Episode 264 Scott Adams: Dr. Shiva - U.S. Senate Candidate
Date: 2018-10-17 | Duration: 50:50
Topics
Dr. Shiva offers his thoughts on multiple topics Elizabeth Warren’s DNA results Dr. Shiva prevented from participating in debate Khashoggi and the Middle East How to address the Fentanyl (opioid) addiction epidemic Diversity of ideas
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## Transcript
## [Introduction and Simultaneous Sip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=5s)
Boom! Hey everybody, come on in here. We've got a very special Coffee with Scott Adams. As soon as you get in here, we'll queue it up. You're looking over my shoulder and you are probably seeing my special guest. I'm going to introduce him the moment we have our sip. Just before it—all right, we've got enough people.
Today we're talking to Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, who is an independent candidate for US Senate in Massachusetts running against—here's the fun part—running against Elizabeth Warren. What better guest and what better day? It couldn't get any better than this. We're going to talk about that and a few other topics like Saudi Arabia, DNA, polls, and stuff like that.
Before we do that, let me ask Dr. Shiva to join me in the simultaneous sip with the rest of you. Grab your chalice, your mugs, your glasses, your containers. Put something in there like coffee and join me for the simultaneous sip.
## [Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Results](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=66s)
Dr. Shiva, tell us what you think about Elizabeth Warren's DNA test. I should mention to the people who are not familiar with you that you have several advanced degrees that are relevant to this question. You've got an MIT BS, MS, and you're an engineer with a PhD. You've got credentials in systems biology, computer science, scientific visualization, and traditional medicine. That should get us covered for this DNA and other discussions. Tell me, what was your take on the whole DNA thing with Elizabeth Warren?
The Boston Globe called me—and they are completely in bed with Elizabeth Warren trying to resuscitate her image—and they asked me for a quote. I said the results showed that she's a bigger fake Indian than we ever thought. She's 99.99% white. That's what the results show. If you look at any percentage she has of any Native American genes—let's say here in the Americas, not South America, Colombia, Peruvian, etc.—it turns out if you add the error into that (a lot of this is based on statistics), she's probably close to 100% white. If you do the significant figures, she's 99.99% white.
From a statistical standpoint, she may have a few base pairs. It’s like if you think about the genome as a huge document with billions of characters, there may be a few characters in there which have Native American origin.
I have to ask you a weird question. I saw it on the news and I forget what the context was, but isn't there something to the fact that women carry around some component of DNA from their sex partners from the past? Is that a thing, or is it not DNA they're carrying around? Have you ever heard of that?
In 2003, when the Genome Project ended, we found some very fascinating things about DNA. It was initially thought it was a unidirectional process; you have your DNA and it's essentially cemented, which means nothing changes. What 2003 showed was that we have about the same number of genes, but DNA itself is malleable. You can add things into DNA. From what you're saying about sex partners, you can actually get it from viruses. In fact, the environment can turn on and turn off genes. Insertions into the genome can take place, but you can also have certain genes be accessible and not accessible. The genome is far more malleable.
## [The Political Fallout of the DNA Test](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=313s)
Does this seem like the worst political mistake that you can remember for her to do this video about her DNA? I thought what went wrong is that although she's called an academic, people could say that about you—except you seem to be a completely different personality, more practical. I think she branded herself as an ineffective academic through this exercise.
There's a fundamental difference between a scientist and an engineer, or a lawyer or lobbyist. The problem with pure scientists and pure lawyers is they are paid to manipulate data. A lawyer’s job is to convince the jury that no matter if the data is against his client, somehow everything is okay. They're about taking the 0.001% and trying to convince people that you're a Native American. In science, you can gather a bunch of data, plot it, and then you're fitting a line to a curve that can be manipulated.
In engineering, the fundamental difference is we can't manipulate this. If you build a piece of software or you build an airplane and it falls out of the sky, it's pretty clear. Only the real Indian can defeat the fake Indian. We have 4x8 signs all over Massachusetts. This is on a highway here, on people's homes. This incredible work by our volunteers, which has been happening for about a year, is what forced the Boston Globe to write this treatise saying Elizabeth Warren did not get into Harvard because of her Native American heritage. It's complete nonsense.
The Globe did this because they're in a very close relationship with Warren. When that failed, Warren was forced to take this DNA test. I believe she likely took a test and it failed, so then she went hunting for this guy, Carlos Bustamante, who then threw in Colombian, Peruvian, and other gene snips. It's like you're doing a Google search—instead of using "cat," you try to use "dog" and you try to find something that's a four-legged creature in there. That's essentially what took place.
Elizabeth Warren doing this was a mistake made out of the desperation that the "Real Indian vs. Fake Indian" meme has gone out into the broad mass of people in Massachusetts. That's what compelled her and the Globe to make these mistakes.
## [Exclusion from the Senate Debates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=564s)
I understand you're also being prevented from debating because of the way they calculate who can debate. Can you explain in its simplest form what math they did that kept you off the debate stage?
The first math, even before the polls, is this: there are only three candidates who got on the ballot, and only two are allowed on the debate stage. In 2014, five candidates in the governor's race were allowed on the debate stage—three independents, a Democrat, and a Republican. All of them only had to get 10,000 signatures. We fulfilled that; in fact, we got 20,000 signatures. On fairness alone, the debate stage can handle three people.
Now, these are federal and state laws put into place so people like you and I can run and follow the rules. We followed all the rules, but then they start introducing this thing called polls. In the polls, they can introduce criteria that you must achieve a certain level of head-to-head comparison to be on the stage. After we filed the lawsuit, the judge decided to hear us. They said Shiva must get 10% or more in the head-to-head comparison. The UMass poll—the University of Massachusetts, who we're suing—said I'm at 9%.
Let's talk about how they count. The UMass poll included two groups: one poll among likely voters and one poll among all registered voters. We were at 9% among the all registered voters and 8% among likely voters.
It took an MIT PhD and an MIT professor to figure this out: they've been making a fundamental error, purposely, in polls which favors incumbents and the existing two-party system. Let me explain it with the hot dog example. Let’s say I’ve got a pool of 100 people that I'm going to poll to find out who likes a samosa (an Indian treat) or a hot dog. Among those 100 people, only 50 people have ever tasted a samosa, but all 100 people have tasted the hot dog. Now you do the head-to-head and you ask people: "Do you like a samosa or do you like the hot dog?" 50 people say they love the samosa and 50 people say they love the hot dog.
The pollsters have always been dividing by 100. They say 50% like the samosa and 50% like the hot dog. But there's a problem: among those 100 people, 50 people have never tasted the samosa ever. The "ballot test" is supposed to measure if you went into the booth, who would you vote for? They have been reporting 50% when it should be 100% favorability with 50% visibility.
When you have a new candidate who doesn't have as much visibility, that denominator is far bigger because there's an indeterminate set of people who have never experienced that candidate. A debate is akin to a taste test. What they want to deny the American people is the taste test where you get to see the candidate and then you get to do the poll. They rig it so you can never get on the debate stage.
Not only would it increase visibility, but people would see this distinct difference between a person who works for a living and solves real problems—building airplanes and software—versus someone who manipulates things. We're seeing this dynamic of lawyer-lobbyists who can take 0.01% and still convince the media she's a Native American. It's no different than saying that the sun revolves around the earth.
I say: "Whites Only; Shiva Not Allowed." When I say that, it's a deeper discussion about race. For far too long in this country, the Left has bound race into "don't use the N-word" or ceremonial things, and the Right says "don't talk about racism." But there is racism in 2018 about excluding diversity of ideas. I call it "dark matter." In Massachusetts, nearly 60% of the voters are that dark matter—independents. They don't want that diversity of ideas. That's a new form of racism. It goes beyond skin color. It's diversity of thought.
## [Khashoggi and the Middle East](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=933s)
Let’s change topics. I have to ask you about Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi. The latest news is that the team of people who went in there are closely connected with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Allegedly, members of his actual security team were in the murder group. What do you think the United States' response should be?
I would build a coalition with Rand Paul on this issue. I think he's right on target. He's put a bill in Congress to cut the arms deals to Saudi Arabia. When you look at the entire cultural basis of Saudi Arabia, they support radical Islamic fundamentalism. By many reports, they were the core area where a lot of the terrorists from 9/11 came from. In many ways, they have nothing in common with the values of this country.
For years, we've known Saudi Arabia beheads people for violating their local laws, and we've never changed our relationship with them. Doesn't it matter who gets killed and what the consequences are? This particular person was important to us because he was a Washington Post writer. Otherwise, isn't it sort of a family squabble? Do we have a national interest?
For years we've allowed Saudi Arabia to get away with its mistreatment of its own people. In this case, we have a person who was a journalist exposing some of the issues within Saudi Arabia, and it became so egregious that it contradicted Western values. If it was just a Saudi Arabian getting beheaded for stealing, we’re fine with that. But when it becomes someone reporting on the Crown and working for the Post, it’s different.
Doesn't it matter to us that as a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, if Khashoggi got his way, there would be Sharia Law? This is something we need to care about because it's not exactly like he was on our side. His preferred world is that women and LGBTQ people would be suppressed. Should we see him as our ally? Is it sort of none of our business if they’re killing someone who isn’t exactly on our team? Should we damage our own national interests over this?
The press has presented him as a free speech activist doing journalism. Your argument is that he's someone who wants to sustain fundamentalist issues, so let Saudi Arabia figure that out. We love to be morally correct and set a standard, but it’s also about protecting our own brand. Do we want to be the kind of country that ignores this alleged barbarism? Of course not. But we also don't want to damage our interests in the Middle East. It seems like we should be smart about where we draw the line.
The Middle East is abusing people every minute of every day, including our allies. I had an uncle who was a surgeon in Saudi Arabia for many years. He said you were living essentially in a police state, but he was willing to put up with that to make money. I think you're pointing out that the entire system is sort of the norm, and now to rattle the bees' nest over this—how does that help our interests?
Suppose our response was to get all of our allies to simply close all the Saudi Arabian embassies in their own countries for a month. Just go quiet for a month to send a really strong signal. It would be appropriate to the crime because it happened in an embassy. But not selling them products that we want to sell feels like shooting ourselves in the foot. Why are we punishing ourselves?
If for decades and decades we've been supporting this regime, why go to an extreme response now? The punishment should fit the crime. If we truly care about Saudi Arabia's abuse, there should be a much larger discussion about US policy. We are dealing with a country which frankly lives in the 10th century. We make issues about other countries not being democratic, but we've never applied that same rule to Saudi Arabia.
## [Addressing the Fentanyl Epidemic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=1540s)
Let me ask you another question: fentanyl. The reboot show *The Conners* explained Roseanne's absence by saying she died of an opioid overdose. I appreciate that because, as you know, I lost my stepson three weeks ago to an opioid overdose. I'm looking at all the things that can be done. Is there one choke point? Should we be working on China to execute their illegal fentanyl labs, or should we just give it away for free in a controlled environment so every addict can get safe drugs? What would you do?
I would do a small test in different cities of different ways to handle this and see which one works. The whole fentanyl and opioid area is fundamentally a very complex systems problem. Why did they even develop them? There was a gap—you had Advil for certain pain and morphine for others, and a group of doctors built this for a new category of pain. Now the cat's out of the bag.
We had a volunteer, Dr. Kishore, who had a solution for this entire problem. He realized it's not just about taking it away because people are addicted. Simply putting them on another drug or sending them to rehab had a very high recidivism rate. His program went into the homes. It was a four-part process where first he got people off of it using a series of other drugs to diminish withdrawal symptoms, then he put lifestyle modifications in place, and he got the family involved. He realized most of these are behavioral cues that require the community. He brought down the recidivism rate to 50%.
The District Attorney of Massachusetts threw him in jail, took away his medical license, and destroyed him. There's a movie coming out called *Hero in America*. One solution is not singular, reductionist approaches. There are solutions that involve the community. There are known solutions with a better rate than just putting people on other types of opioids.
Also, the Narcan stuff—Narcan is about $2,500 a shot. That itself has become a money-making environment. We should look at whether that is contributing to the problem or actually alleviating it.
What was the main dynamic they changed by working with the family?
When an addict gets up in the morning—when a normal person gets up, they think about the coffee pot or the smell of coffee. When an addict gets up, all the behavioral cues in the home make them think about how they're going to get their fix. The Minnesota Model said take the addict out of the home and send them to rehab. Well, the moment they got back, they were back on their drugs. The secondary model was the Philadelphia Model, which was giving them methadone. Now you've just put them from one drug to another drug.
In the home, there are enough behavioral cues that if you use the rehab model and then put the person back, they still have the same triggers. You need to break those patterns in the home. Our body has muscle memory and neural memory. You have to cut those cues.
I had proposed the idea of creating small "rehab cities." Instead of just a building, you have a community where you might have to live for two years to reprogram your habits. You’d be in a whole new place where they can't get any drugs in. Would that work?
That would work to the extent the person was able to go back into the real world. That’s why Dr. Kishore’s model was interesting—he was doing what you're talking about in a micro way in the home and with the neighbors.
If there were two addicts, each in their own home, could you cure them by making them switch homes? If you just switched teenagers and said, "You're in a whole new home and we're going to create all new habits," I wonder if that would work?
Remember, it's the familiar relationships that people have. The new home may work if they can build those bonds, but when people go back to their existing home, the neural network is set. In Systems Theory, we say it's the interconnections that matter. If those interconnections are the relationship with your mom, the physical home, and the food choices—that’s an emergent property. Simply putting people in rehab without addressing those connections is like taking an organism out of its petri dish, putting it in a beautiful clean one, and then sticking it back in the original. You have to do the hard work of addressing it in the home. He called it "Home Detox."
It turns out DNA is more malleable; they call it epigenetics. We have within us a genetic framework that can be turned on and off. There’s a study with two mice: they took a lineage of mice which were angry and a lineage which were peaceful. They took a pup from an angry mouse and had it fed by a peaceful mouse. The pup was reprogrammed and became peaceful.
More interestingly, the children of those pups also became peaceful. Why? It turns out angry mice never licked the ears of their pups because they're always stressed. Peaceful mice always lick the ears of their pups, which turns on a set of molecular mechanisms that allow the mouse to control its cortisol levels. Once that gene is turned on, it is passed on through the germ cells. The material conditions affect the person. If you remove that addict and put them in a new home, you probably turn off a lot of those addictive genes.
I've heard that people who got addicted in the Vietnam War—heroin addicts—when they came home, because their environment completely changed, they almost easily got off the drugs because every single cue had changed.
There's a phenomenon called plasticity in neuroscience. The brain is quite plastic even as you age. The plasticity of the brain knows how to morph. It sounds like the secret for addicts is to get them out of their cues. In my experience with my stepson, we tried rehab, but every time he came back he would need a social life, and he'd go back to the old one. Condolences to you and your family, Scott. It's almost like you need to change the OS. If you plug an app back into the same operating system, it's going to have the same bugs.
You were talking about cortisol, and that made me think of the chemical we produce when we bond—oxytocin. It feels to me like addicts may not be getting enough oxytocin and they're trying to compensate. One thing a student found at MIT was a very low dropout rate in inner cities among those people who had a mentor or at least one family member who gave them security and love. It didn't require the state; you just needed one person who loved and cared.
In many ways, that's what love is— nourishment and safety. Anything is insurmountable when that is provided. My parents came from nothing in India, but they had this family connection that gave them inner strength. I put it in chemical terms: that deep sense of connection creates a specific chemical state. If you don't have that, you're going to look for something to make you happy.
When teens are getting addicted, it feels like they are losing their connection with their mom and dad because they're "too cool." The oxytocin they were going to get from being hugged by parents goes away around 14 because the teen rejects you. Then they have to find another way to get it, and if they find it with people who are using, that search for oxytocin drives you to drugs. I have the "Pleasure Unit Theory"—people need a certain level of physical pleasure in their life or they'll just check out.
We have this technology that came out of my MIT work called CytoSolve where we can model at the molecular level these complexity of chemical reactions. It would be fascinating to look at this process and set two conditions with different levels of oxytocin to see how that turns on and off particular genes. That would give some perspective.
## [Diversity of Ideas in Government](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=2647s)
Nature always supports diversity. Nature is an engineer. The best things in nature are composite things. What are we doing to our country when we only allow one choice, which is a two-party system? We're losing the complexity of choices that would lead to great solutions.
We have a debate on October 19th from which we're being excluded. On October 21st, we're being excluded. We have a hearing coming up with a judge. This is not about me; it's about demanding meritocracy and true diversity of ideas. That's the racism we need to fight. It's for our survival as a people.
I would put that in systems form: the system to get the best government is like the system for investing. You can't always pick the right stock, so you diversify. Right now, our Congress is not diversified in talent. They are very lawyer-oriented, and you get lawyerly results. Rand Paul comes at every topic from a more scientific, less dogmatic perspective. Why can't we have more people like that?
The mainstream media is not run by journalists anymore. They have essentially created a little oligarchy of ideas. In our race, you have one guy who we call "Fake Trump" or "Dirty Deal," and the other woman is a lawyer-lobbyist trying to convince everyone she's still a Native American. With very little money, we've made her life hell by bringing up issues people don't normally bring up. It's a huge opportunity for Americans to see someone like myself in the Senate.
My take is that Elizabeth Warren in the Senate gives you another academic lawyer voice. Putting someone like you in the Senate brings a talent stack that is probably greater than anyone in the Senate right now—real-life experience, starting companies, systems biology. You’re like getting five good skills compared to the stuff they already have. As an investment, it would be a no-brainer.
If anyone wants to learn more, go to Shiva4Senate. Look forward to being in the US Senate and really making America great. Thank you.
## [Closing Thoughts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0dLwlDs5d8&t=2952s)
All right, thanks. Be well.
Most interesting person who ever ran for office. Love him or hate him, he's got more education, more real-life experience, and more ideas. You saw how much energy he has. He's quite an interesting candidate. If you're in Massachusetts, give him a thought.
I especially liked the idea of removing addicts from all of their life cues and putting them in a whole new world. As soon as you hear an idea like that, your mind starts trying to solve for it. I was thinking: what would virtual reality do? Suppose you put somebody in a virtual reality world a few times a day to take them out of their head? Would that help? What if you traded houses with two addicts? It certainly makes me think.
All right, I'm going to wrap it up here and I will talk to you all later.