Episode 385 Scott Adams: My Apology for Saying Toddlers are not as Wise as Adults,

Date: 2019-01-22 | Duration: 41:19

Topics

Kamala’s campaign, the packaging process begins MLK Day and huge portions of the population were being racist Toddlers should be able to vote and participate in national decisions My apology for originally thinking otherwise Brazilian related troll key to spread of the Covington video RPOS (AOC) isn’t dumb…believe she is at your political peril How did she win her election? Why are we all talking about her all the time? You can’t ignore a master persuader…like RPOS CNN hasn’t noticed President Trump talked us out of nuclear war Per CNN, NK played us and we are in a worse position What’s best for the poor, is best for the country and world

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:07]

hey IR heyar come on in here gather around for those of you who are exercising right now those of you who are walking on the beach you know who you are those of you who are on your treadmills those of you who are driving those of you who just are pretending to work but you just put your your earphones in I'm talking to you I know why you're here yeah I do I know why you're here you're here for the simultaneous Sip and the wisdom but first the simultaneous hip hey
hey Eric grab your mug your chalice Your Vessel your glass your container your Stein if you will your thermos fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous

[1:12]

sip extra good that's some extra good coffee right there so [Music] um before I get to my apology second apology in the week I'm just apologizing like crazy here I don't think I've ever made so many mistakes in one week it's just just apologize apologize apologize let's talk about Camala Harris's slogan so here is the inspirational slogan from the strongest Contender from the
the sorry I'm I'm napping a little bit people put it all together it's for the

[2:17]

people okay so that's pretty inspirational apparently she's been she'll be running for the people for the people that's us good enough um so somebody said to me Scott why do you think that Cala is the biggest threat to the president when her slogan is so persuasion weak it looks like they you know dropped a sandwich on a typewriter and just took whatever happened typewriter let's call a keyboard let's update these references please dropped a sandwich on a keyboard and took whatever it said how about four of the people sounds good to me but here's my caution to you imagine that you're a high level advisor and you want to work for one of the high level candidates do you jump in early you don't right the people who are good at this the people who are good at

[3:19]

good at this the people who are good at coming up with slogans the people who are good at you know shaping a candidate the people are good at messaging I don't think they're really involved yet I think at this point each of these many Democrat candidates probably have some people who were close to them before maybe one extra person but they they don't really have the A Team yet so what you should expect much like Hillary's experience she St started out persuasion terrible but by the time you got close to the election she was really really good and almost certainly because the quality of her advisers went from terrible to world class I wouldn't expect the best advisors to jump in this early I think they would hold back a little bit see who the Front Runners are maybe try to pick a winner and be on the winning team because that would be the the Home Run play so don't make any judgments about

[4:19]

play so don't make any judgments about Cala Harris's uh persuasion game yet we can see that one thing she is clearly working on which is fun to watch is that um I most of the people who were Pro trumpers were saying early on she's cold she has no personality she's you know she's got uh no no smile but now you see that all of her tweets her videos that she's making she's dancing she's eating a sandwich she's being part of the people she's smiling she's got a lot of personality if you see a montage of her on CNN it will be laughing smiling personality so she is being you might say um manufactured from whatever you thought of her before into something better now I'm not saying that that's being a big fake because remember the running for president the entire game here is to present a package that's essentially

[5:22]

present a package that's essentially marketing it's essentially persuasion that isn't exactly who you are but it's who you're selling so there's no uh that's not a that's not an insult to Kamal Harris to say that she's finding her brand and and Firming that up as we go but it'll be fun fun to watch um so yesterday we had this weird experience of it being Martin Luther King day and all the country was talking about is racism but not in a good way everybody was talking about it in the bad way like there's too much of it and you're a racist no you're a racist you're a racist no you're a racist um and so you if you looked at the president's tweets the president was tweeting all the right stuff about racial Justice and and Society was all acting like a bunch of racists so the weirdest thing that

[6:23]

racists so the weirdest thing that happened yesterday on Martin Luther King day is that you can make an argument that that the least racist adult no the least racist human over the age of 16 in the entire country was President Trump now here again I'm not talking about anybody's inner thoughts I'm talking about how they acted all right you watched huge portions of the population just be flat out racist on on uh on Martin Luther King Day the only person who was flat out you know open diversity you know let's all get together was President Trump he was tweeting all the right things while the public was going nuts on each other for calling each other right racist so that was different um so some of you may have noticed the trouble I got into yesterday on

[7:27]

trouble I got into yesterday on Twitter and I I made the mistake of saying that the 16-year-old boys um should not be um taken seriously or should not be part of the decision making when it came when it comes to Big political issues and especially if those issues have to do with a woman's decisions about abortions and there was much push push back on that and people said to me wait there are children on the other side okay that's not really reason and then people said but these kids care okay caring is not much of a reason my argument was that there's no minor whose opinion is good enough to influence National decisions meaning that children are not wise they are not well informed and their opinions are not worthy of that we should allow them to influence in any way even by marching

[8:28]

influence in any way even by marching and marching uh you know events to influence the national opinion about what we do about politics totally wrong I was totally wrong and I offer you my unreserved apology to anyone who saw me disagreeing with them so my opinion in the morning has completely reversed and I'll tell you
you why the basis of the opinion is that children are idiots compared to adults right so I'm not I'm not saying children are bad people I'm saying they're not quite people yet they have unformed brains they don't have much knowledge they don't have much wisdom and I thought to myself hey you wouldn't want to add stupidity and here again I'm saying this with love because I was once young and stupid most of you were as well um but why would you add what you know is the lowest quality of thinking

[9:29]

know is the lowest quality of thinking to such an important political decision or any political decision but during the course of the day I completely reversed opinion because I watched one adult after another so freaking stupid that and I'm not joking about this this is not sarcasm this is not satire I'm giving it to you completely straight by the end of the day the people who were arguing that children should be part of the political process won me over by being so stupid on Twitter that I had to agree that the quality of the decision making could not be degraded by having a toddler vote do I mean that as an exaggeration no not even a little do I mean this to be funny well it is funny but I don't mean it only to be funny I'm giving it to you absolutely straight this is my

[10:29]

to you absolutely straight this is my honest opinion s sarcasm is off satire is off and by the way I would never tell you that if I were really being sarcastic I'm actually telling you the truth yesterday was such a massive cluster of stupidity like I've never seen I've never seen as bad a set of thinking on all sides coming at me from every adult that I honestly changed my mind this is not a joke I changed my mind we should let toddlers vote now obviously we're not going to change the Constitution so it's not going to happen but the point is the adults that I witnessed yesterday the quality of their thinking was so poor that quite honestly no joke no joke here at all quite honestly there's nothing that you could add to that that would make it worse

[11:30]

would make it worse and and it's also obvious that the children are being brainwashed early by their respective sides their religion their parents the community whatever we we all being brainwashed early and for the most part the opinions that we lock in as teenagers they tend to stay with us so th those um those kids who were subject of uh all the attention yesterday they probably are locked in don't you think now um somebody said can the children uh protest in public their support for the right of life without influencing politics you're that's a good example of why I say toddlers should vote let me give you some of the ideas some of the things that people said some people said to me Scott those kids are not influencing

[12:31]

influencing decisions all they're doing is going to a public rally to demonstrate and add their bodies and their voices to an event that is designed to influence public opinions let me say that again people attacked me all day on Twitter and they said this those kids are not trying to uh affect public opinion by going to an event whose only purpose is to affect public opinion and I saw that from the first few people and I thought my goodness how can you how can you contradict yourself in the same sentence how can you say they're going to a political event to that is obviously for affecting political opinion they're not they're not marching for fun they're trying to affect political decision-making so if you don't understand that you're not any smarter than a toddler quite literally cuz a toddler

[13:32]

toddler quite literally cuz a toddler wouldn't be able to make that distinction either here's some other things that people said so that so number one people said political marches are not intended to influence decisions okay there's any child is as smart as that any child is as smart as that then people said to me but Scott what about why is it okay for children like David hog to influence the gun debate to which I say um you're agreeing with me not disagreeing so there were a whole bunch of people who attacked me by agreeing with me okay if you can't tell the difference between agreeing with me when I say children should not be part of the decision-making and then you say oh yeah what about these children who are part of the decision-making no that's what I'm saying children should not be part of the decision making it doesn't matter if the topic is guns or or abortion now

[14:34]

the topic is guns or or abortion now remember I've changed my opinion since since that opinion because when I saw how dumb people were and they thought that somehow the gun reference was a counter to me saying that children shouldn't be part of the decision-making when in fact they were agreeing with me hard and I thought well you know who else couldn't tell the difference between agreeing with me and disagreeing with me children children are equal in apparently this sense because they too would say random things that didn't make sense as all the adults were yesterday not all of them what else did they say people came after me when I said that children shouldn't be part of the decision- making process and they said my God why are you saying children shouldn't have free free speech no nobody said children shouldn't have free speech we'll get rid of you goodbye damn it missed you um so when I said that children are not as wise as

[15:38]

said that children are not as wise as adults a lot of people said how can you say that they shouldn't have free speech I didn't say that didn't say anything even close to that do you know who else can misinterpret what I say and then attack me for something that's ridiculous because I didn't say it children children could do that children are just as good as adults at misinterpreting what people say and then criticizing them for their own hallucination children could do that they don't have to wait till they're adults apparently what else did we hear Yesterday people uh were mad at me yesterday and they said don't you know you should never trust CNN number one for the last three years I've done nothing but criticize the fake news media so if you're telling me to not trust the fake news media you're not smarter than a child that's my brand

[16:41]

smarter than a child that's my brand telling people not to trust I wrote a book on it I've written countless blogs on that exact point what I did was not trust my own eyes you know my I I looked at the video and I thought I saw enough that was my mistake and that's why I apologized but the people who say you shouldn't trust CNN no matter what here's what's wrong with that and it was usually matched with you should not watch it if you're telling me that the smart thing to do is only to listen to one side because the one side is telling you all the truth you're not smarter than a child let me say it again if you came after me yesterday and said you should never listen to both sides because that one side gets things wrong the one side really just the one side is getting stuff wrong so you should just ignore the other half of the entire conversation if that's your opinion you

[17:42]

conversation if that's your opinion you are not smarter than a child and so why shouldn't child why should not why should children not vote because they can do that well easily all right that's a very low bar children can definitely do better than that toddlers can do better than that um the other opinion I heard is that people said to me that my apologizing for a clear mistake was uh was terrible and the reason I should not have apologized for what was a clear mistake was because that's how the left wins now keep in mind that my correction and apology went from the the the side that I didn't want to win and I corrected myself to the team that I was likely wanting to support anyway which was Trump supporters and people wearing magah hats and stuff so I actually changed my opinion from my unusual one to my you know one you would

[18:44]

unusual one to my you know one you would expect me to have if you've been watching me and people told me that that's why the left is winning because I corrected myself as soon as I saw that I'd made an error and the facts had changed if that's why the left is winning I don't understand the world could a child have an opinion as dumb as apologies is why the left is winning yes they could any child could have that opinion totally as good as a an
an adult then here's my favorite one people told me that if you just do your own research Scott you wouldn't have to be a poli izing all the time just do your own research don't don't leap in with an opinion you know do the Deep dive on what everything should I do research on everything I see everything aren't there some things

[19:47]

see everything aren't there some things that you look at and you go okay there's no reason to research that you have to kind of call your shots don't you I don't have infinite time to research every claim of fact neither do you if you think that's reasonable to say that people should have researched everything you are not smarter than a child let me tell you what research gets you here's a perfect example I had used the climate climate science example where every time there's a claim there's a skeptical counter claim and then you go back to the scientists and say what do you say about that skeptic and then he says why the skeptic is wrong then the skeptic comes in and says why the scientist is wrong until they get to something you don't understand or you can't verify right and then when you've got to the bottom of that well where it's so dark you just don't even understand the conversation anymore you end up defaulting to wherever you want it to be anyway and when you're done what do you tell other people you say I did my

[20:49]

tell other people you say I did my research I went down in the well you didn't go down in the research well so I'm smart but you are not because I went down in the [Music] well all people do when they research things that experts understand and citizens don't is they find a level that they're happy that they don't want to do any more research and then they just default to whatever they were going to believe anyway and then they say they did research could a child do that well yes a child could be fooled by thinking that they know something it isn't hard so then we saw this situation with the comington Catholic school and you saw the the well in progress so the first R the first level of the well was these boys are a bunch of racist doing bad things to this Native American guy whoops Skeptics come in and say nope here's the full context those kids were

[21:50]

here's the full context those kids were Heroes not Heroes but they were good kids how long did it take for somebody to come in under it and say here's a picture are those same kids wearing black face at a basketball game that is approved by the adults in the school Full Stop half of the country yesterday believed that they saw a photograph of kids in the modern era like right now wearing black face at a sporting event in their school with the administration's approval now how hard was it to figure out that didn't happen that that was not true how hard was it to figure out that was not true well it took about half a day and then Mike covich probably other people tweeted out the context which shows that they always pick a different color to wear on you know as as a theme for these games there was a blue day a white day a

[22:52]

games there was a blue day a white day a black day some of the kids wore black clothing and sometimes they colored their face it all had to do with the theme it had nothing to do with wearing black face all right you probably shouldn't have had to even need to wait for the clarification cuz that was sort of obviously fake so somebody came in below Mike cvent and says aha I can go deeper in the well than you can and prove that your that your blackface photo was faked what happened after that did the other side give up no they didn't they came in under him and said here's a video in which these kids are sitting on a bench and some nice maybe 16-year-old girl or so walks by and they all started yelling at hudin and so therefore they are actually bad kids after all all right now it could be that we'll never learn any more about that situation but if he had to bet you would

[23:54]

situation but if he had to bet you would say somebody's going to say wait a minute that's not even the same kids or they're going to say wait a minute that that uh that girl was actually an activist or they're going to say wait a minute they were actually talking they were yelling at somebody across the street it just looked like it on the film something like that but the point is it is a complete illusion that you can you can keep studying and you can keep researching until you get to the truth all right he can't generally speaking you can't you can't know if gun control works you can't know if abortion blah blah blah you can't know climate science you can't know any of these stories in the news they uh and now's a story about a Brazilian troll who started the whole thing right I'll talk about that in a moment so one of the reasons that I don't vote in addition to not wanting it to bias me is that I've said that I can't know what the right decisions are on the important

[24:55]

the right decisions are on the important stuff so I take myself out of it but I'm going to be consist consistent with my larger long-term um philosophy and people who said that children should be involved in the political process totally proved their point to me yesterday by showing me massive amounts of cognitive dissonance confirmation bias and outright bad thinking to which I cannot make a a case that children would do worse than that I can't all right so the new story is that the original viral video the the edited version came from some kind of a maybe a Brazilian related um troll so in other words there's somebody not in the United States who has a very active troll account who created this situation and then other trolls magnified it um now it's too early to know that I

[25:55]

it um now it's too early to know that I have any of the facts of this right okay it could completely change but here's my question do we have yet another situation where a foreign entity is messing with the United States and if it's Russia isn't it pretty
anti-trump um maybe this Russia why isn't why is nobody blaming Russia so I don't think the Brazil connection tells you it's a resilient you know we we don't live in a world that would say that because the traffic or the the profile comes from now that doesn't really tell you it's coming from there but we are just at the beginning of finding out who it was because it was somebody who was pretty pretty good pretty good it was a pretty good thing all right somebody had prompted me to talk about

[26:56]

to talk about rpos now I'm not uh I'm trying to talk less about her for those of you who are new uh rpos is my name for AOC uh because once she came out as a full racist um the r stands for racist the POS does not stand for point of sale you can figure it out um so when she came out as just being anti-white people uh then then uh you know I just had to lab label her evil and I was trying to ignore her but you just won't let me so there's a video of her saying that uh because of climate science we're all going to die in 12 years what did all of you adults who are way smarter than children so what did all of you adults who are so much smarter than children think about that when she said we're all going to die in 12 years did you say to

[27:57]

going to die in 12 years did you say to yourself good Lord she's anti-science and dumb is that what you said or did you say to yourself she's the female Donald Trump and the and the and the truth of that is not important at all if you said to yourself my goodness she's stupid well I think that's what children might have said so let them vote um if you said to yourself she understands that hyperbole is the reason that she's the most famous Democrat in the world and so doing more of it is smarter than doing less of it and you saw a perfect example of her doing it really really well and it's the reason we're talking about her it's the reason she got the front page news and then she went after Aaron sorin and quite well actually and caused him to basically back down and apologize in a sense if you're watching her act and you're saying that she's

[28:57]

her act and you're saying that she's done
I say children can vote cuz whatever that is it's not dumb it's not dumb somebody said she's not as clever as Trump I would say that's true it's also true she's not as old because there is a certain you know level of wisdom that you're going to get just by being around a while so wait wait till she's 70 do you think do you think she'll be smarter at 70 probably probably all
right um somebody says ignorant is not dumb in this case you have to tell yourself that she really believes we're all dead in 12 years there's nothing you could tell me that would make me believe she really believes that's true

[30:00]

uh uh uh let's see she's not as good as I think if she's not as good as I think why are we all talking about her that's the point you
know uh she knows nothing about
economics man oh man uh she knows more about economics than almost everyone one of you because she understands that persuasion and economics are the same she understands that hyperbole she what it is she understands what the first offer is she knows how to get from here to there uh if you believe that she really doesn't understand these economic Concepts or even that she cares I think that would be some mind reading and would not be in evidence um all right I don't want to talk about her anymore

[31:06]

um yes I am talking about her see the whole point is if you're if you are a master Persuader it doesn't matter how badly people want to ignore you the whole point is that even I with my great desire to ignore her find that I can't that's my point if you're missing that you're missing you're missing the show she has a degree in economics somebody said that is correct so if you're arguing that the person who has a degree in economics and also understands hyperbole is saying things that you don't think are exactly correct you got to be careful about
that yeah somebody says she knows enough she knows as much about economics as Paul Krugman now I don't think that's technically true but it is true that uh his prediction of the E the economic future was no better than a

[32:12]

childs she said if we're short on money we can print some more she's right if you're short on money you can print some
more you can't criticize her by saying things that are true that she said now you're going to say inflation Etc but keep in mind that Warren Buffett said the same thing so when you're criticizing AOC or rpos for saying if you run out of money you can print some more you're not that far from what Warren Buffett
said so think twice all right enough about her um I don't think there's anything else happening it seems like that was the only news so um oh let's talk about North Korea so the there's talk of the summit coming up it is really it's really just mindboggling to watch how CNN covers the North Korea situation versus you know the more Trump friendly

[33:14]

versus you know the more Trump friendly media um on on CNN they say that we've actually lost ground with North Korea because North Korea got the summit they got to keep all the nukes and they're probably even building more of them therefore North Korea is just winning they've played us the president is a big old dupe here's what they don't report the president took away their reason to ever attack us he took away the reason he he made friends with Kim Jun probably convinced them that we don't have any real reason to ever attack them unless they attack us which is the was the key point that had to be made and so if you're CNN and you fail to
to report that this President did something I've never seen a president do can you think of any case where the United States was in a a military confrontation

[34:17]

States was in a a military confrontation or a pre-con frontation and then somebody just took away the reason and just said oh how about we just don't be like that and then convince the other side to just stop being like that because there was never any reason for them to be at each other's necks anyway have you ever seen that happening I mean I'm not a historian so there may be some case where somebody else talked their way out of a nuclear war talked their way out of a nuclear war possibly one of the greatest accomplishments of any president in the history of freaking Pres residents how do CNN report it well it didn't get anything done so there's your uh there's your Two
Worlds that might work if president if Trump were president for life well I don't see the next president coming in and redeclaring hostilities with North

[35:19]

and redeclaring hostilities with North Korea it's possible but I don't see it
happening who what was your simulation Comon you didn't want to make a few days ago I
forget Zakaria called The Summit a victory for Trump um I don't know if you're talking about the first one or the upcoming
one are we still in the Golden Age absolutely so here's a question uh that kind of gets to that Golden Age point you know um I think I talked about this before that extreme Pro poverty in the world went from I don't know 30 some per under Reagan to now it's down all the way to 9% just immense progress in the world in the way that we've never seen before and there's all all kinds of uh progress and and basically you know

[36:19]

progress and and basically you know every level of humanity there's progress at the moment so yeah it's it's definitely a golden age situation but here's here's the key question on climate change if you had a trillion dollars to spend let's call it an extra trillion dollars but it's not really extra because it would be you know deficit spending let's say you had a trillion and you could use it any way you wanted now in our case the United States could probably borrow another trillion over you know over a years and we could still pay it back um so if we had an extra trillion would you be better off spending the entire trillion on trying to get green energy and get rid of coal and um you know and work on climate change as aggressively as possible or would you spend that trillion dollar directly benefiting the poor the 9% who who are literally

[37:20]

poor the 9% who who are literally starving to death which of those two plays is better would it not be entirely immoral to throw the poorest part of the society under the bus to keep the rich people's beach houses intact I'm oversimplifying of course but can anybody tell me that the moral choice is to take a trillion dollars away from the poor maybe not directly but in terms of slowing down the economy if you slow down the economy the people at the bottom suffer the most so you let's say let's say working on climate change aggressively might kill 100 million people in other words doing all the right things that the green people want to do might kill 100 million people whereas if you took the trillion and kept the economy humming the everybody's boat raises a little bit more people

[38:21]

boat raises a little bit more people command of poverty because capitalism does that and then 100 million people don't die because they have Healthcare and they have food which one's the moral choice now it seems to me that we've got a Fighting Chance of keeping the economy strong and then figuring out how to suck the the CO2 out of the air there are half a dozen companies who can already do it each of them are trying to become more efficient over time they will be seems to me that um it's hard to make a case for one of those being the moral the moral situation you know it seems that the most moral path is whatever is most directly beneficial to the poor and unfortunately coal and oil and fossil fuels and uh and all those things fit that now one of the questions that I have is an open question is what would it

[39:22]

it take what would it take to get us from our current situation where nuclear is essentially impossible because of the regulations and and how long it takes what would it take to move this from a place where nuclear isn't practical at least in new plants it just takes too long it's too expensive what would it take to change that if if we said let's do a um Manhattan Project to make commercial uh nuclear power safer and more efficient what would that look like could could we just you know try harder and remove some regulations is there any is there any way to get there I wonder and I don't know there might be but I wonder
um mini reactors yeah it seems like yeah and and what about here's

[40:24]

like yeah and and what about here's something I don't understand why is it that we can can have nuclear power on submarines and and the submarines just seem to operate fine and forever and if we were to build a new submarine tomorrow couldn't we put a nuclear plant on
on it can somebody explain to me this is a real question by the way I'm not this is not an opinion it's just a question is it true that we could bring we could build a a nuclear sub tomorrow and put a brand new nuclear power plant on the sub is that true cuz if that's true and at the same time we can't build one on land what's different so that's an open question hope somebody can answer it for me I'm going to go do some other things and I will talk to you tomorrow