Episode 234 Scott Adams: Kavanaugh and Iran
Date: 2018-09-25 | Duration: 22:57
Topics
Has all news in the entire world (except Kavanaugh) ceased to exist? Is that because the news is manufactured? Respect for “the system” is what provides a stable civilization President Trump says Iranian President is probably a “lovely man” Tweet was intentionally ambiguous and yet productive Tough sanctions on Iran are poised to implement The ability to implement and enforce sanctions improves every year Combat wars are being replaced by economic wars
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## Transcript
## [Introduction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=9s)
Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh. Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. I'm Scott Adams and you're going to have coffee with me, or you might have a different beverage, or you might have no beverage, or you might have something to eat. But no matter what it is, you can lift it to your lips and join me for the simultaneous sip. Here it comes.
I was looking at a comment on Twitter yesterday that said my voice is crazy, but I didn't know if that was good or bad. It can put you to sleep. Do I have a voice that will put you to sleep? ASMR?
## [The Manufactured Nature of News](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=70s)
If you've looked at the news today, you will know there's something very interesting about the news. There's no news. That's it. When was the last time you had news without any news? If you look at the headline pages of CNN or Fox News, it's retread stuff about Kavanaugh. Somebody's opinion about Kavanaugh, somebody's making a good point about Kavanaugh, but it's all sort of stuff you've already heard. News just stopped.
Now, what does that tell you about news? What can we learn from this? Does it seem to you that just when the Kavanaugh thing started becoming important, it could be likely that all the other news in the world stopped for two weeks? That would be weird, wouldn't it? But that's what it looks like.
What can explain that? Is it because we are in the simulation? Well, that's probably not the cause in this case. Here's my opinion: I think what you're seeing is confirmation that the news is manufactured. Here's why you know that. If we had room for more news—in other words, if Kavanaugh were not totally dominating the headlines—there would be other news. Did that other news go away just for a couple weeks or today? Probably not.
The point is that those things we think are natural news just seem to happen in exactly one page of headlines quantity per day. Some days a little more, some days a little less, but basically, we have about a webpage of headlines every day, and that just stopped. I think what that tells you is that it's manufactured all the time. If we didn't manufacture news, there would be lots of dead news days like today. But today you don't notice because it's filled with a little Kavanaugh.
## [Kavanaugh: System vs. Outcome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=254s)
Here's my current thinking of this. Ask me if this is not the way it's shaping up. On one side of the Kavanaugh question, we have people who say that women should be believed in their accusations and that just the fact that the accusations are credible should be enough. It's not a legal process, so we're not trying to put anybody in jail, but people are saying the accusations alone are enough credibility to change how people should vote on this Kavanaugh situation.
The other side says we can't start a precedent. We have to use the right process. People are innocent until proven guilty. We can't take forever tracking everything down if it's not a legal process. So, one side is saying let's obey the process, let's obey the system. The system matters. The other side says that what's important is the woman's accusation—the woman's word over the man's. One side says let's put what the women say as more important than the man's life, because Kavanaugh's entire life will be destroyed if this doesn't work out for him. That's one view, and the other view says follow the system.
Have I framed that correctly? One side says let's follow the system and the other side says let's get this specific result. I've made that claim about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, or the difference between the right and the left more generally. The right says we can't decide what is fair all the time; it's just too hard. Nobody can figure out what's fair in every given situation. But we can have a common set of rules that look like the Constitution, that look like the law, that look like maybe the Bible if you want to take it that far.
If you're working off the same rulebook—the same Ten Commandments, the same Constitution—you can't make sure every outcome is optimized, but you can make sure you have a credible civilization. People will say, "I don't like how this one turned out or that one turned out, but the way we got there, the system, I do respect. I respect the Constitution even though I don't like that particular outcome." That's a Republican way.
What I like about that is if you respect the system, you're probably going to get a good stable civilization with lots of bumps, but life is messy. If you don't respect the system and you try to pick winners—will it be Kavanaugh? Will he be the winner? Or will it be the accuser? Can we derail him from the process by making up some stuff that's not typically part of the process? Can we subvert the process? One of them is sort of goal-oriented. Our goal is to keep him off the court. Forget about the system; the system is irrelevant. Let's keep this guy off the court. That's a goal. A goal is to preserve Roe v. Wade. That's a goal. Republicans are saying let's have a system that works.
## [The Biological Value of Men and Women](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=448s)
One of the things that this shows you is the low value of men. This is not new. What I'm going to say is the current situation and maybe the perpetual situation from a biological perspective. Men are way less important than women for the obvious reason that a woman is necessary to have a child. Having children and reproducing is the key most important element of survival of a species. It's the most basic, most important thing.
Women are biologically more important because you could have one man impregnating lots of women if you had to. Legally, we try to say that everybody's equal. This is one of those situations where it's very clear that women are more important. That doesn't mean that the outcome will go one way or the other, but when I said the framing is about the woman's accusation versus the stability of a system, what I didn't say is the value of a woman's accusation versus a man's reputation or personality or life. It's not really even about women versus men.
Men are so unimportant biologically—this is not an opinion, I'm just saying biologically—we act this way. Men are so unimportant that we don't even say it's men against women in this case. We've said it's women—their credibility, their ability to be safe, their ability to make an accusation and be heard—that's being put up against the generic system. We're talking about stuff like precedents and things like that. Men are not really even part of the conversation. They're not terribly important to this.
I'm not going even argue that that should change. I don't know that it should, because biologically men are less important than women. There's no way to change that. That doesn't mean every man is less important than every woman. It just means in a general biological way. It's typical for men to sacrifice for women. I'm sure that women would say the same thing—that it's typical for women to sacrifice for men. That may be more of a point-of-view sort of thing. I'm not saying you can get rid of all men; I'm just saying that the value of an individual woman is greater biologically than the value of an individual man. We're seeing this play out in the way this situation is framed.
For everyone who is playing Captain Obvious: Captain Obvious, I do understand that men are necessary to create babies. I'm not saying that I'm valuing men less; I'm saying society does. Biologically, you could have one man impregnating lots of women, but you can't have the reverse.
## [Iran and the "Boot and Fig-Leaf" Method](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=696s)
Let's talk about Iran. I guess the President is going to do a speech in front of the UN today and Iran is on the docket. How do you think that's going to go? Keep in mind that the President has been out of the news for a long time, at least as much as the President could be out of the news. Have you noticed that the excitement in the news is really not about President Trump anymore? He got sidelined for about a week.
One force at play is that the President hasn't made much news lately, so he may want to make a little news. On the other hand, we've seen his playbook for how he handled North Korea and it looks like he's using a similar approach. It's probably the smart one. From my perspective, it seems that he's doing the boot and the fig-leaf method. He's basically being as hard-ass as you could possibly be on Iran, short of actually attacking.
At the same time, he said today in his tweet that he's not going to meet with President Rouhani of Iran, but he thinks he'd like to someday and he thinks he's probably a "lovely man." A lovely man. Now, if you're in Iran and you see that the President of Iran was just called a "lovely man," there's probably some cultural problem with interpreting that. Don't you think there's a lot of head-scratching going on? They're over in Iran and they're saying, "What did the devil say about us? The Great Satan has tweeted! The Great Satan says of our president, 'He's a lovely man.'"
Sarcasm? Does anybody know if this is sarcasm? Does anybody know what American sarcasm looks like? "Did we get insulted? Because I can't tell if he insulted us. Can anybody tell?" Nobody knows. Seriously, nobody can tell what this tweet means. Who can we ask? We'd better watch some Periscopes and find out what that Scott Adams guy says.
The ambiguity of it was, I hate to say delicious, but it had some kind of an artistic feel to it. I don't know how exactly to describe how I felt when I saw that he said Rouhani is probably a lovely man, because it was so intentionally ambiguous and yet productive. It wasn't a throwaway line; it was actually the only productive part of the tweet. We probably already told them we're not going to meet with him, so the productive part was that he says, "I think he's a lovely man." To me, it was like art. This is why historians will say that the President is the best tweeter of all time.
What it does is open up the possibility that he's not just a big old evil devil—talking about the President—but that he's someone who is just trying to find a way through. At the same time he's being a total hard-ass, he is also saying, "But you're probably a lovely man. Love to meet with you under the right circumstances." It leaves them a path that isn't the hard path.
## [Economic Warfare and Sanctions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=944s)
I have not heard about Iran playing hard with the United States since the Iran nuclear deal was scuttled. Have you heard any situation where Iran has done something that really mattered? They probably poked around the edge a little bit, but has Iran done anything specifically heinous in the last month or two? Maybe we wouldn't know about it. It could be stuff that's happening on the ground, funding Hamas and stuff like that. I don't know what they've been doing, but it does seem like they've been acting like they're looking for a deal.
Apparently, the next part of the sanctions against Iran are going to kick in early November, and when they kick in, it's the oil restrictions. The oil restrictions could completely destroy the country. I say that based on the fact that their economy is teetering and the populace is very unhappy, at least in pockets of Iran. That could be enough. I'm not the expert on the Iranian economy, but if they're really close to the edge and if the oil restrictions are really a big deal, maybe that's enough.
Does Iran have a military way out? Probably not. Does Iran have a way to forever beat the sanctions so they can thrive? In the old days, maybe. My suspicion is that we are really good at this sanctions business and that we can turn off pipelines and stop big tankers. We could probably stop enough trade that Iran would become a permanent fourth-world country over time. Their economy would just decrease and shrink forever.
I've said before that we may be approaching a post-war civilization. That doesn't mean every war will be avoided; there will always be flare-ups. But if you look at North Korea and Iran, what is it that will probably get us our best results? In both cases, it's probably economics. As the world gets more technological, it becomes harder to beat the sanctions. Somebody needs to fact-check me on that. I just made a claim that as soon as I said it, I wasn't positive it's true, but it makes sense to me.
My claim is that as technology improves—as our satellites are better, our communication is better, our ability to spy is better—the ability of a country like Iran or North Korea to break sanctions might be lower and lower every year. There should be some crossover where the value of sanctions just gets stronger and stronger because we are in a more connected world with more technology watching everything. Our ability to stop war with economics is probably improving quite a bit.
Meanwhile, the utility of a fighting war where you actually have two militaries lining up and fighting went from pretty good in the old days—Genghis Khan, that was a pretty good deal because if you had the good military you could win. You couldn't avoid fighting if the big one attacked you. In the old days, there was utility; you could potentially win the war. Today, I'm not even sure that's possible. Even in Syria, you could say something happened, but it wasn't much of a win. Everybody lost.
I think we're reaching a point where wars are a way for both sides to lose, but an economic embargo is a way for everybody except the offending country to win. Everybody else will do fine; in fact, they'll trade with each other more because you're out of the loop. I think we may be heading toward a time where economics is the weapon of choice. If this President gets a good result in both North Korea and Iran—and of course, there are gigantic, galaxy-sized "ifs" involved—it'll be because of the economic pressure on top of the military pressure. You still need the military pressure; you still need a credible threat. I think that's still necessary, but the actual fighting is going to be economic.
We may be at a crossroads of history in which this President, being business-minded, is the first one to realize that the economic weapon is a complete kill shot if you're willing to use it aggressively.
## [Final Thoughts and Tech Tips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN3JWqBqo4&t=1251s)
If you turn your screen sideways, the chat will light up in a different place. That might work better for you. You can also turn off the chats if you don't want to see the comments go by. I think you push the little icon of a person in the bottom right of your screen, and somewhere in the settings, that would give you the choice of turning off the comments.
When he bombed Syria, I think the Syrian conflict I'm going to mark as the last of the military ones. My point is not that there won't be military action, because obviously that's going to last a while, but Syria is a perfect example of where it didn't work. ISIS didn't get what they wanted and nobody else did either. They just got a destroyed country with too much immigration. Syria might be the example that kicks off the new world because even Syria didn't work. Because it was a traditional war, it attracted how many different nations to be fighting in that little piece of dirt that nobody wanted? It's the perfect example of why you shouldn't have any more wars.
UN countries will still be buying Iranian oil. Some will, but it seems that that will constrict over time. I don't have a thing else to say because there's no news. Thursday will be interesting. I still don't know if the Christine Ford thing will be televised. Do we know that? Probably not. Anyway, that's all for now. Get to work. I'll talk to you later. Bye for now.