Episode 552 Scott Adams: The Trump Impeachment HOAX, Bitcoin
Date: 2019-06-02 | Duration: 56:10
Topics
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Rough Transcript
This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.
Transcript
[0:12]
hello everybody it’s a wonderful wonderful morning in it’s time for the best part of your morning the launchpad to a great day it starts now but only if you’re ready if you’re prepared if you have something like a cup or a glass or mug could be a jealous or tanker doors time maybe a thermos possibly a flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous set mmm oh so good better than usual now we’re doing a little bit of an experiment today some of you may have noticed although it might be a failed experiment because today is Sunday so we’ll see so I’ve been doing YouTube videos which are just these
[1:14]
YouTube videos which are just these videos I download and then my assistant puts up on YouTube an hour or so later and so I have all these analytics which I can so I can see what types of videos get the most of huge and how long they stay etc excuse me and one of the things I noticed which I’m sort of testing today is that my videos that have titles with words that sound like they’d be bad for Trump tend to get a lot of traffic so if you notice my periscope title today was Trump impeachment hoax now also I get a lot of traffic when I talked about hoaxes or persuasion so in theory the algorithm should not be smart enough to know that I’m not necessarily talking about anything bad about Trump but it should see Trump and impeachment and if it’s like all of the other videos
[2:17]
and if it’s like all of the other videos it will have a high usage now it could be it’s entirely possible that those words just attract people so there might not be anything about it was shadow banning there might not be anything about any kind of no algorithm manipulation mischief or anything like that it could be just people see that word and they say oh this would be good so we’re gonna do a little test I will talk about it just so that my title is not a lie so the the hoax part of impeachment is that neither side wants it the impeachment is entirely about a theater at this point now I’m not gonna say there isn’t somebody who would like it if they could get it of course those people exist but in terms of a reality there is nobody on the Left who wants impeachment because they know that that guarantees a loss and there’s nobody on the right who wants it even though it would help Trump’s chances of winning
[3:18]
would help Trump’s chances of winning say all the experts so you have this weird situation where our government is so useless that we’re arguing about something that neither side wants think about that could you be is it possible for a government to be more useless than endlessly debating something that nobody wants they don’t want it we don’t want it no but it was it all right so that’s the hoax part but let’s talk about shadow betting’s more I think I told you that over 1600 people have reported that they’ve followed me on Twitter at one point and then for reasons they don’t understand they got unfollowed now some number of them are probably due to technical this or that some number of them are probably due to false memory you thought you followed you didn’t something like that but 1600 and that’s just the people who saw this think about
[4:18]
just the people who saw this think about all the people who unfortunately once they got automatically unfollowed they didn’t see the poll so keep in mind that I got a 1600 people who said they followed me they unfollowed me at some point automatically not their choice and then they noticed and then they refold me and they also happen to notice that I did a poll so that’s that’s a pretty extreme filter what about all the people who simply thought they followed me and then they got unfollowed they didn’t see the poll so I got 1600 people with the smallest filter you could put on it which is the people who happen to notice they noticed that they that they got unfollowed and then they went back and refiling how many people is that the people who didn’t notice presumably or a much bigger population because I wouldn’t notice if I somehow got unfollowed from somebody but here’s use
[5:22]
unfollowed from somebody but here’s use my caution so there are a number of ways to explain it could be mass hysteria totally possible could be that there’s there’s nothing like anything like a Shadow Man it’s totally possible you cannot rule out that it’s just a psychological phenomenon and people imagine they got people that people could easily very easily imagine that they followed and it got unfollowed totally simple thing for lots of people to imagine even if it were not true yeah I was getting to the next point one of the commenters says it could have been 60 and under trolls so it’s possible that trolls came in somebody who wanted to sell the story that their shadow banning and pumped-up that number but here’s a slight argument against that not a not a not a kill shot but an argument against the troll hypothesis from the moment I put the poll up hit
[6:26]
from the moment I put the poll up hit around 17 percent were saying that they had had this experience and it was up for days and days and days and days and days and at no point did that 17 or 18 percent get on range if it had been some kind of organized human troll activity as in somebody said hey as some website hey everybody go v’ over here cuz this will be good for us if sad happened you would have seen a smooth percentage with a big pop and then maybe you would have stayed there and drifted down a little bit so the fact that it it just stayed locked in at around 17 or 18 percent from the first minute to the end means that either the hypothetical trolls were extremely disciplined meaning that they were voting in eighteen percent amounts all the way through they’d somehow organized so well that they could spread out their votes which is totally possible that is not technically impossible and it’s not
[7:29]
not technically impossible and it’s not organizationally impossible but I would rate it as unlikely so you got that so how do you know is it a bug is it a is a shadow bathing you don’t know so I’d like to suggest suggest some ways that you can shadow band wouldn’t you like to have the power to shadow bear other people if you if you could have the power to actually shadow ban somebody who was on the other side wouldn’t you like that power you personally well as luck would have it you do have that power because you can just block those people so I’ve been running this experiment and again it is so good I’m completely blown away at how well it worked so several days ago I started I
[8:31]
worked so several days ago I started I told you I was going to start immediately blocking all unpleasant personalities and I thought it would be sort of this permanent flow you know I I thought somehow I would have something like whatever the percentage is 10% horrible people coming through just all the time so I thought okay it’s going to be a lot of work I’m gonna have to be banning a lot of people not banning but blocking blocking blocking blocking so the first few days I was blocking blocking blocking and next day I had fewer people blocking blocking each day the number of people I blocked trailed off until yesterday maybe just a few just a handful and we’ve actually gotten to the point where I’ve I’ve extinguished almost all of my trolls and I didn’t think that was possible so it turns out that there must have been some people who were who were the large percentage of all my troll traffic I think I I actually solved it
[9:31]
traffic I think I I actually solved it now obviously it’ll you know it’ll slow back up and I’ll have to reblock again but you have to try this now I am completely shut off from the worst voices so I’ve effectively is this true or not given that anybody who comments on my Twitter feed would get a lot of attention especially if I interact with them so I’ve taken all that attention these trolls would have gotten on my feed 317 thousand followers and I’ve eliminated I have effectively shadow banned the trolls now you could do it too if all of you shadow banned the trolls and I’m not talking about people who just disagree with you I do not ban people who disagree with me disagreement can be painful but it’s also productive so I will accept productive discomfort most
[10:34]
will accept productive discomfort most of the time yeah most of the time I’ll take that choice certainly I would take it in conversational reasons so try it if you would like to totally control shadow Babic at least you’re a little part of the the world completely control it if anybody makes any analogy to hillier any analogy to concentration camps and the analogy like that and it’s just a troll analogy block even if it’s somebody who’s making who’s trying to make a serious point every now and then I’ll give somebody else a uh you don’t look like a troll but why the heck are you making a a Nazi analogy what is wrong with you so I blocked them too because then that’s the Nazi analogy people can’t be helped they can’t be they can’t be convinced they can’t be reformed they can’t be helped so I blockable so be very be very let’s say aggressive in
[11:39]
be very be very let’s say aggressive in your blocking so enough about that so there was of course every time president makes some new policy announcement everybody goes crazy for a little while yeah that was true when the president said he was going to put tariffs on Mexico if they don’t do something to stop their border crossing problem several people have noted that the president starts to mention with the cartels when he talks about border security now I think at least twice recently somebody fact-checking on that he’s put the word cartel in you know right in his tweet as part of the immigration problem and that feels new ish I’m sure he’s mentioned the cartels the number of times but it feels like a slight shift in emphasis in fact his last tweet talked about the cartels and the Coyotes and stuff first and then the illegal immigrants was literally the
[12:41]
illegal immigrants was literally the last thing he said so he’s he seems to be changing the focus to this idea to the idea that the cartels are running the border so he’s using embarrassment a little bit to embarrass the Mexican government for not controlling their own border as many of you know you’ve watched my periscopes you know that the cartels literally control the border crossing areas where the illegals are coming the government of that Mexico doesn’t doesn’t physically or militarily control this place that are actually controlled by armed cartel people who are charging people to get across the border so the president seems to seriously making that shift away from demonizing the you know the people who have these young the people are crossing illegally I have a terrible time getting angry at him I can’t I never have really so I can’t
[13:44]
I can’t I never have really so I can’t demonize people who want a better life who were a lot like people who came here in the first place they have good intentions they just need to get out of a bad situation if I were if I were a if I were a poor person in Guatemala or Mexico would I break the law to come to America yes yeah let me say that as clearly as possible if you plopped me in Mexico or Guatemala or one of the Central American countries and you probably in dire straits and there was no hope that I’d have a good life if I stayed there I’d back my my briefcase or not my briefcase my backpack and I would come and I would illegally cross the border of the United States I would do it for myself I’d do it for my family and I wouldn’t look back so when other people are doing exactly what I would do how do I get mad at people who are doing exactly what I would do not even similar or
[14:45]
would do not even similar or approximately what I do exactly what I would do not not one bit different I would do exactly what they’re doing so but still you don’t have a country unless you control your your border so there are some things you have to do even if they’re unpleasant and border security is one of them so people said hey president Trump’s making another big mistake he keeps using tariffs as a weapon and my god these tariffs are a terrible weapon because they just hurt the economy for us they hurt the economy for Mexico blah blah but the latest news is mexico’s president and saturday hinted this country could tighten migration controls to defuse Trump’s the threat to impose tariffs that’s right Mexico is getting more flexible that was the point do you think that the president was saying to himself yay will collect some tariffs no no he doesn’t want to collect
[15:48]
tariffs no no he doesn’t want to collect any tariffs that’s the last thing he wants because it’s bad for the economy it’s bad for their economy it’s bad for our economy the last thing that Trump wants to do is collect tariffs well that’s not true it’s the second to the last thing he wants to do the last thing that the president wants to do does not change anything that’s the last thing he wants to do because the current situation is the worst slightly better than that is to degrade our economies a little bit and you know do something to stop the the flow or at least twist the arms of the Mexican government to stop the flow but here’s the problem there the president is about to unmask a really really really important point that the citizens of the United States have been prevented from understanding and that is the government of Mexico
[16:48]
and that is the government of Mexico doesn’t control the reporter the cartels - and I don’t mean that in in some kind of conceptual generic way it’s not an analogies hyperbole literally physically with people and guns the cartels are in charge of the border at the places that the massive immigration is happening you know there are places one of the government’s in charge - those would be more of the legal border crossings which have their own problems but the illegal human beings are coming through cartel control two places now can the President of the United States say in direct language our problem here is that Mexico doesn’t control the border so we have a we have a non non-state military on our border and that’s our problem have the President of the United States say that in direct language well you would normally think no that
[17:48]
well you would normally think no that would be so embarrassing to our ally Mexico then you literally couldn’t say it out loud you could not embarrass Mexico by saying what I said into their language you can’t do it that’s when you have a normal president this is exactly frickin why people elected Trump I didn’t vote but those of you did this is why you wanted him there are some jobs the only Trump can do because he doesn’t give a he doesn’t care about how other people are gonna feel if that was his proposition I mean I’m paraphrasing but it seems to me that Trump’s proposition was I’m gonna do some badass things that other people just wouldn’t do because those badass things need to get done there are some tough jobs that other people are just
[18:51]
tough jobs that other people are just timid that are afraid it’s too politically incorrect it’s something but those jobs still need to be done so I’m gonna be the the bad dad and I’m gonna come in and I’ll give you some truth and that truth gonna hurt I’m gonna gives you some tariffs those tariffs are gonna hurt I’m gonna I’m gonna cause some pain I’m gonna do that intentionally to get to a better place sort of like you know going to the dentist nobody likes the Ben test but you got to do it so it’s tough dad so it feels to me and yeah I’m getting ahead of my ability to predict here but it feels to me that the president is starting to make in the evolution and a change toward the political way of talking about Mexico which is pretending their government was in charge - slowly saying you know they’re ours the cartel problem without saying directly that the cartels actually control the border so he’s now
[19:53]
actually control the border so he’s now halfway to the truth started with the old fiction Mexico has something to do with immigration because they don’t they don’t have anything to do with immigration the government isn’t part of the it’s not even part of the equation they don’t control the border he’s now mentioning the cartel in the same same voice as the illegal immigrants who are both the illegal immigrants are both perpetrators of a crime and victims of a crime at the same time and it’s unfair to talk to that talk about them as just perpetrators or even just just victims they are both if you don’t talk about them as both perpetrators and victims simultaneously because they’re victims of the cartel the victims of whatever they’re leaving whether its economic or danger so the real real enemy is and has been the
[20:54]
real real enemy is and has been the cartels but for historical whatever political who knows what reasons the President of the United States can’t say what I just said it’s too bad that the Mexican government doesn’t control their own border there is a armed non-state actor in control and they’re essentially terrorists and they’re shipping and drugs that are killing tens of thousands of Americans per year what would you do if you had a military power on your border that was sending death into your country you would attack them militarily every frickin time but you can’t do it until you can name it you can’t attack the enemy until you can put a name to it till you can identify it let me tell you let me say this as clearly as I possibly can I support military action within Mexico’s border even if their government doesn’t like it of course their government wouldn’t like it if it comes
[21:55]
government wouldn’t like it if it comes to that I am a hundred percent in favor of invading Mexico and I’m not there’s no hyperbole assuming that the facts are exactly the way I’ve described them that what we would be attacking something that on paper is Mexican territory but in reality is not it’s owned by the cartels if the United States government attacked the cartels on Mexican territory I favor that I favor it what’s gonna happen is Mexico gonna send a nuke at us now what would happen is that the government of Mexico I’m just spitballing here because I’m no diplomat so that I could be causing World War 3 here without knowing it so don’t take me too seriously on this I’m just giving you the citizens view of this as a citizen I would be in favor of the US military invading Mexico today I don’t even need
[22:55]
invading Mexico today I don’t even need a better reason I’m not waiting for something to happen in the future today we have all the incentives we need we have absolute moral and I would say legal assuming that we get it you know approves through Congress or whatever I think we have complete legal ethical moral path for a military attack on the grant on on Mexican territory aimed not any Mexican military we definitely should not shoot at any any Mexican citizens if we can avoid it or at any at least you know ones were innocent and we should not shoot at any Mexican military or a Mexican police unless the Mexican police are owned by the cartels in which case they are just the cartel so I don’t believe it’s necessarily not necessarily let me say it is in a more clean statement I doubt this is a good idea I
[23:59]
statement I doubt this is a good idea I doubt it’s a good idea to attack Mexico and the cartels but I don’t know why not so let’s let’s make that as put a question mark on it if somebody can give me an argument why we should not do that I’d like to hear it because I can’t imagine one what I also am open to the fact that I don’t understand this area well enough to be able to see all the dark corners so there could be plenty of reasons plenty of reasons why we don’t attack the cartels but it seems to me we could weaponize even the immigrants coming across and say hey hey hey we’ll let you into the country but we need we need a little intel on the cartels so tell us what we need to know and we’ll just blast a blast a hole there so there’s that anyway my point was that when people talk about the President and tariffs they don’t understand that the whole point of it is to cause a change
[25:01]
whole point of it is to cause a change you shake in the box he says the variables that we have here are two are not sufficient so the way the the variables are arranged is not getting anything done so I’m going to shake the box I’m going to threaten something that even I don’t want to happen but because my name is President Trump people expect I might do crazy stuff so if I threaten I’m gonna do a crazy thing such as tariffs that would you know be quite a burden on both Mexico in the United States if I threatened to do this you think I might do this because you know what I might do this so when he threatens to do something that sounds crazy it’s credible because he might actually do it like literally he might actually do it and I’m not sure another president would have a credible threat if you imagine any other president would do we we wouldn’t even be having the conversation so mexico’s president is there talking and sounds like he’s a little more flexible we’ll see this is interesting
[26:11]
YouTube as I said before speaking of shadow bending going back to that topic YouTube shows me an analytics page that shows me how many people have viewed my videos so far they also show a public number so if you if you don’t own the page so you can see the analytics only the owner of the page can see the analytics but if you’re the public you would see a number of people who viewed the video that number on my videos is often half of what I know it is so you see what I’m saying if you’re the public and you look at my video it’ll say seven hundred people have seen this so far but I look at my own stats the you can see and it says twice as many have seen it at the same time now I googled to find out why that could be why is it that the public number is half now I don’t know if it’s all always half but when I looked it was half now somebody’s saying it’s a delay it’s a delay perfectly reasonable right
[27:13]
it’s a delay perfectly reasonable right there are different systems what one system is the analytics and maybe that is more important to tell me soon so maybe maybe that one’s the sped up system but they’re both owned by the same company the other one pretends it doesn’t know what their own software knows think about this so somebody said oh it’s because there’s a delay these are two pieces of software and two databases from the same company this one knows the number as soon as it happens this one is delayed I don’t know what hours days are you telling me that Google can’t do a database query of their own data seriously there’s a good there’s some good reason that somebody’s gonna tell me why Google can’t can’t query their own database sure there’s a good reason for that I don’t know what it is but here let me tell you this if you go to a video and it has a small
[28:14]
you go to a video and it has a small number of views are you more or less likely to view it and are you more or less likely to share it you know the answer to that the number of views it has biases you a great deal toward watching it watching the whole thing and then sharing it if it’s true that there’s some delay between the numbers that they know are more accurate which they feed to the Creator myself so I get to see what I am sure is the more accurate number and they feed a delayed imitation estimate I think they call it to the public can they not manipulate that number to make sure it doesn’t go viral for example if you got the most viral video in the world and you looked at it and you saw that only a hundred people watched it after a day just for example if you saw that only a hundred people looked at it and you said to yourself man this is really good
[29:15]
man this is really good only a hundred people like it would you forward it sometimes yes but other times you would be greatly influenced by that number so here’s my point I’m not claiming that Google slash YouTube is manipulating the public display of how many people have watched it I’m not saying they are I’m saying they could it would be completely invisible to anybody it would be simple they would not go to jail there would be no penalty and there would be a definite advantage to do it when do you have those conditions how often does mischief happen when there’s a good upside there’s no penalty and not really any risk of penalty and lots of people are involved in other words it’s not just one person you can say yes or
[30:15]
not just one person you can say yes or no probably a number of people who could make this happen in some way under those conditions you almost always essentially a hundred percent you get mischief under those sets of conditions so again I can’t claim that mischief is happening but the lack of transparency is exactly why I understand the Trump administration has opened up some kind of a process to start looking at the question of Google and whether or not they have a monopoly that needs to get broken up and the lack of transparency on on the social media metric and that that’s just one of many examples that the scary thing is the number of ways that the social many platforms could be influencing things if it were just one or two ways that they could do things you might find a way to get some visibility on just those levers and then you’d say okay as long as we’re watching these two
[31:16]
long as we’re watching these two variables we don’t need to watch everything because everything else will take care of itself it’s not like that there might be something like 80 different variables that could be tweaked to bias things in one way or another and there is no no entity no person nobody we know of who who could figure out what’s happening if you’ve got 80 variables that can be tweaked it’s just too complicated so any mischief could be completely concealed behind complexity and even if you found out they were doing it they could still explain it away I’m gonna think about it suppose suppose there was some government law they dug into the algorithm and determines that one of the social media platforms was intentionally biasing things in some specific way probably almost certainly they could make an argument that it was just to improve the public discussion they could say yeah yeah whenever we saw
[32:17]
they could say yeah yeah whenever we saw this keyword we knew this was a warning that the discussion would turn I don’t know racist or sexist or something and so we quite we quite reasonably then you know down you know down throttled wherever we saw that word because that’s not the kind of language and conversation we want on our platform would that be plausible completely completely plausible as long as they have any argument that says well it’s good for the health of the conversation that’s good enough and maybe it should be good enough you know maybe that is good enough so it’s it’s a pretty tough nut to crack let’s talk about Bitcoin just because I’ve learned my title a lot of people ask me Scott Scott Scott what do you think is gonna happen with cryptocurrency using Bitcoin in general now I hate them to say that this is not financial advice okay it is not financial advice should not you should
[33:18]
financial advice should not you should never get financial advice from cartoonists period everything I say after this and everything I say for the rest of my life is not financial advice somebody says then don’t give it I can’t give predictions so a prediction is not advice I’m gonna tell you what I think will happen and then I’ll tell you that you should not rely on me to make decisions first of all I own a good a goodly chunk of Bitcoin I own it I own it indirectly through just a fun because it was just easier so I own a fund that owns some Bitcoin at the moment it’s up from where I bought it and up sharply I’ve been tracking its movements and it seems that when the market in general gets shaky there’s a tendency not a hundred percent time but there’s a tendency for a Bitcoin to go up when the
[34:20]
tendency for a Bitcoin to go up when the market seems to be in trouble and likewise when the market is doing fine people would rather have regular stocks than maybe a little extra risk with this Bitcoin so it seems like this now it’s not every time yeah every now and then the market will go down and Bitcoin will go down yeah every now and then the market will go up and Bitcoin will go up but mostly they have this relationship once up one sale once up one step now should that pattern become more pronounced over time and it looks like it’s self reinforcing because there are people like me there are people like me who mention it and when people like B mention it then other people started paying attention and they say well is that true and by the way I’m not saying this to influence it although I suppose it could there’s always that risk I’m saying it it’s an observation the more people who observe this and by the way this is something that’s been in the news so what I’m saying now is not me
[35:20]
news so what I’m saying now is not me making this up for the first time it’s something I noticed on my own but then I’ve also seen it on the news so there are two points of agreement people in the news and me we both saw the same thing and that is the starting to work like a protective store of value sort of like gold it used to be that if the market went up then people preferred to have that versus owning actual gold so that went down so gold and markets have a have typically moved in Reverse when the market is going down when people say ah the markets gonna lose a lot money I better put it in gold and that starts going up so as our psychology about Bitcoin starts to let’s say solidify around this concept that it is an alternate an alternate store a value such as gold then the value of Bitcoin goes from speculative I think I want to own it because other people will I hope
[36:22]
own it because other people will I hope I hope more vendors will accept it so therefore that would cause more demand so that used to be the whole reason that Bitcoin would move was psychology and expectations and speculations and really if he’d kind of stuff and it was so iffy that’s why sometimes the value would be very high sometimes we dip but psychology can harden over time Bitcoin was new but it’s not new anymore and what we think about it is going to start to solidify because it always does you know though the way we think about things tends to harden over time and become more likely one thing where if it’s political to things but in a case of Bitcoin we’re gonna have some sense that that a lot of things could go wrong in the world but you might need at least a few Bitcoin so what is likely to happen in the future is that people who are not Bitcoin investors they’re not
[37:24]
are not Bitcoin investors they’re not really into Bitcoin they don’t want to be big crypto people but they don’t mind having 5% of their assets in a crypto and if you’re gonna have a crypto maybe you spread it around you know you get some ether you get some no other other some other coins that are in the top five but you’re probably gonna put some Bitcoin in there probably there’s gonna be a little bit coin in there so when people start putting a little bit of it into their normal portfolio it’s just that that little bit of an edge a little bit of a hedge I mean got an edge against worst case scenario you should make the value of Bitcoin very solid over time again for you those of you joining do not get your advice from cartoonists the big risk with Bitcoin is that somebody comes up with a better crypto that gets for whatever reason more credibility could happen very
[38:25]
more credibility could happen very likely could happen the other risk is that there’s just something about Bitcoin that could be exploited in a way that we don’t know when you thought it was safe but it’s not there could be lots of surprises in the future so don’t bet on me but if you do bet on this make sure it’s a small part of your portfolio and make sure you do it you’re doing it just as a as a protective hedge the same way you’d buy gold the same way you’d buy anything that would move in opposition to the market so that’s my Bitcoin prediction well well well Andrew yang on twitter andrew yang as you know running for president and the Democratic side and he says in his tweet according to twin studies between 1/3 and 1/2 of political alignment is linked to genetics that is most of us are born
[39:27]
to genetics that is most of us are born somewhat wired to be liberal or conservative and then he says if this is the case we need to build bridges as much as possible it’s not just information or culture Andrew yang is this close to getting my vote he’s he’s a crazy nerd and I’m saying that with affection because I love crazy nerds you know if I could if I could you know spend time with with somebody I picked crazy nerd every time right crazy nerds are great crazy nurse you know that are the most probably among the most valuable citizens so I don’t think Andrew yang is quite ready he’s not quite ready for that for the big show but when Trump is done whether it’s you know whether it’s sooner or later andrew
[40:28]
know whether it’s sooner or later andrew yang is still gonna be young and his ideas are still pretty interesting because a lot of his ideas are technical and you know they’re modern and they understand science they’re they’re just a little bit more informed about the way the real world works and this I don’t believe I’ve seen any major politician a national politician correct me if I’m wrong have you ever seen a national politician tell the truth at this level because the truth is that we’re not using we’re not using logic and reason or information to make decisions have you ever seen anybody just say this directly it’s like now you’re just it’s just built in half um it’s just built in now he didn’t make this up of course he it’s part of science and it’s well understood science by the way I’m pretty sure this is the scientific consensus so I love this I love that he’s introduced
[41:30]
I love this I love that he’s introduced this idea it won’t go very far just the the other political nerds like us well we’ll pay attention to it but it does tell you that your approach to managing should take this into account think about this he is I would say that yang is the second politician I can think of who ever thought that maybe we should run things based on the way things are instead of imagining and pretend things are different and then running the country based on this imaginary belief about people that’s the way most politicians do it they see how many times have you seen politicians say the American voters are too smart to fall for this or I think I think voters are smart isn’t that the normal thing politicians say that’s so dumb voters are smart what science knows for sure science knows for sure that we
[42:30]
sure science knows for sure that we don’t use logic and facts to make decisions when when Andrew yang points out that as many as half of our political opinions could be just biological has nothing to do with thinking or information or or facts or anything this is baked into our genes and we were going to go that way or not then you add on top of that the social conditioning and you don’t really have anything like thinking that’s going on now the only other politician who was smart enough to understand that was President Trump he doesn’t use the same words but when President Trump talks about you know hyperbole and persuasion which he does talk about the reason those things matter is exactly what Andrew yang is saying yang is just giving us the you know the delightful nerd version of it which is science is shown blah blah blah were we’re rational creatures and were
[43:31]
were we’re rational creatures and were born that way Trump is simply showing us that that’s true by acting as though failing the fact-check 10,000 times doesn’t matter now I keep arcing back to this in 2015 I said publicly and often that candidate Trump would change more than politics I predicted he would win the election before more than that he would change and we understood reality this is what I was talking about this specifically is exactly what I was talking about the most important thing people thought about reality is that we were rational creatures who made rational decisions and when people don’t don’t agree with us they’re not very smart they’re their honor they’re uninformed or they’re dumb we now understand that how smart you are doesn’t seem to make that much difference we’d like it to but it’s obvious a dozen because there are smart people on both sides of every
[44:31]
smart people on both sides of every every discussion we’d like to think that the facts matter but just look at the Russia collusion situation did the facts matter nobody changed their mind when the facts came out nobody everybody just said well told you the facts made no difference at all did the facts matter with the the fine people hoax no no I’ve convinced exactly zero people with facts and the facts were as clear as they could possibly be that the president never called the the neo-nazis fine people he said literally the opposite he condemned them that same time so facts do not change opinions president Trump knew it Andrew yang is saying it directly and he’s saying that you have to find a way to lead he’s clever about it because what he said was Andrew yang said if this is the case meaning that if genetics is determining
[45:33]
meaning that if genetics is determining largely our opinions because if this is this case we need to build bridges as much as possible it’s not it’s not just information or culture so you know how there are the the congressman steve says culture is important a lot of a lot of oh my god this is this is more brilliant than I thought it was because when yang says it’s not just information in a culture he’s cleverly found to words to substitute for liberal and conservative and I just now realized that conservatives are about culture the Democrats the Liberals are about what they think is information in other words the Liberals live in an illusion that if they could just get better information over to the other side the other side change their mind unless unless there are toothless morons when you say that’s
[46:34]
are toothless morons when you say that’s the Republican view I’m sorry the wouldn’t you say that the the left has the general view that information is what we should care about science information data and if only they could somehow convey this information to the Conservatives the Conservatives would just change their mind unless they were toothless morons and so what are the one of the people on the left declare when they fail to change anybody’s minds with data and information what do they declare is the case oh it looks like we underestimated the number of toothless morons we thought there’d be a scattering of them on the right but we’re very disappointed to find out that 50% of the country are toothless morons and they can’t see Dana now of course they’re living in an illusion the illusion is that data and information could change anybody’s mind and part of the illusion is the new information would change their minds but it won’t we see it all the time do you
[47:37]
it won’t we see it all the time do you think information will change the mind of anybody in the left it won’t but they believe they’re in the solution where information is the main thing on the right you know I’m loving this Andrew yang tweet more every moment that I spend with because it’s really insightful but you don’t notice when you first read it when he says on the write about culture that kind of is where the right is at there you know both sides would say you know that culture and information matter but one side thinks information is King the other side thinks culture is King and he says you need to build a bridge between these two irrational zhh so Andrew yang he’s not saying it in the words that I just used but he’s very clearly saying you have the irrational information people who think information will change people’s minds and obviously it doesn’t you’ve got the culture people who think culture is everything and while it’s important
[48:38]
is everything and while it’s important it’s maybe not as useful as should be in in a melting pot multicultural world that is always changing you know you can’t lock down your culture in a changing world things change so you got to unworkable sides to unworkable illusions and Andrew yang who apparently is not it’s not fooled by either illusion because he’s sort of trumpian he’s sort of polite but trumpian is telling us that you can’t solve for that you can’t solve that but you can build a bridge in other words you could find a way to work with it but you can’t solve it this is so freaking insightful and completely underappreciated now I don’t think Andrew yang has any chance of winning in 2020 but in 2024 if he is running I’m
[49:40]
2020 but in 2024 if he is running I’m gonna look pretty hard at him and it wouldn’t matter what party he ran for sorry if you don’t want to hear that that may be painful for you because you don’t want to hear that but if he’s running I’m gonna take a hard look at him likewise if in 2024 Mark Cuban runs I’m going to take a real real hard look at that because I think both Mark Cuban and Andrew yang are operating at a little higher level than our standard politicians because they’re a little more compatible with science while also understanding we don’t live in a rational world so there are people who love science and they think they’re in a rational world and then they’re they’re incapable of dealing because we don’t live in that world what about Kanye I don’t think Kanye’s gonna run Kanye has been delightfully honest about his his mental health I
[50:40]
honest about his his mental health I think he refers to himself as bipolar now if we ever came into a situation in which the science said oh we took care of this I don’t know if that’s possible he’d be an inch in candidate but I don’t think that’s gonna happen so I think Kanye maybe his greatest value is not to get caught up in the the BS of government I think he’s above it I think Kanye has sort of like news for like your spouse so Kim kardashian-west they are so powerful individually that it feels like being president would slow them down a little bit you know because they have they have things they can do that they’re just uniquely suited for doing in terms of moving how we feel about things and our priorities and all that and I think that they would be far more useful and
[51:40]
they would be far more useful and productive as as just powerful voices that we should listen to for our conscience in a way as realizes in a way Kanye and Kim kardashian-west have become sort of a conscience don’t you think so if they were running for office they’d be politicians if they were saying nothing they would be entertainers if they were saying a lot but it was stupid they would still look like entertainers because a lot of our entertainers say stuff it’s not so useful not so insightful just doesn’t help but what do you call somebody who who are world’s tops of entertainers who are not politicians but are saying things that talk directly to our conscience if you think about it that’s what kardashian-west and and Kanye are doing they’re talking
[52:41]
and and Kanye are doing they’re talking directly to our conscience so you know Kanye is saying hey you know you can be good to people you disagree with you shouldn’t be bullying Trump supporters if you think about it these are not policies it’s not policy its conscience its ethics its morality is that it’s love it’s how do you behave with each other all right Kim kardashian-west fighting for the rights of the unjustly imprisoned or or let’s say excessively imprisoned conscience that’s about conscience that’s about who you are that’s about you know what do you who do you want to be it’s not even about who you who you are it’s about who you want to become do you want to become somebody who lives in this better version of the world that you know that the two of them are presenting yeah I want to I want to live in that better world and they’re showing you the way so uh-huh Kanye West as in his role as I
[53:45]
so uh-huh Kanye West as in his role as I would say a representative and probably the best one of conscience is just way too valuable to waste as a politician I’d hate to waste it in that way and his and as I said his history of mental illness which he’s very honest about I think would prevent him from getting elected because people would have worries about that you know the nuclear football but as a positive force in the world even the fact that he’s so honest about his struggle with mental illness is applause because that that resonates with us and a lot of people say yeah I got issues too you know but maybe I can be productive to it because you are so watching the two of them work that hard so in terms of hard work good intentions trying to make the world a better place they they’re sort of becoming the country’s conscience and I like that because they
[54:47]
conscience and I like that because they do it well all right I don’t have much else to talk about except that you should go to the YouTube channel if you want to watch this on replay it’s at just just Google real coffee with Scott Adams it’ll pop right up and if you if you are an expert please use my startups app interface by when hub and if you’ve got a question actually if any of you have specific things you’d like to see an expert on the app so let’s say you’re working and you’re trying to start a company you’re trying to solve a problem or something like that if you have some specific problem then let me know tweet it to me or if you see one of the when hub tweets put it in there and I’ll see if I can find you an expert because you might have you might need an expert in something very specific you don’t know how to Google it there isn’t yet somebody on the app who has that expertise let me know tweet at
[55:49]
has that expertise let me know tweet at me and we’ll we’ll see if we can round up an expert for you after this call I believe I’m scheduled to talk to somebody who who contacted me through the app so I’ll be giving some advice later this morning and I will talk to you later have a great day everybody