Episode 453 Scott Adams: Vetos, White Nationalists, Bernie’s Head Injury, Beto the Hacker

Date: 2019-03-16 | Duration: 55:37

Topics

Do CNN people believe their Charlottesville “fine people” hoax? Is it a self-inflicted false memory they can’t see? President Trump vetos congress rejection of National Emergency Gotcha! question to President Trump about “white supremacists” Either way he answered, enemy press would claim he’s racist “Honeymooning alone”, vacationing and traveling alone Two people who want to do the same thing, same time? Beto has acknowledged being a hacker, a thief, when he was younger Does Hollywood support a guy who pirated their work? His hacker name was “psychedelic” something or other The tell for people whom have done psychedelic drugs? They think their barriers are artificial and can be overcome The world around them is a construct of their own minds The “Candace Owens Effect” You’re an observer, a person talking about the news Suddenly you’re part of the story Bjorn Lomborg and risk management aspect of climate change Natural disaster deaths are now lower than ever in history Quillette article on climate change in the United States People are just lining up behind their political party We aren’t making decisions based on facts and reasons “You just can’t know” if climate change is real, what can you do? Gen IV nuclear is the answer, no matter what

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.
See all of my Periscope videos here…
https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL
Find my WhenHub Interface app here…
https://interface.whenhub.com

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

## Transcript

[0:07]

hey everybody come on in here it's time for a coffee with Scott Adams I'm Scott Adams and you are probably ready with your coffee unless you're running on the beach or on your you might be on a treadmill you might be running for the coffee maker right now saying I better grab this quick quick quick quick pour my coffee it's almost time for the simultaneous sip because it is and please join me now with your cup your mug your Stein your chalis your thermos fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me for the simultaneous
up ah so let's talk about the news in no particular order so there was a headline that caught my attention on CNN and it was a conversation between

[1:08]

CNN and it was a conversation between two of the CNN hosts Don Lemon Chris guomo and headline was if you want Trump out vote him out I think this is from their conversation after the show maybe two days ago so this is a headline in CNN from The Two Hosts if you want Trump out vote him out isn't that a weird headline for a news organization because it's not talking about other people it's not even news about anything outside of CNN so it's Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon talking to each other to CNN hosts and then they say well if you want Trump out here's the way to do it does that sound unbiased to you now what kind of news organization starts with well if you want to get rid of the president let me tell you how here's the best way to do it I know you want to use the impeachment but let's let's just use the voting thing because I got you back we'll we'll make sure

[2:09]

I got you back we'll we'll make sure that people vote for The Other Side that's not even trying that's not even trying to be uh objective but I guess nobody's surprised you were of course many of you were following The Saga of uh my attempts and and Joel Pollock is attempting as well to get CNN's attention to see if they'll stop reporting the fake news the worst fake news maybe of the century I don't know I I was I was wondering if the is the Charlottesville fine people hoax the best hoax of the century I'd like to see if anybody else has a better suggestion and you know I'll tell you what I might do maybe maybe we should run some kind of a poll I think I'll run a Twitter poll right after this and I'll ask people what what they think was the best hoax of the whole Century in my mind the

[3:12]

whole Century in my mind the Charlottesville fine people hoax might be the best one well the Russian hoax yeah yeah the Russian hoax might be the best one gosh there're a lot of choices aren't they can you think of any hoaxes prior to the the current political situation Gulf of tonen maybe yeah wmds in Iraq yeah I guess that still wins right but you know the the wmds in Iraq was more about just being wrong um and there are slight differences in the fake news some fake news people are just wrong they just have the wrong answer some fake news is intentional for
for example I would say that the Russia collusion fake news is just intentional in other words the news organizations in my opinion I'm I'm not inside their heads but what it looks

[4:13]

inside their heads but what it looks like is the anti-trump news organizations knew that they didn't have anything but they for profit reasons uh shaded it like there's probably something there so I would say in that case that was a conscious decision by lots of different people who knew what their self-interest was and sold the Russian collusion or a little oversold it but they knew what they were doing they knew why they knew it wasn't true didn't follow the facts but um they were willing to go with it
anyway whereas here's my hypothesis about the Charlottesville fine people hoax if there's anybody new joining us um the news often reports that Trump was talking about the neo-nazis when he said there were fine people in Charlottesville but if you look at his actual quote he's specifically exempts them from that he talks about them specifically and says they're not part of the fine people and that part is just

[5:15]

of the fine people and that part is just not reported so they report it like he was calling racist fine people so I've I've looked into this a little bit and based on my my Insider knowledge if you will of CNN here here's my best guess I believe that they and many of many of the citizens have an actual false memory which is a little different from normal fake news and more interesting really a false memory is sort of like people who were sure that Nelson Mandela was dead because they remember it or people who are sure that some other celebrity died because they remember it specifically but it never happened so there there are other things like that where people remember very specifically a thing that didn't happen and I think that that what is happening with the uh CNN's uh continued reporting of the fake news that they actually they actually believe

[6:15]

that they actually they actually believe it happened so my best hypothesis and this and I've got some pretty strong backing for this don't ask me how but my hypothesis is that CNN actually believes it and they believe it because they actually remember it even though it didn't happen because when you see when you talk to the uh the folks on social media the most common thing that you hear from them when you say that it's a it's fake news and that it's a hoax the most common response is I heard it with my own ears and then you show them the actual quote and they can see with their own eyes that what they heard with their own ears or they think they remember hearing with their own ears didn't happen so there are a whole bunch of people who have an actual memory of an event that never happened and they can you can know for
for sure let me ask you this in your

[7:16]

sure let me ask you this in your personal life since the dawn of text messaging all right so only since text messaging became you know part of our natural fabric of Life how many times have you had this experience you're having a conversation usually with a loved one might be a family member and one of you makes a claim of something that happened or did not ever happen in other words you're doing you're texting back and forth and one of you says but you said you were going to throw me a birthday party tomorrow whatever the claim is it doesn't matter and the other person says no that never happened and then you look back through the text messages and you find out for sure and you find out that one of you had a false memory how many times since the dawn of text messaging have you personally had the experience of having a false memory that you could prove to yourself Beyond

[8:16]

that you could prove to yourself Beyond a doubt you had a false memory because you could go back in the text message and actually see very clearly that you remembered something backwards twice this week to me just this week I I think two times this week I've had the experience where somebody went back in a text message and found something that they remembered very specifically that just never happened now before text messaging yeah so you you see in the text uh you can see in the comments here how many people have had that before the da of text messaging how would you have solved that conundrum where there's the two of you and you have completely different
memories somebody said women do it routinely it's not just women if you think it's just women you have a an additional cognitive thing you need to

[9:18]

additional cognitive thing you need to work through because let me let me back up and put it this way I I often think that the way you can understand where people are in their journey to greater awareness is the people who say um you know I'm right and you're wrong probably are at the lowest level of awareness the people who say who say we we both might be wrong or at a higher level of awareness so I always keep that in mind so anybody who's 100% sure the other side is 100% wrong are probably operating at the lowest level of understanding of just how the world Works um so one of the things I told you is that uh our understanding of our place in reality would change fairly quickly and in the age of trump and one of the things that's changing is our understanding of false memories now we

[10:18]

understanding of false memories now we it's always been a thing for I know my whole life I've been seeing stories about false memories and I've been hearing this great story of a false memory and every once in a while there'll be a big story story about a false memory but here's what diff what's different since the dawn of text messaging you can find out how often it happens you couldn't know before before if you if a scientist came on and said hey false memories are common what would you as an audience member say yeah I'm sure they're common for other people I don't have any false memories but I'm pretty sure other people are having those false memories all over the place look at those other people people man I guess the problem is other people are
are stupid that would have been a perfectly reasonable conclusion 20 years ago 20 years ago if you were you were supplied with many examples of people who had false memories you'd

[11:18]

memories you'd say those idiots but now you have tax messaging so you've had the experience over and over and and email too you've had the experience of proving to yourself that your memory can be opposite and once you learn that your memories are often false as well your understanding of reality changes now uh so anyway so my my assumption about CNN is that the reason their reporting is so sticky on the fine people thing is not because they think it's a clever political Ploy you know it's it's good for their side politically for sure but that's not probably probably not the base problem the base problem seems to be that they remember something that didn't happen now when you show them the uh the

[12:20]

happen now when you show them the uh the actual transcript I have no idea what happens in their heads because imagine you're a CNN host and somebody says you've been reporting fake news used for 2 years and they of course say of course I'm not I remember it happening I'm reporting what happened that that's just clean as they can get and then you show them the transcript and they can look and they can see that it didn't happen it's right there in the transcript it's it could not be more clear what what what would their brain do when presented with that well I'll tell you what they won't do oh I guess I've been wrong for two years let me correct that there isn't the slightest chance that can happen because we're too cognitively invested there is what I would call a cognitive expense to admitting you're wrong in public about something that's so important and you've said so many times the cognitive expense to say you were

[13:22]

the cognitive expense to say you were wrong after all of that is overwhelming so you should not expect CNN to change because brains are just not that flexible this is this is a real um scientific phenomenon and I think that someday there will be scientific Papers written about how people could be so wrong about their memories on the fine people stuff all right enough about that um so TR Trump vetoed the attempt to stop his executive action on wall funding um I'm going to call this a huge win for the president even if the Supreme Court knocks it down which I think they won't my guess is that they won't knock it down they might but he wins either way here's why so remember that the uh the controversial part is is that he was

[14:23]

the controversial part is is that he was um I I think he my point is he still has budget to build wall either way so he's so he'll start building some wall no matter what if the Supreme Court says oh this part of that funding you can't have he'll still be on his way to building wall he's he still got the budget request for the following years there's plenty to fight about um CNN website report is where the dossier I don't know what that's about so my point is that Trump has proven to his base that he will he will go all the way to the mat for the wall I think that's all he has to do I think that his base will be happy that whoever you know if there's somebody else who might replace him as president who's a Democrat there's almost no chance that the Democrat will do more than Trump has done and will do for the Border because so and those will

[15:26]

for the Border because so and those will be the only choices for president you'll have president Trump who tried hard even if he didn't get you what you wanted you could see the effort you could see the risk the political Capital you know the effort the creativity I mean he tried everything it's all there no Democrats going to do that in fact at least one of them wants to take down some wall B [Music] so um do you know that uh Betto means veto in in Spanish did you know that Betto is Spanish for veto no that's not true but you could convince a lot of people it was so there's no truth to that um but the people who don't speak Spanish are going to say yeah they probably use a b instead of a v I'll bet that is what that means yeah Beto is veto now what's clever about that from a persuasion point of view is that no one likes a

[16:30]

point of view is that no one likes a veto so even if even if the only thing that happened was you started repeating those words in your head Betto veto no Betto doesn't mean veto your your brain will lose the doesn't because your brain sees you know the concepts and the people and the things it doesn't retain as well the connecting words like don't and isn't it it just forgets those uh I'm exaggerating a little bit but if you if you force people to say in their heads Betto and veto and it makes you wonder how to pronounce Betto you'll forget is it is it BTO oh it's Beto is it veto beo vetoo and then you'd be mispronouncing his name apparently I've been Mis pronouncing his name for the whole time I
I guess let's talk about the uh

[17:30]

guess let's talk about the uh president's reaction to New Zealand and the horrific shooting in the Muslim Mosque 49 people I think is the death count horrible probably probably one of the most horrible things that's ever happened anywhere if you don't count uh the 50 beheaded heads that they found in Isis territory recently but just one of the most horrific things and then the president had a new chance to say the right thing so it was a brand new opportunity for president Trump to say the right thing on race and on Muslims and to to maybe you know reset reset our belief about the president so you don't you know you would never ask for this opportunity but it happened and it was just a new time to totally reset and say pres this is President Trump this is what he thinks about this and and he's

[18:32]

what he thinks about this and and he's right with the world and and the world had a very specific idea what they wanted from their president you know we all had an idea you know what is it you're going to say that would be in the category of the right thing to say you know it's a it's a big category so there's like the right things to say big category and then there's the wrong things to say another big category so how hard is it to land in the right area in other words if you got big area that would be the right things to say and a big area that would be all the wrong things to say is it really hard to land in the middle of somewhere in the middle of the right things to say I don't think that's hard the president however did not land in the category of the right things to say he he he squandered in other opportunity to make things better and in fact made things worse let me tell you how

[19:34]

so um so one of the reporters asked the president um if they if he was worried about a rise in white supremacy movements around the world okay now remember so you're the president and somebody says are you worried about the rise of white supremacy around the world and just and and keep in mind that a an avowed white supremacist had just killed 49 Muslims in a horrific attack and you're the president and somebody says are you concerned about the rise of white nationalist violence there's a big field of right things to say yes for example yes I'm concerned yes we have to look at this yes we should be looking at this problem yes it could be a problem big big category of right ways to answer that question and what did the president say nothing in that category that big category of right things to say nothing

[20:36]

category of right things to say nothing in there he said no he said it's a small problem he said specifically uh he was he said he was blaming a small group of people quote with very very serious problems in other words he minimized it
man that was wrong that was so wrong that maybe maybe his biggest mistake since I've been following him um remember I said that when uh Sarah Sanders had a chance recently in a press conference to correct the record on the fine people hoax and she she missed it and I said that's just about one of the worst missed opportunities or mistakes you've ever seen within a week the president gets this underhanded soft pitch just like hey are you

[21:38]

soft pitch just like hey are you concerned about white supremacy after a white supremacist just killed 49 Muslims here here's a softball we'll do it a little slower here we'll do it really slow all right get ready get ready to hit it it's going to be really slow here you go here you go and the president did this
he let it go it was the softest pitch anybody ever sent his way all he had to do was say damn right I'm concerned hell yes I'm concerned now why didn't
he wait a minute wait a minute there there's there's a uh there's a Twist to my story before you get mad at me there's a Twist so you say to yourself okay now how do I interpret the fact that he had such a soft pitch and he didn't even swing at it one interpretation is he loves those

[22:41]

it one interpretation is he loves those white nationalists maybe he's one of them maybe he doesn't or doesn't want to make them mad maybe he's secretly a big old racist and he just can't bring himself to say something bad about a guy who killed or or or a category in which one person killed 49 people 49 Muslims so it plays into the worst thing you could think about him but why did he do it is it because he's dumb is it because he didn't see it coming like it was a clever trap is it because he's a big old racist and he doesn't care if you know is it any of those it's something else here's what it is and I'll bet none of you saw this all right tell tell me in the comments if any of you saw this the reason he minimized the rise of white supremacy is

[23:43]

minimized the rise of white supremacy is let's see if you can get the answer what is the reason that President Trump minimized the rise of white nationalist violence somebody's saying never apologize that's not it not worried not it they want to blame Trump for it thank you somebody got it right um watch how many of you did not realize why he got trapped here's the Trap the assumption is that white nationalist uh violence is because of President Trump so the unstated setup to the question is you president Trump are the cause of white nationalist violence that's the understood part now do you think it's going up because if the president said white nationalist violence is going up they would then say the news is the president takes responsibility without taking

[24:44]

takes responsibility without taking responsibility for the rise in white nationalist violence against Muslims they would have reported that the president admitted that he's the reason that Muslims got murdered in New Zealand that's what they would have reported was it dumb for him to play Down the rise in white nationalism probably he blew the call so probably he blew it but there was a way you I mean there was a way to handle it without blaming himself he could have said it's very troubling and you know we cannot tolerate violence against Muslims something has to be done for done about it but let's not blame you know let's not blame the the United States or let's not blame me for it so he was trapped by the question because either way he answered the question he was going to be wrong and he was going to be wrong in a

[25:45]

wrong and he was going to be wrong in a big way so if you heard that and you said to yourself there is no other reason that he would go he would minimize the white nationalist violence there's no other reason except that he must be a racist you're missing the most obvious reason the most obvious reason he minimized it is because they're blaming him for it they're blaming him for it of course he's going to say it's not that bad what the hell would you say in that situation you know if you got blamed for mass murders you'd say well I I don't know that they're going up necessarily maybe you know not that bad so uh so the bottom line on that is that he completely blew it on that question and you can't be happy about that but don't believe that was a simple a simple question that was a question that he was going to get hammered either way there was no right answer for him politically

[26:47]

was no right answer for him politically but he still blew up all right
yeah was going to say something I don't want to say um there's a trend I just saw in the news toward honeymooning alone have you heard that um they use the honeymooning alone headline just to make the story sound interesting but the the larger story was Couples who who are traveling or vacationing alone so there's a growing Trend toward people traveling alone even if they have a partner and the idea is that people don't like to go to the same places they don't like to do the same same stuff and this is part of a larger problem which has to do with the amount of choice we have in this country so if you went back a couple hundred years and

[27:48]

you went back a couple hundred years and you said okay it's it's 7 o'clock at night and we don't have you know we don't have electricity and we're living on the farm there weren't many things to do so the family would probably look at each other and say 'what do you want to do and they'd say I don't know let how about somebody hum and the rest of us will square dance or something and everybody goes well I don't have a SmartPhone I don't have a radio I don't have a TV I don't have the better idea so somebody home and the rest of us are square dance and then the family's like they're squared dancing away and suddenly they're they're busy and they're having a good time Etc because they had no other choices there was just nothing else to do fast forward to modern times I have a million choices of things to do with my time just on my phone alone I've got unlimited like literally infinite things I can do just in the thing in my pocket not to mention my other sources of entertainment the places I can go the people I can see so

[28:51]

places I can go the people I can see so I've developed very specific preferences about the food I want to eat the movies I want to see the the entertainment I want to consume Etc so if you put any two people in the same room and you say all right you two decide what you want to do with each other it's not easy anymore try to find two people in the world who want to watch the same TV show or the same movie at the same time now you can find people who want to watch the same movie but try to find them that they want to watch it at the same time it's not easy anymore try to take anybody out to eat if if you've just met it's easy because you don't try to get too picky the first time you go out the lunch so let's say you're having a lunch meeting with some associate that's easy you just say oh meet me at the Italian place because everybody eats Italian it's just

[29:53]

because everybody eats Italian it's just easy but if you're a couple you never want to eat at the same place at the same time you might both like sushi you might both like Italian food you might both like Chinese food but do you want it at the same time never so what's happened is we've created a world with so many choices that we've become very picky about what we do and when and then you throw throw throw two people together and you say all right the rule is that you have to do something together because you're a couple couple do things together what do you want to do and you can't find things that people want to do together anymore it becomes almost impossible to be a couple and also do things together let me ask you this how do you I want your your your relationship advice let's say you're a couple doesn't matter if you're married living together whatever but you have to be in the same

[30:55]

whatever but you have to be in the same household and um you think to yourself it's let's say it's a weekend or whatever and you think to yourself I think I would like to go do something with my spouse so you go find your spouse and what is your spouse doing when you find them well in every case your spouse is not just sitting there nobody in a couple is just sitting there thinking I hope somebody comes and asks me what I'm doing because then we can make some plans and we'll do something there always is doing something so you find your spouse and your spouse is let's say cleaning the garage and you say hey do you want to do you want to go um for a drive and your spouse says yeah sure that'd be great as soon as I finish the garage well how long will that take well I don't know so you so you say come find me when you're done with the garage so the person cleans the garage and goes and finds you and says hey I'm done with the garage um let's go for a drive what does

[31:59]

garage um let's go for a drive what does the spouse say well I just started watching this show how about after the show and then the other one says I don't want to watch that show so I think I'll go run a chore and then the TV show is done and then you go all right where where are you I'm done with my TV show let's do something and you realize your spouse is at the store so you wait for them to come back to the store but since then you've started dinner so you can't drop what you're doing because you've already started boiling but you see where I'm going right in my experience two people can almost never be on the same page because somebody's always doing something and they need to finish it and by the and you're not just going to wait so you end up doing something and then you know Etc do you have this [Music] problem shooting is great to do together yeah that actually is a good thing to do together now it's not this is not an issue about me and my Rel relationship this is an issue about every relationship and every person it's a

[33:01]

relationship and every person it's a generic oh the point is that being a couple is uh far harder than it ever was before because before it was you didn't have options like if you got married it probably be hard to find somebody else to marry anyway so you might as well stick with what you got today you've got the internet you could find you know other options Etc and there's too much too many choices so it's hard to be a CLE that's all I'm saying all right um let's see what else is happening oh so the Betto news Betto oror is that apparently he was a member of a a hacker group when he was 18 and under teenager and you know the hackers of course can do illegal things but not necessarily so hacking hacking doesn't necessarily mean you're doing illegal things but probably so and then I guess he admitted that he was part of the hacker group because he

[34:02]

was part of the hacker group because he could unlock features of games he could break games so basically we know that when he was a teenager he was a professional thief of intellectual
property so Beto has acknowledged that he was actually a thief because he stole uh intellectual property now here here's the interesting thing about that everybody knows that you know people of a certain age probably downloaded some music or stole some games or whatever it's so Universal that you would just assume anybody in an age group probably did a little bit but suppose you're trying to be a Democrat and to be a Democrat means that you have to be okay with Hollywood is Hollywood okay supporting somebody who was a professional thief of

[35:02]

somebody who was a professional thief of Hollywood material so if your job you know he was basically you know a Serial uh serial thief of Hollywood property now I say Hollywood just to stand in for entertainment it may have been more video games but it's all intellectual property and he was acknowledged to be a thief of intellectual property now of course everybody in his age group you most of them anyway are in the same category but because he's famous for it you have to wonder now the other thing is that his I guess his hacker name was psychedelic something Warrior Psy it doesn't matter what the second word is but it was psychedelic something and so somebody said I wonder if he's ever dropped acid let me let me tell you something let me ask you if you've seen

[36:04]

you if you've seen Betto has he done hallucinogenics has Betto oror ever done LSD or other hallucinogenics go anybody who's ever done hallucinogenics will have an advantage in answering this question what what do you think do you think he's done
hallucinogenics I'm going to say if there's anything I could ever bet on that I would make a a large bet I would say yes now if you think this is going to be a criticism well you're wrong I'm not it would not be a criticism and in fact I might even prefer it it might be a
a plus let me tell you why I feel this is why I feel he's done hallucinogenics maybe maybe you could say in the comments what evidence do you

[37:07]

comments what evidence do you have that he's done hallucinogenics now some of it might be just the way he talks right so he's got sort of a surfer skateboarder kind of a way that he talks and so that alone would make you biased toward thinking oh well he's he's done some some lucid enics I'll tell you what tells me he's done the Lucin genics what tells me is that he doesn't seem to see the barriers that other people see about himself that's always the tell so here's the tell for somebody who's done hallucinogenics they think their barriers are artificial think about it there the people who think that the barrier on their own success are artificial meaning that he can break through them and and in this case he could become a president with a very light

[38:09]

president with a very light resume now do you think that BTO thinks he could become president of the United States with such a a weak resume yeah he does he totally does he totally thinks that he could be president of the United States with a weak resume and and his lankiness and his and his weirdness and everything like that and you know what he's not entirely wrong so the one of one of the uh the Tells for somebody who has experienced hallucinogens is that they see the world around them as somewhat artificial meaning that they know it's a construct of their own mind once you realize that your experience is to a large extent a construct of your own mind then you can start removing barriers so you can say to yourself yes it does seem in the normal world that it would be impossible for me to become the

[39:09]

would be impossible for me to become the president of the United States with my resume but I've taken hallucinogens and I know that this barrier I'm looking at just right in front of me I mean it's is obvious as anything what could be more obvious than you can't become president of the United States if you don't have a good resume that's pretty obvious right not if you've done if you've done hallucinogens it's not obvious meaning that you can see more possibilities so my take on Betto is that he has done some hallucinogens because he acts like a person who doesn't seem barriers that's my take now could be wrong could be wrong about anything let me tell you how weird my world is um let's call this the Candice Owens effect uh I'm going to give this a name because you know any kind of effect always has a a name I like to put a famous name on this I'm going to call it

[40:09]

famous name on this I'm going to call it the Candice Owens effect and the way that goes is that you think you're a person who talks about the news and then you just become the news so the New Zealand Shooter had this long uh uh what do you call it that the document he he read uh what do you call it Manifesto so the New Zealand shooter wrote a Manifesto in which he mentioned uh Candace Owens among among other things and I'm thinking poor Candace Owens she's just minding her own business you know trying to trying to do well for the country managing her career got a lot going on you know she's got speaking opportunity she's got her new show which is great by the way her new show on prageru is is terrific the one I saw anyway um she's just minding her own business and then she sees in the news that there's a mass shooting in New Zealand and it's the biggest news in the world and she's just watching the news

[41:10]

world and she's just watching the news like anybody watches the news and she like ah this is horrific probably having the same thoughts everybody else is like oh my God this is just the worst thing and then as she's watching the news the news starts talking about her imagine what that felt like she's watching the news about something that seems like it could not have anything to do with her and suddenly she's in the middle of the story just minding her own business on the other side of the world and suddenly she's in the middle of this New Zealand mass murder story anyway so I'm going to call that the Candice Owens effect where you think you're an observer of the news but suddenly you are the news and how many times have you seen that happen with me I will talk about the news and then I guess sucked into the story because I said something that was either interesting or quotable or whatever so I had a version of that today uh there's a um in the climate climate change conversation one of the

[42:11]

climate change conversation one of the big names on the I don't want to call him the skeptical side because that's not quite what his his deal is but you've heard of Bjorn lomborg he uh he talks about the economics and the risk management of climate change so he's not criticizing climate change on the scientific part so he's he's not saying that your science is wrong he's saying that your own estimates science are for not much of a problem and which is a point I made which is why I've tweeted him before and so when I watched the story about um climate I'm looking at these names of peoples and I'm and then I start talking about it but I open my Twitter this morning and and I've got a message from beorn lomber so I think I'm just watching the news and then bejor lomberg sends me a personal message and I'm thinking well how the

[43:12]

message and I'm thinking well how the hell is I'm in this weird world where I think I'm a an observer but then I'm somehow sucked into the story now in this case it was in a very minor way he had he wrote a tweet thread which I um which I just tweeted and his tweet thread was in response to the children who left school and went on a school strike to protest not enough action on climate change and it's a long thread in which he's making the case that um the the real risk if you're just talking about risk management is way overblown that they're just doing the numbers wrong and it's pretty obvious to to see that and when I say they're doing the numbers wrong I mean the way it's reported so if you take the ipcc's own estimate of how bad things are going to be if you just hear the news report it you say my God that sounds bad the way you reported it but if you actually look

[44:14]

you reported it but if you actually look at the the ipcc's numbers what it forgets is that the the standard of living increases no matter what I mean it's it's pretty guaranteed because it's been going on forever but the Human Experience just gets better and better and even if there's a part of it that that is getting worse the is going to be dwarfed by how much better things are and the classic example of that is that the deaths the human deaths from things like floods and hurricanes and natural disasters used to be Skyhigh because you couldn't see them coming you had bad structures and there wasn't time to get out and you just got hit and you know thousands of people are dead from the hurricane in the old days but now we have warning we have better buildings we have better roads we have transportation you know and so people just get out and likewise if you get injured the odds of dying from your injuries are now lower because we have

[45:15]

injuries are now lower because we have good health care Etc so if you look at the graph of people who died from natural disasters it used to be Skyhigh and it's gone sharply down every year so right now have the lowest risk of dying in a natural disaster of all of humanity like way way lower it's not even close it was like used to be way up here and now it's way down here my one criticism with beorn is that he I don't feel like he gives enough attention to the other side's best points so you always have to be suspicious if somebody is attacking the weak points and not the strong points so the weakest point of the climate crisis if you will the weakest argument is that they've done a good job of calculating what the economics will be in a 100 years right that's a terrible argument hey we know what the economy will be

[46:15]

hey we know what the economy will be doing in regards to climate change for the next hundred years that's a weak argument because nobody can make that kind of an estimate it doesn't account for technological change it's it's just ridiculous argument so Bor mostly goes after the ridiculous part of their argument but there's another part of the argument uh that I haven't seen him go after and that would make sense because that's not his domain and that is that the climate will get so bad that economics aside you can't live on the planet so that's the real problem so it's gone from this will be very expensive uh you know that used to be what I worried about so my God the economics of climate change are terrible and then then you realize that we'll probably have the wherewithal to get people out of danger before they die even if things do go bad because we got roads and early warnings and money and all those things

[47:17]

warnings and money and all those things but it seems that the climate change argument has is starting to um maybe focus a little bit on the issue of say the the coral dying and things that allegedly and I know there's disagreement on this but things that allegedly would be impossible to come back from in other words that the uh that the environment could no longer be self- sustaining so it wouldn't matter how much money you had because you couldn't spend it you'd be dead because the climate would be unsupportable you couldn't grow food Etc so I don't know how likely it is that those things will happen my my sense of it is that's a pretty low risk but I wanted to read you uh a quote from an article that uh I think I tweeted this morning but this is the first chapter from an article and it's in quillet and it's about climate change listen to this first uh chap first uh

[48:21]

listen to this first uh chap first uh paragraph the fact that belief in climate change in the US tends to correlate with political affiliation and that's true right people tend to line up Republican and Democrat on their belief about climate change so the fact that in climate change in the US tends to
correlate with political affiliation should tell you that we are not objectively interpreting the science that does tell you that right now what's what's the what's the low level of awareness way to interpret the fact that people think they're looking at science but it's obvious that they're just lining up by political parties what's the lowlevel way to interpret that well the lowlevel way to interpret that is that one side are idiots right so that's the way most of us believe right both sides the Democrats and Republicans to the extent that they have different views on climate change mostly they think the other side are idiots that's the lowest

[49:23]

other side are idiots that's the lowest level of understanding about your reality
here's the highest here's the higher level we're not making decisions based on facts and reason the fact that both sides are lined up by political preference is a very strong indication or confirmation of everything that at least psychologists know about human beings it is a complete illusion that people are making decisions based on the facts as they know him so for example one side will say well 97% of scientists agree so I'm taking that side so it sounds like they listen to some facts and said well that's a pretty good fact I'm G to I'm going to go with that but nothing like that has happened because that same fact doesn't work in the other political party if if facts made any difference the same fact would have the same the same impact for both political parties

[50:26]

same impact for both political parties so the only thing we can know for sure is that both sides are ignoring the facts all right so the lowest level of understanding of real reality is man those people on in the other political party are idiots because they can't see the truth in these facts but both sides are thinking that about each other if you if that's where you are saying that the other side are idiots because they can't see the the truth of climate science whichever side you're on you think you have your truth you're at the lowest level of awareness about your own reality the higher level is that neither side are using the facts or the reason now that doesn't mean that some scientists are not using facts and reason because they're trained to do that they have they have checks and balances in terms of peer review and trying to duplicate experiments Etc so even though half the time they can be wrong in science the stuff that's right tends to be sticky and and stays around

[51:27]

tends to be sticky and and stays around for a while um the only rational opinion you should have about climate science is that you can't trust anybody you can't trust the science you can't trust your interpretation of the science which is more important is more to the fact more to the point uh there is uncertainty so the question is what do you do when you can't know so that that's where it gets interesting if if you're talking to somebody and they say you know you can't know so is there any is there any path that you would take under the condition that you just can't know if it's a problem small problem big problem end of the world tiny problem you just can't know so what do you do under that situation well as luck would have it we do have we do have paths that would be independent of who's right and and of course Generation 4 nuclear would be

[52:28]

course Generation 4 nuclear would be that path because they're safe from meltdowns um and they're economical and it wouldn't be hard to start building them apparently the United States is building or us companies are building four nuclear reactors in China so we know how to make nuclear reactors like that's that's something we know how to do so there is a path to remediating the risk of climate uh you've got the CO2 CO2 capture technology that the government has now funded some studies uh funded some research into carbon capture so that takes the carbon directly out of the air if we ever need to and then the government is also funding a nuclear fuel flexible fuel test facility so they can quickly test the best nuclear fuels to build these new types of reactors that don't have a risk of melting down

[53:29]

that don't have a risk of melting down so those are two things that the government is doing right now that are directly on point because you don't have to decide you do not have to decide who has the right answer about climate you can actually ignore that question because the answer is the same both ways you want your flexible nuclear fuel you want to get as good as you can at that technology no matter what no matter what you still want that technology because it's so economically important it's it's going to have an impact on uh pollution in General on energy whether we can have electric cars just everything so that would be the highest level of awareness I would say is to argue it on the level of you just don't know but there might be a big problem and the path is the same no matter what the path is the same no matter what if you don't if if somebody isn't saying something like that they're not really using any kind of logic or or reason to get to their

[54:31]

logic or or reason to get to their decision all right uh I think that's all for now does anybody have any questions I've got some exciting um announcements coming out about my startup uh whenhub and interface and I think you're going to like it so we've got a something exciting coming on that and I just have to confirm a few things before I can announce it and then we'll have fun uh you can capture CO2 but you have to put in more energy in than you get out not if you use nuclear so if you had a nuclear option for taking the uh carbon out of the air you probably would be economical but I don't need to answer that question you know it's important that people are working on trying to figure those to solve those economics uh

[55:34]

right I think that's all for now and I will talk to you later