Episode 237 Scott Adams: Talking About Kavanaugh
Date: 2018-09-28 | Duration: 39:53
Topics
Discussion of the testimony and persuasiveness of both Ford and Kavanaugh The Kavanaugh childhood calendars were persuasive Should Kavanaugh call for the White House and FBI to investigate him? A more persuasive answer Ford’s hippocampus answer and some overlooked questions Fear of flying…yet she flies all the time? She didn’t know about Committee offers to fly to her?
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## Transcript
## [Introduction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=4s)
But I'm a man, bah-bah-bah. Hey everybody, come on in the air. Come on, hurry up, get in here. Joanna's here; she's already here. Where are the rest of you? Jeremy's here and Mr. Graham Coleman's here. It's about time for the rest of you to get in here. Get in here. Eric's here. Eric Finland, everybody say hi. Derek, Amy's here. Low Plains Drifter, come on in here.
## [Who Do You Believe?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=15s)
Let's talk about Kavanaugh. Let's talk about Christine Ford. What's the big question? What's the big question you want to know? Let me tell you the big question. The big question you want to know is: who's telling the truth and who is lying? Let me see your opinions first. Tell me, who do you believe? Just give me the one name. Who do you believe: Kavanaugh or Ford? Who do you believe? Go.
There's a little bit of delay in the comments. I'll tell you my opinion, but Naval, you're coming in for a good one. Get in here and give me your opinions. Just say Kavanaugh or Ford. Who do you find more credible? Who is more believable? I should be able to see the answers in just a moment and then I'll tell you the right answer. I will tell you the right answer.
Two, one... it looks like the answers are coming in now. Kavanaugh. Both. I will also tell you whether he will be confirmed. I will give you the answers in a moment. I'm not seeing people stepping up to answer the question. I see a few more Kavanaughs.
## [The Simulation Theory and Simultaneous Truths](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=130s)
Here's the answer. Dr. Ford was 100% credible, I found. By credible, what I mean is that she looked like she was not lying. Now let's talk about Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh was 100% credible. He wasn't lying either. I feel like I would have been able to tell if either one of them had been lying; they both looked completely honest.
I've told you that my worldview is that we live in a simulation. One way that you could tell if you're in a simulation is that the creator of the simulation would not create the entire history just in case you need it; the history would be created on demand when you needed it. This is one of those cases where both of their history lines can simultaneously be true because we can never solve for it. We don't have any way to know which one is right. She can go through her whole life in the simulation having experienced this thing in reality—it's her reality—while at the same time, Kavanaugh can go through his timeline in the simulation having never done anything like that. They're both completely possible if your worldview is that we're in the simulation.
If somebody produced a videotape—we know that's not going to happen, but hypothetically, theoretically, if somebody came up with a videotape—then one of those two possibilities would collapse into the other and then we would have one history. But that's not going to happen. What you watched was a perfect example of two movies on one screen. In one of those movies, something happened, and in the other movie, it did not.
## [Kavanaugh’s Emotional Performance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=254s)
Let's talk about the details. Let's talk about Kavanaugh's performance. When he did his interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox, he was very reserved and, dare I say, he was very not manly. I thought it was a good look because it made him look a little more sympathetic. But when he got in front of the politicians—imagine this for you, just put yourself in his head. It's not bad enough that his whole life and his family and his reputation might be permanently destroyed, but he had to sit in the room with the people who did it. The perpetrators were in that room with him for hours looking at him. Oh my God, can you imagine? Can you put yourself in the situation where your life had been destroyed and the people who have done it completely cynically just for political purposes are right in front of you? They're right there. How would you feel? I think the fact that he didn't punch anybody shows he's got some self-control.
In no particular order, here are some observations. His anger looked real. It looked like the kind of anger that you don't get unless you know you've been wrongly accused. That doesn't mean he was wrongly accused; we're only talking about the performance. That's the only thing we can judge. We weren't there 36 years ago, but the performance and the type of anger he had, and the genuineness of that anger as it was directed at the people in that room—or half of the people in that room—that looked real. It looked like the kind of anger you don't get if you got caught doing something bad. Doing something bad anger looks a little differently; it looks a little more like you're acting. This looked real. I thought the anger was perfect because he later modulated. If he had been angry all the way through, he would look unhinged, and that wouldn't be good. But the anger that he expressed was in the context of showing how they had all set him up, so it was perfectly placed.
## [Analyzing the Denials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=438s)
Then there's the denial itself. I've told you how people who are liars deny things. People who are liars leave themselves an out, so they deny over-specifically. A liar would say, "I did not touch a woman on that night." Too specific. "That night." A liar would say, "I did not have any memory of touching her." Any memory? That still leaves an opening. Or, "I never drank that much beer." That still leaves the opening that you drank enough beer.
His denials, though, were thorough. They were completely thorough. That's the way you deny when you're innocent. Now, keep in mind that he's a judge, so he's a trained professional. He knows what lying looks like. If somebody was going to come up with a really good lie, a judge would be a pretty good choice for somebody who could lie really well if he chose to do so. You can't take the fact that his denial was perfect to make the same kind of conclusion that you would make with a normal citizen. In a sense, he's a trained professional dealing with the truth and with lies, so he knows that makes something sound true even if it isn't.
I like that we framed it in the beginning as a plot. I thought that was very effective. I had not really heard it framed as succinctly and as well as he did. That was good.
## [Reframing the Victim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=565s)
Here's one of the best things he did. The situation is that Dr. Ford is the one making the allegations, and that puts her in the position as the victim. If something happened as she alleges, then of course she is a victim. But time matters. A victim a long time ago is not going to affect you the same way a victim who's right in front of you. Even if the thing that happened 36 years ago—if it happened—was worse than being embarrassed or having your reputation sullied, it's so long ago that we just don't give it the same weight.
I don't think I had fully appreciated how much damage this is doing to him and to his family and to his kids. We watched him frame himself and his family as the victims. They're the victims today, and he hit that theme over and over again. It's important. That was smart. He did a really good job of taking the victim off of the ledger and moving the victimhood onto the accused and the accused's family, which was more effective. If he had been talking about only himself and said, "Oh, bad things happened to me," you might not have the sympathy that you would have for his wife or his children. It was very good that he made sure that you understood there were serious victims here.
Dr. Ford, no matter the truth of her claims—whether it's true or not—she did make three people victims: a woman and two children. Dr. Ford did choose to victimize three people. Now, she may be able to rationalize it or justify it by saying, "It's not really my fault, I'm the victim, and it's not my fault that there was a ripple effect just because I'm trying to get justice." Every victim has an unambiguous right to pursue justice. Nobody's questioning that. But just on a factual level, it did create three victims, three females, and it was intentional. When I watched Dianne Feinstein, the senator of my state who I'm ashamed of, essentially destroying the life of this man, his wife, and his two girls, it was horrible to me. It was just horrible to watch.
## [Aging Politicians and Competence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=686s)
The next thing I thought was, speaking of Dianne Feinstein—I forget who the other guy was, Leahy, maybe? The other octogenarian. But Kavanaugh was so good today and they were so old it almost started looking like elder abuse at one point. I actually couldn't get that out of my head, that he was playing at such a higher level compared to the 80-something-year-old people who were interviewing him. It felt like elder abuse. They just did not belong in the room. Let me say this as clearly as possible: they're too old. They're not competent in a way that they could be. We deserve better. By the way, I would say this no matter what party they're in. They are too damn old. I'm sorry, I think we deserve better than people who are one foot in the grave. Look at the trouble that those oldsters are causing us.
## [Kavanaugh’s "Democrat" Framing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=780s)
The other thing I liked was he did an amazingly, impressively good job of painting himself as a Democrat. By the time Kavanaugh was done talking about all the things he had done for women, it felt to me like he was discriminating against men. I was actually starting to get mad at him because I didn't hear all the details, but it sounded like he picked four women for his clerks for the Supreme Court, should he get nominated. I'm thinking to myself, well, diversity is great, I'm actually a fan, because especially for the government, you want the government to represent the people. But really, four women? There was no guy in the top four? Well, maybe there was, but it came across to me like he was discriminating against men, which to me makes him a Democrat. Am I wrong? He acted like he was a Democrat because he talked about essentially discriminating against men. I'm not a fan of that, but it might help him in his quest to get approved.
## [The Persuasion of the Calendars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=880s)
The other thing that I did not see coming: the calendar stuff was brilliant. To be clear, and he said this as well, there's nothing on his calendars—he actually had his calendars from 1982, amazing—there was nothing on the calendar that proves or disproves what he was doing. If somebody went to a party at 17 and drank a bunch of beer, maybe they don't write that on their calendar that their parents could see. The fact that it wasn't on his calendar isn't proof of anything. But we're in a game of persuasion. It's a persuasion game, it's not a proof game, because it's not a court. We're just trying to persuade people.
When Kavanaugh started going through the details that he could recount of every weekend in 1982, he told you what he was doing with his dad. His dad also kept calendars from every year and he had kept essentially a diary of everything he'd done since he was 14. Who does that? Who does that exactly when you need it? I'm going to start a calendar, I tell you. I'm going to start writing down all my calendar stuff too, just in case.
## [Comparing Memory Details](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=992s)
The main thing that the calendar thing did was it allowed Kavanaugh to paint a very detailed picture of what that month looked like, which made his memory of events seem way up here. When you were done, if you watched both of them, if you watched Dr. Ford and then you watched him, you would say her memory has got all these holes in it. She doesn't know the house, the time, the place. She is not quite sure who's there. The people who say she was there say they weren't there. He's not even sure he's met her. Her story has all kinds of memory plot problems, including: how the heck did she get there and how did she go home? And how did she remember that she had exactly one beer?
Who remembers they had one beer in 1982? "Oh yes, I remember it was a Saturday, it was 1982, I drank one beer, I believe it was a Budweiser, didn't finish it, had a little trouble getting the can opened, I believe I got a little of the beer on me when I opened the can." Who remembers their one beer from 1982? The fact that she remembers that—or claims to—and then there were all these other things that she couldn't remember gives you an impression of potentially faulty memory.
That doesn't mean that the main event, the actual assault, is in the category of things she doesn't remember, because she says she remembers that very clearly. But when you compare it to Kavanaugh's more detailed, "Here's where I was on this day, this is what I did in the afternoon, that's what I did at night, I never would have gone out that night because I had football practice," it gave you a picture of someone who had a really clear memory compared to someone who does not. Wow, that was really good stuff. The calendar is just crazy. It's just crazy that there's an allegation from 36 years ago and one of the people produces an actual written record of where he was that day. When does that happen? That doesn't mean it's accurate, but it's just remarkable that it exists at all.
I'll say it again: I believe both of them were telling the truth as they believed it. I did not see in Christine Ford obvious signs of lying. I saw lots of signs that her memory has holes in it. With Kavanaugh, I saw no indication that he's lying. It's a tie. I think they were both telling the truth as they saw it according to their own memories.
## [The Danger of Setting a Precedent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1178s)
Given that situation, the next question is: what are we going to do about it? There are some wildcards, like you've got a Jeff Flake, who doesn't ever have to be in the government; he's already retiring. You've got some women who have got a gender thing they've got to manage as well as a Republican thing and they've got their base. But you put it all together and if you watch these two people, there is no way you could walk away saying, "Oh, he's just completely guilty, there's no doubt about it." If you do, well, people would just pick sides according to their team.
I think he did a good job of describing that if we go down this road of using this standard—this level of uncertainty from this long ago—if we use that standard, it's the beginning of something very bad. I think he made that case pretty well. The two possibilities that I would say would be toward the top anyway would be a standard false memory, or we live in the simulation and there is no actual history, but there are two remembered histories.
Was it good enough to convince the moderate Republican senators? The moderate senators who were the ones on the fence really just need cover. They need a reason that they can look at and say, "This is the reason." Did he give them a reason? Yes. He was sufficiently credible that that's enough of a cover that they could say, "Look, if you heard it, you saw what I saw. This guy looks like he's a pretty straight shooter, we wouldn't want to lose him in the court, we can't let the enemies get away with this." I think that they have all the ammunition they need to do that.
## [The FBI Investigation Question](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1314s)
Looking at your comments, what about the FBI questions? I thought Kavanaugh did not do a good job answering the "Why don't you want the FBI to investigate?" Persuasion-wise, it might have been okay that he kept returning to the same talking point. He kept saying, "I am willing to come in and sit and testify any way you want." The question kept being, "Why don't you want the FBI to investigate?" and Kavanaugh would angrily and emotionally answer a completely different question. He would say that he was willing to testify at any time. It just wasn't an elegant answer.
Here would be my suggestion for a better way he could have dealt with it. It's always easy after the fact. He should have said, "I'm willing to testify to anybody at any time. I want to clear the record straight. I'm okay with anybody investigating." But when she follows up and says, "So why don't you call for those investigations?" the correct answer was: "I would like to stay separate from the political process. The politicians have to make that decision about what is the process. I don't want to interfere with Congress's job. Congress needs to decide who investigates, if anybody. My job is to be a judge and to testify. I can only tell you what my job is and I will do all of it. I'll be there for anybody, I'll talk to anybody, and I would prefer that somebody looks into it, but I'm not going to tell Congress how to do their job. I believe in the separation of powers."
That would have been a good answer. Isn't that a better answer than the one you saw? He should have said it's not his decision; he would be completely okay with it and it would probably help, but he doesn't want to advise Congress how to do their job. That would have been the right decision.
He knows the FBI equals more delays. Here would be another way to go at that. "Why don't you want the FBI to investigate?" Here's a good answer: "Senator Feinstein, I understand that there are people in here who have questions, but I'm not one of them. I have the advantage of knowing that I didn't do any of this. So an investigation is what you need to do. If you need to do it, go ahead and I'm all in favor of it, but I don't need an investigation because I know I didn't do this thing." That may not make a lot of sense, but it would be a confident thing to say and it would probably work persuasion-wise.
## [Confirmation Prediction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1502s)
Do I think he'll be confirmed? The answer is yes. The reason he'll be confirmed is because he did a good job of making his case. If it's just "he said, she said," which is all it is now, the Democrats have all the cover they need to say, "Well, we're not comfortable with it." The Republicans have all the cover they needed to say, "Yeah, he satisfied all of our lingering concerns. We don't want to make a victim out of his family."
By the way, you don't want this to be a precedent. This precedent has to fail. It's far less important who we get on the Supreme Court, assuming that the list beyond Kavanaugh is pretty solid—whether it's him or the second choice or the third choice. That doesn't matter so much as the fact you don't want to set a precedent that anybody can derail anybody with this sort of stuff. I think Congress will say, "Look, we just can't live with this precedent." Republicans are going to vote him in. If there are some Republicans who can't take the heat, they're probably going to get primaried and there's going to be a whole lot of money flowing to their competitors. I think it is not politically safe for any Republican to vote against him at this point, not because of whether it's true or false, but because we can't know. You can't have this precedent. You can live with a justice that isn't your exact first choice. You can't live with this precedent. This is not one you can live with. It is good persuasion because it showed sincerity and that needed to be communicated.
## [The Hippocampus and False Memories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1665s)
Is the vote happening tomorrow? I don't know the update on the vote. Who needs to decide? Is that just Grassley or who is it who decides that?
Dr. Ford's answer about her hippocampus was very interesting. I didn't know what to make of that. I couldn't decide if that was good persuasion or bad persuasion because it sounded like she knew what she was talking about, and since she has the background for that stuff, it sounded believable. Here are the questions that I would have asked if I were the lawyer. Here's what I would have asked of Dr. Ford:
"Dr. Ford, have you ever accused anybody else of any improprieties? Dr. Ford, have you ever had a memory of, let's say, a childhood event or anything that you later found out was wrong? Dr. Ford, do you know people who have had false memories? Dr. Ford, is it possible for people to be an eyewitness to a crime and have a false memory of it? Because you're an expert on memory, is it possible for other people to have that?"
Presumably, she would say yes, it's well-documented that other people have had false memories. Then you say, "Dr. Ford, do those people know their memories are false? Does it feel false to them?" And she would say, "No, false memories feel exactly like the real thing." Then: "Dr. Ford, if other people have false memories that feel exactly like the same thing, and you have a memory of this thing which other people who should remember it don't, is it even possible that your memory, as clear as it is, could be in that category? The category of fake memories? I know you think it isn't and you've said very clearly you strongly believe it's true, but if you could take some distance and look at yourself as if you were someone else, what do you think? Is it even possible to have a false memory of a case like this?" I'd love to hear the answer to that.
## [The Questioning Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1812s)
Obviously, the lawyer who was working for the Republicans—it seems to me obvious that she had been coached to go light. It was not a Search-and-Destroy mission and that was probably the right play. Somebody's asking me, "Does she have crazy eyes?" Well, those glasses that she wore really didn't let us see her eyes, and I haven't seen pictures of her wearing glasses before. I'm not saying that they're fake glasses, because it looked like they were prescription, pretty heavy, and I could see good reasons why she wouldn't want to wear contact lenses in this situation. But the effect of it was we couldn't get a good look at her eyes, and it makes me wonder how intentional that was. My guess is that it was intentional and that her lawyer said, "Look, people are going to look at your beady eyes and they're going to get the wrong idea."
## [Inconsistencies Regarding Flying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=1875s)
The other part was when she was asked about flying. Apparently, she flies all over the place. So the whole thing about why wouldn't she fly across the country, she managed to turn into, "Oh, I didn't understand that they were willing to fly out to see me." When she said, "I didn't understand that Congress was willing to fly somebody out to me," that was a lie. When I said that she looked like she's telling the truth, I'm talking about the alleged event. When she said she didn't understand that Congress was willing to come to her, I don't think there's any chance that wasn't a lie. That was just a lie.
The truth was probably more of a stalling thing or maybe she hadn't decided. We don't know what she was thinking, we don't know why she lied, but I would say with fair confidence that she lied about two things. I think she lied about her fear of flying because it is clear that she flies all the time. She tried to make an excuse that it's easier to fly to a vacation—well, sure, but not so much of a difference that she couldn't fly out to save the country. We're talking about the fate of the country; she couldn't get on the plane for that?
There are two lies, in my opinion. You can't know for sure because you don't know what's in her head, but two things looked obviously like lies. One is that she didn't want to come here because of the flying thing; that was probably exaggerated for effect. Two, she didn't understand they had offered to come to her. That was just clearly a lie because everybody in the country knew that that offer had been made. Literally everybody. There's nobody she could have talked to who wouldn't have said, "But they said they'd come out here." Literally everybody who was following the story knows that.
We do have two instances where she clearly lied. Probably not enough to turn into a perjury situation because they have to do with her state of mind and you can't really prove state of mind, at least not easily, but that certainly hurt her credibility. If I were looking for an excuse to vote for him, it would be this: Judge Kavanaugh seemed completely credible. Christine Ford seems very credible when she talks about an attack happening, but it's obvious that she lied about the flying and it's obvious that she lied about not knowing that they were going to fly to her. Given that we know she lied, she's no longer a credible witness in the sense that we would use this standard to keep somebody off of the Supreme Court. That's all the cover you need if you're a Republican and you wanted a reason to vote for a conservative. If you don't know she is lying, you're naive. She's clearly lying about two things, but the attack itself is, I think, a little bit more likely mistaken identity than a lie, if you had to put a percentage on it.
"Dr. Ford, do you have frequent flyer accounts?" Yeah, that wouldn't tell you as much as you need because the fact that she flies is all you need to know. A lie under oath is a lie. A lie that can't be proven, though, is irrelevant. If she said that she was too afraid to fly, how do you prove that she wasn't too afraid to fly? I just don't know that anybody would make that case. "They kept her in isolation for ten days and she really didn't know." Well, her lawyer knew. If her lawyer didn't tell her, that's almost a bigger problem. Clearly, her lawyer knew what the deal was.
## [Lindsey Graham’s Response](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=2141s)
Lindsey Graham's performance: I haven't seen him today, but he's been very strong on this. I got to say, I like the way he's handled this whole thing. There were some memory holes about whether the music was on or not, but that's not really the sort of thing that somebody's going to remember from 36 years ago.
## [Impact on the #MeToo Movement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1XEZS9Acgc&t=2201s)
Impact on the MeToo movement? It's bad for the MeToo movement no matter what happens in this situation. Half of the country is going to think it wasn't true and they're certainly going to think that the other allegations—that are just crazy, the gang rapes and other stuff—they're certainly going to think that part's not true. I think what the world has witnessed is at least half of them have seen something that they know to be false accusations of MeToo stuff. It's probably a terrible blow to the credibility of women in general, which would be a bad result.
The thing about the two doors: when you hear that somebody needs two doors on their home, and after she admitted that there's no way to know if her PTSD or her mental condition was entirely caused by this alleged event or was it entirely caused by her genetics—there's no way to know. So that matters. She had memory lapses of things that just happened recently.
What did Lindsey Graham do that was so good? I'm going to have to go watch that, I guess. Let me see if I can find it really quickly while you're here. "Lindsey Graham slams Democrat leaders for sitting on sexual assaults." It's probably that. I don't want to play the whole thing, but I'll go look into it later. I think that's enough for now. I've got work to do and I will talk to you later.