Episode 238 Scott Adams: False Memories, Kavanaugh and Confirmation
Date: 2018-09-28 | Duration: 45:24
Topics
More and more of the public now understands that… One or both could have false memories They can BOTH be telling the truth, as they remember it Facts don’t matter, more and more people see that clearly now The 4 or 5 undecided votes in the Senate are running the country Alan Dershowitz says there should be an investigation before proceeding
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip and Feinstein’s Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=6s)
Hey everybody, come on in here. Hello Vana, hello Mike, hey other people—Jerry, Fuzzy, Jim, Tyler. If you come in early, I'll say your name out loud. It's quite a treat. Now we have a thousand people, and it's time for the simultaneous sip. That's the best step of the day. Grab your mug, your chalice, your vessel, your cup, your glass; fill it with your favorite beverage, lift it to your lips, and enjoy the simultaneous sip.
Somebody mentioned a name, Feinstein, in the comments just now, and I have to laugh every time the President mispronounces her name as "Fine-steen." I always think to myself: does he do that intentionally? Does he not care? Or is he just confused like most of us are on whether it's "Steen" or "Stein"?
## [Advocates vs. Truth-Tellers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=67s)
Let's talk first about all the inconsistencies. There's this general feeling I'm hearing in the pundits; the pundits are saying that if people are lying about the little stuff, that's an indication they're lying about the big stuff. If somebody was definitely lying about the little details, that should take away the credibility of what they say about the big point.
I disagree with that totally—in this case, anyway. There might be some general sense where that's true, but in this particular case, you have two people, Ford and Kavanaugh, who are acting as advocates. They're not really there to tell the truth. They're both fighting for their life. They're fighting for the fate of the country, their fate in fighting for their families, they're fighting for their reputations. Neither Kavanaugh nor Ford are there to tell us the truth. On some surface level, that's why they're there, but they're advocates. They're there to win.
In those situations, when you have, let's say, the question of: did Christine Ford really remember she only had one beer but she couldn't remember these other details? Well, that's sort of ridiculous. Did Kavanaugh really never drink to blackout, or never drink too much, or never have a time when he drank so much he didn't remember some details what happened? Well, it's sort of ridiculous. Did he have the drinking age wrong? Did he mischaracterize by a year when the legal age changed in 1982? Well, it doesn't really matter because you should expect that both of them would lie on all the little stuff.
The expectation should be that both advocates will shade the little stuff as much as possible to the point where it's just a lie. So when they talk about whether they had one beer or whether somebody knew somebody, you should expect both of them are lying by shading and so on. Don't make any conclusion about whether they were honest about the little stuff because they're not there to tell you the truth. They are advocates.
## [Jeff Flake and the Logic of the System](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=253s)
Let's talk about Jeff Flake. Jeff Flake, one of the swing votes, has come out and announced that he will vote for Kavanaugh. His reasoning in his announcement was interesting. What he said was that he was open to hearing both stories, but when he did, he said it was impossible to know who was telling the truth, and therefore you must default to the system. The system is essentially—at least an ethic of the system is—innocent until proven guilty.
I think that's the protection that all of the Republicans and the people who might vote for Kavanaugh have now because of these hearings and the testimonies. I think that everybody has the same cover that Jeff Flake does, which is they can credibly say there's no way to know what happened. Once you've said that, you're free to vote for the one you want. I think confirmation is assured at this point simply because the people who wanted to vote for him but found it dangerous have really good cover now.
## [The A/B Test for Confirmation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=316s)
Why is Jeff Flake the perfect one to go first of the group of four or five people who are the only ones who haven't made a decision? If you've never listened to me before, that might be less obvious. If you've listened to my Periscopes, you know that this little group meets, and in fact, they met right after the hearings. Out of that group, Jeff Flake went first and he tried out an approach, which is: we can't really know, so you have to default to the system which says you're innocent until proven guilty.
Why did Jeff Flake go first? It's because he has less to lose. He's not running for re-election, so he is A/B testing his explanation. The other people who would like to say what Jeff Flake just said are going to wait to see what the reaction is, and then they'll know if they're safe or not. The reaction will be safe enough because when you say there's no way to know, it's pretty obvious when you look at the public that the public is split. It's pretty objectively true. Reasonable people are looking at all the evidence that's available and coming to different conclusions. That's all you need to know, and then you just default to the system and you've done the most credible thing that a leader can do.
Jeff Flake going first is important. He's the canary in the coal mine. He's the A/B test. He's the one who's going first to see if he gets killed, because if he gets killed, it doesn't matter that much; he's retiring anyway. The others care more.
## [Facts Don't Matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=438s)
When I'm watching people frame the situation and they're talking about Ford and Kavanaugh and their testimonies and how credible they are, you're watching what I told you would happen back in 2015. You're watching a civilization that is ascending to a higher level of awareness about reality. It's really exciting, and I've said this about the whole Trump administration from the beginning—even from the candidacy—that he would change the way we thought about reality.
Now let me ask you this: back in 2015 when I said the facts don't matter—of course, they matter to outcomes, but in terms of our decision-making, we just ignore them—have you ever seen a cleaner example of where the facts don't matter? This is a real obvious situation where you can see people who have made a decision and then they reason backwards to what the facts must be. "Oh, I've decided I like Kavanaugh, therefore I reason backwards to the facts of: oh, it's a fake memory."
When I first said this in 2015, I think most of you will remember that it just sounded crazy. That's just a few years ago—to say that the facts don't matter to our decisions sounded crazy. But now you're watching it. It's unambiguously true that the facts don't matter. The reason, of course, is that we never know the facts. The facts would matter totally if we actually knew what they were, but we tend to think we know the facts and we're just wrong. We just believed it without having evidence.
## [Subjective Truth vs. Objective Lies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=559s)
The people who have already risen to the higher level of understanding reality are not saying that one of them lied and one of them is telling the truth. Anybody who's framing this as "there's one liar and one telling the truth and that's the end of the story," they have not yet risen to a higher level of awareness.
Much of the public is starting to understand, and the higher-level awareness goes like this: both of them could very easily be telling the truth as they understand it. If you're looking for lies, I think you're not going to find any because on the little stuff, of course, they're shading. They're manipulating all the little stuff about who had to be heard and how would I get home—whatever that stuff is just total—but you should expect that from advocates.
On the big question of whether the main allegation was true, to me, the most likely situation—and certainly the one that should be in every conversation—is that both could be telling the truth as they say it. That means both could have faulty memories, one of them could have faulty memories, or we live in the simulation in which history doesn't really set; the history is variable until you confirm it.
Watch for people like Geraldo, who has risen to a higher level of awareness—maybe he was already there. Geraldo said they're both telling the truth as they say it. That is a higher level of awareness. It doesn't mean it's accurate; it just means that he is aware of that possibility being a prime possibility, not just some obscure, little, weird possibility. It's the prime possibility that they're both telling the truth as they remember it. Then you have to default to the process because there's no other credible thing to do when you don't know the facts.
## [The Hippocampus and Memory Experts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=743s)
Dr. Ford, when asked about whether she could not remember the main fact, talked about her hippocampus and chemical reactions in the brain, and how the brain normally remembers the big details but it's normal to be sketchy on the small details. Was Dr. Ford correct that it is normal to remember the big detail while not remembering what people wore or the exact wording? Yes, that is completely accurate, scientifically backed; everybody would agree that is more likely.
However, the question that was not asked—and I wish it had been—is: "Dr. Ford, do you believe there is such a thing as false memories?" Being a memory expert, she's going to say yes, because she knows that other people have had false memories. Then you follow up: "Dr. Ford, the people who have false memories—are they positive that their false memory is true?" Dr. Ford's an expert on this stuff, or at least she's an expert in this general field. She would say, I think, "Yes, those people with false memories—which are fairly common and do happen in traumatic situations more often than others—they are positive, and they're also wrong."
Without that question, I feel like we just didn't get a good hearing. I do understand why the lawyer that the GOP hired did not go hard at her because it would have been an unnecessary abuse. Whatever is going on with Dr. Ford, it's not pleasant. She's not having a good time. She's a victim of something—whether it's these events, other events, or just a baseline anxiety that she talked about. She's a victim of something, and there is a limit to how hard you go as someone who was clearly a victim of something. So I think the GOP probably chose right. I'm guessing the lawyer they hired probably had some instructions to go easy, or at least not to go as hard as you would go in a trial. I think they played it right, but we'll never know. I still would have liked to hear some more probing questions.
## [Personal Examples of False Memories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=867s)
Here's a question: can people have a false memory of somebody that they know? The fact that she says she knew Brett Kavanaugh—which is also in dispute, by the way, because he doesn't know her or at least didn't hang around the same circles—is it possible to have a false memory with a whole different person in it?
I've told my story of being robbed as a bank teller and how I gave a completely 100% wrong description. The only thing I got right was the gender when I gave my description of the robber. I know that because later I saw a bank video surveillance of me being robbed, and it was a totally different person from my memory. So I hold in my memory a perfect memory of the person who robbed me while also holding a perfect memory of looking at the video of me actually being robbed by a completely different person. There's one example in which I have a different person in my memory and it's confirmed.
But the question is: okay, this was a stranger. If you actually know the person, can you have a false memory of somebody you know? Because that would be weird to get that wrong, right? Well, I have to own one involving my brother. I remember telling a story in which I was the center of the story and I did X, and my brother sat in the room and said, "You didn't do X, that was me." I have a memory of doing something that was actually my brother doing it. It was like a mind-blowing situation because even if you assume my brother was the one with a false memory, one of us has one. It's a situation of having a memory about your own brother that you substitute yourself for or vice versa. That's as deep a memory as you could possibly have.
## [The Story of the Dog and the Gun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=988s)
I also have a false memory involving my mother—a very detailed story of something that happened. I recounted the story that was about her; it involved a gun and a dog. It literally involved shooting a dog. That's the sort of story that, if you're a kid, is pretty traumatic. In this story, my mother was threatening to shoot the neighbor's dog because the neighbor's dog attacked our dog. Our dog got chewed up, and in my recounting of it, my mother took her gun—which we kept loaded and leaned in the corner behind the front door. True story: we had a loaded gun leaned in the corner of my kitchen all the time in case we needed it. When you grow up in the country, that's actually more normal than you think. It was there because there were animals that would get in the garden.
My memory is that she went to the neighbors with her gun loaded, knocked on the door, and said, "Your dog just attacked our dog. You've got two choices: you can either shoot your dog or you can watch me shoot your dog." And then the neighbor went in the back and shot his dog. Now, I recounted that story to my mother and she said, "That never happened." I said, "Well, maybe I got some of the details wrong, but the basic idea that you went to his house and told him to kill his dog or you would, and you had your gun with you—that part's true, right?" She said, "Nope, nothing like that ever happened."
Look how detailed this story is. Either my mother or I have a complete false memory, because how would you forget that? It's far more likely that my memory was the false one because she has the negative memory of it, and you would remember something like that if you were the principal.
## [False Memories in the Present](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1233s)
Last night, this literally happened. It was sort of mind-blowing. I was looking on social media and talking about this false memory stuff, and I got into a conversation with Kristina, my girlfriend, in which I recounted a conversation we had. I remember the place we were, I remember talking about it, I remember how it made me feel after the fact—it had a sort of lasting impact on me. But it didn't happen.
I told the story of a very detailed event that involved Kristina and a conversation with her, but she presented evidence that I think completely confirms that that conversation never happened. I have a complete false memory that I know now is a false memory, and it doesn't change the memory. I still have a complete memory of something that didn't happen.
Can drugs affect memory? Yeah, lots of things can affect memory. So can time. So, can you have a false memory that involves someone you know? The answer is yes. I've had them in complete form with details.
## [Eyewitness Unreliability and Trauma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1295s)
Anytime I see this conversation—and I was tweeting about this this morning—I see stories talking about the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Now, if it's true that eyewitnesses are deeply unreliable and the science is very clear on that, how different would that be if you were the subject of the event? The thing that makes eyewitness accounts unreliable is when there's any kind of shock or trauma or your fight-or-flight instincts get elevated. Whenever that's happening, your memory suffers.
If eyewitnesses watch an event that is sort of routine, they might remember it better than if somebody came in and committed a crime and somebody got hurt. In the latter situation, they're less likely to have the same memory because their emotions are jacked up. Now, if you're the one who is being attacked, your emotions would be jacked up even more than witnesses. Somebody standing right next to you getting attacked would, in theory, have an unreliable memory, but the person being attacked would have even more of that effect. They would have more trauma.
I don't know if that specifically has been studied, but if you're using your sense of reason, the person having the most emotion probably has the least reliable memory. If two people have a different memory or observation—one is seeing an elephant in the room and the other person is right next to them and they don't see the elephant—which one is telling you the truth? It's usually the person who doesn't see the thing. It's the person who's invented the elephant who is having the hallucination. With these memories, if you have somebody who says "I was there" and somebody says "I would remember that," usually I would rely on the person whose memory says they weren't there. But of course, this is all shaded by the fact that they are advocates. You should expect neither Kavanaugh nor Ford to be reliable witnesses because they're not uninterested observers.
## [The Simulation Theory of History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1478s)
What about the simulation? Smart people like Elon Musk and people like me say that reality is probably a simulation. If it is, the creators of the simulation would want to conserve resources unless they needed them. They would not create a reality that had every possibility and every history complete and fitting; it would be too hard to program. You would instead have the past determined by the present whenever it was needed. The past would be developed on demand. That allows for the fact that there could be two legitimate pasts that people believe in at the same time, and neither of them is true—they're both simulations.
You're not ready to accept this explanation of reality, and I understand, but you will. You're getting there. In my world, it is more likely that both of them are telling the truth and they both have a valid history that supports their truth, but that's because we live in the simulation. Since there's no way to decide which one is true, they can both be true forever because there's nothing that requires them to be solved.
If people don't mention in every major conversation that eyewitness reports and memories are unreliable, they're either anti-science or they're just advocates and you could ignore them. Look for the people who are willing to say, "Let's understand that memories are very unreliable." This is true of Kavanaugh, it's true of Ford, it's true of you, it's true of me.
## [A False Memory in a Tweet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1603s)
You want to see another false memory that happened today? Here is one I’ll read to you on Twitter; this is someone having a false memory right in front of you. Here's a tweet from somebody named Greg: "How about Ford's most credible witness, her lifelong female friend? She emphatically says it didn't happen, as do all the remembered witnesses. That's why it's obvious Christine is having false memories."
This tweet is based entirely on a false memory. The friend said she didn't *remember* it. The friend did not say it didn't happen. So this very tweet about the situation is based entirely on a false memory. There was no news report in which the friend said it didn't happen. The only thing the friend said is she has no memory of it. That's completely different than saying "I have a memory of it not happening." False memories are the norm. Our memories are terrible.
## [The 4 or 5 People Running the Country](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1786s)
We're learning so much during the Trump administration about how reality is constructed. We're learning the facts don't matter. We're learning that our system is not what you thought it was. In this Supreme Court confirmation, what is the process? If you live in the second dimension, you say to yourself, "The President nominates somebody, the Senate does advice and consent, they have to get a majority."
Now, what do you think? You saw that mostly everybody made their decision without regard to the facts. They just joined their team and then they reasoned backwards to why they must be right. You all saw this. The facts didn't matter to the vast majority of people. There's a small group, the four or five people who had not decided yet. Jeff Flake has now left that group, but the entire decision of who gets on the Supreme Court came down to four or five people.
The decision about who got on the Supreme Court was not the Senate. It didn't matter what the rest of the Senate did; it only mattered what those four or five people did because they're the only ones who matter. That's our system. We have a system where four or five people get to decide who's on the Supreme Court. That's it. And I'm not even sure there are four or five who are deciding. I told you before that it's more like the four or five are hiding than deciding, because they needed to hide until everything that could be known was out, and then they could find something to be their "fake because."
Jeff Flake's "fake because" was: "Okay, now we've heard everybody and it's unreliable on both sides, and now it's safe for me to say since we can't tell, we have to go with innocent until proven guilty."
## [How to Overthrow the Government as One Senator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=1971s)
Given that only four or five people are running the show, why would you ever vote with the majority? Imagine this scenario: Senator Scott Adams gets elected. On day one I get elected. It doesn't matter which party I'm in. What's the first thing I do to take power, to essentially overthrow the government? All I do is not vote with my party every time.
I could run the country as one senator just by not reliably voting for my party. I would be the only one who's making the decision because these votes are coming down to one vote and I would be that vote. If I got elected and just always voted with my party, I would have no power. I would not be part of the decision-making process in any important way. But by sometimes going against my group and always waiting for the last minute, like this little group of swing voters, they have effectively taken over the country.
There are only four or five senators who run everything. They're deciding who's on the Supreme Court, they're going to decide health care, they're going to decide on prison reform. There are only four or five people. If you get elected to the Senate and you immediately join a team and just vote for the team, well, you're an idiot. Let me put it another way: there are four or five smart people in the Senate and then there are a bunch of idiots. McCain, for all of his alleged and real faults, was simply smarter than most of the people because he was willing to cross sides. That gave him real power. I'll drink to that.
## [The Dershowitz Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=2221s)
I've said many times that I like to wait until Alan Dershowitz speaks to have an opinion because his legal opinion is just better than everybody else's. He's one of the few people who can have an opinion on both sides of the aisle. He is wisely staked down a position where he can go left and he can go right and therefore he can be credible.
He has suggested that the confirmation should wait until the situation is investigated. You might be confused because it feels like: wait a minute, why is Dershowitz trying to hold up this nomination? Is he a secret Democrat? The answer is no; he is a public Democrat. He says explicitly he would not prefer this candidate's opinions on the Supreme Court, but he would like to see an investigation.
My opinion on that is the same: I don't see any reason to not have an investigation because there's nothing it can do. It can't change the result. The only thing the FBI can do is talk to other witnesses and it wouldn't matter what they said. It would still just be hearsay; it’s bad memory, it’s ancient. All the decisions are already made. The best argument against Dershowitz is that we know the decision won't be changed. But an investigation would make everybody feel better about the system and its credibility.
The way you feel about the system's credibility is the glue that holds the whole thing together. If you lose your glue, it all falls apart. So Dershowitz is correct that an investigation would make the country more comfortable. But there's also extra risk because you never know if your investigation is going to kick up something that's a whole unrelated matter that the FBI can't ignore. If I were the President or the Republican senators, I would push through with the vote and get this behind us as quickly as possible. If I were Dershowitz, his brand is well-served by his position: "Let's have a little extra credibility."
## [Elder Abuse and Diversity in the Senate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2531s)
Look at Alan Dershowitz at age 80 and then look at the senators who were questioning the folks yesterday. Boy, 80 is not the same thing for different people. Dershowitz at 80 looks and acts like age 60. I don't even see him losing a step. But you look at some of the senators—Senator Feinstein, Leahy, Orrin Hatch—those guys quite clearly send the impression that they've lost a step.
Watching Kavanaugh respond to the senators felt like elder abuse because the senators just weren't on his level intellectually. It pulled the lid back on who it is who's in charge, and it's scary to see that senior citizens who have quite obviously lost a step are making important decisions. That's a big deal and I think we ought to fix it.
We should diversify the Senate in every way that makes sense. We should have more women, more ethnic representation, but we should also have some science people—some engineers in the Senate. Having all aging lawyers is not diversification. Forget about the fact that most of them are old white guys; that's a risk profile by itself because you don't have enough perspectives. But the fact that they don't understand technology and they never will—and technology will be where all the important decisions are in the future—it's just not a good look. You need some younger people on there.
## [Closing Thoughts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kL8p-m_pa8&t=2718s)
I think we've covered it. I think we've said everything we need to say, and now it's time to get back to work. Is there any kind of a decision on when the vote will happen? I haven't heard that yet.
In the coming days, I'm going to be talking about my company's app, the Interface by WhenHub app. There's some exciting things happening that I think have an implication for the bigger world and an implication for all of you. I want to warn you in advance, I'm going to be talking about the app—not today, but soon. Pretty exciting stuff happening. We'll talk about that later, and I will see you soon.