Episode 435 Scott Adams: The “Nearly News” Headlines

Date: 2019-03-02 | Duration: 36:56

Topics

Examples of currently circulating propaganda and fake news BS Otto Warmbier, Jared Kushner, Anderson Cooper, AOC, Michael Cohen, pending Mueller report, Sean Hannity, “Hindcasting” is creating a model that fits past data The model will easily apply to the first few future decades Beyond that, not so much Why hasn’t the media covered the enormous potential of Gen IV? Gen IV nuclear power is safe and our only real option We should pursue Gen IV whether or not climate change is real DOE has approved and is currently testing Gen IV nuclear power President Trump should take credit he deserves for this Elon Musk agrees that we should pursue Gen IV Everyone qualified to have an opinion, seems to agree on Gen IV

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:10]

hello everybody come on in here if you're wondering why I so often wear the same shirt it's not because I wear this shirt every day it's because it's my office shirt I've got a couple of office shirts when it's a little chilly in my office I like it a little cold so I put on my office shirt cuz it's just the right temperature here all right if uh you're here and you've got a mug a cup a glass a chalice a Stein a thermos and you have a liquid in there chances are you came for the simultaneous Sip Coffee with Scott Adams please raise your Container full of your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous sip
now if you're following the news you may have noticed that there isn't any there's no news I I always get up and I check CNN and check fo Fox News

[1:13]

and I check CNN and check fo Fox News site because that gives me the sort of a a solid grounding of the you know the left and the right but today there wasn't any news oh there was there was almost news there were things that were nearly news let me give you an example here are some of the nearly news stories there's the story that President Trump believes Kim Jong-un when he says he didn't know about Otto War beer now that is almost news well the problem is it didn't happen yeah the fact that it didn't actually happen takes away from the fact that if it did happen that would be news what did happen is the president said he would take him at his word which was clearly diplomatic speak for I'm not going to make this an issue but the news instead of

[2:14]

issue but the news instead of interpreting it in the obvious way really really obvious way is reporting it as though people are saying the president believes Kim jongo what's wrong with this President is he a traitor does he side with North Korea does he like Kim Jong-un more than he likes Americans no none of that is happening none of that is happening it's a complete fake news story let's talk about Jared kushner's um his security clearance so oh there's Big Trouble in this news big trouble turns out that the president ordered security the intelligence people or whoever it is that checks out the uh security clearance they he ordered Jared to get security clearance without going through the normal channels wow
wow bombshell it's a it's a bombshell well when I say a bombshell I mean it would

[3:17]

when I say a bombshell I mean it would be a bombshell if it were illegal for the president to do that but it's legal still if you if you consider all the Terrible Things Jared Kushner has okay he hasn't done any terrible things but if he had done terrible things which he hasn't and if it had been illegal for the president to order him to get a security clearance and if he hadn't later passed his security clearance when they got around to it CU I'm sure they vetted him anyway then it would totally be a bombshell but none of those things happened or are true so it's nearly news it's it's close to news it's in the adjacent property with news but it's not quite news what else we got going on here uh we've got a uh an opinion piece by
by um what's his name why am I uh

[4:19]

um what's his name why am I uh forgetting the most famous person on CNN Anderson Cooper in which he talks about the president's leadership as being and I quote alarming that's big news we've got a president of the United States somebody who's who's got his finger on the the nuclear button and his leadership is alarming it's alarming why because he's made more progress with North Korea than anyone else because the economy is humming because uh because China is is probably going to come up with a better deal for trade what exactly is the alarming part are we alarmed by all the good things happening see that would be news if there were anything alarming but there isn't what else we got oh we have the story about AOC calling out the president's uh

[5:20]

AOC calling out the president's uh differing property values for property tax reasons one assumes and in one context he said his property was worth a lot in another context he said it was worth much less well that's big news that's alarming bombshell well unless the things that President Trump did were completely legal and typical of people in his situation which they almost certainly are now we don't know the details of that story but the most normal thing in the world is you have a low value for the property of a business but the value of the business is the property plus the cash flow plus the Goodwill which would be very big compared to the small amount of the property which is the amount you play property taxes on now I don't know if that's exactly what's going on but I'm pretty sure that when we dig down into it some tax accountant is going to say oh yeah that's just the way we do it

[6:22]

say oh yeah that's just the way we do it that's just the normal way people do it so if any of those things were illegal bombshell big news and that would be alarming alarming but in all likelihood there's nothing there it's like the Cohen testimony man it's going to be a bombshell if he said anything that got the TR the president in trouble but he didn't in fact he was exculpatory and made everything that they anti-trumpers saw for the last three years ridiculous let's see what else we got on CNN
let's see uh why the US may not get answers it seeks from Mueller well that would be a big problem imagine if Mueller did this whole investigation spent you know what tens of millions of dollars took all of her attention for years and what if the

[7:22]

her attention for years and what if the public didn't see the full report that would be a big big problem well unless there was nothing in it if there was nothing especially important in
in it well then it wouldn't be it would be close to news but it wouldn't be news because it would be simply not hearing about things that didn't matter anyway um then there's a story that Hannity may have bought himself a subpoena so there might be something that Shan Hannity maybe almost did that could have potentially gotten him subpena it probably won't happen but if it did it would be very adjacent to almost news and if it does happen probably it won't make much difference in the whole world Hannity will just talk to some people and it will go away but almost

[8:23]

and it will go away but almost news uh and of course then there's the big story on the CNN homepage about the scientists thrilled to spot a huge spider eating an a possum that's news the only thing that would be better would be if a huge spider attacked a hiker and the hiker wrestled with the spider and killed it with his bare hands only to later find out it was actually a very small
spider so um I'm finding that there's no news today and so I would like to change the subject to your favorite topic yes climate change don't beg me I'm going to do it I know how much you love the climate change talk but I want to show you the a type of graph I saw the other
day so you all know what hind casting is hind casting is when you have a

[9:23]

hind casting is when you have a prediction model and you want to know if if you would hyper pathetically or if you had had a model in the past would that model have predicted the past so so that's hind casting so this is today and this is a model of um climate change and you see this kind of model right where they say in the past all of our models would have fit the actual temperature change but that part's easy so there's there's nothing special about that because you would throw away any model that didn't fit the past so the minimum your your prediction model has to do is be consistent with the past so they throw away everything that isn't and they get this range and then it's today and then they say okay the future is harder to predict than the past duh and so the the uncertainty increases as you go out so this gets wider and wider

[10:25]

you go out so this gets wider and wider but here's my here's my question this is supposed to convince me that the predictions have so far been good and they will probably continue to be accurate predictions but that's sort of the opposite of what I see here what I see is this part is irrelevant because it's the past and the models did not predict the past they simply were forced to conform to the past and then suppose suppose you knew that the past looked like this how hard would it be to predict that the future is going to be somewhere in this area isn't isn't this area kind of super easy because youve you have all this history of these slight changes in the temperature what are the odds that it's going to suddenly go Bop or just suddenly go Bop probably not because it's been smoothish changes over time so this first several you know let's say decade do you need a model do you need a

[11:27]

do you need a model do you need a complicated prediction model to know that your temperature is going to be somewhere in this range probably not right probably not you don't need anything you just say it looks like it's going to be in here somewhere now this is the part of the future that's easy to predict this next part where you start getting 10 20 years into the future nobody really thinks you can predict that so you end up with the past which is irrelevant the you know next 10 years which you don't even need a model to to predict and then the stuff after that which no model can predict it's the most useless graph I've ever seen which is presented as proof that climate change is the big problem everybody says for any of any of those of you who are new to my climate change discussions I'm not um I'm not taking a stand one way or the other I'm involved in a long-term project to see if I can deserve what's

[12:29]

project to see if I can deserve what's true and what isn't so I'm I'm approaching it like a let's say a motivated citizen who's not a scientist who's just trying to understand what's true and what isn't and I'll tell you every every time I see a graph like that it's
anyone think warmer cities means warmer Earth well cities should be warming up the Earth because the concrete
Etc um oh yeah so AOC apparently has a list of Democrats who are voting with Republicans and she doesn't like it that's almost news that almost matters do doesn't but it almost does so

[13:32]

matters do doesn't but it almost does so let me ask you this you my regulars on Periscope here you've noticed that I've started to persuade fairly heavily on the topic of um nuclear specifically Generation 4 nuclear designs which have essentially zero chance of meltdown because they're built so they can't melt down and also some of those designs burn nuclear waste so you can actually reduce nuclear waste with these new new types of uh designs and if you were to follow the let's say the South Korea model the reason South Korea has successful nuclear power is that they standardized on some designs so that they can lower cost and it's easier to train people and you can have some economies to scale and all that so if we were to do all of those things nuclear would be the really the only solution that body's talking about that could work now let me ask you this have

[14:33]

could work now let me ask you this have you seen a story about that on the major media lately and why not can you think when was the last time you saw um I did see so I did see Michael shellenberger on Tucker Carlson show and he was talking about nuclear but you don't really see it covered as news per se
se and I'm wondering if part of the problem is that nuclear doesn't create news you there there are lots of these articles about some company or startup or scientist had a breakthrough and somebody thinks something will'll be good but they're all these boring little incremental uh technological advances there's nothing that makes Generation 4 nuclear a a headline what it needs is some politician to turn it into a headline you saw for example that um uh let's say

[15:37]

you saw for example that um uh let's say Andrew Yang running for president as a Democrat is talking about his main focus being um you know robots taking jobs and Ai and and the technological threats now because that's his primary focus that brings attention to the to a topic that's not creating news per se so he he's the news the topic doesn't get as much attention for being as dangerous as it as it is likewise there's some some guy whose name I don't remember some politician who just entered the race to make climate change his primary um objective so that's his thing he's he's the guy who uh uh I forget his name but he's the guy who says I'm I'm just going to make climate change my number one thing now he made it into news so climate change is in the news anyway but he made it more news J JN Lee people are telling

[16:37]

it more news J JN Lee people are telling me Washington
governor so let me ask you this if one of the Democrats one of the I don't know 20 Democrats who were going to run if one of them said I don't know if climate change is exactly what the scientists say but I know Generation 4 nuclear is the solution either way because we need it for economic development we need it for reducing pollution we need it for lots of reasons uh as well as being competitive in the world so I'm going to be the generation 4 nuclear guy but I'm going to be a Democrat how fast would that person get elected it feels like that would be a winning a winning platform because it would be against type but the AR argument would be solid so it's your perfect situation is that the perfect situation is uh to be the uh

[17:39]

the perfect situation is uh to be the uh the man who bites the dog you know the thing that doesn't fit the the stain on the tablecloth the the the Donald Trump in politics you know the person who doesn't fit that gets the news so if a Democrat came out and said look it's Generation 4 nuclear this is going to be my main thing and I know you don't like it but let me educate you it's you know it's safe it's smart it's the only way to go all the smartest people agree let's get this done that would be a tough package to beat that would be a strong package now the question you might ask yourself is why uh yeah somebody saying here Trump is bringing nuclear it's just not being covered well I don't know what it means to bring Nuclear So I talked yesterday about um I mistakenly said Department of Defense but Department of energy Rick Perry I was watching my playback yesterday I said Department of Defense when I meant Department of

[18:40]

when I meant Department of energy um has is has funded through the government a test bed where they can quickly iterate these new designs for nuclear without all the approvals and and the time lag and stuff and that turns out to be the biggest thing that needed to be done if they do it right and if it works it's part of an excellent system for iterating that technology but it feels like it feels like the president is just and this is weird I never believed I would say this but it seems like the president is not taking enough credit who Whoever thought that would happen the the this little thing unless there's something about it that's not so good and I just don't know it that's possible right there might be something about this Rick Perry thing for testing the nuclear designs that's not as optimal as I want it to be but I don't know what that is and and in any

[19:40]

don't know what that is and and in any case Trump should be hyping the beesus out of that because it's so unambiguously smart and so unambiguously the right play it'd be tough to mount an argument against it and it's a solid accomplishment in in terms of building a system that can get us get us out of climate change um the funniest thing that Trump could do let let me tell you the funniest thing Trump could do which would also be very effective and save the world it would be funny and it would save the world Trump could bring together his climate people and have their their meetings where they're trying to update their understanding of climate risks um I guess haer is is ahead of that and the world meaning the anti-trumpers would be looking at that as like a a joke process because they would say all right the fix is in you put a denier in that important position

[20:43]

put a denier in that important position whatever they talk about it doesn't matter cuz in the end they're going to say climate change is a hoax and then you do nothing about it so that's what everybody would expect but what if at the end of that something more nuanced came out of it as in there might be a risk but in any case we should go crazy with nuclear because if you think there's a risk this is the best solution and if you think there's not a risk it's still the best thing you should be doing energy wise right we should be doing it no matter what you believe about the climate so if the president went gungho on the new designs of nuclear as a solution to climate change how does he lose how would he lose reelection could you do it like you'd have to try pretty hard wouldn't you if you went pro- nuclear and sold it as safe designs and you explain to people

[21:45]

safe designs and you explain to people that eats nuclear waste it doesn't create it it eats it
it uh I don't know how you could possibly lose now of course I could be surprised there might be something about it that somebody says sufficient uranium are you worried about the uranium one deal selling all our uranium one of the things people don't understand about uranium is that it's a uh a commodity not as much a commodity as you know say dirt but it's a commodity in the sense that you can buy it so if if Russia buys some of our uranium we we can go to Canada and buy some of their uranium cuz they got plenty we could go to Australia and buy some of their uranium because they got plenty it's for sale you just buy some more so somebody saying is there sufficient uranium globally and the answer is I think the answer is almost

[22:50]

answer is I think the answer is almost certainly you can always get more of it it's not like we've dug up all the uranium
you're saying people don't believe it's safe they have been brainwashed that is correct but that could be changed that could be changed because remember the the climate um alarmists people who are worried the most about climate change they are pro science pro pro pro science they are very very Pro science once you've taken that position you're going to have have to object to nuclear using science and unfortunately the science is not on their side the science is progeneration for nuclear somebody says can you convince Elon what does Elon Musk think about nuclear let's see it's a good

[23:51]

see it's a good question nuclear power will that come up right away no it's a question on quora um which is what does what does Elon Musk think of it uh he feels the efficiency of existing nuclear has been improved and that we should build more nuclear plants uh so what's to convince so so Elon musque is apparently on the same side as 100% of the people people who have looked into it I don't personally know anybody who's looked into it who has a different opinion which is weird because yeah so when when people use the uh Fukushima meltdown and the um you the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl and stuff like that let me

[24:51]

Chernobyl and stuff like that let me tell you the worst defense let's say you're pro- nuclear pro- nuclear and people say yeah but what about Fukushima and three m Island and and Chernobyl the worst defense would be to say turns out nobody died or you know the death toll was immaterial and if you compare that to the number of people who died from pollution and from standard other sources of things there actually millions of people who died from burning coal because it pollutes Etc that's a terrible defense because in order to answer that by saying oh those disasters didn't kill many people you're making people think about those disasters as if somehow that's a continuing problem the correct way to answer that question when somebody says what about all those disasters in the past is to say oh

[25:52]

disasters in the past is to say oh you're talking about a different technology that technology was faulty and it still didn't kill anybody the new technology can't do those things it there if everything goes wrong it can't do that you could have literally just everybody walk away from the job have a have a earthquake it still wouldn't melt down it's designed so it can't now when I say something can't melt down keep in mind you know I'm not a nuclear scientist I'm just paring what I've heard uh you know maybe there's some chance but evidently the the chance is very
um and apparently the Pacific Ocean is fine as well now you wouldn't put one where I don't think we would locate a nuclear plant in a tsunami zone so probably we can figure out how to avoid that

[26:54]

that stuff uh somebody's mentioning the the uh the my pillow guy here in the comments if you would like lessons in Persuasion watch the my pillow commercials on Fox News and I was thinking of actually doing a special Periscope just calling out all of his technique cuz you'll see every good sales technique in those commercials they're they're actually uh yeah Mike Lindell is the owner he does own commercials those commercials are a master class and had to sell stuff I mean he has every technique packed in there and man does he do it well it's it's as and if you think about it it's an improved pillow like how do you how do you get that rich selling a darn pillow I mean

[27:54]

that rich selling a darn pillow I mean that's pretty amazing now uh I will say in uh In fairness I have purchased some of his pillows so I bought a few my pillows and they're better than regular pillows you know so he has a real product and the real product does what he says it does which is it's better than a it's it's far better than a regular pillow um but still the way he sells it is just it's just exceptional he's he's so good at it and if you don't know the techniques you you wouldn't notice how many of them he packs into that the 30 seconds um how many pillows do you buy I think I bought two or four of them I can't
um somebody left their pillow at a friend's house and the friend won't give it

[28:58]

back um now I'm starting to see people people pushing back on green energy because of the so-called density meaning that if you build a nuclear power plant you might need X number of acres for your plant but and that won't be that much compared to if you needed to um have the same amount of energy using solar you would need you know miles square miles and miles and miles of uh solar panels or miles and miles of of windmills and so you end end up chewing up a lot of Mother Earth to create very little energy per square foot compared to nuclear so that's part of the trade-off that people haven't quite appreciated
yet um what are the techniques well I'll just uh I'll do a special Periscope on it I don't I don't want to uh give give you a bad preview of

[29:59]

to uh give give you a bad preview of what I might do
later um my new book I still have to finish writing it I'll be working on that hard for the next few months so it's mostly written I'm in the I'm in the editing and rearranging and and punching up phase of the book so the the basic the basic book has been accepted by my publisher in the sense that it is a book and and will get published uh but still I'm still punching it up now um you know the feature on Periscope that lets me add a guest um right now I turned that feature off because the new release I understand which should happen next week I don't know what day next week but um that should allow me to do the guest feature at the same same time that I've got the Twitter notifications on at the moment

[31:02]

Twitter notifications on at the moment uh and until next week you can't have both of them at the same time and so I wasn't using the the guest feature because I didn't want to turn off the Twitter notification but this coming week those two will work together I understand and we'll have some more
guests do your new books make up for your lost income no they don't they're not even close
what brand coffee do you recommend I don't recommend coffee I'm not a foodie so I I can drink any kind of coffee and I'm I'm fine with it um have Andrew Yang as guest he would be
be interesting yeah Andrew Yang Victor Davis Hansen I you know I prefer I prefer guests that you haven't already seen a lot on television you know prefer people who are have something to say that is a little bit

[32:03]

something to say that is a little bit different than what you're seeing every day on television
anyway uh do I appreciate espresso espresso yeah it's all right lomberg would be great except he basically agrees with everything I say uh I will I will invent I will invite van Jones um I've been kind of waiting for the right topic and I think I have some ideas um no Talib I would not invite um I don't know who Randy Carlson is I'm just uh did I see the Alex Jones Joe Rogan P podcast I did not see it but everybody is telling me I need to see it I I'm hearing it from everywhere so I have to assume that that's worth watching uh all right Gordon Chang I love Gordon Chang as a as an expert on China and

[33:06]

Chang as a as an expert on China and North Korea I don't know that he would come on my Periscope but he'd be an amazing guest um what I really want to do is bring people on who don't agree with me and so it's a little bit less interesting to bring on people who I know what they're going to say and it's compatible with everything I think and maybe you've already heard
swell um that's a possibility Eric swell would be a good possibility now I I I've met him a few times and we have friends in common and stuff so um I I could get an invitation to
to him Larry Elder he'd be interesting but I'd need a topic you know oh Alex Epstein I probably will invite him yeah I think he'll be on my list uh uh what about Greg Gutfeld yeah if he wants to Don Jr would be great Mark

[34:08]

wants to Don Jr would be great Mark Schneider I probably will invite Mark Schneider to talk about nuclear all right so that's what's coming up and I got nothing else and I will oh somebody said Chris Cuomo so now how long has it been since I and also Breitbart said in publicly that the uh Charlottesville uh hoax was a hoax specifically the part where they there are claims that the president called White supremacists fine people which simply didn't happen he was talking about people on both sides of the statue question more generally and then the Press illegitimately said oh he's talking about white supremacist being fine people so I I call that a hoax in public all the time and I've been experimenting ing this past week to see if I could say something that outrageous and be completely ignored by the anti-trump press and they did completely

[35:09]

anti-trump press and they did completely ignored by the anti-trump Press imagine saying something that outrageous imagine picking any other major headline that they've been reporting as a fact for years years as a fact and a notable person who whose name is you know at least well known in much of America says it's literally a hoax imagine them not reporting on that I showed you that and I showed you that as an experiment I did that right in front of you
you um all right oh Ed ladimore would be a great guest uh if you're not following Ed on uh on Twitter you're really missing a good show Ed is one of those guys uh I'm talking about Ed ladimer l a t i m o r e uh you should follow him on Twitter every day he produces content that I like every day that's very rare I

[36:10]

that I like every day that's very rare I mean his tweets are so uh delicious they're just so well written and provocative and they and they they sort of challenge you uh but not so much that you don't like it it's really good stuff all right those are good suggestions I see you making good suggestions and I will try to do some of those people in the
the future Michael Mora would be great you know part of the problem is I don't know how many people would be willing to talk to me if they if they're not on the same page with me um so we'll see and I we'll talk to you later