Episode 386 Scott Adams: The Giant Rip in the Fabric of Reality, Kamala Harris, Dale

Date: 2019-01-23 | Duration: 1:08:55

Topics

President Trump is changing how we view reality Our opinions are assigned to us by the media we follow Facts don’t matter, reality is subjective We all think we can read others minds…we can’t People with diff opinions aren’t necessarily evil or stupid Ability to predict the future accurately and two movies one screen Your “movie” if valid, can predict the future Is your movie more predictive than the opposing movie? Rhymes have powerful memory and persuasion powers Build the wall and crime will fall! The “Well of Self-Research” (Whiteboard 1) Doing your own research isn’t possible for non-experts Eventually you can’t go any deeper and go with your bias The 97% question regarding climate science (Whiteboard 2) The framing of poll questions can pre-determine poll results Are retired climate scientists without financial incentives… …more likely to be climate skeptics? Do scientists with the most experience, agree with newbies? CNN “sarcasm package” Mexico will write a literal check for the wall CNN Ana Camerota’s racist Democrat guest He refers to President as a “Grand Wizard” Linking a white person to the KKK without proof…is racist Why I watch CNN, or MSNBC or “the other side” How do you form opinions without knowing both sides? Alternative: Blindly, always agree with your “team”

I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:12]

bum you and you and you come in here grab your beverage oh I see you already have your beverage some of you some of you just getting up and running for it right now quick quick grab your beverage do you know what one of my favorite words in the world beverage do you know why beverage is one of those words that nobody dislikes nobody says I think I'll never have another beverage nobody ever says that you can think of almost anything in the world that some people like and some people don't like but Everyone likes a beverage different beverages but they like their beverages so grab your beverage grab your cup your mug your glass your chalice your Stein your container your thermos fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous
zp oh yeah well I'd like to start today with a lesson on face

[1:12]

with a lesson on face reading now in the news you've noticed that there are apparently some people who are excellent face readers they can look at faces and they can tell the uh complicated internal thoughts associated with the face so I'm going to give you some uh different faces uh starring my uh my capable partner Dale so Dale will come on here in a moment and give you some faces and I want to see if you can read them all right face number one what is Dale
thinking okay do you have it what was Dale thinking read the face if you didn't see it the first time here it is
all right the answer is Donald Trump is terrible he's very orange and orange man

[2:14]

terrible he's very orange and orange man bad did you get that how many got it right did everybody get that right all right so let us go back a few years and think about a a prediction that I made a few years ago when Donald Trump came on the scene and I was just starting to write about this topic I predicted loudly and multiple times and in public that Trump would change more than politics I said that he would change how we understood reality yeah sounded weird when I first said it didn't it everybody who heard me say that or RIT probably said to themselves yeah yeah yeah Donald Trump is going to change reality Scott no no I don't think so I think he might run for president and obviously he's not going to win but

[3:15]

and obviously he's not going to win but I'll tell you one thing he's not going to do he's not going to change how we see
see reality that's not going to happen and here we are how much has your understanding of reality changed in three years here are some things that I think are at least partly my influence have you seen how many people are talking seriously now about the two movies on one screen phenomenon now they use different analogies and different words but did you really ever see that maybe you've ever seen it but but did you did you notice people talking about that commonly prior to Trump you did not you did not it is now commonplace to look at uh Yanni and Laurel or to look at this situation with the Covington

[4:16]

at this situation with the Covington kids or to look at Mueller and Russia and I could probably come up with 10 more examples but it is now common for people to understand they can look at exactly the same stuff and and have a different opinion it is now common for people to use the phrases confirmation bias and cognitive distance now of course those phrases were always around and you always heard them once in a while but it's now the routine way that people explain their reality that's all new um how many times are you seeing people say that the facts just don't matter how many people have now realized realized that AOC as you call her and rpos as I call her is another one of these how many people have now realized oh crap she's just female Trump and she's a Democrat she's using the same

[5:25]

technique how many of you now can see clearly that Cala Harris has been chosen by who ever is doing the choosing the few billionaires who do this sort of thing and that the media entities are lining up behind her and that the public will imagine they chose her for their candidate but that nothing like that is happening that in fact our opinions are being assigned to us in this case us as the
the Democrats and you can see it now right in a way that you could never really see it before because before you always had another reason oh Hillary's good at uh fundraising Hillary put in the time you know there was always a reason why you thought the candidate was the candidate but this one's really clear isn't it this time you can see CNN and the New York Times Etc I tweeted a few things from Michael try showing showing this effect but you can see it really clearly now can't you and you couldn't see that

[6:26]

now can't you and you couldn't see that a few years ago so your ability to understand your reality is now far different far different than it was 3 years ago this is one of the biggest shifts in human consciousness of all time the fact that facts don't matter because we see them differently your fact and my fact just don't line up um and the fact that reality is as subjective as it is and the fact that this entire thing we call the Republic is absolutely artificial that the real decisions are made somewhere and they're assigned to the people and then the people imagine they made those decisions that is unfortunately the universe you live in let's talk about some more fun things um how many of you are now seeing references to mind reading the the effect where you think you can see somebody's face just as I

[7:27]

you can see somebody's face just as I was talking about and then you can imagine what what they're thinking how many times have you seen that something that I I think I introduced you to most of you and now you can see it everywhere can't you try turning on any news story or or any news um Channel whether it's fox or CNN or MSNBC and watch how many times people will imagine they could read somebody else's inner thoughts once you notice it you real realiz that that's a big driver of why we're living in different movies it's the illusion that we can understand what people are thinking by looking at their actions we can't now um some of you may have noticed that CNN um I don't know what she would be called CNN analyst maybe Kristen Powers uh got into it with me on Twitter because I made the statement

[8:28]

Twitter because I made the statement that there was confirmation involved in people's initial reaction to the Covington boys and especially the one with the smirk on his face and Kristen Powers uh came in and said how do I know that she or people have the same opinion are the ones with a confirmation bias how do I know that I'm not the one with a confirmation bias fair question fair question and I would like to answer that for you so let's say that you and someone else have completely different worldviews and you trying to figure out wait why am I looking at this and I'm seeing one movie you're seeing another movie yet we're standing seemingly in the same reality which of our movies is the right one which is the wrong one and how do you decide I'll give you a couple of um ways now the first rule is that you can't know for sure all right so rule number one you can't know for sure

[9:29]

rule number one you can't know for sure so I could be the one experiencing confirmation bias in this example um but I'll give you a couple of clues for figuring out uh which one is likely to be the one who is closer to reality number one I on this exact situation the Covington boy situation I have experienced both movies so I've lived in the world where I looked at him and said it's obvious it's obvious what that smirk means it's obvious they're surrounding this poor Native American guy it's obvious that they have bad intentions it's obvious I've lived in that world for about about a day and then when I saw the larger context I moved instantly from that world to a whole different reality in which none of that none of what I first saw is either true or at least is not confirmed by anything that we saw so if you've lived in both realities

[10:30]

saw so if you've lived in both realities you probably have a little bit of an advantage seeing past your confirmation bias because real confirmation bias the kind that you're locked into you just can't get out of but you saw me effortlessly I mean l literally effortlessly switch realities right in front of you now you saw a number of other people do it too cuz people were issuing their apologies Etc so I would say the first rule is and this one is not like a 100% confirmation kind of rule but it's a good hint that if somebody has lived in two realities on the same topic they're probably a little bit advantaged in in recognizing their own confirmation bias but not guaranteed number two here's the second way you can sort out which of you is experiencing the confirmation bias prediction you've heard me say this many times if your view of the world predicts accurately you probably have the better

[11:33]

accurately you probably have the better view in this case let me give you an example I had told you on an earlier Periscope that soon after the the Covington kids thing happened and soon after we got the new video that showed the the Two Worlds and I and I switched worlds um I was exposed to two photos that alleged that these kids were terrible kids and I made a prediction now I did it privately uh so you know I can't demonstrate that I really did that for you well no I think I did it publicly I take it back I think I told you publicly that there were some things coming out that I couldn't even describe at the time I didn't want to give them oxygen but that I I believe they were fake I think I said that publicly on Periscope so that was a prediction one of the things I said was the fake was the picture of the kids in blackface allegedly allegedly in blackface at a basketball game now the picture showed

[12:35]

basketball game now the picture showed the coach literally right next to a kid who was alleged to be in blackface and I said not likely to be true so unlikely that it's it's beyond belief so here's another tell here's another tell if the thing you're looking at is unbelievable by its nature it's probably not true here's what would be unbelievable a Catholic School in the year 2019 or maybe the you know even if you imagine the picture was taken in the last few years but modern day a Catholic school with all kinds of adults and chaperons and coaches allowed children to wear racist blackface costumes to a public event at a school that wasn't even slightly believable all right so one of the ways you could tell

[13:35]

right so one of the ways you could tell you're in confirmation bias is if you believe the unbelievable so if somebody said hey I saw a unicorn flying by my window if you believe that based on all of the other evidence you had that unicorns can fly you should ask yourself wait a minute wait a minute step back if somebody told me a unicorn flew B my window on the surface would you believe it I mean sometimes we can be surprised by amazing things but not a unicorn flying past my window to me the idea that these kids would be allowed to dress in racist blackface in the modern day in front of a bunch of adults at a Catholic school at a Catholic school for God's sakes right that is a flying unicorn story so if you're not in confirmation bias it's kind of obvious that that wasn't real now I had to wait

[14:37]

that that wasn't real now I had to wait a few days to find out specifically why it wasn't real and it turns out that this school has a a deal where they all the kids dress in the same color and it's a different color on different days they've done the white day the blue day you know the nerd day so they have themes that they all dress up at this one just was the color black and there was at least one kid who colored his entire body as I'm sure there was at least one kid who made himself entirely blue one day so was it a good idea for that one kid to put his entire body in the color that they were all celebrating that day well no but that's still a flying unicorn if you imagine he meant it as a racist statement now the second picture was the uh allegedly the kids in basketball uniforms making a white power sign now I'm not going to do that I was this is

[15:38]

I'm not going to do that I was this is me being a little bit more experienced in the media I'm not going to make the sign because if I did then I give photoshopped all over the internet but I said to myself huh it does look like there are a bunch of uh kids making the racist symbol with their hand but my my movie predicted that it was fake so I told you there are a couple things coming out that I think are fake the moment I saw them I said I believe these are fake I don't know exactly why but these seem obviously fake to me first impression a prediction right now it turns out that the sign that they were making with their hands was a sign that uh all professional basketball players make when there's a three-point uh play so if if somebody makes a long basket if you're not a basketball player from a certain distance you get three points so when somebody makes it the the people on the bench as exactly what this picture

[16:41]

the bench as exactly what this picture was showing the the kids who were not in the game raised their hands and they made the three-point play symbol which looks a lot like the the racist symbol now my my movie predicted that those two pictures were fakes someone else's movie the person that I first saw them from predicted that they were a bunch of racists doing over racist things right in public and right in front of their handlers and that that was somehow okay with them all and from that point of view her prediction was that both of these pictures were also true and that we had discovered this pocket of overt racist behavior in a Catholic School turns out that was exactly wrong all right so prediction is the your strongest sign that you you in the right movie or the wrong movie and the ability to move from

[17:41]

wrong movie and the ability to move from one to the other um or somebody saying that the hand signal is a 4chan hoax um so I I'll add that clarification that it's not at all clear that there's any such thing as a as a as a racist hand signal so that might not exist but I'm sure that there your racists who have probably tried it out just because they heard it was a hoax and so I'm sure somewhere in the world somebody's made that hand signal in the racist way all right um
next uh you saw the president's tweet he says his new slogan is uh build the wall and crime will fall so people were having fun with that now if you don't know uh there is science about Rhymes when Johnny Cochran was uh handling the OJ trial he said if the glove doesn't

[18:42]

OJ trial he said if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit there are there are a few different pieces of magic in that slogan the first magic that Johnny Cochran who was a persuasion genius uh one of the things was he knew that rhymes register in our minds as more important and more true so anything in a rhyme irrationally registers as a little bit more true than something that didn't rhyme there's no reason for it no reason for it at all but it's a truth you know we can we can demonstrate that so when Cochran said if the glove doesn't fit you must acquit he rhymed it and it was clever here's what Elsa did what Elsa did was it took this big complicated trial where the you could depend on the jury for getting 90% of everything they heard which is typical by the way if if people are presented with a big complicated PowerPoint presentation or a trial they actually sort of forget 90%

[19:44]

trial they actually sort of forget 90% of
of it so Cochran did this clever trick where by using the rhyme he made us give more Focus to the thing that was best for their side
that's my cat boo um and so so it was brilliant the rhyme was brilliant CU Rhymes are good but the rhyme also focused you on the one part of the case that was the strongest for the defense and it was also visual what have I told you about visual stuff if you say to yourself um the timeline doesn't you know work out that's a concept you're just imagining time which is hard to imagine but if you imagine OJ trying to put on this glove that's visual so Johnny Cochran had the visual he had the rhyme and he took all the focus from the things that were hard to imagine the concepts and put them in this little visual rhyme perfect perfect persuasion it was so strong it got a probably got a

[20:48]

it was so strong it got a probably got a murderer off I mean That's How Strong the persuasion was President Trump has borrowed from a well-known persuasion technique to put it in the form of a rhyme it will make you focus on the crime and even if you say to yourself there isn't that much crime or even if you say to yourself they're not bringing more crime as a ratio and even if you right about all that stuff it will still make you focus on it and what you focus on is what your brain will irrationally imagine is more important and more true so the presidents build a wall and crime will fall um would have been brilliant had he done this earlier on arguably the fact that he's doing it now might work against him because the word wall has become the biggest problem now it could be that he's decided that they're not going to give him anything so it doesn't matter what he says I don't think he's thought that

[21:50]

he says I don't think he's thought that you know my my guess is he's still pushing hard I can't read his mind but um at this point I think you'd have to ask yourself is use of the word wall helping or hurting I would say it's unambiguously hurting at this point so he's got this great rhyme which under normal situation let's say he started saying this two years ago it would have been super it would have been really solid but saying it now when the word wall is the only thing that's keeping us from getting this done that's kind of a uh that's it's tough to score this one because it's got some plus and it's got some minus now in his in the president's defense I would say that um the public I would say the public has largely started to think about the wall as being a word that describes a variety of different solutions for a border

[22:50]

solutions for a border barrier but still using the wall by itself without that larger explanation yeah all right let's go to the Whiteboard I've got a couple of Concepts I've talked about before but I want to give them a little more love here's one of the reasons that we cannot agree on anything it's one of the one of the biggest reasons behind why we're looking at the same information and coming to different worlds and I'm using this example of a well I call it the self-research well and the illusion that this talks about is the illusion that a person can do their own research and get an answer that's closer to the truth I might be the only person who has ever told you this and it might be the thing that you disagree with me the hardest but over time you're going to see this over and over and it's going to sink in and someday in the future you're going to say to yourself damn it that cartoonist guy was right about this

[23:52]

cartoonist guy was right about this until you see it you can't see it so it's invisible until you see it for the first time and then you'll see it everywhere and it goes like this it doesn't matter what the topic is if it's complicated and people are disagreeing it's going to look like what I'm going to describe doesn't matter if it's climate uh science debate doesn't matter if it's the Covington kids are they good or are they evil it doesn't matter if it's um if it's gun control it doesn't matter if it's border control it doesn't matter if it's almost anything all all of the big agreements where we're living in two different worlds follow this pattern and it goes like this you start down the well of trying to research it yourself and let's say the first thing you do is you talk to an expert and in this context I'm going to say the experts on one side of the debate and the skeptic is on the other again it doesn't matter what topic there's always two sides let's call it the expert and

[24:52]

two sides let's call it the expert and the
the skeptic the expert will say this is true and you say to yourself wow that sounds very convincing by itself it's pretty convincing but what do other people say so you keep researching it and you find a skeptic and you see that the skeptic's argument is pretty good by itself but you don't know what the expert's response to the skeptic is so you keep going and you find and you find that the expert has a good explanation for what the skeptic said and then you say but is that true and you go back to the skeptic and you say but what about what the expert said about what the skeptic said about what the experts said and that sounds pretty good too and at some point in every situation you get to a place where one or one of these two things is true as you go down the well from expert skeptic expert skeptic looking at the point Counterpoint Point Counterpoint you will always get to this point in which you reach things you

[25:53]

point in which you reach things you can't understand let's say science things or you know uh economics just something you don't understand or things you can't check and you don't have any way to check always if you're watching the climate debate that I've been hosting on my Twitter feed you you're watching this happen in real time you're watching the claim counter claim claim counter claim and
and always always it ends up at the bottom of the well sometimes the well is tall sometimes the well is short but has a bottom and then the bottom is something you can't understand or you can't check or both right once you reach this point um somebody says you're projecting um I'll get to you in a moment the person who says I'm projecting um your time will come hold tight I'm getting to you so

[26:56]

come hold tight I'm getting to you so what do you do if if you're a human being with a human mind and and you continually encounter this scenario what you do if you're completely normal is you default to one of these levels that agreed with wherever you are already leaning so if you are leaning toward the Skeptics one at some point you're going to stop researching at one of the skepticals at one of the skeptic levels if you believe the expert in the beginning before you even went into the well you're very likely to end up wherever the last argument was that the expert made a good point so your your uh your illusion is that there's something called doing your own research and that if you do that you will go down the well until you found something like the truth that's not a thing if the the next thing you need to

[27:58]

thing if the the next thing you need to understand about reality is that reality hides from us all things that are beyond our level to understand things we can't understand let's say it's too scientific it's not a field we work in or things that we just will never have a way to check and this is what keeps us from ever knowing the reality of anything because we have this illusion that we can do this thing called doing our own research it's just not a thing it's something we imagine as a thing now almost all of you should be disagreeing with me at this point all right I would expect that nearly all of you are thinking yeah that certainly applies to other people almost all of you are thinking that's not true I can tell the truth when I see it so if I see an argument that's solid I can identify that that's what most of your thinking

[29:00]

what most of your thinking right watch for this watch how often you go down the well and you can see that the last person you talk to is very convincing until there's something you just can't check or can't understand um that was called pacing and leading not mind reading once you learn the difference between those two things yeah you will come out ahead all right
now I'm going to change to a slightly different
topic the how would you determine how would you determine the truth or the nontruth of the question do 97% of scientists agree that climate science is a big problem CO2 is driving it all or driving most of it and that we're all in big trouble many of you have said that's not true

[30:00]

many of you have said that's not true it's not 97% um recently I saw Tony heler um present a graph that showed closer to 50% of Meteorological Society people agreed with the consensus on climate change so do you say to yourself wait a minute well there's a study where only 50% agreed with this climate consensus but then you you look into what's the definition of being in the Meteorological Society it turns out you could be a student you just have to be interested in meteorological stuff so the fact that a bunch of people who are simply weather people and students and some scientists had some percentage of belief in something didn't mean anything it had it had no no meaning whatsoever so here's the question or maybe the challenge how could you ask the question correctly and do a proper poll of the

[31:01]

correctly and do a proper poll of the proper people meaning really just climate scientists people who work in the field and are close enough to have a a legitimate opinion suppose you could do a poll what would be the question you would ask because if you ask the wrong question you're going to get the wrong answer and if you say do you think CO2 is increasing warming in the planet you probably get something close to 97% I think so if you ask is is it true that CO2 has an impact on warmth probably 97% would say yes to that because a lot of the Skeptics probably the majority of the Skeptics believe that's true to a point but here's the question all right here's the question um suppose you ask the question this way is helping the poor directly more important than slowing the the uh the climate change now this is the bad version of the question that the idea here is if you had a trillion dollars to

[32:02]

had a trillion dollars to spend you Mr climate scientist hey climate scientist you personally if you were the boss of the world and you had a trillion dollars to spend you didn't have two trillion and you'll never have two trillion but you got a trillion would it be better in your opinion to spend it directly helping the poor the people who are literally going to die in the next few years for lack of resources money health care and food just directly helping them or let's say indirectly helping them by keeping the the economy humming which tends to to lift people uh the rate of I guess the rate of desperate poor has gone from 30 some per to down to 9% lately because of capitalism so do you do you take your trillion and keep the capitalism running to take that 9% down to closer to zero Mr scientist or would you take that same trillion you know whether it's in opportunity cost or actual expense to really make a

[33:03]

cost or actual expense to really make a strong push right now to to lower the risk of climate disaster which would you do with your trillion dollars do you think you could get 97% of scientists to say yes it's very clear that for the benefit of all people even including the desperately poor that the very best thing we could do I'm very sure is to to put all of her money uh in the climate science bag what percentage of people would say that that's an unambiguously Clear Choice would it be 97% well I don't know I would hope that half of the scientists would say you know I can only talk about the science I'm not really an economist and I think you can say some things about the science but I don't know you can necessarily be as confident about uh where to put your money and you know the future and the the the economic outcome 80 80 years from now my assumption would

[34:05]

80 80 years from now my assumption would be and this is what I'd be looking to check is that if you ask the question correctly and the only question that matters is not does co2 warm the environment because everybody's sort of on that page you know they they differ about how much and how much it matters but we certainly all agree even the Skeptics that all things being equal a little extra CO2 is is probably going to raise your temperature a little bit at least so so at least that much we all agree on um so that's the first thing I'd want to know is is if he ask it in terms of economics which is the important you know ultimate outcome of this what would these scientists say here's another thought I had if you trying to find the scientists who were the least biased by money how would you identify them how would you identify someone who's working in the field of climate science knows enough they're close enough to it and they have reasonably current information and they're unbiased well I

[35:08]

information and they're unbiased well I would argue that The Closer a scientist is to retirement let's say this is the retirement line the closer they get the greater their bias and I say that because the the last say five or 10 years of your productive career are when you earn the most and you're probably locked in the most you know to your prior opinions you're least likely to change in the years when you're making your Peak income and you have your Peak reputation and you're you're locked into your old point of view but at the moment of retirement you still know as much as you knew you know the moment before retirement so your your knowledge is very similar the moment you retire versus the M the moment uh before these people however have no Financial incentive anymore they already made their money they're living off their their Investments or the retirement plan or whatever I'd love to see a poll that

[36:09]

or whatever I'd love to see a poll that showed the people 10 years before retirement and the people 10 years is probably too long cuz the way information changes but maybe 5 years 5 years before and 5 years after show me that do they have the same opinion because if there's a difference and it's consistent you know may maybe you're starting to see at least a suggestion of how big the money bias part is so I would be interested in that by itself it would not conclude anything but I think it would be uh somebody says people uh don't change well here's the thing I've noticed and maybe you've noticed that the if you look at the Skeptics climate Skeptics um you would notice that there seem to be a lot of retired climate Skeptics and I wonder if that's a coincidence is it because they're older people and they're you know not as they're not as uh tapped in anymore

[37:09]

they're not as uh tapped in anymore could it be that they're just older and that explains why they don't agree with the people who are you know working in the field currently maybe could be part of the question but it's starts to look like a coincidence to me that people who are retired and no longer have any monetary incentive are slightly more likely anecdotally just anecdotally so that's why you'd want to test it but my impression is that retired scientists are more likely to be Skeptics I'd like to I'd like to measure that measure
that all right I would like to also see um I'd like to see the difference in opinion with people who know the most about it so within the climate science Community surely there are huge differences between the people who know the most and the people who know the least even if

[38:11]

the people who know the least even if they're all in the same same field probably a gigantic difference wouldn't you imagine the person who's been in the field for a few years and maybe worked on one one little corner of the field versus someone who has a sweeping you know broad experience and is this smartest person in the field what wouldn't you like to see the smartest people and see if they have the same opinion as the people who just entered the field that would tell you something right I mean at least it would be a hint of where to look next for getting to the truth all right um how do we deal with the well so the way to deal with it is to understand um understand its nature if you understand its nature and then you start to notice it in other Realms then you can more easily police your your own confirmation bias if you know that you're going down the well and

[39:11]

know that you're going down the well and you and you start noticing that wait a minute the last person I talk to is always convincing and they're on different sides so really it's really just about the last person you talk to that's all that's happening here and I seem to always agree with what I started with surprisingly before I went down the well the well I was biased in One Direction surprise surprise After All This research in my head I came to the same opinion I wanted to come to all right if that's happening to you you're probably in uh you're probably in the confirmation bias Scott do you have biological children not that I know of uh that's the answer um older people have more skill being diplomatic well I don't know that that's been proven but let me summarize a few things here so we're seeing people realizing that they don't have the power of reading Minds this Covington kids thing

[40:15]

reading Minds this Covington kids thing has really brought that to the four so we realize we can't read minds and we all think we can that is an enormous tear in the fabric of reality the reality you you used to think you lived in where people could look at faces and know what they were thinking or they could look at somebody's action and knowing what they were thinking it's now beginning to to feel absurd it's beginning to feel absurd when you see somebody pretend they can read a stranger's mind it didn't used to look like that even one year ago you would not have thought it absurd to see a pundit on TV saying well the president is thinking this or that or he's his secret thoughts are this or that right now it's starting to look absurd because you can you can understand the world a little bit better secondly you also understand that when somebody is seeing a completely different world than you

[41:16]

a completely different world than you are looking at the same facts but seeing a completely different movie you no longer think necessarily that they're stupid most of you probably still do I would say still the dominant thought is that if somebody is seeing something you're not seeing they must be stupid or evil or they're pretending or it's just political but now you're seeing more and more people say wait a minute they might actually believe what they're seeing and they're not they don't have low low IQs and if you're watching other people believe what they see and be completely wrong as far as you can tell and also being smart people who who normally would not be so wrong it starts to tell you maybe your view of the world in some cases in some cases needs a little fact checking and the way you can check your version of the world is by predicting

[42:18]

version of the world is by predicting all right so here are the predictions that I've made so you can get a you can get a uh an understanding of this I've predicted that president Trump's um skill persuasion would make him president when few people thought that was the case the the other view of the president was he was a crazy old clown with no chance I said no he's a clever Persuader who has way more game than anybody sees coming and then I made a prediction therefore he will be president chew it off I made a similar prediction with AOC if you you can remember right out of the gate there were people like me Mike cerovich who has essentially the same skill set that I have and from our perspective with the same skill set about persuasion the moment we saw her act we said uhoh here it comes so Mike cernovich and I made

[43:20]

cernovich and I made predictions that this was not this is not a flash in the pan it's not a a weird little news story that's going to go away that AOC who I call rpos was going to make a big splash and now you see that the prediction is correct you see that her her social media impact is bigger than anybody's you see that the entire party has to respond to her even if they're not responding to her
her um all right so that's a prediction I have been predicting that the uh Russia collusion story was not um was not real and it was based on confirmation bias and and politics and that President Trump himself would never be implicated in an actual Russia collusion crime now predictably people are people are trying to reinterpret any anything from what maniford did to what these these lesser lesser involved

[44:22]

these these lesser lesser involved people did who talked to Russians Etc so predictably people are trying to make their their movie work but that was never my prediction I I certainly never made a prediction that nobody on the Trump campaign were associated in any way ever talk to a a Russian who had any Authority I certainly never said that but the prediction is you're not going to see a conviction or or impeachment of this president for any Russia related stuff um
all right thoughts on the Mexico would pay for it argument yeah so you see the the Democrats have started to retreat from their notion that you can't have good border security because it's not really defensible it's not really defensible in the sense that uh many of them supported border security in the past and there's

[45:23]

border security in the past and there's no real way in a practical world to say you don't want border security um so they need something so if if you're in a political contest and your your best argument is we should not protect our border you don't have a good argument but you got to you got to still make an argument that's what the political process forces us to do so they've retreated into a ridiculous argument which is that the president um said Mexico would pay for it now unless your argument depends on it being too expensive it's not even relevant it's just a thing that he said as part of the fund that may or may not ever happen but it's the least important part of the question if if the president were asking for you know a trillion dollars or something it probably would make a big difference if if we were paying for it

[46:23]

difference if if we were paying for it or someone else is paying for it but if 5 billion it's in the round rounding so once you agree that that dollar amount is in the rounding it's sort of irrelevant to the the US budget it's not terribly important who pays for it and it's certainly not important that the president optimistically said and I would say persuasion said you know because it's a persuasion thing to say Mexico will pay for it because it makes you think past the sale if you're talking about who's paying for it you've already uncritically accepted that there's something like a wall up so they have interpreted his persuasion technique because it was fun and people like hearing it and it was provocative and you couldn't look away because it seemed so wrong you so it had all the persuasion elements that that make it powerful but the Democrats are trying to take that literally and the the best example of confirmation bias I saw was I I saw one

[47:24]

confirmation bias I saw was I I saw one of CNN's uh sarcasm uh packages I'll call it a sarcasm package so a package in TV talk a package is a a video montage right so CNN did a video montage or a package that uh alleged to support the point that the president had said that me the Mexico would write a check so the claim was that the president said no I didn't mean they were going to literally write a check and they said oh yeah oh yeah so it's a sarcasm package because the way they dealt with it was so president Trump said he's not going to write a literal check or that Mexico is not going to write a literal check to pay for the wall did he oh did he let's go to the sarcasm package and then they go to the video that's a montage of President Trump talking about it as a candidate and he says well they'll pay

[48:26]

candidate and he says well they'll pay for the wall one way or another and I say to myself wait a minute you just showed a video that supports the president's version that it's sort of a one way or the other it doesn't have to be a direct check at the same time you're putting on sarcasm oh yeah he said he he didn't say it's going to be a check well let's go to the video and then the President says well they'll pay for it one way or the other and I think to myself what did you see when you saw this video when you know did did the CNN producer when they saw it say ah he's saying they're going to write a check and then they show the video and it says exactly the opposite and I thought to myself what's happening to me like can they not see that the very thing they said this video would do was the opposite of what they just said it was going to do but then they go deeper it's like oh okay it's not just not just that one clip we also found that on uh the

[49:26]

one clip we also found that on uh the campaign the Trump campaign's website there was a reference that said Mexico is going to pay for it with a check Case Closed with a check that's right the small print on the Trump campaign website from back during the campaign said Mexico would pay for it with a check do you see any any problem with this do you think that president Trump then candidate Trump read or wrote the small print on his campaign website do you does anybody believe that President Trump then candidate Trump ever read what somebody else wrote on his website not a chance there's not a chance that that he was necessarily even aware that they

[50:27]

was necessarily even aware that they said that on the on the site so they showed that which also did not support their claim that he keeps saying that they're going to write a check now I think they did come up with one if I recall there might have been one video that was sort of closer to their point but my point is that they showed at least two video segments that disagreed with their point and I don't think that they could say could tell because of confir information bias in their world in their world it did fit so let's call that the sarcasm package all right I uh I tweeted around just before I got on here uh a photo of um let's see let me let me just call it up here Allison Cado from uh CNN and I want to show you the the expression she was making because it was great so she had on um

[51:28]

because it was great so she had on um some democrat racist I forget I forget his name doesn't matter where are you hey how come I can't find my own tweets that's weird my own tweet is missing there it is so uh the headline is uh I don't know if you could tell that says a democratic representative stands by remarks calling Trump a quote Grand wizard by say but says president isn't a racist so this uh representative it doesn't even matter his name he's he's just a racist I'm not even going to say his name so This Racist refers to the president as the grand wizard the you know the head of the Klux Clan as being president Trump now here's the thing if president Trump were not not white would you call him uh would you

[52:28]

white would you call him uh would you refer to him by the KKK no you wouldn't so any reference to the KKK which is a white organization when when applied to a white person in a insulting fashion it's nothing but racist the comment itself is racist because you simply wouldn't call a black person the head of the KKK you wouldn't call you know you wouldn't call anybody else the head of the KKK so it's a racist statement but this comes this comes right after the the media has had the worst week they've ever had so the media is just getting slayed just getting slayed for fake news and for bad reporting uh first there's the BuzzFeed thing that they all fell for and then there was the Covington kids and they all fell for that so they're just getting beaten up and then CNN puts on their puts on their network uh this uh this racist who's who's who

[53:30]

uh this uh this racist who's who's who then tries to walk it back and saying that no no no he's just calling the president of the United States uh the head of the KKK but he's definitely not saying he's a racist and I'm looking at the
the expression of can you see this
expression that's her looking looking at his answers because uh you know arguably the person she's interviewing is sort of generally on the Democrat team and CNN is clearly on that team as well so she's listening to somebody on her own team who's making her look like I'm not even going to say it right if somebody on your team is is this bad it's just embarrassing and I think uh so since we're all good

[54:30]

and I think uh so since we're all good face readers um let let me let me not say that I can tell what's in her mind I'm just saying it was hilarious to see that expression because it's hard for me to believe she was having a good day listening to this guy uh basic so basically you know they their integrity and their reputation as news providers is just totally you know in the toilet and this guy comes on making it worse and I'm thinking you know if I were in that situation here's the face I'd be
making why are you making me look so bad why are you making the news look so stupid why are you making Democrats look like idiots why can't you say something smart so I can so I can act like I agree with it all right but again we can't tell what's in her mind I just was amused by her face given

[55:33]

mind I just was amused by her face given that the context of the day is that we can tell people's Thoughts by their faces
um why do I watch CNN thank you for that question all right so I've been uh beaten up pummeled if you will I've been pummeled for being fooled by a CNN story The Covington kid story and people say Scott how could you be so dumb as to believe CNN and let me give you the full explanation number one if you're saying you won't watch CNN or MSNBC or the the other side of the media if you say that that's smart you got a lot of explaining to do if you're not watching how the other side is framing things which is different from believing them but if you're not continually monitoring how the other side is framing events so that you can compare it to how your

[56:33]

that you can compare it to how your preferred B is framing events you don't know what's going on so if anybody who said to me why are you watching CNN you're not really part of the productive conversation all right you have failed in the most basic basic element of understanding the world and you should not in my opinion nobody should listen to your opinion so if you said to me why are you watching CNN no one should ever listen to your opinion again on anything you you you've shown a level of understanding of the world so primitive that no one should ever pay attention to you again that's different from saying CNN has all the correct stories if you're not watching all sides to see how they framing things you don't know what's going on and you're not even going to ever get close you have decided to be a puppet of one

[57:35]

you have decided to be a puppet of one side of the media and if you've decided to be a puppet Don't lecture me on how to think all right it is a conscious decision to cut yourself off from half of the half of the framing of the world as opposed to half of the truth so that's number one is a total total thinking mistake to not look at the other side um number two people said why did you believe something that was on CNN here again let me remind you that the vast majority of what CNN reports as news is true I know you hate to hear that the vast amount of what CNN reports is true it's the the the way they interpret it the way the pundits interpret it the the emphasis they put on things and every now and then a story from an anonymous source or something that's not true but if there's an earthquake and

[58:36]

true but if there's an earthquake and CNN says hey there was an earthquake is it likely to be true yes if there's any kind of natural disaster and they report on it is it likely that that natural disaster actually happened yes was there an event um was there you know something that happened in a certain time did they report it yes so the vast majority of what CNN reports just like the vast majority of all the other networks Fox MSNBC the vast majority of the facts are true so if you ask me why do you believe something on CNN well how about because most of it is true just like the other network now am I aware am I aware that a solid I don't know 5% it could turn out to be wrong yes I am and I the way that I distinguish you know what that 5% is likely to be is if somebody if it's an

[59:37]

likely to be is if somebody if it's an opinion I discount it if it's a partisan opinion I discount it twice if it's um if it's a uh secret Source I don't count it all if it's mind reading I don't count it at all if somebody is speculating well if this is is true I don't count it at all so there are a whole vast category of things which whether it's CNN reporting them or any other network by their nature I would say okay I'm not going to buy that when I saw the photographs of the Covington kids one that purported them to be in blackface but wasn't and one that purported they were showing some kind of racist hand signal but they weren't photographs taken out of context I know to not trust so when I looked at the photographs I was like no first first reaction no I don't care if these were on CNN I don't care where they are I'm not going to buy these photographs

[1:00:38]

I'm not going to buy these photographs and sure enough they were not true but a video where I watch an event with my own eyes can be a lie this one was right this is the perfect example of something where a video you think you're watching it with your own eyes but it turned out to be not true I would say most of the time the video is going to be the the truest expression of reality and still and still it could be wrong a lot now was it my mistake that I uh I found credibility in what I saw with my own eyes on the video in retrospect total mistake because I did in fact object objectively speaking got it completely wrong so my eyes fooled me but they're still just about the best we have so here's my here's my bottom line of this if you get fooled by

[1:01:40]

bottom line of this if you get fooled by something that is a good trick you do what you can do when you find out if it was a good hoax and you got fooled well you got fooled do what you can make your apologies make your Corrections you know make it right if you can but there is no shame in being fooled by a good hoax now a bad hoax would be the the photographs I mentioned those were bad hoaxes if you got fooled by them you have some explaining to do but if you saw the video and a context and you were fooled by that that was a really good hoax right that was really wellmade that's exactly the sort of thing that nobody is smart enough no nobody is smart enough to always get that one right all right so you got to make a distinction that was one that was unlikely to be wrong but it was it turned out it was completely wrong you got to you got to play the odds all

[1:02:42]

got to you got to play the odds all right uh now to all the people who say you were not fooled by it you cannot tell the difference between always taking your side's side and getting this one right so to all the people who say yeah it was obvious to me the moment I saw this the moment I saw this video you know the the little short one the moment I saw that short video I knew it was a hoax really really now I do believe you were confident it was a hoax but do you also agree with your own side every time no matter what the information or evidence is cuz I think many of you do if you're like everybody else in the world right if you're normal you agree with your team pretty much all the time so if your team had a point of you and you agreed

[1:03:43]

team had a point of you and you agreed with it and it turned out to be right this time you don't have anything to celebrate about you have nothing to hold over me you just agreed with your team and that's all you know the fact that was also coincidentally correct in this case means nothing and it will never mean anything and if you're claiming it as your your pride well I got this one right you got this one wrong look at me I don't think that's reason to
um now if if you said let's wait and see I would say that you are just smarter than me all right so I'm I'm going to give give some credit here for those of you who said yeah I I see it does it does look the way it's being reported but let's just let's just wait 24 hours if you had said that you would have been following my own advice which I didn't follow for

[1:04:43]

follow for myself cuz this one looked too obvious to even have to wait but that's the trick right so anybody who said I'm going to wait you were smarter than me on this topic there there's no I'm not going to qualify that all right if you said I'm going to wait you were up here smart I was down here not as smart so I'm going to there's no reservation in which I would say that you weren't smarter than me on this point now uh one of the questions that people ask is was I embarrassed by this incident now here I took a very uh very aggressive public stand based on my first incorrect notion of these Covington boy behavior and then I had to quickly walk it back and completely completely say I was fooled I I was not thinking well I made a mistake I contributed to you know bad outcome

[1:05:44]

I contributed to you know bad outcome for these kids it's 100% on me was I embarrassed by that nope what of the reasons that I'm able to change opinions in public is that I don't have any sense of embarrassment and I talk about this and I write about it a lot you can't get there easily right that you it's it's hard to be born without a sense of embarrassment and you might be a sociopath if you are but you definitely can
can practice and you definitely can you know learn how to frame your impressions until embarrassment is just not a factor so some people said to me oh you did it because you want to uh make the make the left love you and that will never work and I thought to myself me have you been watching me for the last two years I've been doing nothing but making the left hate me if if I'm the guy who's acting

[1:06:48]

hate me if if I'm the guy who's acting because I want the left to love me I'm doing a terrible job of it I've Done 3 years of completely doing the wrong thing because the left hates me more than anything it costs me probably 30 to 40% of my income because I so don't care that the left hates me so that the the idea that I was doing it to make friends on on the left um doesn't just doesn't hold water and the notion that uh I did it to avoid lawsuits so that was the other thing people said people said you don't really mean this apology uh or this diretion you you're just trying to do it to avoid lawsuits to which I say now I deal with this world for my work like the you know the whole world of what is parody what is defamation this is my job right for 30 years I have operated in a world in which there are such things as

[1:07:49]

which there are such things as defamation and liel and you know and and those things I'm pretty good at identify when there's a problem and this wasn't one of them if I watch the news and it's fake news and I am fooled by it and I comment on it my liability is nothing is nothing I have no liability if I comment on on something that I believed in the news there's no liability there because there's no intention and especially if I corrected it there's no intention so I I can tell you honestly that when I issued my uh correction SL apology I never even thought about a legal element of it that was never even a variable in my mind it it was literally irrelevant then and I I contend that you would never find a lawyer who would find a problem with the way I handled it all right the way I handled it would never be any legal problem whatsoever all

[1:08:49]

problem whatsoever all right um I will talk to you all later