Episode 381 Scott Adams: Buzzfeed, Wall Negotiations, Needle Parks, More

Date: 2019-01-19 | Duration: 47:31

Topics

CNN laments the Buzzfeed story falling apart Unreliable authors working for non-credible Buzzfeed Why did CNN breathlessly push the story till it collapsed? Kill shot for the “immoral wall” position by Pelosi “Negotiating with yourself” Classic negotiating error Watch President Trump NOT make that mistake Adding variables can get you past an impasse At a conceptional level, open borders make sense In the real world…open borders can be a nightmare In a private conversation, does anyone believe in open borders? Fact: Countries meddle in other countries elections Mexican cartels bribe Mexican elected officials Cartels likely already supporting the Dems Dems must know that Willingly or unknowingly, Dems have Cartel support “Needle parks” discussion by Tucker Carlson and Mark Stein They overlooked a MAJOR aspect of the topic Judith Curry a powerful climate change skeptic, tweet reply She agrees that average citizen cannot determine the truth

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:08]

[Music] hey everybody come on in here it's the morning but don't let that stop you from having a good time because some of us are mour people the rest of you well I hope you do as well as you could and one of the ways that you can catch up to the morning people is with a little thing I call Coffee and it's time for coffee with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams your host and I'm about to enjoy the simultaneous sip with many of you those of you who are prepared please raise your mug your glass your container your chalice your Stein your cup put it put your favorite liquid in there I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous hip
ah so many fun things in the news let's start with

[1:08]

news let's start with BuzzFeed now uh I like to remind you what my prediction record is now this isn't quite a prediction but I want to remind you that when the BuzzFeed story first broke that Michael Cohen had said blah blah blah it doesn't matter what he said because it wasn't true or at least it's Fallen apart and and when I talked about it on Periscope was it yesterday I stressed to you that BuzzFeed is not is not a uh credible Source did I not did I not stress several times remember it's BuzzFeed they're not a credible source and then by today we find out the whole story is Fallen apart and I was just watching a fascinating clip on CNN it was Anderson Cooper talking to Jeffrey tubin and I forget who El and they were taking it pretty hard

[2:12]

and they were taking it pretty hard because the the mainstream media ran with that story with a lot of if it's true but if it's true and if this is true there's big stories uh but to their credit and I like I like to give credit where credit is due the uh Jeffrey tubin and uh especially he said you know make no mistake about this this is just a bad day for the media yeah Brian Brian stelter that's right he was the third person there and I think all of them realized and yeah Maggie hman was there too and I think all of them
realized that uh the media has a big big big credibility problem and it got a lot worse yesterday yesterday but again remember I told you from the jump this is not a credible source so I'm going to take a little bit of credit for calling out the

[3:13]

of credit for calling out the unreliability of the story from from the jump okay now why did I think it was not a credible Story number one the authors have a little sketchy past number two it's BuzzFeed that does not necessarily uh work with the facts all the time and number three it fit perfectly with The Narrative of the side that was reporting it oh surprise number four nobody else could confirm it right away number five it was a Muller leak are there Muller leaks remember what I said if if somebody has a source in the Muller organization that would give them that kind of detailed leak remember what I said they would also know what the general outcome of the the Muller investigation is going to be anybody who has a a source that good who was going to give up something that

[4:14]

was going to give up something that private would have given up more and by now by now BuzzFeed would be reporting on basically the result of the uh of the whole thing and of course they're not and so that was another red flag and then of course the whole fact that it was an anonymous source so you've got anonymous source fits their narrative perfectly nobody else can confirm it it's BuzzFeed who is unreliable the authors are unreliable if you didn't see this one coming you can't see anything coming cuz this one was broadcasting from a long way around hey fake news coming we got some fake news coming but a lot of people wanted to believe it all right that's enough on that um You probably noted that a lot of people got the talking points about the Pelosi flight to Afghanistan being uh canceled at the last minute by President Trump and the

[5:15]

last minute by President Trump and the standard reaction was it's childish it's childish like a fifth grader it's such a childish thing to do I don't think that worked as well as they hoped it
would because it was also reported simultaneously that it was a tip for Tat but it was a tip for Tat for something childish which was postponing the uh uh the State of the Union so who could possibly listen to the Democrats saying that the the tit fortat response was childish but not the original you know who started it now like most of us I think we're watching this as entertainment right we're watching it as an entertainment show it it was sort of the perfect reality TV response to the reality TV you know provocation which is the cancellation of the uh of the of the whole deal

[6:17]

the uh of the of the whole deal now do you remember that I told you um I don't know how long ago I said that the kill shot for Nancy Pelosi's statement that the wall is immoral what did I tell you the kill shot would that would be the persuasion Kill Shot does anybody remember it cuz I like that I like to ask you cuz in case anybody is coming into this late they can you know get some confirmation that that I'm predicting things ahead of time um now the engineering question is we'll talk about that separately so that's a different that's a different kill shot I'm talking about specifically the question of whether a wall is moral or immoral what did I tell was the best response to that well let me remind you since it doesn't look like anybody's going to get the right answer um I told you that the kill shot was to start asking other Democrats to defend to defend the statement that some walls are moral and some are not and what did you say you saw the

[7:20]

not and what did you say you saw the media start to ask the other Democrats do you agree that this wall is immoral because it's a completely unsupportable concept now Pelosi could probably get away with it because Pelosi is an advocate right so when you see that the head of the party you know so or you know one of the leaders of the party when you see them say something crazy you say to yourself well their job is Advocate you know Nancy P's job is not fair and balanced presentation right so you can't really hold it against her to say something that outrageous it's something the president would have done it's it's something that somebody who's a leader and an advocate does but the problem is she created a standard that the people below her who are just many of them who are actually just trying to do their job they're going to have to defend this ridiculous standard that there's such a thing as a moral versus an immoral kind of barrier when all of these people have

[8:21]

of barrier when all of these people have voted for barriers of this type in the past so you saw people asking about it and that whole moral immoral thing has just started to I don't know rot you know it didn't go away it just started to rot from within like it it just doesn't stand the test of time at all you put a little sunlight on it it's like it's like an old vampire it's starting to crumble anyway so uh the president apparently has a speech today at I guess 300 p.m. eastern time in which he's going to offer reportedly you know any Anything could happen between now and the time the president goes on the air but reportedly the president's going to make some kind of an offer to to have something for both sides to chew on now here's a um here's a rule of negotiating and if you've never heard this rule it's a really important one but it's not common sense

[9:24]

important one but it's not common sense so this is a non-common sense really smart rule about negotiating you don't quote negotiate with yourself unquote let me tell you what that means what that means is let's say you and I are negotiating and I come to you and say I will give you a million dollar for whatever it is you're selling and we're negotiating if you say no that's that's no
no good what you don't do if you've been rebuffed for your first offer is make a second offer that's called negotiating with yourself cuz you're the one who offered a million and now you're the one making the next offer which is lower that that's referred to as negotiating with yourself it's a classic mistake that people who don't negotiate make you've watched that the president is very good at not doing that right it's a it's a it's a rock bottom basic most important thing you can do you never

[10:26]

important thing you can do you never make a offer and then just make another offer you you just don't do that it's it's bad persuasion bad negotiating so you've noticed that the Democrats haven't really made an offer not really right because they've said how about nothing how about immoral and the the immoral response isn't really a counter offer is it it's more of like we're not going to talk about it we're not negotiating now the mistake would be that Pelosi would Trav the president into negotiating with himself and if he were not the master Persuader that I believe he is he would be going on television tonight and negotiating with himself in other words she's creating a situation because the thing to keep in mind here we always have to keep this in mind is that Pelosi is pretty damn good at what she does right she knows this space

[11:29]

she does right she knows this space whatever else you want to say about her she's got an aame and she brought it and she was trapping the president into negotiating with himself which is weak and
and stupid the president is now going to give a give a speech in which he's alleged to be making a second offer or or at least you know a new offer that we haven't seen before that could be construed as negotiating with himself if that's what's going to happen so let me make uh one suggestion and I'm not I'm not going to predict that this the president will do this but it but it's by way of making my point suppose the president went on on the air and made the following offer and he said this I will reopen the government when the Democrats give me their plan for the Border in in a way that has a budget and shows exactly what they plan to do and where

[12:30]

they plan to do and where H because this is not ask this is not negotiating like I've just decided to go down on my price it's a specific offer that the public will understand as reasonable so imagine this the President says we all want to open the government I will open the government if all you do is show me your plan and then we will negotiate from that plan we will start with your plan and then we'll show it to the people we'll have border patrol look at it and then we'll see how different is your plan from ours now the key to this is that there was never much difference in what the left and the right actually wanted right nothing I said would make sense if you knew you were really far apart cuz if you were really far apart they would just say oh okay how about something way over here and then then you wouldn't be anywhere right but because we know they're close and especially the the rank and file Democrats are like yeah we like border

[13:31]

Democrats are like yeah we like border security we just want to do it in the smartest most humane way now who among you disagrees with that statement so here's the Democrat position on border security yes we want good border security we want to do it in the smartest most economical and humane way who disagrees with that who disagrees with that nobody right so when you force them to actually put some meat on their proposal and you offer that you'll open the government if they do it what what voter is going to look at that offer and say well that's just playing games who is going to say that's an unfair offer who is going to say that the Democrats should sit tight and not even say what they want while 800,000 people are eating tree bark cuz they can't afford to buy food all right who thinks that wouldn't

[14:35]

food all right who thinks that wouldn't work cuz you know it would all right it would put all of the pressure on the Democrats if they brought a plan it would reveal it would reveal the basically the bad I'd say the bad will behind everything they're doing at the moment which is they're not that far off from what everybody else wants now to their credit and I'm going to give the Democrats a very big compliment right now to their credit they have killed the wall I I think that even Republicans at this point because we've all learned more you know there's something about this process that's very educational you know on day one when the president said build a wall across the whole thing solves all these problems I have to admit I thought to myself I don't know why not why wouldn't you have a wall you know I'd have to look at the details but seems reasonable on the surface right but the further you dig into this and

[15:36]

but the further you dig into this and the more reasonable people get involved you realize that walls make sense in specific areas and they simply don't make sense economically or on any other level in other areas and that if the engineers get involved and the experts they'll tell you where to put a wall El Paso is a perfect place cuz when you're separating you know water and El Paso I think those are the two places they're both populated areas and you need to slow people down pretty severely because otherwise they disappear into the other populated area but if you got a big empty space and you can see the whole thing with a drone or from Towers or you could put some electronic sensors there if anybody tries to cross you just send out your border patrol and they just pick them up right so there's nobody here who disagrees with the general concept that the engineers and the experts should make the decision we want a solution that's Humane but it also has to work you know who has that plan

[16:38]

to work you know who has that plan probably Democrats do you know how similar that would look to the Republican plan probably not that different by the time it's done but it would give everybody a reason to move forward so that's so again it's that's not my that's not my prediction of what the president will do I will say with some confidence it would be the best thing to do I'm I'm completely confident about that part um but here's what to watch for watch for the president avoiding the problem of negotiating with himself one way or another that's his biggest challenge right at the end of this nobody you the president can't have a win and can't even have like a good path forward if at the end of this the enemy is saying well it looks like they tricked him into negotiating with himself he's not much of a negotiator is he so it could be that all he's going to do is throw some variables into the mix

[17:38]

do is throw some variables into the mix so he might say here's here are the other variables here's how we want to approve workers here's what I want to do with H1B visas here's what I want to do with you know path to citizenship and DACA and all that stuff so I might be that he's just adding variables now that would not be a case of negotiating with yourself because I've often said if you have if you have an impass often times the only way you can get past an impass is by adding variables you need you need extra stuff to to make a deal so he may just be adding extra stuff and that would be perfectly fine would not be a case of negotiating with himself per se because he probably wouldn't offer anything that hasn't already been on the table before all right um here's an update on the question of open borders so there was yet another article in the New York Times uh by someone who said yeah let's let's think about open

[18:38]

said yeah let's let's think about open borders you know because they're economic benefits and I want to give you just a a little bit of a tour you know a very short one of open borders now there are people who argue and they have good economic arguments so on a conceptual level just a conceptual level not a practical level but on a conceptual level open borders actually make sense wait for the Practical part before you throw up in your mouth okay if you're just if it's just a thought experiment and you're saying well in a perfect world open borders because the argument is the free flow of uh labor and everything else is just always good basically it's an argument for capitalism and freedom and whenever you have better capitalism and better freedom you almost always get a good result right so on a conceptual level open borders totally conceptually reasonable thing

[19:41]

conceptually reasonable thing unfortunately we don't live in a conceptual world we we have to survive in the real world and in the so he says my God man have you gone insane wait wait to the second part all right you must be new here wait to the second part and the in the real world the countries that are next to you are not uh equal on all variables their economy could be in the toilet they could have more crime for example I'm not saying that's the case but there could be a terrorism risk some people have a terrorism risk some don't maybe the other countries have uh loose requirements about who gets into their country which would you know be a pathway for anybody else to get into the country [Music] so um and then the biggest variable is if there's a country that has um lots of Social Services let's say free health care um your retirement whatever else

[20:43]

care um your retirement whatever else and they're next to a country that doesn't how's that work out wouldn't wouldn't all the people in the country that doesn't give them free stuff stand up and start walking toward the country that does you wouldn't wouldn't uh you know right now the number of people who come in from Mexico is is putting you know some people think a burden on the employment of the the citizens uh and that's with all the effort we can put into reducing the number coming in what would happen if that number what happens if it's 20 million people a year where where do they live do they live on the street do they make camps on the roads what you know did do they clean up after themselves you know from a practical perspective um the here let me put it another way open

[21:43]

another way open borders probably is a really good solution for countries that are largely similar the more similar the countries the more open borders makes perfect sense because let's say you know your your France and Germany or something and I don't know if this is the case but let's say that they have similar social services and let's say they're both similar targets for Terror attacks and anything else well it kind of doesn't matter that much right the terrorists are already in one of the countries and they're happy to attack that one maybe there'll be a little more in your country but you know you probably had the same risk anyway you know so so when you see the open borders people here and here's my statement um that I think is just my opinion alone I don't know anybody else who has this specific opinion but my belief is that the people who talk about open borders literally don't mean it and other words if if you put a

[22:45]

it and other words if if you put a camera on them and say do you believe in open borders they say yes and here here are all my arguments but I believe if I took that same person off camera in private and I said look I hear what you're saying you know on a conceptual level it does make sense to remove friction that's good for everything but in a real world you know in a practical world tell me how this looks to you what would keep 50 million people from just entering the United States and what would the United States look like if 50 million people came here and said give me some health care or give me some whatever so my belief is that the people who are claiming open borders let's say the the intellectual class I'm not talking about the the people who are activist and working with immigrants they just have a self-interest all right so there there are two kinds of open border people there are the the intellectuals and the economists and the philosophers I

[23:47]

economists and the philosophers I believe that in private none of them would support open borders they would only support it on an intellectual basis not on a practical basis cuz they wouldn't be able to describe how it could work in our specific case whereas the activists not really they don't really care about the greater good as much as they care about their their activism and about their cause and by the way there's nothing wrong with that that the whole point of activism is people are advocating for their group and we allow activism we allow free speech so I'm not I'm not saying there's anything bad about that but it's not in the interest of the people who might be living here if those activists win and the the borders are thrown open so I would like to um make this challenge if there's a let's say an intellectual as opposed to an activist um who can make an open borders case and would like to come on to a periscope with me I would love to talk to you and

[24:47]

with me I would love to talk to you and maybe you could educate my audience but you have to be maybe somebody who's written on it you know I I don't want just somebody who's got an opinion I want somebody who's put some real skin in the game on this uh on this topic and I think you would watch their idea just fall apart in front of you so I predict nobody's going to take me up on that who who has the right credentials but we'll see and by the way if they have a good argument I'm going to change my mind I know you don't like that but if they have a good argument I'm going to change my mind I'm kind of new to the topic so maybe there's something I haven't thought about all right here here's another topic um we know that foreign companies or foreign yeah companies too but foreign countries like to meddle in other countries elections we know that anytime there is a politician that would do good things for you versus one that would do

[25:48]

things for you versus one that would do bad if you have money you're going to try to get that money to the person who's going to help you assuming you're a big entity with a lot of money you're a billionaire or something now what does that predict about the Mexican cartels and uh Democratic candidates and Democratic um elected officials could we not predict with 100% confidence that the cartels have already have or will soon start funly money toward Democrats cuz why wouldn't they right if if you're a Mexican cartel and you got a lot of money and you have lots of mechanisms to feed that money through you know shells and people and and different things wouldn't you identify the the politicians that are closest to the border and wouldn't you find a way to get them money it's hard to believe it's not

[26:50]

money it's hard to believe it's not already happening and I see a number of you are saying it's it's already happening but I don't know any specific cases but whether or not it's it's already happened it's kind of guaranteed isn't it so it seems to me that we've created this super dangerous situation where Democrats and Republicans have this Stark difference on how to deal with the Border it's the Stark difference that opens it up for the cartels cuz the cartels can say whoa we didn't create the Stark difference but now that it's there let's let's have more Stark difference let's start supporting some people who really want to you know open that border or whatever so I would think there's a high likelihood that in the next couple years let's say uh we're going to have a major story of a name brand uh candidate a Democrat who is accepting maybe unwillingly or not unwillingly but maybe

[27:51]

unwillingly or not unwillingly but maybe unknowingly accepting money from cartels I think that's going to be a future story because and and my argument is not that Democrats are bad and Republicans are good I'm not coming from that position I'm just saying that one of those two parties has a position that the cartels are going to like and people support the politicians that do things they like I don't know what would stop is this from happening all right last night on Tucker Carlson show uh there was a segment on uh the idea of safe needle places that you can get a safe injection if you're an opioid addict and the idea is that if you um if you can move the addicts from getting their drugs on the street where they're going to get the wrong kind of stuff they're going to do overdoses they're going to have unsafe needles and all that if you can get them into a legal um safer environment they're still going to do the drugs cuz you don't have

[28:51]

going to do the drugs cuz you don't have a way to stop that easily but at least they'll do it in a way they don't get overdoses while you're trying to figure out how to deal with it now on Tucker show the I think this was Tucker's point of view and I hope I don't get it wrong I hate I hate to paraphrase other people's opinions because if you lose some Nuance you're not doing anything good for the world but I got the sense when he was talking to I guess Mark Stein that uh both of them were the opinion that this was a bad idea and that we should go stronger at getting people off of drugs and that you know the the energy should be on getting people off of drugs not on making a safe place where it's easy to do them here's a problem with that and I just sent a message I just DMD Tucker on Twitter I don't know if you'll see it or not but um unfortunately I have some experience in this realm as most of you know my uh

[29:51]

in this realm as most of you know my uh stepson uh died a few months ago from an fenal overdose and you know we dealt for for years with his teenage addiction and here's what I learned that is a real key variable that did not come up in Tucker's conversation there is no way to get somebody off drugs that's that's the end of it there there is no way nobody has an idea well let me let me make a uh important distinction if an addict has decided to get off drugs and really really wants to and they're they're you know they have you the incentive and they go through processes and they do the right things and they do rehab they can get there but the problem is the ones who don't want to get off it so and that was that was the case with my stepson cuz we and my situation was very similar to he had friends who were in the same situation so we knew the parents of of his friends whose kids were also

[30:52]

his friends whose kids were also addicted Etc and the big problem was that they didn't want to stop doing it they liked it and there was nothing you could tell them that would change their minds they would you know they would um they would all prefer to run away from home with no money and no resources because the drugs are so good that if you say to a 16-year-old look you 16-year-old if you keep doing these drugs I'll take away your phone the 16-year-old will say drugs are better than my phone okay you say um I'll take away everything else you have and the 16-year-old will say I still like drugs better we will disown you from the family the 16-year-old will say yeah drugs still better and in fact it's not even close like you're you're not even you're not even in the ballpark yet do you know how good these drugs are all right the reason that these drugs are killing 72,000 people a year just in the

[31:54]

killing 72,000 people a year just in the United States from overdose is because they're so good that there's nothing you can offer to take away or to give them that comes close to what the drugs are doing it's not even close but here's the real problem in at least in California maybe there's some state where it's different you cannot control another person's body if they don't want to be controlled the exception being prisoners who have you know committed crimes you can put them in jail but if somebody has not committed a crime or let's say has not been commit committed it's not the committing of a crime but they've not been convicted of a crime there is no way anybody including the parents can touch their body and if you can't touch physically you can't hold them you can't handcuff them you can't tie them up if you can't physically stop anybody cuz it's illegal um the kid can just walk stand

[32:56]

illegal um the kid can just walk stand up and walk walk out the front door there's nothing you can do legally suppose you Tred to physically constrain him well it would get violent whatever but in the end you can't keep a kid handcuff forever as soon as a handcuff comes off they walk out the door now you can commit somebody who's like a danger to themselves you know there's a process where they can be hospitalized for a short time and even tied to a bed and of course you'll find that many many parents of addicts have actually done that they've actually taken their addict kid committed them and they get tied to a bed literally tied to a bed they can't even move their arms and you know they give them all good medical treatment Etc but what does the addict do when the time that that is legal expires they get up they walk out the door and they do drugs why because the drugs are better than their Alternatives they like it it's their choice

[33:58]

they like it it's their choice there's nothing you can do to stop a human being from taking drugs so back to the uh the free needle exchange uh uh thing um when you say I would prefer that we spend our our energy getting them off drugs you have to understand there is no path to that if the if the people wanted to get off drugs they also wouldn't need this needle exchange thing they would be working through a system you know they'd be in rehab they'd be doing what they needed to do if they don't want it you can't make them want it and you can't make them do anything so for those people you only have a choice of essentially addict death or this needle exchange thing which keeps them alive long enough maybe they can come on their own you know on their own they decide life is better you know life with them drugs and most of them won't so I wanted to add that piece of information that if you assume that

[35:00]

of information that if you assume that you can help these people who don't want to be helped you've missed the most important variable in the entire conversation the drugs are better than anything you could take away from them the drugs are better than any penalty that you could give them the drugs are better than their family everything they love the drugs are better all right um let's talk about uh and I'll i' like to end on these climate discussions now you may have noticed that I've I've created a little bit of a kurur fuffle on the internet with my so far at least a little bit balanced discussion of climate because you've never seen a balanced discussion of climate and it makes everybody mad both sides are hating me at the moment because they're like oh you said that one thing about my side but they're both saying it right now so uh apparently I got the attention of Judith Curry who most of of you know as maybe the most prominent um skeptical

[36:03]

as maybe the most prominent um skeptical voice in climate I don't know if she would label herself that way but she doesn't agree with the mainstream and she addressed one of my tweets so I I followed her I didn't realize she was following me on Twitter and
and um I'm imagining that I might invite her to come on a periscope because she would be a good voice now here's the interesting thing the thing she she responded to as I tweeted that it is literally impossible for a citizen people like me who are not climate scientist to understand the debate and I've been proving this uh every single day so every single day the following thing happens I'll take a climate claim you know doesn't matter what it is the something about ice or seawat or temperatures what whatever the claim is and they'll say here's the claim here's a really credible sounding at least sounding critic and they say that this is all Bs and they show their work so

[37:04]

is all Bs and they show their work so you see the claim and you think well that's pretty convincing it's all the scientists are on the same side and they they all say this then the critic comes in and goes okay here's what they did wrong it's obvious I'm using the same information they are I told you what they did wrong I'm told you how to fix it I'm laying it out here there's nothing hidden look at my work and you can tell clearly that the climate scientists got this wrong and then I look at the skeptic I'm like huh that is very convincing and then this the scientist or somebody who's on the same side as a scientist comes in behind the skeptic and they say ah this skeptic they're always saying crazy stuff here's five other things they said that weren't true and by the way here's why they're wrong in this case too because they did something wrong or they're doing something with the numbers Etc now when the scientist comes back in they are totally credible because I can't I can't judge the scientist I can't judge the the critic and I can't judge the

[38:05]

the critic and I can't judge the scientist again when they come behind the critic now what happens after the scientist comes back the second time and says the critic was wrong the critic comes back in and the critic says no your objections to my criticism are off base and here's why and then you read them and you say okay those sound like pretty good reasons to Infinity whoever talks last in any narrow topic on climate science you believe whoever just goes last and so Judith Curry was agreeing with my uh general statement that we citizens cannot penetrate the topic I I I would say with certainty now this was a suspicion that has now moved to a certainty in my mind that you cannot do your own homework and get an answer on climate science that it just can't be done and it's because the pingpong between the opinions will be infinite and you'll always always get to

[39:06]

infinite and you'll always always get to a point where you don't understand what they're saying so even if you let's say you start at the top and the claim is something just dead simple sea level is rising too quickly just a dead simple claim critic says no it isn't because this or that scientist comes in and says yes it is you forgot to include this or that by about the fourth iteration they're going to be talking science and you're gone right they're going to be talking about words you haven't heard Concepts you're not aware of contexts you don't fully understand so if you think you can follow that chain to a conclusion and you're not a scientist you know working in this field that is just a hallucination what happens instead and it's quite obvious to me at this point is that people have a bias or they're willing to have a bias I guess and they simply go down the chain of you know no yes no yes no yes no until they're

[40:07]

yes no yes no yes no until they're exhausted or they can't find the next reply and when they can't find the next reply they say okay the last person I read that must be the one I don't exactly know what they said or why but that last person who talked was pretty smart so really the people who think that they have good opinions and that they've researched and they've come to their own independent opinion total illusion all they've done is they've come down to the bottom of the chain and they don't know what the next response is or it hasn't happened or they don't understand it there's no thinking going on in the public none no thinking it's it's an illusion that we're giving ourselves based on the fact that we don't have the capability of understanding the argument now what's funny is Judith Curry said she agreed with you know in Broad in a broad way she agreed with the statement that it was hard for the citizens to penetrate the topic and she said this is why you

[41:08]

the topic and she said this is why you know I put it in simple form and then she connected to a document uh that is just on the question of whether the the sea level is rising in a in a way that's unusual now how many pages do you think her simplification was right so here's somebody agrees with me that the topic is too complicated for the average person so she simplifies it and she sends me a link to it and then I read it 72
72 pages one question is sea level rising yes or no or I mean is it rising in an unusual way it's the unusual part that's the important part so because apparently the sea levels been rising for a long time 72 pages to answer the question is sea level going up or do we know now I'm pretty smart but I also don't have infinite

[42:09]

smart but I also don't have infinite time so I skimmed it you know I looked at the executive summaries I looked at a few charts and stuff but that 72 pages of simplification were so far above my ability to really judge them for credibility didn't help me at all all right didn't help me at all the other thing that I know for sure is if I took her her document which by the way was completely credible meaning that I looked at it and I thought huh this is a smart person who knows this topic the things they're saying must be easy to check so you wouldn't say something something that was wrong that was just so easy to check right so completely convincing and her her point was that um that we don't have a signal of human involvement so far that we can sort out from the natural variations to know whether CO2 is making the ocean rise so far all right which is different from will it happen in the future but so far but I also know that if I took her

[43:12]

far but I also know that if I took her 72-page paper and handed it to any scientist who's working in the field es specifically you know ocean sea level stuff in climate science they would look at her paper and they would say well here are all the things she got wrong or the things she didn't consider or why why there's some context that matters or the study that she didn't mention and I would read the new new one and I would say okay that looks pretty good I can't really judge it I'm not a scientist I don't know if any of the claims are true but they sure look good and I'm sure that if I said hey Judith Curry this scientist who has good credentials just said that your 72 Pages has some flaws and it's wrong what would she say do you think there's any she would say oh darn good criticism I changed my paper I changed my mind no there's no chance of that she would tell you with 100% certainty she would go in and say no that scientist got it wrong you know I

[44:12]

that scientist got it wrong you know I say in the original paper and he's ignoring what I said and what he's what he's saying has already been debunked by this paper so I'm actually right after all Etc forever the scientist would disagree she would disagree you cannot penetrate this topic here are the current outstanding questions which if uh about climate and if anybody has anything to add to this I would love to see it I think I called for this on Twitter already but I haven't seen it so there's a skeptical notion that the CO2 does affect temperature but that its effect uh tapers off meaning that the first amounts of CO2 do affect temperature but it's it's starts to make less and less of a difference the more CO2 there is that seems like maybe the simplest thing that you could test do you think even that simple question we could look at what the scientists say and then look at

[45:12]

what the scientists say and then look at what the Skeptics say and again you know how each of them respond to each other do you think we could even find out the answer to that simple question I don't think so and it it's the basic question that's driving this entire thing no I don't think we can um well let me put it this way I'm not claiming that science doesn't know the answer I'm claiming that we non-scientists will never know if science knows the answer we could know maybe how many people are on each side but when we look at the arguments we're helpless we we can't judge the
arguments um and so I I hear some of you flailing around uh in in your own hallucinations so so here's somebody who's hallucinating and you can tell from the comments somebody said uh CO2 think of it as a tiny oscillation and it can only absorb so much right if you believe whoever said that

[46:14]

right if you believe whoever said that comment if you believe you have a grasp on this topic I guarantee you you're hallucinating CU you do not if I put you in a room with a bunch of climate scientists do you think they would say oh Bob we didn't think of this tiny oscillating thing nobody had mentioned before the idea that CO2 might have a maximum and and you know might might be saturated this is the first time we've ever heard that argument do you think that's going to happen no they're going to tell you why you're you're full of baloney and then you're going to find a skeptic who says why they're full of baloney Etc forever you cannot penetrate this topic all right um that's enough on that let us uh we might need to double back when the president does his speech because it's going to be fun time I'm so interested to see what he says about all this um oh can I end with a little

[47:14]

can I end with a little story it's about the simulation so well I'm going to tell this story another time I'm going to end here for today and I will talk to you maybe this afternoon I'm not sure talk to you tomorrow at least bye for now