Episode 516 Scott Adams: The World’s Dumbest Tweet AOC, It’s a Doozy

Hey everybody, come on in here. I don't have long, so you're gonna have to hurry up. I know you can't hear me right now because you're not signed on, but if you could, I'd be telling you to quickly get in here. Hey, everybody. Hey Ricky. Hey Chris. And, and the rest of you, I just saw a tweet from AOC that might be the record breaking dumbest thing anybody ever said. And I know, I know in the field of politics and in the whole world there's a lot of competition for the dumbest thing anybody ever said. But AOC's tweet may be the dumbest thing anybody's ever said. Now, I want to put some context in this. Remember, I'm the person who often says I'm not going to worry about somebody missing a fact. I don't care if there's a little hyperbole the President is using and I don't care if the Democrats use a little hyperbole too. That's all fair, we understand. I don't really care if the Democrats, they don't pass the fact checking a little stuff. So I'm not the one who's going to nitpick. Oh, they got this fact wrong. But this is a whole new level. And I can't detect whether this is pure persuasion, but nobody would persuade, persuade this poorly. So I think it's actually stupidity. And I, I have resisted, you know, that I have been not agreeing with AOC on policy, but I've been largely supportive of her as a, you know, a positive contrary voice, having some good sort of long term, you know, views of the world in terms of healthcare and stuff. So I have gone out of my way to give her the benefit of a doubt and to frame her as a good persuader who sometimes departs from the facts. But as you know, that doesn't bother me. This latest tweet. You've never seen this level of dumb before. Like this is world destroying dumb. And that's not even an exaggeration. If this level of dumb became part of people's common thinking, it would actually destroy the world and kill millions. And I'm not even talking about socialism. You know, that's a whole other topic and I'm going to read it to you now. The context is there were some. Congress had a hearing with witnesses about climate change. One of them I talked about on my earlier periscope was a fellow who said that fossil fuels have helped the world a great deal, including health. Now the argument was that all industrialization and the end of poverty, that's gone from 30, 36% of the world was in poverty during Reagan's administration is down now down to like 6 or 9%. And that's almost all on the backs of fossil fuels. And if you look at the health benefits of moving people from poverty to non poverty, it's amazingly good for your health. There's almost nothing that's as good as for your health as a good economy and raising people out of poverty. There wasn't any way that that could happen without fossil fuels. Now, if you're talking about the future, that's a new question. But listen to this tweet. This is aoc, literally the dumbest person in the world. And that's a brand new opinion. I wasn't thinking that until just today. She's tweeted this morning, one of the things that genuinely surprised me in Congress is the sheer mediocrity of witnesses called forth by the GOP in hearings. So no reasons given, it's just sort of political posturing. But here's the good part. She says yesterday they brought in a guy with a polka dot bow tie backed by oil lobbyists arguing that fossil fuels are, quote, healthy. And then she writes in all caps, healthy. It's embarrassing. AOC just went on the record to say that the history. We're not talking about the future, remember, we're not talking about the future. That the history of civilization has been that fossil fuels have made people less healthy. Apparently she's doubting the fact that bringing the entire planet out of poverty until there's like 9% left in poverty. And of course you couldn't have done that anyway without fossil fuels. She's arguing that somehow that made us less healthy. AOC, are we less healthy than we were in the 1800s? I don't think so. I don't think so. This, if she's arguing that, it's. Let me put this in perspective. You need an official. Let me put a size on this because I don't want you to think I'm talking about some gray area. We're not talking about something that reasonable people can see both ways. It's like, well, I don't agree with you, but I could see why you say that. We're not talking about anything like that. We're not talking about a political disagreement where just somebody has different priorities. Nothing like that. Here's what we're talking about. This, this big circle represents all of the health benefits of fossil fuels in our recent history. The amazing economic boom that has Allowed us to build hospitals, it allowed us to build helicopters, to airlift people from, you know, dangerous situations. It gave us all of civilization. It was the biggest improvement in health in human history. Our life expectancies, you know, zoomed. Everything got better because of fossil fuels. We didn't have any option. Right, but there were also negative impacts. Definitely there was more pollution, people died as coal miners. Definitely. No question about it. There were a whole bunch of people, lots and lots of people who had negative health impacts because of fossil fuels. But that's this big. If you're looking at the last couple hundred years, the benefits to our health, our health, capital health, all caps aoc. The benefits to our health are frickin huge. It's like she went on a public forum and said the gop, they brought in a person who thinks that the planet Earth is bigger than a marble. He thinks the planet is bigger than a marble. And I love the sarcasm and the snark because to be so confident and so stupid at the same time. And keep in mind the expert with the bow tie that she's talking about explained what I just explained, except much better to her yesterday. He made his case essentially the way I am, which is fossil fuels were absolutely essential and a big part of our economic prosperity that took people out of poverty. And if you can buy people stuff like air conditioning and you can heat their homes and you can feed them, their health is a lot better. To tell me that that's somehow like a gray area. Was she not listening? Is she actually that stupid? I actually can't tell because it's hard for me to believe that literally anyone like I believe I could take a child in here. And I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. Could I take a 10 year old child in front of my whiteboard and say, well, here's the deal, you know, fossil fuels had all these benefits, but you know, some people died of the pollution, there were accidents, you know, a number of, you know, there were definitely a lot of people died. No, we're not minimizing that. But this one's this big because it's an entire civilization that was benefiting and all the health benefits that come from prosperity versus this, a 10 year old would understand that right now for her to dismiss that and I'm sure also dismissing nuclear power as a solution. She has now crossed the line from simply being persuasive and political and you know, she's fun to watch to this is dangerous. Do you know how dangerous it is to put out this kind of idea to her even dumber supporters. Because I worry that people looked at that tweet and said, yeah, she's right. Fossil fuels are bad for our health. Not just health, but health with all capitals health. I'm blown away. This is a level of dumb that I don't know if I've ever seen in, in like a public figure. Certainly, you know, there are public figures who will say something that's not true. They'll have a logic gap. They'll have a bad day. I mean, it's not like we haven't seen millions of people say dumb things in public. But have you ever, in your whole life, have you ever seen anything this dumb? Give me another example of anything this dumb and this dangerous. It's mind blowing. So I just had one point today, so I thought I would jump in here with this. Now, she also didn't mention, and I don't know if any of the experts mentioned nuclear power, but if AOC is talking about climate change and nuclear energy is not in every other paragraph, she's not a serious player and she's as stupid as you think she is. Now, I still will say that she's great at getting attention and she's great at a big part of the persuasion game. She's actually very good at. That part's still true. But, wow, this is a level of stupidity that I did not see coming. And you've been telling me for a year you've been telling me that she's stupid. And I kept saying, well, I don't know. I wouldn't assume that because she's so good at this persuasion stuff. And then I see this. The best thing I can hope is that she's lying and she knows it. That's literally the best assumption I can make about it, because there's no way you can defend this big steaming pile of stupidity, the kind you, you almost will never see anywhere in your life. I mean, you can think of any topic and anybody's bad opinion on any topic, and it's not this stupid. Let me give you an example. She also supports socialism. Now, lots of smart people say, hey, socialism's never worked, blah, blah, blah, but you could still make an argument for it. All right? Bernie's position isn't a hundred percent stupid. We just don't know how to pay for it. We don't want to, you know, but there's an argument Bernie is actually making gray area but reasonably smart arguments where maybe he's shading how much it's going to really cost. Maybe he's not quite, you know, putting all the variables in there that you might. But that's not. This. This is stupid on a galactic scale. This is. This is destroy the world stupid. This is almost criminally stupid. Does anybody disagree with me? Is there anybody in the comments who can argue that this isn't the biggest pile of stupidity you've ever seen in public? Anybody? I don't think I'm going to get an argument right. All right, so I think I'm just repeating myself now because you're all on the same page. But I cannot believe that she tweeted that. It's mind boggling. And what it tells me is that the expert, the expert who got some press and he must have messed up her head. So it's possible that this is cognitive dissonance, but I don't know. That would be a very kind interpretation because it's hard to see this as anything but stupid. I mean, she sat down and thought about it, had a day to think about it, and composed this tweet and came up with the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Literally the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Somebody says you've been wrong about AOCs since the beginning. I don't think I've been wrong about her persuasive powers because the fact that we're talking about her. So I'm 100% right that she's got real persuasive skill. And this might actually be another example of where she's persuading her side quite effectively. But it does seem to me. Does she believes this because the. Because of the attitude she put into it. It doesn't look like just persuasion. It looks like she actually believes this. Wow. How. How embarrassing. I don't know if this tweet is going to stay up, but the fact that she ever thought of it once is. It's mind boggling. All right, so that's all I have. I just. I just couldn't let this moment pass. I hope, I hope you enjoyed it and I will talk to you later.