Episode 213 Scott Adams: The White House Mole, North Korea, Garbage
Date: 2018-09-09 | Duration: 22:20
Topics
North Korea’s military parade without long-range ICBMs Ocean floating plastic cleanup experiment Serena Williams meltdown over cheating Profiling the White House moles writing style and narcissism
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## Transcript
## [Introduction and Tech Setup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=14s)
Pom pom pom pom pom. Hey everybody, come on in here. It’s time for Coffee with Scott Adams. Excuse me while I’m setting up my technology, which just gets better every day. For those of you who would like to see my cool setup, watch this. Would you like to see the difference? Now you’re looking at me again. Pretty amazing.
Now I’m looking at your comments. Hey, isn’t it time for the simultaneous sip? I believe it is. Join me. Oh, that’s good.
I think I’ve got my lighting fixed. I’m actually—this is weird—the camera on my iPad is so good that I had to go to almost darkness in the room so it wasn't too bright. It’s such a sensitive camera. It’s kind of amazing. I’ve got a few fun stories.
I’m just showing off with my new technology. I got this thing called a SlingStudio. It’s a box that you can hook different cameras into—the cameras on your iPads and iPhones and other cameras—and then you could have a little studio setup where you can change camera angles and stuff.
## [North Korea Military Parade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=140s)
So let’s talk about North Korea. North Korea just had a big military parade, and do you see what was missing? It turns out that they did not have their long-range ICBMs in the parade. That’s a big deal because they’re very proud of their ability to send missiles all the way to the United States, but they decided not to make a big deal about it.
What does that mean about North Korea? Does it mean that we’re crawling forward with these little steps? I think you saw that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un recently said glowing, nice things about how much he likes President Trump. Then they held a military parade where, conspicuously, they subtracted the big weapons that are problematic. It feels like progress, no matter how slowly it goes.
I think the thing you need to look at with North Korea is every few weeks, are you further ahead or not? I would stop worrying about how long it takes. Everything seems good on that front.
## [Ocean Plastic Cleanup Experiment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=225s)
Did you see that there’s a big effort to clean up the plastic in the oceans? We’ve got this big technology with these big, gigantic nets and it’s going to sit out there for months trying to clean up the plastic. It’s kind of an experiment. They don’t know exactly if it’ll work or how well it’ll work, or if it hurts too many fish, but they’re going to find out now.
This is exactly the kind of job that only billionaires can do. I think Marc Benioff and Peter Thiel are behind it, among others. There are a lot of people who donated money, but sometimes you just need a billionaire. There are some things you just can’t do—the government just can’t figure it out, or the government is not well-suited for it. I think this plastic pickup stuff might be some of it.
## [Serena Williams and the US Open Controversy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=300s)
I see lots of questions about the US Open. Serena got in an argument with the chair umpire because he penalized her a point or a game or something because of something she said. She’s saying, "Hey, the male players get away with far worse, so it must be sexism."
I wondered why she chose sexism. She could have played the race card, right? It seems like it was a toss-up. If Serena was being treated differently than the male players she’s seen, was she saying that all women are treated differently than all male players? Because if that’s not the case, and if it’s just something she noticed about herself that was unique compared to what she’s seen from male players, why did she pick gender? Why didn’t she pick race?
In any event, I have no idea what the chair umpire was thinking, so I don’t know how you verify what somebody was thinking. In a way, it’s sort of a thought crime, isn’t it? There’s no way to statistically prove whether this particular chair umpire was biased because you’ve got this one call. What do you do? The only way you can legitimately continue to attack this one person’s decision for being sexist is to imagine that you know what they’re thinking.
How many times have you seen this? I call it out all the time, and you probably were less aware of it before I started talking about it, but—oh, the opponent was black? I’m reading the comments; you’re reminding me that her opponent was also black. Is that true? I don’t really know the opponent, Naomi Osaka, but she has a Japanese last name.
Maybe that’s the reason, but it still isn’t enough of a reason, is it? Because the call wasn’t about the opponent. I don’t think the claim is that the umpire was trying to make the other player win, in which case it would matter if the other player was black. I think the complaint is just that it was a harsh call for Serena in that particular situation, so it really doesn’t have much to do with the other player.
It’s a tragedy that we’re even talking about that, isn’t it? I feel so sorry for Osaka. Here she is, she wins this major event against Serena Williams—probably the most amazing sporting thing she could accomplish in her life because she’s probably dreamed of winning something like this all of her life. Then she wins, and what are people talking about? People are not talking about how great she played; they’re talking about her race or ethnicity. It’s the last thing she wanted, one assumes anyway. It kind of ruined what should have been a great day for her.
I feel sorry for her. I don’t personally have an opinion about whether the call was good or bad, or sexist or not sexist, because I can’t read the umpire’s mind.
## [Profiling the White House Mole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=540s)
The interesting thing I wanted to talk about was the White House mole. I’ve got a take on the mole that I haven’t heard, and it might be part of some profiling going on where people are doing what FBI profilers do to try to figure out the identity of this secret White House mole who wrote the editorial for the New York Times.
Here are some things I would add to the profile of this person. The first thing we know is that the White House insider/mole believes that his or her—and I think it’s a he—believes that his judgment about political stuff is superior to the President’s. That’s our first data point. This person unabashedly, and without any reservations, is saying in public like it’s a fact that their own judgment is better than the judgment of the President of the United States, who has clearly accomplished a few things.
If that was your only data point, you would say to yourself there are two possibilities. One: this is a really, really smart person who is correct, and this person has great judgment and should have been the President because this person is so awesome. The other possibility is that you’re dealing with a narcissist who believes that he’s just kind of awesome, and he’s so awesome that he knows more than the President of the United States.
Now, what else would be our evidence that he’s a narcissist? Someone who just thinks everything about him is amazing? Well, he’s doing two things that people are calling unusual. He is writing a big New York Times article but then not putting his name on it. He's telling you he’s saving the world, but writing the article makes it less likely he’ll be able to save the world. Did he really care about the world? It doesn’t seem like he cared about the world, because if he did, he wouldn’t have written the article, or he would have gone public and said, "This is bad for me, but I have to talk about what I’m seeing."
So I don’t think it was about the world. It didn’t look political, did it? In the sense that it didn’t look like it was a secret Hillary supporter. You can’t rule it out, but there’s nothing we saw that would suggest that, because he was saying good things about the economy and good things about defense. He sounded very conservative.
If it wasn’t political and it wasn’t a Hillary supporter and it isn’t consistent with really trying to help the world, what does it look like? It looks like somebody who wanted to be famous and felt that they were too important to get in trouble. Or to put it another way, they wanted to have no risk of getting in trouble, or at least a low risk, while also being famous.
Put the pieces together: The White House mole believed he had better judgment and could run the country better than the President, and acted like there was no doubt about that. The way the article is written, it's just obvious that this person knows more than the President because he’s helping the President avoid his own disastrous, impulsive decisions. Says who? Says the person writing it. Secondly, they believe that they’re too important to get in trouble. They want to be famous for the article, but they don’t want to get in trouble, and they think they have better judgment than the President. Narcissist, right?
I think you should be looking for someone who has an insanely big ego, because this is someone who thinks a lot of themselves and their opinion, doesn’t want to get in trouble, but still wants to be famous. Maybe someday we’ll know that identity, but no matter what, they’re famous in a way because they can at least tell their friends, "You know that article? That was me." I think that narrows down the personality.
## [Kanye West and Being the Boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=815s)
Kanye tweeted the other day—I’m paraphrasing—but if you’re trying to be the boss, you don’t have time to explain your decisions. Sometimes you’ve just got to tell people what to do, and they’re not going to like it because you just don’t have time to persuade people. You’ve just got to tell them what to do. It felt like that was a response to what’s happening with the President, but you can never know. Then Kanye tweeted "2024." So if he’s not running for President, he’s doing a good job of looking like he is. We’ll see.
It doesn’t have to be someone who’s currently in government. Somebody's trying to blame Bannon for this? I think it seems more likely it's somebody still in government. The mole will be caught because their mouths—correct, in all likelihood, the mole has talked to other people.
## [Lie Detectors and Writing Styles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=939s)
When I was talking about the lie detector test, even if you imagine that the mole could lie well enough to beat the lie detector test, the only way they could still get away with it is if all the people they’ve told—and if it's a narcissist, the narcissist is going to tell other people—keep quiet. There’s no way that the person who wrote this is not blabbing to other people.
If those other people get the lie detector test and they believe lie detectors work, they could easily break. You could imagine the person giving the test saying, "Huh, when I ask you if you know who did it, I got a little blip here." And here’s the fun part: maybe there was no blip, but the person who’s strapped into the lie detector is thinking, "A blip? Did I blip? Oh god, I’m starting to break." And then there is a blip, and the lie detector guy says, "Getting some kind of reaction here, so you better tell us if you want to keep your job. Better tell us who this person is."
It seems to me that they must have already figured out who it is by now. It wouldn’t be that hard. I think that it can be done by analyzing the style of writing. They would probably have to run the style of writing against the New York Times' own editors just to make sure it wasn't rewritten, but I think they could do that.
Somebody said, "Well, maybe it was rewritten by somebody so that you could not identify the writing of the original author." Well, that’s possible, but what did we see about this author? Narcissist. Does a narcissist let somebody else rewrite their writing so that it is less identifiable as the person who originally wrote it? I might, you might, but a narcissist doesn’t. I’ve got a feeling that whoever wrote that very much wanted their writing to be the thing that was in the New York Times. You don’t think that much of yourself unless you want to see your own writing in the New York Times, because that would be a writer's biggest win.
Remember when I told you people could not tell if Trump was a narcissist? Trump, in my opinion, uses ego as a tool and he pumps it up and he pumps it down whenever he needs to.
## [Visual Persuasion and Conclusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxPrIFvY3s&t=1122s)
Did you notice Cory Booker’s eyes and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? I try not to be disrespectful by pronouncing her name wrong, and I’m conscious of the fact that when I stumble on it, it sounds like I’m having trouble with a Hispanic name and it sounds weird, but I promise you I’m just terrible with names. Don’t read anything into it.
But have you noticed that both Cory and Alexandria have—you know who I’m talking about—they both have those eyes. Let’s see if I can bring up my second screen to show you what I’m talking about. This would be a good test of my technology.
Bear with me here. They both have eyes that are like a little bit too big and round. Their eyes are like this. I don’t know if it’s just because of the pictures that we’re seeing. And why the heck is my lighting now terrible? I’m literally sitting in the dark and it looks like I’m sitting in a photo studio. I can’t actually even make it darker in here; there’s no light on in this room. This is weird. I’m going to have to change out my camera.
I don't think I have anything else interesting to say. Anybody have any questions? "Lazy eyes, Chuck Todd." Well, I’m wondering if there’s something to that look—something about the energy, optimism. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t read as normal. We just don’t know what it reads as. I mean, I don’t want to read their minds. Somebody says, "Adderall." I don’t know if Adderall does that to you.
"Make the room brighter," somebody says. Well, let's try that. I'm going to turn off my microphone and make the room brighter. Don't go anywhere. Okay, that experiment I'm going to call a failure. All right, well, I'll keep working on this and in the meantime, I will talk to the rest of you later. Bye.