Episode 224 Scott Adams: False Memories, Kavanaugh, Peacocks, Lie Detectors, The Simulation
Date: 2018-09-17 | Duration: 53:20
Topics
Allegations against Kavanaugh from when he was in high school False memories are normal, common The 20 year rule Signs that we’re in a simulation Q is a false memory phenomena
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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.
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=14s)
Hey everybody, come on in. We’ve got so much to talk about. Yes, I am on the road. Savannah and Polly and Nicholas and Don, Richard and Angela and Jeremy—come on in here, gather around. We’re going to be talking about a few things, but not until we have the simultaneous sip.
It’s time for coffee with Scott Adams, and it’s time for the solid simultaneous sip. Be it coffee, be it water, be it juice, be it in a mug, a vessel, a cup—it doesn’t matter. It’s time now for the simultaneous sip. Join me. Oh, good stuff.
## [Accusations Against Judge Kavanaugh](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=78s)
The big interesting news today is about the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh—accusations that come from decades ago, 30 or 40 years ago when Kavanaugh was a teenager. There’s a woman who alleges that, while classmates at a drunken party, he climbed on top of her and tried to have his way with her, and he was pulled off by his friend. What was the name of the friend who pulled Judge Kavanaugh allegedly off of the accuser? What was the friend’s name? His actual name?
The friend’s last name is Judge. Now, what are the odds of that? I’ll tell you why that actually matters in a minute. Yes, I’m on the road; I’m in Las Vegas at the moment just for fun. Let me give you some context because there are a lot of low-information voters out there on the Left who don’t understand a few things that you already understand—or you're going to in a moment. So whether you were a low-information voter or not five minutes ago, you’re going to be the highest information voter of all the information voters. I’m going to take you up to the height of information on this topic.
The first thing we must ask ourselves is: what about the credibility of the accuser? The evidence we have is a memory from 30 or 40 years ago while people were inebriated. That’s the first piece of information. The second piece of information: she says she took a lie-detector test and passed. The third bit of information is that a reporter for the Washington Post claims that she came to the reporter in July. For those who are saying, "Hey, why did she wait so long to come forward?"—you can question how long it took her, but she did come forward in July. So that’s the information we have.
## [The Credibility of Lie Detector Tests](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=203s)
Let’s look at the credibility of each of these. Lie detectors—are they credible? Nope. Lie detectors are not used in court, and the reason they’re not used is because they’re not credible. They are not backed scientifically. What they’re good for is when somebody doesn’t know they don’t work and they’re afraid that they might work. You can get a reaction on the machine just because somebody’s panicked that you’ve forced them into a lie.
It can be a useful tool if, let's say, you’re checking an entire department and you’re trying to find the mole who leaked something. You could probably find somebody in that department who, if they knew who the leaker was, might panic a little bit. Maybe you could convince them to give up their secrets because they thought they failed the polygraph. So polygraphs do have a place; they are useful in certain situations, but only to narrow things down. If you get lucky and somebody panics because they think they’re failing a polygraph, you can sometimes get them to confess. It has that value. But as a measurement of accuracy or truth, they don’t have a purpose.
There are several problems. One is that people who believe their own lies can pass. Secondly, we don’t know what questions were asked—if they were the right ones. Thirdly, if she had a false memory, she would also pass the polygraph because she would believe her own memory. If that's all you had, the polygraph should not tell you anything. Passing the polygraph doesn’t mean anything. Failing a polygraph might tell you something; it might help you narrow down who’s telling the truth, but passing one doesn’t tell you anything. I guess the only thing it tells you is you didn’t fail.
## [The Science of False Memories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=327s)
Now let’s talk about false memories. This is the point where all of you get to be the high-information voters. You’re in the good group—I call you super elite. Here’s the thing that you know that low-information voters don’t know: how common false memories are. Take this situation itself. How many people read about the accusations against Kavanaugh and then walked away and had the facts wrong? A lot. There are a lot of people on social media talking about this very situation, which they just read about, and they already remember it wrong. Do you see how common this is?
If you were to have a fight on the street and then one hour later you gathered up all of the witnesses individually—so they’re not influencing each other—and you asked them, "What did you see? Who started the fight? Give us the details. What were they wearing?" you would have stories that didn’t even look like it was the same event. It would look like people had watched completely different movies. That’s normal. If you think it’s abnormal, you’re a low-information voter.
What about when you and your siblings or your family get together and you talk about details from your childhood? For some of you, that might have been 30 or 40 years ago as well. How accurate are those memories? Those things you think are memories are not actually even memories—which is hard to wrap your head around, but it’s true. The things you think are memories of your childhood are little illusions which you have created where you filled in the details of something you don’t really remember. You remember the broad strokes. You remember you went to the zoo, but you don’t really remember what the animals looked like. You can’t be sure who went with you. You might have your age wrong by three or four years. All of the important stuff—the details—are manufactured after the fact.
That’s the normal way. Everybody has a sense of memory of the past as they invent it. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong about everything; there are certainly situations in which, if you could go back and check, you would find something true. But are they reliable? If somebody says, "I remember an event from 30 or 40 years ago," how much credibility should you give it? Now let's say there was drinking involved and a traumatic event. How likely is the memory accurate? Well, if I had to put a likelihood on it, certainly not more than 50%. I don’t think you could actually put a percentage on it, but in a broad sense, it is certainly not more than 50% likely to be true. And it wouldn’t matter who is telling the story or what it was about; if it was 30 or 40 years ago, we would have no way of knowing.
If you’re a low-information voter, you’re going to say to yourself, "Well, when people have accusations, most of the time those accusations are correct." That might actually be true because most accusations are fresh and most accusations can be proven by other witnesses and evidence. But when you go back 30 or 40 years, are most memories true? I don’t know if it’s even most, because it starts falling off really quickly when you don’t have corroborating information and you’re going back decades and you’ve been drinking.
If you’ve noticed on social media, there’s a trap that’s been set. Already, people are coming after me on social media and I’ve had to block a few people. Just by talking about the existence of false memory and the fact that polygraphs are not credible technology for memory confirmation—just talking about the science of it makes people say, "You misogynist, woman-hating bastard." You can see the forces already lining up. That’s part of the trap—you can’t talk about the technology of it or the likelihood it's true.
## [The 20-Year Rule](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=758s)
I have proposed that in the context of politics, because politics affects us all, that we employ what I call the 20-year rule. The 20-year rule goes like this: if there’s an accusation that’s over 20 years old, just ignore it. Even if it’s true, just ignore it.
The reasons are several. Number one, you can never verify something that’s 20 years old. Number two, we’re not really the same people we were 20 years ago. We share a history, we share an ID, we share maybe the same house, but people aren’t really the same people they were 20 years ago. And it’s quadrupley true if you’re comparing a senior citizen to a 17-year-old. I don’t know how old Kavanaugh is—not a senior citizen probably—but if you’re comparing somebody in his late 50s to his 17-year-old self, do I really care how horrible the 17-year-old self was? Well, I care if there was a victim involved, of course, but it’s just not the same person.
Before you say, "Scott, isn't that convenient? Just when the person President Trump likes gets accused of something, now you say let’s have the 20-year rule." Some of you already know that I’ve had the 20-year rule for some time now. I say that Hillary Clinton benefits from it. I don’t care what she did with Whitewater or anything else—just don’t care if it’s 20 years old. They’re just different people. If they’ve done anything in the last 20 years, then I say throw it in the mix and let the voters decide. But if it’s more than 20 years ago, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true; it’s just not the same person. You’re accusing a third party for all practical purposes.
I would apply the same standard to Bill Clinton, to anybody. Part of this is self-preservation because when it comes to politics, if you didn’t allow anybody into the job who had a spotty record from 40 years ago, you'd just have to clean out the whole Congress. As a practical matter, you can’t really run a country with 20-year-old accusations against everybody who comes through, because it’s going to be everybody. I would apply the standard to Kavanaugh, to Bill Clinton, to both sides. 20-year rule.
## [Signs We Are in a Simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=939s)
I often talk about this simulation—the idea that we’re not real flesh and blood, but that we were created by some earlier species and we’re actually some kind of a software simulation. The argument for that is: if anybody could create one simulation, they probably created lots of them. So it’s very unlikely that we’re the original when the odds of so many simulations being created is so high.
Here’s the evidence you look for to find out if you’re part of a simulation. I think I’m the author of this idea—I’ve never heard it anywhere—but every time I say I have a new idea, somebody always says, "Oh, that’s in that sci-fi book from 1984, you stole that idea." If you’ve seen it somewhere in a book, let me know.
The idea goes like this: there is a way for us to determine if we are real or a simulation. We look at how we alleged humans do software development. If our reality has the same limitations that a programmer would have built into a software simulation, well, then we’re probably a simulation. For example, if you built a simulation, you wouldn’t let the characters see beyond the edges of it. You wouldn’t let them get out of the simulation so they could look in and see it. Sure enough, we have a universe that is infinite and you can't travel faster than the speed of light. The universe is expanding at the speed of light because the light itself is moving in outward directions. It fits that we can’t get outside the simulation.
Incidentally, we can't see the smallest part of the simulation. No matter how good your microscope is, you can’t see the smallest thing. We can deduce that there are particles and we can split a particle, but what’s the particle made of? Nobody knows what this stuff is made of. And if you could find out what the particles are made of, what’s *that* stuff made of? Does it keep going down the list forever? That makes no sense. That’s one of your signs.
## [Memory and Resource Management in a Simulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=1127s)
The other sign is that we would have lots of false memories. If you built a simulation, would you make a real history that existed for every single thing that happened in the universe? Would you have to create it and then store it, just in case anybody had a memory that was in conflict with another memory?
As we have with Kavanaugh and his accuser, two people have different memories. Would the person who made the simulation create a simulation that has in it every fact that’s ever happened just in case there’s ever a disagreement? You wouldn’t really build it that way because it would take too much resource. Instead, you would give people false memories for any situation that can’t be confirmed. That’s the important part—if it can't be confirmed.
If there was an event in the past like the Kennedy assassination, there’s a video of it. That video collapses the reality and makes that the actual shared reality, and it can never change because there’s video proof of it. But what about the memory that Kavanaugh did something bad versus the memory that he did not? Those are opposites. In a normal universe, it could not be true that he did something bad while simultaneously true that he wasn’t there and didn’t do anything. But if we live in a simulation, they can both be true.
As long as those two competing histories can never be fact-checked, they both exist as true. The simulation isn’t "true"—it’s a movie that’s presented to us. It can be true that the event happened at the same time it's true that it didn’t happen. The only thing that could turn them into one is independent corroboration. Probably not from another person, because another person just has faulty memory too. It would have to be from a videotape, or maybe the mother finds a diary page that talked about it. In my world—the world that I perceive as if it’s real reality—both are true. My perception is that both histories can be 100% true because neither of them are true, meaning we’re a simulation. If one of them were ever confirmed, it would harden into history. If it's never confirmed without outside corroboration, the two histories just go on as true forever.
## [The "Judge" Memory Conflation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=1370s)
Now, let’s go back to talking about false memories and that coincidence. This situation is about a judge who's trying to become an even more famous judge, and he's being accused of doing something when he was 17 that was stopped by his friend whose last name is Judge. Think about that.
If you were going to create a false memory about a judge doing something to you, and it just happened to be that there were two judges in the same story, what does that do to the credibility of your memory? False memories are usually created out of some experience you’ve had—something that’s suggested. In fact, the main way that a false memory can be created is through questioning. This is very well-established.
If someone comes and says, "I think I saw a UFO," false memories can be implanted by the person asking the questions. You would say, "Oh yeah, was it football-shaped or was it disc-shaped?" You just implanted a false memory because the person didn't say they saw a shape. But if a person hears those two suggestions, they might say, "Yeah, I think it was more a little more football-y than it was disc. Yeah, it was definitely football-shaped." From that moment on, they’ll start remembering it as football-shaped. This is a known scientific process. It happens that fast.
Now, if you had remembered a story about being attacked and you didn’t remember all of the people there, but you remembered that one of the people there was named Judge—let's say that's the only part you remembered. Someone says to you, "You know who else was there? Someone named Judge, and there were some who were his friends. Who else was there? Was it... was it Brett Kavanaugh?" The name "Judge" is in your mind because it's the only person you could remember.
By the way, the friend named Judge is not accused of doing anything. In her telling of the story, the friend is who took the attacker off of her. So the person named Judge is being remembered as a hero, not an attacker. But once that name is in her head and years have gone by, and the other person she knew in that class is an actual judge, memories conflate. The fact that one person was named Judge makes the odds of her misremembering somebody who is also a classmate and also a judge skyrocket.
If you don’t understand how likely a false memory can be planted, then you’re a low-information voter. The odds of her remembering it accurately are vanishingly small. The odds of getting the big facts right? Fifty-fifty, maybe.
## [Partisanship and Accusations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=1865s)
I’m hearing some stories about Kavanaugh’s mom being a judge who was involved in a case that involved the accuser’s family foreclosing their house. I don’t know how true that is or how much that matters. It’s also relevant: what are the odds that the accuser would be a rabid Hillary supporter? Well, pretty good, 50/50 or something. But why is it never the other way? Are we to believe that if a conservative had been sexually attacked, she would not come forward?
Someone mentioned Anita Hill, but that’s also ancient history. In our current hyper-partisan climate, what are the odds that it’s always Hillary supporters who come forward? Someone says the Roy Moore accuser was a Trump supporter. Okay, that’s a good counter-example. I will accept that.
The whole Keith Ellison situation is surprising. I don’t know why the Keith Ellison thing is not making a dent. People believe—at least on the Left—that they’re on the side of good and that the other side is evil, so pretty much anything is allowed. There’s sort of a control on human behavior because other people are watching you, but we’ve lost our social control because now people say that other side is a bunch of Nazis. You can do anything you want to a Nazi. Democrats can no longer control each other because they don’t all see the world the way you see it. Al Franken had to step down, but he just did step down; if he had stayed, who knows?
## [Social Control and Hand Signals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=2110s)
There was a Coast Guard person in the background of a video story who appeared to give the "white power" symbol. I saw that, and I could not for the life of me think of anything that wasn’t the white power symbol. When I looked at it, I thought to myself, "Okay, whatever that is, it’s certainly not natural looking." But the fact that I think it doesn't look natural—how much does that matter? It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn't tell me what another person is thinking or why they’re doing anything. It could be a troll, it could be accidental. You can’t really conclude anything from it.
I saw the story that Jack Dorsey of Twitter admitted that conservatives would not feel comfortable at the company. I thought, well, that’s an understatement. But I think it’s important that Jack Dorsey has said publicly he acknowledges the situation, because that’s the first step to doing something about it.
## [QAnon and Peer Pressure Experiments](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=2298s)
What has Q predicted? Do people still believe in Q? Is Q still a thing? Give me a sense on this periscope. Say yes or no: how many of you believe Q is real?
I’m looking at your comments. I’m seeing about... does it look like two to one, three to one against Q being real? Now all I see is "no." All the "yeses" went away. Well, here’s an interesting experiment. How come all the "yeses" came first, and now it’s almost a solid wall of "no"?
Somebody was passing around an article about a study showing how easy it is to change people’s opinions with essentially peer pressure. They’ve done studies where they would show people two lines and they would say, "Which line is longer?" If the person was alone, they’d look at the two lines and they’d say, "This line is longer." But as soon as you added some people who were working with the researchers, and they would say, "Oh yeah, that other line is the long one," something like a third of them will change their mind immediately.
What I did here in this periscope was ask you if Q is real or fake. In the beginning, people gave their answer without being influenced by other people because the other comments hadn’t come in yet. There’s a lag. When I asked the question, the people who believe that Q is real said "yes," and you saw a bunch of "yeses." But the more "nos" you saw, it very quickly collapsed reality until the only answer you were seeing was "no" at the end. Did you see that? As soon as the people who said "yes" could observe that the majority were saying "no," it went to something like 90% "no." You watched that in real time.
## [Q as a False Memory Phenomenon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=2482s)
The reason people think Q is real is that they have a false memory of it, which is a perfect connection to the earlier topic. People believe Q is accurate because they remember accurate predictions. Now, is it a truth that Q has amazingly accurate predictions? No, it’s not true, and it can be easily demonstrated. Q predictions were not even close to true. The people who believe Q is accurate simply don’t remember the ones that were wrong. Those are false memories.
Everyone who believes in Q got there the same way. Maybe they were a little open-minded at first, but over time they came to believe that the predictions were spookily accurate. But those were not real memories; they simply just didn’t remember the ones that weren’t real. When there was a vague one, other people would say, "That’s not vague, he nailed it!" Q is a false memory phenomenon.
I’m not making fun of Q believers. Having false memories in this kind of a context is 100% normal. If somebody came to me and said, "There’s somebody who claims they’re making predictions and some people say they’re not coming true but other people are convinced that they are," I would say, "Oh, that’s a completely normal situation. You’re talking about false memories." The people who don't see it are always the ones with the better memories.
Q is a phenomenon where some people see it as clear as the nose on their face, and other people look at the same stuff and they don’t see it. Which is true? It’s always the one who doesn’t see the giraffe. When you see how many people believe in Q, that tells you how easily people can have false memories. And remember, the Q false memories are all within the last three years. The odds of the Kavanaugh situation being a false memory go through the roof after 30 years.
## [Kavanaugh Confirmation and Power Shifts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=2790s)
Will Kavanaugh get confirmed? I say yes. Here’s my prediction: Kavanaugh will get confirmed. If Kavanaugh doesn’t get confirmed because of this, then I don’t think there will ever be another Supreme Court nomination that gets all the way through, because there will always be something as good as this. I’m guessing that the adults in Congress will decide they can’t run a country with this standard.
It appears to me a tremendous power shift from male to female. Now that it’s clear that this can happen to essentially anybody—it was male, but probably can’t happen to a woman—it’s sort of the perfect attack. If Kavanaugh goes down because of this, independently of whether something really happened or not, it will make it impractical to be a male nominee to the Supreme Court. You might actually have male Supreme Court nominees who just say, "I don’t want to lose my marriage. If I go through this nomination process, our marriage is going to be totally screwed because somebody is going to come forward." Those are the new rules.
## [Running for President in 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wTA-R5kdi4&t=2974s)
I can tell you that in my case, I would not run for president in the current situation. I wasn’t planning on it anyway, but if I thought, "Well, I would win if I ran for president"—by the way, how many of you think that if I ran for president, I would win? Let’s say not against Trump, because I couldn’t possibly win against Trump. How many of you think that if I ran in 2024, I could win if I was just all in?
The reason that I predicted that Trump would win was based on his skill set, not on his policies. My skill set is not as good as his, but if I ran for president, it would be better than whoever I ran against. I would have the best skill set in the competition by far. It wouldn’t even be close. But that’s not all it takes; you still need a lot of other qualities.
I’m not going to run, so it doesn’t matter anyway. If you’re a man and you’re being considered for the Supreme Court or running for president, it’s probably a bad decision because you’re going to be ruined. Trump is a unique character because it doesn’t seem to matter what we learn about his past. I think Kanye would have the same quality.
Me and Candace? That would be an interesting package. Imagine me running for president with Candace Owens as my vice president candidate. I think Candace would have one problem with that plan—it should be turned around. She should be running for president. But it’ll give her a few years before she’s ready. I would have to choose a party. I could win as a Republican, but I couldn't win as a Democrat. Height and hair used to make a bigger difference, but now persuasion tools are more important.
That’s all I’ve got to say for now. I’m going to let you go and get back to your day. Nice talking to you. Bye for now.