Episode 543 Scott Adams: Teaching You Tricks for Spotting Fake News, While Others are Duped

Date: 2019-05-27 | Duration: 33:35

Topics

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Rough Transcript

This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

Transcript

[0:07]

pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in here Chris it’s good to see you it’s been so long Beth hi baby Tyler Kevin it’s all great to see you and I know why you’re here it’s for the coffee but it’s also for the learning and when I say learning I mean I even put on my professor sweater to make it extra impactful but first before we get to that it’s time for something I like to call the simultaneous F and it starts when you grab your cup your mug your glass your Stein your tankard your chalice your thermos perhaps a flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous it oh yeah a little reminder for those of you who would prefer to watch this content on YouTube this is the live version on periscope I do every morning but within

[1:08]

periscope I do every morning but within an hour or so or two it will be downloaded and then uploaded to YouTube and you can find it by searching for real coffee with Scott Adams make sure you put the real on there real coffee with Scott Adams and if you watch that it’s monetized and that’s good for me to do but if you like to watch it live this is the only place to do it so we’re going to talk about Ian Bremmer first and then I’m gonna give you a lesson on identifying fake news such as the Ian Bremmer tweet if you are not up on the news let me tell you what happened so Ian Bremmer who is president and founder of Eurasia group and a political science professor at NYC also a frequent guest on new shows has a big big footprint on Twitter as well so you’ve probably heard of them

[2:09]

as well so you’ve probably heard of them you’ve probably seeing him talking about the stuff on TV so he does a tweet yesterday of the day before in which he says and by the way this is not true so this is just what the tweet said Kim Jong gun so he attributed this to Trump so he tweeted as if this were a quote from Trump wall Trump is over and was over in Japan or is over there he said that allegedly that Trump said Kim Jong gun is smarter and would make a better president than sleepy Joe Biden now first of all the first thing you need to know is that’s not true President Trump did not say that but what is true so apparently Ian Bremmer took the tweet down after there was a some confusion a number of reputable

[3:12]

some confusion a number of reputable reputable news sites apparently retweeted it as if it were true and the Internet many people on the internet thought it was true I think his comment was that it was a sort of a comment on the state of the news and social media I’m paraphrasing but but that’s all the embroider said about it I like the fact that he’s not saying too much about it which makes it kind of funky so here’s my take on this was clearly now that we know that it was not real we know I think we can say this was some some certainty that it was intended as parody in other words it was a tweet which was supposed to be sort of in the let’s say in the general field as something that the president might have said and that’s the joke the joke is that it’s outrageous but it’s not so

[4:15]

that it’s outrageous but it’s not so outrageous given the things that President Trump has tweeted or said in the past it’s not so outrageous that it’s obvious that he didn’t say it it just wasn’t obvious and so I think as parody it fell short meaning that it didn’t quite hit the zone now the zone for parity is anything that even a dumb person would know is just a joke so so the line of parity is starts with everybody can tell it’s a joke all right everybody knows that’s a joke no way that’s real it’s clearly just for fun so that’s the starting place for parody but parody can sort of stretch into another zone that’s a little more dangerous and the dangerous zone for parody is where dumb people can’t tell the difference smart people think is hilarious because they say uh that’s obviously a joke this couldn’t be true in the real world it’s

[5:16]

couldn’t be true in the real world it’s so funny that somebody made a joke that’s so close to reality that dumb people can’t tell the difference now that’s a dangerous form of a parody but it’s still parody its intended as a joke the smart people laugh dumb people get confused and that’s part of the joke part of the joke is that dumb people can’t tell the difference Ian Bremer’s attempt at parody and I’m gonna call it parody some of you are going to disagree with me but pretty pretty firmly confident that it was intended as parity and the problem was that even smart people wouldn’t necessarily know that one was supposed to be a joke so as parody it was a complete failure because it was too close to the original now you should you know we could say let’s give him some credit for being so close to the original voice that even

[6:16]

close to the original voice that even smart people can’t tell the difference so there was definitely some art that went into the tweet the meaning that it confused even smart people now I didn’t see it until they had already been taken down and people knew it was not true so I didn’t have an opportunity to find out if I would have been fool by it but I think I would have been fooled by it I think it would have fooled me if I just saw it in the wild I liked I’d like to think that at least a little flag would have going up and that the little flag would have said ah maybe I should wait on this one I’m gonna wait for a little confirmation on this one I might have been smart enough to do that but I probably would have thought it was mostly true so what do we what are we making this the president has weighed in and thinks it’s outrageous and maybe the libel laws should be changed but here’s my take on

[7:18]

should be changed but here’s my take on this I am familiar with Ian Bremmer from Twitter we’ve exchanged some tweets in public so I also know that his Twitter feed is his Twitter feed is usually at least tongue-in-cheek a little light-hearted yes you know serious topics as well but is it’s very common for Ian Bremmer to be using humor and I won’t you sarcasm that sort of thing in his tweets now if you didn’t know that and the first time you ever came in contact with his material was to see that tweet that would be out of context because you don’t you don’t know that he does humorous tweets so I probably would have been at least alerted because I know the context but I think I still would have been fooled so I would call this simply a mistake meaning that he meant to hit the parody

[8:20]

meaning that he meant to hit the parody zone missed it by a hair but that hair is a big deal if you miss it you’re really missed it so it doesn’t matter that he barely missed it he missed it so he took it down which was the responsible thing to do he is acknowledged that it was not real he has not as far as I know has not apologized do we require an apology mm-hmm I don’t know it was a mistake now he’s so he has said that it’s a it’s it’s a comment on the news that anybody would believe it it’s sort of a comment on our current situation and I actually or somebody says he did issue an apology I haven’t seen the apology then somebody else in the comments was saying he doubled down let’s just say it doesn’t matter he did say it wasn’t real he took it down he said it was a comment about

[9:21]

it down he said it was a comment about the world which I accept I think it was a comment about the state of how people will believe just about anything oh so just about 10 minutes ago he issued an apology look let me be current and let’s just search for him and let’s see if he tweeted it so Ian Bremmer says this is one hour to go he says my tweet yesterday about Trump preferring Kim jong-un to Biden as president was meant in jest okay so that’s that’s what I told you before before he said it clearly this should have been obvious the president correctly quoted me as saying it was a completely ludicrous statement I should have been clear my apologies apology accepted apology accepted he did his apology within the 48-hour window he clearly

[10:22]

within the 48-hour window he clearly said what he got wrong and in this case it’s implied what he would do in the future it’s a good apology should be sincere you should acknowledge what you did wrong what how it hurt people essentially and then you should say what you’re gonna do later to make it better now in this case the what you’re gonna do later is just you know not do this so he doesn’t really need to state that that would be optional in this case I would say apology completely accept it not that not that he needed to apologize to me necessarily so he just said my apologies took responsibility told us what he should have been told us what the mistake was BAM done right we should be done with this so remember my standard my standard at which I recommend to all of you is that if we judge people by mistakes we end up hating everybody

[11:23]

mistakes we end up hating everybody because we all make mistakes and people don’t make mistakes like this intentionally clearly he wasn’t thinking I’m gonna fool the world into thinking this is real I’ll get away with this cuz obviously it’s not something you could get away with it’s you know there’s too much visibility on the president so so it was clearly a mistake and it was not one day he made consciously so you can’t judge him by something he wasn’t even aware of he was doing but you can judge him and I would recommend that you always take the standard you could judge him by how he responds to his mistake he fairly quickly took the tweet down he clarified he apologized 100% acceptable Ian if you’re watching this thank you and it was actually a good lesson on fake news but let’s take a sip before I go to the whiteboard ready sip so I want

[12:30]

go to the whiteboard ready sip so I want to give you a quick lesson on identifying faint news here’s one of the most important lessons you will ever have in your life so here’s the big picture let’s start with this on this miss dimension that we have stimulation just to how interesting something is and how compelling it is and then we have time on this dimension so here’s you your normal interest and stimulation in events will go up and down on your board you hear your board hear you’re interested here you’re really interested in here your board a little bit now you get interested so your normal life is to injure him to interest the real news is mostly below your boredom line meaning that if the news is simply gave you information about what’s happening every day you really probably wouldn’t be interested at all because your life

[13:30]

be interested at all because your life is kind of interesting the news if it doesn’t affect you personally and that’s most of the news not that interesting so you couldn’t have much of a of a business model of the news when it’s more boring than anything you’re doing during the day why would you tune into that now every now and then the real news is so interesting that you really do have to tune in there’s a disaster a terrorist attack or hurricane so sometimes the real news is more interesting than whatever you were doing on your own but it doesn’t happen often sort of a twenty to one situation twenty twenty times it’ll be boring and one time it’ll be interesting but fake news has a completely different graph fake news is pretty much permanently more interesting than your life so the fake news you can’t look away it’s like what are you kidding me that happened now

[14:30]

are you kidding me that happened now every once in a while the fake news will be maybe you know less interesting than whatever you’re doing but it’s not often so here’s the first rule for identifying fake news all right you ready now I want to tell you this is not a hundred percent rule as in every time this is true it’s fake news doesn’t work that way but it’s a really really strong indicator and it’s probably a ten to one or twenty to one indicator meaning that if you treated it as if it were true you’d be right ten times and wrong maybe once and you would know which that once was necessarily but if you see a news story that is so provocative then is more interesting than your normal life and you can’t look away there’s probably a ten to chances not true now when you saw the Ian Bremmer fake quote that was meant in

[15:32]

Ian Bremmer fake quote that was meant in jest as he explained but before you knew it was meant ingest because it was poorly executed it looked like maybe it wasn’t what did you think about that did you say to yourself oh my god did the President of the United States just say that a brutal dictator Kim Jong Il would be a better smarter president than Joe Biden did that seem like something that could be real well unfortunately that was the problem the problem was it felt sort of real it felt completely within the realm of things that are real that was the problems that’s why that one was hard to tell but generally if you see something that’s extraordinary it’s not true all right so the first your first reaction to an extraordinary story should be okay it’s extraordinary therefore there’s a ten-to-one chance it didn’t happen okay so that’s the

[16:36]

it didn’t happen okay so that’s the first rule if it’s extraordinary there’s a ten-to-one chance it’s not real and that you’ll later find out it wasn’t here are some more tips on spots of the fake news yes I do have a whiteboard with two sides MVB anything made from my two-sided whiteboard that I made myself quite prominent here’s the more ways to tell things that are credible and in this case I don’t mean true I mean credible meaning that it has the quality that it’s believable even if it’s not true because sometimes you can be wrong but things that are credible are disasters if you hear that there’s a disaster that’s actually happening or happened probably true names and places usually true not every time but usually you know who was involved and usually you know where they were

[17:37]

you know where they were so that kind of news you can usually depend on that’s usually true all right here’s the here’s the key one I put it in a different color reported by both sides if your news is only reported by let’s say anti-trump media let’s say it’s reported as true on MSNBC and reported true on CNN and reported true in the New York Times but it’s either not reported at all or reported as false on fox news and Breitbart is it true or is it false the answer is almost every time it’s false and it works in the reverse if it’s reported as true on Fox News or Breitbart but it’s not reported as true on CNN and MSNBC probably not true so I would look for the four point check I would say if these four

[18:39]

check I would say if these four organizations and these are just sort of proxies for you know right-leaning your left-leaning but if these four all reported the same Breitbart Fox News MSNBC and CNN if they all report it the same almost certainly true this could still be wrong but almost certainly true if only one of those two sides reports it as true and the other one says it isn’t probably not true it doesn’t matter which side it is this reporting it is true which side says it’s not true here’s some other indications of fake news predictions are pretty much always fake news because people can’t predict some of the biggest things in the world news wise are based on predictions climate change is based on predictions now it might be true that and probably is true that the science is roughly right and that co2 is being added by

[19:41]

right and that co2 is being added by humans and it has some impact on heat and we should care about that and make sure we’re checking that out the predictions though of you know in this year the the oceans will swallow us all up or whatever the predictions are those are far more likely to be fake news because we can’t really predict that well so the current reality might be true might be false but more likely to be true if it’s the current reality if it’s a prediction we don’t believe it at all predictions are terrible very unlikely to be true mind-reading you see continuous mind-reading especially on CNN and the anti-trump of press the reason you see so much of it is that the real world is not serving up enough bad news about this president the real world is giving him a good economy and success and defense and trade wars or at least going in a direction we think could be productive so the real

[20:41]

think could be productive so the real world is just not serving up enough bad news so the anti-trump press starts finding bad news through mind-reading and they will say such things as he as Nancy Pelosi got under his skin we don’t know that we don’t know his internal mental state because he didn’t act like that on the outside how would you know that on the inside he’s in some kind of turmoil you don’t know that and it’s unlikely that given all the things that this president deals with consider that the size of the scandals the size of the risk the size of the rewards the size of the issues that the president deals with do you think that Nancy Pelosi is little comments got under his skin it probably is the least important thing that happened to him all year so whenever you see somebody saying that they know what somebody’s mental state is or what they’re planning or what they really thought the first thing you should say to yourself is I don’t know

[21:43]

should say to yourself is I don’t know probably fake news not every time because we are humans and we have to make assumptions about what other people are thinking and feeling in order to work you know and operate in the real world and sometimes we’re right on the obvious stuff but when it comes to the news mm-hmm mind reading is failures the way people frame things is not the news because you can take the same set of facts and frame them positive or frame them negative do not be fooled that the way people are presenting the facts is truth because people present things to tell a story even a photographer who is just taking a picture this is the Peter Duke theory they even a photographer is not just taking a picture and pictures don’t lie never that never happens the photographer is deciding which picture to show you which picture to take had opposed it what angle was story to tell

[22:43]

opposed it what angle was story to tell so even a photograph is a narrative even a photograph is framing something a certain way so framing is not news that’s somebody’s opinion and they’re trying to manipulate you with their framing quotes quotes I wouldn’t believe unless you actually hear them if you hear it on video it’s probably true but we’re actually entering a phase in which even that is not reliable because now we see that we can create these so-called deep fakes where you can put words into somebody’s mouth that they never spoke and it’s gonna look really real so you can’t even trust quotes anymore even if you’ve seen the video I would say at the moment probably 99% of what you see on the video as a quote is true but it might be taken out of context because I don’t have to go too deep into your

[23:45]

don’t have to go too deep into your memory banks to tell you that there are plenty of times when part of a quote was was accurately given but if you leave out the second part of the quote or you leave out the context it can be an accurate statement that somebody used these words and still completely fake news because all you did is you you left out a part you left out of context you left out what somebody said just before the answer so even direct quotes should be regarded as probably fake news if those direct quotes are about politics about science Sciences are probably the most reliable way to get to truth why do I have science on the fake news category well the problem with science is that by the time you hear about it is filtered through Liars so the people who write stories about science and that’s how you hear it for the most part you know you hear the news talking about science you

[24:47]

hear the news talking about science you don’t hear the science you hear people reporting on what scientists said now if you talk to the scientists who read what the news says about their own story those scientists more often than not will say well they didn’t quite get the story right it’s it’s missing a key thing that I think you should know that would be the most normal situation is that even the scientists would say it’s fake news even if the news is about this scientists science because the news reporters will get it wrong they’ll miss key things they lose some context they’ll oversell it that sort of thing so even the science you have to assume is going to be filtered through liars and you oft also have to assume that there are a lot of I think something like half of all peer-reviewed science turns out to be not reproducible so half the time a report about a new study is

[25:48]

the time a report about a new study is telling you something that’s not true about half the time if not more it might be more and especially if the story is so so amazingly fascinating that it’s beyond what you would expect that fascinating element should be a tell that it might not be true it’s a little too interesting if something’s a little too interesting a little too provocative a little too outside of what you expected it’s probably not true might be it could be but probably not all right anonymous sources you should know by now that anonymous source means it didn’t happen far more likely than it did happen when you hear an anonymous source that says that somebody did something horrible behind closed doors you should automatically think it’s not true automatically the first thought you should have is that didn’t happen your first thought should not be well it

[26:50]

your first thought should not be well it probably happened it’s in the New York Times so probably happened that should not be your first thought your first thought should be anonymous source those are never true well sometimes they could be true like it’s possible but probably not laundry list persuasion when you see the laundry list to come out there’s a high likelihood that there’s that is all fake news so there are some things in which you could say this list of things about whatever the topic is are all true so that it could be true but more often than not you see the laundry list when there’s no no substance to the claim for example there’s a laundry list of what the president has done that some people say is collusion with Russia and some people say is obstruction it’s a long list of things but the the quality of that list is that there’s nothing on it that individually has much weight so if

[27:52]

that individually has much weight so if you see a laundry list of reasons why something is good or bad you should say to yourself what’s the strongest thing on the list this is a good discipline ignore the size of the list because that’s that’s probably fake news so that the number of things on the list should tell you it’s less credible not more so the more things on the list the less credible it is keep that in mind not the more credible the less credible because if you have one good reason you just focus on the one good reason if you if somebody says I have one fact one good reason one good argument it’s so strong here it is well that could very likely be a good argument if somebody says I have a laundry list and there’s nothing on this list that individually would be persuasive it’s probably confirmation bias that they just collected in the list this last one is really troubling video we used to think that if you saw the video

[28:53]

used to think that if you saw the video same as the story with the picture that a video would be even be more true than a picture because you could tell yourself well a still picture you know I get how that can be photoshopped so you have less belief in a still picture and you’ve also had the experience if you take your own picture you take a selfie you can take 20 pictures of yourself a nineteen of them you look like a you know an ugly idiot and then there’s just that one selfie that you look pretty good and you think well it’s 120 so pictures can really lie to you hard we think video is more reliable because it’s just a little harder to fake but the days of making the days of it being hard to fake here let’s get rid of this troll whoa anybody who says apologist just so you know why you’re being blocked now apologist is not a reason or an argument it is not a fact an apologist is somebody who’s doing

[29:55]

an apologist is somebody who’s doing mind reading of me so if you just listen to this a commenter said that I’m an apologist and that’s mind reading because you don’t know my inner mental state you can’t know that it’s unknowable if you imagine that you can know my interior mental state you’re probably hallucinating that’s not a good indication of reality anyway point is that video is no longer something you can trust the video could be out of context for example the Covington kids situation the video was not altered per se but it was at a context and that that turns something false into something that looked true there we go yeah we’ll get rid of another one who thinks apologist is a good word to use you don’t need to be on this all right so and then we have the the additional problem that video can be can be altered

[30:58]

problem that video can be can be altered and if you look at the latest situation about the slowdown Nancy Pelosi the video I didn’t trust any reporting or any video from any source so for example when the New York Times said here’s the original video in the next to it you can see the altered video and so here’s proof you can look at it yourself here’s the original here’s the altered you can see that they’re very different when I read that story I said to myself video that’s not reliable anymore probably a year ago I would have said okay it’s the New York Times they’re showing the video side-by-side this is as clear as it can be I mean there’s there’s nothing to doubt anymore that that the news has been proven today I would no longer say that I would say that the odds that the New York Times could have I’m not saying they did this is not an accusation but you have to be open to the possibility that they just

[31:59]

open to the possibility that they just showed you the wrong video or that they changed a video on their own and showed it or that they mistakenly got the wrong video or that or that you only imagine they’re different I mean there are probably 20 different ways in which that could not be exactly what you thought it was so here’s the bottom line if you see something that seems to you like too amazing to be true in the news it probably isn’t true and when I say probably I mean ten to one as in not even close not even close alright and you saw the other thing so I won’t go over them again but those are your cues none of them are a hundred percent the more of these cues you see the more likely it’s fake and if you’d like to review this again you can see it here on the periscope playback or you can see it on

[33:01]

periscope playback or you can see it on youtube search for the search for the phrase real coffee with Scott Adams it will pop up and if you have not tried interface by when hub my company’s my company’s product which would allow you to make a video call to an expert on a variety of topics please try it and that’s all for now you can go to the wedding hub comm to find out all about that and I will talk to you later