Episode 915 Scott Adams: If You Can't Bank it, Blanket! Come Feel Better.

Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. Ah, that's better. Do you know it's hard to put on a blanket when you're already sitting in a chair? Well, now you do. You come here to learn and learn you did well. This is the part of the night where all of your worries and cares will be draining out of your body back into the earth where they belong. Don't push them down into your stomach and try to bury them with food. I'm just kidding. That works too. But stick with me and by the end of this, you're going to feel so much better. So much better. It's just going to be crazy. So let us begin talking about all the things. Number one, I hope that all of you are learning a new skill or working on your fitness or learning to cook or bonding with your partner. Is everybody here? Have you all made it a point to just at least pick one thing that's just going to be better because it's the one thing you can control. You can control if you learn something, you can control if you try something, etc. And in times like this, it's good to get our mind off of things and it's good to just try some stuff. So one of the things I'm trying, I'm trying lots of different stuff. You're working on my drumming, working on my weight training and stuff. But I signed up for a cameo. Do you know what that is? It's the app where you can have me leave a message for somebody as sort of a gift. So it's like a 30 second message from Semi famous B list celebrities like myself. So you do the cameo app and you just find me there. That's what you need to know. I have, I have a feeling that the zeitgeist is changing. This is what I feel like. The Zeitgeist is changing, meaning that the way that the country feels, it's almost. Can't you feel like you're connected to the whole country right now in a way that you haven't quite felt before? Because I find that when I think about the big decision of how do you go back to, to work and how do you go back to normal and the risks and stuff, I feel that because I can't make that decision without literally thinking of everyone else in the country, like, how do you do it? Because it's all connected, right? So anything you think of, it's like, well, we could do it this way. And then you think, oh, well, that would be really Bad for restaurants or whoever. So there's pretty much no way to guarantee that anything you do is going to be good for everybody. So you just feel sort of connected because you're worrying about everybody. You're wondering what you can do, how you can help. It's a very connected feeling. And because it's connected, I feel like maybe you feel this too. It's almost like you can feel the pulse of the public in a way that you don't normally feel. And let me tell you what I'm feeling, and then maybe you can validate how that feels on your end. There's something about one month that makes anything doable. Meaning if you say we only have to do something for one month, people will complain. But you can do anything for one month. If it gets pushed out to six weeks, you'll complain some more, but you'll say to yourself, it's only two more weeks. If it gets pushed out to what would be the second month, there's going to be some serious conversation and you know where we are, right? So we're right in that point where the flexibility of the country has reached something like a limit. Now, let me give you the good news. If our leaders are doing everything just right, it might be that the perfect place to start getting back to work is when it seems like it's too late to just take it right up to the red line. You get into the red zone and just push it more into the red zone. Red zone. Sort of like Captain Kirk trying to do warp 12. The ship wasn't built for warp 12, so it could be that we're heading right into the optimal best we could have done. You just don't know. And that's the big problem, isn't it? Nobody really knows. It could be that we should have gone back to work three weeks ago. It could be that the only thing that makes sense is to stay locked out for longer. Nobody really knows. But I'll tell you some things we do know. Here are some things we know. Okay? Number one, I probably have the best situation of almost anybody, you know, in terms of, you know, getting through the social isolation, because I'm in a really nice environment and it's where I would be anyway, you know, most of the time. So I'm a suffering at all. But I gotta tell you, today I lost it a little bit. So just, you know those days where you're getting really mad at stuff and you're getting really mad at the people online and you say to yourself, I don't know if I would have been this mad about what somebody said online, and they make up excuses. And I say to myself, all right, it's not that I'm getting too mad. It's because it's so important. You know, people need to think right about the crisis to get it right. So I feel like, no, no, I'm not overreacting. I'm reacting just right because it really is important, and somebody could get killed if we get it wrong. But I realize that's a rationalization. I'm completely aware that I'm just pissed off and I'm starting to take it out on objects and, you know, on nothing, right? And here was my first revelation. I'm a pretty chill guy, and I'm writing this out better than just about anybody, really. And if it got to me, if it got to me, I mean, I was ready to stage a revolution today. And honestly, I don't know what it's like to be anybody else, and I don't think anybody else does either. You don't know what it's like to be me. I couldn't possibly know what it's like to be you. But I do know this. It's way worse. It's way worse to be most of you because you're not in as good a situation. So if it got to me today, I got a real, like, just a glimmer of how bad this must be for other people. And of course you knew it. You know, it's not like you didn't know it intellectually. You know, you hear it on the news. It's obvious. But to feel it is a different. Is a whole different experience. And this gets me to Michigan. What would you say is the most American state if you had to pick one out of all the states, what's the one that just is the most American? And I'm not saying that's good or bad. You can leave your judgments at home. But I think you'd agree that Michigan is pretty high on the list, right? I don't know if it's number one, but when you think of what makes America in the sort of traditional way so sort of the salute the flag and eat the apple pie kind of, and watching Michigan stage a revolution today, most of you saw the news where they got in their cars so they wouldn't be infecting each other too badly, and they clogged up the streets around the capital to make a point. And I thought to myself, you know, if the revolution is starting Michigan, why not? Michigan's pretty darn American And Americans, we're flexible. We're very flexible, but we have a limit. And what I'm saying is, if I felt I was near the limit, I can't even imagine how you feel, you know, some of you. So I think that we all buy into the idea that in an emergency, it's better to have order. And if you have at least a little bit of trust about the people at the top, it's better in an emergency just to say, okay, it's an emergency. Just tell us what to do. But as time goes by, that authority gets pushed down, so the states have more control and they tell the cities, and the cities do their things, and maybe your neighborhood does something. So the control is being pushed down. But ultimately, as I like to say, ultimately the public has all the control. We have a government, and then they have police and they have armies and stuff like that, but they're not going to use them. If the public just said, you know, let's just pick our own date, we'll just pick our own date. And we know the risk. We watch tv, we'll wear the mask, we'll do the thing. If some people don't want to, we'll work it out. Maybe they'll be shunned. Maybe they just work in places where it doesn't matter. Maybe people take the risk. We'll just work it out. So ultimately, I guess what I was feeling today is that that zeitgeist power shift in which the government is still in control, but only barely. Do you feel that? And I mean in a bad way, you know, I don't think the government is going to be overthrown. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just on this question of when we go back to work. I think the public is ready to decide for the government, because I don't think the government has a better plan than we do. Do you. Do you think the government can give you a more detailed plan that works for you and your family? Do you think they can prescribe that better than you could? Probably not right now. I also read the mood of the country that if a few hundred thousand people die because of this, that's what it's going to be. It could happen fast, it could happen slow, but probably there's no way to get to the other side without that. And I think the country's ready. And it took, you know, if you had to say there's a silver lining. It's really dark. Silver lining in this case. But the fear and the real pain of this Economic upheaval probably was necessary to get the citizens of the United States to say effectively what I was saying earlier today, which is, I'm in the higher risk group because of my age and asthma, and I'm ready to take the chance. So, you know, if I'm ready, I don't think an 82 year old should be ready. But, you know, I'm close enough to the gray area that I take a chance because, you know, my actual odds of dying are really kind of small. So I think people are ready. Here's some good news. Can you believe that we have too many ventilators and way too many. That's pretty good. And the only stats that I care about out of New York City, because I think today the number of deaths went up, but the only one that I'm really watching is the number of hospitalizations, you know, how many people are admitted to the hospital. And that keeps dropping. So lately, day after day, the number of people who went into hospital at all is dropping. And in terms of getting back to work, that's got to be the most important one. So there's that. I found out I keep seeing stuff all over Twitter that I didn't understand. So I dug into it a little bit and Candace Owens was saying this and also Emerald Robinson from Newsmax. They're both making comments about Bill Gates and his involvement in health care decisions and vaccinations and stuff. And I didn't realize how much hatred there was for Bill Gates. I had no idea. So I decided to sample a little of. What is it that he did. Indeed. Candace called him a vaccine criminal. I thought, that's pretty. That's a pretty direct accusation. What does that mean? So I asked her and we messaged a few times, and she sent me some links to show me the sources that would show that Bill Gates had done horrible things. And I read them and I just didn't see it. So I don't know. I mean, I read two sources that she sent me. One was Snopes saying that there was no evidence of the thing. And so when I pointed out to Candace that Snopes, the source she sent me, says there's no evidence of this charge against Bill Gates. And Candace said, but they don't have any evidence that it isn't true, essentially. Well, I'm not sure that's a thing. You know, if there's a weird accusation, it's not Bill Gates job to prove it didn't happen. Somebody kind of has to. You know, if Snopes says there's no evidence. So that was one of them. And the other one was, I think it's true, but it didn't seem to mean anything in terms of Bill Gates being a bad guy. And it was this, that. I guess there was some situation. I don't know all the details, but I'll give you the broad strokes. So I guess it's cheaper and easier to test some meds and vaccinations in Africa because in part everything's cheaper there. But probably more than that, they have relaxed standards for things. So, you know, right away your alarm is going off. It's like, wait a minute. The pharmaceutical companies go to Africa because they have relaxed standards? Now, I don't know what that means exactly, and I don't know if those relaxed standards are ones that matter, because you could easily imagine that the United States has too many. And maybe it's just easier. And maybe everybody has good intentions. But let's talk about their intentions. So there was some kind of something got tested. I think Bill Gates invested in a company that did some testing of some vaccines. And it looked like there were some pretty bad outcomes. So some of the people in the trial in Africa had bad outcomes like death and just really bad outcomes. And so here's the question. Is that Bill Gates fault that a company that he funded did a study and or did a trial and it ended up hurting some people? Because that's actually why you do the trial, right? That's the whole point of the trial is that you don't know if it'll hurt anybody and then it does, and so you stop. But then there was also something about a lot of the people who were in the trial seemed to be young and not really knowing they were in the trial. So that was another issue. But I think that almost certainly has more to do with their parents or guardians or whoever signed the paperwork, because I guess some of the girls couldn't read or write. So, you know, they didn't read any kind of agreement. So that part is super sketchy. But I don't know if that was Bill Gates fault. I mean, it's kind of a stretch to connect those dots. You could say that the thing is horrible and should never happen if the facts are accurate. There's something horrible there that needs to be fixed, never happen again. Probably. But did Bill Gates know that the company he funded would hire somebody on the ground who would talk to a guardian who would not have the proper motivation? Maybe they should have. But anyway, Africa is a tough country, tough continent. All right, then there's you know, the small business loans. So all the small business loans are coming out and I wanted to see what the paperwork looked like, so I downloaded it. And here's the. Here's the economic argument you have to have in order to apply for a loan which would turn into just free money. You wouldn't have to pay it back if you can meet the requirements of using that money to retain your staff. So it's meant to retain the staff. I'm not sure if that's the SBA part or something else. But anyway, so that's what the money's for. And here's the only sentence that you have to satisfy to say that you need the money. Here's the exact sentence. Current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant. So you only have to check the box, then sign the document that says your current economic uncertainty makes it necessary to get this to be sure that you can retain people. I'm thinking to myself, that's pretty open ended. That is pretty open ended. I'm looking at all the anti, anti Bill Gates people. I'm fairly certain that all of the Bill Gates stuff, well, I don't know, I can't say 100%, but it's almost all so ridiculous that I don't even know if you need to research it. It's in the clearly ridiculous category of things because you have to start with, who is Bill Gates? And the only way you could believe any of this stuff is if you'd never seen a documentary. You never read about him, never had his biography, never read his predictions. So if you didn't know who Bill Gates was, those would be pretty reasonable conspiracy theories. But if you know who he is, they're all ridiculous. All right. Are people going to hate me for liking Bill Gates? Probably. So here's a point where you can check your prediction. Awesomeness. Are you ready? Every once in a while, the news will report something with enough certainty that you should stop and say, okay, now that we know what the situation is, what did I predict it would be? And you should make a note of it because you don't want to lose sight of the fact that you were right, if you were right or that you were wrong. Because that will teach you if you're good at this or in what situations. Maybe you're good at it so that your powers get better. So what we found out in the last, I'd say two days is that there's a lot of reporting that the virus came from the lab in Wuhan but was not intentional and was not a bioweapon, probably just a natural virus that they study typically in those labs and got it and that China covered it up. Now, who among you said early on, before we had, I think it feels confirmed at this point, the quality and the extent of the reporting, the way the United States is talking about it, the way China acted, it looks like it's confirmed. So how many of you thought that it was a bioweapon? If you did, I think you can mark that wrong, at least according to the best reporting and according to the United States right? Now, some of you may cling to that and say it's not 100% wrong yet, but it's probably, probably wrong. Now, I predicted from early on that it wasn't a bioweapon. So I think I got that part right. How many of you said it came from the wet market and not the lab? Because if you said that you were wrong, I think I get partial credit because in the very earliest days I said, yes, yes, yes, I hear you, that there's a lab nearby. And yeah, I get it, that that's pretty suspicious, but it's not outside of the kind of coincidence that happens all the time. So it wasn't such a big coincidence. Assuming that there really were bats there, which at the time we thought there were bats, but turns out maybe there were no bats for sale at the wet market. But when we thought there were bats in the wet market, well, it was pretty reasonable to think, well, you have two hypotheses. Something got out of a lab, very possible. Or something got out of that wet market and there were some wet bats there also very possible, seemed very possible. So I was saying, hey, keep an open mind until we know a little bit more. But as of, I don't know, several days ago. So before this latest round of reporting, I had commented that when China reopened the wet markets, that that was China basically telling us that it wasn't the wet markets because they wouldn't have opened them if they thought that the world would be looking at them. And oh my God, those wet markets, I don't think they would have just reopened the very thing that almost destroyed the world. So it was kind of almost a public confession that it wasn't the wet markets because it's too hard to imagine they would have just opened them up because it's not like they contribute that much to the economy overall. So I had said that that was a signal that it definitely wasn't the wet markets. So that left the obvious, which was something accidental from the lab. So I would say that I eventually, eventually got pretty close to what it looks like is going to be the answer. So check your predictions. How many of you predicted that? Christina is texting me. The order will be here in 10 minutes. So we have 10 minutes before my doordash is here. So I wanted to talk to you about models because I've been explaining this on social media until my face is blue. And this is the thing that people didn't understand until maybe this month. So I used to do a lot of prediction models for a living back in my banking days and my phone company days. That's what I did. So I would, you know, do these complicated, many variable models just on, usually just on spreadsheets, but it had lots of variables and stuff. So I learned firsthand that they're never accurate, but sometimes you can find a range of your risk. So this is the thing that people learn today. If it's a complicated model, which is different than something simple, a simple model that could work. If you have a really simple model that says, oh, every year for the last 30 years, we went up 5%. So, so we predict next year we'll go up 5%. If it's really simple, sure, it might work. But as soon as you get a bunch of variables, such as we had with the coronavirus, and here's the fun part, we didn't know any of the variables accurately, and we knew we didn't know them accurately. So we were guessing about the lethality, we were guessing about which variables really made a difference. We thought that smoking made it worse, but maybe it makes it better. We thought it was something about, I don't know, humidity and density and something, you know, age. And then maybe it wasn't, and maybe it's in the blood. So we had these intense unknowns. And then on top of that, nobody really knew how well we would do social distancing. Nobody really knew how well it would work because it had never been done on this scale. Nobody really knew how well the masks would work. Nobody really knew any of that. So here was this complicated model with I don't know how many variables, but had to be at least dozens, maybe hundreds. And here's the thing, they didn't know any of them. It's not as if they had a few assumptions, but the rest of them were pretty good estimates. They didn't know any of them, and they knew they didn't know them because they knew that the information was evolving even as they watched. So in the situation where you just are guessing on most of the variables because you can't really know them, what are the odds that it's going to predict the future? Zero. It can't do that. That's not a thing. If it hit the future, it would only be an accident which could happen. I mean, it could accidentally predict the future, but it couldn't do it intentionally. It's not for that. And you don't even use them for that. They're only for these things. They can size your risk. So you try a bunch of variables and you say, well, these variables are here. Oh, that's not so bad. Let's try it again. These variables are here. That's not too bad. Let's try a little tweaking of the variables again. Oh, my God. If I tweak those variables this way, it's the end of the world. I better run that again. Uh, oh. There's a whole bunch of situations that are the end of the world. You could just tweak different variables and get there. So that's how you use a complicated model to size the risk. It's not telling you what the risk is. It's not predicting the risk. It can't do that. You can't predict the future with that many variables. It's simply telling it's this big. Now, here's the key part that everybody gets wrong. If it's sizing it this big and it turns out that it's just beyond it. Was the model wrong? No, that's the part everybody gets wrong. If it's just outside of that big range that it said, it's going to be almost certainly in this range, and it's just outside which 60,000 deaths is really just outside of 100,000. If you're looking at 100,000 to a million or two, that range, that's actually a bullseye. You know, it's about as good as you can do. And. And of course, the models are used to persuade because the scientists, the experts, have a hard time communicating because the complexity of what they know can't really be communicated. So they need a simplified way to tell the people who are not experts. Here it is. And here's how it usually goes in an exaggerated form. The scientists will say, all right, here's this model. But I have to tell you, we have a lot of just estimates. There's so many variables. I mean, there's just no way to know what the actual answer is. But it was somewhere in this general area. We think this model sizes the risk. So that's what the expert says. And the expert tells, let's say a low level person in the government, person in the government takes the graph that came with all of that hedging and takes it to his boss or her boss and says, we've got a problem here. Look at this graph. It looks like something terrible is going to happen and all of the hedging will be gone by then. Because as soon as the graph gets into the wild, all of the. Well, we're guessing on this. It could be this. We ran a lot of models, we had to throw 10 models out. We think we feel pretty good about this. It turns out that a complicated model is usually just the expert opinion consensus hammered into a model so that they can communicate it. But what they're communicating is just the bulk of all their testing and things that are hard to explain. The only way they can explain it is say, look at this pretty picture. Hey, hey, look at this. See that graph goes up. Do you see? Goes up. That's all you need to know. Look, graph goes up, goes up. Remember that. I don't want to overwhelm you. So when people got mad because they said, hey, we thought those predictions were going to be accurate or at least far more accurate, and now we're disappointed. And now all the experts are liars and idiots, to which I say, well, you only had yourself to blame. And now that you know that complex models of that type are not even intended to predict the future, they don't have that. It's not even an option now that you know that you have advanced to the next level. So in this simulation game, your challenge was to understand this, and now that you do, you may advance to the next level. Experts with complicated graphs are trying to persuade you. Now, that doesn't mean they're wrong and it doesn't mean they're dishonest. It only means the only way they can communicate their awesome intelligence, which could be right, could be wrong, but it's still awesome intelligence. The only way they can communicate it is by lying with a little graph, if you know what I mean. It's the only way you can get from here to there. So if you feel like you want to blame the experts for lying to you, give them a little credit. It's the only way they can communicate with people who don't know what they know, haven't seen what they've seen, haven't lived and breathed the full scope of the thing. So they can be pretty sure that there's a big problem ahead. But they might need a little bit of a lie, a little bit of a graph that's a little too neat to sell it to the public. So once you know that, you go to the next level. Congratulations. You've gone to the next level. And by the time we get out of this coronavirus situation, I expect you will have advanced several levels up in awareness in the simulation. Congratulations. And your reward will be an extra good night's sleep. Tonight, when you're drifting off, you're going to remember my voice. And you're going to remember that I told you that it was going to be a really good night's sleep. And as soon as you think that, you're going to think, wow, it's like I'm just sinking into the mattress. I'm just sinking into the pillow. And you'll feel momentarily heavy, and then you'll just boop right to sleep. Have a great night.