Episode 216 Scott Adams: The Tucker Carlson Diversity Question and Presidential Popularity
Date: 2018-09-11 | Duration: 33:44
Topics
Why/How does diversity make us strong? CNN is making a gigantic analytical error in their approval analysis People’s opinions are assigned to them by the media they watch The media creates opinions and then polls their effectiveness
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## Transcript
Yes, I'm back again. Had a few rough starts this morning. I overslept, didn't get enough coffee, everything's a little bit harder, but I'm back now. I'm using the correct technology, I can see your comments, and I know—sorry about all those Periscope teases. This is the real one. As my way of making amends for the late start and the bad start, I've got great content for you today. Oh, it's so good, so good. But first, the simultaneous sip. Please join me.
## [The Tucker Carlson Diversity Question](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqydiUTY-aI&t=67s)
A couple of fun topics. You may be aware that Tucker Carlson is getting himself in some hot water with his critics—because he's not in hot water with his fans—by the fact that he has challenged people to explain to him why diversity is strength. What is the argument for diversity being an advantage?
I actually have an argument for that, and I'm going to answer Tucker's question. I watched Don Lemon show a clip from it—I didn't see the entire show—where he was talking about this topic. The folks on Don Lemon’s show said the answer to Tucker's question of "why is diversity a strength" is this: Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist.
Did that sound like an answer to the question of "can you explain to me why diversity is an advantage?" I'm not saying it's not; I just haven't heard the argument. The argument from Don Lemon’s crew and his pundits was, "Well, you're obviously a white supremacist. That's very racist of you."
Now, did anything in that situation sound like an advantage? Did you feel like you were better off because Tucker Carlson was a white guy with one opinion and Don Lemon had several people—they were all white I think, three African Americans and one white pundit—and they disagreed? Were we better off? Well, probably not in that specific case.
Here is what's illegitimate about both sides of the arguments: I think both sides of the argument have implicitly in them that there's something about diversity that would either always be good or never be good. I don't think that's anywhere near the truth. It seems far more likely that there would be situations in which it makes things worse and there would be situations in which it would make things better. But nobody has actually expressed the positive argument—the argument that there is an advantage—and I'm going to do that for Tucker's benefit and for yours as well.
Let us first admit that there's not one answer that's just right all the time. It's going to be a little of both. Tucker used the example: let's say you and three other people were trying to build a bridge across a river and you didn't speak the same language. Would it be easier or would it be harder for the small group of you to work together given that your diversity has caused you to be so different that you don't even speak the same language? Well, in that artificial example, clearly it's worse.
But does that little example describe our whole world? It does not. It doesn't even come close. Let me give you an example where diversity would be a strength. Take the Blight Authority project. Most of you know I'm working on that with Bill Polti. You should go to blightauthority.com and add your ideas if you have any for what to do about these inner-city areas where there's a lot of blight. Some of them have been cleared by the Blight Authority so that it's now empty ground and you're trying to figure out what you do with this now.
Is it an advantage to have opinions from billionaires who have money and African American residents who grew up there or still live there? They are completely different than some billionaire who maybe wasn't even born in this country, but the billionaire’s got the money, and the people in the inner cities have the knowledge, the insight, and the experience. Don't you need both of them? You need the money, and they need the people to know if that's a good idea or a bad idea or why it won't work. That's a clear example where having everybody involved gets you to a better place.
I think embedded in Tucker's question—and maybe I'm going a little further than he intended—I don't like to mischaracterize someone's opinion, so I hope I'm not doing that. But if you were to start from scratch—let's say there was no planet, no world—and you were going to say, "Let's build a perfect little planet," and you are God. Would it be better if the people were more alike or just completely different to the point where some of them want to kill the other ones? If you're God and there's no planet yet, you just get to create one—which is better? I suppose it depends what you're trying to accomplish, and nobody can figure out what God would have in mind.
It does seem to me that if you could start from scratch, having people who don't have a reason to fight—that's just baked into some stupid reason like "Hey, your DNA is different than mine, I have to kill you"—you probably want less of that. But that is not our current situation. The current situation is diversity is a given, meaning that we're different. We live in a world full of different people. You don't get a choice of non-diversity. There's no choice. It just exists. It's like air. What would be the point of saying would it be better to have three kinds of air or one kind of air? It's not really a question. We just have the air we have. It's a given.
So, given that it's a given, are there situations in which it is an advantage? The answer is absolutely yes. One of the ways that diversity is an advantage is you can get more feel for more things than you could if you had one sensor. I tend to think of civilization as sort of like a living creature. The sum of all people is like a living creature that's evolving even as we speak.
The centralized elements, such as the government, social media, and the internet, are like the brains. The internet plus the government are sort of like the brain of civilization. But all of the people are like the five senses. All the people are in different places doing different things; they're different ages, different situations all over. If we didn't have all of those different sensors feeding into the central government, the central internet, and the central brain, we wouldn't be effective. We would be flying blind. We wouldn't know when to do this or when to do that because the sensors wouldn't be telling us what's happening when we do things.
From that perspective, let's look at the United States. The United States has diversity. There's not a realistic real-world situation where that's going to change. How do you make it a plus instead of making it a negative? One of the ways you make it a plus is you try to standardize on language so that at least you're talking the same language. You try to standardize on culture as much as possible, but that causes its own problem because there are some cultures that don't assimilate as easily.
For example, I would say that the Mexican immigrants, legal or illegal, they do assimilate fairly well. It might take them one generation to really dial it in, but that's pretty quick. Compare that to somebody who's coming from a devout 100% Muslim nation, they don't speak English, and if they had their choice, they would like to see the American government change to Sharia. Are they going to assimilate at the same rate? Probably not. It's going to be an extra challenge. You've got the language challenge plus you've got a religion that you can't leave without pretty big penalties, and that religion has its own set of beliefs that comes with it. In that case, it's a little harder.
What do you do when you've got all of this diversity? I would argue that the United States has done an excellent job of selling the melting pot as a positive thing. What are some of the advantages of selling this melting pot situation as a plus? I'll give you a real-world example. If you saw one of my earlier Periscopes this morning, I was talking about my startup, WhenHub.
The genius in my startup—the smartest person by far—is Nick. Nick is our CTO, co-founder, and he was born in India. He came here, got educated here, and he's an American. Am I better off because I live in the country that was able to import a genius who just happened to have a completely different background? Well, yeah. We built a company. He was the main mastermind behind it, the main idea guy. We all did our part. In the startup, I have a certain set of skills that I can bring to it; Quinn, our CEO, has a certain set; all the other folks who are working with us have different skills. We're all very different people, but we couldn't have built this product without a bunch of really different kinds of people coming together to work on it.
Why is it that Nick is even available to be in this country? To me, it's because the United States did a good job of making this country a place that you could come no matter who you are. It's not easy. Immigration is not easy—I think Nick would tell you there were some tough years—but certainly, I'm better off because I could meet Nick and we could build something that I think could actually make a big difference in the world.
That's not to say that diversity works well all the time. What caused the 9/11 problem? What caused somebody to attack the United States on 9/11? Well, you can't say diversity exactly, but the fact that we're completely different and that difference was the basis of what the disagreement is—one pursuing a radical Islamic version of the world and one who seemed to be opposed to that—and then you've got war.
There is no overall answer that says that diversity is always good or always bad. But it is very clear to me that there are situations where diversity gives you more insight and more ways of looking at things so that you can have a diversified portfolio of not only thought, but—here is the important part—of experience. If you don't bring that different way of thinking and different experience, you're missing something pretty powerful.
Somebody is saying that's anecdotal, and you are correct. I'm using anecdotes to make the bigger point, but I think the bigger point stands on its own. If I were trying to start this same startup and I didn't have somebody who had Nick's point of view, I'd be way behind.
So to Tucker: your question was an excellent question. Why does diversity give us strength? Why does it give us power? I think it does through the diversity of thought. In the real world, you could tell yourself, "What if people were all the same ethnicity or same gender? Couldn't they also have different thoughts?" The answer is yes, but in the real world, not so much as if you actually came from a different gender, a different ethnicity, or a different country. That's a whole greater level of diversity of thought. There are plenty of situations, such as brainstorming, starting a new company, or innovating, where you want the superior thought.
## [Presidential Approval and the Midterm Error](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqydiUTY-aI&t=932s)
I'm watching CNN having absolute orgasms over the fact that President Trump's disapproval level, according to them, has reached 57%. As the midterms are approaching, they are interpolating or extending that thought, and they're making a gigantic analytical error that is hilarious to watch.
Here's the error: in the past, the popularity of the president was very correlated to how the midterm election goes. If the president had lots of disapproval, you would expect his party would do poorly in the midterms. There's plenty of history of that. So CNN and others are saying, "The president's doing really poorly, in the mid-30s in approval, and if history is our guide, that would tell us that the midterms are going to be a disaster, a catastrophe." They're actually using that word—a catastrophe for the Republicans. They note that, in particular, the independents are leaning in the wrong direction.
But here's what's wrong with that analysis. Have I ever told you that history doesn't repeat itself? We think it does, but it doesn't. History definitely does not repeat. Here is what's different: this president has a screaming economy. This president has a whole bunch of stuff going right. North Korea—you could make an argument that it's moving slowly, but in the right direction. You can see that with the trade deals, a lot of people like the fact that trade deals are being pushed. We'll probably see a few more countries come online with deals. Mexico said yes; Canada can't be far away. Maybe we get some more between now and the midterms.
Here is what's different from history: there has never been a president who performed more strongly while being personally disliked so much. Most of it is because of the accusations of racism, the accusations of being a bully—the personal stuff. We've never seen that before. If there were going to be a year in which the old statistic didn't work anymore, where the president's popularity no longer predicted what the midterms would be, this would be that year. Don't you think? If ever there could be a year where the popularity of the president is disconnected from what people think is his performance, this is the year.
We might see a bit of a surprise. If you were to ask an independent who does not identify with the Republican Party, "What do you think? Do you approve of President Trump?" what would independents say? I think they might say, "I don't approve of him, but I sure like this economy. I sure like what's happening overseas." Many of them are going to say, "I like the court picks." The news is more interesting lately. They might wish race relations would be better or wish we could do something with healthcare, but things are going pretty well now. I've got a feeling that independents are not answering surveys the way people expect they will.
I think the Republicans are going to do better than what all the indicators are. I don't know that the Republicans will pull it down—I'm not predicting a red wave—but I think they'll perform better than the experts are going to say. It's for all similar reasons to why the president won when the polls said he wouldn't. People will tell you they don't like him, but it's not related to his job performance.
Now we've actually seen his job performance. Here's the other thing that strikes me: I've told you that people don't form independent opinions about politics. They think they do—you think you do, everybody else thinks they do—but they don't. People's opinions are assigned to them by the media that they choose to watch. If you're a conservative and you choose to watch Fox News and Drudge Report, you're going to end up with one hardened opinion. If you watch CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times, you're going to end up with a hardened opinion that is what they assigned to you.
When CNN reports that the disapproval of the president has reached 57%, what is the other way they could report that? Another way they could say that is: "CNN has succeeded in convincing 57% of the public that the president should not be approved." Because it's the media that causes these opinions. People don't just have opinions and then the media measures them; the media creates the opinion and then they measure how well they did.
CNN is doing really well right now. What's interesting is that this change seemed to correspond to them talking less about Russia. I don't know if it's related or not, but the news has sort of abandoned Russia as a story and moved to other things. There's the Woodward book and the New York Times anonymous thing. It looks to me like the anti-Trump press has found some winning messages, and it wasn't Russia. Russia just wasn't moving the dial. Now they're back to "there's chaos in the White House," "he might be crazy," "they have to have him removed from office," and "he's unhinged." Maybe that's just a more effective attack and the polls are reflecting that.
But you also have the effect that the independents are going to say, "No, we don't approve of him, but when I walk into the voting booth, tell me again why I wouldn't vote for a Republican if I would have voted for a Republican under a different administration?" When they walk in the booth, what is it that makes you an independent instead of a Democrat or Republican? It's the feeling that you've got some independent thoughts and that you could go either way.
Is a self-identified independent going to walk into the voting booth and say, "I'm not going to vote for this Republican because of a totally unrelated person whose personality I don't like, but I do like his performance? And his performance will be even better and give me more of what I want if I vote for this person who happens to be a Republican?" Is an independent going to say, "No, I'm not going to vote for this Congressperson because I have a bad feeling about the tweets coming from a completely different person?" Do independents think that way?
In the past, people would have said the approval rate of the president is basically an approval rate of the party. They would have said those are sort of the same thing. But now those have disconnected. The approval rate of the president is really just about him—it's just about personality.
What's the most recent thing you heard about the party? It was an anonymous article in the New York Times in which someone who is presumably a Republican was operating as a control on the personality that was the part you didn't like. Are you going to get more or less control on this president if everybody's a Republican or if you get a split Congress? The people who control the president, to the degree that he can be controlled, are Republicans. Who is it that's the better control on this president? Is it Maxine Waters? Is Maxine Waters having a productive effect on President Trump by forming his opinions and helping him move toward more reasonable policies? Probably not. Is it Nancy Pelosi who's having a good impact on this president to take some of the rough edges off? Probably not.
Is it Rand Paul? Who does the president listen to: Rand Paul or Maxine Waters? One of those people can help you get what you want from this president, which is taking advice. Who has more influence with this president: Lindsey Graham or Chuck Schumer? There's no competition.
If you like what this president has done mostly, but you want to make sure there are some gating factors and some second opinions that he'll listen to—and that's really what it is, because the president's still in charge—second opinions are useful. Rand Paul's got a good second opinion. Lindsey Graham's got a good second opinion. You could go down the line; there are lots of Republicans who operate as quite credible. Take Newt Gingrich—he's not in office at the moment, but as a prominent Republican, is Newt Gingrich a good voice in terms of the president's second opinions? Yes, he is.
If you're an independent, you might find yourself voting for your best interest. Ted Cruz is another good example. Your best interest is somebody who's a credible second opinion for the president, and those are Republicans.
We'll see how it goes. I'm not going to predict a red wave, but I think the blue wave won't be this high; it might be more of a blue splash. I'm going to commit to a prediction: my prediction will be that the blue wave will be a small ripple. That's my prediction. I'm not quite sure if it will change who's got control, but I'm going to say it's not a wave, it's a ripple. It’s because the polls are not capturing the fact that people are evaluating their approval of the president based on personality and not results. If they want more of the results, they're going to go more Republican.
## [Why I Don't Vote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqydiUTY-aI&t=1790s)
Do I even vote? I do not vote. I've explained in the past why I don't vote, and it's a combination of two things. One is I don't think I add much to the outcome. Rarely do I have confidence that I have the better idea. I don't know what to do about trade agreements or what to do about North Korea necessarily.
On top of that, it would make me less unbiased. As soon as you join a team and you say "I'm one of these people," or even if you say "I voted for this person," you're kind of committed and you're going to defend that person no matter what. I have been saying positive things about President Trump for a few years now. People would say, "Well, you're already biased. You're so biased in his camp, everything you do seems to be pro-Trump." But that's not true. I criticize him on race relations. I criticize him on healthcare. I criticize him on immigration—that should have been wrapped up by now.
With Puerto Rico, it's hard to judge whether the recovery there could have been better because it was the last disaster of several, so the resources were strained and it is an island. You can't really know if things should have been better, but you can say it wasn't great. However it came out wasn't great.
If I vote, I would be more inclined to say everything the person I voted for does is great, even if it isn't. If I don't vote, I maintain a little bit of mental independence in which I can say, "Yeah, I like these things he does; these other things need work."
The food was found rotting in containers in Puerto Rico? In a big disaster relief situation, you have to assume that there will be lots of flaws, lots of imperfections, and a lot of inefficiencies because they're just shoving massive resources in the general direction and hoping that people can sort it out when it gets there. I'm exaggerating a little bit, of course they do have a plan, but I imagine that they're sending more resources than they have people who can keep up with it. That's why it's hard to know if that was a failure of management. You would need a control group that was managed by somebody else under the same situation at the same time to know if it should have gone differently.
Somebody's asking me to tell you my "I am Spartacus" story. Well, I was driving this morning and I changed the lane, and after I changed the lane...