Episode 240 Scott Adams: Why Do We Punish Imaginary People for Crimes of Imaginary People?
Date: 2018-09-29 | Duration: 1:00:10
Topics
Is 52 year old Kavanaugh responsible for 17 year old Kavanaugh? There’s a reason we don’t treat minors the same as adults 100% certainty of either innocence or guilt Chickens pecking for pellets, MSM and social media manipulation Prediction: If Kavanaugh is denied confirmation, red wave will result Jeff Flake, the lame duck…was running the government this week
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=13s)
Hey everybody. Jason’s in here, Juliana, and everybody else. Donna, come on in. Tyler, you're always one of the first ones. Jason, get in here. Brad, Ken. We'll get down to the little whiteboard talk here. It’s going to make you mad. These are the best ones, the whiteboard talks that make you go, "I’m not sure I believe that." You're going to have one of those, but not until we enjoy the simultaneous sip.
Yes, it's time. Grab your mug, your vessel, your chalice, your cup, your glass, your container. Make sure it's got the beverage of your choice—I like coffee—and join me for the simultaneous sip.
## [Are You the Same Person as Your 17-Year-Old Self?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=75s)
Now, as we're all struggling with the questions about Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford, it seems to me there are some assumptions we've made that are worth challenging. One of the assumptions that we're just zipping past as if it doesn't matter is this very basic question: Are you the same person as the person who did something in your name when you were a minor?
In other words, what makes you the same person as the young you? Should you be punished for the crimes of the young you or held responsible for the young you? What is it that connects you? Let's go to the whiteboard.
Here are all the reasons that the 17-year-old version of you is the same person as, let's say, the 50-something-year-old version of you. These are all the things that make you the same person: you might have the same memories; you've got some of the same cells in your body; there's a legal and financial connection; anything you owned then that you haven't gotten rid of, you still own legally. There's the law—the law says you're the same person. There's your mind—the things you thought then were part of this continuation to what you think now. And then, of course, there's your character.
There might be more, but this is a starter set. By history, law, tradition, and society, your 17-year-old version of yourself is considered the same person as your current self. I'm just saying 52 here because we're watching this Kavanaugh situation, and the assumption we've started with is that if the person today can be determined to have done something in his 17-year-old incarnation, then we should hold him responsible today for what this character did.
## [The Science of Memory and Reconstructed Identity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=258s)
First, you need to know that this person doesn't exist. The 17-year-old Kavanaugh that we've all been living with for the last week or so—and you have been living with him, haven't you? Haven't you had in your mind a picture of a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh doing things? That person sort of exists for all of us. We've seen his pictures, imagined the scenes, and replayed the scenes as they've been described to us many times. But here is what all of those things have in common: they're imaginary. 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh literally doesn't exist. He's an idea.
The reason that we blame current Kavanaugh for what 17-year-old, imaginary, no-longer-exists Kavanaugh did is that we connect people in all these different ways. Let's talk about one of the ways we connect people: their memories. The memory you have now is connected to what you did. But what if you don't remember stuff? What if it turns out that your memories are not really memories; they're reconstructions? They're not real memories, and the science will confirm this. The things you think are your memories from way back then are not exactly memories. They're things you've manufactured from old memories; you've pieced together photographs; you've filled in the gaps of the things you didn't remember. You don't have actual memories of when you were a kid by the time you are this age; you have fake, reconstructed memories. You're not really connected by your memories because they're not real.
What about the cells of your body? Most of them are different. You don't really have the same body cells that you had then. What about finance? We're connected by finance. Legally, if I owned something when I was 17 and I never gave it away, I still own it. Well, there might be something like his old calendars. He still owns the old calendars, but it's kind of trivial. The things he owns now are like this; whatever he owned then was some calendars, maybe his old baseball mitt, some baseball cards. Realistically, there's nothing he really owns. He didn't have any money then; he was flat broke. He's not really connected to his old past by a fortune that he owned then and still owns. Everything he has now, he made since then because he had zero money then.
## [Legal Responsibility vs. Biological Reality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=446s)
Then there's a legal connection, which is that if I do something today, my tomorrow self has to pay the penalty. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't have any rule of law. You have to hold your future self responsible for what you did now. But there's no reason for that other than it works—it's just a practical thing. But the law also has a limit. Things that you did when you were 17—let's say something that he was accused of doing—don't really connect him anymore because the law does not require that for something he did at 17, he would be responsible for.
What about the mind? Is the mind of the 17-year-old the same mind as the 52-year-old? No. The 17-year-old mind is like a lump of clay. It's basically a potential mind. It's not the way he thinks now, it's not what he knows now, and it's not the experience he has now. There's a little bit in common, maybe, but not really.
And then what about his character? His character is certainly quite different than it was when he was 17 because the things you do when you're 17 are just stupid and reckless, and the things that you do when you're older are more considered. The entire discussion is whether or not we should hold responsible the person who does exist for the activities of an imaginary character. The past doesn't exist. There is no young Kavanaugh. You can't find him; you can't touch him. He is literally imaginary. We have constructed young Kavanaugh in our minds, and now we're going to hold old Kavanaugh responsible for it.
## [The Fallacy of 100% Certainty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=568s)
Realistically, he's not really the same person. We are literally looking to punish a person for the activities of an imaginary person. That's not far off the truth, is it?
The people who are the dumbest people in this conversation are the ones who are sure he's innocent or the ones who are sure he's guilty. If you're sure about either one of those positions, you're the dumb people in the conversation. Now, you can say the odds are very high that it's one or the other, and I think that would be reasonable to say. But if you're positive that he didn't do it or positive that he did do it, you're the dumb one. You're not even close to a reasonable position because we don't have any evidence that would put you on one of those extremes.
Do you want to live in a world where people can be punished for the activities of imaginary people? A 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh is absolutely imaginary. He's not connected to current Kavanaugh by character. Everyone who is a witness agrees that whatever 17-year-old Kavanaugh may or may not have done, he's definitely not this guy now. He's not connected by money, not connected by the same body cells, and he doesn't have the memory. He doesn't remember because nobody does—nobody remembers exactly what they were doing as a teenager. We think we do. If you're 20, you might, but if you're 52, you don't remember what you did as a teenager.
There's a reason that we don't treat minors the same as adults. If a 12-year-old were functionally the same person as they would be as an adult, they would be charged as an adult. But we know that's not the case. Your teenage brain is just not the same; it's not developed. If we can blame him for what he did at 17, could you also blame him for what he did at 12? Why not? What about six? Should Brett Kavanaugh be blamed for the things he did when he was six years old? They're both imaginary. Neither of them have anything important in common with his adult self.
## [The FBI Pause and Risk Management](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=813s)
Let's talk about the pause. I talked about that in my Periscope yesterday. I was not entirely against the pause. The pause introduces some risk that they'll kick up something, or maybe it'll take too long. But there was also some risk in ignoring half of the public who demanded it. That's a risk too.
You had two very big risks. I think that we're on the smarter path because we could get to a credible result on the path we're on. There are some risks that we won't, but we could. But if we were to just slap him onto the court, that would largely guarantee we didn't have a credible outcome. One of them has a possibility of being credible; the other way guaranteed a permanent problem.
## [Dr. Ford’s Credibility and the 100% Lie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=944s)
When Dr. Ford said that she was 100% positive about her memories, that should have eliminated her from credibility. The moment that Dr. Ford—who should be an expert in this field of psychology, or at least she works in that field—said that, she should understand this stuff. For her to say under oath that she's a hundred percent certain should have disqualified her. There's nobody who has her training who can say under oath, "I am a hundred percent sure I don't have a faulty memory." It can't be done.
She destroyed her credibility by claiming a hundred percent certainty. Here is what an honest answer would have looked like: "Well, Senators, I work in this field, and I know that sometimes people will believe their memories and they can be a hundred percent certain even when they're wrong. That said, my internal feeling of certainty is a hundred percent, and I've had this same memory for a long time. It meets all the characteristics of something that I would consider a high probability. But if you mean technically and scientifically, nobody can ever be a hundred percent sure. But on a human level, yes, I'm as close as you can get to total certainty."
An answer like that, I would have said to myself, "Well, that is scientifically correct and it sounds honest." But when somebody who is an expert in this field says that under oath, that is a lie. It's a lie because you know that she knows that memories can never be a hundred percent certain. When she leaned in and said "100 percent," at that moment, there's a hundred percent chance she was lying because her training would have told her that memories can be inaccurate or concocted, and you can't tell the difference. If you have a false memory, you can be 100% positive it's true.
In terms of persuasion, it was probably good because most people don't understand the nuance of memory. From a lawyer's perspective, it was a good play, but it was also unambiguously a lie.
## [The News as Chickens Pecking for Pellets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=1445s)
I've seen a lot of people who are concerned that the country will be torn apart by this. Let me give you the optimist view. Number one: our country has never been stronger in all of the important ways. Individually, we are less racist and less sexist than we have ever been.
When you look at the news, it would be easy to imagine that things are falling apart because that's the nature of the news—it's supposed to wind you up. If the news doesn't wind you up, you're not going to be clicking on stuff, and they need you to click on stuff like a chicken with a pellet. When you're watching the news, just imagine yourself as this chicken. You’re in an experiment, and there's a pellet here. "Pellet, pellet." That’s my impression of us watching the news.
If you remove yourself from that chicken-eating-a-pellet world—this artificial world that the big tech companies have created to put you in a mental prison where you think the stuff on TV is real and the world is going to blow up—you’ll see it’s a big artificial thing you’re feeling. Relatively speaking, there aren't that many people who are even paying attention. The vast majority of Americans are barely aware that there's something going on with the Supreme Court.
## [The Strongest Economy in History](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=1630s)
The excitement or fear you're feeling is artificially generated. It's not based on actual facts because we're completely divorced from them. We're in this little bubble. The system that the founders created is really, really strong. What we're dealing with now is nothing compared to what this country has been through before. Everything that we have right now is a smaller risk than everything that happened for the last 200 years. We are currently at the lowest risk to the Republic in our entire history.
Look for the blank space. What we're not talking about is the economy. Why? Because the economy is freaking amazing right now. Based on its size and solid elements, it is the strongest economy in the history of civilization. We don't need to talk about it because it doesn't make anybody unhappy. Militarily, we are safer than we've ever been. Physically, we are safer than we've ever been. We're wearing our seatbelts; we've figured out what kills people and we do less of it. Almost everything that's big and important—health, finance, the threat of nuclear war—is better than it's ever been before.
## [Individual Relations vs. Media Narratives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=1819s)
I believe that even with race relations, if you look at the news, it looks like it's worse than it's ever been. But it isn't. If you have any two people—real, actual physical people, not concepts in the news—introduced as strangers in a room, are the odds of them getting along better in 2018 or worse than at any time in history? The answer is better. You put a black person and a white person in a room and ask, "Do you respect each other? Do you listen to each other? If one of you gets hurt, would the other one help?" Yes.
Individually, we are less racist and less sexist than we have ever been. But on TV, we play our parts, we take our teams, and we battle for power. That's a whole artificial world that most people aren't even involved in. Most people are just going to soccer practice, and their kids' best friend is some other ethnicity, and it's all working out fine.
## [Trump's Strategic Silence and the Midterms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=2005s)
Trump has been, by Trump's standards, pretty quiet. He's letting the process play out. One thing we can determine from Trump being quiet is that he doesn't want attention to be taken away from this question. We have a weird situation where both sides think they will benefit by focusing on the Supreme Court. The more they can focus on this, the more they can get their base involved. That might be the only thing that matters for the midterms: how many of your own base you get to show up at the polls.
If the left succeeds in stymieing Brett Kavanaugh, what’s that going to do to Republican turnout? Democratic turnout will be higher because they'll see an opening. But that's a bit of a conceptual moonshot—that they could delay it and also get control of the Senate. People usually aren't motivated by long shots; people care about what hurts right now.
## [Republican vs. Democrat Mindsets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=2250s)
Imagine you're a Republican and Kavanaugh just got declined. What do Republicans do when they've got a problem to fix and all they need to do is get off the couch and take care of business? My summary of a Republican is this: if you need to take care of business, you take care of business. Period.
There's a car wreck, the car catches on fire, and a Republican stops in his pickup truck and a Democrat stops in his Prius. One of them has to risk themselves to pull people out of the burning car. While you're thinking about it, the Republican already did it. The Republican looked at it and said, "Big risk to me, but it's obviously the right thing to do." This midterm election is like that burning car. Republicans look at it and say, "If I have to vote to fix this thing, I’ll vote."
Democrats have painted themselves into a corner by saying we only need a week for the investigation. They are locked into that week. But what can be done in a week? Almost nothing. In any big organization, a week looks like talking to a few people, writing reports, having bosses rewrite them, and getting signatures. There will be no physical evidence obtained. Most people on the list will say, "I wasn't there."
## [Prediction: The Outcome and the Red Wave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=2620s)
My prediction is he will get confirmed at the end of the week, or even if it takes two weeks. But if Kavanaugh is denied the seat for any reason, I'm going to go on record with the Red Wave.
If Kavanaugh gets confirmed, the left will think, "Well, we tried," and they'll get used to it. But if he doesn't get on the court, the right is going to vote like you've never seen. You would see record Republican turnout. Republicans would act as one. You wouldn't need a leader to tell them to vote. They would make sure their lazy son-in-law voted; they would offer rides; they would call around. It will be the most instantly self-organized Red Wave you've ever seen.
If Kavanaugh is thwarted and it turns into a bloodbath where he doesn't get confirmed, that won't lead to a revolution—it will lead to an outbreak of democracy. The Republican response to not getting their way in the system is to stay within the system and try harder. Republicans like the system. They're not going to break it; they're going to use it harder.
## [Jeff Flake: The Lame Duck Running the Government](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=3056s)
The whole Jeff Flake situation—I love the fact that he is a lame duck and doesn't have to run for election anymore. He ended up being the only one who mattered. He decided to wait a week, and they had to because they needed his vote.
Did we have a government this week? We didn't have a government; we had a Jeff Flake. Jeff Flake was the government this week. The guy who already quit, the guy who's barely in the government because he's just waiting for his replacement—that guy, the lame duck, is running the government. He made the only decision this week that mattered.
## [The FBI Investigation and the "Responsible Lie"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-zqse9t60&t=3178s)
I think the odds of the FBI finding negative new information about Dr. Ford are very high. She has never been the subject of an FBI investigation, and they have to look into her credibility. They have to find out if she has ever had medical or mental problems, or if she's ever been on psychoactive prescriptions.
What are they going to find about him? I think they're going to find out that he drank more beer than they admitted in high school. But given that Kavanaugh said "I like beer" about fifty times, does it matter? If he drank a little bit more beer at 17 than he allowed as his adult version while talking in front of his daughters, of course he's going to say, "I like beer, but I didn't take it too far." What else do you want him to say?
In my opinion, he was exaggerating or lying about the degree of his drinking. It is also my opinion that I’m glad he did, because it didn't really have much to do with the accusation, but it had a lot to do with what his daughters were going to hear. He’s a role model to a large population of teenagers.
There are two answers to give. One is the exact honest answer: "Yeah, I drank a lot of beer." Terrible role model. The responsible thing to do—the same thing every one of you is doing to your teenage kids right now—is to lie. If Brett Kavanaugh is the good person he is alleged to be, he should have lied to that Congress about how much he drank. That is a responsible lie. If he lied about his beer drinking at age 17, I say: Thank you. I appreciate that, because you are a role model. If he lied about those trivial things to protect that, I hope he did.
All right, that's all I've got for now. I'll talk to you later.