Episode 221 Scott Adams: Woodward’s Bombshell, Low-Information Voters
Date: 2018-09-15 | Duration: 55:52
Topics
The “blank space” in Woodward’s book He looked really hard…and found no Russian collusion What the left feels is obvious, Woodward saw nothing The claim that Trump supporters are “low-information” voters Education and training for how to make decisions Apple Watch ultra-sounds and heart analysis Mentoring, tutoring, healthcare guidance and other potential uses for Interface app by WhenHub
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## Transcript
This is "Coffee with Scott Adams" - a daily livestream where Scott discusses current events, persuasion, and his frameworks for understanding the world.
## [Simultaneous Sip and Hurricane Update](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=6s)
Hey Sandee, hey Joe, hey Jeff. Come on in here, gather round. Erin and Tyler, I hope you've all got your coffee, your mugs, your chalices, your containers, your cups, and I hope it's filled with your favorite beverage—your coffees, your teas, your hot waters, your who knows what—because it's almost time for the simultaneous sip. Get ready, here it comes.
Oh, that's the good stuff. So, one of the biggest stories in the world right now, besides the hurricane—I won't talk too much about the hurricane because there's wall-to-wall coverage. There's not much to say. We're all thinking about the victims, but there's not much to say about it. So, I'm not going to be talking about that, but I'm not ignoring it either.
## [Woodward’s Book and Russian Collusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=66s)
Let's talk about the biggest story in the country. Did you hear it? There was the big bombshell from the Woodward book. Listen to it; it's a big bombshell. I don't hear anything. That's right—it's the blank space again. It's the empty space. It's the thing where you'd expect to hear a story, but where's the story? And here it is: the non-story.
Apparently, Woodward was asked if in any of his investigations he found any Russian collusion, and he said he had looked hard for it and didn't find any. Now, obviously, Woodward cannot dig as deeply as law enforcement. Woodward is not the final word. But here's the thing: maybe you've had a similar experience. Starting in 2016, I have personally been treated by anti-Trumpers as part of the problem, and the biggest reason given, at least in the beginning, was this Russian collusion stuff.
I was pretty sure there was nothing there, but the people who were mad at me and mad at the President and mad about Hillary losing were so sure it was true that they could see it. They didn't need Mueller to investigate; they could just see it. It was in the news. It had something to do with Don Jr.’s meeting, something to do with Manafort, and what are the odds that Papadopoulos did this, and what are the odds that there would be all this FBI investigation?
To a big part of the country that was hating on me personally, and probably most of you, they could just see it. Mueller was just going to tie the loose ends together and wrap it up into a nice little impeachment/prosecution ball. But the fact of it was just obvious. You know who it wasn't obvious to? The most famous investigative journalist in the United States, who looked into it and looked really hard to find the thing that the people on his side say is obvious. An investigative journalist wrote a whole book, spent a lot of time investigating this very thing that people said is right there, and he didn't find—I almost did the zero sign, which would have been bad because you can't do that anymore.
Think about that. Now, does anybody owe me an apology? I would say yes. I would say that I am owed by a pretty large number of people a really big apology. Of course, we can still wait until Mueller does his thing, but keep in mind that whatever Mueller comes up with is going to be in the category of something that nobody saw, because everything we see so far, according to Woodward, amounts to zero in terms of Russian collusion.
I believe I'm already owed an apology because you could say about anybody, "Well, if you look hard enough, maybe you can find something," but we haven't found it yet. That would be a true statement about every single rich person, every politician, etc. I can't predict the future, but so far I'm owed an apology because the anger and the hatred that people felt toward me—and most of you—was based on what they thought was obvious. Now Woodward has done a really good job, apparently, of showing that there's nothing obvious. Not only is there nothing obvious, but if you're Woodward and you've got all kinds of sources and you can dig pretty hard and you've got millions of dollars on the line, you can go really deep. And there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. Why isn't that the headline?
## [The Dalai Lama on Immigration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=411s)
Today I saw on FoxNews.com that the Dalai Lama has said that European refugees should go home. I'll just let that sit there for a while. The Dalai Lama has said in public that he thinks the refugees streaming into Europe should go home. Now let me clarify, because I'm mischaracterizing what he said, but I'm not inaccurate.
He did say exactly that, but in addition—if you want the extra context, and you should—he's saying that the Europeans should treat them humanely, accept them, feed them, educate them, and then when things are better, they should go home to help their home country become a better place. The Dalai Lama is in favor of humane and generous treatment of the refugees, but he says let's make this temporary because it's changing Europe; they should go back and change their own home once that's a possibility.
So now when people say, "Are you supporting the President's policies on immigration?" you can say, "Well, I'm somewhere between the Dalai Lama and President Trump." I'm in that range. Probably most of you would like humane treatment of everybody. I've never heard anybody who was against humane treatment of people. If you were to ask me where my opinion of immigration is, I would say it's not exactly the Dalai Lama's opinion, but it's pretty close. Instead of saying that I agree with Republicans or agree with Jeff Sessions or agree with Trump, I'm just going to say I'm pretty close to the Dalai Lama, which is basically that you can't have unrestricted, gigantic refugee flows without some consequences that you didn't want.
## [The Limit of Immigration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=560s)
I was just in an online Twitter discussion with somebody who was anti-Trump, and rather than arguing, I was just asking questions about how their point of view would play out. It was somebody who was soft on immigration, and my question was, "What would be the limit on immigration for you? Would it be unlimited?" And he said no, not unlimited.
I said, "Well, if you're against unlimited open borders, but you're also against being tight on the borders, doesn't that require you to give an opinion about how many people per year is okay?" The person I was talking to looked like he was trying to avoid that question, but that's the only question. If you've said don't be a hard-ass at the border, but also don't just completely open the borders, that's not an opinion, is it? That's simply two things you don't want. You haven't really given an opinion if you just don't like those two extremes; you have to pick something in between. Otherwise, you haven't given me your opinion. I said, "What about 40 million? Would 40 million people over just a few years be too much?" And then the subject gets changed.
## [High-Information vs. Low-Information Voters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=680s)
This gets me to a bigger question. You've noticed that Trump supporters and Republicans in general are often referred to as "low-information voters." But here's a test I want you to give yourself when you're talking with other people. I find this to be consistently true.
I was talking to someone who was an anti-Trumper, and I said, "Take for example Charlottesville." I was explaining how it was reported that the President said both sides were fine people, and it was reported that he meant that included the white supremacists. I said to him, "Well, that's just not what happened. What actually happened is the President said there were fine people on both sides of the statue question, because the whole event was around the statue."
When I told him this, it was clearly the first time he had ever heard that interpretation. Forget about whether he agreed with it or disagreed with it; it was the first time he had heard it. How many of you had never heard that interpretation before—that "both sides" was clearly about the statue thing? The alternative explanation the news has presented to you is that the President of the United States consciously and intentionally sided with white supremacists on the same week they killed somebody. That didn't happen. It would be crazy to think that happened. He clarified that he does not support white supremacists, just as he has clarified 55 times in the past.
My interpretation is completely normal and consistent with the facts. My point is he had never heard that interpretation, but you've heard both interpretations, right? Wouldn't that make you the high-information voter in this case?
I told the same person about the accusation that the President made fun of Serge Kovaleski, the reporter who had the genetic problem with his arm. I said, "Have you seen all the videos in context where he makes the same or similar hand motions about other people? It's just the way he makes fun of dumb people." He had not. Probably most of you have seen that he often does that same gesture and it's not about people with bad arms. I had seen his point of view and my own point of view, but he had only seen his own point of view. Not once had he ever seen what I described. So which one of us was the lower-information voter?
## [Immigration Trade-offs and Cages](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=986s)
We talked about the kids and cages, and Trump putting kids in cages. I mentioned that it was also happening during Obama. You could almost see his face reboot. When cognitive dissonance sets in, there's an obvious facial bodily change where the person just goes blank. It's almost like you could see the brain rebooting.
I said Trump put more people in cages than Obama did, but Obama was putting kids in cages as well. It was the first time he considered that. I further explained that treating the refugees in the most humane way creates more refugees, right? You would be increasing the number of refugees. He hadn't really considered that. I said the thinking is that if you have fewer refugees in the long run, there might be fewer children who are raped. The trade-off was less child trafficking, fewer children getting killed.
I agreed with him that kids in cages is just always a bad situation. But I said the alternative, and the only alternative that anybody could think of, was one in which more kids got raped and trafficked and killed. It was a conscious decision that having this impact on, say, a hundred kids put in cages helped two or three of them not be raped and killed. That was a conscious trade-off.
The person I was talking to had never heard it framed that way. He imagined the good solution is that you just let the families and the kids stay together, which meant releasing them because there weren't any facilities. I said, "You realize that would increase the amount of trafficking? Your preferred solution would have fewer kids in cages, and that's good, but at the expense of two or three out of 100 getting killed or raped. Did you know that was a trade-off?" And he did not.
I think you would find that conservatives are completely aware of the arguments on the left. Fact-check me on this—isn't it true that the right knows the arguments on the left and they also know their own arguments? I'm finding that it is massively true that the people on the left have never even heard the argument on the other side.
## [Training for Decision-Making](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=1296s)
In my new book, I'm working on how lots of times you think you have a difference of opinion with people, but the difference of opinion is not what it looks like. There are people who, because of their career choices, have been exposed to education on how to make decisions.
A scientist is trained in how to make decisions because the scientific process is about getting rid of bias. Engineers are trained to be objective and test things. Economists, as I was trained, are also trained to make decisions. We know how to compare things, look at the long term versus short term, and measure opportunity costs.
Do you know what profession has not been trained to make decisions? Journalists. Journalists are never trained in the art of making decisions. I would say that lawyers probably are. But there are mistakes the untrained are making because they've never learned to make a decision.
For example, anti-Trumpers say Trump did a bad job in Puerto Rico with disaster relief. Anybody who says that is not trained in making decisions. Likewise, anybody who says the opposite—that Trump did a great job—is also not trained in decision-making, because we don't have another Puerto Rico to compare to. The only way you could tell if the administration did a good job or a bad job is to have a control case. Without that comparison, it is impossible for the observers to know if it was a good job or a bad job. It can't be known. If you've never studied how to make decisions, you would imagine it could be known, but you would just be looking at anecdotal things.
## ["Half-pinions" and Incentives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=1541s)
A well-formed opinion would consider all the costs: short-term, long-term, and opportunity costs. It would also include the benefits. If you've included all of those things, you're probably trained in how to make decisions. But if you said, "Hey, why can't we just let people in and let the families stay together because that's the humane thing to do?" and you're done with your analysis at that point, you've probably never learned to make decisions. You might be a journalist, for example.
The right way to look at that is: if you treat them well, what happens? If you leave out the "what happens," you're not really making a decision. You have a "half-pinion." You're picking the part you like. If your opinion ignores human incentives, then you're not really part of the decision-making crew.
## [The Impact of Presidential Lies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=1663s)
Anti-Trumpers will say the President of the United States has told 3,000 lies since he was inaugurated. I always like to say, "Well, what exactly was the impact of that so far? What would the GDP be if that number had been zero?"
Economies are built on expectations. Suppose a lot of those alleged fact-checking problems were the President exaggerating how good the economy was—maybe exaggerating that businesses are bringing jobs back, or exaggerating how quickly he did it compared to Obama. Suppose he exaggerated to the point where it's just not true. What would be the net effect? The economy would be better.
If you understand how the psychology of expectations drives the economy, you could say: how many of the 3,000 were economy things that were directionally good persuasion to cause those things to become true? I think you'd have to subtract out all the good things he said about the economy that may have been exaggerations because those actually made the country better and were intended to do that.
Take North Korea. Which of the 3,000 fact-checking problems made the current situation with North Korea worse? I can't think of any. Lying, exaggerating, hyperbole—maybe none of them have any direct effect on fighting ISIS or North Korea. People are really concerned about something where they can find no connection to a problem in the real world.
## [Directional Accuracy in Race Relations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=2032s)
What's the worst thing in the country right now? I would say race relations. How much of that is because the President lied? I can't think of anything the President lied about or had a fact-check problem with that made race relations worse, because all the things I can think of were in the opposite direction.
If he says he did great things for African Americans—even if it's an exaggeration—it's in the direction of making things better, not worse. It’s expressly showing support: "I'm working hard for the African American people, I love Hispanics." Even if you imagined they weren't true, they still would not have made things worse.
Are there any lies in the race situation that made things worse? Oh yeah—Charlottesville. And that was a media lie. The media has lied about Charlottesville from the beginning, and that's made things much worse. Lying does matter, but it seems to only make things worse when it's coming from the media.
Even when the President's facts are wrong, he is directionally accurate. Take the extreme example where the President says only a few dozen people died because of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The fact-checkers go crazy. No matter which facts you think are true—and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle—when I see the President say, "No, we did a good job," which way is he trying to persuade? He's trying to defend his administration, but he's also trying to tell the story where the government was doing all they could. He's telling a story that makes you think the government cares about all of its people.
## [Vague Criticisms vs. Actual Outcomes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=2337s)
The critics are running out of actual facts they can connect to a bad result. They don't like the attitude and they don't like the tweeting, but they're having real trouble connecting those things to an actual problem. It's very hard to say, "He sent this tweet and these ten people were killed because of it." It's all general, vague things.
They say he's "impulsive." Tie that observation to a bad outcome. Every time we hear a story like that, the impulsiveness doesn't seem to be a problem except for the way it's reported. He'll throw out ideas, the people he talks to say, "That doesn't work, here's why," and then they don't do it.
They say he's "unhinged." But what problem did that cause? Is the GDP lower? They say he's "dictatorial" because he says critical things about the Justice Department. The President has used his right of free speech to push against another organization in the government in public. The Supreme Court is still doing its thing. Has anybody in the Justice Department said, "We'll just stop doing our job now"? Personally, I appreciate the transparency. I like a country where I see the unfiltered opinion of our leaders when it doesn't have national secret implications.
## [Apple Watch and the Future of Healthcare](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=2641s)
Apple has produced an Apple Watch that has a medical sensor in it that will check your heart. I think I'm probably going to go out and get one. I don't like watches, but now that Apple's watch has a nice ECG, it can tell you if your heart is functioning right before you might have noticed it. It could save your life.
Apparently, this is just the beginning. There are all kinds of micro-sensors that can work with your smartphone. There's even a device you can hook to your phone that does ultrasound imaging. We're really getting to the point where doctors are going to be—sonograms, thank you, ultrasound. That's what the device can do.
It feels like we're close to what I'll call "the poor person's healthcare." You've got a range of apps and people who can walk you through how to use them. You could get medical advice on my app, Interface by WhenHub, which is amazing. We're close to an amazing time.
## [The Interface App by WhenHub](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=2829s)
If you haven't tried the Interface by WhenHub app, you should. You can sign up for free and be an expert on anything. You can set your own price, and when you're online, people can make a video call and pay your price for the minutes you're on.
I wondered if people will ever use it to tell their kids a bedtime story. I'll bet there are parents who would just put it next to the bed and have a nice grandmother tell a bedtime story while they get some other business done. How many people would use it for tutoring? Low-income households who can't afford a real tutor—maybe fifteen minutes of a person's time would make a big difference.
And what about mentors? I've often said that people in low-income situations, especially in the African American community, don't always have access to mentors if they are locked into the silo of their own community. Some people might want to say, "I'm retired, I don't need to make money. I'm just going to be a mentor for inner-city youth." Your price can be zero on the app.
The advantage of the Interface app is that you can discover people and make a call, but you don't have each other's personal contact information. They don't know where you live, they don't have your phone number. If you want something that's quick and anonymous, you can do that. I think it will be great for therapy, for people who need a sponsor if they are addicts, or for people who just need a friend. Seniors might use it just to have human contact for an hour a day.
## [App Development and Tokens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqoSMRD-I9s&t=3198s)
Somebody said "suicide prevention," and I had suggested that idea too. However, any professional would immediately tell them to go to an emergency room, so ethically, a professional would probably send them to a real person right away. But it could help distract them from bad intentions.
The version we're getting ready to release will improve the browsing function. Right now, it's like "Tinder for experts." We wanted to start simple, but we'll continuously improve. We're not doing vetting of experts; it's a free market. If you see somebody who's obviously a fraud, you can just end the call in the first minute and you won't get charged.
People ask how to buy stocks of WhenHub. We're a private company, so we don't have an equity offering, but you can own the tokens that are used within the app. If there's more demand because more people are using the app, the value should go up. It's a way to be linked indirectly to the success of the company without owning equity.
Interface by WhenHub may very well change the world. It could change healthcare, education, mentoring, and job searches. All right, I will talk to you later. Bye for now.