Episode 205 Scott Adams: How President Trump Became the Main Theme of McCain’s Funeral
Date: 2018-09-02 | Duration: 1:04:03
Topics
Update on Cuban embassy “sonic weapon” McCain planned his own funeral and didn’t get his one final wish The major networks didn’t honor his final wish Integrating computer memory with human memory Image matching memory functions Mind reading limitations and reasonable assumptions Accusing the Democrats of being Socialists, not persuasive Martin Cowen Libertarian for Congress, healthcare cost reductions Does the MSM have a vested interest in promoting racial unrest?
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## Transcript
This is "Coffee with Scott Adams" - Episode 205. Scott discusses the "sonic weapon" in Cuba, the political undertones of John McCain’s funeral, the future of human-computer memory integration, and why the media has a vested interest in maintaining racial tension.
## [Tech Troubles and the Sling Studio Experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=8s)
Hey everybody, come on in. It's a little bit late this morning, I know, but I gave you time to get your coffee and get ready for Coffee with Scott Adams. When we get to a thousand viewers, we will enjoy a simultaneous sip. Almost there. Waiting, waiting... here it comes. And now, the simultaneous sip!
Yes, I am late. I was working, sorry. It happens. I've been trying to upgrade my system here so I can do some split-screen things, and I've discovered once again the reason that my startup already makes an app called Interface, where you can talk to an expert in real time. There were no experts on this particular topic, but as we grow our experts, I hope there will be.
Here's what I was trying to do: I bought this wireless camera system where you can hook up your iPhones and other cameras, and then you can do split screens like a real production from an iPad. I thought to myself, "I'm unreasonably clever with technology, I've spent a lot of time with this stuff. I will buy that kit." It's called the SlingStudio, and I will make it work with my cameras and my laptop. It comes with pretty much no documentation, but you can go online and find things.
The most basic thing I needed to do was use it with this OBS software. Somebody said, "Go with OBS." OBS is the thing I haven't been able to get working for about two years. I'm trying it on different computers, I tried it with all kinds of different equipment, and I've never gotten it to work. I can get it to do things, but the very next time you shut down, all the settings are lost and you have to start from scratch and reload software, unhook things, power things down, and reboot. It doesn't look like it's a real system that can work, but I'm not done with it yet.
I tried to go online to find the answer to a very simple question: How do I get the signal from this box I bought into my Macintosh? That seems like the most obvious question. Is it a cable? Is it Bluetooth? Is it the Wi-Fi that comes with it? How do I connect them? I look at the picture, and it just shows a dotted line. What the hell is a dotted line telling me?
If you dig deeper, you look at all these YouTube videos of people doing stuff. They're 15-minute videos, and I have one question, and I don't know if the answer is in those 15 minutes. It's not just one of them; it's dozens of them. Last night, I spent maybe two hours looking at one YouTube video after another, looking for somebody to tell me the answer to this one question which can't be searched.
If I had access to someone who used this system before, I would have picked up the Interface by WhenHub app, looked for that keyword "SlingStudio," hit a button, and in five minutes, somebody would have said, "Well, if you're using it with a Macintosh, you need to buy an external box that's essentially the video card for it." That's not in the picture, and I can't find anybody in the video that talks about it. When I put that box on there—because it turns out I had one—it still doesn't work.
Now what do you do? I have several thousands of dollars worth of equipment and no real way to get from buying it to using it. My larger topic here is that there's this entire world of things between things you can search for on Google and things you would have to hire an engineer, an expert, a lawyer, or a doctor for. It's just this vast need.
I was trying to make a larger point: it's not my problem per se that I'm worried about, it's that there's an enormous knowledge gap. I've said before that this is the Golden Age, and that the Golden Age would be defined by most of our problems being psychological and mental. This is a good example, because there's so much more I could do if I had access to an expert for just five minutes.
## [The Cuba "Sonic Weapon" and Mass Hysteria](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=374s)
Let's talk about that sonic weapon in Cuba. I saw a New York Times article, an update saying that now they believe it really, maybe, possibly was some kind of a microwave weapon that injured the diplomats in the Cuban embassy. Remember, my initial take on that was that it was probably a mass hysteria and that there's no way the Cubans were secretly targeting Americans at an embassy. It would be an act of war; there just wasn't any reason for it.
I was also reading an article that 5G might be kind of unhealthy. Apparently, there's something about the spectrum or the vibration that 5G makes that could be unhealthy. You could make a weapon out of this stuff; that part I think is certain.
But here's my updated theory on what happened to the diplomats: if it's a weapon, it's definitely not coming from the Cuban government. If it's a weapon, it's definitely not coming from the Russian government either, because it would be an act of war and neither of them have any reason to do such a thing. It just wouldn't make sense in any world that we can imagine. That doesn't mean there's not some crazy person who was doing it, but the bigger part of my prediction of mass hysteria is that however many people were actually affected by a real thing, I'm going to say there are more people imagining that they had effects than there are people who actually have it. That's my updated opinion on that.
## [How President Trump Became the Main Theme of McCain’s Funeral](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=498s)
Let's talk about the McCain funeral. I tried so hard not to talk about the funeral while it's happening, to give the family some space. I tried not to make it political. I tried just to show respect for veterans in general and for the family. But I can't be silent anymore as I'm watching the spectacle.
Here's how I imagined it shook out: We're told that McCain planned his own funeral service or ceremony. McCain decided who was invited and who the speakers were. But he probably did not look at the actual eulogies. I assume he probably did not look at the actual words that people would be speaking. How could he, really?
The very thing that he wanted—we understand, could be wrong about this, but it looks like the thing he wanted—was that President Trump be left out and that he not be made the star of McCain's funeral. McCain didn't want to be overshadowed by Trump because they weren't on good terms. Why do you want the guy that you don't like being the shadow over your funeral? It just feels like you want less of that.
He did not get his final wish. John McCain did not get his final wish because the people who spoke—I won't name names—used this implied contrast to President Trump: "Don't be like him, be more like McCain." It bothers me that you can't plan your own funeral and get one thing. Sometimes you just have to swear; there are sometimes when not swearing doesn't work.
You've done this life of service, you've been in the military, you've been a POW, you've been a senator, you've tried to serve your country and be this honorable person and a good role model. When it's your own funeral, you only wanted one thing—well, I'm sure you wanted other things—but there was one thing that you were pretty clear about: let's make it less about Trump. And he didn't get that one thing.
Now, of course, the news industry is largely guilty for this. It's not so much the speeches that people gave, but the way the news covers them made it essentially all about the President playing golf. A dying wish should be honored, and it doesn't look like the major networks decided to honor that.
There was a touching scene some of you saw in which President Bush 43 shared some candy with Michelle Obama as they were sitting in the front row. It was just a cute moment. Well, I felt like even that was about President Trump. Maybe that's just me, but it seems to me the reason they would show that little clip over and over again is to show, "Hey look, even President Bush 43 was good friends with Michelle Obama, why can't other presidents be like that?" It felt like even the smallest moment—which really was about a piece of candy—was made about President Trump. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that's that feeling that's over everything right now.
## [A Mental Experiment: Visualizing the Impossible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=869s)
I want to do a little mental experiment. I want you to see if you can imagine two things at the same time. This is the test to see if you can visually imagine two things that are in different places.
Look at something in front of you, maybe the computer itself. Visually put your focus on the screen where you see me. At the same time, without losing your visual consciousness of what you're looking at right now, imagine somewhere in Africa there's a giraffe. Now imagine that giraffe in the jungle, but don't stop imagining what you're looking at right now.
Can you do it? And if you can do it, do you feel like you're holding both thoughts simultaneously, or does it feel like you're rapidly switching between them? Maybe so rapidly that you can't tell you're doing it, but which does it feel like? The question is: do you multitask? Are you seeing both of them at the same time?
Some of you did a split screen; that's cheating! Some of you did a little mental trick where you split the screen of your imagination and put the giraffe here and me on the other side, which is very smart. I will confess I did the same thing when I was doing the experiment myself. I imagined them on a canvas next to each other so that they weren't really in different places. I could see them at the same time.
## [The Future of Human Memory and Digital Immortality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=1053s)
Here's where I'm going with this: it seems to me that one of the biggest changes in humanity is coming, and it's integrating a computer memory with human memory. In a sense, we've already done that because our devices have memory and we can offload things we don't want to remember, like phone numbers. But it's a clunky process of talking into your phone or typing. If you want to recover something, you've got to type it in, whereas your actual brain is retrieving things almost instantly and automatically.
Could you ever have a chip or something that's just part of your brain working instantly to offload memories? Here's how I think you could do it: imagine this chip is connected to the cloud, so you have effectively infinite storage. You could have that thing watching and listening to everything that you do. It would be recorded in two places: one is your organic mind, and the other is in the cloud. That would take care of augmenting your natural memory, because your natural memory might remember 3% of any situation over time, whereas the fake one would get 100% of it.
But what would the recall method be? Here's what I suggest: the early version of this will probably work through something like glasses or contact lenses. It should look like this: you know how some things remind you of other things? For example, if I showed you this cable, probably some of you thought of a worm or a snake. But that thought instantly went away because it wasn't really relevant.
Suppose your computer brain in the future would be able to do image matching. If it saw something that was similar to something else, it served it up onto your glasses as a weak overlay. The moment you looked at this cable, your glasses would sort of "boop" a snake, and it would go away. That would be a way that your computer brain could be effortlessly serving up associations, because your memory works on association.
I'm thinking that the most important change in our human evolution will be when we figure out that interface between the infinite knowledge of the cloud and how you get that into your brain directly.
Somebody said, "You want to live forever, Scott?" Here's the thing I know for sure: somebody will live forever. I personally will probably be one of the first people who make the leap from being organic into being a total recreation of my personality. Why do I say that? Well, these Periscopes for one. Some AI in the future will be able to take all of my Periscopes and build a perfect recreation of me talking and acting. It can read all my books and will know everything I think about everything.
Because I have for so many decades been sending a fire hose of information about me personally—my opinions, my looks, my style—into the internet where it is stored forever, some AI will be able to recreate me. My personality will probably go on. Will that version have hair? Probably not.
## [Mind Reading and the Trap of Political Labels](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=1552s)
The people who call me a sycophant or an apologist are part of the large class of what I call the "mind-reading people"—the people who believe quite literally that they can read the minds of strangers. If you call me a sycophant, you're making assumptions about what's in my mind.
Have you watched me for more than five minutes? Because if you have, you probably have noticed that if I thought like other people, you wouldn't be watching me. Part of the reason you watch is because I don't think like other people. It's just an objective fact. It is my distinctive thought that is the reason you even know to insult me.
If people who know they think differently than I do believe they can anticipate my inner thoughts, that's not good thinking. You do not have the ability to understand the inner thoughts of people who are objectively and unambiguously not like you. When you accuse me of having this or that motive, you should know that my motives are complicated, and "sycophant" and "apologist" would not be anywhere close to my internal mental process.
It is reasonable to make assumptions about what other people are thinking just to navigate life, but you should know when you're likely to be good at it. If you're dealing with your best friend or a spouse in a familiar situation, maybe you can make reasonable assumptions. But if you're looking at a famous person with a completely different set of opinions and experience, and you think, "I know what you're thinking, and it makes you an idiot," you're almost certainly wrong.
Most people are having positive thoughts on the inside; they think they're acting for the greater good, at least in a political sense. Your outside assumptions that they're evil are ridiculous. The rest of us are looking at the worst people in the other group and trying to convince our own group that the other side is entirely made of those worst people. The right calls the left a bunch of socialists and Antifa criminals; the left calls the right a bunch of racists and KKK.
## [Why Calling Democrats "Socialists" Isn't Persuasive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=1927s)
Let me put a stake in the ground here: anybody who accuses the left of socialism is not part of the intelligent conversation. I want to say it again so you can get really mad. If you're accusing the Democrats of being socialists and you think you've said something, you haven't. You're not part of the conversation.
It's really just the right's version of the left calling the right racists. When the left says all Republicans are racist, it's not true, it's not useful, and it's not even smart. When the right calls the left socialists, it's not smart, it's not true, and it's not helpful. Every time I see somebody say, "Those socialists," or "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a socialist," as if the word itself won you the argument—it didn't.
We all agree that full socialism hasn't worked and probably can't work. But trying to equate the "little bit of sharing" socialism—the shared burden that some people think would be a good idea—with full-on socialism is just not good thinking. It's not persuasive except to your own team who are being bamboozled by your overuse of the word.
## [Martin Cowan and the Complexity of Healthcare Reform](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=2113s)
There’s somebody running for Congress, a Libertarian, Martin Cowan for Congress in Georgia's 13th. I'm not endorsing him, but he has a section on healthcare that is super interesting. His argument is that the government and its rules essentially have made it impossible to lower healthcare costs.
I’m going to read some of his suggestions, and I want you to see if you say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I totally understand that," or if you say, "I don't understand any of this." This is a criticism of our ability to understand complexity.
He suggests:
1. Repeal all "certificate of need" laws nationwide. (I didn't even know that was a thing.)
2. Stop all government funding of MD residencies. (Does it limit the number of doctors? I don't know.)
3. Reduce the jurisprudence of the FDA for medical devices, including phone apps.
4. Allow fully qualified foreign doctors to be licensed in the US on the condition that they practice medicine for at least five years upon entry.
5. Repeal all healthcare subsidies through the VA, Medicare, and Medicaid.
6. Abolish "MEC" (Minimum Essential Coverage) regulations.
7. End all price controls nationwide.
8. Allow the purchase of prescription drugs from anywhere worldwide.
The problem with all of these suggestions is that you and I really can't evaluate them because we don't know what we don't know. Every time you see one side of a debate, you're not seeing anything if it's a complicated situation. It's the same with climate change. If you see either side in isolation, it's useless. We believe it's useful because we fool ourselves into thinking we understand it, but we don't.
I have a chapter in my new book, *Win Bigly*, talking about how ridiculous it is when people say, "Look at the facts and make up your mind." That is a pure illusion. It is a pure illusion to think that non-experts can analyze an expert field and come to a rational opinion based on "research."
## [Media, Race Relations, and the Incentive to Stay Broken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzep7S-dcKY&t=2671s)
There is an ABC poll about black support for Trump at 3%. I think black America has had a huge opportunity to work with the administration to get some things that a Democratic administration has no reason to give them. If the Democrats know they have your vote, why would they do anything for you? Politics doesn't work that way.
I have a hypothesis: prior to Obama running for office, there was a lot more crossing of boundaries. But when Obama got 95% or 96% of the black vote, I wonder if that destroyed democracy. If you were white and you saw that 96% of black voters voted the same way, did it make you feel like you needed to vote for the white candidate next time, no matter how bad he was? Did it make you feel that the old model of voting for the best candidate for the whole "melting pot" broke? Because with 96% going for the person who looks like them, I think it changed other people who said, "It's okay now just to vote for your ethnicity."
I was pro-Obama. I thought it was just time to get somebody in there who's not just a generic white guy. But I think it might have had the opposite effect; it might have actually pulled people apart. The other unintended consequence is that the government can't do that much for people. That was a setup for the black population to feel that Obama didn't do enough.
Now, take President Trump. Does he have an incentive to do something unambiguously good for the black community? He does things like prison reform, which is good for everybody but happens to affect African American citizens more. The president has a pretty good incentive to help, but I’m coming to the conclusion that the answer is "nothing" because the media has rendered this unsolvable.
The media has decided to keep the public worked up about racism because it works. If you were on the left and your biggest issue was reproductive rights and the courts, would you want this administration to fix racial relations? If the president did something great for the black community and they started voting for him, you wouldn't get the courts you want. So, the left has a problem: fixing racism would be the worst thing they could do for their own political goals.
The black voters have been pushed into a horrible corner in which neither side has a reason to help them. If the president does something good, the press won't give him credit for it anyway. Anything he does will be characterized as just more racism.
One of the things I like about working on the Blight Authority is that we can do our thing independent of Democrats and Republicans. As soon as you get into the politics of it, the politics makes it hard to help. You almost have to do it as private citizens.
People ask why I'm so invested in this. I think rich people have a special obligation to take on the hardest problems. I have everything I need for the rest of my life. The people in my position should take on the hardest of the hard problems. Racism and the economic problems that come from it are the biggest problems I might be able to have an impact on.
All right, I've said enough. I'm going to go do some other work now. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.