Episode 72 - Causes of School Shootings, Terrorism, Fake News, Plus Hypnotism

Date: 2018-06-16 | Duration: 54:19

Topics

Jordan Peterson getting pecked to death by his critics His premise: Monogamy reduces violence School violence, common factors Video games association with violence “top of mind” thoughts and influence on beliefs Scientific study: Journalists more susceptible to bias than other professions Understanding the power of hypnosis Darren Brown / Simon Pegg, demonstration of memory being rewritten Journalists have taken role of hypnotist, rewriting audience memory NXIVM Raniere interview John Legend becoming the thing he hates

Transcript

[0:05]

I don’t do bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. It’s a wonderful Sunday. Some of you are off searching it up, but not me. I’m here working and drinking coffee and talking to you. So if you’re lucky enough to be available, it’s time for the simultaneous sip and Coffee with Scott Adams. That’s me. Raise your mugs, grab your beverage, and let’s simultaneous sip. If you’re still brewing—I see somebody’s still brewing—we’ll get you another simultaneous sip.

All right, we have several fun topics in no particular order. Number one: I am watching with great entertainment and interest as Jordan Peterson is being pecked to death by the lesser educated media.

[1:07]

I love it because he tends to say things that I have said in the past and gotten in great trouble for. But unlike me, he can back up what he says. So the big difference—I’m not saying that I agree with everything Jordan Peterson’s ever said. I might; I just don’t know everything he’s said. So I’m not disagreeing with him, I just can’t claim I agree with everything because I don’t know everything he’s ever said. But he’s getting in trouble right now for saying something I got in trouble for several years ago. I got in trouble for exactly the same thing, or very similar. Maybe not exactly, but he can back it up with research and scholarship. So it’s fun to watch him winning the fight that I lost. I’m getting great entertainment value out of that. The idea that he’s putting out is that monogamy is

[2:11]

for reducing violence. I hope I’m not mischaracterizing him like everybody else in the world is mischaracterizing him, but essentially the idea is that if you pair a man and a woman, the man is going to be a little less violent on average—at least less violent to society. He might be more violent to the woman, I suppose, but in terms of societal violence outside of the actual couple. Apparently, there are a number of studies in the biological evolutionary field that make it pretty clear that if you have a situation where the rich guy has a hundred wives, you’ve got a lot of extra males and they end up getting in trouble, causing trouble, and creating violence and such. Now, when I said it several years ago, I said it

[3:12]

without the benefit of any scholarly anything. I might have linked to one article or something, but I just got eviscerated for the idea. Let me generalize a little bit because I got eviscerated several times for related ideas. The thought was—here’s the dangerous part of the thought—that there’s something about the way society is organized, not in every place, but we’re talking about the whole world. There’s something about the way society is optimized that’s bad for boys. One of the side effects of that system—that is not organized to optimize male experience—is that the men who are not optimizing their experience get in trouble. Now, even listening to me say it, I’m going to disavow myself. You should ignore everything I say on this topic because

[4:12]

there are people who know what they’re talking about. Jordan Peterson is one. Follow him on Twitter and you can see lots of links to scholarly things which make the same point. As we’re trying to figure out what the heck’s behind these school shootings and what the heck’s behind all this terrorism and problems in the Middle East—pretty much 98% or whatever of the violent people are males, and most of them are young-ish. So what’s going on?

Maybe I tweeted this morning, but I deleted it because I got caught tweeting a fake Kanye account. You should never tweet before you have your coffee in the morning. Every time I’ve retweeted a fake account, which I’ve done a number of times, it’s always before I have my coffee. It’s like, “Retweet this, this looks good.” Oh, it’s not the real Kanye; it’s a fake Kanye. But the point of it was still

[5:12]

interesting, at least my point. So I was saying that if you’re trying to understand school shootings, it’s not that complicated. Here’s the equation: Schools—you need a school to have a school shooting. Guns—you gotta have guns. Boys—it’s always boys. Bullies—there’s always a bully involved. I’ll bet 100% of the time there’s a bully involved. An outcast who doesn’t have a girlfriend—relating this to the first point—it’s a boy who’s been separated from any sort of meaning. He doesn’t see a path that looks like he’s going to be on the winning path, the path that other boys are taking. Then you add to all of the feelings that this person is going to have—the bullying, the lack of hope, maybe

[6:13]

some slight or bigger mental problems that wouldn’t have been a problem in the past because in the past they would not have all these other elements at the same time. One of those elements is—and this is just me talking, this is not science—one of those elements is video games, and then the news itself about all the school shootings. Now people will be quick to jump on me and say, “You idiot, Scott, why are you not aware of all of these studies that show there is no link between violence and video games and violence in the real world?” Well, I don’t know if those studies exist or not because they’re not exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not saying that the average boy is influenced to violence by video games. Likewise, I understand there are studies that also agree with that—that the average kid is not inspired to violence by a video game. Here’s what I do claim:

[7:16]

Perhaps one out of a hundred thousand boys who are on the edge and thinking, “I don’t like what my situation is, what do I do?” What video games do, and what the news reports about the school shootings do, is they take an idea that might not have occurred to the kid and they make it top of mind. Now, I don’t need a study to tell me that people are more likely to act on things that are top of mind. Nobody needs to show me a study on that. That’s just too obvious. So if you add the fact that they think of this idea because of video games and because of the news about school shootings, it probably takes both of those things. By the way, who has

[8:17]

studied video games plus the news? Because you’d have to study both. I’m saying that they probably interact just at the obvious level—not the kind of level where you have to study and really do a controlled experiment, but at the obvious level. Humans are influenced by what’s on their mind. We are far less influenced by things we’re not thinking about. I don’t need a study to show you that.

My point was it would be surprising if we did not have school shootings, and it would be surprising if we don’t have lots more of them. The prediction that we’re going to have them and more of them—we have all the conditions for that to happen and nothing’s changing. There’s nothing particularly changing that will change them. Now, the question of whether we could harden the targets—the

[9:19]

honest answer to “Can we harden the targets at the schools?”—I hate to say it, but here’s the honest answer: We don’t care enough. That’s it. That’s the whole answer. Obviously, we could harden the targets at the school. Obviously, we could protect all the schools. There isn’t even the slightest chance we can’t do that. We could protect those schools. Out of all the problems that we have, if you look at all the big problems in the world, this is the easiest one. We could bring school violence, at least the mass killing types with guns, down to zero. Do you know what we would have to do to make that happen? Care more. We just have to make it a priority. It’s just not a priority because most people say, even now with all the school shootings we’ve

[10:20]

seen, the odds of my kid getting shot are still very small. But if you want to take another thousand dollars out of my paycheck per year to cover all this school enforcement, that thousand dollars is real. The odds of my specific kid getting killed are very small, so people don’t care enough. That’s the only problem. We could solve it easily just by playing lots of cards, fixing some of the physical stuff. There’s probably ten ways we could solve it completely if we cared.

So let’s now pretend that we care enough to solve it, because that’s the problem. Now let’s talk about there was a fun study that Business Insider talked about. I tweeted it, so you can see it in my Twitter feed. I

[11:21]

talked about this more because it’s fun and funny than because it’s necessarily scientifically valid. I’m not going to put too much credibility in this study, but there was a study recently that said journalists are below average in executive function and below average in the ability to get past bias. I think it was a small study with 40 journalists or something, so it would have to be reproduced lots of times before you could say there’s anything to it. But it fits with my preconceived notions, so I like any kind of study that matches what I already thought was true. Whether or not it’s true, I’m going to like it just as much. My observation is that if I meet somebody who’s, let’s say, an engineer or somebody in the technical field, and I disagree with

[12:22]

them—this is a continuous thing I have—let’s say somebody who’s a professional engineer and they disagree with me on politics. We’ll have a discussion. I will note absolutely no cognitive dissonance happening in the engineer. The engineer will say, “Fact, fact, show me your source.” Pretty much they’re going to follow the fact chain to wherever it goes. I’ve actually seen engineers change their minds in real-time, which is kind of weird. You almost never see that, right? But if you give an engineer a new set of facts, the engineer will go, “All right, I will take that new set of facts, I’ll put that into the hopper, and maybe I’ll change my mind.”

You do the same thing with a journalist, you will get anger. You tell an

[13:24]

engineer they’re wrong—if you tell an engineer they’re wrong, the engineer will have two feelings. They’ll feel a little bit through the ego—nobody likes to be wrong, right? So if you show an engineer they’re wrong, one feeling is, “I hate being wrong, I don’t like that at all.” But the other one that is unique to engineers and people who think like that—not just the people who went through engineering school—is they’re going to have a second emotion. The first one is “I hate being wrong.” The second one is “This is kind of exciting.” It’s exciting to be wrong if you’re an engineer because you might be learning something. This might be improving your power. Because if you go from being wrong about something to being right about something as an engineer, that’s pretty important. So I think engineers are unique in that they

[14:26]

hate being wrong like everybody else in the world, but they also like it because it means they learned something and they went to a better place. Do the same thing to a journalist—and again, these are gross generalizations, of course there are lots of exceptions to both groups—but generally speaking, you tell a journalist they’re wrong, what is their reaction? It’s not excitement. They will write a hit piece about you. So they definitely are different people. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that journalists are uniquely biased compared to people in other professions such as lawyers, doctors, engineers—technical people who are using logic and rationality all day long. Writers are not in that world.

Let’s talk about a clip that somebody sent to me, and I tweeted, in which hypnotist Derren Brown—he’s a

[15:27]

famous sort of TV hypnotist, I guess—hypnotizes, just with words, not an induction but just by conversation, hypnotizes actor Simon Pegg into believing that Simon Pegg had written a note in his pocket that said something different than what it said. Now, the actual situation was they asked Simon Pegg to write down on a piece of paper a gift that he always wanted to have but he never got. So Simon Pegg wrote down on his piece of paper “leather jacket,” sealed it, signed it, put it in this tiny envelope, and put it in his own wallet where he is sure that nobody touched it. Then he goes to hypnotist Derren Brown, who talks to him through just a conversational technique plus manipulation of the scenery in the room—which was probably the more important part. Simon Pegg

[16:29]

believes that he wrote on his piece of paper that he wanted a red BMX bicycle. What he actually wrote was that he wanted a leather jacket. So Brown actually rewrote Simon Pegg’s memories in real time while you’re watching it, and it only took about five minutes. In five minutes, by just the choice of words, Derren Brown, the hypnotist, made Simon Pegg—who knew he was talking to a hypnotist—believe this. Simon Pegg knew he was in an experiment, so he was wary of all the tricks, looking for the tricks. Did it help him to know that he was being influenced? It did not.

If some of you watched the clip, I see the questions: “What do you mean by manipulating the scene?” If you see the room that they’re in, the room is mostly two colors—mostly white, but there are lots

[17:30]

of red accents. It’s red, red, red. So if you’re sitting in that room and somebody says, “What color bicycle do you want?” the odds of you saying “red” go up by a huge factor. You would think it’s because you prefer red bicycles. Now, red bicycles are fairly common, so you’re also starting with something that’s at least in the top three or four answers. The room influenced the color by being only white and red, and white is probably a less popular color for a bicycle. Then there were a number of round objects that were paired like the wheels of a bicycle. You could see over the shoulder of the hypnotist there was an old-style reel-to-reel, and the reel is going like bicycle tires behind him. So while Simon

[18:31]

Pegg is talking to the hypnotist, he’s looking over the hypnotist’s shoulder at two things that look like bicycle tires but are not. Then—and I will tell you that I saw the technique as it was happening—you could see that Derren Brown was using words that sounded like “bike” and “BMX.” He was working them into sentences that were not using any of those words, but they sounded like it. For example, if you wanted someone to think of “bike,” you might say a sentence like—well, that’s a

[19:33]

terrible example. I wish I thought about it a little bit more; I could give you a better one. In the actual clip, you’ll see Derren Brown doing that trick but more elegantly. So the word “bike” is not spoken, but you still hear it. Likewise, you hear “BMX” and stuff.

Here’s the shocking part: Once the hypnotist had convinced Simon Pegg that what he wanted was a bicycle—oh, and also there was a very large box in the room. The hypnotist said that the gift is in there. He said, “It might be a big thing in a big box, or it could be a small thing in a big box.” The hypnotist says the size of the box is not a clue. Here’s what the hypnotist knows: The person seeing the box is going to logically know it could be a small object, but irrationally, they’re thinking

[20:36]

“big object,” and it was about the size of a bicycle. So the box itself was huge persuasion even though the hypnotist said, “Oh, don’t look at the size of the box.” Because when you tell people “Don’t think of the size of the box,” what does that make them do? Think of the size of the box. That’s part of the trick.

What’s interesting is that once Simon Pegg said, “Yes, what I want is a bicycle,” then the hypnotist said, “Is that why you wrote on your note before we talked that that’s what you wanted?” And Simon Pegg would be like, “Yeah, I wrote BMX bicycle, of course.” Then he takes out his own note in his own handwriting and opens it up and sees that it says “leather jacket.” You watch Simon Pegg’s reaction like, “I don’t know what’s happening here.” If you have not studied hypnosis, you probably think there was something about that that was faked. Maybe you think that Simon Pegg is in on

[21:37]

the joke. He wasn’t. Because everything that happened would be normal within the hypnotist’s world. In other words, this demonstration, which seems amazing to you, would be ordinary for a trained hypnotist. Very ordinary.

In fact, there’s a magic trick I often did that is the same trick. Simon Pegg actually rewrote his own memories to believe that he wrote “BMX bike” originally, but in fact, it was “leather jacket.” And it wasn’t that long ago that he wrote the note. You saw in real time somebody’s memories being rewritten. That’s the amazing part of the trick. There’s a similar trick that I do in which I take a deck of cards, I’ll pick one card out, I’ll put it aside, and I’ll

[22:39]

say, “All right, I’m gonna have you guess what card I picked.” Now, if you do it with a woman and you do it in a room this color with a lot of red stuff—what the subject doesn’t know is I always pick the Queen of Hearts. You just, no matter what, always pick the Queen of Hearts and you put it aside. Now they think you’ve picked a random card, but it wasn’t random. You picked the one that you knew would be most likely guessed.

Why will somebody guess Queen of Hearts? Number one, if you say to somebody “Think of a card,” people gravitate toward the face cards. Very rarely will somebody say “seven of spades.” They almost always say King, Queen, or Jack. Then if you’re talking to a woman, the odds that she will say Queen versus

[23:39]

King or Jack—which are the male cards—is very high. And the odds that they would say Hearts instead of Diamonds gets a little bit closer to even, but if you influenced your subject by something that made them think about hearts or heart surgery or Valentine’s Day—if you primed them with any of those thoughts and then put them in a room with some obvious red objects—the odds of someone saying Queen of Hearts is, in my experience, about 70% of the time. So 30% of the time I would just say, “Ah, trick didn’t work.” 70% of the time the person would pick the Queen of Hearts and would be blown away. They would think, “Out of 52 cards, how did you guess the one I was going to guess?” The answer is: you

[24:40]

were always going to be in that area and I just influenced you to narrow it down a little bit more. Same trick.

Are David Blaine’s recorded tricks staged? Yes. The so-called TV magicians, as opposed to the TV hypnotists, do not have an obligation to be honest to the viewers. They are an entertainment product. Because their only obligation is to entertain, they can just use trick photography and anything else they want and then just tell you they didn’t, or just not mention it. By the way, that doesn’t mean all of their tricks are TV magic. I’ll give you a couple of examples. You probably saw the famous trick where David Copperfield has all the people stand in a circle with their arms around

[25:41]

an airplane. They’ve locked arms and they put an airplane in the middle, and then later the airplane is gone, but the people are still locking arms and they didn’t hear anything moving. How is that possible? Here’s how it’s possible: the people on TV were all in on the trick. That’s it. That’s the whole trick.

There’s a David Blaine trick where he levitates on the sidewalk. Have you seen the commercials where it looks like he just goes off the ground and just stays that way? Do you know how that one’s done? I hate to ruin it for you. All he does is turn in a certain direction so that the audience can see that he’s lifting up on one toe but not the other toe. The audience is seeing the foot that’s completely off the ground and that foot is covering up the

[26:43]

toe that’s on the ground. You see two heels off the ground and one toe off the ground. The other toe that’s on the ground is covered, and it’s this cool little illusion, but it only works for people within a narrow range of view. So when they film it, they just make sure they show it from that perspective. The people on the sidewalk very likely saw how the trick was done, but then they will also splice in people who are answering different questions. You’ll see an interview and the person on the street will give an honest response and they’ll say, “Oh my god, that blew my mind.” But they might not be talking about the same trick. Magicians are there to give you an experience and make you

[27:44]

feel fooled, so how they fool you doesn’t really matter because you’re getting the same experience. However, the hypnotists, as far as I can tell, are actually doing exactly what they say they’re doing. There doesn’t seem to be much of any TV trick.

Let me take that back; I’m going to rescind part of that. The TV hypnotist like Derren Brown does have one TV trick: if the Simon Pegg experiment had not worked, you wouldn’t have seen it. The trick that Derren Brown did on Simon Pegg probably works 70% of the time. So if it had been in the 30%, you just wouldn’t have seen it. It’s likely that he would not do that kind of trick on a live stage. What was Kreskin?

[28:47]

Kreskin used to read the minds of the audience. There wasn’t much of a trick in those cases—either the audience was in on it, or they were filmed ahead of time, or they had confederates working with the audience. For example, Kreskin might have somebody in the audience who works with him and just strikes up a conversation in the lobby before the show. They find out their name and find out a little bit about the person, and then Kreskin finds all that out before the show. Those are some ways they could be done, but they’re not mind-reading tricks.

Will I have Derren Brown as a guest? Probably not. What about mediums—the

[29:50]

people who talk to the dead? I’ve done that trick. You know the mediums who pretend to talk to the dead, and the amazing part is they seem to know things that only your dead relative could have known. I personally have done fake medium readings with people who were blown away by how amazingly accurate I was. The trick is called a “cold read,” where you make some assumptions about people that are just logical guesses. You get enough of them right, and they forget the ones you got wrong. You pretend the ones that were wrong were really right because you modify them after they’re wrong. There’s just a technique to make people think you’re getting information from their relatives when you’re just making logical guesses.

Somebody said, “What’s Dogbert wearing behind me?” That is a little space outfit

[30:51]

from my book cover, The Dilbert Future, from 1998 or whatever it was.

What about cartoonists who convinced people Trump is not a disaster? Well, you’d have to look at the data for that. How is that economy doing? I was thinking about this yesterday. Trump’s been on the job for what, a year and a half? It’s possible—we don’t know this yet, it’s too early to say this is true—but it’s possible that in a year and a half, Trump won two wars (North Korea and ISIS) and presided over the strongest economy we’ve ever had. As of yesterday, it looked like there might be some success in negotiating with China over trade deals. He’s lowered

[31:53]

illegal immigration. He’s eliminated so far every actual ISIS or Al-Qaeda terrorist act on our soil. Have we seen one since he’s been president? I don’t think so. He’s lowered taxes, he’s lowered the deficit, and here’s the fun part: the temperature of Earth has gone down since he went into office. Now, I’m not saying he caused that to happen. Apparently, the reduced temperatures were expected because we were coming off an El Niño, and whatever’s the opposite is lower temperatures after that. So apparently, we’re supposed to have a few years of lower temperature. That does not invalidate the climate models; it’s just funny. It’s just funny that the

[32:55]

one person most identified with climate skepticism comes into office and the temperature immediately goes down. I mean, if we’re not a simulation, I don’t know. It’s a coincidence, but it’s a fun coincidence. Yes, he’s going after the human traffickers, etc.

When somebody says to me, “What about cartoonists who convince people that Trump is not a gigantic disaster?” I say to myself: we now understand the cause of the problem. As I started my Periscope, I said there’s a study showing journalists are more susceptible to bias than other people. What we’ve seen is journalists who are susceptible to bias buying into a story of Trump as a

[33:55]

monster, and then they convince half of the public. The other half was not convinced. But if you watched the Derren Brown exhibit where he easily changed somebody’s current opinion and also their memory in five minutes using simple persuasion techniques—that shit’s true. That really happened, and he can reproduce that most of the time.

I believe the arm touches—by the way, Derren Brown touched the arm a number of times, and I think the arm touches were correlated when he was saying “bike” or “BMX.” I’d have to see the video again, but it looked like he was correlating that so somebody would make a special note of that

[34:58]

part of the sentence. All right, so if you saw how easily people can be influenced, then the real world in which you’re in the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and you think you live in a country managed by a monster—despite all of the objective data saying the opposite—pretty much. There might be some exception, like we don’t have healthcare that we’re all happy with and race relations are bad. If you had data on those, I think that would show. But on every other level, you can see that the president’s objectively—the economy is up, optimism’s up, we’re in good shape with North Korea, the wars, etc. So for half of the country to believe that

[35:58]

they’re living in a disaster run by a monster, the only way you get there is if the journalists take on the role of Derren Brown. That’s how we’re here. The journalists have taken on the role of the hypnotist who hypnotizes by language and by influence of the “room.” He influenced Simon Pegg. It’s exactly the same mechanism you’re seeing play out. If the journalists say it often enough, if they act like they’re all on the same side, if they act like experts, if they give you one example after another to demonstrate their point—even if it’s just confirmation bias—half of the country is going to buy into it because we’re wired that way. Half of the country will be susceptible to it because of team protection. In other words, if you were on the team that is likely to support Trump, you’re a little bit

[37:02]

protected against the fact-free bias telling you to change your opinion. But if you’re already biased toward not liking that side of politics, it’s very easy for the media to “Derren Brown” you. That’s what we’re watching happen.

The example would be when the media somewhat universally said Trump is calling immigrants “animals,” even though right in front of them was the evidence that that did not happen. You saw people rewriting their own personal history in real time, just like Simon Pegg did. You saw how that happened. It’s because the media convinced other people and convinced themselves—because of the echo chamber thing—that they were dealing with a monster. So why wouldn’t a monster talk like a monster? If Trump’s a monster, why would we be surprised that he would talk

[38:02]

in monstrous terms? But if you believe he’s not a monster, you don’t hear it. I listened to it live and I thought, “How in the world did anybody interpret that as meaning all immigrants are monsters?” It was mind-boggling that anybody could have had that interpretation. But then you watch Derren Brown change the memory of Simon Pegg in real time and you say, “Okay, that’s how.” It’s not even complicated to explain.

Somebody says “it’s tone.” If you’re referring to hypnosis, some people think that the way you speak—the cadence, the timing, the tone—are important to influence. They might be slightly

[39:05]

important in the sense that if you had a bad voice it might be distracting, but there’s very little technique in that. It’s in the wording of things. One of the best evidences of that is that some of the best hypnotists of all time had terrible voices and they don’t all talk the same.

Let’s talk about NXIVM, or whatever it is, the cult in upstate New York. It’s getting some airplay. I watched a video clip of the leader of that cult, whose name is Raniere. I only watched three minutes of Raniere talking. People sent it to me because they were curious whether he was persuasive or a hypnotist. I

[40:06]

couldn’t tell from that one clip. I could tell that he was speaking in a way that would endear certain people to him. That was clear just because he sounded smart and empathetic. If somebody sounds really smart and they also have empathy, a certain number of people are going to be drawn to them.

The woman who was interviewing him—it was fascinating. If you were to see the interviewer and then Raniere on the street, you probably would have said that the woman was far more romantically and sexually valuable than him. He looks sort of like a nerdy, lowish-looking guy, and she was

[41:07]

unusually attractive, way above average. But what was interesting is if you watch that interview, she is clearly in love. If you look at the way she looks at him, it’s love. Now, I don’t know if they have any history—maybe it’s an ex-girlfriend—but to watch that indicates that he’s got some persuasion power that’s probably pretty special. Apparently, he used it for evil if the allegations are true.

“Please explain my tweets about John Legend,” somebody says. So John Legend has been sort of the anti-Kanye West. In public, he’s trying to be friendly with Kanye

[42:07]

because I guess they are friends, but he also quite aggressively argues against the idea that anybody should be pro-Trump, essentially. What I’m watching is John Legend exhibit bias and hatred in his effort to discredit bias and hatred. You’re watching him become the irrational, angry, hate-filled creature, which is his whole point that you should not be. I don’t think he realizes it. But it’s hard to watch because he’s going through something—see, my guess is that he’s a smart guy, but he’s watching other smart people disagree and it’s causing him some dissonance.

[43:10]

He’s trying to figure out how he could be so sure of something while he’s watching other people he thought were smart have reversed from where he was and defending it pretty well. Candace Owens does the cleanest example of defending that point of view. For him to watch that and see that that point of view is just more persuasive should, in theory, throw him into cognitive dissonance and cause him to act irrationally. If everything we’ve learned about how people are wired is true, you should see him acting irrationally. Instead of acting with love, which is what he promotes, he is acting with bias and hatred, which is quite palpable. It’s the least persuasive thing you’ll ever see in your life, and it’s hard to watch only

[44:12]

because his intentions are right.

Let me say this again: I don’t want to be the guy who insults John Legend for simply wanting the world to be a better place. He’s doing all the things I admire: he cares, he’s got empathy, he’s got skin in the game, and he’s not sitting on the sidelines. His hopes and dreams are all in the right direction. His mechanism—his system to get where he wants to go—is completely dysfunctional. That’s what Candace talks about. She’s not saying “I want to get to a good place and you want to get to a bad place.” Everybody agrees we want to get to this good place. Candace says your system to get there doesn’t work. It’s obvious; just look at what

[45:13]

results you got. Keep doing your system, keep watching the results. It’s obvious it doesn’t work. Then look at the people who have rejected that system, that way of thinking—being caught in the past and in anger. Look at the people who have just translated their minds into “Let me just use the stuff I’ve got, let me take advantage of the things I do have, let me look at the things I can do instead of looking at the things I can’t do.” We note that those people get to a good place.

The hard part is watching John Legend—who I believe is smart and capable—his mind is in all the right places, but he doesn’t see that his mechanism to get there is just completely broken. There are better ones being suggested right now.

That’s all I have for today. Does anybody have any question or comment about

[46:15]

today’s Periscope? I will give you another minute to weigh in. While you’re making your comments, let me just talk about a story that Meek Mill—if I’m saying his name right—was maybe talked out of attending the meeting at the White House about prison reform. Jay-Z may have been part of that conversation. I don’t know that he specifically talked him out of it, but after consulting with people, Meek Mill decided not to go because the meeting was a “sham.” Some people are saying this was really just giving the president—who is a “big old racist” in their point of view—a way to look good and nothing can come of the plan. This is what I call the loser philosophy. This is about the cleanest example you’ll ever see.

[47:17]

Meek Mill—again, probably a smart, capable, well-meaning guy—this is no insult about the person. I’m only going to talk about the technique. There are smart people who use bad techniques; it happens all the time. Using the wrong technique doesn’t mean you’re a bad person; it just means you’ve got the wrong technique. In this case, the correct winning play was to go to the meeting. Because you go to the meeting, you’re part of the conversation, you raise your profile. Yes, you do make the president look less like a racist, and maybe you didn’t like that part, but we live in the adult world where you make investments for bigger gains. The bigger gain is to be in the room. The bigger gain is to be part of the conversation.

Now, I know enough because I have personally talked to somebody involved in the prison reform process.

[48:17]

I’ve had a personal conversation with somebody who works directly for Jared Kushner. I know that this is a genuine, real prison reform effort. There is nothing purely political about this. These are people who really do want to fix this part of the world. It’s unglamorous. It doesn’t help them personally in any frickin’ way. This is absolutely for the benefit of the people who will be helped. To walk away from that meeting because of this smaller question—that it would make this guy you think is racist look like less of a racist—it’s still a loser philosophy. It’s a loser way to go to not attend the meeting. Smart people attend the meeting.

Let me give you an example. I don’t know

[49:20]

if Hawk was invited to the meeting, but I did connect him to that process. If he had been invited, I think he would have gone. Hawk is a smarter operator and he understands that having the right system is the only way you’re going to get to the right answer. In this particular case, had he been invited, I think he would have gone because he would want to be part of the solution. He’s just operating at a higher level.

It’s also true that for a younger performer like Meek Mill, he does have some legitimate career issues. I would not fault him for saying, “At this point in my career, I’m gonna protect my base a little bit. Maybe later when I’m a little safer I can do some risky stuff like Kanye is doing.” I don’t know what his thought process is, but I

[50:23]

would not criticize Meek Mill for making the choice he made because that’s probably the right choice for him and his place in the industry. Later on, maybe he gets a little more flexibility. He’s trying to keep his base, and there’s nothing wrong with that. People are allowed to make selfish decisions, and I don’t judge people for making selfish decisions.

“More risk equals more reward.” False. More risk does not equal more reward for an individual. More risk equals more reward for the average of the crowd, if it’s something like investing. For the individual, that doesn’t necessarily play out.

“Looks like you just did, Scott.” I’ve seen this comment

[51:25]

twice. Just did what? Tell me what it is you think I just did. I can’t tell; I don’t even know if that’s a criticism or agreement. We all make selfish decisions, yeah, and that’s allowed. I approve of selfish decisions, especially when you’re explicit about it. In fact, if Meek Mill had said, “Look, I’d like to get into this political stuff, I think I could be helpful, but at the moment it would just be bad for my career. I’ll come back later when I’m stronger and more secure,” I’d say that’s enlightened selfishness. I would not ask for anything above that.

“Clean coal.” Why are we talking about clean coal? I will

[52:26]

agree with you that there’s no such thing as clean coal as far as I know. To the extent that President Trump is calling the coal “clean,” I’m not sure that even qualifies as hyperbole—well, it does qualify if it’s cleaner than it used to be, I suppose. I haven’t seen Trump’s tweets from this morning.

Elon Musk is talking about his bricks a little bit more. The bricks that are made from the dirt that his Boring Company makes when they make tunnels—he’s looking at selling them for maybe ten cents a brick, so that building a home would be practically free. Imagine, if you will, that wherever they

[53:27]

built these Hyperloops, you’re creating the bricks. Since it’s probably not expensive land—potentially you could be putting the tunnels under inexpensive land—then people could be building inexpensive homes on inexpensive land along the entire route of the high-speed tunnel. They’d have access to the transportation because they’re right next to the tunnel. It’s a pretty good deal.

“You need shale for good bricks.” There might be different criteria for different dirt. All right, I’ll go look at the Trump tweets after this. I’m going to sign off for now. Talk to you later.