Episode 1642 Scott Adams: Our Data on Everything is Wrong But We Can Fix That By Lying. Welcome to 2022, Where Truth Died

I hope I didn't violate any copyrights with that perfect rendition of I think you all recognize it. Sing along. Okay, I'll wait for the chorus. Well, I think uh this is gonna be the best thing you've ever seen in your life. Um lots of evidence for it. And you don't believe me yet? You'll believe me pretty soon.

Right after a little thing we call the simultaneous sip. If you'd like to participate, all you need is a cupper of mugger glass, a tank or chalcastine, a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid I like. Coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. It's the dopamine head of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And you, my lucky, lucky. Listeners.

You're here for it. My goodness, what a good day this is. Go! I feel my DNA being rewired, but in a constructive way.

For those of you who are on YouTube, you may not be aware that I have a locals community on the locals uh And people who pay a s uh subscription get to see me make these micro lessons, I call them. They're usually two to four minute videos that are designed to give you an actual useful life skill. in a few minutes. So there are over 200 of them now. But uh the one I did yesterday, the locals people considered uh too valuable to be behind a subscription wall. And I'm so glad they did.

And by the way, thank you. Because after I had created it, it was a it was a micro lesson on reframing stress and anxiety. So it'd be a bunch of little uh simple mental tricks uh and techniques and systems that you could very easily incorporate to reduce your stress and anxiety. Uh and the people in locals thought it was I I'm gonna I'm gonna overinterpret what they said. But thought it should be on YouTube because it would have a value outside the subscription base. So as a philanthropic

Um, and I guess it would be. Sort of weirdly indirectly philanthropic. The people on locals who actually pay money for my content have decided that you should see it too. So in this case, the the it's on YouTube. You can see the link to it in my Twitter today. So if there's anybody in your life who could benefit by reducing their stress and anxiety.

There'd be a bunch of tips there that they can consume really easily. And remember the the whole point of the short videos is to just get right to it and give you something useful.

Um here's the most depressing thought of the day. Uh Will you tell me if I'm just old man talking like an old man or if this is true? And I know e everybody my age is gonna think it's true. So this is the worst crowd I could ever ask this question for a sanity check. All right, here's the sanity check, please. What the hell is wrong with kids?

What the hell is wrong with them? Can you imagine your generation if you're my if let's say you're my age-ish, can you imagine your generation not having a masked rebellion yet? Seriously. Do you think my generation would have put up with months and months of worry mask? I don't think so. How long would it have taken us to simply all of us throw them away? What what would happen if the entire class threw their masks away at the same time? What, they're gonna close the school?

What what the hell are they gonna do? What happens if all the school if everybody says, all right, well if you're gonna put your masks away then you have to do Zoom school. What happens if everybody says, what I'm not gonna turn in doll? I'll just I won't turn on my computer. I'm going to school and I'm going without a map. I'm am I crazy? Am I crazy that my classmates in my school would have worked this out in two weeks?

I f I feel like I might be romanticizing my childhood a little bit. So that's where you have to stop me. If I can be blunt. The fucking kids are a bunch of pussies. You telling me that there's a bunch of fourteen to seventeen year old kids who can't get their shit together enough to tell their teachers to go fuck themselves and get rid of the masks and just throw them away? Do you think their parents are gonna put up the fight that will change their mind?

All they have to do is do it at the same time. It's not rocket fucking science. Just do it at the same time. Nobody can get in trouble. Nobody. Zero risk. Zero fucking risk. If they just do it at the same time. And they can't organize that? Have you heard of social media? There's this thing called Snapchat.

TikTok. I believe it's a way for young people to talk with each other. And you can't work out a single day to throw your fucking masks away at the same time and just be done with it. It's time, kids. It's time. W did you lose all of your fight? I mean, seriously. Like uh wha what is going on here? No and I'm not even saying

you know, what is what is good or bad or when it should have happened. I'm just I'm just astonished that there's no fight left in kids. What happened? Is that the brainwashing or the change in diets or

What? I don't know. So Uh here's some tragic news for a company called Spotify, uh, who made the who made a a huge mistake of uh w working with the most popular podcaster in the history of civilization. Um and now they've lost, first they lost Neil Young. Uh if anybody is a certain age you might have to Google him. And Joni Mitchell again Googled her and uh now Nils Lofkin apparently. Uh but that's not the end of it.

Mary Trump. She's removing her podcast from Spotify. Now I know what you're thinking. Mary Trump had a podcast. But I don't know how Spotify's gonna weather the storm. You know, and I have to say that uh unlike the children, they do have a little fight in'em. And uh Spotify seems to be I think they're gonna I don't think they're gonna case. I I think they're actually gonna take this pressure. I mean Spotify.

That takes guts and uh standing up for freedom. I don't know how you can take that hit, but I'm glad you are. Weird news of the day.

In a tweet by uh Bhatya Angar Sargon, I saw that of all things Tell me if you saw this coming. This is what I did not see coming. Would not have guessed. that Tucker Carlson is pulling in more uh young Democrat viewers than CNN or MSNBC individually. So here are the here are the numbers.

According to this tweet anyway. Fox News got forty-two percent of Democrats aged twenty-five to fifty-four, the ones you want, right? That's the exact the age you want. So in the age that mattered most to advertisers, You got forty two percent of Democrats. CNN only got thirty three percent of Democrats. Now remember. Fox News also has, you know, huge numbers in general, so they have, you know, more of every category. But I didn't think they would have more Democrats.

How many of you knew that who knew that? I mean, specifically for Tucker Carlson. Yeah, Carl and Carl well Carlson was top among Democrats in the demo across all cable news. Tucker Carlson is the top thing watched by Democrats. What? Am I reading this wrong? Carlson was top among Democrats in the demographic across all cable news and ranked third among Democrats in total viewership. So I guess you throw in the old people and the younger people and it changes it. Oh wow.

So uh what how do you explain that? Somebody says hate watching. I don't think it's hate watching. You know what I think it is? I think it is uh uh distrusting the government is just popular everywhere. Don't you think? I mean the i if you had to say what is Tucker Carlson's um political view? Like if you were on the left, you'd probably say he's a Republican. If you're a Republican, you might say, I don't know. I mean he's he seems sometimes surprised.

But you know, more on the conservative side for sure. Libertarian, I think, a little closer to libertarian, right? But y if your message is the government is screwing you and you can't trust anybody, uh there's a there's an audience for that. Apparently there's a big audience for that. But you but you also have to be I don't think you can ignore the fact I've said this a million times Fox just has h better production

It's just a better produced show. And I would say that uh Tucker stands out among, you know, the crowd of people who do what he does. I think at the moment he does it better than anybody else. Would you agree with that? Let's say on on cable news, just just cable news alone. I I feel like even if you disagree with it.

The just the performance, the thinking, the provocation, the I don't know, just the talent that goes into it. The writing. Um It it feel it feels like almost every part of it is just a little bit above who he's competing. So it doesn't surprise me that people were drawn to not only quality of their program, um in a technical sense, but also the message of not trusting the government. That's so that's my view. That's my best my best uh hypothesis for what's going on.

Payroll is down. Surprisingly, we're expecting the p uh the number of people who are on a payroll to go up, but it went down quite a bit. And why is Well, here's some speculation with no numbers beyond it, just speculation. So fr this is my own speculation and Mark Schneider had a idea here I'm gonna throw in. Um somebody on Twitter mentioned uh vaccine band-aid.

You think the vaccine mandates would be a reason the payroll is down? How about uh as this is what Mark Schneider added, how about the return to single family incomes? I was sort of expecting I I feel that a number of people said, you know, maybe only one of us needs to go back to work. But you know, it's twenty twenty two.

Whichever one, doesn't matter. So I think it'll be m more single family, less traditional, you know, the dad's working mom at home, but probably still a lot of that, right? Still a a majority probably. Um So that's that's that's it. But I'll bet it's also hard to hire.

So here's another old man yelling at the clouds thing. And you you really have to fact check me on this. 'Cause I'm I'm somewhat hyper aware that there's some point in my future where I can only th see things through an old man lens and I'm just gonna lose the ability to you know see life in a normal way. Because it feels like it happens to everybody, so why would I be the exception?

So here's what I'm thinking. I've never seen so many people in the young working age category who are incapable of holding a job. Is that new? Can you can you do you see this in just in your personal life? Do you see the number of people who for different reasons and anxiety is often one of them um for whatever reason Didn't get whatever that base

the base capability is. And I'm not sure that they're, you know, different genetically than anybody ever was. So I wonder if it's partly uh um that the environment got more complicated. Or are people different? So here here's the question. Did the the environment get too complicated and there's some people who just you know, they're not built for that level of uh let's say stimulation?

And they they're just overstimulated and it it's like paralyzing. Um or is there something in the water, is there something in the diet? But if Is it the just the schools are bad at teaching? You know, I would say somebody's saying the soy, but it's not like it's only boys are being affected. No competition, somebody says. I dunno. I uh I don't really have a speculation and I'm also not not sure it's true. Oh drugs. Hmm, drugs, maybe.

Although I haven't seen drugs being directly implicated implicated. Although yeah, I guess

Yeah, I guess it would be a combination of a whole bunch of stuff. All right. Um here's some um CNN fake news. So uh uh they're reporting that the Tennessee school board banned uh a comic about the Holocaust. Uh so rats are portrayed as people and it's sort of a Holocausty theme. And it so they banned these books in the I guess the libraries, in the school in the school libraries, because of the book's uh quote, unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide.

And then the CNN commentary here opinion is as though it would be possible to depict one of one of the you know, the most violent events of the last century without violence. Now w what is wrong with banning a book for having too much violence and sex in it if it's a school? Is that new? Like are we could you put uh you know copies of penthouse? Back when there were copies of penthouse, could could you just put porn?

in the school library. I I'm pretty sure we've always had restrictions about the levels of violence and um and nudity. And sexual stuff. Right? Am I wrong? No, even though it's a classic, yeah, I know. In in this genre it's it's uh it's a classic. But why is this even news? Is it news? I mean that's a serious question. Isn't this just the most ordinary thing?

And uh uh I think that the uh the political part of this is that because it's about the Holocaust, maybe it would be denying kids, you know, some history about the Holocaust. But I don't feel like that's really going to be skipped. Are they skipping the Holocaust and history now? You need a comic to do it? I don't know, it just feels like a non story that turned into a story.

So um can you believe that the Biden administration is going to appoint a Havana syndrome coordinator? So Havana syndrome, the thing that as far as we can tell never happened and doesn't exist, is probably a psychological disorder, although there could be an actual physical disorder. caused by something, but unlikely to have been caused by a directed energy attack. But we have a sitting senator, a Democrat, not that it matters, in this case.

Uh Senator uh Jean Shaheen, who tweeted, for too long Americans affected by directed energy attacks. What? What? Uh I guess this is a big problem in your world. Uh Americans affected by directed energy attacks have struggled and fought to access the care they need and deserve to get well. Their experiences drove my effort to establish this coordinator and reform our government response to provide equidelax, blah, blah, blah. So there's a senator who believes that

It's proven enough that she can just tweet it out like fact that there was a directed energy attack. At the at the very least. It's not proven. Can we all agree on that? At the very least, it's not proven there was a d you know, it's not in evidence. There's some suspicion. Um now the the latest the latest I I've seen is that it's been debunked. Well you know, debunked doesn't mean the d the debunk is right either.

So I don't doubt that people have actual medical problems. I just don't know that this is a source. And I think it's weird that we're going to have a uh a coordinator for a mass hysteria as if it had been real. And you know it would be hilarious.

Hypothetically. What if Trump gets re-elected? W work with me on this. Hold. What if Trump gets elected and then uh appoints a uh Trump derangement syndrome coordinator? to try to try to figure out how to collectively deal with the damage that's been done to people who are suffering from Trump derangements and The source, I think the source of the Trump derangement syndrome is a directed energy weapon. Now that directed energy weapon is the press and the fake news.

But you'd have to admit that the press is directing its energy. Directed energy. at the people's skulls who are consuming the fake news, the the directed energy, and that is causing them in many cases correct me if I'm wrong, give me a fact check on this. Actual verifiable mental illness, bam. Right? Trump could literally do Now, we wouldn't want to see a budget for that person, right? I wouldn't want to spend money on it. But it would be hilarious.

And it would be completely defensible. Because if the news reported on it and they tried to say how ridiculous it was, they would still have to talk to the experts, wouldn't they? What would the experts say? What would the experts say? Would they say there's no such thing as people having mental illness from the time of Trump. No, they wouldn't say that. I'm pretty sure the experts would confirm that something like Trump derangement syndrome absolutely exists.

And then we'd have to talk about where it came from, wouldn't we? And of course we'll never agree where I came from. But wouldn't it be hilarious if Trump made the the conversation about where you got the Trump derangement syndrome instead of whether or not it exists? I mean, it would just be too perfect. And even better than doing it in for real.

Better than doing it for real would be to do it on the campaign trail and say he was going to do it, but you don't know if it's he's kidding or not.'Cause you think he might actually do that. And then the press wouldn't know if he's kidding. So they'd report it like he wasn't kidding, but they wouldn't be sure.

And then that would be the story itself, whether he was kidding or not kidding. It would be just the ultimate campaign thing to say, a Trump derangement syndrome coordinator to bring help to those who were damaged by the fake news. And then back it up with examples. When somebody says, that's crazy, then you say, well, did you or did you not report X, Y, and Z? And if somebody thought those things were true, shouldn't they feel distressed about them?

I'd feel distressed if I thought those things were true. So it's a wonderful uh just persuasive message. Just for fun.

Um, here's a thought. If climate change causes a whole bunch of problems that have to be remediated. It's gonna cost a lot of money, right? So, you know, there have been economic projections. Now, if you can release on the question of whether climate change is real, I know you're all gonna be, hey, it's not real. Forget about that for a moment.

Because that's not important to the the point. If it were true, if it were true that there will be massive economic displacement because of climate change, how do you fix that? Let's say it's gonna happen and it's too late to stop. And which the experts are telling us, right? They're already saying it's too late to stop pretty big economic problems.

It's not too late maybe to stop even bigger ones, but but pretty much the consensus and I know you don't you don't agree but hold that thought because that's that's not the conversation. It's not about whether you agree with I'm just saying hypothetically, if there were big economic displacement, what would you have to do necessarily to fix it? Well you'd have to spend a lot of money, am I right? But more ironically, it would take a great deal of energy. literally oil and coal

And green energy and nuclear and every other kind of energy. And since we don't have as much green energy or nuclear as we need, nuclear being green too. Um Where would you get it? So I feel as though you've got it it's just a question I haven't seen addressed. That if you have to fix all the economic displacement it would necessarily mean a whole bunch of energy increase, which would also uh make the climate work.

I guess the only question is if you have a long range eighty, you know, eighty year economic model. Is anybody doing it right? Or could it even be done right? You know, i is it just safe to say, and this is sort of a Jordan Peterson take as well, that if you're looking at a you know a hundred year model,

It doesn't matter how how uh good you are at modeling, you're not gonna get it right. It's just not a thing. But I wonder about the feedback thing. That um and and let me now simplify that whole point that I should've started with. There are some who say that your well-being is directly related to how much energy you could use, or that's available to you. maybe that's all you need to know

Well what if what if the only thing we did is we just ignored the climate and everything else. I'm not saying it, I'm just this is just a mental exercise. What if you just ignored everything and focused on one rule? And the one rule was this. The more energy you can provide for everybody at the cheapest cost, the better everybody will be in the long run. I have a feeling it is that simple.

that you could ignore all the models and all the everything and just try as hard as you could to drive down the cost of energy and also to produce more of it in every way that you could. Like you know, get as much oil as you can, because so you know if you boost the economy of a uh of any place. it's gonna do better, you know, against uh any climate change risks. So I feel as if we have all this complication because there are people whose jobs it is to do complicated stuff.

Right? The the scientists have to do complicated stuff or else what's the point of being a scientist? That's what they do. They do the complicated So you probably we probably get drawn into thinking things are way more complicated than they should be, because there are people whose job it is to say, hey, you better pay me because I can do this complicated stuff and you can't. But it might be a simple economic truth that more energy equals more better all the time.

And I would love to see some economist or especially an economist who's involved in any kind of climate Uh uh I I guess I should have asked that question uh uh Bjorn Lomborg, right? He would be the right kind of person to ask that question. Is it true, just generally speaking, that more energy more cheaply is just always is the right answer, no exception? It might be. I'll just put it out Uh if I were running for president, I think I'd be saying that.

I did uh my maskless experiment uh on February first. Here was my result. In mask required California. Uh I was the only massless shopper in my supermarket and it was pretty crowded. There were a lot of people there. Um Not a single problem. I just didn't wear it one and nobody said anything. Now I did use the self-checkout.

Because I was I was going for a soft target here. It was more important for me to get in and get out without being challenged than it was to, you know, make any specific thing happen. So I wanted to use the self-checkout. But of course the self-checkout never works. So or there's always some problem. So I end up interacting with a masked employee of the supermarket. Who stood next to me with her mask on and said nothing about the fact I didn't have one. Now

Do you think half of the people looked at me and said, You magnificent bastard? I wish I could do that. And half of them said, You're gonna kill my grandmother? Maybe, I don't know. I couldn't tell. I will just tell you that I couldn't detect. Anything except me walking around And if I have to be honest, I'm not exactly the kind of person that gets challenged.

in my town. So it's not really a fair test. I i if I may throw some uh systemic racism at you, it is a true thing that people who look like me Don't get challenged in a town like mine. Let me give you an example. If I saw construction I could walk into the middle of the construction site and the people wouldn't stop me, they would assume I was in charge. It's true. I could talk myself past any security.

Do you think do you think I've ever been stopped by security and couldn't get through? Like ultimately couldn't get through. No. No. No. It it is literally true that I'm in that exact demographic. That looks like it should be ruling the world because systemic racism, right? And so people just sort of assume that I'm trouble. Not trouble like physically.

But I just look like uh I'm not gonna challenge that guy. He's probably got he's probably got an ace up his sleeve. Right. So I have a feeling that when I walk through Safeway, it I don't get the same challenge I might be if I were years old. Am I right? If I were twenty years old, do you think somebody would have told me we would put a mask? Maybe more likely.

Anyway, so I tried it in a few different corporate chains and the the private private companies are all maskless at this point for all practical purposes. Uh nobody wears a mask at their home, nobody wears masks to socialize, nobody's telling their kids to stay home because of COVID. I mean basically masking's over if you want it to be. So here's my point.

Masking's optional in California. It's uh it's over. Now, if you would like to push it harder, if you're in a state that wants to push it, I think it is now fair to give a bad Yelp review to any business that challenges you on being masked. Not a bad Yelp review for requiring it, because that's usually just putting the sign up. Yeah, I I don't I don't care what sign somebody puts up. But at this point,

Yeah, and I wouldn't have said this earlier. In fact I didn't want to recommend this earlier because I think Yelp is like a it's a nuclear weapon. You you don't want to use that one. Uh Yelp will take a business out. It's it's really bad if you get yelped. This is one of the reasons that I couldn't own a restaurant. If somebody was mad at me for something I did in my public life, they would go to Yelp and give my restaurant that had nothing to do with anything, a bad reason.

And if you have a bad review on Yelp, you're dead if you're a local restaurant. You're just dead. So so people had the ability to put me out of business and uh that's kinda what happened. I mean there there are other stories for why being in restaurants a bad business. But you couldn't get I couldn't get past the bad Yelp reviews from the people who were mad at me for other

So Yelp is that powerful. It was powerful enough to completely change my business life. That's up right And I figure I have, you know, my own power, so it's not like I'm a powerless individual in society, as I just said.

And Yelp took me out, no problem. So if there's a uh business now, uh don't give them a bad review about, you know, some of their service or something. Just be specific. But it'll show up and it will get Anyway, uh schools across America are implementing some kind of BLM week of action.

And one of the I guess controversial parts is that the BLM is calling for a quote disruption of Western nuclear families. Well, that doesn't sound good. Let's dig into this a little bit. Um and a return to the quote collective village that takes care of each other. So this is part of a starter kit for schools that want to be teaching the BLM week of action. Now here is my persuasion advice.

I know you're gonna hate But I almost sorta kind of agree with BLM, but their way they're saying it makes it sound like nothing you could possibly agree with. Here's what they should have said, and maybe I'm interpreting it wrong, but I think this is what they would want. If a nuclear family works well for you, go ahead and do it. But there are lots of people for whom it doesn't work and won't work, and a lot of them are called children. For children, you might have one parent who is an addict.

So there there are probably lots of people who just through no fault of their own, just the nuclear family isn't working, so they need some kind of extra village help, right? So um don't get mad at me for um thinking that the nuclear family is the best institution. You all agree with that, right? That the nuclear family, when it works right.

I think everybody would agree it's the best. Does anybody disagree with that? The in the ideal situation, you know, your parents are functional and you've got enough money, you live in a nice place. I don't think you could beat that. But would you also agree that not everybody could achieve it? Realistically. You know, the number of people could hit that would be

Twenty-five percent. I'm thinking. Yeah, I say twenty-five percent because there's another twenty-five percent that pretends they're happy, but they're not. So if you actually could know secretly in people's heads whether things are working or not, I think that nuclear family thing, I mean what what the odds of getting one good parent, what are the odds of that?

Not that high, right? 50-50? The odds of getting one good parent about 50-50? Now what are the odds that you get two good parents when the odds of getting one is 50-50? Twenty-five percent. Right? So there's a twenty-five percent just just based on the awfulness of people. They are gonna get some at least a below average experience. And one of them's an addict and blah blah blah

So um the so I'm only making a persuasion um suggestion here. So Don't get mad at me for doing something that sounds like I support B L M. If you haven't heard my Yeah, the full uh breadth of my opinions. I think Black Lives Matter has been a a scam organization, even though they had d good intentions by the people, but I think the leaders at this point are obviously just scam. So

Uh don't use the word disruption. Just say you're augmenting, you're improving. That would be better. Um here's another persuasion thing about school choice. Um

uh I guess to uh a representative who was talking to uh senator. I don't know the didn't see what the setting was. It doesn't matter to the point. But it looked like some congressional kind of debate thing. And uh represent representative uh Noyen, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Uh asked another asked another representative. I'll get to that. Says uh why don't uh private schools have the same level of accountability and scrutiny as our public schools? And

The answer from uh Representative uh Cantrell was, quote, and here's the here's the kill shot, this is done so well. He goes, You're right. They don't have the same level of accountability. They have a much higher level of accountability. Families have the freedom to leave. And and I thought, well yeah, we're done here. We're done here. That that's the high ground. The high ground maneuver is accountability is the only way you get anything done.

Am I right? Who's going to argue with that statement? Having accountability is the only way anything's ever worked. There's no exception. So, what is more accountable than people can say, well, screw this, I'll take my money somewhere else? You couldn't get more accountable. So if somebody's arguing for a school choice

Representative uh Cantrell is either a natural, like he he just might be just a great communicator. I don't know. I don't know anything else about him. But the way he so um so succinctly put this It's the succinct part that's the impressive part. You know, having the idea is something you've all thought of, am I right?

You know, j just knowing that that's true is something you've all thought of. So it's not that uh novel. But how he boiled it down was, you know, it's the highest level of accountability. Families have the freedom to leave. You're done. That's perfect writing and perfect. So I just point that out as good persuasion.

And I would also say that you can always tell the Republican in a conversation even without them being labeled. Do you know how? The Republican's the one who's making an appeal to how human incentives and motivation works. And the Democrat is the one who's acting like they forgot that variable. If you didn't you know, I saw the video before I knew the political parties, but you know, it's just instant as you as soon as you see one talk about motivation

uh an incentive you know and market forces and the other one acting like they don't even understand that. You know the party.

So Biden's doing this uh cancer moonshot. He's resurrecting it. They had this during Obama, Biden administration. And I guess it's mostly funding to get uh and he's got a aggressive goal of reducing cancer death rates by fifty percent. Um pretty good. I mean I like the fact. that he's taking a shot at it. But so so let me say this. From a I don't know, I'm assuming that funding it is gonna help. Apparently cancer rates, death rates have fallen quite a bit, 25% in last

Uh oh what what? Yeah. It's i we we've already brought cancer death rates down quite a bit. So I'm saying this is probably a reasonably good thing. It's a high priority. All right. It's a high priority. So giving it more money sounds good on paper. Um but here's the political persuasion problem. And you have to respect him for doing it anyway. You don't want your you don't want to be associated with cancer.

I don't even like to talk about it on the live stream. Because are in in fact that's the last time I'll say it. So I'm not going to use the word again. And that that will beg my point. Our brains, we can process some things semi logically, but it's not how the brain is wired. The brain is wired by association. So the brain just associates things. Oh this is like this. It's like that. It's different from this. It's like that.

He uh for Biden having this uh moonshot of this word I'm not gonna say out loud'cause I don't want to associate with it. Um, even though it's important, even though it's a top priority, even though I would uh compliment him for having good sense of priorities, I guess. Um it's politically really bad. Politically it's just a loser. Even if you think it's a good idea, I think his political instinct would steer away from

Um Rasmussen Netapol is asking is Biden the best or worst president? And uh or or is he one of the best or one of the worst presidents? And uh fifty-four percent in the Rasmussen poll said that Biden is one of the worst. Trump at uh was only forty three percent. So uh way more people think that uh Biden is the worst, which means that he's picking up a lot of Democrats, right? So at this point at this point there are a lot of Democrats. We're not liking Joe Biden.

Uh and and Obama did better than both of them. Only 33% thought he was one of the worst. So here here's a progression of uh of people who thought they were one of the worst. 33%, 43%, 54%. Do you think it's actually the president, or is there something else going on? What else was happening during this period? What what was the other large force? The other large force was the social media and and fake news.

As social media and fake news got more polarizing, we started to hate our presidents more. Now, it could be a coincidence that the last three of our presidents started out relatively awesome and just got progressively worse. It could be. And then the people noticed and answered the poll. Could be.

Well we'll rule it out. I mean it doesn't look that way to me, but we'll rule it out. Um But I think a better interpretation of this is that everything wor looks worse because of the the nature of social media and the nature of the the fake news business. So my guess would be that our next president, no matter who it is, uh, will set a new record as the worst of the worst. Democrat or Republican, it won't make any difference.

It will be the I think our next president is going to be uh uh both a racist and uh mentally incompetent. It's the only way you can get even worse. Um could you tell me, did I did I say yesterday that there was yet another big study that says moderate drinking is not good for you? Did I mention that yesterday?

I didn't mention it yesterday. Well, there's another big study that says moderate drinking. It's not good for you. And that if you ever thought it was, it's because the numbers were done wrong. Now, um, and so I did a Google search. Oh, somebody says yes though. Oh, two days ago I did. Two days ago. Um, one of my best predictions. But one of my other best predictions is that when the uh pandemic was over, That leadership wouldn't matter.

In other words, we would look we wouldn't see a difference in uh leadership as changing the your numbers. And um I'm gonna lay a s lay a claim down that the one and only place you can see a clear signal for leadership was uh Trump's warp speed. And arguably uh closing closing traffic to China, but I don't know if we can measure that exactly. Now, here's the thing: you also have the benefit of being able to measure some things better than others.

So whatever you can measure is always going to seem like a more important thing because you have more certainty about it. So because we we know who gets us vaccinated, we know if they die, you know, even though the data is bad, it does look according to the official data. And I know, I know, this is before all your your alleged uh vaccine blood clot

You know, wipe out America or whatever's gonna happen. So we don't know the long run yet, but in the short run Uh the latest I saw on today was there is sixteen times more vaccinated people in hospitals in America in December than vaccinated. Sixteen times more unvaccinated than vaccinated in the hospital in December.

Now if that's true, or even true-ish, well let's say it's just eight to one, right? Let's say the numbers are terrible, but it's still eight to one. That is a big effect that can be measured. At least in the short run. Now remember I said the leadership that would matter the most. If you think it was a huge mistake and it's gonna kill us all, it still mattered the most, right?

So my point is matter to the most. I don't want to argue with you about what was a good or bad idea. Can we get away from that? It's n I'm not saying the vaccinations are a good or bad idea. Let's forget about that. Just what had an impact. And I'm saying that nobody else really impacted anything. That all of the the lockdowns, apparently the numbers are all over the place. Oh by the way there was a Uh new study, uh you know, a uh meta study about the lockdowns that showed that they didn't work.

But really they did work except they didn't work, except it was a meta study, except the data's bad but it worked, except in the cases where it didn't work, uh and then the bad study that was ridiculous. So We don't know anything about lockdowns, but we do know that the signal was not clear. Right? You could still argue, uh, you know, maybe in some cases the lockdowns made some uh and and there's some indication that maybe closing the bars might have made a difference.

But uh y you the one thing we'd all agree on is there's no clear data. Right? There's no clear data that says the lockdowns worked. Am I right? Can can we get a fact check on that? Because I'm not positive I'm right, but I th I think I'm right. Well uh and that if there's a small effect, you know, that wouldn't necessarily be worth the cost. So of the things we can measure, just fact check me on this, of the things we can measure.

The vaccinations have the biggest impact. Again, I'm not saying good or bad, but the biggest thing you can measure, and that was Trump. Now some of you could say, oh wait, you know, DeSantis is a clear example of good leadership. But here's the catch. DeSantis' leadership, um, at least in terms of staying open, was more about not doing something. And I'm not sure his numbers were really that different.

We do like the fact he protected the elderly. We you know, we liked his regeneron thing while while that was working with Delta. So he did he did a lot of stuff right. But it's not you don't see it in the number. That's my point. Even if you even if I grant you, and I think it is true, that DeSantis may have hit every note right. He may have hit every note. I don't think it made much difference.

the vaccination is dead. Even if they end up killing you, they made a difference. So I think that was my w uh two of my least likely predictions. That moderate drinking if I think I made this fifteen years ago, the first time I said it, or twenty-five years ago probably, that there was no way that moderate drinking was going to be good for you, and that leadership wouldn't matter in the past.

Except the one example of and and and there's also indication that maybe even warp speed would have happened anyway. Maybe. Like anybody would have done it if they had been president. We don't know that to be true, but we do give credit to the person who did it. That's the way it works. So that was Trump.

All right, uh have to talk about Whoopi Goldberg. So if you're not up to date on this Whoop we was talking about the Holocaust.

And said something like it wasn't about race. It was uh she said, quote, It's about man's inhumanity to man. That's what it's about. And uh she argued I think that um And when when uh Anna Navarro said, uh but it's about white supremacists going after Jews and gypsies, then Goldberg uh attempted to speak over and said, but these are two white groups of people, according to Whoopi Goldberg.

Well, she apologized for that because people explained to her that uh during the Holocaust certainly the Nazis believed that the Jews were a different race. So we could argue about what race means, but I don't think we can argue that that's the way the uh Germany was interpreting it at the time. So once uh Whoopi was, you know, got this clarification.

She issued an apology, which showed that she understood, you know, the impact it had. It uh she explained, you know, that she had become better informed. And she apologized in a way that I I took as sincere. Would you say that her apology uh hit the form and was timely. You know, I have the forty-eight hour rule that says if you apologize in forty-eight hours, you should be forgiven no exceptions. If it's just worse.

No, it not if you kill somebody. But if it's just words and you correct and clarify in forty eight hours, forget. So according to the forty eight hour rule, Whoopi is forgiven. But according to her employer, the biggest bunch of cowardly assholes uh I've heard of lately, she got suspended. Now You can't be a little bit wrong in America. You can't be wrong and then correct it and apologize on a fucking opinion show. Are you kidding me?

She's an opinion person who gives opinion on an opinion show. She gives an opinion on an opinion show that disagrees with some other opinions. Changes her opinion on the opinion show. clarifies and apologizes sincerely and correctly. I mean hit form. Nice form. And she gets fucking suspended. You cowardly pieces of shit. Talk about blowing a public relations opportunity. Do you know how this could have worked? This is how this should have worked. We all learn something about the Holocaust.

This was the opposite of a negative anything. Everything about this was positive until they suspended the person who caused the positive thing to happen. Do you know why people have different opinions and then talk about it on TV? It's so you can get smarter. That's the whole fucking point. And what happened? She had an opinion, other people had an opinion, she revised her opinion, and you got smarter. I mean I I'm not sure that I'd ever thought about that.

specific question, but that filled in a little filled in a little context for me. Oh yeah, of course they would have called it race back then, but you know, maybe our definitions of race have changed or whatever. Uh this is this is the most horrifyingly incompetent uh response I've ever seen from a corporation. I mean just who compare this to Joe Rogan's uh response to his comp.

You know, I gave Joe Rogan an A plus literally a Steve Jobs level comparison. You don't get any better than that. That you know that's the standard of how to do it. And then ABC News' PR department tweets out this horseshit. About somebody who clearly is not a racist. I mean, I mean, come on. Yo whoopee Goldberg? She she's suspended for being a racist or saying something that I guess was insensitively uh accidentally racist or something.

ABC News, you are so incompetent. Really the entire whoever came up with this idea of how to deal with it, they they should all be fired. Why I can't believe that there's a CEO who looked at this. I wonder if the CEO was even involved. Let me give you a hypothesis. Uh I'm gonna give you a very weird hypothesis. I don't think the CEO is involved. And I think he might reverse it. Who's the CEO now? Who's the CEO of uh Disney? Didn't that just change recently, right? Who's the CEO of Disney?

Uh come on, somebody's gonna tell me. Uh is that Bob is it Shapik or Chapik? Well, here's the thing. That this is this is what I in my opinion, on my opinion live stream, the CEO probably didn't see this. I think he didn't see it. And here's why I think he didn't see it. You don't become the CEO of Disney by being a fucking idiot. And this decision is fucking idiot territory. This is what somebody who learned public relations does. This isn't CEO. This is not CEO level thinking.

How many people would agree with me? This looks like, yeah, this looks like human resources, doesn't it? Am I right? I mean maybe the CEO got pushed into it somehow, but no. There's no way that I uh this is my prediction. My new prediction, the CEO did not Have a let's say uh strong input on the decision.

Something else is going on. All right. Uh let's talk about uh long covet risk. So there's a story in the Wall Street Journal and it starts out by saying that uh Uh asthma, unhealthy gut bacteria, the presence of autoantibodies, blah, blah, and some other things can predict whether you'll have this thing called long COVID.

And then in the body of the story, uh, there's a completely different story. So uh if anybody works for the Wall Street Journal Um I don't know if I missed it, but the headline said the asthma was one of the four things and then the story doesn't. So I think you've got a headline story mismatch or or I'm a bad reader. I wasn't a hurry. Uh given that I have asthma, I would like to know.

If uh I have a risk of a long COVID. But according to the body of it, it's all these other things. One of them is that you might reactivate your Epstein bar so that your your long COVID is actually the Epstein bar kicking the shit out of you. Um maybe some people have Addison's disease. S um some people have some kind of autoimmune condition that isn't so bad normally, but I guess pushed over the edge. Somebody said yes. Anyway. That, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have to say today. And Um

Question is, Scott, can we reframe critical race theory as a religion? No. That never works. People have been tried to do that reframe forever. Science. It's just a religion. It makes a good bumper sticker and stuff, but nobody's ever been persuaded by it.'Cause I think people just know what a religion is and what it's not and you know. Yeah. And they're not gonna change their minds on that. And and uh plus people have a positive view of religion.

So when I say alcohol is poison, that's a good reframe. Because nobody likes poison. But people do like religion. So if you say, oh, critical race theory, that's like a religion, people are like, oh, I didn't realize it was that good. Um

I get a micro lesson on getting past security? Well, look like me, I guess. Be be an old uh bald guy with glasses, that helps. Is it a good strategy to back what the left hates the most, uh, like Trump? Probably not. Based on her comments, oh here's an interesting comment. So Michael says, based on her comments, I think Whoopi Goldberg isn't particularly fond of Jews. Uh I feel as though that's a little mind readerish.

I mean, y you know, if you if you accuse a public figure of not being fond of Jews, you better bring a link. You better bring a link. I I take that a little bit personally. Honestly. Because yeah, that's some shit that happens to me. Just people throw out some w wild accusation and then somebody sees it in the comments and that's all they've ever seen on the top.

You you better bring a link if you have an accusation like that. Because we don't live in a world where that's safe to do. Like you're actually you're creating an unsafe environment for a public figure when you do that. You know, and I I'm in favor of free speech, so I'm not saying you need to get banned for saying what you're saying. That's different kinds of conversation. I'm saying as a as a point of personal responsibility.

Don't put that shit out there. Unless you can back it up. If you can back it up, then please do.'Cause you know, that would be worth seeing. Um Sh uh would mushrooms help someone with addiction? I'm gonna tell you to Google that, um, because I don't like to delve into anything that would look like a medical recommendation. So I never recommend, you know, marijuana or mushrooms. I might tell you if I've had an experience

But I wouldn't recommend them. You know, that that's a medical thing. And why would I do that? All right. Um Steven Spielberg launched Whoopi's career. Oh, why is Whoopi clearly not a racist? Well, I'm just saying that she wouldn't be on the view if she were. Would you agree with that? When I say it's clear that Whoopi is not a racist, I mean in the in the classic Um not not in the, let's say, expanded sense that um you could be racist against white.

Not in that sense. I don't have an opinion on that'cause I don't know what she said about that. But but in the sense that um the mainstream would consider her classically yeah. non-racist, I think she fits that category perfectly. Yeah, and what are the what are the chances her last name would be Goldberg? It's like the simulation is just serving up this perfect thing. You know, and this is another case of people being offended on behalf of other people.

Uh so we've we've gone through this entire whoopee Goldberg story, but was there anybody who was actually offended or were we all worried that somebody else would be offended? Was that the worry? Somebody else would be offended.'Cause usually Most offense is third party offense, right? I am pretty sure that somebody I don't know who doesn't have quite the sense of humor that I do, somebody with a thin skin, not like me, I've got a thick skin. Criticism rolls off my back, but let me protect.

Those weak people back there, right be there's nobody behind me? Well, I'm sure there was somebody back there. moment before and that person was deeply offended by that horrible thing you did. Now it's somebody like me who has a sense of humor and a thick skin. Alright, well I'm gonna see a counter to that. Uh so Cole says, no, plenty of Jewish people uh were offended. Deborah Messing was pretty expli explicit.

If you read, so there was a specific counterexample, Deborah Messing. I'll bet if I read her comment, it wouldn't strike me that way. But send it to me. Yeah, and and I this is also a special case, right? Because where the Holocaust is involved. there's not only were you personally offended, but does it make you feel less say more vulnerable

if the Holocaust narrative is attacked. So I I feel like there's a a complication there that that would be different from saying somebody was actually offended. Somebody might have, let's say they're there's safety effects. I guess that would be another way to say it. She she might feel that her sense of security as you know a Jewish person in the world might be offended by it. Ben Shapiro appeared pretty offended. But again But again...

I will bet if you if you asked him privately, I can't read his mind, right? So let me let me have some humility about being able to read the mind of somebody who's smarter than I am. That's always the worst. Yeah. At least with Ben Shapiro I can somewhat confidently say he's smarter than I am. So trying to read the mind of somebody or like understand like exactly what they're thinking in their private thoughts.

If I could think what he was thinking in in my private if I knew what Ben Shapiro was thinking, I would be as smart as Ben Shapiro. But I'm pretty sure I've not So, um, but I'll bet. Uh here's my bet. That it's not so much that he was personally offended in in some way that you know his his body was having some stress. I feel like it was more like

the point you know, more of a philosophical point that maybe he had some energy about. But that's just a guess. Yeah. I probably shouldn't even try to y you should erase that. That that's somewhat unfair territory. But uh but I guess that what I think of Ben Shapiro is that his uh H his personal ability to be offended must be pretty high. Because you can't you can't do this kind of work if you're easily offended. So it's hard to imagine anybody doing this.

who's really ever offended. I don't know if I've ever been offended. I can't think of an example. Have I ever said I've ever been offended by anything? Is that have I ever used that word in talking about myself? I may have just like end of hyperbole, but not really. I I'm sure I did. Oh, on this podcast? Did I say it on this podcast? That would be funny if I did. That would be funny. All right.

Yeah, maybe somebody is using hyperbole sometimes. Alright, that's all I have for today. And I'm going to uh talk to you tomorrow.