Episode 228 Scott Adams: Kavanaugh and Coffee
Date: 2018-09-21 | Duration: 49:42
Topics
Ed Whelan tweet naming Kavanaugh classmate What we view as justice, is a social construct Facts don’t matter in the Kavanaugh approval process If you can’t imagine that you could be wrong…you’re an idiot Is it now acceptable behavior to say white men are the problem? Has a line been crossed? “Pale, male and stale”
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## Transcript
## [Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=5s)
But boot boot boot pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum. Oh, we have so much to talk about today. And when I say so much to talk about, I think you know what I mean. Coffee—that’s part of it. It’s not just about coffee today; it’s about Kavanaugh, too. It’s about Kavanaugh and coffee. And when I say we have a lot to talk about, it’s all Kavanaugh, all the time. Nothing but Kavanaugh. We’re going to go deep dive, full Kavanaugh, but not until we have the simultaneous sip. I believe you’re ready. I know you’re well-prepared. It’s time for the simultaneous sip.
Oh, that’s good. Before you talk about Kavanaugh, you’ve got to have coffee. This looks like it’s going to be coffee and Kavanaugh for a while now.
## [The Ed Whelan Tweet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=66s)
Let’s talk about all the Kavanaugh news. Where do I start? Let’s start with a tweet you probably saw by a gentleman named Ed Whelan, who published a tweet thread in which he detailed his hypothesis that the actual attacker of Christine Blasey Ford was not Kavanaugh, but somebody who looks like him, who was a classmate.
Here’s the jaw-dropping part—I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now—he named the classmate. I read that and I said, now, we weren't there, so we don't know who did what to whom back 35 years ago, but naming a classmate as a probable rapist or attempted rapist based on the fact that some people think he might look like Kavanaugh did back then? That’s a pretty big stretch.
Now, somebody just said he apologized this morning. I’m not sure it was an apology in the usual way. He said it was "appalling" what he did, which is different from apologizing. I was going to give him a pass and say, okay, 48 hours, you did something bad, you apologize. But there are two problems. There’s a real victim here. Saying "what I did was appalling" is not an apology. It’s in the same zip code as an apology, but it’s definitely not an apology, and it doesn't help the victim at all because he didn't recant the speculation.
What kind of an apology keeps the original insult? The original insult is: I'm putting you on the list of people who might be rapists based on essentially no credible direct data. And he didn't change that. Whelan said he shouldn't have named the person, but he didn't change the fact that he still thinks this is a reasonable hypothesis. The weird thing is that Whelan’s job, according to his Twitter banner, is that he’s the head of some kind of ethics group. The head of an ethics group published something—oh my god, there’s a bad fire right in my view.
## [A Building Fire Outside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=248s)
I’ll show it to you. I just discovered that there looks like a pretty bad fire outside. See if you can see it. It’s in that part that looks white right now. Can you see it? It's hard to say, but right there is actually black smoke, which indicates a building fire. So somewhere right out there, there's a large building on fire.
All right, but enough on that. Why are we talking about fires when we're not done with Kavanaugh?
## [Facts Don't Matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=309s)
The President tweeted this morning that "facts don't matter." Literally that sentence: facts don't matter. He was talking about the Kavanaugh case, and in context, he was referring to the question of whether they should do a little more investigating. The President noted that it's a political thing and the facts of the case actually don't matter. Why would you bother investigating when the facts aren't going to matter anyway?
Now, I believe I've said that in a little book called *Win Bigly*, subtitle: *Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter*. The whole world is coming around to this realization that facts don't matter. But let’s talk about the idea behind why these facts *should* matter, assuming we could ever determine what the facts are. I don't think that's possible, but in a world where we could determine the facts of what happened 35 years ago—just bear with me and imagine it’s possible.
I don't think it's possible, but imagine it is. You could concoct a scenario where three separate witnesses come forward, they all have the same story, and they haven't talked to each other. You could imagine a scenario where we might learn the facts in a way that we're all convinced, but I don't think that's likely.
## [The Code of Hammurabi and Justice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=433s)
Here's the thing: What is the reasoning behind why those facts would matter if we can get them? The reasoning is that Kavanaugh is running to be the head of the highest court, and this would be an indication of his qualifications. But does that reasoning fit—that what Kavanaugh did at age 17, or didn't do, matters? Let's say hypothetically that some facts came out that showed he did something essentially like what he was accused of doing. Would that matter to his confirmation?
Let’s talk about the Code of Hammurabi. I know when you clicked onto this Periscope today, you said to yourself, "God, I hope he talks about the Code of Hammurabi, because we need more of that." I’ve been reading the book *Sapiens* on and off. It’s a big book, and they talk about back in Babylonian times, there was this leader called Hammurabi. There were no codified laws, or at least ones he liked, and he came up with a code of laws: the Code of Hammurabi. This was before there was a United States Constitution, before there were well-agreed laws.
One of the laws that Hammurabi came up with that he considered just—and apparently people of the time also considered just—is if you killed somebody's daughter, then the parent of whoever's daughter got killed could go kill *your* daughter, and then you'd be even. Do you know what's wrong with that? You’re not punishing the person who did the crime. The idea is that you would kill the other guy's daughter if he killed your daughter, and then that would be called justice under the Hammurabi code.
I bring that up because apparently human beings, who had essentially the same evolved minds as we do, thought that sounded pretty good. They thought that sounded like justice. The backdrop of that is that children in general were considered property. The daughter was property, but it would have applied to the son as well. My point is that what we regard as obvious and clearly justice is really a social construct. Human beings in Hammurabi's time saw something completely different than what we consider justice, and they all looked at it—and I’m speculating here a little bit—but since it was popular and it took hold, I have to think that people back then thought, "Yeah, that's fair."
## [The Seventeen-Year-Old Brain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=619s)
What we imagine to be justice is a social thing. The idea that you blame the person who did the crime seems perfectly reasonable to us because we've been raised that way. But let me suggest this: Was 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh the same person as current-day 2018 Brett Kavanaugh? Most of you say, "Duh, that's why we're having the conversation. Yes, he is the same person. He was 17, he got older, same person."
Really? That's a legal construct. We have decided as a society that you are the same person as your child self. You’re a continuation. But these are things we come up with because it makes things convenient. It allows us to have a justice system with a set of rules that are always the same. It allows us to own property, because if you own property when you're young, it's still yours when you're old. It allows us to assign blame and responsibility.
There are all these practical reasons why young Brett Kavanaugh is the same person as old Brett Kavanaugh, and therefore we extend that to say anything the young person did has to be applied to the old person. But keep in mind that we're not talking about the law. Nobody says that legally current Brett Kavanaugh would be responsible for anything that his 17-year-old version of himself did. The law is off the table; it's not part of the conversation. Even the critics would agree there's a statute of limitations, and it has passed.
So if we're not talking about legal responsibility or property ownership, what are we talking about exactly? The argument, as I understand it, is that we can know something about current-day Kavanaugh by looking at his 17-year-old version of himself. Can we? It seems to me that science is pretty solid on this: young people don't even have a frontal cortex fully developed until around 25. Scientifically, 17-year-old Kavanaugh should be making worse decisions and different decisions than current-day Kavanaugh.
That particular fact is not in dispute. Nobody argues that their 17-year-old self, with a partly developed frontal cortex, makes the same decisions as their 50-year-old self. Why are we concerned about Kavanaugh in 2018 because of the decisions he made then? He’s being considered for a job to make decisions. Are we asking him to make decisions today with his 17-year-old brain? Nope. We're not asking anybody to do that. It doesn't make any sense.
The only way it makes sense to connect modern-day Brett Kavanaugh to anything his 17-year-old self did or did not do is if we think he's the same guy or if there's a legal responsibility. We don't think either of those is true in a scientific sense. There is no reasonable connection between why we should care in terms of the nomination.
## [Empathy for Victims](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=867s)
We should certainly care if there's a victim. We can have maximum empathy for the victim. We could have maximum caring for any victim, whether or not there was one in this case. We'll probably never know the facts, but we could have maximum empathy for any victims, and it still wouldn't connect to 50-something-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, who just doesn't have that brain and wouldn't make the same decisions.
We don't know what decisions he might make, but he does have 20 years or whatever it is of legal opinions that we can read through.
## [The FBI and Credibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=927s)
When the President says facts don't matter, I think that's a supportable statement in this case. I was watching Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN last night. I know you don't want to hear this, but he puts out a really good show. I know there are a lot of Fox News fans here, and I am as well—I think Fox News generally has better talent and production values—but Chris Cuomo’s show for CNN really stands out as being the closest thing to balanced that you'll see on that network.
He was talking about this Kavanaugh situation, and to his credit, he did a good job of explaining in his own words what the other side has as an argument, which is rare. Usually, you see one side just misinterpreting the other side. Cuomo doesn't really do that. If you watch, you're going to be impressed. When he describes the other side's argument, he actually describes it pretty much the way it exists. Very rare.
His argument was that you want your Supreme Court to be credible. So far, so good. Everyone wants the country to say, "Okay, we did everything we could to pick a good person." His point is: Why wouldn't you just make the three-day effort to have the FBI look into some of the accusations and see if there's any "there" there? Why would you not do something so trivially easy to have such a big benefit, which is a better idea of comfort with the final vote?
On its surface, that’s a pretty good point. A small investment—a few days of an FBI investigation—to get a candidate who has been checked out as well as is practical. Here's the counter to that which takes it to the next level: What happens if you do? What are all the ramifications? Number one, does anybody believe it would last three days? The argument is that it is transparently a delaying tactic. From a political point of view, the politicians involved are using it exactly that way. Given that Merrick Garland was delayed for so long, it's actually not a completely unreasonable strategy.
In that context, spending a few days having the FBI look at stuff probably would just kick up more things. If they looked at it for three days and came back, what are the chances that somebody else would come forward? "There'd be one more thing we heard, one more person we got, one more effect, you better take another week." The odds of it really only taking three days are close to zero in today's politics.
But suppose it takes a month. Is that too long? I'd say no, but here's the problem: facts don't matter, as the President said. Can you imagine realistically any situation where the FBI can come back with an opinion on what happened 35 years ago that would change anyone's mind? If they came up with another eyewitness who said, "Oh yeah, I was totally there and Christine Ford is right," what would the second part of that be? "Who did that witness vote for?" And then we would find out, in all likelihood, that the one new witness voted for Hillary Clinton.
Now, are the facts still the facts? Is that eyewitness now credible? No. That eyewitness would not be credible to the other side because the whole issue is whether the original claim is politically motivated. It would have no persuasive power.
And how credible would the FBI be for this particular investigation? My personal opinion of the FBI is that they are mostly good, patriotic Americans doing the work of patriots. But in this very narrow question of President Trump, the Supreme Court, and all things Trump-related, is the leadership of the FBI sufficiently credible? I don't think we live in a world where that's possible. In Anita Hill’s day, we had an FBI who could do an investigation, present a result, and the country would say, "Oh, if the FBI says it's true, that's probably pretty true." Right now, we have a whole bunch of emails from FBI and Department of Justice types who are clearly very biased.
If the FBI did a three-day investigation and came back and said, "Yeah, we have some good indication there might be something here," it would have no persuasive power. So when the President says there's no point in delaying it, he’s right in today’s environment. In 2018, asking the FBI to determine whether President Trump's person is of good character is frankly ridiculous. On this very narrow question, the FBI has no credibility, and they earned that lack of credibility through their actions.
## [Judge Jeanine and Hypnosis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=1672s)
Let's talk about Judge Jeanine's comment. You probably saw her on Hannity. Judge Jeanine tossed out the word "hypnosis" in talking about why Ford may remember something that some people think didn't happen. There's no evidence on the table that hypnosis is any part of this story. If we ever found out that Ford went to a therapist who did anything like hypnosis, that would very much change my opinion of the quality of her memory. Recovered memory under hypnosis is not a real thing.
But there's no evidence of that, so I think Judge Jeanine was using it in a hyperbolic way—not a literal stopwatch putting you under hypnosis, but maybe just that she had been influenced to the point of remembering something wrong.
## [The Failure of Imagination](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=1794s)
Here's my other big observation: You're seeing a lot of people argue on both sides of this story who are pretty sure they have the answer. The argument usually goes like this: "If your story is correct, how can you explain why...?"
The President did it in a tweet: "If Christine Ford’s story is true, why didn't she report it to the police back then?" And you've seen the other side say: "If it's not true, why did she mention it to two people ahead of time? Why did she tell her therapist?" Both sides have the same construct because there's no direct evidence, no DNA, no video.
Here's the problem: that is not an argument about the evidence. It’s an argument about your own ignorance. Insisting that you "can't imagine another explanation" for something is just an explanation about you being an idiot. It’s not how you change people's minds. "I'd like to change your mind. Let me start by saying I'm an idiot and I have no imagination. Now, have I changed your mind?"
Let's use the President's tweet. "If this event really happened, why didn't she report it?" That is not facts. That is you not understanding that there are plenty of reasons a 15-year-old doesn't report things to the police. One of them might be that it would only make her life worse. One of them might be she was a 15-year-old girl. What 15-year-old girls make good decisions? Have you ever met a 15-year-old? They don't make good decisions. 15-year-old boys don't make good decisions either.
If your argument is "why didn't a 15-year-old do something that I would have done as an adult," that's not an argument. But still, it can be persuasive to the people who want to believe. I have not heard anything from either side that I personally couldn't imagine several explanations for.
How's it possible that she could misidentify somebody she knew? I'll tell you how: it happens all the time. If you think that's impossible, that's your problem, because it's not impossible. It's actually fairly common. That doesn't mean she did it; I'm just saying that if you're asking the question "how do you explain this," there are plenty of normal explanations. Don't confuse your own lack of imagination as some kind of evidence that somebody else committed a crime.
## [The Partier Argument](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=2284s)
Others are saying, "Look at the yearbooks, she was a partier." The fact that she's a partier doesn't mean anything. Nobody is arguing that people who are drunk make good decisions. I don't know that that has any relevance.
If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, what if we reach a point where nominating a male for the Supreme Court is so impractical because you know there's going to be stuff like this coming up? What if it's so impractical we just stop doing it because nobody wants to deal with it? Is that the world you want to live in?
## [Anti-Male Rhetoric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=2344s)
I'm seeing in social media primarily opinions from women that are basically just pure anti-male. It’s one thing to think it, but it’s another to be able to say it out loud and have no repercussions. It has become acceptable behavior to just paint men in general as horrible beasts.
It’s not new that people thought it, but I've never seen it so brazenly spoken in a political context without repercussions. "Oh, just old white men." The notion that a bunch of old white men would be incapable is exactly the Judge Curiel situation, isn't it? The accusation against Trump was when he said Judge Curiel might be biased because of his Mexican heritage. People said, "Are you saying that judge can't be objective because of his race?" Well, that was exactly what the President was saying—that a person's life experience causes the potential for bias.
In this case, these old white senators are being accused of being old white males specifically. When did it become okay to say that? If it's okay to say that, is everything on the table now? Are we allowed to say some other group can't do their job because of their race or their gender? It feels like some kind of a line has been crossed.
I saw somebody else on social media say, "How could a man be a Democrat?" That's an exaggeration, a little hyperbole, but not a lot. That’s a legitimate question whereas it would have been a crazy thing to say not long ago. How the hell would a man join a party that doesn't like you?
## [The Democrats as a Gender Force](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L1zihIShnU&t=2649s)
Let me do a fact check on myself. I've made a claim of fact that the leadership of the Democratic Party are women. Now, that doesn't mean all of them—obviously, there’s a Chuck Schumer, there was a Keith Ellison. But wouldn't you say that the opinion of the Democrats is whatever the women want it to be? Democratic philosophy is what the women want it to be.
I'm pretty sure that the white men who are also Democrats don't really want to live in the world where they can be told they can't do their job well because they're white males. "Pale, male, and stale" is what I've heard. I’ve got to say, that's pretty good persuasion. Someone on the Democrat side is using the phrase "pale, male, and stale" talking about Republicans. That's pretty funny, even though it's offensive. Chuck Schumer takes his lead from the women; that appears to be true.
How long will it be before we see a national-level politician say what I just said? It seems like the Democrats are starting to evolve into a gender-based political group. Can you name the Democrats' plan for helping Black people? Just take your time. What is the big program they're working on to help all the Black people who are Democrats? We can't think of one. Now think of what the Democrats want in terms of gender, and suddenly you can think of lots of things.
It is not my point of view that the thing Democrats are asking for is wrong. You’ve heard my opinions before, in particular on the question of abortion. I have recused myself because I don't have a womb, and I think that women are more capable than men of deciding how society should treat this. They have more skin in the game. I defer to whatever the majority of women come up with.
My point is I'm not arguing the politics of the points coming out of the Democrat side; I'm simply saying that as a brand and as a political force, they’ve become a gender force. That's unmistakable now. It's not really about being inclusive; it's about gender and power.
All right, I think I've said enough. I'm going to sign off for now. I'll talk to you all later. Bye for now.