Episode 164 Scott Adams: Healthcare, North Korea, Noam Chomsky, Climate Change
Date: 2018-08-02 | Duration: 31:05
Topics
Healthcare is moving in the right direction Technology to cut costs and cutting unnecessary regulations Rand Paul…most honest person in the game? Fountain of youth pill discovered? Possible medical uses for weed President Trump’s tweet thanking and respecting Chairman Kim for returning remains of our fallen heroes Noam Chomsky video about current events Climate skeptic scientists
Transcript
[0:06]
Pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom. Hey Reggie, Ivanka, hi everybody. Come on in here. Jeremy, Tyler, JP, and E Mustang Girl. Hey Mark, go out in here, Bikini Ninja—you have funny names—Suzy, Rick. I know why you’re here. I know why you’re here: you’re here for the simultaneous sip. I dare say it’s the best sip of the day. It’s a way to get your morning off to the right start. I can speak from experience: I have never died on a day when I’ve had a simultaneous sip. Zero. That’s my correlation. In fact, I’m willing to say I will live forever if I…
[1:07]
…just keep drinking this delicious coffee. It’s time for all of you to join me for the simultaneous sip. Quick, grab your mugs, your cups, your vessels, your glasses with the liquid of your choice—coffee preferred. It’s time.
Oh, so good. I hope you’re all feeling good. Take a deep breath. Sometimes you just need to be reminded to relax, so that’s what I’m here to do. Take a nice deep breath, shake it off, get your muscles loosened, and you’re off to a good start.
Now, we got a few topics today. Let’s talk about healthcare. Healthcare, as you…
[2:07]
…know, is a big, complicated area. People like me don’t know much about it, and people like you probably don’t know much about it either. But a few interesting things are happening. One is that the government has apparently approved some kind of telemedicine law. Again, I don’t know the details, but it looks like the government has allowed some doctoring over the internet for rural areas. When I saw that, I said to myself: why does the government have to allow that or fund it? Why is that not already happening? I think the issue is funding because they need to reach these areas and they don’t have the infrastructure necessarily to do it. There might have also been some laws about it at some point, but I don’t know if that was part of the current changes. Tele-doctor—and so that…
[3:09]
…seems like a big deal. I also see that there are some changes in that the government’s made some changes on something about short-term insurance and how you can extend it from 3 months to 12 months. Whatever the change was, I don’t really understand that, but Rand Paul seems to think it’s a good idea. When it comes to competition, he’s sort of my Alan Dershowitz for competition. I’ve told you that on legal matters, I just wait to see what Alan Dershowitz says because if he likes it, I’m probably going to like it too. If he says it’s good, I’ll probably think it’s good. On stuff like this healthcare, and specifically whether the government’s doing something for competition, if Rand has looked at it and he likes it, I’m a lot closer to liking it myself. Most of us are…
[4:09]
…in the same boat. I kind of trust he’s very trustworthy. Don’t you think Rand Paul—I say good things about him a lot even though I don’t agree with him on all of his policy. I’m just talking about the character of the individual. He seems like probably the most honest person in the game right now. He just seems totally straight, which probably is why I can tell there are some things I don’t like; because if everybody else is lying, you don’t know if you like it or not. But we should know where he stands. I don’t know if he’s an idealist or he’s practical—some of his ideas seem a little impractical—I can’t think of one in particular, but he certainly knows his stuff. Anyway, he can’t get on with his neighbors, he says. Well, a lot of us have that…
[5:11]
…problem. Here’s my larger point about healthcare: it looks like stuff’s happening. It looks like the administration is taking advantage of technology and cutting regulations. Those are the two most fruitful paths compared to the Bernie Sanders wing that are saying single-payer or healthcare for all, and it’s going to cost us a few extra trillion to do that. That plan, while it sounds good in theory, the numbers are hard to make work. But there may be something with technology and with cutting regulations and goosing the market that would get us there. I think I talked about this before: there was some law or regulation that wouldn’t allow a private doctor to have an MRI machine. He could…
[6:13]
…charge very little, like five hundred dollars compared to thousands it would cost if you went to a hospital. It was just a regulation that doesn’t allow it. I’m sure there’s some explanation for that, but it’s not quite obvious to me what it is. I feel as though there’s a potential efficiency gain of maybe fifty percent. That’s just what it feels like—an efficiency gain meaning the cost of healthcare is probably fifty percent higher than it needs to be for any good reason. It has to do with regulations, inefficiency, doing things the old way, and not taking advantage of technology.
Now, the big picture is that healthcare might be…
[7:14]
…moving in the right direction. Then I saw a tweet—Mike Cernovich tweeted yesterday about an MIT professor/scientist who came up with a pill that is sort of like a “fountain of youth” pill. Now, if I told you that just out of context, your first reaction would be: yeah, right. Sounds like perpetual motion. Sounds like bunk. And probably it is. But the credentials of the scientists working on it, plus his board—which apparently is filled with Nobel Prize scientists—have found some kind of gene that you can manipulate. Apparently, this pill they’ve made manipulates it, so they say. When you get rid of aging…
[8:18]
…as a problem, you also get rid of a lot of the age-related diseases. Elysium—somebody said in the comments—is the name of the company if you want to Google that. E-l-y-s-i-u-m. Elysium. Now, it did not go through the FDA. If you hear these two things—it’s a youth pill and it did not go through the FDA—you should put all of your skepticism powers onto that. Be as skeptical as you want. I don’t have an opinion whether it’s real or not; I’m just giving you the facts that there are super qualified people who say there’s something to it, but it didn’t go through the FDA. I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea yet. My point here…
[9:19]
…is if you’re trying to predict healthcare expenses over the next ten years, which everybody’s doing in order to compare these healthcare plans, how do you factor that in? What if in three years we’re taking “live forever” pills? How does that change everything?
Every day you see that there’s a new breakthrough in cancer treatment and stem cell stuff, and these are completely game-changing. Somebody says the cost goes up—it’s entirely possible the cost goes up, but it could also drop by eighty percent, at least for the big things that you get hospitalized for. In the next ten years, I don’t know how you could possibly model the economics of any of this stuff. Somebody says…
[10:22]
…”You will look more like I do when you get younger.” I’ve actually said for probably twenty years that I might be the first generation that gets to grow younger. Think about that. Probably, if you look at the entire future life of human beings, somebody’s going to be born into the age where they’re growing old, and then technology gets there and they can start reversing it. It’s going to happen to somebody. It might be now. Of course, I think everybody’s been saying that every year since probably the ’70s, so you shouldn’t put too much stock in it, but someday it’s going to happen. I’m pretty healthy at the moment. I’ve said before that I believe I have reversed my aging since I…
[11:25]
…was 40. At age forty, I was in far worse health than I am now—just general health, not anything specific. Between the ages of 40 and my current age, sixty-one, science has improved. Science has said: “Hey, if you eat these foods and exercise this way, you will be more healthy.” I’ve taken what science has learned and thrown away the bad science of the past, which was the food pyramid—which actually made me less healthy. There were all the wrong recommendations for food. I figured out that just through diet and exercise—and smoking lots of weed, which is really good for some people, but I don’t recommend that; I’m not a doctor, so don’t take any medical recommendations from me—but through trial and error and the improvement of science, I have legitimately grown younger.
[12:27]
I know our brain… actually, we’ve had lunch. Smoking takes care of most of my smaller problems. Marijuana—this is just in my case—in conjunction with a preventive inhaler for asthma, completely eliminates my allergies and asthma problems. I used to have two months of a year where it was just a living hell for most of my adulthood, but turns out marijuana just makes that go away. So, no asthma problems. I got rid of my… well, I didn’t get rid of, but I sleep like a baby despite having some mild sleep apnea problems. Enough that it was a problem. Marijuana helps all of my…
[13:32]
…anxiety. I don’t know how much I’d have if I didn’t; I imagine it would be more. So I sleep like a baby, I have no anxiety, and I have no depression. I might if I were not a medical user. The other major benefit of marijuana is it’s an anti-inflammatory. Most problems that people have are inflammation. There are a whole host of problems you get from inflammation, and one of them is a simple one: you can’t work out as much if you’re all sore. You don’t want to work out. I have no soreness ever. I work out five days a week typically, and I never have any soreness. My body is as fit and as lean as probably when I was 25. That’s largely because…
[14:37]
…I now know what to eat.
Let’s change the topic. Did you see the tweet this morning from President Trump about North Korea? He made a very friendly tweet to Kim Jong Un thanking him for the ashes of the fallen heroes and saying that he knew he would keep his word. No, I’m not stoned right now, somebody’s asking. So, the President said that he appreciated Kim Jong Un for giving the ashes and for doing what he said he would do. Here’s the persuasion part of that tweet: when you tell somebody that you knew they would be true to their word, that’s really powerful persuasion. Because it could be…
[15:40]
…that Kim Jong Un is just doing what he needs to do and he’s not really thinking of it as a matter of honor per se, but the President has framed it as an act of honor. “You made us a promise, it was something that mattered to us, you came through in a fairly quick manner,” and the President said he knew he could trust him on this issue. That is a really strong way to frame this because what is it that Kim wants? He wants to be respected on the international stage. He wants other things too, but that’s certainly something he wants. In public, you have seen two leaders—and this is the important part, you won’t hear anybody else say this—you watch two leaders have each other’s back. If you don’t get that…
[16:41]
…you don’t know what’s happening. You might be looking at: what have they done with their missiles? Are they still working on them? As some people who are smarter than I am have said, of course they’re still working on their missiles. Of course they’re still working on whatever because they’re still negotiating until the ink is dry. As someone said, on an agreement, of course you keep working on it. That’s the only way that you get to an agreement because nobody’s going to make an agreement if you’re just giving them stuff for nothing in return. You shouldn’t worry at all that they’re doing stuff that we’re hoping will stop—that’s just part of the negotiation. Now, you might say, but that would also look exactly the same if they were just playing a trick on us and they don’t plan to give up anything. You’re right. To us as observers, it would look the same. It probably wouldn’t look the same to the people who actually know what’s going on over there—our negotiators, Mike Pompeo, and…
[17:42]
…the intel services. They probably have a different idea of what’s going on than the public does. But when you see a tweet like that from the President, he has Kim Jong Un’s back. Kim Jong Un did something that made the President look good. He gave him something conspicuous: the ashes of the fallen soldiers. He knew those were important to the President both emotionally and politically in terms of showing that he’s made progress. Somebody said “the bro code”—that’s pretty close to what’s happening. You see these two leaders in public having each other’s back, making each other look good, making it look like there’s some success. Now, we hope that the ashes are real and when we test the DNA…
[18:44]
…we got what we thought we got. I think that’ll be true; they probably know by now. Maybe there’ll be more of them. Now, what will the critics say? I will let you do the punchline at home. What will the critics say about getting the ashes—the remains of the fallen—back? I’m saying “ashes,” but I just mean in terms of organic matter decomposing. I think the critics will say something like, “Kim Jong Un got everything he wanted. He’s still building weapons, he got respect, and all he gave us was some boxes of dirt.” It’s going to look like that. But it’s going to be tough to make that claim because those boxes…
[19:48]
…likely have the remains of heroes in them, so you don’t want to be a critic. It’s going to be dangerous to be a critic on this particular point.
I saw a video clip this morning that I thought was interesting. I don’t have the link to it—I may have tweeted it—but it was a video clip of an interview with Noam Chomsky about current events and about the Trump administration. It was really interesting because you might know Noam Chomsky is no friend of governments. He’s not a big fan of the government in general. He said the Russian stuff was just trivial and barely worth our time. His context, of course, is that governments always interfere with other governments. If you look at it…
[20:48]
…in context, it’s just a whole bunch of nothing compared to the real problems we have. Here’s his example of the biggest real problems—he said two of them. One is having a nuclear confrontation with Russia, so we’re probably better off if we try to play friendly with them. He mentioned previous administrations that probably just made things worse. I don’t know if he’s right about that part, but it’s interesting that Noam Chomsky is saying that the Russia thing is no big deal. He does say that climate science could be lethal to humanity in general. The same day, somebody had tweeted around some links to some climate skeptics who, if you watch their video, it’s very convincing that we don’t know what’s going on with climate. That does not mean it’s not a…
[21:49]
…problem; it just means that we don’t know what’s happening. Then I see another clip of another scientist who’s saying, “Oh, it’s definitely there, there’s no doubt about it, we’ve got this big problem.” I think to myself: they’re both completely convincing. The skeptics are completely convincing that we don’t know what’s happening and that it’s ridiculous to think that we can forecast these things. Then you hear the experts and you think: well, that’s pretty convincing too. How could they both be convincing? The way that can happen is that the topic is complicated. When a topic is complicated, people who know more than you do can pull anything out of that topic and package it any way they want, and it’s going to sound pretty good to you. Take for example that healthcare stuff I was…
[22:50]
…just talking about. The way I described it was as positive things. But I guarantee you that I could bring in someone who knows more than I do about this who would say both those things are a waste of time, it’ll just make things worse, and here’s why. When they’re done, you’d say to yourself: well, that sounds pretty convincing. I thought this was good, but it looks like it’s actually bad. Then I could bring in the next expert who would say: “No, that guy’s only got half the information. When you look at all the information, these are great things and all moving in the right direction.” Then you’d say to yourself: sounds pretty convincing, I believe it. So you and I are kind of helpless in the face of all this complexity. That’s why I always recommend trying things small. If there’s anything you can try in one…
[23:51]
…state or try a pilot, that’s always the way to go. With climate change, I’m not sure that option exists. Do you know where we can find those climate science videos? The ones where the skeptics were on PragerU. If you Google “climate science” and “PragerU,” you’ll find it. It’s easier to find the ones that are pro-climate. I heard one of the skeptics—I forget his name, but he’s one of the famous skeptics—talking about the famous 97% of climate scientists who agree. But if you really drill down to what it is they agree on, it’s not the models.
[24:52]
When you see a news story, it’s always a model. This model predicts the end of the world. There’s 97 percent agreement that the climate changes and that CO2 is a component. I may be over-summarizing this, but that’s close to what they agree on, which is quite different from “the world is going to end and we know it now.” Even the skeptics don’t say there’s no problem. The skeptics say we don’t have a reason to think there’s a problem, which is different. That doesn’t mean that the world won’t end from climate science; even the skeptics are not ruling it out. They’re just saying that you can’t rule it in. I’ve heard people say under that situation, “Well, you should just act as though it is a problem because if it might be, it will kill us all.”
[25:55]
So just the fact that it might be a problem should be all you need to know to spend trillions of dollars to fix it. To which I say: bad thinking. If you had unlimited money and time and resources, it would be good thinking. You should just toss all that unlimited time and money in that direction just in case. But we live in a world where we’re surrounded by mortal threats. Unemployment is a mortal threat. The economy is a mortal threat—if the economy is bad, lots of people die. There’s terrorism, there’s nuclear war, you name it. In a world where there are competing risks, if there’s a risk that might be a problem and it might not be, how much resource do you put toward that when you have real ones that are immediate and you can deal with? My take on this is that there are…
[26:57]
…technologies coming online that can modify or suck the CO2 out if we need to. Humans are extremely adaptable, especially if they see a problem coming. I think that in the long run, we’re better off making sure our economy is operating at peak because if it turns out we’ve got to pivot quickly and do something about hardening our buildings against these storms or living underground or whatever, we’re in better shape. Living underground, obviously, is not a short-term solution.
Somebody wants me to say something but I don’t think I want to say… oh, how is my app coming along? Good. I’m going to…
[27:58]
…tell you more about that in maybe next week. I’ll tell you a little more about that, so stay tuned for that.
Does anybody have any questions? I’ve got a few minutes. Let’s talk about Q. You saw that some of the followers of Q, the so-called conspiracy theory anonymous users, attended the last Trump rally. That got CNN breathing hard because they thought, “We can focus on this handful of people and make all Trump supporters look dumb.”
[29:02]
As you know, I’m not a believer in Q. I think it is for entertainment only, sort of like horoscopes, but you’re welcome to accept it in any way you like. There’s a lot of talking about the number 17. You could make anything you want of Q. My entire opinion is that it’s fun; if you see it as anything more than that, that’s on you. First-timer says, “Do you do this daily at the same time?” Roughly, but sometimes I’m traveling. But roughly, yes. Can persuasion be used on…
[30:04]
…the homeless problem? Yes, because persuasion can be used on every problem. You can’t persuade the homeless to go get jobs, probably, because there are reasons that people are homeless, but you could certainly persuade people to do something about it. How to fix the problem in San Francisco? Well, a lot of the problems in the cities are local government problems. There’s just a problem with the government. Long-term, that stuff does get fixed because people vote out the people who are not fixing it.
I’m going to have to take off. I’ve got other stuff to do, and I will talk to all of you later. Bye for now.