Episode 422 Scott Adams: I Predict That Fake News Will Destroy all Life on Earth. With Coffee
Date: 2019-02-19 | Duration: 30:16
Topics
Jussie Smollet story, is it a turning point in our view of reality? The news used to be regarded as 80% true, 20% false Now, it seems reversed, 20% true, 80% false Review of current news stories…how many are fake news? Are ANY of the things on current emergency list…emergencies? Everything already on the list is stretching the definition Good persuasion on climate change Article author David Wallace Wells, very persuasive It’s WORSE than we think, and happening FASTER Immediacy is important, visual persuasion gold The article moves fear forward persuasively Permafrost is melting, it’s permafrost…and it’s melting Doomsday seed vault in the permafrost is in danger Ice shelf crack grew 11 miles in 6 days, good visual North Pole is 60 to 70 degrees warmer Is he correct? No idea. Is it persuasive? Yes Bad persuasion on climate change Hockey stick graphs associated with business swindles In 80 years GDP will increase 10% less than it otherwise would
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript
[0:09]
boom boom boom boom pow boom well it looks like I mistakenly used the wrong microphone which means that this will not post to Twitter so we won't have as many people here today and people will complain about not getting a notice but I think that's being fixed sometime soon alright everybody I'm starting a little bit early this morning we've gotta take Snickers to the vet for some routine stuff nothing wrong with the dog she just needs some routine stuff so let us begin with the simultaneous lip it starts when you go and you grab your mug your cup it could be a Stein or a chalice possibly a thermos you fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and you join me for the simultaneous separate all the people who simultaneously sipped are happier than all the people who looked at it and said I'm not gonna fall into that trap of
[1:11]
I'm not gonna fall into that trap of simultaneously sipping it only hurts yourself so this Jessi Smollett event which in one sense is a small story meaning that it involved you know three people in the United States directly but I'm starting to wonder if this is a turning point in our understanding of reality and I asked myself what was the common view of the news 20 years ago I would say the common view of the news 20 years ago is that the news was mostly true but maybe 10 or 20 percent was faking news ish or wrong or likely to be corrected later so sort of an 80/20 thing but it feels like that has reversed and maybe it was always reversed but after the the jussie Smollett
[2:13]
Smollett the thing became so big and so talked about and so fake as far as we know right now I wonder if people are starting to realize that the news is mostly made-up meaning that the 80/20 has reversed now to test that I will look at some stories that are in the headlines and let's see if most of the stories that are the news are real or if most of them are Fame news let's take a look at some other things in the headlines we have Jesse small that story started as fake news right rushon collusion that's in the headlines every day probably fake news will wait for a Muller to confirm but at this point it's looking like fake news we've got McCabe saying that Rosenstein not only wasn't joking about wearing a wire to see the president but was but said it twice now that's of
[3:16]
but was but said it twice now that's of course two different stories we have one is that he was saying it sort of sarcastically like it was the worst idea in the world and the other is the opposite that he was saying it seriously so at least half of the story or at least half of the world believe in one half of the story is living under a fake news situation so that's a that's a 50-50 depending on which version you decide to accept then there's the emergency declaration for the border what is the main narrative about that the main narrative is that this border is not really an emergency and what do you call an emergency is it appropriate to use emergency powers for something that's not really technically an emergency and then you look at all of the other emergency declarations have you done that have you ever have you taken the time to look at the list of all of the emergency declarations that
[4:17]
all of the emergency declarations that are still in in effect I think there are some 30 of them do any of them look like emergencies to you there isn't an emergency on the list is there I think everything on that list is a non-emergency most of them are about freezing bank accounts and bad people like cartel members and terrorists and stuff and yes I think those things are important those are important things but were they really emergencies as in if you if you do it next week it's gonna be that much worse than if you do it today welco sort of stretches the definition of emergency right so the main story that the president is stretching the definition of emergency it is about as fake as you can get we don't know how it will turn out but certainly the emergency stuff is used all the time for
[5:19]
emergency stuff is used all the time for non emergencies the other part of that story is that it's a slippery slope that if the president uses his power to declare an emergency for national defense there's some other president might use an emergency for something else to which I say okay it's okay with me they're gonna have to defend it because you can see the pushback that this president is getting for not even really departing much from what an emergency declaration has always look like so he's just a little bit of departure he's being sued by 16 states it's got to go to the Supreme Court who knows so if you're telling me there's a slippery slope I would say the obvious news right in front of us says that's not true because he's getting the maximum pushback from the smallest little deviation from what people thought was okay if you deviated even a
[6:20]
thought was okay if you deviated even a little bit more I would imagine there would be more pushback the system seems to be able to absorb that kind of a problem slippery slope not really I I've always said this but the slippery slope is imaginary because everything goes in the direction is going until there's something that stops it everything so to pick one thing out of life and say oh there's the slippery slope right there almost always and elucidation because if there's nothing to stop something it will go forever and if there is something to stop something it will stop that's the whole story and almost everything creates a counter force when it gets going so no matter what is in action you can almost guarantee a counter force will will come up such as these sixteen lawsuits for example all right what else is in the news let's see if it's fake or real we had the story about Alison and camerado saying that
[7:22]
about Alison and camerado saying that President Trump has no sense of humor is that real news or is that fake news the president has no sense of humor well that's the fakest news you could ever have that's pretty fake then there's one of the bushes old attorneys a guy named dick painter that's his real name dick painter now I've seen painting with rusty I don't know what a dick painter is exactly but I think it's his name he's a dick painter and he says that Trump should be removed under the 25th amendment because he's not meant because he's mentally ill is that real news or fake news well it's real news that he said it so I mean to that extent is real news but is it real news that the president is mentally unstable no no how
[8:24]
president is mentally unstable no no how about let's see what else oh and the border funding questioned what's the biggest thing that you see in the news biggest thing you see is that walls don't work walls don't work that's pretty fake news now if you only have half a wall that might not work but nobody is suggesting that we do a bad job at the border there there's nobody side that says let's only plug some of the border you know about a half should be good and you know that should be good nobody thinks that so there's this fake argument about the fact that incomplete border security doesn't work nobody's arguing that incomplete border security is a good idea it's a complete fake argument you know straw man and in a sense both sides alright so those are
[9:25]
sense both sides alright so those are the those are the big fake stories now what else is in the news let's look at this page oh nothing nothing so everything I mentioned is pretty much the news today how much of what I mentioned is fake news is it twenty percent fake news and then covington was fake news so I just mentioned all the news from you know the way we look at the wall to the way we're looking at the Moller thing to the emergency funding eighty percent of fake news so I think this mullet thing smollett is a may be a turning point in how we see the news from seeing it as eighty percent likely to be true to eighty percent likely to be not true now some of these stories have gone from the not true to the oh my god we figured out what's really going on here say yes but when you first hear
[10:27]
on here say yes but when you first hear a story what should be your percentage of truth you put on it in general when you first hear a story how likely is it to be true I would say twenty percent twenty percent so if you wanted a good rule of thumb I would say twenty percent now there are some types of news stories that by their nature are more likely to be true so if they say the president gave a speech today well he probably gave a speech right you can tell that kind of story is real but if you hear that somebody said something provocative and so far that's all you've heard so all you've heard is that somebody famous that said something provocative what are the chances that they really said that and that the correct context has been reported 20% no 20% that's about it let's talk about climate change I forwarded around what I
[11:29]
climate change I forwarded around what I considered one of the best arguments in favor of climate alarm now when I talk about climate change persuasion those who have been following me for a while you know that what I'm really talking about is how good they can convince people I'm not talking about what's true I'm not talking about whether climate change is real and dangerous or not I'm not talking about the underlying facts only talking about how persuasive the argument is and the main argument that I've seen is that hockey stick I'm just looking for the article itself because I want to read a little bit too of it to you so if you if so the biggest argument for climate change the one you've heard the most is the the hockey stick graph right this shows that the co2 goes up and the heat goes up and and it's it's been going up but man it's gonna go up like a hockey stick shake if you worked in corporate America as I did what is
[12:32]
in corporate America as I did what is the most common joke about hockey stick and graphs what does every business person say when somebody produces a hockey stick graph a hundred percent of business people people who have business experience see they see the graph with the hockey stick and they laugh they laugh because the hockey stick shape of a graph is the most famous symbol of fakery in corporate America now that alone does not mean that the climate graph is wrong right those are different concepts I'm just saying that those with business experience as opposed to scientific experience perhaps as opposed to news media experience but people who work with income projections are used to seeing this graph it's like oh we're gonna introduce the new product and
[13:34]
gonna introduce the new product and it'll start slow for five years but man it's gonna pick up just like that all right so from a persuasion standpoint the hockey stick graph is probably the biggest mistake well if it if it becomes true the climate change is as dangerous as the climate scientists are mostly telling us the hockey stick graph would be the biggest failure of persuasion in the history of humanity probably or at least you could argue it's in the top ten and the reason is that by its nature it looks fraudulent secondly when they do the prediction models the prediction models also feel like lies which is different from whether they're true or false different from whether they're accurate or not accurate those are separate questions but how they feel to us is like somebody's lying to us so you show me the hockey stick and I say automatically
[14:35]
the hockey stick and I say automatically boom both wait I don't even need to hear the details as soon as you show me that I know you're lying that doesn't mean you're lying doesn't mean that's wrong it just means that that's my first impression likewise with the complicated prediction models if you if you show complicated prediction models to someone who's never worked in corporate America they probably say well they come from scientists they're complicated a lot of people seem to say they're real I'm gonna believe them but if you show a complicated 80 year prediction model to someone with business experience most of those people are going to say that looks exactly like all the lies I've ever seen that look just like that so again independent of what's true because I don't know what's true but independent of that in terms of persuasion the two worst things you could do to convince the world is show the
the hockey stick graph looks illegitimate on the surface and then say you've got all these secret you know or not secret but
[15:37]
these secret you know or not secret but hard to understand complicated models those two things are the least credible arguments of all time now if it turns out that climate change is as dangerous as people say and and our disbelief of it caused us not to act then those two pieces of persuasion would be the most dangerous things that have ever happened compare that to this article that I tweeted yesterday which I labeled the most persuasive argument I've seen on the climate change side of the argument in other words an alarmist argument let me tell you what it does right so the first thing it does is says that the problem is worse than you think and it's going to happen sooner than you think now do you do you feel more afraid already than you would if somebody said in 80 years the GDP might be hit by 10 percent because that's what the IPCC
[16:39]
percent because that's what the IPCC said recently 10 percent we hit on GDP over 80 years so the IPCC did not scare me in fact I took them at their word and said oh that's all 10 percent I'm not even gonna worry about that but now this far more persuasive piece and again I'm not saying this is true I'm just talking about the persuasive power of it starts right now saying that it's worse than you think and it's sooner than you think immediacy is important if something is immediately a problem as in my lifetime as opposed to some teenagers lifetime then I'm more worried now what it doesn't do is show the hockey stick graph what it doesn't do is talk too much about the models instead it says listen I won't be able to find it oh here it is so it throws out some things like this past winter a string of days 60 and 70 degrees warmer than normal baked the
[17:41]
degrees warmer than normal baked the North Pole sixty and seventy degrees warmer than normal at the North Pole now that's something you can understand right now it might not be true it might not be a representative but it feels persuasive it's like wait you're talking about the North Pole and it was 60 to 70 degrees warmer like you can feel that argument right you feel it all right then they talk about the Doomsday vault where they keep all the seeds apparently the permafrost stuff which everybody thought would never never melt that's why it's called permafrost melted and actually threatened the strategic vault in which we keep all the seeds in case there's a calamity when you start telling me that the Doomsday vault with all of the seeds for all the plants that we would need to repopulate and refeed
[18:41]
we would need to repopulate and refeed the world if there's some disaster you tell me that thing almost got taken out by climate change now I'm afraid now I'm afraid all right but one of my favorite parts about this it talks about a crack in an ice shelf that grew 11 miles in 6 days by the time you read this it may have already gone into the open water all right Co visual this is he's talking about an ice shelf so you imagine it it grew 11 miles you're seeing that golf ball so you've got a little movie running in your mind about this happening that's good visual stuff he's got a bunch of more visual stuff but my favorite part of this was when he talked about how so listen to this he talked about how if you went outside at 105 degrees you can survive right 105 degrees isn't that unusual it's not
[19:42]
degrees isn't that unusual it's not unusual in a desert at all but apparently there are some changes that would make our humidity go up now and the story says that if you ever reached a point where the humidity was 100 was 90% which happens routinely in Costa Rica already all right so 90 degree humidity is already a thing with it we experienced but you also at the same time had a hundred and five degrees it would kill you it would boil you think about that a hundred and five degrees at the same time it's 90 degrees of humidity would actually kill you if you went outside for a few hours it would take a few hours but it would kill you you would boil now here's why this is so persuasive 90 degree humidity is something we already have in places so it was easy to imagine because it already exists 105 degrees is something we've probably all been in most of you
[20:43]
we've probably all been in most of you have been in degrees that are over a hundred so those two things are going to start to come together and fairly quickly and so this article talks about mass extinction event so instead of saying hey I think we might lose Miami this one goes further it goes full you know Donald Trump president Trump persuasion so instead of now 105 degrees is not the boiling point if it's 105 degrees and it's 90% humidity the human body can't handle it and you'll die in a few hours that's the claim now it might not be true but we're talking about persuasion right it's good persuasion okay I said boil for those of you who are a little bit literal I didn't literally mean boil okay so if you're hung up on the word boil I take
[21:44]
you're hung up on the word boil I take it back for anybody who was hung up on that you would simply die if you're out there with that humidity and that temperature for several hours now many of you might be saying but wait a minute Scott the world is already deadly in a lot of it for you know there are a lot of places right now you can't go out into worse for four hours right you can't go to the North Pole and just you know walk outside without your jacket I'll stay there for four hours you die so we already have a world that's inhospitable if you stay out there with the wrong preparations for four hours anyway the point is bad persuasion looks like the hockey stick graph and our complicated models good persuasion looks like this the temperature is already going up X degrees if it goes up a few more degrees which were which every scientist oh oh
[22:46]
which were which every scientist oh oh and here's the best part when people are trying to convince you of climate science don't you always hear that 97% of scientists agree what is your first reaction when you hear 97% of climate scientists agree it's fake right so your first impression to the strongest thing people like to say to persuade you is that doesn't sound right all right as soon as you hear the 97% you go I don't think they can even measure that did you ask the same question to everybody what would that mean because there are so many sub specialties within climate science how many people even can see the whole picture so the moment you hear the 97% many of us who have experience with hearing bad statistics say on its surface I don't even need to go any deeper on its surface if you're telling me it's 97% I already know you're lying and everything you say after that I don't believe so this article that I say
[23:48]
don't believe so this article that I say is persuasive doesn't do that it's here's what it does instead this is this are the author I should say and I should name the author because it is so persuasive the author is David Wallace wells and David Wallace wells it says that he talked to the top scientists in the field and they all agree now compare that for persuasion if you tell me that 97% agree I know that you have ginned up a number for persuasion and it sounds fake to me and it also includes all the dumb people because I've heard critics say this and it's probably at least a little bit true that the smarter scientists go into physics and the the scientists who didn't do so well tend to go into climate climate science now of course that's not true for the top scientists
[24:49]
that's not true for the top scientists in climate science I'm sure the top scientists have every bit the qualifications as the you know the best physicists because they're the top scientists but it's probably true that if you took a hundred randomly selected climate scientists they might not be the best scientists in the world you know the bottom 80% but if you say I talked to the top scientists in climate scientists and they all agree you have persuaded me if you tell me the top five or even five at the top ten you know you don't even need to know who are the top five but if you say I talked to five four scientists who are probably in the top ten and they're all in the same page I'm persuaded you tell me that 97 out of 100 claimed a scientist and some poll you did agree I am unpersuaded it's the opposite of persuasion right so anyway the point is independent of what's true
[25:52]
the point is independent of what's true or false about climate science and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that personally and also for your benefit persuasion wise this was solid gold is scared me here's what I did right it was visual in the sense that I painted a picture in your head of glaciers moving and people people boiling to death outdoors and stuff like that so it was good on visual it was good on fear and it was smart because it moved the fear forward so it's more media and it avoided the biggest mistakes of persuasion the hockey stick graph the complicated complicated models and the 97% of scientists those are the three biggest missed in climate science persuasion not saying they're not true that part I don't know but persuasion why is there an anti persuasive and then yeah again talking about the top five scientist or whoever
[26:53]
about the top five scientist or whoever you talk to so somebody says so do you believe it like do you believe we're too late I'll tell you my experience that I've been reporting on for some time when I read an article like this I'm completely persuaded that we're all dead again persuaded that doesn't mean it's true the moment I'm done with this somebody pointed me to a tweet by Bjorn Lomborg I said wait for me to finish my point here before you weigh in with your opinion so immediately after tweeting this and saying it was persuasive and that I could feel it I could feel persuaded like I was I was literally afraid when I was done reading him somebody immediately sends me over to a tweet by Bjorn Lomborg he's I guess you could call him a skeptic he's more of a more of a economics guy in terms of how he
[27:54]
of a economics guy in terms of how he looks at things so his argument is the economics of climate change are not as bad as people say and I look at his Twitter feed and the and right there there's a tweet where there's a new study that says that all these little islands these atolls that were supposed to be underwater I know they were supposed to be subject to rising tides basically none of them have rising tides not not ties but sea level so one of the most central predictions of climate change is that we are already seeing rising sea levels and this new study couldn't find it and these are these are tolls I don't know exactly where they are but they were certainly critical to predictions about about climate change so as soon as I read Bjorn Lomborg thing and I looked at it and said okay here's a key prediction
[28:54]
it and said okay here's a key prediction that's just not true according to the study again I don't know if the study's true I was completely persuaded that I had been over persuaded by the alarm so my point is that whoever you read last is completely persuasive if you read a climate scientists argument it will persuade you and if you walk over five minutes later and read a skeptic Toni Heller for example and you you see his arguments you will be persuaded they both have solid gold persuasion so when somebody asked me what do I believe I don't believe I can penetrate the topic to get to the point where I really I know what's going on I can sort of guess I can at various times I've had predictions that have you know leaned in one way or the other but at the moment I am directly on the fence I actually
[29:54]
am directly on the fence I actually can't tell I cannot tell how much I should worry about climate change I just don't know all right I'm gonna nd here because I need to run to the veterinarian's and I will talk to you all later