Episode 283 Scott Adams: The Dumbest Voters in the Midterm Elections
Date: 2018-11-02 | Duration: 21:01
Topics
The party of the young and the media’s need for clicks CNN reports extra high turnout among the young… Republicans should be careful about celebrating if they win big The party of violence won’t respond well if you rub it in Republicans should continue being restrained
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## Transcript
## [The Simultaneous Sip and Midterm Turnout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=6s)
Bah-up-a-bone-thump, boom-ba-ba-boom. Hey Tyler, come on in here. The rest of you, grab your beverages because it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. I'm not going to say it's the best moment of your day, but it probably is. So grab your cup, your mug, your glass, your container, your stein, and lift it to your lips. It's time for the simultaneous sip.
Let's talk about midterm turnout. We're seeing early indications that the turnout on both sides could be massive. I just saw a comment that said Q is back. I believe Q is back to say everybody should vote, right? Isn't that all Q said? So I'm not sure Q was back, if you know what I mean.
## [The Youngest and "Dumbest" Voters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=67s)
Anyway, let's talk about the voter turnout. On CNN, there's an optimistic—from their point of view—article in which they say that the young might turn out in greater numbers for this election than any prior midterm election. If that's true, what does that tell us?
Number one, I don't know what it means for the young to turn out in greater numbers because their turnout is actually kind of bad. But I wanted to make this point that I've said before, but it makes sense when you're looking at the midterms: if your party is the party that attracts the most young people—and that would be true with the Democrats—should you be proud of that? Seriously. I'm the only person I've ever heard say what I'm going to say, and you know it's true when you hear it: young people are the dumbest voters.
I say that with love because obviously, I was once a young person. Most of you either are young people or have been young people, so I have nothing against the young. I don't mean this to be an insult. It's absolutely not an insult. Every one of us has gained experience by living.
## [The Death of Real News and the Click Model](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=189s)
Here are some of the main differences that I think are worth pointing out between the young and the not-so-young. At my age, I have the perspective of having experienced something like real news. Think about it. Imagine if you were so young—let's say in your 20s—and you had never been alive during the era of real news. You've never even seen it. You don't even know what it is.
Imagine that. That's actually a thing. In my lifetime, the early news reporters seemed to report the same news, and you were just competing to see who had the best production or the most charismatic presenter, but the news was the news. It was a reflection of what happened. But today, there's nothing like that. Now there's only bias disguised as news. There's opinion disguised as news.
As I've described, there's a reason for that. The business model changed as soon as we could measure all of the variables. When there was a story and a certain treatment of the story, and you could measure whether this one got more clicks or more viewers than the last one, the business model completely changed to focus on what got the most clicks—which tended not to be the truth. The truth doesn't get many clicks because the truth is balanced and boring. But the non-truth? "I think the President of the United States is actually a Nazi"—that stuff will get you some clicks. "I think Soros is actually a vampire who has come back to destroy humanity"—that's going to get you some clicks.
## [The Worldview of the Inexperienced Voter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=312s)
If you're in your 20s, you have never been alive during an era of actual news. You've never even seen it. Think about that. What would your worldview be if you were born into a world where the people you trust—because most Democrats hang around with Democrats and most Republicans grew up in Republican families—actually grew up believing that MSNBC was telling you the news, or CNN, or even Fox News? It's true on all sides. You would believe that you were getting something like the news.
There's nothing like that happening. It used to happen when I was a kid. I'm not telling you that people were better back then; I'm telling you that technology changed to allow us to measure how people respond to stories, and that guaranteed that we would no longer see the news. We would hear some biased presentation because that's where the clicks are.
Now, imagine if you were young and you had not yet experienced how many times you are lied to. I like to use climate change as the perfect example of the young versus older point of view. If you were young, you were born into a world that says: look, science is the standard by which we determine truth. It's not perfect, but the standard is a good one to adhere to. If scientists have judged and peer-reviewed and the consensus is in one area, that is really reliable and you should treat that like it's true. That would be a good opinion for somebody in their 20s. It’s what they're raised to believe. Science is the truth.
## [Climate Science and the Perspective of Age](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=437s)
If you're my age, you have seen that be false so many times that it doesn't even seem like a thing anymore. Whether or not climate science is true or false, I'm just talking about how an old person looks at it versus how a young person looks at it. A young person says, "I've been taught to believe science gives us truth, enough that we should treat that as the closest thing we have to the truth."
When you're my age, you've seen that doesn't work so often. Really, most of the time what we think is science is really where the money is biasing people. We've seen science be sure and then change its mind and be wrong. We've seen scams. We've seen the food pyramid, we've seen Peak Oil, we've seen the year 2000 bug. We've seen all of these things that science and the experts agreed were true that were absolutely not true.
So here's my perspective when I look at climate science: it is important that the scientists seem to be on one side. That does count. You should not ignore that. But I'm also bothered by the fact that the way climate science is presented to the public looks exactly like how scams are presented. If you're young, you don't know that. You haven't seen a lot of scams yet. You will. Oh, you will. If you're in your 20s, you've got a lot of scamming in front of you. You're going to be fooled a lot of times; you just don't know it yet.
When I'm looking at climate science, I'm giving a lot of weight to the fact that the scientists seem to be lining up on one side, but I'm not going to ignore the fact that the way they're presenting it to me is very suspiciously like how scams are presented. I've described why it looks like a scam in the past. There's a famous scam where you pretend that you can predict the stock market because you send lots of emails to lots of people and you pick different stocks. Some of them are going to be true, just like some climate models are going to be true, and then you say just to those people that got the right one, "Hey look, I got that last one right. Maybe I'll get this next one right too."
## [Midterm Predictions and TDS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=619s)
The midterms look like they're going to be really high turnout, and there may be extra high turnout among the young on the Democratic side. What does it tell you that there's extra high turnout among the young on one side? It's not the smart voters. Again, I'm not insulting the young; I'm just saying that all young people gain experience and context simply by being around longer. So I wouldn't be bragging about getting all the young voters. That's not necessarily a good sign.
CNN was reporting that the young will be voting in higher numbers because they're all worked up about Trump. In other words, they have Trump Derangement Syndrome.
## [Framing Republicans as the Nice Party](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=683s)
I saw today that the President is framing Republicans as the nice party. He's framing the Democrats as the angry mob of irrational fools while framing Republicans as the nice people. I kind of like that. But what I like better—and I'm going to start reminding you of this between now and the midterms—is to keep in mind that you don't want to punch down.
Keep in mind that if you've got a gun and the other person doesn't, you can't act like peers. Keep in mind that if you were a trained professional MMA fighter, it's not fair to get into a bar fight with somebody who's never been trained. Keep in mind there may be a tremendous power imbalance that you should be mindful of after the midterm election is over.
Whether Republicans hold Congress or don't, Republicans still have the guns, they still have the President, they still have the Supreme Court, they still have the power—far more power than the Democrats will have. I would caution you to not get angry and to not rub it in their faces if you end up winning. If it's a surprise result and Republicans do better than anybody expected, don't rub it in. Don't be dancing in the street too much. You can enjoy it at home, but don't make it worse. It would be real easy for violence to break out.
## [Republican Restraint and Avoiding Violence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=807s)
Let me give you a compliment. When I say "you," I mean most of the people watching this are probably Trump supporters because of the content that I present. You're probably a pretty good proxy for Republicans and conservatives in general. I'm going to compliment you because you have watched a whole lot of violence and bad behavior by the losing team—the people who did not win the presidential election—and for the most part, you have been really well-behaved.
There are some crazy people that just have to be judged as crazy. The synagogue shooter was mentally ill. The mail bomber was mentally ill. But I'm talking about Republicans and conservatives. I'm going to say you have been really well-behaved. In general, in the physical world, Republicans have been very, very restrained relative to what it could be.
We all agree the temperature is starting to get a little high, but that temperature is being kept as low as it is entirely by one side. One side is trying to raise the temperature; that's the losing side at the moment, the Democrats. The Republicans, on the whole, have been the side that's keeping the temperature low. They're not taking out the guns, they're not starting fights, they're not punching down as much as they could be. I'm not talking about social media—that’s its own evil animal—but in the real world where you have fists and clubs and guns and cars, Republicans have been well-behaved for two years. Better than I might have expected, actually.
So I'm impressed, and I think it would be terrific if Republicans could take that same attitude, win or lose. Wouldn't it be nice if Republicans maintained the respectable approach to our system, the Constitution, the country, and our fellow citizens that has been maintained so far? So I'll make my appeal to niceness, amplifying what the President is saying.
## [The American Flag Strategy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=931s)
I'll reiterate that if you're planning to tweet an American flag, Sunday is the time to do it in numbers. If you go too early, people will get used to it. You don't want people to get too accustomed to seeing tweets of flags until it gets closer to the actual election. That's when you want to start peaking energy.
Peak the energy starting Sunday and don't put any words with your flags. I know you're all going to want to say "go vote" or "do something for the country." It will be less effective if you add words, I guarantee it. Whatever words you think to add, don't do it. As soon as you add the words, you're a partisan. If you show the flag without the words, that's not partisan—or it shouldn't be in this country. The science behind it is that people who have been exposed to the American flag are more likely to vote Republican, if that's the outcome that you want.
## [Addressing Personal Bias and Policy Disagreements](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=1056s)
People have been accusing me lately of campaigning for or supporting the President. Let me be as clear as I can: I always support the sitting president. Doesn't matter what party. I'm generally supportive—not of every policy because I've got my policy differences—but I'm generally supportive of the sitting president.
Secondly, I'm not pretending to be unbiased about President Trump. I've met him, and I liked him. It's hard to be unbiased about somebody that you've met in person and you had a very positive response to. He was very nice to me. So I'm not going to pretend I'm unbiased about him personally because I like him personally. It's just weird that I've actually met him.
But I will continue to say where I disagree. That's as close as I can get to anything like a lack of bias. I'm always going to say his technique is strong because it's been insanely effective, and I think the rest of the world is catching up to the fact that what he does works. That much I think we all agree on. You can't argue against the fact that he became president or the fact that he got stuff done, like getting people on the Supreme Court.
## [Specific Policy Disagreements](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yESprKe8TcM&t=1179s)
But here are the areas I disagree, just to put them on record. I think on health care, Republicans should do a lot more. I'm disappointed. A lot of that is Congress, not just the President, but he's the boss. The boss takes responsibility even if it is the underling's fault.
Immigration should be a lot better. On environmental stuff, I've got a real big question mark. I read some scary things about rules that have been relaxed under this administration. I'm not in a position where I can judge whether those rules should have been relaxed or not, but I've got a big question mark. I would say I'm not delighted about environmental stuff, but I don't have all the information.
I'm not happy about race relations under this administration. I disagree on Confederate statues. I think they're just decorations, and they're offensive to enough people in this country that we should be kind to our teammates. It doesn't matter that you disagree; it's offensive to enough people that we should just treat that as the fact and act on it to be nice people.
There are other things which I have minor disagreements about. But as long as I'm open about where I disagree, I feel like I can be a credible person by saying what he does well. The President and persuasion, he does very effectively. I need to go right now and get some other stuff done. That's all for today, and I will talk to you later.