Episode 545 Scott Adams: 2020 Election Prediction Update, Can Biden Really Beat Trump?

Date: 2019-05-28 | Duration: 1:00:55

Topics

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Rough Transcript

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

Transcript

[0:02]

jumpin pumpkin tintin tintin tintin tintin papa papa hey everybody come on in here Joe and mashin and Andrew I see you grab his seat in the front we’re waiting for everybody else to sit down before we get into our fascinating fascinating periscope of the day more fascinating than ever before or not we’ll see we’ll see how this develops a reminder if you don’t catch this live it is available to see on periscope in a replay but also on YouTube so if you prefer the YouTube experience just do a search for the phrase real coffee with Scott Adams and I’ll pop up on YouTube where it’s also monetized so I’ve got that advantage all right so enough about that so yesterday I had a real experience of that Devon newness retweeting my periscope /youtube

[1:05]

newness retweeting my periscope /youtube from yesterday the one he retweeted was the one which I described how to identify fake news which was kind of cool because if you think about it Devon newness is probably most famous for being the person who dug into this whole Russia collusion fake news stuff so he’s sort of the probably the most famous fake news exposure in the world and he he retweeted my video on that topic so that was kind of cool in other famous people news I checked my Wikipedia page to see see if there were these surprises there and there are well I’m gonna go over to myself and tell you I think it’s probably been removed too by now but at one point you said that I was good friends with Bob Dole I’ve never met Bob Dole but if you if you went to my Wikipedia page it would say

[2:07]

went to my Wikipedia page it would say you know I think I said that citation needed meaning that there was no source warrant of course but there was a sentence on my Wikipedia page saying that Bob Dole and I were good friends never met him but there’s also there’s an award on here it says Adams is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences so that’s that’s the first sentence under my personal life on Wikipedia is that I’m a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences I don’t even know what that is I’ve never heard of it is there something called the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences apparently I’m the member never heard of it says a former member of Mensa that part is true there’s some stuff about my health problems blah blah blah blah and

[3:08]

health problems blah blah blah blah and all right so I’m not gonna read the rest of that but I think the rest of it’s closer to true right some other things that are fun you know about the GoFundMe campaign for building the wall so it was a private GoFundMe people donated they raised twenty million dollars and they’re actually building some wall so the private people found a a piece of wall or a piece of no wall where they want to build that apparently connects two pieces of existing fence / wall so they figured if they just do this part the several however many miles in is that they’ll they’ll have a longer continuous wall who should make a big difference now I don’t know don’t know if that’s gonna work or not we’ll see all right you came in for the coffee or the coffee as some of you say I know it’s time raise your glass your mug you cup could be a chalice first

[4:09]

mug you cup could be a chalice first time could be a tankard may be a thermos baby flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the simultaneous sip wasn’t it better because I made you wait you know it was come on you know it was one of the secrets to addiction is a non predictability you would actually be more addicted this is actually science you would be more addicted to the simultaneous sip if I didn’t do it every time because you’d be upset because the times it didn’t happen you’d be looking forward to it and you actually reinforce your addiction circuitry if it’s unpredictable so I like to keep it predictable though just so you can plan your work out by the way this is the ideal periscope or YouTube - depending where you’re watching it for working out it’s just the right length so think about that all

[5:12]

the right length so think about that all right here’s more fun there is now a drone bullet they call it a bullets but I’m not sure that I would call it that so it’s a little bullet shaped drone that can I guess has 20 minutes of hover time and twelve minutes of flight time so you can basically send this one-way trip drone bullet over your destination you could have it hover there for several minutes while you’re deciding whether to kill what sever whatever is below it and then you just drop it now now that that’s possible how many of them are you gonna see you’re gonna see a lot of them now I wrote a book many of you know called the religion of war I wrote it 15 years ago or some long time ago and it predicted this day this day when the bad

[6:13]

predicted this day this day when the bad people will be able to send small drones anywhere they want to kill anything that’s outdoors so much so that I speculated that these drones would actually be able to go through a doorway in other words a proper drone like this this bullet drone could actually hover outside a pub building and wait for somebody to open the door and they could follow them in it could actually exact it the drone could actually internally go down hallways and find some of these office there’s nothing that would stop it because once it’s in you know people in the in an office don’t have guns or anything so if a drone gets him into an office building what are you gonna do I mean nobody’s gonna stop it with their hand because it’s probably got propellers and stuff so all I would have to do is is tailgate somebody into a building and it could it could hunt somebody in a cubicle and kill them in

[7:13]

somebody in a cubicle and kill them in their cubicle you could SWAT it but I don’t think you would because you would just be walking down the hall at work and you’d hear a noise and you turn around and go home so I don’t think anybody could stop it once it got inside so that’s something to look forward to the things I’ve predicted are that number one unless we develop some kind of real counter drones which is possible I think a bunch of drones that fight other drones but even then there’s a number problem because if you have counter drones you only need one extra drone that you know so that you’re outnumbered so it’s going to be probably the end of outdoor activities when I say outdoor activities I mean group activities so I think that’s common but I also think that the only defense is a complete and total lack of privacy in other words the government would not be able to keep its citizens

[8:15]

would not be able to keep its citizens safe without having total information about every human who steps foot on this country and I think that’s where we’re heading and of course you can’t get there unless you can also control your border so when you’re looking at this drone problem know that the only way to stop them is you know somebody said EMP we’re not going to do that on the homeland the only way to stop them is to have complete and total lack of privacy of all human beings alive on the homeland short of that there’s nothing that’s going to stop it and the only way you can have complete and total information about citizens among other things is to stop all illegal immigration completely you’d have to you’d have to bring it down to almost zero to stop the drone a problem alone so that’s what’s happening and I think you will see a complete and total lack of human privacy and you’ll be glad

[9:15]

lack of human privacy and you’ll be glad you got it because the alternative will be worse all right now oh and if you’re afraid that these complete and total lack of of privacy is going to lead to a dictatorship well maybe but if we have if we have the information about the leaders themselves if they are also completely transparent it’s not as dangerous is it the real problem with privacy is if some people have it and some people don’t because the people who have the privacy will have a gigantic advantage over the people who have no privacy because you could send them to jail anytime you want well you have no privacy I can find something you’re doing but the people who still have privacy would be protected so your most dangerous situation for privacy is some have it in some don’t that’s terrible but if you get to a point where nobody has it the the police don’t have it the

[10:17]

has it the the police don’t have it the government doesn’t have it nobody has it and we can all find out anything we want about anybody then it’s harder for people to abuse you because it would be so obvious and somebody would respond and you couldn’t get away with anything you might not want to live in that world but that’s probably where we’re having all right let’s talk about the it was a story that said there were three different prediction models that say the president Trump will win easily in 2020 so three different models and I think they look at things such as the economy’s doing well and inflation is low so they’re looking at these external markers that have always been very accurate in determining who is going to get elected but we didn’t see too many prediction models work in 2016 some did but mostly the prediction models did not work in 2016 what would make them work in 2020 why would we

[11:20]

make them work in 2020 why would we trust any prediction models after living through 2016 well I would say we shouldn’t because there’s something about this president that’s not like any other president and there probably every rule that used to exist it just doesn’t count anymore so I’m gonna I’m going to give you two different prediction models number one I’ve already mentioned this prediction model says that social media learned it’s lesson in 2016 they learned how powerful they are they’ve had four years to improve their their effectiveness and that the people running these social media companies primarily the people who are closest to the algorithm this does not mean the CEOs so what I talked about social media manipulating results in the election I’m not talking about the top person in the company giving an order to the underlings to do this I think that’s unlikely to be true

[12:21]

I think that’s unlikely to be true because the people who are at the top I have way too much to lose because you know they they have good lives they don’t want to throw it away committing something so stupid they would be of course ratted out there’s no way that a CEO or social media company could give an order to put their finger on the you know on the scales and hope that that wouldn’t get out someday too many people who would know about the order it would be effectively handing over your entire life to somebody else let me put this in a in in a word picture you’re Mark Zuckerberg and let’s say I don’t believe this is the case so I’m not I do not believe that Mark Zuckerberg thinks the way I’m going to explain but imagine if he did if he thought hey I want to influence this election however I want to influence it imagine him calling somebody and to his office and underling and saying hey I want to put my finger on the scale

[13:21]

hey I want to put my finger on the scale of this election so why don’t you go do it you know do what you need to do to the algorithm to make this happen at that moment the underling owns Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg would be giving away all of his power because the person who knows that he ordered them to change the election could just go to the media that person would own Mark Zuckerberg not just that day and not just during that election year but forever Mark Zuckerberg job would depend on the loyalty and keeping happy the one person he ordered to go change the algorithm so in my opinion the Jack Dorsey’s the Mark Zuckerberg the this sundar who am i pronouncing his name wrong I can never pronounce Google’s CEO I don’t believe any of them are giving

[14:21]

I don’t believe any of them are giving an order to an underling to say go do this I think that’s the least likely thing that’s happening the most likely thing is that lots of people are involved in lots of individual decisions that somehow feed into this large algorithm monster it’s lots of people with lots of lots of you know different theories on how to change the algorithm for a lot of good reasons you know things that would help the consumer etc there is probably a handful of people at least in each of these companies that know that if they choose this this choice they get a certain set of outcomes and if they choose this other choice for the variables or the code in the algorithm they’ll get a slightly different choice different outcome I believe that those people could both consciously and or unconsciously influence the election fairly fairly simply just by changing a variable and knowing how that would how that would

[15:24]

knowing how that would how that would ripple through the system so we’ve got one theory one prediction model says that social media of course has the ability to influence the election you know I’ll say more about that in a minute they have the ability they’ve had years to perfect it and they have the they have the motivation so if nothing changes social media will decide who is the president that’s the first model so I provocatively made that assessment which I won’t call a prediction because it’s a straight line prediction and those are observed a straight line prediction says suppose nothing changed between now and 2020 this is what it would look like and what it would look like is that Trump would not win because the social media companies have the will the power of the ability to influence things than they could cause that not to happen but what

[16:25]

could cause that not to happen but what are the odds that nothing changes between now and 2020 that would change the balance of the votes very low the odds are very high that something would change so here’s the other prediction model it’s called the Adams law of slow-moving disasters it’s the most reliable law you will ever see in terms of predicting it has predicted every the outcome of every disaster we’ve ever encountered in in terms of disasters that we saw coming for a long time so the way the Adams law of slow-moving disasters works is if everybody can see a problem coming and we’ve got lots of time to get to get a solution and and we know exactly what the problem is even if we don’t know how to solve it on day one where we’re really good at figuring out how to deal with it over the long run so because we are very alerted to the fact that the social media companies can put

[17:25]

that the social media companies can put their thumb on the scale we also have two years to do something about it so what are the odds that either the voters or some individual or saw inventor or somebody in the social media companies themselves it could actually be one of the CEOs of the social media companies could do something different than what we expect what if the government decides to do some small form of regulation that just gets to this question and that’s all suppose the government and I’m not proposing this I’m just allowing you to imagine things suppose the government said well we don’t have enough time to put together a comprehensive regulatory framework but we’re going to because the election is so important and we might have Russian interference we might have a variety of different interferences I’m going to apply I’m going to appoint a special judge for the algorithms now is that

[18:29]

judge for the algorithms now is that legal I don’t know but imagine that we could do something like that some way we could probably figure out how to make it legal if it’s not legal so it’d be a special judge sort of like a special prosecutor type person who is the only person who’s allowed with that person’s small staff they’re the only ones who are allowed to see the algorithms of all the major players so that they would have complete freedom to go in and look at any kind of confidential documentation now that would be that would very a very special type of oversight there we’ll be living it to the election so it wouldn’t be the big oversight where they’re making sure every person is treated the same and every business has has visibility and there’s no censorship and stuff like that I’m not talking about that stuff that stuff might also have to happen but you probably need some judge and a small group of people who just have access and full visibility to the algorithms and

[19:29]

full visibility to the algorithms and what it all means now it could be those two qapla games it might be that it’s just so complicated that you can’t even get anybody who could understand it I think that’s possible but the larger pic the larger idea is this if nothing changes the social media companies will determine the election and I’m going to say a little more of that but we have a few years to come up with a solution that nobody’s thought of I haven’t thought of you haven’t thought of there’s probably a solution and it may have nothing to do with the algorithms it could it could be some entirely you know different mechanism so a lot of creativity will go into it everybody sees this as a problem I think it will be solved now somebody said to me actually several people said to me on social media they said to me Scott you are overstating the effect of social media because you’re on it and you think everybody’s on it because when you’re in that world it just seems like everybody’s on Twitter and everybody’s talking about the news but the reality is most people don’t care about social

[20:30]

is most people don’t care about social media at least in terms of following the news most people probably don’t even follow the news most people are sort of dialed in to their their own world and social media will not have that much impact to which I say wrong as wrong as you could be I’m saying people agreeing with that statement in the in the comments agreeing that social media can’t influence us that much here’s why you’re wrong certainly the news that collectively can influence people I think you’d all agree with that but when I say influence people we’re only talking about that thin sliver of people who could be influenced 98% of the country can’t be influenced 98% of the country already know who they’re gonna vote for in size they’re gonna be whoever the Democrat is or Trump maybe 2% maybe 5% could be moved in any direction so they’re the

[21:30]

moved in any direction so they’re the only ones that matter that’s the first thing to know so and beyond that it’s not even the small percentage of people who could change their opinion in the matter they have to be in the right states because if they’re not in the right states moving one or two percent in either direction doesn’t make any difference it’s still going to be the same the same result just the margin will be a little different but the same outcome so there’s a very very small group of people who matter people who can be persuaded and they’re in the right half dozen states that’s it we might be talking about 200,000 people does that matter period that’s it 200,000 people they’re the only ones I have to be influenced now the way the news works for those of you who have never spent time in this industry if you don’t know the business model of the news you could be caught blindsided by the by the importance of social media to

[22:32]

the by the importance of social media to the news in general here’s how it works if you’re a news organization you say hey here’s the news you report on the news and then you watch social media because social media is going to tell you how much people care they’re going to tell you what people think about it they’re going to tell you what people click on they’re going to tell you why headlines get the most traffic that feedback loop goes back to the news alright so CNN where anybody Fox News they do a story because they found some information that’s new and relevant then they monitor social media to decide if they do more of it so there’s no such thing as just watching the news anymore if you’re watching the news and you have no social media accounts you’re still watching social media because the news is responding to social media and doing more of what it says they need or less of what it says they don’t need now when I say social media I mean the Internet in general how much people are clicking on their news sites how much traffic

[23:32]

on their news sites how much traffic Twitter is driving to their news sites the Facebook etc so there’s no such thing as somebody who’s not watching social media because if you watch any kind of news you’re watching social media and those few people I’m talking about who might have some chance of moving one way or the other far more likely to be watching the news because the people who are let’s say data-driven are looking for data so they’re the ones who actually care what’s happening because it might influence their decision if you’ve already decided and it doesn’t matter what the news is you don’t need to watch so social media will in fact change the news and the news plus social media are the only things we have to go on it’s the only thing that moves people’s vote is social media plus the news so everybody is watching social media even if they don’t have a social media account now I’m borrowing a bit from Vox when I when I make these

[24:33]

bit from Vox when I when I make these this claim I watched a very interesting video by some some some writer I guess some journalist at Vox vo X not Fox you know the Vox made a provocative but ridiculous claim they said that Fox News has a special place in our I guess our idea ecosystem that is unmatched by people on the left and their claim which is just laughably ridiculous is that Fox News comes up with a bunch of ridiculous stuff and even if you don’t watch fox news the other media have to talk about it so in other words Vox was making the claim that even if you never have watched Fox News in your life you’re still seeing their news on CNN and MSNBC because they talk about Fox News so that fox news is driving the news cycle in a

[25:36]

fox news is driving the news cycle in a way that the left doesn’t have any equal to which I say that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard now this sounds like a video made by somebody who doesn’t own a television because yeah obviously Fox News is just the balance to CNN and MSNBC they’re they’re just identical entities I’m on the other side there’s no difference he came up with this this fancy theory about some kind of a what he called the hack gap hack meaning a news person who’s who’s not really trying too hard to cover the news but is just trying to do their job I guess and get paid and you see he’s acting like there’s there’s some kind of gap that Fox fills in that everybody is responding to it’s ridiculous in fact Fox News frequently every single day let they

[26:36]

frequently every single day let they play clips from the competing networks CNN and MSNBC to mock them and that’s just what CNN does they play clips from Fox News to mock them it’s the most common thing on both networks so the whole Vox video was so ridiculously just transparently ridiculous that it made you it reminds you what kind of a little bubble people are living in that they could even produce something like that and that there were probably a roomful of people who all said yeah that sounds reasonable yeah it’s only happening on the left yeah it only happens in one direction that sounds quite reasonable let’s make this video uh it’s mind boggling that you could put you know several people in a room and nobody would say arm yeah I just got to mentioned that this looks exactly the same in both directions does anybody see me but that didn’t happen all right somebody told me that that

[27:39]

all right somebody told me that that YouTube is blocking I don’t have a confirmation to this and part of the problem is these things are hard to confirm so we’re going to come to believe things about social media that we can’t confirm and I may be adding to it but since my story is that things are to confirm I think it’s fair to say that in this case so somebody told me that YouTube is blocking people from playing a video and I’m trying to describe this video without getting blocked myself let’s just say there’s a person whose first name is David and his last name is D uke so there’s a video about that guy and I’m not going to say his name and apparently that guy in his videos says he that he wants to clarify that he’d never supported or endorsed president Trump and that video apparently is blocked on YouTube now you can’t share

[28:42]

blocked on YouTube now you can’t share it or something now it could be just the algorithm is just picking up his name and because his name is identified with some of the the worst ideas in America it could be that that’s all it is so how do you know because I already told you that my videos that talk about a certain topic the F I and II peop LD X H Oh a X so I don’t even use the words anymore because I don’t want to get you know D monetized and and then become invisible but when I made my videos on that topic showing that the way had been covered was fake news they all got demonetised which means they’re less visible now let me ask you this if that if only one thing happened between now and 2020 what would be the

[29:43]

between now and 2020 what would be the effect of the election what if the one thing that happened and the only thing that happened between now and 2020 is their social media allowed the truth to come out about the F I and II peop LD h o ax what if social media allowed the real story to come out that that had always been fake news it’s the single most important piece of belief that people have about this president it really it really is the primary thing they objective is that piece of fake news then forms all their other beliefs about it so when you talk about about social media influencing people if you could get that message to this thin sliver of people who actually could change their votes and you gave them the real news about just that one story

[30:43]

real news about just that one story nothing else let’s say that everything else in the world is the same just that one story got debunked because it’s not true and then everybody found out it’s not true what would that do to the election it would be a massive landslide for Trump because people would really realize how bamboozled they had been but we can never realize that because that message that it’s a H o a X is suppressed on social media evidently because you know I watched my traffic traffic just fall off a ledge when I talked about it yesterday civil rights champion and John Lewis who has an amazing resume for fighting for civil rights went on TV or said in public that he cried when Trump said there were quote a certain type of people who were good on both sides you

[31:45]

people who were good on both sides you know what I’m talking about I’m not going to use the words because they don’t get banned or or demonetised and thankfully Joel Pollak corrected that on Breitbart but people who support John Lewis are not reading Breitbart so they’ll never know so there’s a perfect case where there was a fake news what John Lewis said and then the correct news which corrected him shows the transcript makes it very clear that everything you said is a lie which of those will get noticed only one of them right the John Lewis’s statement will get noticed because there’s nothing slowing it down the the fact correction will be stopped in his tracks it will stay in this little silo people who are gonna go see that see Breitbart anyway will see it nobody else will see it so that little change and nothing else would completely change the result of the election so that’s the sort of

[32:50]

of the election so that’s the sort of small change that you could imagine happening with the the Adams law of slow-moving disasters somebody could figure out how to get that one message through the social media filter if somebody could do that then it would change the the election that’s just one way it could be changed let’s talk about Joe Biden and Oh before I talk about that I think it’s hilarious that Alyssa Milano who is calling out Jon Voight on social media and calling him an F List actor and acting as though he should not be talking about politics things could not get any better than that there’s nothing to say about that it’s just funny that too an actor and an actress or are calling each other illegitimate for their political opinions all right I have to wonder so there was an article that I tweeted around in which apparently I’m not the

[33:51]

around in which apparently I’m not the first person to notice that Joe Biden is invisible so Joe Biden’s apparently Joe Biden’s campaign strategy is to not be seen and not be interviewed and not get on the news and importantly not talk about policies too much so Biden has decided that the citizens of this country are so dumb and I think he’s right about this he’s decided that the citizens are so dumb that he doesn’t even need to talk about policy so much it’s like I’m not even going to talk about policies if he talks about policies then there are things to criticize if he just says orange man bad which is so far all he’s saying if he says orange man bad then people will vote for him and apparently that’s enough to make him the front-runner so the simulation has handed us another little inside joke because what I hear

[34:54]

little inside joke because what I hear Biden’s name be IDE and I always think to myself Biden is he biding his time I guess he’s just biding his time he’s just waiting and that seems like his entire campaign strategy is just I’m just biding my time and I’m trying not to say anything because people will yell at me and they’ll look at my record and stuff and that can’t be good so I was trying to imagine what that conversation was like when his advisors who I imagine were the one who broke it to him what happened when the advisors for Biden were telling him what their strategy would be I imagine the conversation went something like this playing the part of Joe bard Biden’s advisor will be Dale the anti-trump critic Oh so Joe Biden we’ve got to do a new political strategy for you oh that’s great what is it what is it uh I’ll do my job

[35:54]

what is it what is it uh I’ll do my job I’d an eyebrow for all what is it that’s I can’t wait to hear it well we’ve decided that instead of doing interviews you will not do interviews oh okay I got it I get it well will do sighs the interviews so that they’ll get more attention for my rally speeches good good that’s a good strategy no no we’re also going to de-emphasize your rally speeches okay I got it got it no interviews no rally speeches so we’re all gonna we’re gonna concentrate on the policy I like it I like it it’s gonna be really policy centric no personality stuff no no no no policy stuff so let’s do no interviews no no rallies and we’ll do a few just to make sure that people know we’re still running but we don’t want to get on television and stuff so don’t say anything that would be

[36:55]

don’t say anything that would be something somebody might quote for example and make sure that you don’t have any policies because somebody’s just gonna you know criticize that okay I got it I got it no interviews no won’t do too many public appearances and light on strategy so we’re gonna use my really just the power of my charisma and my personality to know knew I would would de-emphasize your personality yeah it’s not gonna get you there and seeing so somewhere there was a real-life conversation in which somebody sat a room with Biden and said in some kind of words you know Joe the less of you the voters see the more likely they are to vote for you now I don’t think I’m

[37:58]

vote for you now I don’t think I’m making that up was it the New York Times there was some major publication who just wrote essentially the same story and by the way I would like to Pat myself on the back here a little bit you can join me just for watching these periscopes all right so it’s a pat on the back moment so you get a pat in the back for watching these periscopes i get a pat in the back for being I believe the first person in the country who I correctly identified that Biden was trying to be invisible he was intentionally staying out of the the public eye while running for president I was the first one and now it’s gonna be a thing there’s so there’s already a story on it people are noticing and pat yourself on the back good job good job all right I have told you many times that one of my let’s say techniques for understanding the world is to consciously look for the empty

[39:02]

is to consciously look for the empty space look for the thing that isn’t happening so while everybody’s looking at the shiny objects I always say okay you got to look at the shiny objects you can’t not look at it but sometimes spend a little time looking for the things that you think should have happened but aren’t because those are telling you a lot what should have happened is you should have seen a lot more Joe Biden in the last several weeks I noticed hey there’s a very there’s a conspicuous lack of Joe Biden given that he’s the leading candidate now clearly that’s a decision and it’s a decision by probably lots of different people because the news industry could do stories about Joe Biden all day long he doesn’t Joe Biden doesn’t have to agree to participate the news can just do stories better because there’s always something but they’re not there are very few stories about him except that he’s leading in the polls and that his

[40:06]

leading in the polls and that his advisers could have done things you know to give him more visibility he could have done things so there are a lot of people making individual decisions who have all decided collectively apparently yeah I’m just assuming based on the outcome I’m not reading minds but based on the outcome it seems that a lot of people in different jobs have all come to the same conclusion the more you see of this guy the less you’re gonna like him so that’s the problem it is funny all right let’s talk about Trump downplaying North Korea once again Trump I believe has set the standard by which future presidents will have to rise did that sentence make sense you know what I’m talking about I believe that even though President Trump is being criticized because he’s criticized no matter what he does the criticism that he’s being - let’s say forgiving -

[41:06]

that he’s being - let’s say forgiving - Kim jong-un who fired off some small rockets and other people are being more hard asked really is just telling me that he’s the smartest president we’ve ever had and it just becomes and by the way I mean that literally I don’t mean that if he took a SAT that he’d beat Obama necessarily I don’t think that’s necessarily the case Obama’s pretty smart but in terms of understanding people Trump is the best Trump is absolutely the best and understanding people I would say Bill Clinton is in is in that range but I think Trump’s takes it to another level yet and here’s what he’s doing right and as I’ve said this is number of ways but it’s it’s so important that it’s worth saying again Trump has pioneered the idea that you can be nice to the leader while being and negotiating and that you don’t have to give up anything in either area now

[42:08]

to give up anything in either area now part of that is that his personality this you know win it all costs put up with any kind of you can put up with any kind of problem or blowback or criticism as long as he’s he’s got a strategy that’s gonna get him where he wants to go so he can simply take more heat than other people so being nice to kim jeong-hoon is something he could do because he’s the president who can take more heat it just it’s an option for him I’m not sure other presidents would even have the option because they would look at a character but when Trump does it you say okay that’s totally in character you know and if there’s one thing I can teach you if there’s only one thing I can teach you today it’s that when people stay in character we accept them and even their decisions because they’re consistent and in character we only get freaked out and we get worked up and angry when somebody acts in a way that we think is out of character so if you

[43:09]

we think is out of character so if you were taken and let’s say Obama and suddenly started being nice to kim jeong-hoon that would be so out of character that you would be bothered by it and you would lose your trust you know bottom but because Trump is the guy who can have lunch with Don King you know he’s got supporters who have every kind of you know obnoxious belief you could imagine no problem he could invite me into the Oval Office no problem can you imagine another president taking even that ten tiny little risk of having a cartoonist in the in the Oval Office I mean I don’t bring a lot of credibility to anybody but he can do that he can talk to Putin he can talk to President Xi he can he can talk to the you know the the the Pirates of the world and he said you know I’d like to meet with Iran could Trump meet with the Ayatollah absolutely absolutely so he’s created a space for him to operate this very

[44:11]

space for him to operate this very productive for the country because I don’t know about you but I have never felt the safer about North Korea until this administration what how many of you would say the same I feel completely safe about the odds of any kind of a nuclear war with Kim jong-un now I mean there was a time when I was definitely worried about it but at the moment I’ve never felt safer and it’s entirely because of the personal relationship the the fact that Trump said basically he backed kim jeong-hoon over joe biden in a sense the fact that he would do that without without a second hesitation makes me feel good because Kim jong-un what does he want in the world besides survival and you know I’m sure he wants good things for his country why wouldn’t he but he wants survival but he also knows that respect

[45:12]

survival but he also knows that respect is a big part of that survival Trump is giving him that respect so he’s giving him the thing that he was trying to get with nuclear weapons he’s giving it to him in a different way the only Trump can give him because Trump Trump can be his buddy and by the way whenever Trump leaves office I’m assuming it’s gonna be in six years actually he probably will stay friends with Kim jong-un in fact the odds of Trump visiting Kim jong-un as a private citizen are pretty good are pretty good I think there’s a good chance it would happen all right so I think Trump plays North Korea perfectly right I think that time is on his side because North Korea’s economy is doing nothing but getting worse and we don’t seem to have any special risk on our end in fact it looks like we’re saving money

[46:12]

in fact it looks like we’re saving money because we’re doing fewer war games and such so we may just be saving a little money we’ve completely eliminated our our you know big risk from North Korea yeah we just wait see if things improve I think they will all right let’s talk about Duncan Hunter a representative Duncan hunter who was supporting at least verbally supporting the Navy SEAL who was charged with a variety of things including taking a photo with a dead Isis fighter I guess and sending it to somebody and Duncan Hunter was now a representative I had been in the military said that he did the same thing with that was sending it to somebody so his point was that it’s fairly common unfortunately fairly common for people to take a photo of a dead fighter or civilian I guess for whatever reasons

[47:12]

civilian I guess for whatever reasons it’s less common for them to send it around because that’s that’s what gets you cook court-martialed and I thought to myself I had I had two reactions my first reaction was Duncan Hunter you just did something really stupid you just associated yourself with a despicable crime which nobody should want to associate themselves he actually you know he got all the way to Congress and then he just painted himself as the same kind of you know despicable person he would take a picture of a dead person that was my first reaction here was my second reaction if you’re in the military you don’t leave people behind if you know if one of your own dead if you’re one of your own is dead you you make sure that you even if it risks your life you’re gonna you’re gonna protect them basically you’re going to take you’re gonna have the back of people in

[48:15]

you’re gonna have the back of people in the service and my second opinion after thinking about it a little bit is that this was actually quite valiant meaning that don’t Duncan Hunter took a bullet for somebody else in the service in essence he was taking the heat off of his fellow service member you know at least somebody was also in the service they weren’t they didn’t they didn’t serve together they were just in the military and I thought to myself I gotta say I respect that because he certainly knew what he was doing you know you can’t say that Duncan Hunter didn’t think about it that seems unlikely it just seems to me that there’s something honorable about that because there’s there’s nothing good this is gonna happen to Duncan Hunter yeah nobody’s gonna say I’m gonna vote for this guy because he did this in fact they could hurt him I mean it might be the thing

[49:15]

hurt him I mean it might be the thing that gets him not reelected he took a bullet for another member of the military I have to respect that I respect that so that’s all I have to say about that I had an interesting conversation with on Twitter with a few folks started by navall Rafa Conte if you’re not following the fall you should he’s one at the top probably a top five Twitter accounts you should follow in the world and he’s that at navall and as a neighbor a V al at navall so follow him anyway on Twitter he I sometimes refer to new vollis as smartest person in the world I don’t know if that’s true I just haven’t seen any counter evidence he might actually be the smartest person in the world across a whole variety of fields which is what makes him special anyway he had the he said on Twitter and I’m paraphrasing that the robots

[50:16]

I’m paraphrasing that the robots basically will take the manual jobs but humans will have creative jobs essentially forever because a I can’t do creative work people can therefore people will always have this you know the artistic the creative stuff that they’ll always be safe no not naval no vowel at nav al not heal it’s a navy ale alright so I yeah so some people say he’s right robots will take the manual labor but the creative jobs will be I weighed in with the following I as you know am a creator so I’m a writer I’m a cartoonist which is sort of an artist I do these periscopes so as you’ve seen in their variety of fields I am very productive as a creator and creating different types of things

[51:18]

creating different types of things including you know the startup and inventions and everything else so I think I think most of you would agree just I’m not trying to brag I’m just trying to set the stage for my point my point is I really really know about creating I’ve got 30 years of it professionally the other weird thing that I know is that I did programming for a while so early in my corporate career I did a lot of programming made some video games etc I was never good at it but I learned enough about it that I I can understand the basic concepts right so once you have been a programmer even if you’re not up to date on current languages and such you you at least understand the limitations and and the basic concepts which is what I do in my opinion creativity will be easily replaced by AI and I say that as somebody who is a professional creator in a variety of fields take humor for

[52:22]

in a variety of fields take humor for example many years ago I came up with what I call the humour formula which said that something is not funny unless you have at least two of the six dimensions of humor when I list them I always forget one but the basic idea is that something is either you know bizarre or clever or or naughty there’s six of them but the point is it’s a formula I could write a program even with my meager programming skills I could run a program to write jokes and it would take me a while and it would be you know the first versions would be rough but I could already do it and I’m not even much of a programmer but I can do it you just have to know what the rules are so the programming of it is actually trivial knowing what to program is the clever part and I’ve already solved the formula for humor it is that formula you

[53:24]

formula for humor it is that formula you have to use two of the six dimensions and if those two are in there and three is even better but you you’ve got a joke now could you teach a AI to go to look at all the jokes of the world and figure out what the best ones have in common of course you could then you could say okay AI go check the trending hashtags and the social media to find out what’s in people’s minds you could do that easy already do that right there are already systems to figure out what’s what people are thinking about you already have 80% of what you need for a joke you’ve got the structure you’ve seen all other jokes and how they work you’ve you see what people are thinking about which makes jokes funnier people are far more amused by something that’s in the news something they have experienced etc then you could test it rapidly and here’s the part that people always miss I do rapid

[54:27]

part that people always miss I do rapid testing inside my own brain so in other words what I’m trying to come up with a joke what I’m doing really is I’m cycling through lots of possibilities and I’m rapidly discarding them so creating is not you don’t just sit there and then suddenly the idea comes in your head that generally doesn’t happen what generally happens is you’re you’re processing lots of different ideas that are flowing through it’s like a stream so what I’m creating I feel like a stream is going through and it’s like about this how about this how about this how about this how about this how about this the ones this thick I’ve got a I’ve got a little let’s say a sensor for knowing which ones are good and the sensor is my physical body because when one of those ideas in the stream goes through and my body goes in I’m exaggerating but if I feel it in my body then I know it’s art that’s I know because I can feel it my body

[55:27]

I know because I can feel it my body goes I get it I get a chill I laugh I I feel depressed but I feel it’s actual physical bottle.these sensation now that’s something that a a computer can do because computers don’t have feelings so I’ve got a sensor for going through all of the possibilities and catching the one that matters because my sensor goes off and it’s my body but hey I can do that better all they need are a group of people who are willing to look at a first draft of a joke so AI can say alright there’s seven billion people in the world I’m gonna I’m gonna try my best guess at what’s funny I’m gonna send it out to a hundred of them if 70 of those hundred people laugh or you know they rate it and they give it five stars or whatever they do to rate it you’ve got a joke if you send it 200 people and nobody thinks is funny or

[56:28]

people and nobody thinks is funny or they don’t even understand it you discard it you send out a different version to another hundred people and you could do that it’s so rapidly that you would do effectively what I do with my body but you would do it with the population of the earth with small groups until you had crafted by trial and error and according to formula something that was the funniest joke in the world and by the way there are only a hundred jokes in the world they all have the same they have the same like setup and etc I could easily teach a computer the hundred jokes they just have different different subject to different verb you know different time and time in history etc but they’re all a formula I hate to tell you it’s pretty formulaic so that’s just writing jokes it would seem to me that art would be even easier I’m sure that there I think there are already a is that do art and

[57:29]

there are already a is that do art and it wouldn’t be hard to look at all the art that exists and figure out which ones people liked the most figure out what it is about that the colors design the complexity whatever it is and then reproduce that but not reproduce it perfectly rather reproduce things that can test rapidly so if you forget about the ability to rapidly test you can easily convince yourself the a I could never do creativity but AI will be able to rapidly test its what it does best it can test it with the the instruments that are us so we can use the population as its sensors by just sending out little tests at it how’d that feel oh it made me laugh it gave me chills that made me cry and then they know they have something all right so my prediction is that in ten years AI will be able to do all of the creative jobs now I’m not saying that all the creative jobs will go away I’m

[58:30]

all the creative jobs will go away I’m saying that in ten years there will be at least one program that can do better than humans even the best humans on every form of creativity including music yes music is probably more formulaic than most things so yes music for sure music would be easy visual art is easy jokes are easy writing the a I can already right so we’ve already seen websites in which the AI is writing sentences and stories that already exists and and of course that would be better than humans because they can test it so rapidly all right so that’s my provocative idea right there I would ask you again to check YouTube if you want to see the replays on this stuff and just do a search on real coffee with Scott Adams and it will pop right up alright I think I’ve covered most of the

[59:32]

alright I think I’ve covered most of the the news let me wrap up my prediction if nothing changes between now and 2020 the social media companies will determine the president and that doesn’t mean the CEOs of the those companies but rather the people working there and control the algorithm if nothing changes but I’m sure that because of the atom’s law of slow-moving disasters that that disaster is so obvious and so clearly coming that there will be responses to it we don’t know what those are and they probably will be effective so if I had to put my money on a result I’m betting Trump all the way if you want to feel better about this right if I have to put my money on it I’m betting Trump with no no ambiguity whatsoever you know anything could happen between now and 2020 but but it I would bet that so confidently I could sleep pretty well on that and it wouldn’t know what the polls tell you today but it requires some kind of fix

[1:00:35]

today but it requires some kind of fix for social media that we have not yet seen could be any kind of a fix but there’s got to be something that deals with that or else you don’t get that result that’s all for now and I will talk to you all later and I’ll see if I can turn this off