Episode 297 Scott Adams: The 2020 Competition, North Korea, Lawyers Against Trump
Date: 2018-11-12 | Duration: 1:03:21
Topics
Bjorn Lomborg graphs on climate change: Biggest reduction in CO2 production last year: U.S. Biggest increase in CO2 production last year: China Poll says Democrat frontrunner for President: Kamala Harris NYT article says dumb Trump Admin allowing NK to build WMD Hmm…same thing NYT said about Iraq Democrats plan to bury Administration in lawsuits till 2020 They plan to go…full Avenatti? Will Matthew Whitaker become the AG? Understanding the concept, “fog of war” Fog of war applies to all political news Broward (possible) voter fraud Odds that Broward is actual significant voter fraud Lack of imagination prevents you from understanding reality “how would you explain…” = “I lack imagination” Inability to imagine other explanations isn’t proof of anything Many people lack visual imagination If Q encourages followers to do their own research… …and you haven’t researched “Q prediction failures” Climate studies are modeled the same as a famous stock hoax 70% of peer reviewed studies aren’t true It’s common for scientists to (mostly) all agree, and be wrong Food pyramid was fully reviewed, approved, accepted…and wrong
Rough Transcript
This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.
Transcript
[0:11]
bum-bum-bum-bum-bum hey everybody come on in here you know why I think you do because it’s time for something it’s time for coffee with Scott Adams always bring a coaster never put your beverage on your nice furniture without a coaster unless it’s glass and even then you don’t want to clean your glass but anyway I divert j— you didn’t come here for housecleaning suggestions did you I think it’s time to raise a mug a cup a glass a beverage container and join me for the simultaneous end now some people ask me on the comments here how is my house I think that’s a reference to the fire I’ll give you another view out the window as you can see no but as you can see now
[1:15]
as you can see no but as you can see now that’s what my view looks like keep in mind that everything above those tree lines is normally a hundred percent visible so we still can’t really go outside that’s not an option and it’s a weird world because when you can’t go outside your world gets very small it’s almost like it’s the dead of winter or something but the fire is still a comfortable I don’t know 150 miles away from me and you can see how much smoke is here so imagine the poor people who are closer to it I understand that there are several celebrity types who have lost their homes there’s a lot of controversy about what the government state and or federal should have been doing or could have been doing about these fires there’s a big question about climate change I saw an interesting graph by bjorn lumber Lomborg now bjorn
[2:21]
graph by bjorn lumber Lomborg now bjorn if you don’t know him is not a climate skeptic but he has lumped in that category because he dares to bring rational thought to the discussion and I’m not even making that up what I just said is literally true that there’s a guy named Bjorn Lomborg who is considered a a science doubter simply because he brings rational thought to the discussion Alon Borg okay yeah Bjorn Lomborg and specifically why he brings to it is that it’s not enough to look at just the science once you think you know what the science tells you you have to also look at the economics so by simply saying hey you also have to study the economics he’s considered a science doubter he doesn’t doubt the science he doesn’t even doubt it he’s just saying but you haven’t done the comics completely and you have to do it
[3:22]
comics completely and you have to do it completely or you don’t know anything which is pretty close to my view now he just produced a graph that showed that the biggest decline in co2 production was from the United States in this past year and the reason was a little bit coincidental because I guess there was a shift from coal to shale gas and I guess shale gas is far better for the co2 emissions than coal so the fact that our the free market is doing this thing that’s that’s suggesting that the Paris Accord didn’t make much difference because the United States was the biggest decline in co2 who was the biggest increase in co2 China what is killing more people than anything else according to the climate believers the
[4:24]
according to the climate believers the climate right forest fires and hurricanes and such the so the the climate believers and I’m not doubting this I’m not an expert on science that I can’t tell you if the forest fires are worse or the drought is worse or the Hurricanes are worse I don’t know that but smart people are saying that climate change my whether it’s human-made or not that’s the secondary question but it seems to be getting worse and if you buy into that you have to buy into the fact that fentanyl China is killing the United States in three different ways one stealing all our technology to sending fentanyl here in killing 30,000 people a year and now three apparently they’re destroying the atmosphere in ways that will which will destroy our country and our economy and the world while starving and killing their people so I think there’s no doubt anymore that China is the biggest threat
[5:25]
anymore that China is the biggest threat to the survival of and they may not even be necessarily trying to do it intentionally but fentanyl China is not in my opinion a credible trading partner and we shouldn’t make any trade deal with them until we get what we want so I’m in favor of no trade deal at all let’s just keep terrifying them let’s let’s make it hard for them to operate and maybe they’ll stop killing tens of thousands of people in our country you can always hope I saw article on CNN that says that there’s a new poll about 2020 frontrunner for president on the Democrat side who do they say is the front-runner on the Democrat side oh here’s a big surprise I’m so surprised it’s Kamala Harris who told you that
[6:25]
it’s Kamala Harris who told you that Kamala Harris would be the chosen Democratic candidate for president I did when did I tell you that long time ago months and months and months ago why did I tell you that well who was the front-runner on the polls the you have to you have to admit that this is kind of funny it’s funny there for months and months and months we’ve been told that the front-runner on the Democrat side is Joe Biden in what universe do the Democrats put an old white man on the top of their ticket in what universe was that even a little bit possible let me tell you what universe none was there one serious person in the world who thought Joe frickin Biden was going to be the front-runner when it came down to that you know actually the voting time who really thought that and for months
[7:27]
who really thought that and for months I’ve been watching these I’m trying not to curse as much as I want to for months we’ve been watching this weird pretend reporting where we’re people on the Left would look at you know the rest of the country with a straight face and say well I think this has to be done with Dale I think Dale has to do this yep the front-runner for 2020 for our team is Joe Biden I totally mean it when it comes right down to it we’re totally gonna vote for the really oval white guy who says embarrassing things all the time and maybe he touches people the way they don’t want to be touched that’s totally our brand come on was there was there anybody who believed
[8:27]
there was there anybody who believed Syria and I mean this seriously anybody was there one person on the planet earth and as seven billion people was there really even one person even Joe Biden who thought that Joe Biden would be the Democrats choice to run for president on what planet was that even a little bit possible all right so now the world has going back into balance Kamala Harris was always the threat she was always the threat and she will she will rise to the ranks until she’s unless you know we have some new surprise that we didn’t know about her let’s talk about North Korea there’s an article in The New York Times saying wha-wha-wha the the dumb old Trump administration fell for it again and North Korea has all these secret missile making plants that are ramping up so let me summarize what I just said the New
[9:28]
me summarize what I just said the New York Times who was instrumental in creating the Iraq war am I wrong about that was it not New York Times reporting that to a large extent mobilized the country to go to war against Iraq I’m right about that right and now they’re mobilizing us to go to war with North Korea with similarly not good information what yeah what kind of credibility should you give to the New York Times when they say there’s a country that maybe we need to bomb because it looks like they’re building weapons of mass destruction right yeah the New York Times is not a credible news source for this kind of story I would imagine that they’re credible for a range of different types of stories there may be a whole you know universe of things where the New York Times is
[10:29]
of things where the New York Times is completely credible completely you know accurate and a high standard but I don’t think it’s about politics and I don’t think it’s about what countries are building weapons to go kill us for that they are the enemy of the people they have proven that so do not believe anything you see coming out of the New York Times about whether or not we need to go to war that my friends is not credible now I’m seeing some reports that the Democrats are looking to lawyer up and bury the Trump administration with lawsuits what do you think would happen if they do that what do you think will happen if the Democrats decide to go full wmd and actually execute on all of their plans to bury the administration in lawsuits
[11:31]
to bury the administration in lawsuits and discovery and indictments well number one they will certainly lose in 2020 I suppose they would hope to be running against Trump and have him weakened by them but you know what they say if you go for the if you try to kill the king you better make sure you can do it and how how is sure with the Democrats be that even with this massive blizzard of what they’re going to send against the president how sure are they going to be that they could take him down because if they don’t take him down guess where Congress goes back to if you want to give the the Republicans a total stranglehold over the system just go full lawyer because there’s nothing that the voting public loves more than wasting their frickin time and ruining their own country with lawyers there
[12:35]
their own country with lawyers there what can you think of anything maybe taxes what what is it the Republicans and even Democrats I suppose hate more of them taxes lawyers the Democrats are going to turn their entire party into avenatti the they’re actually you know I make fun of the Democrats for having the worst strategies you’ve ever seen like to the point where they’re laughably bad can you imagine the room when they did the strategy let me take you into that room now imagine if you will going back not too far few few days ago probably in which the Democrats were huddled and trying to figure out how to improve their brand I believe it went like this well what are we gonna do to improve our brand in the 2020 election what is a good role model somebody who is very popular charismatic somebody who we
[13:38]
popular charismatic somebody who we would like to emulate I’ve got it Michael Appa Navi wait is that his first name Michael I don’t even know his first name because we just call him have a nappy let’s go with avenatti he was so popular doing legal stuff against the president we should just follow that model and expand on it we should all be often at ease instead of saying I am Spartacus let us say I am a vanadis no I am often a B no I am of Inari no I am on the Navi because if you’re gonna help your brand you want to go full avenatti full of bloody feathers our strategy yes yes we finally got a winning strategy people love him right we’re right about
[14:41]
people love him right we’re right about that right people love him and all he does yes I thought so everybody in the room is agreeing with me full of a lobby floor lobby this scene I believe that is exactly what the meeting looked like may have been more or less fist pumping what is a vanadis first name I literally don’t know his first name by the way I have a a brief interaction with oven honey on Twitter I don’t know if anybody saw that but we went easy on each other so avenatti came into one of my Twitter comments recently and Adam I don’t remember the topic it doesn’t matter but he made some semi humorous anti-trump
[15:42]
he made some semi humorous anti-trump comment and I made a somewhat inoffensive joke about it Mike so it’s Michael alright then so the Democrats have their plan for total self immolation the question is how successful could you expect them to be well here’s what I would say if you’re the President of the United States I think you should just ask the public what they want you should just say to the public we can either have a government that does nothing but sue each other and and believe me if they do try to if they do try to tie up the government you know the president if they try to stop the president with just legal tricks there are some things which you can guarantee you will happen number one they’ll will get killed in 2020 that’s a guarantee number two and
[16:45]
2020 that’s a guarantee number two and by the way that apparently they’re so dumb that they’re going to do it anyway number two you can guarantee the Republicans will respond with absolute devastating career and life ruining kind of tit-for-tat and it won’t be just against one person the Republicans will try to take out the entire Democratic hierarchy every top politician and even probably just popular backers like put like celebrities and stuff so if the Democrats do as a strategy go full lawyer full avenatti what you can guarantee is that the Democratic side will be devastated by what the Republicans will do to them because they kind of have to they have to have that threat of mutually assured destruction and since the Republicans will are the
[17:47]
and since the Republicans will are the Democrats will primarily be aiming at the president and the president will at least be a little bit insulated by the office and armies of lawyers and stuff like that but the the Democratic field is wide and deep and unprotected and they’re all going to get sued into bankruptcy and destruction so we’re probably at the verge of the Democrats driving the country into complete complete ruin by the avenatti approach to governing that’s what it is right it’s the often knotty strategy let’s call it what it is they’re going full avenatti and now when you see who’s the who is the guy on the the Democrat can’t remember his name who’s the Democrat who is going to be behind all this the one
[18:47]
is going to be behind all this the one who was talking too loudly on the train remind me his name he is not a sympathetic character yeah if he’s he’s part now the other guy was the guy who was talking on the train Nadler Jerry Nadler here’s the other thing that the Democrats get wrong Jerry Nadler is not a sympathetic character so if he becomes the face of your avenatti attack you’re doing something wrong because that makes him the sort of the focus of your party and he’s an old white guy and if you’re an old white guy and you’re trying to be the face of the Democratic Party and shift shift has the same problem right if they become the face of the Democratic Party what’s that do to the Democratic Party is that who they want
[19:48]
Democratic Party is that who they want to be their standards bearers Nadler Schiff and often Adi three white guys I got a feeling that that’s not going to be popular on their own side I don’t know if they’ve done any Studies on that so anyway finishing up if the if Nadler and chef and those guys decide to go full avenatti as their governing governing plan I think first of all they underestimate how protected the president is meaning that they can the president can just say I’m not going to give you any information okay can you imagine the president just saying I’ll tell you what I’m not going to give them any information until I leave office just just period I’m just not going to give them anything because if I do the government will be crippled and it’s it’s clear that the people don’t want that after amount of office then you know we
[20:49]
after amount of office then you know we can see how much of this matters but I I’ve got a feeling he might just say I’m just not going to give you anything that’s it now what about Muller and what about this guy Whitaker I don’t know if you read the Whitaker’s bio but at least part of his biography associate associates him closely with and I guess he was paid by a company that was accused of being credibly accused of being just a scam company so if there’s nothing else that bothers you about Whitaker and that should bother you a lot and it’s a different situation I would say them you know somebody’s gonna say hey isn’t that like Trump University my take on Trump University is that that was a license deal essentially and the person who licenses even if they do a commercial for it they really don’t know what’s happening in the company so it’s
[21:52]
what’s happening in the company so it’s it’s completely believable that candidate Trump President Trump privacy’s and Trump had I guess hundreds of entities that were licensed or businesses under his control he would do little commercials for lots of them the odds that Trump actually knew what Trump University was doing that got them in trouble are pretty low it’s pretty low that they hear that he actually understood what was happening there because that’s just not how licensing deals work I’ve licensed you know I’ve personally have licensed to hundreds of companies I don’t know what they do oh you just make sure that something about the license looks good but if then you license it and that company goes off and does terrible things it’s not like you’re checking all their work all you did is license a character or license a name and indeed I’m currently working with lots of companies you know
[22:52]
with lots of companies you know publishers my syndication company a number of other companies how much do I know about what they’re doing that I might not like not a lot not lot but in the case of Whitaker he was actually a lawyer and he had a sort of a key role in that company so I would say there’s very little chance that Whitaker is going to remain in the job especially the way Trump has has talked about him lately saying he doesn’t really know him if that there’s nothing else you really need to know if you’re trying to predict what’s going to happen to Whitaker the president’s saying well I don’t really know the guy there’s not much else to talk about by the way did you know that you can give me super hearts if you don’t know arts are they are down by the comments there’s a little heart that’s got little lines coming off it if you press that that would give you the ability to send me
[23:53]
would give you the ability to send me tiny amounts of money to say thank you for your content and can you put it on more platforms so that the money that I make from the super hearts and the money I make from the patreon account which is that Scott Adam says that money is very small but it goes toward just putting this content on different platforms so all it does is spread the message it doesn’t make me rich so if you want to do that that’s how you do it yes so they’re down by the comments section on the comment line there should be a little icon of a heart if you push it you’ll see some options for how to use those and thank you thank you for all the for all of those who you did now let’s talk about
[24:54]
what else you want to talk about oh so I’m saying that let’s talk about the election so remember I told you the thing to worry about with all this election allegations is that we were very much in the fog of war and if there’s one concept which can be very very useful to you it is how to understand this fog of war stuff now the fog of war where that saying comes from is that in war it’s very hard to get information about what’s really happening because there’s a fog and complexity and people are lying and you can’t get information so the first reports out of any kind of a war zone tend to be unreliable because of the fog of war but this also applies to almost any political news almost any political news will also have a fog of war quality because the world is a complicated place
[25:55]
because the world is a complicated place now and when it’s complicated and there are people on both sides and there are lots of people reporting and there’s people making up stuff and the first version of events gets misreported and somebody didn’t hear something so you should have expected that everything coming in a Broward County about the recount no matter where you heard it whether you heard it from someone who you trust I would say in this context Marco Rubio would be completely honest about what he believes this happening so I don’t think that Marco Rubio is telling any lies here he seems like a pretty straight shooter when it comes to stuff like this you know I’m not gonna say that every single thing he’s ever said passes every fact check but on stuff like this my impression is that Marco Rubio is completely straight in terms of reporting this which is different from saying he’s right because he’s also in the fog of war he’s reporting on things
[26:56]
the fog of war he’s reporting on things that look questionable and they’re certainly questionable so it’s completely honest to say hey we’re hearing this we saw this we don’t understand why this could be this seems unusual etc so you should certainly pay attention to that and it makes perfect sense that there’s a serious investigation and people are trying to get to the bottom of it that said I don’t believe we found anything that qualifies as proof of manipulation beyond the trivial yet I think there was something like 12 votes that got mixed in with 200 or something but you can’t really count that as as meaning something about the whole of course there are small errors nobody’s questioning that but you know or 22 somebody’s saying but if it’s small numbers that doesn’t mean anything if it’s really tens of thousands you really got to look at that so so somebody’s
[27:57]
got to look at that so so somebody’s saying it’s untrue so so I made it a statement that there’s nothing of significance that has been proven for voter fraud somebody immediately said that’s not true this is my point we’re all looking at the same stuff and we’re seeing completely different versions of it we don’t know which is true whoever it is who’s positive you’ve seen something that tells you absolutely there’s a big problem you don’t know that you just know what some new source told you some pundit imagined somebody hallucinate it you don’t really know anything it’s total fog of war I also don’t know anything because I’m in the same fog that you are so it is important to take everything you hear so far about Broward with a gigantic grain of salt I would say that they are no more everything you hear and have broward for a while it will be no more dependable
[28:59]
a while it will be no more dependable than the New York Times talking about talking about Noor Iraq we’re talking about North Korea it’s a very low standard of dependability that said could there be a massive voter fraud very easily I would say the odds that Broward is actually a case of exactly what it looks like and you know I’m not immune to the fact that it looks even to my eyes as much as I’m trying to be objective and not jump to conclusion I have the same reaction most of you do which is well it certainly looks like there’s massive voter fraud but looking like it is very different than it actually being there so it can it is possible in fact it is likely that it can look like massive fraud without an existing it could look like that so just wait shall we have a second simultaneous
[30:01]
wait shall we have a second simultaneous it Ali Alexander and Laura Loomer have the evidence well our ally Alexander and Laura Loomer two people who understand the situation and Broward well enough and have enough access that you should trust them during the fog of war now no offense to either those people but it wouldn’t it wouldn’t matter who you replace them with in my example you could take them out put in whoever you want if you like somebody else better we’re not in a place where you can believe anything we’re just not there yeah other people are saying they don’t have any evidence so the thing you can be sure of is that some people will say they have the evidence and some people
[31:01]
they have the evidence and some people will say they don’t so what do you know if you know only those two things you don’t really know anything which is my point yeah so a ballot box was found in a closet what does that tell you that tells you something about one ballot box if they were trying to change an election they had I don’t know a difference of thousands and thousands would they do it by putting one ballot box in the closet not likely I mean that the example that you give oh they found a ballot box in a closet that operates against your theory not for it if they found a warehouse full of ballot boxes well you’d have a really good point there if they found one ballot box in one closet you don’t know anything
[32:04]
in one closet you don’t know anything yeah I know some of you’re saying well well what if there are many many closets well that is speculation check the other closets oh yeah of course you’d want to you’d want to get as much information as you can but if all you know so far is one closet one ballot box that argues deeply for incompetence you probably had a minor level it does not argue for a conspiracy it argues against it because it seems like it’d be a lot of work to have one ballot box in one closet in lots of different places because the problem with that conspiracy is you’d have to have what hundreds of people in on it and hundreds of people would have to coordinate there one box in there one closet and and wait for the secret the secret signal all right take your box out of the closet everybody drive to the rented car that’s a stretch so my take on the ballot box in the closet yes is
[33:06]
on the ballot box in the closet yes is shouldn’t you raises questions and I’d like to know the answers to them as would you but it’s not evidence of massive fraud it’s math it’s evidence of one box in one closet that’s what it is now of course you should wonder if there are other closets with other boxes but until that comes into evidence all you know is one box in one closet why our boxes being misplaced somebody says so far one box so you should ask him not why our boxes misplaced but why is box why is that one box in the whole freaking country misplaced in the closet well probably lots of things got misplaced that day but they probably don’t add up to much microfarad now as hard as I’m trying to convince you that you haven’t seen evidence that you should consider reliable yet and I’m
[34:06]
should consider reliable yet and I’m trying pretty hard to take you to that place I still have the same questions you do which is that given what we’ve seen it does look like massive fraud to me it looks like it to me but that’s different from it being true all right I spent much of yesterday talking to people who had seen ridiculous things and thought they were true I’m not even gonna tell you what topic it was but let me say I spent much of yesterday talking to people deeply hypnotized who believed they had seen things that literally don’t exist and were convinced by evidence that wasn’t evidence they had seen an orange and thought it was a banana right in front of them and they are absolutely positive that their version of reality is correct so just being positive that things look fishy and there’s no other way you could explain it doesn’t mean anything and by the way one of the one of the topics in
[35:07]
the way one of the one of the topics in my upcoming book called loser thing is how a lack of imagination can really hurt you I don’t know if when it was last time or if I have explained this before the somebody’s asking me how do you explain X that is a perfect introduction to my point thank you let me say something that you’re gonna hate if your argument for why you believe something is quote how do you explain X unless this is true if that’s your version of understanding the world then you have one of the worst ways to understand the world anybody had let’s say you put two people together oh well let me give you a specific example so somebody said to me if Q is not real you all know who q miss if Q is not real
[36:10]
you all know who q miss if Q is not real how do you explain that a photograph that the president tweeted I think had as its file name do it Q how do you explain that Scott how do you explain that now here’s my here’s my point today if you’re asking the question so oh how do you explain that unless you’re almost always hallucinating not every time but when you hear that setup you almost can walk away from the conversation if that’s you how would you explain this how would you explain this when somebody asks how would you explain you think what they’re saying is these sex line up to tell one story that’s not what’s happening when somebody says how do you explain this unless here’s what they’re actually saying I have a bad imagination that’s how you should hear that whenever anybody says to you well then how do you explain an X the first thing you should think is this person I’m talking to has
[37:12]
think is this person I’m talking to has a very bad imagination that’s mostly the problem most of the time now sometimes how do you explain X does actually mean that there’s only one explanation and you know you can get a conviction etc but in the real world outside of the court system how do you explain X almost always and I’m gonna say nine and ten times simply means you have a bad imagination so let’s go back to my example so somebody who was a queue follower said well if Q isn’t real how do you explain that the president tweeted something they had as a filename do it q how do you explain that Scott explain that to me try to explain that to me all right here’s my explanation the President of the United States doesn’t name files do I need to go on the most obvious explanation is this
[38:12]
the most obvious explanation is this somebody else named the file and then somebody who thought it was funny and maybe there are a queue followers or whatever and they thought well this is funny I’ll just name it this file and stick it in there and see what happens or the president just tweeted a file and didn’t know what the file name was because it didn’t matter or it’s a complete coincidence and there the file names all had random letters and you know there’s a lot of people tweeting a lot of stuff and somebody was gonna do something they had a key with it and something else that made sense so if you can’t imagine what the other explanations are that’s a failure of imagination yeah or a typo somebody said it could just be a typo if you can’t even imagine what the other possibilities are you haven’t proven that something happened you have proven you have a bad imagination do people get that is that point clear because it violates almost
[39:14]
point clear because it violates almost everything that the average person operates under it’s almost the opposite of your worldview for most people and I will further make this point imagination the ability to imagine is if it’s like every other human capability probably you know fits some kind of a normal curve and by that I mean most people have an or average imagination the ability to imagine is just sort of normal some people have an extraordinary ability to imagine other people have no ability to imagine indeed we learned recently that there are a lot of people in the world quite a few them and as a percentage it’s not that many but enough that you probably know one who literally can’t imagine things visually there are a whole bunch of people don’t have visual imagination and didn’t know it some people were asking recently wait a minute are you saying that you could imagine what it would look like like walking through a room that you’re not
[40:15]
walking through a room that you’re not in - which I say yes I can imagine that almost like it’s real my personal powers of imagination are obviously commercial-grade because what I do for a living living is imagine things and write them down and make them interesting so I’ve not only been working on my imagination forever but I feel like maybe I was born with some kind of advantage you know it’s just one of the random things that happens sometimes you go to things sometimes you’re bad at things and I feel like I was born with some you know natural capacity for imagination which I have honed over 30 years of career in which I used my imagination commercially every day on a lot of different topics much of it visual so if you say to me Scott how can you explain if this is true this must mean X my first reaction is OK it could mean this or this or this or this it could be this or this or this
[41:17]
or this it could be this or this or this or this it could mean this or this or this or this or this or though so this or this or this or this over there so this or this or this or this or this because I have a really good imagination and I’ll guarantee you that we’ll just get rid of all the people who say that and I guarantee you that people who have less let’s say practiced imaginations can now come up with 10 alternatives that are more likely than whatever the dumbass thing that people are thinking I usually can I usually look at the situation and come up with ten stories about what it could have been that’s not the the story somebody believes if you can’t automatically come up with multiple explanations to explain every case of well if this is true have you explained it if it’s not if you can’t come up with ten right away the problem is your imagination okay it’s
[42:21]
problem is your imagination okay it’s not imagination it’s critical thinking is it yeah I’m tempted to say that the problem is a lack of critical thinking and when I write about it in my book I will actually put it in that context as well but what I’m saying is that in some cases you really cannot imagine an alternative let me let me give you an example let’s say you you watch somebody walk into a room you’d have to come up with a constrained example but there are certainly cases where you have in let’s say in the context of a court case there are certainly cases where the evidence is somebody’s on the video the DNA is there you’ve got a picture of them you’ve got their DNA you’ve got ten witnesses and they’ve confessed is a really a second alternative in that case right it’s not a cat it’s not a question of critical thinking it’s a question we
[43:22]
of critical thinking it’s a question we have as I described that situation you literally can’t imagine another explanation I have a good imagination I can’t imagine if all of those pieces of evidence were true and it’s on video and you’ve got DNA and all that I can’t imagine any alternative to the fact that it’s exactly what you think it is so look for situations which are constrained like a court case there were always good for good for understanding what limits of things are but in the wild in the real world almost every time in the real world there’s not enough information to rule out lots of alternative expo the real world is messy you were really bad understanding let me give you an example here’s an example I’m writing about in my book so I’ll give you a reason my my car is very dirty so for a rich guy I have an unusually dirty car
[44:23]
rich guy I have an unusually dirty car part of it is that it’s a kind of car where the brake pads are always messing up the wheels so two days after I get it washed it looks filthy anyway but my car is very dirty if you saw my car and you saw that it was very dirty and you knew it was my car what assumption would you make about why my car is dirty go what possible reason would a rich guy who has the money and the time I could you know I can easily take care of this lazy right if you knew me you’d know that I have money so you wouldn’t think I was poor you might think I was too busy you might think I was lazy my thing I’m saving water I’ll bet not one of you can come up with a real reason right so watch how you’re all imagining different possibilities none of you have the right reason here’s the reason and this is a cautionary tale about the limits of
[45:26]
cautionary tale about the limits of imagination the real reason my car is dirty is that the the self car washes where you can you know you get gas then you can clean your car those are what I would be using if I were washing my car on a regular basis maybe I’d get it detailed at different times so basically I would just use the car wash the reason I don’t do it I have a fear of Public instruction’s did anybody see that did any did any of your hypotheses be well Scott has a fear of Public instruction’s nobody guess that here’s what I mean if I Drive into the carwash and somebody you know in the line of cars are behind me and they pull up to this unfamiliar situation where there all these instructions be you know five different options and you know pull your car up here and don’t do this you know do put your brakes on don’t put your brakes on remember to take this out and take your keys hit
[46:27]
take this out and take your keys hit this thing push this button for whatever reason one of the things I know about myself is that I’m too literal in in a lot of situations so in other words if I read a sign that says wait here I’ll never leave and other people will say no no obviously the sign means you wait here until it’s time to go and I would say well that’s not what the sign says the sign says wait here why would I Drive forward when the sign says wait here so that’s a dumb example but I have real problems interpreting public directions because they’re often written so poorly and here’s what is in my mind that’s completely rational except that it’s based on experience so it’s not that irrational then I would get in the middle of this group of people who just want to wash their cars and my car would get stuck or something would happen after I’m in the middle of the line where for whatever
[47:27]
middle of the line where for whatever reason I can’t figure out it had to make the instructions work or the right way to drive into the carwash and there’s something weird would happen now every one of you should be saying to yourself Scott what you’re explaining is not rational and how many different ways are there to solve that there must be a hundred ways to solve that Scott you could take somebody with you who knows how to do it you could just do it when the traffic is low you could maybe read up on it maybe you could Google about it before you go maybe you could talk to the person in the you know the little attendant and have the attendant show you how to do it all true and yet the reason my car is dirty is because I have a fear of Public instruction’s and embarrassing and inconveniencing other people it’s not the embarrassment exactly I so if you think it’s a bad embarrassment that’s slightly wrong it’s a fear of inconveniencing other people
[48:28]
a fear of inconveniencing other people it’s the same reason I don’t like to golf the main reason I don’t golf if you said Scott why don’t you golf you probably would never guess my real reason it’s the same reason I don’t like to be the person who shanks one and loses a ball and makes the foursome behind me angry because they’re waiting to play I can’t abide the situation of inconveniencing other people to me it’s just about the worst thing and the feeling in the world so I only point this out not to show you that I’m weird but to show you that in the real world when you don’t have a constrained situation and every possibility is possible that a lot of the reason for stuff is completely invisible to the average person no way you would have known why my car is dirty but you would have thought you did I’ll bet most of you would have bet money on it’s like okay I couldn’t bet money on this he’s lazy or I can bet money on this he’s a
[49:28]
lazy or I can bet money on this he’s a he likes the environment so he’s just not watching it you were to come up with lots of ideas but you want to co-op with the real one so the word the real world is full of unimaginable complexity which we imagine we can understand and we can’t so when you’re looking at this Broward County situation when you’re looking at the President of the United States is he colluding with Russia any of these big questions you simply are not equipped including me and I would consider myself easily in the top 1% of people who can imagine stuff effectively probably easily just cuz I do it for a living right people who do anything for a living are going to be in the top top percentages all right so there you go that’s my point don’t let your lack of imagination be confused with a certainty about what is
[50:29]
confused with a certainty about what is the only explanation for something and by the way most of the cue believers are suffering from exactly this the the cue believers are not looking at positive evidence or like proof I guess I’d call it my evidence they’re not looking at like positive logical proof they’re mostly saying well how could you explain this and unfortunately there are lots of explanations for whatever this is it’s a coincidence it was not really predicted it was just it was a good guess there are lots and lots of ordinary explanations because the cue thing is exactly like a hoax so here’s the thing if somebody is doing something that looks exactly like a hoax and has all the characteristics of a hoax and your take out of this well how could it not be true if that’s your take it just
[51:30]
be true if that’s your take it just means that you’ve not been exposed to enough hoaxes because if you’ve seen enough of them they’re kind of obvious after a while I personally have studied hoaxes it’s actually a field of interest I’ve studied how to do magic because it’s had a fool people I’ve studied hypnosis because it’s had a fool people I’ve studied persuasion because it’s essentially the same thing so I’ve studied field after field after field I’ve looked at mass hysteria so I’ve really looked into them I know what a scam and a hoax looks like and they have a very distinctive characteristic q is one of those now if you’re telling me how do you explain this file name how do you explain this Scott the answer is I could give you a ten explanations and they’re all every one of the ones I could imagine may not be true but they’re all more likely than Hugh is magic but he gets a lot of things wrong because that helps you do your own reach
[52:32]
because that helps you do your own reach if you just say it out loud what what are the ways to tell you’re in a hoax is to just say out loud what it is just just use the words that say it out loud well I believe that there’s a mysterious person named Q who claims to have secret information to predict the future we know that much if not most of those predictions are not true but he’s still doing it because it helps us learn to do our own research did I say anything that wasn’t actually a good description of Q right there I don’t think so I mean it’s pretty easy to go to the internet and Google Q prediction failures and to get a gigantic list of the things that weren’t true if you haven’t if if your entire belief system is based on how important it is to do your own research and you have never googled Q failed predictions I’m not sure you’ve done your own research ever
[53:34]
sure you’ve done your own research ever you know what I mean let’s drink to that everybody simultaneous sip with me one more time yeah somebody save climate change and I’ll say this again because it fits into the context the science of climate change is probably pretty solid I’m no scientist so if the bulk of scientists say hey we got the chemistry right we got the physics right I would say no probably probably true but the second part the modeling if you’re just talking about the the modeling of the predictions of climate science its presented in exactly the form of a hoax does that make it a hoax well not necessarily but if you’re trying to convince me if something is true don’t package it exactly like a hoax here’s what I mean I’ve said this before there’s a common hoax that people who study hoaxes people who study scams and
[54:35]
study hoaxes people who study scams and I have all no and it works like this you send out 10,000 emails and with three different recommendations for stocks you know everybody gets only one but there there different ones some of those stocks go up and then next week you you send only to the people who by chance got the emails with the right predictions and you say well our last one was right here’s another prediction some of those predictions you know they because they do more than one prediction to that same group some of those might be right and then you’ve got to totally by chance that went up and then you win over that group now you’ve got maybe ten people you send them you know two different predictions half of the ten get one that goes up you got lucky so there’s a small group maybe five people we’ve just got three amazing predictions in row what they believe is it you really can predict so when the fourth one comes through and they say we’ll give you the name of this fourth one if you give us ten thousand dollars
[55:37]
one if you give us ten thousand dollars what does that person think they think you just got three in a row and these were very unlikely so definitely I’m going to give you a ten thousand dollars this is like free money I’ve never done so sure of something in my life all right that’s a very famous scam it is exactly what climate models are climate models are people saying okay if it’s not in this general zone that we’re all agreeing what would you do with that model if if I decide to do some climate modeling and I come up with something that’s way out of the range it’s way too low or it’s way too high what happens to my model does it get added to the model and then they just increase the range and say well now now our range is this big no that doesn’t happen that doesn’t happen because climate models are the exact model of a famous hoax which is you just throw away the ones that are out in the range so if it doesn’t fit the range that you’re pretty sure must
[56:38]
the range that you’re pretty sure must be right you tweak it until it does because you can’t give funding if you’re the person with the only climate model that doesn’t fit everybody else’s range that doesn’t work so if you’re trying to sell climate change with the models just know you’re using the form of a hoax that is impossible not to recognize as a hoax form even if it’s true see which is important point because when you call me a science denier or a climate science denier keep in mind that I didn’t just do that that didn’t happen nothing I said was denial what it said was the way it’s messaged and packaged is identical to a hoax now if that’s unimportant you don’t really study these things because it does indicate that the great likelihood is that they don’t know what they’re doing or it’s accidental or you know or people are influenced by money
[57:39]
know or people are influenced by money etc now here’s another another thing that people would say they would say well how do you explain that the great consensus of climate scientists and all their peer-reviewed articles are all on the same side how do you explain that Scott give me one good explanation can you give me any explanation of how all of these people who are science experts would be on the same side Scott explain that to me explain that to me to which I say what’s wrong with your imagination I can give you lots of explanations for that and they’re all more likely than yours number one something like 70% of peer-reviewed studies turn out to be undone reproduce Abul meaning that in general if something is peer-reviewed what should be your opinion of it if something is peer-reviewed your opinion of it should be it’s probably not true
[58:40]
of it should be it’s probably not true because 70% of the peer-reviewed studies are not true now if there are lots of studies that of course adds to the credibility but suppose you also add money to the system and people have you know they have money on the line is it is a science denial to say that all those scientists could wrong or biased or in a hallucination because money is involved well if you believe in science you would believe in the science of incentives the science of psychology the science of how people act the way they do that science do right if you really believe in science you should be a skeptic on climate science because there are two sciences involved one science is climate science and you should not ignore that you should listen to what they have to say but there’s
[59:42]
to what they have to say but there’s another science which is the science of psychology and how people are influenced by peer pressure by you know clues the environment influenced by money and that’s science too if you choose this science and you reject this science you can’t claim to be Pro science if you are skeptical it means you’ve accepted that the scientists have done the work and they know more than you do but you’ve also accepted that the science of psychology and the way humans work and the way people come to believe things that aren’t true plus the entire history of science in which we’ve seen many cases where the consensus of scientists were wrong I used nutrition as my best example when I grew up all the scientists who are nutrition scientists were on the same side they were all wrong there were plenty of peer-reviewed journals they were all wrong why were they all wrong
[1:00:43]
were all wrong why were they all wrong because there was money in the system the the food manufacturers were funding the studies and they were telling the government to tell you when they were real alright so if you are not old enough to understand the science has a history of being this this certain and also this wrong then you don’t understand science so the science denier is the one who’s positive that climate science is exactly what the clients climate scientists they understand one-third of the science that you need to understand they would have to add an understanding of the social sciences psychology incentives how money changes things how people can be fooled how how peer-reviewed things can get peer review and even though they’re completely ridiculous you’d have to understand that part of science too and you’d also understand the history of science in which it is a common phenomena a common phenomena for
[1:01:45]
common phenomena a common phenomena for so many scientists to be on the same side and wrong it’s common if you don’t know that that it’s common then you say things like telescope explain to me why all of the climate scientists be on the same side come up with any explanation go go give me any explanation how that is possible and the answer is I have a really good imagination and I believe in science science itself tells us to be very skeptical about this situation everything in science is consistent with what I just said that if you understand how brains work and that’s science do you should be very skeptical of the models because the models fit the exact form of a hoax a well-known hoax a very well understood well known common hoax
[1:02:48]
well understood well known common hoax same format alright that’s enough about that do I seem like I’m in a an aggressive mood lately I’m been accused of being a little little too aggressive lately somebody says yes and I’m going to sign off now