Episode 291 Scott Adams: Why You Can’t Tell Good News From Bad

Date: 2018-11-07 | Duration: 35:00

Topics

Prediction success: Republicans will do better than expected (fun) Prediction success: Outcome will be ambiguous on election day (fun) Bet success: Republicans will hold the house Our robust election system worked At what point do we stop reporting the ethnicity of elected officials? It’s a big deal when the first something takes office It’ll be a bigger deal when “the first” isn’t a big deal Healthcare…why can’t we have both single-payer and universal? Let everyone choose one or the other, as they prefer The election results were the best thing for the country It will take a while, but in the end the country will benefit The Senate assures continued Presidential progress Prediction: The House result will allow allow progress as well

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:10]

boom hey everybody come on in here so much to talk about things are happening things have happened and we have to talk about them once you get in here and I see you're doing a good job of getting in here hello is Sharona hello Russell Troy hey Alfonso it's time for coffee with Scott Adams and if you have your container your mug your glass your stein raise it filled with a favorite liquid the liquid of your choice I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous it oh yeah so we got a lot to talk about last night from the midterm elections let's start with my predictions I had the following predictions I do this so that you can track how accurately I predict because as I've

[1:12]

accurately I predict because as I've told you penny times it's easy to fit your view of the world to the past but that doesn't tell you anything because everybody can do that you can you can make anything look like the past makes sense but predicting the future is much harder so if you can predict the future better than other people you might have a better filter on it so here's my predictions back in January I was asked to predict the midterm result and I said that the GOP will do better than people think back then in other words people thought it was going to be a gigantic tidal wave back in January and I said it will be closer than that true I would say true I would say it was you know not a giant blue wave but it was a good solid win so the Republicans did do better than people said I claim victory

[2:13]

people said I claim victory for fun I had been saying that it would be a tie in the house what I meant by a tie was that that we would not have a result that night on Election Day do you know do you know what time CNN called the winner did anybody notice the exact time the exact time to the minute the CNN called the house going to the Democrats was midnight exactly midnight I predicted it would be a tie some pieces not true was it 11 but anyway I was looking at the clock at midnight it was a it was a p.m. here so had to be four hours after Fox
Fox oh okay so Fox called it earlier anyway my point being that it was close right

[3:15]

my point being that it was close right until the end that was my fun prediction and I think you could go either way as to say whether that would that was accurate or not now I did have one other prediction that I didn't tell you about which is that I placed an actual financial bet on the outcome of the house and I won money so I bet several weeks ago I bet that the Democrats would keep the house I didn't want to tell you that because I didn't want to ruin your fun yeah but I did make money on it so so there's that another bit of good news that you probably don't know about is so one of my Twitter followers who also read my book win big Lea ran for mayor did he win do you think that somebody with no political experience who runs for mayor

[4:16]

political experience who runs for mayor in this town could win based on reading my book about how to persuade the answer is yes yes he is so the new mayor is David Springer David Springer congratulations I you you did the work put it in the legwork apparently worked hard read exactly the right book and you got the result you wanted so congratulations let's talk about the the riots I don't know about you but I see angry mobs of Republicans outside my door looks like they've got a huge protest on the streets they're all wearing their penis hats and there's and they're chanting death to something oh wait that's not happening there are no riots outside my door I don't even see

[5:18]

riots outside my door I don't even see anybody in my straight wait I wish or the country would be torn apart by this but instead what we got was a tweet from President Trump and President Trump tweeted the following in all fairness Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats if they give her a hard time perhaps we'll add some Republican votes she has earned this great honor I also congratulate the Democrats they fought hard they put together a good strategy they chose apparently they chose good candidates they won personally I like living in a in in a in a country that has a robust system did our system work

[6:22]

has a robust system did our system work yes it did our system was totally out of balance you could tell that it was out of balance by the by the reaction of the public total the Trump derangement syndrome they were crazed like actually crazy mental health crazy not now political crazy not crazy used as an exaggeration I mean go to the therapist guess some heavy medication crazy a huge mental health problem in the country that just decreased by half so the total mental health of the country just went from DEFCON 10 whatever the highest DEFCON it's probably not 10 4 but it went from maximum alert to okay let's wait and see how this works yeah we went a little bit one of the things that I've tried to

[7:24]

one of the things that I've tried to teach you and I believe I say that in when Bigley is a human psychology is far more influenced by direction of things than where things are and the example I give is if you're a street person and somebody gives you a nice fresh sandwich it's like the best day ever because you went from a terrible situation to hey sandwich you're going in the right direction but if you were a billionaire and you lost a hundred million dollars in the deal you would be sad cuz you're going in the wrong direction even though you're still ninety percent of a billionaire so direction of things is what influences our psychology from the point of view of Democrats who were having mental problems literally I mean that with empathy I mean that we're having great distress we're scared to death about the the direction of the country what did

[8:26]

the direction of the country what did they experience last night what they experienced was a change of direction things were sort of going all Trump all the time and that my friends as much as you might like it scary scary scary to the people who are not on the train real scary to the bone scary and again I'm not talking about political scary where you wish your team won but it didn't I'm talking about fear of jail fear of nuclear war I'm talking real serious fear that just was largely extinguished last night not completely but the direction went from all Trump all the time oh my god I'm not on that train the people on that train have all the power I'm not in power they don't like me they don't love me I'm in trouble too balance boom congratulations to the

[9:28]

balance boom congratulations to the founders of this country for developing a system the self balances this self-corrects we have to wait a couple of years to the next election but we have found balance or something a lot closer to it you see that there are no protests today the Democrats are not protesting the Republicans are not protesting when I tweeted last night you know I treated it as a question would a democratic victory in the house bring down the temperature in the country it already happened you don't have to wonder you just watched it this is the day after a major election there's nobody in the street nobody there are just hopeful Democrats who have gained something and they feel like they're moving in the right direction there are Republicans who did not get exactly what they wanted but they're not protesting they're not in the streets they're

[10:30]

they're not in the streets they're trying to figure out how to make it work why because they're Republicans what do Republicans do when things don't go their way they figure it out right you know I'm not saying that other people don't do that but as a brand what do Republicans do when they don't get their way they get on with it right they put their head down and they say well gotta try harder got to make it work got to figure this out and so they are so I started off this periscope with the title that it's hard to tell the difference between good news and bad Mark Twain was the first to say that he said that we humans can't tell the difference between good news and bad I'm here to tell you that last night was some of the best news you're ever gonna see that is different from saying that you're gonna get everything you want but

[11:31]

you're gonna get everything you want but keep in mind you weren't gonna get everything you wanted the other way either we don't live in a world where everybody gets everything they want that's not an option we do live in a world where sometimes if the system is working you can crawl forward and you know figure stuff out and we are now in that situation so the president has signaled that he is willing to work with Nancy Pelosi we have at least one one moderate Democrat who has said publicly Connor Lam is his name that we that the Democrats should do less less investigating and more legislating all of the things that are on the table that haven't gotten done in the first two years of the Trump administration also probably couldn't have gotten done with a narrow majority so if the Republicans said had held both houses by a narrow majority they

[12:32]

houses by a narrow majority they probably couldn't have done anything they just would have been the the the party that's under attack all the time now the now the Democrats have a little bit of power and what comes with it is a little bit of responsibility Oh somebody is let me double back somebody is talking about the president's Trump and saying that he's being sarcastic I'm not gonna disagree with you let's read it again and and dig into that a little bit so the president tweeted in all fairness Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats if they give her a hard time perhaps we will add some Republican votes so he is he is playing a little meaning that whether she's the speaker or not you know they they have a problem to work out on their side so he's definitely playing a little bit but he's also not going hard at them all right so he's winning both ways he's playing with him a little bit but he's also being

[13:34]

him a little bit but he's also being reasonable in other words he's he's not going at Nancy Pelosi because she might be the person he has to deal with now what is Pelosi said about pursuing what is Pelosi said about pursuing impeachment Pelosi says no no on impeachment weren't you worried about that you were worried that the Democrats would pursue impeachment not a chance not a chance it's the sort of thing you say when you're not in power once you have a little power which they have now they will immediately abandon their most extreme position and the impeachment was the most extreme so then other people say oh we'll wait what about other investigations what about investigating Trump's taxes good luck with that let me tell you what that looks like hey show us your taxes lawyers say no

[14:37]

hey show us your taxes lawyers say no any questions that that's the whole thing that's the thing you're most worried about hey show us your taxes no
now there's a lot more lawyer in that story that I'm letting on that's kind of what's going to happen they're gonna ask for them he will not provide them that's it that's the old story so and also the president has warned of I think I believe one of his tweets was warning them about mutually assured investigations as I like to call it I don't see here doot-doot - where is it the president tweeted this morning if the Democrats think they are going to waste taxpayer money investigating us at the House level then we will likewise be forced to consider it investigating them for all the leaks in other words pretty much everybody can be investigated so if the

[15:41]

everybody can be investigated so if the Democrats want to employ mutually-assured investigations they can but it wouldn't be in their self-interest would it so those of you who are worried that everything will go to hell because Democrats never negotiate they never compromise that are impossible to deal with I think you have to rely on their self-interest to be in tact so as long as they're reasonably smart collectively not we're not talking about any individual but if the Democrats are reasonably smart and they just won an election so I think you can have to say that they're reasonably smart they figured out how to win an election and they have self-interest because they're human beings human beings of self-interest if they pursue their self-interest it's not investigations and they are realizing that as they wake up there will still be some people on the Left who want to do

[16:43]

some people on the Left who want to do that etc but here's a general statement on day one when you hear there's a problem coming you probably think it's this big well it's usually this big all right so most things that people talk about it's like oh it's the end of the world and you know I've heard every every version of why it's the end of the world on Twitter this morning none of them are close to truth you may have noticed that the stock market let me let me just check that make sure stock market is up here's a stock market that's the S&P 500 for the week notice that big up that's the stock market recognizing that a split government is good in the past the stock markets have going up when the House and the Senate are in different hands this would be

[17:45]

are in different hands this would be another one of those times so the people who have the most money and the people who literally are betting with their money these are the people who have skin in the game are saying this isn't so bad it's not so bad so you shouldn't think it's so bad either because the people with the big money the people who run the world just said hmm we could work with this now so bad the other thing that's fun and I was saying this ahead of the actual result is that President Trump is completely unique in that he is some people are calling him the transactional president or transactional Trump in other words he's about the deal not about the dogma if you're about the deal and not the dogma and you've got a mixed Congress you are in the best situation you could possibly be

[18:46]

you could possibly be who else was about the deal and not the dogma President Bill Clinton how did he do pretty well right maybe it wasn't your cup of tea but as a president he was quite successful in working with mixed Congress so what you should expect is that the things that are still on the table table that have not been done from infrastructure to prison reform to maybe drug policy to healthcare to immigration I would expect to see more progress on those things with our current setup then then than we would have seen otherwise so I think that we've moved closer to the golden age but it looks scary to the people who are hoping for a different outcome I think we're way ahead

[19:48]

we also elected I guess our first openly gay Governor the first openly gay governor we've ever had I didn't even know that was true yeah I never really thought about it but I guess I had assumed we had already had at least one gay governor that was out of the closet so to speak but I guess we got our first one
one so congratulations I think that's a step forward I saw also that there were a number of gains for women and women of color I don't like using that that phrase I just I'm copying somebody on the left who used it on Twitter women of color at what point do we stop saying that is it my imagination or is that a society sort of locked into a bad area every time we call out somebody's ethnicity when they succeed tell me if this is bothering you like you'll see for example let's say an Asian American guy becomes the the first

[20:49]

Asian American guy becomes the the first senator of some state the news is going to report that as first Asian American becomes governor of this state to which I say was that really the story like when when do we just stop saying that why can't we just say this guy got elected I feels like it makes it worse right you know there was a time when it was so unusual for somebody to get ahead and in the you know the white male patriarchy it was so unusual that absolutely it was worth mentioning first black president yeah you got to mention that right but at some point everybody's doing okay enough then maybe we're better off if we just stop talking like that stop calling it out like it's special because that seems to be more dividing uniting wouldn't the help you imagine a world imagine a world like this where

[21:50]

world imagine a world like this where you know we elected the first will say lesbian president of the United States imagine a world where we elect the first lesbian president of the United States and nobody mentions it nobody mentions it they just say hey the Democrat won or hey the Republican won when can we get to that you know why why do we have to care about that the other things I want to talk about today the youth vote versus the old vote so I my my prediction was that the the old people would show up and the old people apparently did break records so I don't know if we have the final numbers but I think it's breaking records so it looks like the GOP turnout was very high for a midterm it looks like the senior citizen turnout was extra high but here's the

[22:50]

turnout was extra high but here's the fun part the youth turnout no different so youth did not turn out in big numbers and that probably that probably is the the difference between f you know the the small wave and the big wave is that the youth didn't turn out now you might ask yourself how can how can the Republicans and the Democrats work together on these various mostly domestic issues I have an answer to that if you have a normal Republican and a normal Democrat trying to make a deal you kinda can't get there because if they stick with what their team wants them to do just can't get there but President Trump is not normal is not normal in any of the ways that people are normal and you only need one of the people to be not normal in this

[23:52]

of the people to be not normal in this in this case I mean not normal in a good way
way so how can let me give you some examples of domestic policy how could you reach an agreement on immigration let's say the wall it would just pick one thing how can you make a deal on the wall if one side says yeah we want all kinds of wall let's wall up the whole thing and the other side says absolutely no wall no way how can you reach a middle ground well you could reach it the same way every business does you could say let's try some wall will approve enough wall budget to see if it makes a difference and they'll pick a place and they'll say alright we're gonna build a wall here small budget and at the end of the build we'll see if people are coming over it or going to other places we'll just see if it changes anything see what we learn and then we'll make a second decision after we've seen now the first part of the wall worked now you could even do better you could say we're going to build a little wall here we're gonna we're going to build

[24:53]

here we're gonna we're going to build some say electronic surveillance here and a different process over here you could try three different things see how they work so for everything that is a big decision there is a way to find out how to test it so that both sides can claim the victory if Pelosi only approved let's say two billion dollars of wall funding and it was enough to build some of the wall she could say we did not approve the wall all we did was approve some fixing up some places that we were gonna fix up anyway and President Trump could claim yes we got the wall of course we're funding the first part first and then when that goes well we'll fund the rest so you do have a way for both both sides to claim the victory if you do the same process every time which is tested small and then make a second decision about expanding it once you know more from the test how could you do that with healthcare uh I don't know the answer

[25:55]

healthcare uh I don't know the answer that but I have a question the United States is a big country and it's so big that if you were to take a corner of the United States it would still be a big country right it would be than a lot of European countries why do we have to choose between single pair and let's say the free market or something like it that were experiencing now why do we have to choose what would stop us from from saying you can either sign up for the free market one which means do nothing or you can sign up for the single payer but if you sign up for the single payer the only people who will ever be on the hook for that bill are other people who signed up for single payer in other words just have two systems let have everybody have exactly what they want if half the country said we want single payer we want the government to do it let them accept that they would also have to

[26:57]

accept that they would also have to accept that the entire bill for that forever could never be paid by the people who did not choose it so the people who stayed in the free market area and either because they didn't trust the other one or because they wanted to pay more to get better service whatever reason they would never be on the hook unless they decide to go over is there any reason that we need one system for the whole country when the country largely would like to have their own system I don't see anything that would stop half the country from saying here's my social security number I want to be in the one payer system and I will be in the class of people who are the only people who have to pay the bill your taxes will go up but if you join it let's say you join a company that has health care perhaps that company that has health care can now take you off the roll because you're you're in the single

[27:59]

roll because you're you're in the single payer it seems to me you could do both let's take another example let's take prison reform prison reform is the perfect situation for something that can be tried in one state in one area you don't have to make a deal nobody has to agree if you have two different ways you want to do prison reform let's there's a democratic version a Republican version do both just find a state that wants to try it put one in one state one in the other try it run it for two years you can't tell me anybody's going to disagree with that because that's the high ground all right let's take another thing I don't know let's let's say I think I think marijuana reform that's coming I think that'll happen easily so that's good news let's take what else we got immigration I think there'll be some kind of middle ground on immigration you know the what's the the biggest

[29:01]

you know the what's the the biggest complaint that people had about Trump's handling of the border kids and cages right now if you're trying to be logical and rational and look at everything the kids in cages thing wasn't as real as people want to make it sound there were kids in cages if you want to call them that so that part was real but it was also a continuation of what Obama was doing it got worse under the Trump administration I would call that a mistake it was a mistake that was called out and corrected and what does it take to correct a mistake like that funding that's it it requires money if you have enough money and resources you could make sure things are taken care of you might also need to change some laws so for everything that remains that I think everything that the Democrats and

[30:02]

everything that the Democrats and Republicans want to work on there is probably a way to test as small which means there's a way forward because nobody has to make a decision if you can test it that looks like the that looks like the situation we're in now I've said before that I think because President Trump has a stronger control on the Senate he's still going to get his Supreme Court picks he's still going to have the flexibility he needs to you know deal internationally with treaties and whatnot you'll have the flexibility he needs for trade trade negotiations and now he's got possibly a partner in the Senate or I'm sorry the partner in the house that you can work with either with Pelosi or whoever replaces her so here's my for those of you just joining my take on last night is that it's one of the best

[31:03]

last night is that it's one of the best things that has ever happened to the country and I don't think you're gonna see it for a while meaning that at the moment Republicans are sort of shell-shocked and you know disappointed and stuff and and you imagine you imagine that you imagine that the Democrats will act in the future exactly the way they have acted before a number of people have tweeted at me and said Scott you're so naive don't you understand that the way they act is the way they'll always act just because they have some power doesn't mean they'll act differently they will be all about destroying the president no matter what all the time to which I say let's see I predict the opposite I predict that when the the dog is chasing the car the dog barks and barks and barks while he's chasing but once the once the dog catches the car which is what just

[32:03]

catches the car which is what just happened with the election the dog acts differently he catches the car and he's like I wasn't expecting this I guess the barking is over now I got my got myself a car I guess I'm happy so what I would expect is that Democrats will have to adjust to having power they're going to they're going to have to adjust to having responsibility they're going to start looking at 2020 and saying if we don't do something useful there's no way in hell we're gonna have a good 2020 so I would think you're gonna see a lot of cooperation you're gonna see people on the right and the left mad at both Pelosi and Trump and Schumer I suppose but you're gonna you're going to have a perfect setup for a president Trump a deal maker who can make a deal all right so honestly this is the best-case scenario you and I

[33:05]

best-case scenario you and I I feel bad if you can't see it now I'm not saying that the future is so clear that you know I can predict it with some some degree of crazy accuracy but the setup the way the way the the chessboard has set itself through nobody a special effort it just ended up here is the best it's ever been this right now is the best setup the country has ever had for a good result will we get a good result fingers crossed let's let's so people do with what we elected them to do but I say congratulations to the Democrats congratulations on a great fight you put in the effort you had the right strategy you picked the right people we got a we got an openly gay governor I think that's great we got more women of color

[34:08]

that's great we got more women of color in positions that has to be good because you know we're a country that needs to recognize everybody so I think we came out way way ahead last night it just doesn't look like it to everybody yet so let's see what happens I'm gonna leave you on that positive thought one all of you to have a great week and it was tremendous fun thanks for sharing it with me the the election was was just so entertaining and to me it was exhilarating to watch the system self correct so don't expect riots in the street I think we cured that last night so good job to the founders of the country you built a system that worked all the way through 2018 at least and that's all for now