip and it, you know, will be coming up on Christmas before, you know it. Would any of you want to. I bet a lot of you would get them as gifts. Like there's somebody in your family who's sick of you talking about what you heard on my live stream. And they're like, well, I don't know what to get you, but for 20 bucks, I'll get you a coffee with Scott Adams mug. So I think I'm going to ask you this, that if you have a suggestion for. Oh, we got some calls. If you have a possession for a design. Here we go. I'm going to take this call. This one will be interesting. All right. I'll tell you what, Once I get an answer, this one's history.
Morning, Scott.
Good morning, Anita. You've got a little turn down my program behind you.
I'll go downstairs.
Okay. All right, let me give you a little introduction. So I'm talking to Anita Freeman and Anita, are you single?
I am.
So she's single. And her actual given name is Anita Free Man. Anita Free Man. Now, I pointed that out to you before, so you're not hearing it for the first time. All right, Anita. Anita is famous.
You aren't the only one, by the way.
What's that?
You aren't the only one that's pointed that out.
I'm not the first. All right, here, let me tell you why Anita is famous, actually, Anita, why don't you tell them why you're famous in my universe? Go ahead.
Well, probably they'd rather hear your version, but we worked together many years ago in a lab at Pacific Belt, and it was a pressure cooker. And Scott was in the lab with us. And I asked him early on if he had any female characters in his cartoon strip. And he said no, because he couldn't draw women. And he couldn't draw women. And then over time, I noticed that I didn't notice anything, but others did. And then this female character started to appear in the strip. So that's Alice.
That's Alice, yeah. The character Alice in the Dilbert comic strip is actually based directly on Anita. So getting a call. When was the last time we talked? It was like forever.
Right, well, right, right.
And so we worked together now. And I'm going to Tell this story. You have to confirm this is true in case I have false memory. But it's my memory that on at least two occasions, you made male engineers cry in meetings. True or false?
Well, it was just one, but, yes, I remember it well because you almost wet your pants, remember?
Yeah. I might do it again. So let me give you a compliment if I could, if you don't mind. So Anita is actually also the author of a persuasion tip that I give all the time now. And I don't know if you've ever heard me say this, Anita, so this might be the first time you ever hear it, but I talk about this all the time. And it is that you had this technique which made you probably maybe the most effective employee I've ever seen. And their technique was that if you did something good for her, let's say you were a worker in some other area and she needed a favor or regular favors, she would buy you flowers, or she would, like, give you a gift, she would go to your boss and say, my God, what a great employee. You should. You should give this one a raise and a promotion, right? So if you were on her good side, she would really make sure you knew it. But if you were on her bad side, there was hell to pay. And it was the biggest difference between being on a good side and being on a bad side. And I've used that example, and I think that's why you were so effective, because there's such a big difference between doing what you wanted somebody to do that needed to be done and them ignoring you and being selfish as always. So I always call out that. That's the technique Trump uses. Have you ever noticed that Trump will go really hard at you if you're not doing what he wants, but if you do what he wants, it's the highest praise. So it's the biggest difference between pleasing and displeasing. So I've actually used you as an example for persuasion in a positive way forever.
The only thing is, I didn't ever buy anybody flowers. So you can. But you know, you can have it.
You know what? You know, I'm gonna challenge your memory on that. I. I have. I. I have a very specific memory of you buying flowers for somebody in another department. Did that never happen?
Oh, well, it was a busy time back then. So maybe.
Maybe one of. One of. One of us has a false memory, and it could always be me.
It's okay.
All right. Thanks for the call. That was great. All right, take care. Well, that was fun. I haven't talked to her forever, all right? And I got one message, but I don't recognize the. Don't recognize where it's from. So it's not my. You are not whoever you are at 941. You are not in my contact list, so I don't have a name. Text me again with your name if I know you. Well, obviously, I know you have my phone number. All right, that was kind of fun. Did you just manifest her? No, she manifests herself, I think. Do you know Belya Unger Sargon's work? I do not. I do not know who she is. Now, how well could you hear the. The other side of it? Could you hear it well enough that that's something you'd ever want to hear again? Or is it just Chris? Really? Really? Oh, interesting. No, I didn't solve the ring problem. I placed the call. So I received a text, which has never been a problem, and then I called hers when I decided to do that. All right, so that's enough for today. Maybe we'll do more of that at another time. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the best live stream of all time. But if you have an idea for a design for a coffee with Scott Adams mug, Then tweet it at me. Okay, maybe I'll pick it. But if you do design, make sure you. You're giving away the rights, because I don't want to deal with any copyright problems. If you want to for fun, or if you just have an idea, let me know and maybe your design will be chosen. And that is all for today. Talk to you tomorrow.
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