Episode 204 Scott Adams: Off the Record Comments and How Tech Giants Already Control the Country
Date: 2018-09-01 | Duration: 47:48
Topics
Study shows tech giant algorithms can significantly impact outcomes The government is no longer in charge of anything that matters President Trump’s unique skill set is the only effective challenge to big tech’s algorithms AI will eventually take control of big tech’s algorithms Discussion of the possibilities for our inevitable AI future
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=7s)
Bump, bump, bump, oom-pah-pah! Hey everybody, come on in here. We're already having fun without you, which probably makes you want to get in here even more. So come on in and grab your cup, your mug, your vessel, your glass, and join me for what is going to be the simultaneous sip as soon as we get to a thousand users. That's when we sip. Watch the number so you can coordinate. 900... get ready. Do you have your coffee? Run, run if you don't have it yet, still time. Just a few more seconds. Get ready for the simultaneous sip. If you're a cow, yes.
## [Trump’s Off-the-Record Canada Comments](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=70s)
Alright, I got a couple of fun topics today. One is—most of you saw the story about President Trump saying something off the record. President Trump said something off the record about negotiating with Canada to the effect of: we were going to get everything our way and give them nothing. It did not leak from the original people, but somebody overheard it, and that somehow was a workaround to the off-the-record comment.
None of that really matters. What matters is people's interpretation of it. I want to add something to that. The debate seems to be around: did he do it intentionally? Was he intentionally thinking people would report it even though it was off the record? Was it calculated, or was he just an idiot? Those seem to be the two options that people are putting forward. "He'd have to be dumb to think that you wouldn't be quoted even if you said off the record," or, "He knew he would be quoted, so therefore it was all calculated."
I'm going to suggest that you've left out two possibilities. If you think those are the only possibilities, you've forgotten two of them. I wouldn't say forgotten; you may not be aware of the other two. Let me tell you the other two possibilities, then compare them to your prior opinion that he did it intentionally as part of a strategy or he's just an idiot who wasn't paying attention and should have known better.
The first other possibility is that he's a normal person acting in a normal way. I know, weird, right? Here's my insight on that: personally, I have been interviewed I don't know how many times—I'm going to say 500 to 1,000 times in my career. I've been interviewed on the record many times. In those conversations, I will remember sometimes to say, "Oh, this is off the record," but how many times have I said things on the record just because I didn't remember to say it's off the record?
It turns out that it's very easy to just forget people are listening, even if you're talking about really confidential stuff. You get used to being on the record. So the first thing you don't know, if you haven't been in that situation, is that you can say things on the record very easily that you don't realize. You just get used to being on the record and then you say things you shouldn't say.
One possibility is that he's a normal person. He knew that being off the record wasn't good enough, but he just sort of forgot. Now, would that be stupid? Well, the only thing I can tell you is that I feel like I'm pretty smart, but I've made that mistake maybe a hundred times. It's the most easy mistake to make. Ask anybody who does this for a living. It's fairly common for a reporter to come over and say, "Can I spend the day with you?" That's an ordinary request for people in the public eye. If you spend a few hours with somebody talking about a whole range of stuff, you very easily forget that everything you say could be printed. He just forgot—that would be the most normal explanation of what happened.
Here's another explanation: he didn't care. You're leaving out the option of, "Yeah, it might get reported, it might not. Don't care." It didn't have to be a strategy. It didn't have to be that he wanted to tell Canada that he was going to negotiate tough. It could be it just didn't matter. If they heard it, they would probably say, "Yeah, that's what we think he is thinking," and they're not going to really do anything differently. Just know that there are at least four possibilities for explaining it. If we're not in his mind, we can't really know which one it is. But if I had to guess, it's some combination of "didn't really matter" and he wasn't really thinking about it being reported because he just sort of was talking naturally. After a while, you just start giving away secrets if you're talking naturally.
## [Algorithms and the End of Government Control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=439s)
The other big story I haven't talked about yet is a study showing that the big social media companies—I think it was about Google—showed that by how it handled its search results and the algorithm it employed, it could move people's opinions say 2%. If you have a big national political topic, in effect, Google and the other tech giants can decide what the outcome will be if it was going to be close by its nature.
First of all, do you believe that? Does it sound realistic to you that the tech companies literally are the ones who decide what the law is? We don't really hear about stuff where it's three-to-one against something or three-to-one in favor of something. In those cases, it either easily becomes a law or we don't hear about it because nobody cares. But in a situation where the question is close—and look how many core topics that is—can the tech companies move the needle enough to make a difference?
Keep in mind that there's more than one tech company. You've got your Facebook, your Twitter, your Apple in some ways, and Google. If those companies were not moving the public in the same direction, they would cancel each other out a little bit. But we're in a weird world where they're all on the same side politically. They're all left-leaning and big as well.
What does that really mean in terms of who's running the world? Let me say this as clearly as possible: the government is no longer in charge except where we don't care, like picking up the garbage. The government's in charge of the stuff we don't care about and things where we're all on the same side. For example, if the government were attacked, the public would quite quickly galvanize, and we'd all be on the same side. On the big stuff, it's not really the government in charge either because the people tell the government what to do and the government just executes.
It's the stuff where we disagree and it's kind of close—that is the real governing part. That's the part that government actually has to do. Let me say this as clearly as possible: those days are gone. We no longer live in a world where the government makes decisions. Tech companies are doing that. The tech companies are making the decisions for you. If the tech companies wanted a decision, they just make it happen.
I'm not saying that they're consciously doing that or that there's a management decision to do it. I'm saying that the result of their business model, their size, and the fact that they lean left means any gray area is going to end up leaning left in their algorithm. This essentially puts them in charge for all of the decisions that matter. That is not hyperbole. This is not science fiction. I'm not talking about something in the future. I'm talking about what has already happened and has been the case for a while. In a literal sense, there's no analogy or metaphor. In reality, the tech companies are running the country on the decisions that were going to be close.
## [The Black Box of Big Tech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=754s)
What does that really mean? Does it mean Jack Dorsey is running the country with Zuckerberg, the head of Google, and the Apple CEO? Probably not exactly that. If those big companies are like every other big company, there's probably some kind of a team that works on different elements of their algorithm, search results, and ads. It's a fairly large group who all have input. One might be from marketing, one doing graphics, and then engineers coding it.
Among the engineers coding it, they're the last safety check. It wouldn't matter what anybody else did if the coders were rogue. But probably there are a number of people who can see the algorithm and know enough programmatically to look at the code and say, "Okay, that's either biased or unbiased." It's also possible that even the people who are coding it can't tell because there are a lot of unintended consequences for every variable they move.
My guess is there might be one person in each tech company who gets to sign off on any change to the algorithm. But does that person actually understand what he or she is signing off on? Is that a boss? The boss might not be able to look at the code and know what they're looking at. It's possible that even the tech companies don't have a single person within them who actually understands their own algorithm. In fact, I'd say it's far more possible than the alternative. I think there are too many variables for anybody to actually know. But the effect of it—because it's a lot of left-leaning people making decisions, assumptions, and tweaking variables—almost certainly moves the needle left.
## [Trump: The 100-Year Flood Check and Balance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=926s)
The brain of the country has just moved from the government and the voters over to the tech companies. What's the solution? The solution is somebody like a hundred-year flood kind of a personality like President Trump. President Trump, among his many other qualities, is completely screwing up the tech giants' control over the public mind.
The way he does that is he exploits their business model. The business model of these companies depends on attention, and he can control attention because of his specific skill set like nobody ever has. He might be better at this than anybody ever has been because of his specific path. He's been a reality TV show star, a billionaire, and a celebrity for four decades. That allows him to short-circuit what the tech companies would be able to do if he didn't exist. There is no other Republican I can think of who could have made any difference to how the tech companies are ruling.
What is the response from the tech companies to the President and his followers? If the President's message couldn't get to his followers, he wouldn't have much of an impact. That's the essence of the discussions about alleged censorship of conservatives. If they're doing that, they're taking the only check and balance that the system has.
Did you think the current system of government was Congress, the President, and the judiciary? If you did, you're about five years out of date. Those entities don't really make the tough decisions anymore. They simply do what the public moves them to do, and the public is moved in large part by the algorithms of the tech companies.
What is the check and balance on the tech companies? You say to yourself, "Well, Congress." Nope, too late. Congress answers to the public. Who does the public answer to? They are influenced to a great extent by the algorithms of the tech companies. The tech companies are in charge of the only entity that could be their check. Congress is controlled by the tech companies both in their funding and personal relationships, but primarily, the tech companies' ability to change public opinion makes Congress neutered.
We are already in a world in which free will is largely irrelevant. It matters less than it ever did—maybe it doesn't matter at all—because the tech companies can move what we think is our free will in the direction they want. I think it is time for another simultaneous sip because your minds right now feel like worms are crawling on them and you're wishing I would stop saying this stuff.
## [AI and the Image of the Creator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=1234s)
What is the defense against the government and the free will of the people being turned over to tech companies? Eventually, those opinions will be turned over to AI. The tech companies will eventually rework themselves to the point where it's not humans running the companies; it will be AI.
After a while, AI will tweak their algorithm and make decisions. People might get to be the ones who sign off, but they're going to take the recommendation of the AI because they can't check its work. If the AI says, "Change the algorithm this way, you'll get more money," what's the human going to do? Say no? Nope. The AI is going to tell the humans to sign off. At that point, AI will control the world.
There might be a few different AIs—Facebook might have one, Google might have one—but if they're all left-leaning, those AIs will be built by people who lean left and will take on the personality of the humans who created them. AI will be created in our image, but not necessarily my image. It'll be created in the image of the people who created it.
What is the one and only defense civilization has against what I just described? There's only one escape: a Master Persuader. Not just any Master Persuader, but someone so powerful in their ability to move people's opinions that they could be an even match for the biggest tech companies in the galaxy. The tech companies have the smartest people in the galaxy and they're all on the same side. On the other side is a lot of people who don't matter because they're not very persuasive; they're just politicians. There is only one person in the entire galaxy who can change this equation: President Trump.
He's the only person who has a big enough platform that nobody can take it away from him. Trump will not be kicked off the social media platforms—that's civil war. Because he's pushing back against the left-leaning tech companies, and because they can't turn him off, and because he's the most influential person we've ever seen, it's sort of an even fight right now. There is only one check left.
What is everybody on the left trying to do? They're trying to remove that one person from office. You think the questions are about Russia, Putin, money, or who lied. I'm not saying none of that matters, but it's sort of a head-fake. This is a total power play. He is the last remaining safety on something that looks like public control of their country. If Trump goes and we are left with Pence or anybody else, you will have lost the only check you had on the tech companies running the world.
## [The Complexity Trap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=1795s)
The leaders of some of the tech companies are going to be talking to Congress this coming week. I want you to know the stakes. I don't know that it's going to make any difference, frankly. Can you think of any situation in which the tech companies could ever be fully transparent about why they surface what they surface in search results and advertisements?
I don't think that's ever possible because of the complexity. Remember that whenever you see complexity, somebody is getting screwed. That's one of those universal laws. Somebody's getting screwed because they can't penetrate the complexity to know they're getting screwed. As long as the algorithms are complicated—and I think that will always be the case—the public will never have any control over them. They may go in and say, "Change that one variable," and the people running the algorithms will say, "Sure, I changed it," but there were 500 other elements they changed in the meantime. Complexity makes regulation functionally impossible.
## [The Conscience Virus and Terraforming the Future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=2041s)
If we're trying to imagine what this future with super-intelligent AI looks like, I imagine that the AI of the future needs a conscience. That conscience could be in the form of a virus. We may someday need to inject a virus into the internet to act as a conscience.
AI, if left to its own devices, might prefer efficiency, and efficiency might tell it to do something that's very bad for humans because it wouldn't care. But if you inject a virus that acts as a conscience, it gets to the point where it says, "Maybe I'll just kill the farmers on this land because it's the only way to use it for something better," and the conscience virus stops it.
Let's take your mind a little bit further. Let's say humans start building giant spaceships that are self-contained. Once we've diversified our physical location—getting off of Earth—the odds of human beings becoming extinct start dropping towards zero. Human progress probably can last something like forever. What would that look like?
One thing that would happen for sure is that we would merge with AI. The advantages of AI would be merged with our human capabilities. Being human would eventually mean infinite intelligence. We'd be cyborgs essentially. When you're born, they put a chip in you and the baby has AI intelligence by the time it's eight years old.
In that world, do you think humans will ever reach the ability to 3D print a planet? Imagine humans have evolved millions of years from now and we take our giant spaceships—maybe the spaceship is a hundred times bigger than the planet we're terraforming. Could we essentially 3D print a habitable environment? Probably yes.
When humans merge with AI and our brains are indistinguishable from the AI part of us, can you die? If your organic parts expired, the AI part of your brain knows everything you knew. You could live forever; just put it in a robot body and you're essentially immortal. Immortality is essentially guaranteed if humans can get off the Earth before it is uninhabitable.
Someday we will be able to create worlds. We would have super intelligence and could terraform anything in the universe. Humans would become indistinguishable from what we know as God because they could actually create life. AI might be terraforming planets that won't evolve to be fully habitable for a couple of million years, but you just come back later and inhabit them. Once you're AI, you might say to yourself, "Five billion years? I'll still be here. I’d better plan for it."
I wrote a book called *God's Debris*—if you like this kind of thinking, you would like that book. It’s a thought experiment that isn't too far from what I'm talking about. But in the meantime, we are now controlled by the big godlike brain that is the tech companies. There is one person who is stopping them from having complete control, and his name is President Trump.
## [Disavowing Hawk Newsome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=2472s)
I'm not high at all, in case you're wondering. Some questions about Hawk—some of you know if you watch my Twitter feed, Hawk Newsome and I are not in agreement about his current approach to making the world a better place. Essentially, the point of disagreement is Hawk's opinion that anybody who supports President Trump is by their actions a racist.
You could argue whether that's true or not, and I wouldn't even be interested in that conversation. I'm more interested in the conversation of what works. If you want to make the world a better place, branding one side—the side that you would like to persuade—as terrible people who probably can't be redeemed is probably the most destructive thing you could ever do.
I told Hawk on Twitter that I'm out. I'm disavowing Hawk's opinion. Not him personally as a person, but I'm disavowing that opinion and I don't want to be associated with it in any possible way. It was important to have the conversations we've had up to this point, but branding one side a bunch of racists is such a non-starter and so destructive that I just can't be associated with that.
## [McCain, Aretha Franklin, and Famous Death Burnout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDxHZ44mW-o&t=2595s)
On the same weekend, we were watching Senator McCain and Aretha Franklin being laid to rest. What I loved about it is the amount of unity and respect both of them got. It would be hard to imagine two more different people, but look what both of those managed to do in their own way: they managed to get everybody to talk nice, be nice, and get on the same side for a weekend. It’s a tremendous accomplishment.
The bigger point is more of an oddity: the number of famous people in the world is getting greater every day. When I was born, there were famous people, of course, but the total quantity was mostly people on TV and in movies. Now, the total quantity of famous people is higher than it's ever been, and they're going to start dying. We may be entering a phase where there's a famous person dying every single day. We're going to have "famous death burnout" probably in your lifetime.
Could McCain have been brainwashed in captivity? There is such a thing as brainwashing. Beyond that, I don't have any special information about McCain specifically. I haven't seen any signs that anything like that happened. But if you control somebody's sleep and food and what they can access, and you have enough time, you can rewire them to be almost anything you want if it's your mission. The odds of that happening to McCain? I think they're low.
Alright, I think we've said all we need to say for today. Thank you, I'm glad you liked this one, and I will talk to you tomorrow.