Episode 279 Scott Adams: Domestic Terror and Who Does It
Date: 2018-10-29 | Duration: 53:02
Topics
Nobody has been able to answer two basic questions for me… Soros is the devil, got any links and facts to support that? Who does more domestic terror attacks, GOP or Dems? Shortcomings of the data and links received in response Should President Trump take any responsibility for recent violence? A “fake trick” argument, various filters are in play Anything will trigger somebody…in a pool of 300 million If the Fake News was honest and just reported without bias… would President Trump need to be so provocative? Challenge for CNN: If you think less provocative talk would help the country… will you correct your reporting that promoted and continues to promote the Charlottesville hoax?
Transcript
Win Bigly Paperback Tour
Hey, where is everybody? Tom, get in here, you’re the fastest one. Andrew, Unikz, Rab, Mathias, Andy, Barry, and Deep Southern, come on in here. Hey Juju, and I don’t know what that name is, and somebody with a bikini, and Joe.
As you might have already noticed, I was not doing Periscope this morning. I’m in a different time zone doing some press for the paperback edition of Win Bigly. If you don’t have Win Bigly yet, you don’t know what everybody’s talking about. I feel sorry for you if you haven’t read Win Bigly, but on the other end, you are very clever to wait because if you waited, you can buy the paperback edition and it’s lighter to carry on the plane. So pick that up, do me a favor.
The Ben Shapiro Interview
Somebody said I just interrupted them from watching the video of Ben Shapiro and I talking. By the way, if you haven’t seen that, you can find it—just Google it. Just Google my name and Ben Shapiro; it’ll come up. I’m hearing that people really like it, which is weird because when I left the interview, I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, I wish I had done better. I wish I had said things a little differently.” But apparently, people like it, so maybe you should watch it.
George Soros Social Experiment
Let me talk about two social experiments that I have been running on Twitter that many of you have been part of. I wasn’t trying to hide it, so everything I’m going to tell you was obvious in public, but let me put the frame on it.
The first one was asking people to send me some information about George Soros to tell me specifically: what was he funding? How much of their budget did he fund? If it’s only 1%, it doesn’t mean much. If it’s 100% of some organization’s budget, well, that means he’s in charge. If we don’t know what percentage he’s giving to any organization, we don’t know what year he did it, and we don’t know what he’s trying to achieve, it’s kind of hard to say what’s going on.
Instead of getting useful information that would say “George Soros did this, here’s the link to it, and here’s why this is bad,” I didn’t get anything like that. I got a whole bunch of people saying stuff such as, “Well, look at this video clip of his 60 Minutes interview in which he said he enjoyed being a Nazi collaborator.” That didn’t happen. If you watch the unedited version of that, it’s completely different.
Soros Derangement Syndrome
Most of the people who are hating on George Soros are starting from a fake news standpoint. The video in which it appears that he was enjoying being a Nazi collaborator is just fake news. If you see the whole thing in context, it doesn’t mean what it looks to mean when you see it out of context. Secondly, who cares? What does it matter to me what Soros did when he was 14? That doesn’t affect me. I only care what he’s doing now. If you are pointing me to the 1940s to tell me why you don’t like George Soros today, you haven’t answered the question.
Here is my preliminary take, and I’m open to revising this. Indeed, I think there might be a really good chance that someone will give me information that will cause me to revise it. I’m not locked in on this opinion, but so far it appears that Soros Derangement Syndrome is an equivalent of Trump Derangement Syndrome; it’s just on the right instead of the left. I am completely unconvinced that there is an argument against George Soros which is coherent.
It might be that he talks like a vampire and people don’t like that. It might be something anti-Semitic that people don’t say out loud, but they’re sort of thinking it. It might be because he does seem to be doing things that Israel doesn’t like—I don’t know exactly what—but to the degree that he tries to be balanced, that would be bad if your interests are the interests of your country. Israel is most interested in Israel, as it should be. The United States is most interested in the United States. Canada should be mostly interested in Canada. If George Soros is doing something that might be good for one country—let’s say good for Canada—but less good for the United States, the United States has a reason to complain about that, but I’d like to see the data that would support it.
Domestic Terror Data Experiment
I tried a similar experiment today on Twitter. I’ve been seeing summaries of what types of people are causing this domestic terrorism—the violence, the killing—and the summaries tend to say things such as, “There are X number of people who are white supremacists who kill people, and there are X number who are lefties who kill people.” To which I say, I don’t know if I trust that.
What I asked for on Twitter was for anybody who could give me a list of all the white supremacists, or at least by political affiliation, what domestic terrorist stuff they’ve done, and then I would compare that to a list of the other side—say left-leaning people and maybe Islamists to just complete it. Here is my contention: if you have never seen a list of the one I described, there is no information that’s useful here.
What happened was people massively tweeted me things that they thought were the answers to my questions, but quite markedly were not. I’m going to read you some of the responses just so you can see how wild this is. This is a very interesting psychological experiment. What I was doing here is seeing if people had a blind spot and if they could see it.
The Blind Spot of Political Bias
Here was the original tweet: “Can someone tweet me a detailed list—‘detailed’ being the operative word—of domestic terror incidents sorted by political affiliation of the perpetrator?” And then I said—and here’s the fun part—“Please do NOT NOT NOT”—and each of the NOTs was in capitals—“send me totals without details.”
How many people responded by sending me exactly what I said in clear language NOT to do? Quite a few. How many people sent me a list of just the leftists? Quite a few. How many people sent me a source that talked about the totals without showing them? A lot. How many sent me to some place where I could do the research myself? That’s not what I asked for. If the only answer is “I can do the research for myself,” that means nobody did the research, which is my hypothesis.
If you look at the comments, they are hilariously blind-spotted. Some people sent me the Wikipedia link, which talks about it but doesn’t show the list side-by-side. I guess I would have to research their links and make the list myself. But here’s the problem: if you have a list of what Breitbart says is all of the leftist violence, and you have a list of, let’s say, what CNN said of all the violence from white supremacists or people on the right, could you compare those two lists and say this one is bigger than this one? No, you could not. The methodology that those two entities used would be different, so you wouldn’t know anything.
People are sending me one side like, “Hey, I’ve got the answer for you!” I think there were dozens of people who sent me a Breitbart article showing 600-some left-leaning acts of violence domestically. What does that do to answer my question? Nothing. It’s the same as a blank page. Because if it doesn’t use the same methodology by the same author to show you what’s on the other side, you don’t know anything. Is 600 a lot? I don’t even know; it’s a big country. Is the violence on the right twice as much or half as much? I don’t know.
Cognitive Dissonance and Methodology
When you see how clearly I asked the question, knowing that close to 100% would hallucinate the question so they could answer it in a way that’s compatible with their bias, it’ll blow your mind. Somebody’s saying, “You’re being thick, Scott.” That’s cognitive dissonance.
The people who were coming in and just insulting me for asking the most reasonable question anybody ever asked are suffering a cognitive crisis. How many people were sure they knew the answer to where the violence is coming from? A lot of people, according to my Twitter feed. A lot of people thought they knew Soros is an evil monster, but when I asked them to show me even the slightest rudimentary reason, the slightest little useful piece of information, it’s just silence. It’s nothing.
Soros, Hungary, and Conspiracy Theories
Preliminary, I believe that the people who think Soros is a monster don’t know anything about him, and they don’t have an argument to back it up. They do have hundreds and hundreds of articles in which other people gave their opinion. I’ve read some of the articles, and the articles have things such as “Soros wants to destroy Israel” or “Soros wants to destroy the United States.” To which I say, did he say that? Or is that mind-reading?
Somebody said, “Why would Hungary ban him?” Is the argument that Hungary doesn’t like George Soros and therefore he’s bad for the United States? Hungary is not the United States; there are different countries with very different things going for them. Does Hungary have a good reason for banning him? I don’t know, I haven’t heard it. But I’ve heard a lot of people say Hungary banned him. I believe the issue is that Hungary is very aggressive on borders—I believe they have a border wall or at least a fence. Hungary closed their border and Soros is more pro-immigration. There are a lot of people who are pro-immigration who are not the devil. Unless Soros is making a difference in that country, he’s just a player with an opinion.
I believe that it is a conspiracy theory that Soros is the devil. I can conclude—and this part I’m confident of—that for nearly all of the people who have a strong opinion about Soros, it’s not based on anything. It’s based on what they heard other people talking about without supporting facts. Secondly, I believe that any comparison of domestic acts on the left versus domestic acts on the right has never been made. It’s looked at through such a political lens that nobody’s ever done an analysis where you could just compare: “I made these two lists using the same criteria; this list is bigger than this list.”
Should the President Be Blamed for Violence?
Let’s talk about who gets blamed for this. Should the President be blamed for the uptick in violence? I don’t know if this is true, but people have been tweeting a list that shows the domestic acts of violence spiked under Obama and that this would just be a continuation of that line. Do I believe those graphs? No, because they’re summaries. I can’t see the detail. We should at least figure that out for context. Was the trend starting under Obama, or was it a flat or declining trend that went up in the age of Trump? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you don’t know a thing about this topic. I don’t know the answer, so I don’t know a thing about this topic either.
The argument about whether the President should take some responsibility is a sort of a “fake trick” argument. People are shifting the definition to fit their political agenda.
The Different Filters of Responsibility
The rational way to look at it is through different filters. From a legal filter, the President is absolutely not responsible for the violent acts of a stranger. Even the anti-Trump people agree with that. From a social perspective—how we want to judge each other—even President Trump’s critics often give him a pass and say you can’t judge one person’s talk as the cause of a stranger’s action.
But if you were to look at it as a scientist, you would say if there are tens of millions of people—maybe hundreds of millions—listening to somebody who is speaking provocatively, what are the odds that at least one person who has mental issues will be triggered by that provocative speech to go out and do something that we wish they hadn’t done? The answer to that is about 100%. Because the population is so big, there’s a 100% chance that the way you talk will trigger somebody.
Was that true under President Obama? It probably was. Do you believe that nobody killed anybody during the Obama administration while thinking that he was part of the reason? I would guess that that’s a fairly common thing to happen. People look for excuses to put on their evil. They say, “I want to kill somebody today, I think it’s because of Obama,” or “I think it’s because of immigration.” You can’t always trust people’s reasons, even if they’re screaming them while they’re shooting people. Those might be the excuses of crazy people who need a rationale for their actions.
Provocative Speech vs. Music and Video Games
You have to put it in context. What about some forms of music? Can music make somebody go kill people? A normal person doesn’t go kill people because they heard something ugly in a song. But if you’re talking about hundreds of millions of people listening to music—some of them putting it on repeat—could those few people who are not mentally stable be inspired to kill somebody because of music? The answer is 100% yes. It almost never affects the average person, but there is a 100% chance someone listening to music killed somebody because of it.
How about video games? Does the average person become violent because they played a video game? Absolutely not. It’s been tested; they can tell the difference between fake violence and real violence. But if you have hundreds of millions of people playing violent video games, and some few of those are mentally unstable, could the video game be a trigger or the last necessary variable to cause them to be violent? Yes, 100% chance.
If you’re trying to size how bad it is that Trump speaks provocatively and uses “punch ‘em, kick ‘em” language—how big a deal is that? It’s probably similar to music or video games. That doesn’t mean he should do it. If you said, “Scott, are you saying he should keep talking the way he used to talk?” I would say no.
Midterm Strategy: Dialing it Back?
With six days until the midterms, the smartest thing he could do is to say that he plans to stop doing that and that people should call him out if he does it again. He should invoke the help of the public. The trouble is, doing so would make it seem like he was taking responsibility for what’s happened in the past. That’s very problematic. He’d have to be very careful about how he presented it. It would be better to say, “We should all do this,” and go first.
Let me put on my “humility earphones.” If I were to go back in time to 2015 and candidate Trump said, “Look, here’s my plan to be President. Here are all the tweets I’m going to send for the next few years. What do you think?” I would have looked at his list and I would say, “Oh god, no. You’ve got to get rid of this one, this one’s a mistake.” None of us would have advised him to act the way he acted, and the way he acted made him President of the United States.
Maybe you’re right that these parts are clearly bad, but it could be that the provocative talk that we think goes too far is exactly what makes him interesting. Being interesting is what allows him to control our thoughts, and that allows him to persuade. I would advise dialing it back—I’ve seen Karl Rove advise it, I’ve seen every talking head in the world advise it—but we don’t really know. It’s more complicated than “don’t talk bad because bad things will happen.” There are more variables involved.
The Symbiosis of Trump and Fake News
It would be brilliant to dial it back before the midterms because the biggest complaint about the President right now is that he talks mean. If you announce you’re going to stop doing it right before people vote, it’s going to put a little doubt in their heads. After the election, he could go back to talking mean if he needs to, but it would be effective to get in front of it.
The other thing I asked in the Twitter poll is whether fake news was a bigger or smaller problem than Trump’s rhetoric. It’s a highly unscientific poll, but 75% said fake news was worse. I would agree. If President Trump were not battling against fake news, would he need to be as provocative as he is? If the anti-Trump press just covered the news straight and gave us the facts, would President Trump feel the need to be this provocative?
The fake news and Trump are not separate entities; they’re like one monster. When one moves, the other moves with it. When one hits, the other hits back. They are joined at the hip. You cannot say that President Trump acts independently of how the news is treating him. He does what he needs to do to get the job done in his mind. To ask him to tone down while the media is staying at DEFCON 10 isn’t fair.
The Charlottesville Narrative
It would be fair to him to say, “I’d really like to tone it down. Can you help me? Can you fix, for example, the Charlottesville fake news?” In Charlottesville, Trump said both sides of the statue issue were fine people. The anti-Trump news reported it as him saying white supremacists are fine people. That never happened.
Take that away. Go first, CNN. I know some of your producers are going to see this. Go first. Just take back the Charlottesville hoax and see what the President does. Test it. If you think less provocative talk is good for the country, go first.
Somebody says, “Nope, they won’t.” Well, I’m not optimistic that that would happen, but the President doesn’t operate in a vacuum. A huge part of why he chooses the strategies he does is because of the context. He’s got to get above the noise and be the strongest voice. Right now, the noise is so evil that the only way to get above it is with a good dose of hyperbole. Why? Because it works.
Somebody said Charlottesville is not a hoax because of his “demeanor.” I’ll delete the guy who thinks “apologist” is part of a reason. The people calling me an apologist should keep in mind that I disagree with the President on healthcare, I think immigration could be better, and race relations should be better. But the Charlottesville hoax is pretty clearly factually on my side. If you believe the President was calling white supremacists “fine people,” do you think he also meant the other side—Antifa—were fine people? Do you think a sitting President decided it would be a good strategy to throw in with the white supremacists on national television? No, it’s ridiculous on its face.
When he was asked to clarify, he disavowed them in the clearest possible language. It was about the statues. He made a standard comment that there are good people on both sides of the statue question.
Statues as Decorations, Not History
I happen to be on the opposite side from the President on the statue question. I’m on the side that says the statues are just decorations, and if they’re offensive, well, that’s a bad decoration. They’re clearly offensive to a significant portion of the population. Why do you put up a decoration that’s offensive?
“Erasing history is wrong,” yes, that’s why I’m not suggesting that you change the history books or the internet. I’m suggesting you change your decorations. Do you ever redecorate your house? Why not leave it the way it was for history? The “changing history” thing is a terrible argument. History should not be erased, but a statue isn’t history. Do you remember when you were in seventh-grade history class and the teacher said, “Instead of books, we’re just going to take you down to look at the statue because that’s history”? No. A statue is not history any more than everything else in the world is history. You can preserve history without a statue. I live in a town that does not have a statue; how do I learn history if statues are history?
Put them in a museum. If you move the Confederate statues to their own museum, nobody’s going to say you’re praising slavery; they’re going to say you put it in context.
Where to Draw the Line on Offensive Art
Where do you draw the line? Good question. If 100% of the public disliked a public decoration, should you remove it? Most would say yes. What if it was just one person in the whole world? No. What if 40% of the public is deeply offended? Yes. If 40% of the public is offended by a public statue, you move that statue.
How many people are deeply offended by the Confederate statues? It’s probably somewhere in the 20% to 50% range. In my opinion, a public statue that offends nearly all African Americans and a lot of other folks too is absolutely inappropriate. It has nothing to do with history.
The reason they are offended is because of slavery. It’s one thing to be offended by a piece of art because you don’t like it; it’s another thing to be reminded of slavery. I’m not going to compare Christmas decorations to slavery; I’m going to keep those separate topics.
Changing Minds and Super Hearts
Apparently, I get some small amount of money when people send me these “super hearts” or hearts. If anybody’s inclined to do that, please do. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but if you tap the side of your screen, hearts appear.
Someone said, “You changed my mind on this subject.” Look at me being all persuasive! Whoever said I changed their mind, props to you. You rarely see anybody change their mind based on argument or data. It’s a very rare thing, and I have a lot of respect for that.
Tomorrow, I’ll be on Fox and Friends. I’m scheduled for the 8:30 AM Eastern time slot. West Coast people have to wake up early—it’s 5:30 AM. Sometime after 8:30 Eastern, I’ll be on for a few minutes and I will explode some more minds.
The Business Model of Gab
Let’s talk about Gab. I find myself in a very awkward situation with Gab, so I’ll be full disclosure. I like free speech. I don’t like any suggestion that Twitter would be shadow-banning conservative voices. But here’s the problem with Gab: in theory, Gab would be a competitor to Twitter, but because of their business model of allowing people who would not be allowed on Twitter, it becomes a magnet for all the people that are “too misbehaved,” if I can use that word.
The people who are not misbehaving in a way that Twitter cares about—people who are not conservative—why would they leave Twitter? It would be crazy to leave Twitter if you’re a liberal because that’s the bigger, more robust place. Gab, because of their business model, became a magnet for the people who got kicked off of Twitter. That’s not a business model I can imagine working.
When people say, “You’ve got to support Gab,” I say it’s not strictly a free speech question; it’s a business model question. Supporting Gab’s business model unintentionally supports people that I don’t really want to support. Gab publicly kicked off the shooter of the synagogue as soon as they found out what he was up to, but not until the shooting. I think to myself: if Gab is kicking people off too, how long will it be before they have to change their business model to be basically the same as Twitter’s—banning people who say things you feel are dangerous?
I am concerned that big tech companies are deplatforming them. Credit card processing companies and server companies have deplatformed them. I don’t like that because it puts those people in a censorship position when they should just be bankers. Bankers should just be bankers.
The Network Effect and the “Bill Gates Degree”
Kim Dotcom is creating an alternative to Twitter. We will believe that when we see it. The problem is that Twitter has the “network effect”—if you’re already on there, there’s not much incentive to leave.
Somebody said they want the “Scott Adams Degree.” I’ve thought of defining what that would be. It would be some kind of combination of things you’ve read or studied. I think that’s where the world should go. We should have degrees that are not conferred only by colleges. If I could get the “Bill Gates Degree,” it would mean I learned the things Bill Gates thinks a successful citizen should learn. It could be books, a couple of classes from different places, or trying a startup.
“Your sleeves were too long on Ben Shapiro’s video.” That’s the same shirt I’m wearing right now. Wait, I have another shirt—I better watch that. I need a tailor. I do need a tailor.
Kanye West and Blexit
Let’s talk about Blexit. Apparently, Kanye designed the Blexit t-shirt, and I love the subtitle: “We Free.” Persuasion-wise, it’s perfect. It’s a “mistake,” right? The proper way to say it is “We will be free” or “We are free.” But when you say “We Free,” it makes you stop and you can’t help but think about it longer. It’s kind of genius. You know exactly what it means, and your brain can’t get off the fact that there’s a word missing. It also calls back to an urban way to express yourself, which makes it perfect.
I don’t believe a white guy could suggest “We Free” because it wouldn’t sound culturally the same. My guess is either Candace Owens or Kanye or somebody associated with them, but it’s a great slogan and a great design.
Hawk Newsome and Urban Advocacy
I was just texting with Hawk Newsome. Hawk has some things he wants to add to the discussion on rhetoric from the President and violence in society. I said I was very interested in seeing that, so he’ll be coming to us at some point soon.
People are saying, “He’s going off the rails.” Here’s the thing: I believe Hawk wants to make a positive difference in the world, but it’s a tough situation to try to find common ground when people are so polarized. I would ask you to have a little bit of patience. Nobody knows exactly what’s going to work. Sometimes he needs to pace his team, sometimes he needs to reach across, and nobody knows exactly when is the right time to do that. He’s out there in the trenches.
Somebody says, “He hates us.” I don’t see that in evidence. I’ve had enough personal conversations with Hawk that I feel like I would have picked up actual hatred, and I’m not picking up a hint of it. I think what you’re looking at is a communication strategy that doesn’t work for you, which is different than him hating you. He’s an advocate for the African-American community. His objective is quite obvious: he’s trying to make things better for a certain population that could use a hand. Nothing wrong with that.
That’s enough, I think we’re going to stop now and I’ll talk to you all later.