Episode 287 Scott Adams: What the NYT Got Wrong About JobsNotMobs, Polls, Midterms
Date: 2018-11-05 | Duration: 1:02:57
Topics
NYT article about the evolution of the JobsNotMobs slogan The article is accurate…at the same time it’s misleading Prediction: On election day, the election results will be ambiguous Prediction: If weather is bad in key locations…Republicans will win 62% of women prefer Democrats, 35% prefer Republicans How come the polls indicate a very tight result? CNN headline says “Democrats still up”…still? If the Democrats win the election, just say “good job” If the Republicans win the election, don’t rub it in Dems will not take it well if they lose, be aware, be careful Diversity of thought and culture is a definite benefit to the U.S. Obama says lying is destructive to our system and America Have we EVER had a President that didn’t lie? The U.S. is doing great under directionally accurate President Trump
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## Transcript
## [Intro and the Flag Science](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=3s)
Papa-pa-pa—that's my special almost midterm election day theme. Ba-ba-boom ba-ba sounds a lot like my regular theme, I know, but it's slightly different. Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. If you have been prepared, or if you just got lucky, you might be sitting near your beverage. It might be in some kind of a cup, a mug, a stein, a glass, a container of some sort. But whatever it is, if you love it and you love me, or even if you don't, let's have the simultaneous sip. Ready? Go.
Good stuff. Well, it seems we have lots of things to talk about today. I hope you're tweeting your flags—your American flags—today and tomorrow morning. Based on the science, exposure to the American flag, actually just seeing the American flag, biases people to vote Republican. So if you'd like to support President Trump, tweet a flag. I see a lot of you are already doing that, and we'll never know if it worked, but science says it should.
## [Using the Interface App on Election Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=66s)
Those of you who have been watching my Periscopes know that my startup has an app. It's called Interface by WhenHub. On that app, you can sign up to be either an expert or somebody who wants to talk to an expert, and the experts can set their own price for an immediate video call. I'm saying this because at polling time tomorrow, if any of you are at a polling place where something interesting is happening, get on the app as an expert and just put in "polling" or "reporter"—some kind of keyword about election polling. I will find you and I will contact you while you're in line at your polling place.
But only get on if there's something happening there. If there's an altercation, an extra-long line, if somebody is dressed a certain way, if there's some confusion, some kind of voter suppression—anything like that. If there's anything interesting, I'll be off and on Periscope all day tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll have multiple Periscopes and I might build them around anybody who's seeing something interesting at a polling place. Just go on and put in the keywords "polling" or "reporter" or "election." I'll find you and we'll go live to you like you're a reporter on site.
Now that we have this app, Interface by WhenHub, it's free. You can download it for free and you can set your price as an expert anywhere from zero—you don't have to charge anything—or if there's something really, really interesting happening and you happen to be there with a camera, wouldn't you like CNN to have to pay for it? You could put a price and say, "Hey, anybody who wants to contact me, it's going to cost X dollars," and I will help give you some attention through my Periscopes. Most of the big media companies watch my Periscopes.
## [The NYT and the Birth of #JobsNotMobs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=190s)
Let's talk about the New York Times story that dropped yesterday. I tweeted it, and they took up the story that Politico reported on about the birth of the "Jobs Not Mobs" meme. What the New York Times did was fascinating. You won't be able to see this clearly, but I'm just going to give you a rough representation. They did some kind of a histogram—a historical thing—where they show the meme growing. Orange shows how much Reddit attention it got; blue is how much Twitter. You can see that it grew and grew and then it went boom. All of these bubbles here are how many people in social media are talking about it.
The interesting part is that it went from a trickle—so small you won't even be able to see it—a trickle of mentions mostly about mobs, and then the New York Times reports that right here, where things started getting interesting and there were lots of "Jobs Not Mobs" mentions, the New York Times calls it out. This is how they described it: "Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, quickly endorsed 'Jobs Not Mobs' as a potential slogan."
Then here's the fun part: "Because of the cartoonist's popularity among the pro-Trump crowd online, this was a key moment." They say that a screenshot of Mr. Adams' tweet was posted to Reddit, followed by a meme with the phrase laid over an image of factory workers on the top and violent protests at the bottom. That was by Brian Vision. They showed his meme and then it talks about Brian Vision, who goes by Brian Mackaveli on Twitter. They say the creator of the meme—talking about the visual presentation—told the New York Times that he charges $200 an hour for his mimetic warfare consulting services.
First of all, I don't know if that's true, but it might also be something that Brian just told the New York Times because it was funny. If it was true, he should certainly raise his prices. Brian, if you're watching this, $200 an hour is way too cheap. It's time to raise your price. But I'm not sure he meant it.
## [Why the NYT Reporting is Misleading](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=379s)
There's another interesting angle on this. If you're a person who is talked about in the news often, as I am—I'm the subject of the news literally thousands of times in the past year—you're in a unique vantage point. You're the only person in the world who knows for sure whether a report is true. I've seen the news about me being wrong a billion times. So when I look at news about other people, I have to assume it could be out of context.
I want to demonstrate that effect with this New York Times story. Let me read the story again and see if you think this is accurate reporting. "Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert... quickly endorsed 'Jobs Not Mobs' as a potential slogan." Completely accurate. Now it says, "Because of the cartoonist's popularity among the pro-Trump crowd online, this was a key moment." In the context they're talking about, it's when the traffic picked up. It's true-ish. It's completely true, but there's context left out.
The way I would have considered it to be completely true is to say that it was a key moment partly because I had a big audience. I've got pushing 300,000 followers on Twitter, so that part's true. But here's the other thing that's true: I wrote a book on how to do this. *Win Bigly* is a book about how to persuade. I'm literally an expert in the context of persuasion, and specifically for the past two years, persuading in politics.
The other part of the context is I was one of the few people who predicted the outcome of the 2016 election based on persuasion. What they missed was that when I saw this slogan—which I did not invent, I wish I had because it's great, but I didn't invent the phrase "Jobs Not Mobs"—when I identified it, I said this was pure "brain glue." Of all the many slogans that were floating around at the time, there was exactly one that I said was special. I only picked out one as being "the one," and then it became the one.
The story should have been not just that I am popular. The size of the audience matters, but that wasn't the key thing. The reason it took off when I endorsed it is because I have a track record and credibility with a big group of people who thought that if I identified it as powerful, it probably had a better chance of going forward. Secondly, Brian is one of my followers and we interact a lot on Twitter. The fact that Brian, the creator of the visual meme, and I interact all the time on Twitter feels like important context.
In summary, the news the New York Times reported is completely accurate meaning they got no facts wrong, but the story is completely misleading at the same time. If they think the only reason the meme took off is because I'm popular, they've missed the best part of the story. I'm popular for being able to predict what matters.
## [The Election Day Weather Prediction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=806s)
I said the other day that the midterm election might come down to the weather, and I wasn't kidding. The election might be so close in some of the important places that the weather might be the variable. Right after that, I turned on the news and CNN was giving a national forecast for what the weather is likely to be on Tuesday. Apparently, there are parts of the country where it's going to be super bad.
If we don't live in a simulation, I don't know how to explain this. The election of Trump has to become a movie. The midterms are like the movie, too. The only thing that could make the movie more interesting in the final scene would be to have a huge big-ass storm. Imagine the movie: you're showing the Democrats getting ready to vote and they're all angry, and the Republicans getting ready to vote except they're planning for a party, and then the storm starts. It's like a super storm—telephone poles coming over, dogs flying in the wind, minor flooding. You see the people asking, "Where's my umbrella?" They can't get the car started, but they're getting out there.
Best movie ending ever. Every one of these people is fighting nature for democracy, for the country as they see it. Every one of those people braving the storm tomorrow is fighting for America. It's a great movie. There's some thought that young people won't go out if the weather is bad. If that's true, you're going to see the old people determine the election, and the old people skew toward the Republicans. The weather could be the final predictor.
## [Midterm Predictions and the "Movie Model"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=1059s)
I will reiterate my predictions. Back in January, it looked like the Democrats were up here and the Republicans were here. My prediction was that the Republicans will do far better than whatever is being predicted in January. If the results turn out to be close, I am going to claim another accurate prediction. I predicted that the gap would narrow based on results—in other words, that the Trump administration would do well.
Here's my actual prediction. Because everything seems to go the way a movie goes, what would be the most movie-like outcome tomorrow? The most movie-like outcome is a tie. You might say, "Well, that's not even possible." Yes, you can sort of have a tie. The way you would do it is you only need a couple of races—maybe three—to be in question on Election Day. A vote count so close it's being challenged, a recount, something goes to the courts because the recount was inconclusive.
My prediction is that we won't know who won tomorrow. By midnight on Election Day, we won't know the result. Keep in mind that the odds of this kind of a prediction being accurate are really small, which is why it's fun. This one's just for fun; it's not based on the persuasion model. It's based on the movie model and the simulation model. If we're living in something like a simulation that continues to operate like a movie, the final scene is going to be a nail-biter.
## [The Math of the Polls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=1245s)
I'll give you a conditional prediction that I will stick with: if the weather is bad—like really bad—in some of the key states, I'll predict the Republicans will win. If the weather is good, Democrats have an advantage.
I saw online today that 62% of women preferred Democrats. Women are preferring Democrats 62% to 35%. As I've been saying, the Democrats are basically a party of women at this point. If 62% of women vote Democrat, that's enough for them to essentially control the party. If you are Black or Latino, for example, and you want to have power in your party, you might have come to the wrong party because women are going to get what women want.
But here's the part I didn't understand. The same article said women are 62% to 35% likely to vote Democrat, but men are roughly even. There are the same amount of men who will vote Democrat as Republican. And yet the polls say it is close. How do you explain that? How could it be possible that women are overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats, men are even, and yet the election is going to be close? With what kind of math can the total outcome be unknown? I don't understand it.
## [Latino Voters and the "Hallucination"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=1490s)
I read a seething editorial on CNN by Jen Psaki in which the entire article was just dripping with Trump hatred—all the usual laundry list stuff. Then I see on the same CNN poll that Latinos are 66% likely to vote Democrat. 66% is a lot—two out of three. But how does that explain that one-third of Latinos have not noticed anything wrong with the Republicans and are going to vote with them?
If you're one of the two-thirds of Latinos looking at the CNN view of the world—which is that the Republicans are flat-out racists against Latinos specifically—how do you explain the fact that one out of three Latinos don't see it? One-third of Latinos are not voting for racists who are racist against them. That's not happening.
If you're in the two-out-of-three group and you're talking to each other, everything makes sense. But what happens when the one-third walks into the room? The two-thirds say, "Obviously you're not going to vote for the people who are racist against you," and that one guy says, "I don't see it. I think you're just hallucinating. I'm going to vote for him because I like my taxes low and I like a good economy." How do the two-thirds respond to the fact that one-third of Latinos can't see the world that they imagine they're seeing?
I imagine that during the Holocaust, there weren't many Jews saying, "Oh sure, there's a little bit of rounding up, but one-third of us are still okay with this Nazi thing." If you could do a poll in Nazi Germany, the number of Jewish residents who were pro-Hitler was probably close to zero. How do you explain that one-third of Latinos have not noticed your scary Trump Derangement Syndrome bubble?
If two people are in the same room, one sees an elephant and the other says, "I do not see an elephant," who is hallucinating? It's always the one who sees the elephant because hallucinations are positive things. You never hallucinate the absence of furniture when the room is full. If one-third of the world is looking at exactly what you're looking at and they don't see the "racism," it's actually just not there to them. The one-third is right, not the two-thirds.
## [CNN's "Still Up" Wording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=1794s)
I saw another CNN headline that had interesting wording. It said that in the polling, Democrats were "still up." Did they need to say "still"? Do you notice the doubt that has crept in? A month ago, the headline would have said "Democrats are up in the polls." But CNN's headline says "Democrats are still up." Doesn't that tell you it's not going to last? In their minds, it went from a gimme to, "Oh shoot, it's definitely going to change, but for now, it's still up."
## [Winning and Losing with Grace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=1855s)
Voting is a special thing. In the United States, it has almost a religious, spiritual kind of feel to it. Tomorrow could be fun for half of the country and a disaster for the other half. I would advise you this: if you're on the losing team, take it with grace. If the Democrats pull this out and they have a good midterm, the proper response should be, "Nice job. Good job. You put the extra effort into it, you got the extra result."
If it goes your way and you win—and most of you, I think, are Trump supporters if you're watching this—hold down the gloating. Try to keep some perspective because the people who are on the losing side are also on your side, meaning they're Americans. Don't be too happy if it turns out that the unexpected happens and Republicans pull out the House as well as the Senate. Don't rub it in.
## [Conduct of Trump Supporters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=2102s)
If there's some violence against your side because the other side flips out—which would be a likely outcome if Democrats lose—don't go anywhere near any kind of action like that. Don't address anybody in the street. Don't wear your MAGA hat outdoors for a day. I think that would be just asking for trouble. Of course, you have a right to wear your hat anywhere you want, but if things go your way, I wouldn't wear it the day after the election.
Take it with grace. I would like to give a compliment to the Trump supporters who for the past two years have held their fire. It's a great credit to the Americans who were on the winning side. There are some crazies, and we should do what we can to discourage them, but in general, looking at the overview, Trump supporters are the most well-armed citizens in the history of civilization. The Republicans who have been on the receiving side of a lot of negative everything have, for the most part, just kept their heads down, done their work, took care of their families, and just took it. It's something to be proud of that you did not take the bait. The general population of Trump supporters were very well-behaved. My advice: win or lose tomorrow, be cool.
Somebody says, "You see this as a game, others see it as a fight for survival." I don't think that's quite correct. The whole reason I'm telling you to be cool is that I don't see this as a game; I see this as life and death. An election with this much energy is a life-and-death, civilization-risking situation. I'm encouraging people to stay "not nuts" because the future of the country will really depend on how people act in the next week.
## [North Korea Update](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=2225s)
I saw that North Korea is doing a little saber-rattling lately, talking about starting up their nuclear program because they're not getting what they want as quickly as they want. You should expect that the North Korea situation will continuously take steps back before it takes steps forward. It's a very long-term process. I wouldn't worry about a little bit of negativity coming out of that process; you should just expect that's normal.
## [Immigration and Diversity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=2347s)
I saw a video made by some Republican Trump supporter type that was trying to gin up fear about immigration from the south. It showed an animated map where, for a hundred years or so, most of the immigration was coming from Europe. Then it showed that there was more immigration coming from south of the border, and it was presented as a threat.
But at the same time, the United States in 2018 is the strongest the United States has ever been. If your feeling about immigration from south of the border is that it's ruining the country, your own argument works against you because we've had massively more immigration from south of the border for decades and the result so far is the strongest country we've ever had. If you're going to make an evidence-based argument against immigration coming from the south versus Europe, you better provide some evidence, because so far that immigration has been a component of what is the strongest United States we've ever seen.
## [Humans as Discrimination Machines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=2471s)
People are talking about whether diversity is good or bad, and it's a fake choice because diversity just is. There is no option where you don't have it. People are "discrimination machines," meaning that discrimination is the primary way our brains are wired. If you look at a bush and some fruit looks overripe and some is under-ripe, you are going to discriminate in favor of the fruit that looks good. Your brain is always sorting and ranking things automatically.
We're wired to prefer things that are the most like us. You can create laws and training so that our higher-level thinking can override our lower-level thinking, but if we don't have good reasons, we'll default to our bias. If I could snap my fingers and everybody became the same race—let's say we all became Elbonians—would that end discrimination? Not a chance. We would find some reason to decide some Elbonians were worse than others. You would have left-handed Elbonians we would be executing. You'd have bald Elbonians, fat Elbonians, skinny Elbonians, tall Elbonians, short Elbonians. We would find a hundred reasons to discriminate against each other even if we were all Elbonians.
If you live in a diverse society, and there's no changing that, I would say it is a positive to have people in the process who come from different windows into the world. Wouldn't it be good to not have to guess what Latinos want or what Black Americans want in this country? They're part of the process; they'll tell us. It absolutely helps the process to have more diversity in Congress—diversity of thought, culture, and gender. Having diverse representation is absolutely a positive. People who argue against diversity are arguing from magical thinking.
## [Obama and the "Science" of Political Lying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=2840s)
Former President Obama has been giving a lot of speeches. He says we can't stay together with all this lying; lying will destroy the country and makes everything worse. Do those statements pass the scientific fact-checking? They do not. Obama is being absolutely science-denying when he claims our culture can't go forward unless the leaders are honest, because all of the information suggests the opposite. We're in literally the strongest situation we've ever been in at the same time that the President has violated the fact-checkers more than ever before.
If the way you're lying is random, that would be a bad world. But if everything you say is directionally accurate or directionally desirable, you end up with a better country. We've never had a president who told us the truth all the time. Our most honest president was Jimmy Carter, who was also widely considered our worst president. Great guy character-wise, but as a president, that honesty wasn't exactly the right approach.
I would suggest that the Democrats are being deeply unscientific when they say that lying doesn't work, because right in front of your eyes you can see that if your hyperbole is in the right direction, you get a better result. Do you think dealing with North Korea as honestly as we could would get you a better result than scaring the pants off them? You know that dealing with other countries, it's not honesty that gets you the good result. You can't negotiate on the basis of complete honesty.
Take the economy. If your president said, "I'm going to be honest, we've got some good things happening, but we've got a lot of bad stuff happening in the economy," it would be perfectly accurate and it would destroy the economy because it would take all the optimism out of it. Optimism is what keeps us afloat. Former President Obama is being anti-science when he suggests that honesty is the glue that keeps society together when every example we can think of is clearly the opposite.
## [Climate Change and Social Science](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=3211s)
The Democrats would say that Republicans are the anti-science group because they're not taking the recommendation of climate scientists. But only the Republicans are looking at climate science scientifically. The Democrats are looking at it half-scientifically. They say the chemistry and physics tell you it's all bad. Republicans say the same thing, but then the Republicans add the other factors: how many lives are saved by good economies?
The tradeoff is: do you stall the economy to aggressively deal with the climate, or do you let the economy do everything it can while hoping that we find better technology? Which of those two approaches saves the most lives? The Democrats are only looking at the science-y part. The Republicans have added social science and economics. If you don't include the fact that a growing economy is good for life expectancy and healthcare, you can't claim scientific thinking. Check out Bjorn Lomborg's arguments on this; he is one of my influences.
## [Gender and Empathy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=3396s)
I'm more sympathetic to the multiple genders thing than most of you. From a practical, legal, social point of view, it causes lots of problems because there's extra paperwork and questions about bathrooms. On a practical level, it's easier just to say there are two. But it's also terrible for some of the people who are in the gray areas. My empathy is that society should not be crushing people for the way they were born if we can avoid it.
I have far more empathy for anybody who's in any kind of a gray area gender-wise. If you were in that situation, you would want society to understand it a little bit better. People are just born into it. It's always simplified to say you have this genitalia so you're this "thing." But if you were to look at a continuum from the most "male" behavior to the most "female" behavior, I would argue that there are plenty of humans with female genitalia who are closer to the male end of the spectrum in terms of how they feel and act.
For me, gender is a continuum, and men and women are all over the map. As a society, we have to do what works. You have to do the thing that causes the least problem for the smallest number of people, and that might be just keeping it to two genders. But I have great empathy for anybody who's on the continuum and not in the majority. I don't think people choose to be that way; they're born into it.
What about a transgender eight-year-old? I think a lot of these questions come down to whose decision it is. When you're talking about children, you've got the complication that the child might actually be right. But an eight-year-old can easily be confused. If you've ever seen an eight-year-old boy dress up in his sister's dress, by the time he's ten, he might be as hetero as you could possibly be. An eight-year-old doesn't have a settled gender preference yet. That's a "who makes the decision" question, not a science question. An eight-year-old is going to have to follow the decisions of a parent, but the parent might not be right.
## [Closing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzW43K3EWw&t=3767s)
That's enough for now. I will talk to you a lot tomorrow. I'll be on and off. Use the Interface by WhenHub app if you're at a polling place where something interesting is happening and I will call you. Remember to vote, show your flags, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.