Episode 541 Scott Adams: The Age of Enlightenment, End of the Republic

Date: 2019-05-25 | Duration: 1:09:19

Topics

“End of the world” fears about President…versus major successes A consistent President Trump theme…he knows what matters “Age of Enlightenment” phrase used by President Trump As predicted, he is changing how we view reality President Trump is teaching us what’s important Military arms sales to Saudi Arabia and support for their leadership Blight area usage, homestead style with 2 lots per owner Kit style homes, like Sears Craftsman homes of the past Twitter poll, ever notice you were no longer following my account Consistently, about 20% have experienced the phenomena Social media has neutralized our democratic republic Ability to influence people without them realizing it Headline construction, clickbait links, influence triggers 2020 election results will be determined by social media Smartest people in the world run social media They have the means, intelligence, time, resources Can message ratios be influenced without people noticing? Limiting messages that reach the top Twitter influencers? Subtly tweak how often they see those messages? Huge upside gain…almost zero risk, mischief results Our democratic process is GONE, not planned, but it happened Assange situation might be “laundering” him through legal system Did the government make a secret deal with Assange? He might run through system and be found innocent YouTube demonetization of some of my videos The issue isn’t money, although it matters Demonetization affects visibility/content of a video The news business intentionally tweaks our “Fight or Flight” instincts Crazy people might be getting triggered MORE than in the past Naomi Wolf’s book on the prosecution of homosexuals in the UK BBC informs her live…she misunderstood her two main points To her credit, she acknowledged their points Judging people by their mistakes… …you hate everyone, including yourself We ALL make mistakes, sometimes bad ones Judge people by how they respond to their mistakes Is Adam Schiff an emotionally scarred victim of childhood bullies? Are victims of bullies more likely to be anti-Trump?

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

## Transcript

[0:03]

open button pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom boo hey everybody come join me hello Missy hello over the rest of you come on in here and grab your cup your mug your jealous your tankard grab your thermos your flask your glass your mug your cup did I already say that hey everybody it's time to join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous it don't miss it don't miss it
it run run grab you cup here it comes ah sublime alright let's talk about a bunch of things in no particular order first of all how how good is the world when one of the top stories of the day is that there was a yoga instructor who was lost in the in the forest I guess in

[1:04]

was lost in the in the forest I guess in Hawaii and then they found her and she's fine that's it the most important news in the whole country apparently things are going so well that that the news industry it can't find any news literally their news was somebody was lost in the tropical paradise but they found her she was fine she'll be teaching yoga tomorrow that's it that's your biggest problem Wow let's talk about a few other things I noticed in some advertisements for Fox News that they're doing something very clever so this is sort of a shout-out to compliment to Fox News and what they're doing is that it looks like they it looks like they're trying to advertise themselves market themselves and brand themselves this is Fox News as having

[2:07]

themselves this is Fox News as having opinion in the evening but more news during the day which is quite brilliant can you see why that's brilliant now first of all that's simply a description of what they do the the people they have on in the evening or I think almost entirely opinion maybe until shannon bream comes on but its opinion in the evening it's mostly news in the daytime now can you see how smart that is by calling it out that specifically it's brilliant because CNN doesn't make that distinction on CNN they're hosts and their opinions are a little bit less distinct so it's very smart for fox news to say these are our opinions so stop calling these guys fake news because those are opinions but our news is solid you don't see a lot of

[3:09]

news is solid you don't see a lot of fake news on the news but you do see some things that maybe you disagree with because that's part of the opinion show and it was very good framing I think that they're smart to do that in no particular order Andrew yang who's running for president is certainly one of the most interesting candidates I don't think he has a chance of winning but you certainly interesting he's got tons of policy ideas and all of them are provocative but he tweeted yesterday something that was practically well it wasn't wasn't Trump like because it was too humble but it was very funny so Andrew yang he tweeted yesterday that the only thing keeping him from being president is his popularity I I think he bets it as a joke it was pretty funny so as a professional humorist I endorse that joke have you noticed how how

[4:14]

that joke have you noticed how how little pushback President Trump has gotten since he became president on some of the biggest issues that you imagined we're going to destroy the world here's some of the things which you expected more disaster or pushback from you thought when he started pushing China on trade that the world would end but in fact the economy is great and and he's figuring out a way to to help the farmers or artists it no big deal I mean it's a big deal for certain individuals and we should do what we can to to ease the pain because the the pain is not distributed equally so if we can find a way to help those Patriots who are taking most of the pain we shed and it looks like the administration is at least trying to do that yeah somebody in the comments is saying Jerusalem moving the embassy to Jerusalem thought it would be the end of the world no big

[5:15]

would be the end of the world no big deal Google on heights recognizing that as part of Israel and to the world yeah no big deal how about canceling the Iran nuclear deal end of the world I don't know doesn't look like it North Korea pushing loose North Korea end of the world nope he was right about that again Paris Accord yeah getting out of the Paris Accord no big deal canceling TPP no big deal yeah canceling NAFTA worked out fine just just think about how many examples there are where Trump correctly knew the importance of something and his critics did not and it works the other way as well so what do his critics Trump's critics talk about the most they talk about is character

[6:18]

the most they talk about is character and they talk about he is failing the fact-checking now that a few years have gone by where he has failed the fact-checking more than anyone has ever failed fact Jackie although apparently 25% or so of the fact-checking he fails is
is we fake news and about 25% of the things that are listed as Trump's lies or actually lies themselves so but even if you accept the 75% is true the president has failed the fact-checking more than any person ever has yeah net neutrality we're still alive so it seems that the president has one skill that is a transcendent skill if you tried to figure out why does Trump keep succeeding in lots of different places of course yes some famous failures too but it's pretty clear that at the moment

[7:18]

but it's pretty clear that at the moment he's on top of the world he is a billionaire he is the President of the United States the United States is doing great if he quit today he in my opinion historians would still rate him as the best president of all presidents if he quit today and I don't think he's done so I would say if you could understand this president with one variable and of course that's always dangerous because we don't live in the one variable world you know everything counts but there's one that seems a little bit more let's say enlightening you know one thing about him that is so consistent across all the topics and really across his entire life that it seems to be the one thing you should focus on which is he can tell what matters look look for that trend in everything that the president does do you remember when I used this example too much when

[8:22]

when I used this example too much when the president first called Jeb Bush low energy what did most of the world except for a few people yeah except for me except for Mike soda except for you know a handful of people what did most of the world say it was a silly trivial insult unworthy of the president but certainly not important turns out it was very important in Trump probably knew that the way he framed people the way he brands people would be effective and important and sure enough it was effective and it was important when the president exaggerated something and the news spends all day talking about how that fact is wrong the president knows that having that fact a little off so long as is sort of directionally correct not important and sure enough the country does not respond to it like it was important he is right

[9:23]

to it like it was important he is right so look for that trend he seems almost psychic in his ability to know what's going to actually matter in the long run and you see for example when he does provocative things people focus on the provocative thing but it's pretty clear that he knows that getting attention is more important and in the long run it is so look for that so the president used the phrase age of enlightenment in a tweet yesterday he said we're in the age of enlightenment isn't that interesting I don't know I'm sure he a B tests stuff like that so I don't think he necessarily assumes that he'll be using that phrase going forward he throws it out sees what happens you know if people respond to it maybe you'll use it again I don't know the database could respond to that will

[10:24]

the database could respond to that will say but how interesting that he's calling it the Age of Enlightenment now if you recall back in 2015 and I like to remind you this often when I started writing about Trump when he was running for office I said that not only would he win the presidency back in 2015 they said he would not only win the presidency but he would change forever the way we saw reality done I would say that that that prediction is probably the most accurate prediction that ever made that that he would change how we saw our very existence and he did now some people may not be happy about it but clearly but it's clearly he did and now he's called it out by name an age of enlightenment what does that mean let me put a little

[11:25]

what does that mean let me put a little meat on that well one of the things that means is understanding what's important that's really central to this enlightenment situation yeah you don't have enlightenment unless you can also tell what's important this president has taught the world what's important we didn't know we were worried about political correctness and social justice worrying and identity and we were trying to be nice to other countries and maybe they'd be nice to us and it was just all wrong pretty much everything we were doing that we thought was right turned out to be illusions and mistakes and the president has largely replaced all of that stuff that was perceptually wrong with things that nobody not nobody but people who were his who were his critics thought could not possibly work out well it can't possibly be a good idea to push

[12:25]

it can't possibly be a good idea to push China that hard I can't possibly be good to push Iran it can't possibly be good to be this friendly with with Israel and so much so that they're naming things after him it can't possibly be this good to here's another one it can't possibly be this good to be so friendly with dictators but it is it absolutely is he's creating the model of being respectful to the dictator so that you could negotiate as hard as possible without without making it personal that model will forever be the model he has set a standard which if a future president violates that standard it's just going to look like just gonna look dumb because he showed that that works Saudi Arabia let's talk about that speaking of dictators this is clearly a case and you saw this again apparently the administration has trying to bypass some

[13:26]

administration has trying to bypass some I don't know some laws so that they could go ahead and sell military equipment to Saudi Arabia and some other friendly countries over there and it seems that we're treating Saudi Arabia far better than you would think we should given the Chokey situation and anything else that we don't like about how they handle their domestic situation but you know that it in in June if the plan is still on in June there is supposed to be a some kind of a comprehensive peace plan Jared questioner I think is behind that and so the president is setting the pieces before June one of the pieces is hey in Saudi Arabia we're really gonna be your friend assuming you do something important for us on this bigger picture you know this something like that conversation is happening because this president had Saudi Arabia's leaders

[14:29]

president had Saudi Arabia's leaders back in the way that nobody expected in a way that nobody suggested even his own team said hey I think you need to be a little tough around Saudi Arabia's leader you know for instance Salman because of the Chokey thing if not if not other things and the president pretty clearly ignored everybody it seems that the president has once again decided that that relationship is important probably important for the larger plans and we may find out what that looks like in June likewise pushing Iran as hard as possible now is probably all just a setup for June when there's the big plan because the reporting now is that Iran's proxies all the people that they're funding to make trouble and in cause armed problems or in the region

[15:30]

in cause armed problems or in the region that they're strapped for cash and Iran has told them that they're going to need to find money elsewhere now that's pretty important because he's softening up around he were moving military assets in were blaming them for things we've with the administration has declared the Iranian National Guard to be a terrorist organization now when you heard that when you heard that the administration was going to call the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization what was your first thought when you heard that I remember my first thought was why did that take so long is there some reason we didn't do that before as soon as he doesn't you say to yourself well wait a minute that seems so obvious after you do it because that creates the mechanism where they can start strangling the the

[16:30]

where they can start strangling the the the finances of anybody involved with the Revolutionary Guard creates another set of weapons that can be used to to make life hard over for the administration so you see over and over again that the president seems to have this almost I don't it's almost an unnatural ability to know what's going to matter in the long run and the fact that he's still president his ratings are improving the economy is doing great the country's doing great seems to be a validation that he has correctly correctly guess what's important alright let's talk about some other stuff on health care apparently the administration is going hard on in three areas on health care to reduce prices each of these categories seem exactly right on target and again when you see this stuff I'm going to describe in a moment your first impression should be why weren't we

[17:33]

impression should be why weren't we doing that before what about this was not available to every other president why why are we waiting for now Jake Novak wrote about this before the administration focused on it and Jake's writing I think highlighted what what was important and then sure not the administration yet the same three points so obviously they were important one was price transparency so the administration is trying to make hospitals and others in the health care field publish their prices apparently they're gigantic differences in prices and if the consumers knew they could make different choices so that's one thing then selling health insurance across state lines apparently that change has already been made or it's in the works so that makes things more competitive and then apparently there have been a lot of hospital mergers that reduce the

[18:34]

lot of hospital mergers that reduce the competition so the administration's going to take a look at that to see if maybe there's something to do with hospital mergers to perhaps prevent them that would make more competition in the area and then I also understand this is not on the list of three but that the Health and Human Services sped up the process for is a Health and Human Services but anyway the government has sped up the process for approving generics because there's some kind of rule where apparently when the second or third generic hits the market the price plunges so they just make sure that they get to that second or third generic option as quickly as possible the FDA I'm sorry yes so the FDA has spread has sped up the process of generics now if you look at those four things I mentioned are not all of them is so obvious that you say to yourself um why are we only learning that the government

[19:34]

are we only learning that the government is getting interested in doing these things now every one of these things is glaringly obvious after you hear about it you know most of us are not educated on all the ins and outs of health care and where the levers are what you got to push but it's pretty obvious after the after they announce their price is that those are pretty good priorities because the market will do the rest all right I've got an idea that I want to run by you it's not a good idea but I want to run it by you anyway you remember when Elon Musk's one of his companies builds tunnels so it's big equipment called the boring company a funny name and they bore giant holes and one of the things he announced was that they were figuring in a way to make bricks and of the dirt that they were digging from the holes and this made me

[20:37]

digging from the holes and this made me ask the following question how hard is it to make a brick what kind of equipment I know chemistry what do you have to mix together how hard is it to make a brick it is that can you buy a brick making machine and if he did is it a whole factory or is it the size of a you know maybe a shipping container size is it tabletop what what exactly does it take to make a good-quality brick you know and I asked myself suppose you have this following model for for helping people at the low end of the economic situation and and it looked like this all right now this is the bad idea the bad version of the idea but maybe you maybe this will stimulate thinking take for example these urban blight areas where the where the land and the inner cities is so

[21:37]

the land and the inner cities is so blighted that it's essentially worthless and if you wanted to buy some people would just the city would practically give it to you just to do something productive on so you do have a lot of land in the inner cities likewise there's lots of land in rural rural areas so we have enough land lands is not really the the gating factor here in most of that land has dirt if you wanted to build a basement for example you would create a lot of dirt if you want to build a tunnel to run some cables or or to run some you know geothermal pipeline or something you need tunnels or you need holes or ditches so you can create a lot of dirt in any kind of building imagine this model alright so now I'm gonna get to the point the model looks like this the government organizes or approves some simple building mechanisms that are

[22:37]

simple building mechanisms that are close to a kit that you can make with bricks now I was just making bricks that are not necessarily just rectangles but rather are a little bit more like Legos maybe they've got some shapes that are easy to snap together could you design single-story homes that are really really livable and really really easy to build if you can slap bricks together you know maybe there are parts of the construction that you still need to bring in outside help because there's a specialty but I'll bet you that if you could take a neighborhood unless I prep some you know prep the let's say the plumbing and the electrical and the sewage you probably could get people to to homestead on a piece of land and say okay here's here's your land and all you have to do is build on it but here's the

[23:38]

have to do is build on it but here's the cool part you give people two plots one to build on any rate they want they can dig their own holes they can make your own bricks they can build on it once built it will be almost pre approved because they'll be building to a model that the government has already blessed the reason I say single-story is because you've got a whole higher risk if you go more stories it's harder to build it it's you know it's more to follow that on it's a greater risk right so just keep it simple and somebody's saying you need mortar and I'm not I don't / specify the mechanism for building I'm just saying that you probably could create a kit like building thing that anybody could learn by looking at a youtube video so every day you wake up and look at the YouTube video and says okay it says put some bricks on this wall and that's all you do that day you

[24:39]

wall and that's all you do that day you just look at the video do it now some people are gonna say Sears had kit homes etc so I know that kit homes work the market has for whatever reason taking them and at the out of the market but there's no reason we couldn't put them back so here's here's the key part you give people not one plot of land but two and they're they're contiguous they can build their own home from from a base home so let's say that let's say that the Builder creates a bathroom kitchen and one extra roof for sleeping in so let's say that's your your basic house let's say it only costs twenty thousand dollars to build just that little core but you build it so they can easily be expanded by the owner so the owner could add another bathroom add another room they just do it one brick at a time according to the plans that are already approved and they can build it in a rate they want in their spare time but then the second plot of land they simply own

[25:41]

the second plot of land they simply own as an investment property so once they built out enough of their own home they can say alright I'll just keep going I know how to build the house though so I'll just build a second one on this second free plot that came with the first one and the second one will be for me to rent or to sell so that you create a place to live with an income because the second plot of land is something that they can they can use their labor to invest in build another home rent it out or sell it anyway I'm going to throw that out throw that idea out there it would require standardized plans it would require some kind of a kit material that the average person who could use it would require land that could be easily acquired it would require the concept that you get two pieces of land and you would need you would need the professionals to to set in the basics so you would need the professionals to put in the sewage the you know the the main

[26:41]

in the sewage the you know the the main electric to the house but you could probably get to the point where even an individual who didn't know plumbing could add a bathroom if you did it right because if you if you always use the same plumbing the same set of things they would stick together pretty easily you know they you only get it's only hard to do construction if everyone is different and your your you have to cut logs and yep not cut logs but you have to cut wood you have to shape things and you've got to take big things and turn them into little things on the jobsite if you never had to do any of that if everything was a set of things that always fit together just right the average person could do it easily you might need inspectors just to make sure they did it right all right so that's enough on that let me talk about a little poll I'm doing on Twitter right now so you have seen it I did a poll and I asked how many people have had the experience of following me on Twitter

[27:43]

experience of following me on Twitter only to have Twitter's system for one reason or another unfollow them so that they had to later follow me again and so I I did it Twitter poll now first thing you need to know is that the Twitter poll is not it's not scientific it doesn't mean that these numbers are accurate in the way that you would like a poll to be accurate all I was trying to find out is if there are a lot of them or not a lot of them and I thought for that purpose it doesn't matter how scientific it is there there either be a lot of them or there won't be a lot of them so here was what I found out so there over 8,000 people have responded to the poll from the beginning from the first you know hundred or so people who responded approximately 17 or 18 percent were saying that they had the experience sometimes more than once of following me

[28:43]

sometimes more than once of following me and then finding out that they had been somehow unfollowed and what's interesting is that as that number of people who answered the poll grew from a few hundred to now close close to I think nine thousand for most of that entire time the the ratio of people who said that their their followers had been unfollowed on my account specifically state around seventeen to eighteen percent does that mean something I don't know it could easily not mean anything but I asked myself that is a very consistent number I would have expected to see more fluctuation I would have expected that maybe it started out being a big number and shrunk over time but it stayed consistent at around 17 to 18 percent now as many people pointed out some developers pointed out and and

[29:44]

some developers pointed out and and twitter themselves had explained this to me as well there is a real situation in which this can happen through normal just normal error and the way it works is if you've got your device in your hand and your your in the app on twitter and you say follow its first recorded in your app so the only place that exists at first is on your phone it doesn't exist at Twitter yet until until that signal is sent to Twitter Twitter you know recognizes that there's probably some kind of a digital handshake that says yes we got it you don't need to send it again now apparently there are fairly fairly frequent times when you lose a connection or just that handshake between Twitter and your phone doesn't work so you can have times when you think you've liked something you think you followed somebody and it didn't get registered at Twitter and then the next time you check is not there so that's

[30:44]

time you check is not there so that's some of it so I would say it is confirmed that sometimes that happens likewise it is confirmed that probably people think they followed me and didn't probably confirmed you know they pushed the wrong button they thought they followed me but they liked it they remembered it wrong so some of it's probably human error and bad memory and all that but I now have I think over 1,500 people 1,500 people said that they followed me and got automatically unfollowed about 18% of all the people answered do you think that 17 or 18 percent of all the people who followed me had a technical error
maybe maybe you know if you added the the possibility of technical errors to

[31:44]

the possibility of technical errors to confirmation bias to the fact that the poll is not scientific so you know it may be it may be skewed quite a bit just naturally if you added together all of the possible reasons why people would have the impression that they were unfollowed could it get to 18% of all my traffic and maybe 18% is not accurate because it's not a scientific poll I don't think so you know I can't rule it out yeah there's no way I can say it's a hundred percent chance that something weird is going on here but as I've said before if you can't tell and there's no mechanism to know so I so I have this question it's it's suspicious it's suspicious by its nature if I can't tell if that's really stopping me or not then democracy or the Republic as we call it does not exist because it means

[32:46]

call it does not exist because it means that the social media companies can do anything they want and they can they can put their finger on the scale any way that they like and nobody's going to know the difference there is no mechanism to check now you may say to yourself well wouldn't it be more obvious if they were doing this and of course a lot of people think it is obvious but confirmation bias is too much of a possibility there to know that just people's thinking they see it means anything doesn't necessarily mean anything but let me let me draw a picture to tell you how dangerous this is some people when I when I made the comment that social media has eliminated really the democratic process for all practical purposes and concentrated it with a few people who can control those platforms people said to me is God's God's got we've always had you know the news and the news has always been fate news so if he went back to the 20s and

[33:48]

news so if he went back to the 20s and read a newspaper about politics it probably wouldn't be all that accurate and so we've always lived in a world in which our democracy was greatly influenced by you know big companies in in in the past it was more just the news in the president it's the news plus the social media so nothing's different Scott you know why are you why are you talking about this but here's the difference that they do not account for if you go back to the 20 years of the fifties or any time in the past or even 60 seventies ratings you could go back to the 90s and it would be completely different than today and the reason is that we now know so much more about how to influence people we know what works in general and we can rapidly test it to find out if it did work and we have so much better analytics we know how to get the exact message to the exact person

[34:49]

the exact message to the exact person the type of message that affects the right person and we can even tell what kind of people might be influenced and and which ones not to bother with because they'll never change their mind imagine all of that technology that knowledge that abilities to measure and to influence people nothing like that ever existed before and the public at large is unaware of it the the average member of the public doesn't know that the technology and the knowledge of how to influence people has gone from you know the right brother is barely getting an airplane in the air to putting the rocket on Mars so if you say it's no different we had newspapers then we've got social media now it's all fake news nothing's that different completely wrong because we didn't know how to do it until I'd say the last several years that's when we started getting really good that's when AI got

[35:50]

getting really good that's when AI got into it and you know that you know that the deep dives into the data when we really knew who everybody was people lost their privacy and we were ability we could tell even a slight difference in a color on an interface or or a headline the way it was worded and we could tell which ones stimulate people and which ones don't now as good as we are at the moment at influencing people consider and I said this yesterday as well consider that we've had we will have had four years from 2016 before the the next election in 2020 these smartest people in the universe were who are the tech people the people work at the big tech platforms let's listen it they are some of the smartest people in the universe as far as we know let's say the solar system and they have a great incentive to do better at

[36:51]

a great incentive to do better at influencing elections they have the means they have the intelligence they have the time they have all the resources and they've they've got everything they need and by 2020 they will be able to completely determine the results of an election let me give you a specific example suppose they found out and I think this is all discoverable and something that they could find out suppose social media found out the people in the electorate the voters who could be influenced so they start with all these people all the people who vote and they know that most of them are going to vote their party no matter what most of them are gonna vote or not vote and there's not much you can change it's hard to turn non voters and to voters it's hard to change people's party but there's some small sliver of people who can be influenced and I'll bet they can be identified

[37:51]

bet they can be identified all right so step one is canvass social media platforms identify the small group of people who can be influenced I'm sure they came i'm sure the both parties can do it i'm sure that this is available information once you've identified that people who can be influenced can you change the ratio of messages they hear from one side versus the other side and could you do that without being noticed well if you took all of the people who were looking at me and you said all right let's hypothetically let's let's mess with Scot we've identified this Scot he's unusually persuasive because he has training and because he has a large following on social media so those two things are first the first flag oh he's persuasive he knows how to do this and he has the large following so it's a big platform so suppose they said why

[38:52]

big platform so suppose they said why don't we just change how his message gets to not the whole group because the whole group is largely can't be persuaded about anything but suppose we only limit his message to the few from the few people who could be influenced would I notice and what would that look like what I looked at my traffic what it would look like is that I didn't go down by 90% because I would notice that it wouldn't go down 80% or 70% or 6050 I would notice that 40 I'd noticed that 30 20 and around 20 I can't tell so if I were going to game the system I would make sure that the only people who didn't see Scott's message are the people who could be influenced and that can't be more than 17 or 18 percent of the public

[39:54]

more than 17 or 18 percent of the public I mean I would be generous probably as close to closer to less than 5% so I can't determine if anything inappropriate illegitimate is happening in my case I cannot make that determination but I can say with complete certainty that if someone wanted to game the system they would look for people like me and you could probably make a small list of the other people that would be in the last year you see Jack pasaba QC Mike Serna on the list you'd see you know you could make your own list of you know 50 people let's say if you took the the 50 maybe 100 let's say if you took the hundred most influential people on one side let's say the pro Trump side and you said the only thing we're gonna mess with is how often the persuadable sliver of the world sees their content

[40:55]

of the world sees their content everybody else could see everything it doesn't matter because it's not going to change their votes could they do that they could certainly identify who the people they don't want me to see the message and they could change for example which which YouTube gets suggested would you know the difference if your youtubes were not being suggested as often to the small sliver of the public then are the influential ones you wouldn't notice you might notice something like what I saw with my 17 or 18 percent who seem to get automatically unfollowed it could be that the people who are getting automatically unfollowed wait for it are the persuadable now I'm not gonna make that claim because I don't have I don't have the sufficient data to say that that's true I'm just saying that it would look kind of exactly like this if

[41:56]

would look kind of exactly like this if there was something going on some mischief but we don't know the fact that we don't know creates the following situation which I talked about in different context whenever you have the following variables you're gonna have mischief the following variables are a huge upside you know you either making money or getting power so there's a huge upside gain that you could get it is almost impossible to get caught and there are a number of people involved the number of people involved is to make sure that there's at least one person who's willing to do something mischievous let's say if you only had one person who saw a big upside pain and there was only one person and they knew they wouldn't get quiet you might say well okay it's one person sometimes that one person will do the ethical thing and they won't do the thing they could if it was just

[42:56]

do the thing they could if it was just one person maybe the word may be the one but if you have a number of people you can guarantee somebody in that number of people is gonna take the free money big upside game either in power or whatever it is that they're trying to gain no chance of getting caught in what situation have you ever seen those variables gigantic upside came no chance of getting caught and lots of people involved when those are the variables when do you not see mischief never in the history of the in the history of humankind you've never not once see in a situation like that where people you know don't jump in and aggressively exploit the system it's what we do we're humans right you would expect nothing less so I would say at this point that the

[43:58]

so I would say at this point that the whatever you thought about the republic and about the democracy is over and we don't have to worry about losing our democratic process because it's already gone now and by the way I mean that sincerely without we don't have the same political system we had 10 years ago and nobody decided to make it that way right we didn't have a national conversation delay let's change our government by really putting the social media platforms largely in control of this stuff nobody made that decision it just sort of evolved that way that's what we got now I've I've said before that if I ever reached a million followers on Twitter that I would largely run the world meaning that because again I I'm a skilled persuader I've studied it I know how to do it if

[45:01]

I've studied it I know how to do it if my platform were bigger and I'm just using a million as sort of my you know there's no science behind that number it's just a big number there's somewhere at around a million followers I would be so hard to ignore that I would become part of every conversation in it once I become part of a conversation starts changing things now somebody said look how big your ego is I'm making a claim that anybody who has my skill set and reaches a million followers is going to have this kind of influence my skill set is simply that I've spent time learning these things it's not that I'm magic it's not that I'm smarter than other people is that I spend time learning a specific skill set anybody could do it now you add that to the fact that that I would have more followers that magnifies the message so here's the thing as we're

[46:04]

the message so here's the thing as we're entering this new age of enlightenment where we understand that voting is not what we thought it was but rather we're being influenced by all these dark forces if you want to get your way the best way to do it aside from voting is to boost the voices on social media that are the closest to your own so I think you're going to see sort of to promote certain voices so that they they have more influence on social media because that's the thing now keep in mind that if it's true that I'm I'm being shadowed by and/or throttled back in any way and I don't have I don't have conclusive evidence that that's the case but if it were true the more users I have the harder it is to make me invisible so as some number of users it would be almost impossible to game the system to keep me to keep me away from people so

[47:08]

keep me to keep me away from people so if you want if you want to get your system back you would find people you agree with it doesn't have to be me but just people you agree with who are persuasive try to boost their social media traffic and then those voices become sort of the proxies for you all right let's talk about let's talk about Star Trek discovery so Jack Sabich asked on Twitter what were people's favorite science fiction shows the people had a lot of opinions as you might imagine I mentioned Star Trek discovery which is on CBS all access pass and I got a huge push back and and I do know that at least there's a huge number of people who are seriously mad about that show because it's too politically correct now it is politically correct in in a sense that they make a female character of the most ass-kicking character but that's

[48:10]

most ass-kicking character but that's all all science fiction the entire genre of science fiction has gone to a female centric model where the women are the badasses and they're the ones who are beating up beating up the aliens and stuff so that part i'm just started getting used to yeah it's probably a phase that society is going through but the reason I like it is the first season was confused and wasn't that great so if you only watched the first season and then you bailed out you missed the best second season ever the second season introduces a new character Captain Pike who is just great but what I like about the show is they they have the best actors the person who plays the main character Michael who is she's a woman but her name is Michael for reasons that are not explained she's a great actor or do you say actress I don't know I don't know what is the proper term but all of the actors are the best that I've seen in

[49:11]

actors are the best that I've seen in the sci-fi ensemble and the effects the story is the actors second seasons great first season yeah now let's talk about Assange somebody on Twitter sent me some articles showing me that both Rand Paul and Rudy Guiliani not too long ago in the in the not distant past have suggested that Assange maybe not go to jail for different reasons Rand Paul was suggesting that that we offer a pardon the government offers a pardon in risk in return for whatever he knows about Hillary Clinton's email separately Rudy Giuliani was making the point that you couldn't really criminalize what WikiLeaks or Assange did because it's the same thing that the New York Times and other organs do all the time and so that was more of a legal opinions Rand Paul was more of a practical political

[50:12]

Paul was more of a practical political opinion Giuliani he was more of a preliminary obviously not a deep dive but a high-level legal opinion so remember I said before that this whole Assange situation could be laundering him through the process with the understanding that there's no way he's ever going to get convicted for anything in return he may be giving up some secrets but because there would not be a deal per se that you know we were aware of maybe we never even know the government made a deal the government would take a lot of heat if it made any kind of a deal with Assange there are enough people who wanna sonj in jail or executed that it would be very awkward for our governments say ah we made a deal but there are deals and then there are deals and it's possible that the deal could be to charge him with things that they know

[51:14]

to charge him with things that they know full well could never get a complete jury to agree on because that would launder him through the system nobody could say we ignored it nobody could say we he was above the law nobody could say that the government did not act aggressively to to try to to put the greatest harm upon him it would look like that but at the end he would be a free person at least in this country he'd still have problems with other countries I think but yeah we would have run him through the system and then we would say all right well maybe we don't like how it turned out but we do respect our own legal system for the most part and that would that would really hurt
all right so what else we got going on here somebody asked me why I cared if YouTube demonetised some of my videos

[52:14]

YouTube demonetised some of my videos it's a fair question so I think I'll give you a fair answer in the context of that is that since I've said I have a few money and what's the point of needing to be deep needing to be monetized if you're not doing it for the money completely favorite question here's my complete answer the deep monetization is more to do has more to do is about more than money the money of course matters and it is an incentive I would work harder for more money even though I have money if you don't understand that you don't understand human beings it doesn't matter how much money I have I would still work harder for more money in other words if I were monetized I I would have moral I would more likely do let's say a second video in the afternoon instead of whatever else I was going to do all

[53:15]

whatever else I was going to do all right I'm almost sure I would still do one a day because I enjoy it so much but I might do more I might put a little more effort into it I might improve the quality of the production I might buy a new microphone at the moment a hundred percent of my monetization which comes through patreon for people who still are ok with patreon it comes through these super hearts that you can do on periscope if you click the super heart you can donate money and then the monetization that I just turned on for YouTube just to give you a sense of scope my total lifetime monetization on YouTube which has only been this past week is a little bit over $200 right so just so you know what monetization means in my case about $200 over three days I think so essentially all of my monetization goes to pay for my

[54:16]

monetization goes to pay for my assistant who moves it from the periscope over to YouTube ads as captions etc and for improving the production so we're a long way away from me actually making anything like money at you know all of the monetization that I expect to experience over the next year would be more related toward improving the product so yeah I'm not expecting to make a profit on it but if I did let me let me say this as clearly as possible I would love to make money on this or anything else I'm a capitalist so if I do more work and people like it and that causes me to make more money then I'm very happy and I'm more likely to do a better job but the other point I was getting at is that the D monetization I'm pretty sure I think this is safe to say would also affect its visibility in other words when YouTube says we suggest this next video because you

[55:18]

we suggest this next video because you watch this one it seems unlikely to me that they would suggest demonetized videos because the reason they got demonetised is that they're not as suitable for the general audience as an advertiser would like them to be so it makes sense to me that demonetised and less visible are sort of the same thing right so it does matter it if you're deep monetize let's answer the question this is a random point you saw I tweeted last week I think a study that said that racism in the United States is sharply down under trump and was not sharply down under obama now you have to be careful of this kind of science because it just might be wrong so I would wait for more confirming studies to feel comfortable that that's true but people said well how could it be true that there could be more crazy people

[56:20]

that there could be more crazy people doing violent mass shootings at the same time that racism in general is down and I think that those are completely compatible one this crazy shooters are literally crazy people crazy people are more likely to be triggered because the news business is stimulating our fight or flight instincts so you would expect that people most sensitive to having their fight or flight instincts tweaked most sensitive to being you know radicalized online it would be crazy people and sure enough crazy people are doing more crazy stuff because everybody's amped up like whatever you were feeling about politics five years ago I'll bet you feel more about it now you might not care more but the way you feel is probably higher so you could easily have the crazy people being triggered at the same time you wake up in the morning you see your neighbor was some different

[57:21]

see your neighbor was some different after the ethnic group and you're better than you've ever been so my experience is that racism at least against blacks and against Hispanics it feels like it's down you know my my regular life I just don't see any signs that anything's getting worse for racism against those groups in particular but of course there's greater racism against white people I think that's that's obvious it's just that there's a different level of sympathy when it happens to the groups that people think are running the Patriot patriarchy that doesn't mean it doesn't exist it just means that people don't care as much yeah somebody's I like this quote that who said this first the racism that the demand for racism is outstripping the supply was that greg gutfeld who said that that that the news

[58:24]

gutfeld who said that that that the news business has to go out and you know generate some racism because they need it for the news but there's just not enough of it happening so they've got to go chin up some get their own racism going by the way I've agreed to go on Candis Owens show but I might wait until my closer to when my upcoming book is end oh my god somebody's somebody's reminding me poor Naomi Wolf I died a thousand deaths I hope you saw this story so author Naomi Wolf wrote a book which I think it was about the prosecution of homosexuals and England back in some period and she was doing a BBC interview now and you know because I'm an author and because I've gone on many book tours and because I'm going to be going on another one this year I I could feel the pain like

[59:24]

this year I I could feel the pain like it was so personal to me it really hurt so what happened was she goes on the BBC to talk about her book and it turns out the two really important concepts she misunderstood which cause really the main premise her book to be completely flawed and in summary there were there were there's a phrase called death recorded she interpreted meaning that they were executed so she thought well there were lots of executions of homosexuals and that was an important point that I guess was part of the theme of her book turns out that that word that the phrase death recorded was an old-timey way to not specify what happened meaning that you could record the death without killing the person apparently that was the the common usage of the term as they wanted to say well we'll record it like we killed you but we don't want to kill you

[1:00:25]

killed you but we don't want to kill you so we'll just write down that we killed you or something like that I may have that wrong but the point of it is that on a live BBC interview this book that she probably worked on for a year or two or whatever she she's completely unmasked for her central theme just being wrong and I I couldn't even get to the end of the interview to her credit and and a lot of credit how often do you see people sort of trapped about the facts on live TV or a live interview and they just lie typically when people get trapped with a fact check they just change the subject or they just lie but Naomi Wolf hears this probably realized that she's totally you know in trouble and she and she just says she says well

[1:01:25]

and she and she just says she says well that's an important fact that we should research so she actually immediately acknowledged that she could be wrong and that she needs to look into it now here's my take on that and I'm going to give you the author's take I don't expect you to adopt this opinion because I know it's kind of fun to watch people suffer in public my respect for her act we went up because she she accepted that at the hardest possible time I mean that took some stones to simply even acknowledge that that could be the case now of course she's assumed she'll do some research and maybe maybe we find out she's right maybe the BBC goes wrong but the fact that she she took that like an adult and she accepted completely the

[1:02:27]

an adult and she accepted completely the you know the possibility and said she would look into it my standard is not to judge the mistake and I've told you this before if you judge people by their mistakes you just end up hating everybody including yourself because everybody makes mistakes but if you judge people by how they respond how they handle their mistakes you have a much more useful standard and you know there there's more to the story she'll she'll have to deal with this maybe forever who knows but the way she handled it initially seemed brave and and somebody who was in control of her ego and had an appreciation for the truth even beyond her own well-being so that's what I saw so I would say maximum respect to Naomi Wolf for for just

[1:03:27]

respect to Naomi Wolf for for just taking a bad situation in a graceful way very impressive so I would judge her by that not by whether the book has a mistaken all right there was something I knew I wanted to talk about that I wrote down and probably can't find it now yeah all right I think that's all they're all I have to talk about today oh yeah old old nads so Jerry Nadler fainted had some kind of a health scare in public yesterday now I'm not going to be happy about anybody's health problems but I have to point out that President Trump is the luckiest guy in the world because of who his enemies are if your enemies are literally collapsing you know Hillary Clinton was the first one to collapse and now Adler's like literally collapsing it

[1:04:29]

Adler's like literally collapsing it really doesn't it's not a good look for the opposition right now again I don't want to make fun of anybody's health problems and you know I hope that he's I hope he's fine health-wise but you can't overlook the fact that the the quality of the president's critics is getting worse and worse I think it was Faraldo who said on the 5:00 yesterday that that the President had the most unattractive critics now when he said unattractive I don't know if he meant physically or just the whole persona their character I think he probably meant it comprehensively but Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and now Pelosi being that I would say the faces of the opposition are really problematic for people who want to be on that side because even if you agree with Nadler people are team

[1:05:32]

you agree with Nadler people are team players and they feel that anybody on their team is a reflection of themselves sort of like an accessory you know you put on your own outfit but you know your team is your accessories and Nadler is a not a good as accessory for most people they're happy to agree with his opinions about the president but it's hard to promote him as your brand because he's he doesn't have a good look he doesn't have a personality that you love he's he's just not very likable in his public persona and Schiff is the same thing Schiff is is odd looking and I've noticed that a number of the president's critics the Democrats are unusual-looking sad that coincidence because I said this the other day I've said that I believe that's people who have the most genuine hatred for the president are people who have been

[1:06:34]

president are people who have been bullied in their life which is no laughing matter right now do you imagine that Jerry Nadler has ever been bullied in his life he is short and stout and not a good-looking guy well most certainly all right because we live in a cruel world and almost certainly he has been bullied in his life how about Adam Schiff do you think he's ever been bullied in his life probably I mean most people have been bullied so it would be hard to find people who haven't blumen Blumenthal yes Blumenthal do you think Blumenthal big critic of the president do you think he's ever been bullied in his life I mean I'm trying not to be mean but it's hard to overlook that the the critics who are the most vocal and out front about this president do have a look and again I'm not trying

[1:07:36]

do have a look and again I'm not trying to be mean I don't mean this as an insult it's an observation there is sort of a look to the people who have what seems to be an emotional hatred of the president now I would I would exclude as I did yesterday Chuck Schumer Pelosi and a number of other people there are a number of people who are just legitimate critics of the president they're sort of professionals you know I don't see Pelosi as somebody who was necessary bully does get you're at least not more than anybody else I don't know that Chuck Schumer was bullied as a kid but neither of them seem like they're emotionally involved they seem like they're doing they're professional critics Nadler Blumenthal Schiff they'd always seem like that they seem like there's something else going on now some of the younger ones like SWA well and AOC I they also seemed like professionals when I sees while while talking about the president does it look

[1:08:39]

talking about the president does it look to you then soir well was bullied as a child and he's got an emotional problem with the president no I don't see it I see swallow world doing the things that makes sense for somebody who's a politician on the other side saying the things you said is some of them true some of them seem a little exaggerated but he doesn't look like he has a mental problem he doesn't look like he's emotionally involved Ted Lou same thing I would say Ted moon is not emotionally involved he seems like he's he's just playing his part all right so that's all I have to say today and I will talk to you all tomorrow