Episode 319 Scott Adams: False Memories, Chinese Re-Education Camps, Facebook Racists
Date: 2018-11-28 | Duration: 34:29
Topics
Jerome Corsi being interviewed by Mueller team Were they attempting to plant false memories? Implanting false memories study: 70% successful Trade war pain hits both sides The concept is that it hits your opponent worse than you Of course you suffer also Re-Education camps in China for the Uyghur…till they’re “normal” Muslim beliefs treated as a dangerous medical problem DHS reports 600 known criminals are in the caravan How do they know that?
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript
[0:13]
hey everybody hello Aaron and Jack and Sharona and Tyler and the rest of you come on in here we got lots to talk about and I think you know what time it is you do now you know it's time for coffee with Scott Adams join me now grab your stein your beverage your your your cup your mug your stein you're jealous and have the simultaneous up right now
all right I got a bunch of stories let me start with the some things I tweeted there was a a student group college students who have been working for years to try to develop a inexpensive $20,000 house and they showed a picture of the twenty thousand dollar house that they say they can build and I applaud the
[1:17]
say they can build and I applaud the effort so I'm a big fan of the process of trying to create a design having having some particular things you're trying to accomplish working on it over time to improve it but I would say if they had lion $20,000 home is a little bit misleading as many people have suggested the land would cost much more than that the process of getting something approved in any locale would cost more than $20,000 and in my town it would cost you more than $20,000 just to get a permit you know not a permit specifically but all of the approvals and everything else so you should not believe any story about a twenty thousand dollar house for poor people and and I have a few criticisms although I love the process the thought I
I of the you know the attitude of it what is that the house itself is just
[2:18]
is that the house itself is just god-awful ugly and I just can't believe that has to be the case I don't believe that design necessarily has to cost more so that's the first problem what it was built from a it appears to be built not from a living perspective but from a what's it cost to build a perspective so I would say on a scale of one to 10 where 10 is learning how to build a good livable home for people who don't have much money this $20,000 house is closer to a 2 and the 10 meaning that we're not even close to what we could get to but I love the fact that they took you from zero to two it's the right direction so directionally it's good I will be joining bill full day of the blight Authority you've heard about that a lot on Fox & Friends on Friday morning
[3:18]
on Fox & Friends on Friday morning unless the weather gets in the way I'll be shipping a little bit to head to New York and will will tell you some suggestions for what to do with that blight cleared land and the inner cities and one of the one of the main things that is important and other people have pointed this out is that it doesn't really work to take a nice house no matter what it costs it doesn't really work to take a nice house and just plop it into a bad place and then fill it with people who don't really have the training to know how to manage their you know their finances manage the home etc so you have to approach it as sort of a system problem you know you might have to build a community that that allows the people who are in it to come in and experience their own little world within the community and then maybe you have a chance but there's a lot more you have to do a lot more than just get the cost
[4:19]
to do a lot more than just get the cost of construction down so the purse is that next there's the Pompeo Secretary of State has a article in The Wall Street Journal in which he defends working with Saudi Arabia and he outlines all the things that we have that we have that we work with Saudi Arabia to accomplish everything from trying to figure out what's going on with Yemen trying to curb Iran trying to get something going with an Israeli piece something about oil prices etc etc etc and I thought it was a good article that laid out the case now as I watch people make reasonable arguments about things I've noticed that the what I'll call the I hate to use this phrase but it just works the liberal approach to arguing if you haven't noticed is to use sarcasm
[5:21]
you haven't noticed is to use sarcasm instead of reasons have you noticed this to use sarcasm as if it's a reason and it works like this I'll have to ask Dale to come in so let's say I make a claim that two plus two equals four and let's say I do a tweet and I say two plus two equals four now you know that whoever is on the other side of the political divide has to disagree with it but sometimes there are things that are hard to disagree with and so instead the critic will come in and they'll say something like this Oh cartoon boy says two plus two equals four Hey look everybody two plus two equals four two plus two equals four can you believe it okay look have you seen this have you seen this guy check this out this is just like all the mistakes he's ever made in the past it's all put into this one one new mistake two plus
[6:23]
into this one one new mistake two plus that we kill for and seen so we're seeing a lot of that with the with the Saudi Arabia situation because it's one of those deals where pretty much everybody in that same situation would act the same way in other words if they really wanted to help the country they would probably work with Saudi Arabia given given all of the variables that are in place but since we have to take sides you have people taking sides against something that they would do you're seeing the same thing with the the so called the gassing of women and children at the border nobody is blind to the fact that this is a normal procedure that apparently Obama did many times on the border and the reason they use the what is it the the spice gas whatever it's we call the
[7:24]
spice gas whatever it's we call the reason you use it is that it's the least bad thing you can do and of all the alternatives so who is it who would pick a peppers rheya who is it who supports doing the most dangerous thing well nobody right everybody agrees if they were in the same situation they would do whatever is the safest thing to do it turns out that lobbing a few pepper spray canisters into the you know onto the other side kind of is the safest thing you can do so what do you how do you argue against doing the safest thing you can do given the situation well I'll tell you how oh so now we just shoot projectiles at children and and women so you've got a regular like that because I don't know how else you could argue now keep in mind that anybody watching this will now say cartoonists favors gassing women and
[8:29]
say cartoonists favors gassing women and children no I know how to play this game so let me say as clearly as possible no children in cages and no guessing women and children so I'm just going to do what all of the children in the argument say which is just forget about the big picture and just talk about the little picture so that's what I'm doing because people seem to like that now the hilarious story of the day is that there's an african-american X Facebook employee who is coming he was going after Facebook for not having enough black people on the staff and so Facebook he says is a much used platform by the african-american community but the employees within Facebook are only four percent black and he's saying that you know there needs to be something done about that now here's the interesting thing people have suggested that this would be the case that the that that the liberal entities would
[9:34]
that that the liberal entities would start eating themselves well I'm looking at a Facebook and I'm looking at all the tech companies who are you almost 100 percent not a hundred percent but they're overwhelmingly left-leaning the employees in Silicon Valley the employees in Facebook etc and I think to myself how is it that the widest or at least the least diverse group of people in the world have become the standard bearers for diversity how is it yeah how is it that it never made sense to us that the you know the group of people that is the least diverse are the champions of diversity in other words it's it's their biggest issue is racial equality inclusivity you know gender equality those are their biggest issues
[10:35]
equality those are their biggest issues but am I wrong to say they're the worst offenders so are the biggest complainers also the worst defenders I usually don't do the you know the hypocrisy things like oh you saw this but you're doing this I always think the hypocrisy claim is ridiculous this is more like a puzzling situation it's not I'm not I'm not calling them hypocrites I'm just saying how do you how do you reconcile it how do you reconcile being clearly and factually the worst offenders at the same time you're the biggest proponents and you're the most aggressive proponents of not doing what you're doing it's an interesting situation alright let's talk about Jack passive exceed this morning in which he talked about david Corsi sometimes called an associate of Roger stone that's if you
[11:37]
associate of Roger stone that's if you don't like President Trump if you do like President Trump he's called a New York Times best seller Harvard Graduate Oh Jerome Corsi right sorry and so but anyway that the topic is dr. Corsi and being interviewed by apparently the the Muller team and there was the report now let me let me clarify that I have no way to know what did or did not happen in a room that I wasn't in so so there's nothing that I'm gonna say they should validate the facts of the story because I don't know the facts but the facts that are reported are that [Music] I'll just read over the next few hours as a linskey and Ray they must have been
[12:38]
as a linskey and Ray they must have been the the interviewers on the Muller team would use any number of techniques to push me meaning dr. Corsi we pushed me to remember a source finally szalinski said quote dr. Corsi many people find they have to put themselves back in time to a particular date in place to remember precisely what happened zalinsky suggested that I should go back to my trip to Italy putting myself mentally back to July in August 2016 I put my hand up to my forehead close my eyes and tried to engage seriously in the regression exercise I think I see someone telling me about Assange I finally said trying hard to imagine myself in Italy was it a man or a woman ray asked with obvious enthusiasm that the prosecutors may finally be breaking through a mental block they presumed I had I think it was a man I responded then I realized how ridiculous this was as I was beginning to invent people and make things up just to answer their persistent questions but
[13:43]
to answer their persistent questions but it really struck me as preposterous that a serious US Department of Justice prosecutor like szalinski would ask me to use this type of regression technique used by hacks promising to unlock for gullible clients past lives embellishments to enrich otherwise troubled present existences so so the claim here or the the topic I guess is whether or not a an investigator can plant false memories in somebody they're interviewing and the answer is yes yes so unambiguously yes if these facts happen the way they're reported and that's the part I can't confirm or deny I wasn't there yeah and keep in mind that everybody involved and in the Moller investigation is unreliable yeah
[14:44]
Moller investigation is unreliable yeah there are no reliable characters and any of this and any of this drama so even the people who mean to be right or sometimes getting things wrong so nothing's reliable but if it's true that questions were asked in this nature is this the type of approach which just systems wise and process wise that could implant a false memory and the answer is yes
yes I also retweeted this morning a YouTube video of a researcher who shows it being done so if you don't believe that you can implant a memory with this technique watch the video and you can watch actual people believe they remembered committing crimes that they did not believe now and of the people that the researcher tested what percentage of them do you think had a false memory that the researcher implanted would you
[15:45]
that the researcher implanted would you say ten percent would you say ten percent of the people got a false memory because it was sort of suggested to them no it's higher it's higher than ten percent would you say 25 no no it's 70 it's 70 percent 70 percent of the people with minimal effort generated a false memory of committing a crime when they were younger now I don't think that you know given this was one one study I would not say the 70 percent is necessarily something that you could reproduce so I wouldn't put too much you know faith in the 70 percent part but what you should put faith in is that it can easily be done whether that's thirty percent or twenty five or seventy or 90% is a little less important than the fact
[16:46]
is a little less important than the fact that it is a real phenomenon so well let me just put that out there that a lot of what we think is reality it is not now another topic I see a lot of people are coming after me on Twitter lately and they're noticing that for example farmers are having a tough time and GM is you know laying off people and they say to me something like whole Scott I couldn't wait to come over to your Twitter feed and rub it in your face because as you can see just like everybody smart knows a a tariff or a trade war never works for anybody it's bad for the people who do it whoever starts a trade war they always lose just look at the facts look at the history looking for data look at the studies if you start a trade war and always turns I have seen let me address that number
[17:52]
I have seen let me address that number one what did these people think a trade war was if not something that hurts both sides so the fact that a trade war is hurting your own side in in some ways in the short term is not proof that it's a bad idea it's simply a description of what it is a trade war is both parties hurting each other until somebody wins or something changes right so you can't claim credit for what everybody knew was going to happen because that's exactly what it was it's a trade war now the question about whether you can never win a trade war and therefore you should never get into one doesn't that sort of depend on what situation you're starting with because for example if you had a deal that was kind of close to even but you started a trade war it would
[18:52]
you started a trade war it would probably be bad for everybody because the best you could come up with is probably something else that's close to evil but if you start with trade that is uneven you can take a lot of pain and it's still worthwhile in the long run to even it up so if you're telling me that historically it's always better to back down in negotiations I would say I would really like to be in a negotiation with you because the people who think the best strategy for negotiating is to give in because otherwise the other side will do something bad to you you might be the dumbest people in the world I mean I don't know how you'd measure who's the dumbest person in the world but the general concept that if you're in a negotiation your best strategy is always to surrender because that's what not having a trade war is is simply accepting what the other side is giving you in what world is surrendering
[19:54]
giving you in what world is surrendering a hundred percent of the time better than not surrendering in a negotiation my experience is it's kind of the opposite but let me give you my best negotiating tip you're ever gonna hear it's a slightly off point but it's a good it's a good learning experience so back when I was offered a contract to be a syndicated cartoonist I had never been a cartoonist and getting a syndication contract and the syndication sells your comic to all the big newspapers so the big break for a cartoonist is to become syndicated so when somebody offers you a contract to be a syndicated cartoonist that is the biggest deal in your life it's a totally transforming experience and so the syndicate gave me a contract that was sort of like China negotiating with the United States right their initial contract said we want everything and you
[20:57]
contract said we want everything and you will have nothing I'm exaggerating but it was a very uneven contract which is normal the normal situation is the first offer is sort of an aggressive offer and they don't expect you to accept all of it now normally in that situation you'd say oh no the big syndication company has all the power because if they don't pick me they'll just pick somebody else and so there's nothing I can do because I have no negotiating leverage fortunately my background was not in art my background was in as it turns out negotiating so I literally negotiated two contracts for a living during my corporate life that wasn't my entire corporate life but it was a big part of it and I had a MBA and you know an economics degree and I'd seen enough of the world from the corporate side to know the following fact here's a fact
[22:00]
know the following fact here's a fact that I knew that made me a fortune and the fact goes like this if a big company let's say a syndication company what makes you an offer and then enters into a negotiation because it's it's a lengthy process to negotiate this sort of thing if they enter into it they have also put skin in the game and they don't want to change their mind they don't want to be wrong in their offer and they wouldn't make an offer to you unless they thought you were rare so in other words it wasn't true that they could just easily go to the next cartoonist I mean certainly there were thousands you know in line but it's very unusual to find a new cartoonist that you think has potential so the very fact that they had offered me the contract in the first place tipped their hand they tipped their hand that they needed me a lot because their
[23:04]
that they needed me a lot because their entire business model depended on finding rare people so I with my lawyer and of course having a good lawyer helps a lot push back hard so at the end of the process and successfully we got a contract the Syndicates that some version of I hope we never have to deal with your lawyer again because that guy that guy's just he's like the toughest lawyer we've ever dealt with now why was my lawyer the toughest lawyer they've ever dealt with two reasons number one he was a very good lawyer and very experienced so that's good number two he had the best client in the world because I wasn't willing to take BS for an answer if something was a reasonable thing to ask for I held out for it until I got it so here's your tip for the day in negotiating if somebody is willing to enter a negotiation with
[24:06]
is willing to enter a negotiation with you they have a bigger opinion of your qualities than maybe you do so and people rarely just walk away from a negotiation and don't come back so you can say no as long as you're productively saying no you don't it's a bad idea to just say no I can't deal with you your your first offer is so ridiculous I walk away that's just dumb alright that maybe that could work in a car dealership situation that's a special situation but if it's a big complicated contract you want to get them a little bit pregnant you want to get the lawyers involved you want to get them you want to make sure that they've had meetings in which they said yeah we've got this going it looks good because nobody wants to go back to their boss and say yeah I'd negotiated with this guy for a month and I couldn't close the deal because it makes you look weak and stupid so I allow the other side to get a little bit pregnant and then they will take a lot of pushing once they're a little bit pregnant because they can't unpregnant
[25:08]
pregnant because they can't unpregnant themselves well now we'll get into that all right let's talk about China and their persecution of the we gar if I'm pronouncing that right minority the Muslim minority in China apparently they're sending them to re-education camps now we don't know exactly what's going on over there but so one of their diplomats I think it was the Chinese diplomat in the United States said that they send them to these reeducation camps until and here's the fun part until they can make them normal normal what yeah they're sending them to re-education camps to make them normal Wow now remember that what I told you is that the Chinese model is that the that Islam they're treating it like a mental
[26:10]
Islam they're treating it like a mental illness now without saying I'm going to try to enter this part of the topic without giving you an opinion so I'm gonna describe it with them so don't take this out of context and say Scott says this was that their approach whether it's right or wrong might be less important than whether it works or whether doesn't because from China's perspective keeping order is a question of life and death because there are just so many people and it's so hard to keep order with all these different people in a vast country so that the the level of challenge for the Chinese leadership is much higher than it is for a lot of different places just because of the scope of the thing they're trying to manage so for them they probably can't tolerate as much dissension as maybe a smaller country you know in a different situation now
[27:12]
you know in a different situation now that doesn't make it right so I'm not defending anything China does as you know China is on my my my bad list for Christmas because they're fentanyl practices but it is instructive to look at how they're looking at religion as a mental problem that can spread by association and and I wonder if there's any analog to that you know not that analogies are persuasive but is there any other situation where a way of thinking is considered a mental national mental problem and while we see it with trump derangement syndrome that's joking aside it's an actual medical problem people are seeing therapists and reporting mental problems because of it but I've not seen anything in which a
[28:13]
but I've not seen anything in which a way of thinking is considered so dangerous that it has to be quarantined but imagine if you would anyway I'm not going to say much oh it's somebody saying it's similar to trying to convert gay folks no it is opposite of that it is opposite of that the the folks who were who are treating homosexuality as a mental illness were were missing the biological and medical fact that people or born with us or an orientation and there's nothing they can do about it that's very different from someone who is born as an open slate and then a religion is introduced to their mind so it's not a it's not a how you're born situation it's it's how you were socialized situation so those are not comparable some of you are saying gender dysphoria is a mental illness I not to
[29:17]
dysphoria is a mental illness I not to get into conversations that our definition conversations it's always illegitimate to try to win a convert to win a debate by owning the definition so just because you can say oh the way or your gender orientation is a mental problem just the fact that you can put words on it it doesn't change what it is it doesn't change how you should deal with it it's just trying to win an argument by putting a definition on it is what it is and you don't need to define it in order to figure out what to do about it or or how to be kind I happen to be far more open to the the flexible definitions of gender than most of you because the simplistic version that your genitalia determines your sex is a convenience for society but that's all it is it's just a
[30:20]
society but that's all it is it's just a convenience that happened to be very inconvenient for a segment of the world so if your goal is convenience then maybe a stick with your external genitalia which is very bad for some people who have who are somewhere along the continuum and not where you are so
yeah I can see I can see that all the ways that I will be taking in a context when somebody says what if what if it is partially a choice well I don't believe in free will so the question is invalid it doesn't mean anything that if your chemistry and your situation and your life have brought all of the the particles and your existence to a certain point the next thing they do is going to be the next thing they do there's not like it's not like your soul is changing what you're what you're going to decide so the whole what if you
[31:24]
going to decide so the whole what if you chose it is just word thinking because you can't choose it you're gonna do what you're gonna do why don't you believe in free will I won't get into that because I said it too many times but basically the the basic argument against free will is that the rules of physics do not change once they once it's inside your skull your brain is part of the world the world is based on rules of physics you can't think anything different than what you're gonna think you don't have an option it's just gonna be what it's going to be you have an impression of free will but that's all of this
what about fakers it's such a small problem I wouldn't worry about it go back to my China point oh so yeah thank
[32:24]
back to my China point oh so yeah thank you so I had a China point which was so apparently their Chinese are using you know sophisticated digital means to control their Weger population and this this reminded me of the caravan did you see the news that apparently Homeland Security is reporting there are 600 known criminals in the caravan have you asked yourself how they could possibly know that how could homeland security know there are approximately 600 known criminals in the caravan did they interview them did they asked them probably not did they photograph them and use a facial recognition well the technology
[33:25]
facial recognition well the technology is here so they certainly have the technology to fly a drone over the crowd take pictures of all their faces run it against the database and find out how many of them are criminals and probably that's what happens just guessing you know because I can't imagine any other way it would happen unless they literally just made up the number which you can't you know you can't rule that out but so that's some scary stuff took a sample size and expanded it yeah and are you saying that the sample size may be the sample size was based on facial recognition but maybe they could have interviewed people too I doubt it
so we talked about Jerome Corsi if you missed that I've got to get ready to fly so I'm going to cut it short and I will
[34:26]
so I'm going to cut it short and I will talk to you later