Episode 556 Scott Adams: The Coming GoldenAge of Energy That Will Change Everything

Date: 2019-06-06 | Duration: 35:01

Topics

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Rough Transcript

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Transcript

[0:04]

[Music] hello everybody it’s time for a coffee with Scott Adams it’s your place to get your dopamine hit and it comes with caffeine this time caffeine dopamine it’s like a marriage made in heaven it’s like chocolate and peanut butter it’s like any two things put together and you came to the right place for it today is gonna be a great day in fact it’s part of a great age I think the Golden Age might be here oh sure sure we’ll have some problems thought we’ll work through them we’ll talk about how great things are when everybody gets here but first let us lift our glass our cup of rug could be a stein chalice tankard vessel could be a thermos might be a flask fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous enter so

[1:11]

pleasure of the simultaneous enter so let me tell you some things that are amazing today if you check the headlines you’ll think you are in Reverse own world you know where everything’s backwards let me give you an example in the news today Jim Acosta is praising or yesterday was praising President Trump’s speech for d-day the 75th anniversary totally praising it what where am I have I woken have I awoke in in a dream at the same time over on fox news tucker carlson was praising elizabeth warren’s economic policy true story do you know why he was praising her economic policy because it was pretty good do you know why Jim Acosta was praising President Trump’s speech and Normandy because it was a really good speech what’s happening

[2:13]

good speech what’s happening we’re seeing everybody from AOC to Biden to Murkowski - of course the administration talking about the potential of nuclear energy what it’s the solution to what many would see is the biggest problem in the world I’m gonna be talking a little more about that in a bit how about pretty amazing pretty amazing all right Kim jong-un is criticizing his top officials lately for for not being good enough now it doesn’t seem that he has at least at least he hasn’t executed his people who are negotiating but one of the hypotheses is that the new loosening of will say loosening of contact between North Korea and South Korea is probably letting into the country a lot of movies and culture and stuff probably on thumb drives and you

[3:14]

stuff probably on thumb drives and you know small devices and things but the thinking is that Kim jong-un knows he can’t survive information if information gets into the North it will make clear that they’re not doing things as well as other countries and that’s real problem so Kim has started to criticize publicly his own people for not doing a good job he’s making sure that when the public finds out that things are working well he wants to make sure that they know who to blame which suggests that he knows information is coming now it’s a lot of dots I’ve connected here so I’m not going to try to get into the mind of somebody on the other side of the world but I do think that there is some truth to the fact that he can’t stop the information from getting in and the more that gets in the more he’s gonna have to explain and that’s probably good for us because he’s going to need to improve things and there is one print one path

[4:14]

things and there is one print one path to improvement and it’s through negotiations with the u.s. even Robert Downey jr. has started a foundation to try to fake climate change and maybe pollution it’s a little unclear what he’s up to but he’s putting his money behind it now what is what’s the first thing you think of when you think a Robert Downey jr. an actor once the cleanup the end you fix climate change it’s gonna be something dumb not so much not so much he loves you loves nuclear energy that’s right [Laughter] Robert Downey jr. is bro nuclear energy but he’s also proved proud nanotechnology and robots n’ and other stuff and he’s putting his money beyond it to which i say how about that how about that there there’s there something I can respect so when you see a world in

[5:16]

I can respect so when you see a world in which Jim Acosta is praising the president for being so so polite and so you know well-spoken and you’re seeing people on both sides say nuclear energy is great you’re seeing you’re seeing a Hollywood actor do something that’s clearly good now who knows if it produces some you know breakthrough but if you’re if you’re not trying to get a breakthrough you’re not gonna get one so pretty basic stuff all right what else we got going on so I was reading about Russia and collusion in oh wait a minute no I wasn’t I looked at the news today and there’s nothing about Russia and collusion there is a little thing about Pelosi wanting to see Trump in prison what do we know about that story we know that it’s a quote of something that somebody said that wasn’t recorded and was reported to us by people unknown what is the reliability of an of an

[6:20]

what is the reliability of an of an unknown source repeating what somebody said in a meeting reliability zero zero no reliability now it’s possible that she said something like we’re gonna play it for you know we’re going to do the election you know and then it’s possible she said something that sounded like it but it’s not possible that that’s exactly what she was thinking well it’s possible it’s unlikely here’s what I think was happening as others have suggested she’s trying to find some way to to find the middle path between two groups that don’t really have a middle one one doesn’t want a peach one only wants to the peach so how do you find the middle between these two opposites well it seems the way she’s doing it is she’s going to say hey the thing that’s even better than impeachment is the vote amount of office and then put him in jail so if you’re talking to the hardcore impeachment people you say look I’m hardcore that

[7:23]

people you say look I’m hardcore that you are all you want to do is impeach and that’s not even going to work what I want to do is beat him in the election which could work maybe could work and then once he’s beaten in the election the legal system can’t protect him and then we can do what we want now if he’s saying that to her impeach crowd pretty smart because she’s saying no I’m not less hard on the president that you are I’m much harder that’s a very good argument it’s a high ground she say have a little patience we’ll have automatic office then we do whatever we want with him because he’s not protected by the office anymore now that doesn’t mean she believes it that doesn’t mean that she would really pursue the President or want to after you he was out of office what it does mean is this a good way to control the the people who were on the fringe while at the same time the people who don’t want to impeach can you hear her say hey let’s not impeach let’s just try to beat it in the election and that’s exactly what they think you know

[8:25]

that’s exactly what they think you know you can worry about that separate question whether there’s some legal thing sometime in the future you don’t have to worry about that it’s a separate question so did she say did Pelosi say something like we don’t need to impeach him we’ll beat him in the election and then you know I want to see him in jail buddy she might have said something approximately like that but I wouldn’t take that too seriously that sounds like managing for debate but the the more important larger thing to keep in mind is that it’s hearsay it’s somebody that you don’t know who said something interpreting what somebody said it in a meeting probably untrue let me correct something that let me correct a fact from prior conversations here and on Twitter you made you may know Joe Concha who I mentioned he tweeted something from the hill and the hill article said that the

[9:25]

hill and the hill article said that the president was praising white nationalists at Charlottesville which is not true so I had some criticisms about promoting that fake news but I want to correct it is not joe concha who said the faint news he tweeted a story written by somebody else they had a line in there they said that the president was praising white nationalists now I do have a question why it was tweeted but I do not but I do not put any responsibility on it nor should you on Joe gallo for writing the article it wasn’t his article and I don’t know what he thought about that particular line in it but just want to correct the record if you thought that if you thought that Joe concho believed the president was praising white nationalists there’s no evidence that he believes that in fact he has apparently said the opposite in public a number of times so I want to correct that just for accuracy there’s a

[10:29]

correct that just for accuracy there’s a story out of Japan there’s apparently some kind of a movement in Japan and a big national a lot of people signed a petition to make high heels no longer required / desirable for working women in Japan so the idea is that women and Japan are saying hey don’t make us wear high heels at work and I have to admit do this experiment mentally bring yourself into the future of 50 mentally right so just go imagine 50 years into the future do you believe in 50 years there’s any chance that women will routinely be wearing high heels at work probably the odds of that are zero haha I mean maybe but I would say in 50 years

[11:32]

I mean maybe but I would say in 50 years the odds that women routinely wear high heels at work is probably zero right for all the obvious right reasons now when you do that experiment where you put yourself 50 years in the future and then you look back and you look at this age you look at 2019 doesn’t it feel weird there women wear high heels doesn’t it feel like wrong on every level I mean high heels literally are sexualizing women that the reason you wear heels is because they’re flattering to your legs and the reason you do that is because that’s one of the signals for you know sexual attractiveness now why in the world is that a work requirement it’s a work requirement to make your legs look good at work think about how that’s going to look to us in the future in the future we’re going to look back to that and say well I can’t believe that seemed okay like how was it that we

[12:35]

that seemed okay like how was it that we were in the the me2 era and everything else and everybody was just okay with that now let me say I I want to give you my personal opinion I’m a guy do I like seeing women in heels yes of course I do do I think they’re women in heels are more attractive well it depends right depends on the woman blah blah blah but yes absolutely do I think they make women look sexier of course a lot but do I think women should have to wear them for work for work are you freaking kidding me that’s still a thing like doesn’t it already feel like we’re it feels like it’s a bit of the past that followed us what we didn’t notice you know sometimes you step on the toilet paper and stock you shoe and you you walk out of the restaurant or whatever and you’ve got that long string of toilet paper stuck to your shoe if the high heels thing feels like that it

[13:36]

the high heels thing feels like that it feels like society has walked way past the point where having women wear sex objects to work could make any sense at all and yet there it is it’s like the toilet paper stuck to the shoe that’s the same time I love high heels so I will feel bad when they go away but they’re going away all right I’ll feel good for women though for a woman it’s gonna be terrific I would think the others there is one there is one reason for heels that make sense which is it adds height and height actually is pretty correlated with success and with confidence and all that so if women want to wear them because of height that’s not a bad reason that that would at least have scientific backing but I think the trade-offs pretty bad all right let’s talk about censorship of conservatives so the latest is steven crowder was demonetised on youtube I

[14:38]

crowder was demonetised on youtube I keep wanting to get really engaged in this topic I keep thinking that somebody’s gonna get kicked off a platform or demonetised and I’m gonna say to myself now you’ve gone too far you’ve crossed the line now big social media this one was way over the line and I keep waiting for the story and I think oh here’s one steven crowder because i’ve been on his show and there was nothing when i was on the show there was nothing - sounded even vaguely like it be a problem I’ve watched many clips of his of issue and I’ve never seen that anything on a clip that looked even vaguely like a problem to me so I thought to myself here’s the one steven crowder you can’t possibly think that he and his show should be demonetized I’m going I’m gonna go deep this time and then I look at the clip the clips that got him kicked off and unfortunately it’s really anti-gay ugly

[15:41]

unfortunately it’s really anti-gay ugly stuff now he’s doing it jokingly and in the context of humor but the humor is at the expense of gay people in general now what am I supposed to do with that how am I supposed to take his side seriously this is like a frickin trap I feel like I feel like I feel like the left have this perfect trap where they can go after people who have a video record of saying think that something that’s clearly beyond the you know beyond the Terms of agreement or the Terms of Service and then what am I supposed to do am I supposed to argue that they shouldn’t have you shouldn’t have guidelines am I supposed to side with the person who said things that I would that I disavowed about and and keep in mind and I did watch it and I do know that he was talking about a specific journalist the specific journalist he was talking about is one

[16:42]

journalist he was talking about is one of the worst people I’ve ever seen in my life so the person that Crowder was going after and who ultimately I guess was behind getting him demonetized that front the person from Vox I’m not going to say his name because he’s just a horrible horrible human being but none of that has to do with being gay I don’t think that comes into anything right there’s there was nothing along those lines nothing on the topic had anything to do with anything so somebody say he was using that guy’s own words it doesn’t work that way you can say things about yourself other people get to say about yourself so here’s the thing I want to defend steven crowder I wanted to defend his right to say things that other people find offensive just sort of as a general free speech thing without you know I don’t want to endorse anything he said I just want to say that he should be able to say what he said but here’s the thing why YouTube did was they demonetized him

[17:47]

why YouTube did was they demonetized him they didn’t take him off the platform as long as he’s on the platform he still has complete freedom of speech he just isn’t monetized and here’s here’s the issue does YouTube or any other platform have a legitimate right to service their advertisers in a way that the advertisers are buying something that’s a value which is an advertising platform that doesn’t cause them any trouble if what if what if what YouTube is doing is saying we our advertisers do not want to pair their content with this what they don’t want to pair their ads with this content I say well that’s sort of a free speech issue too isn’t it because if you’re an advertiser you get to have your own free speech and your free speech as hey I don’t want my brand associated with this kind of content why can’t the advertiser have that right of

[18:49]

can’t the advertiser have that right of course they can if you have the right to associate you also have the right to not associate you have the right to not pair your content with somebody else’s in a in a commercial platform voluntary way of course you do so when YouTube says this content we don’t monetize because our advertisers would not like it and they’re buying a service and that’s not their service they’re buying i I’ve got a big problem criticizing that because if you criticize that I mean you’re criticizing a pretty basic part of capitalism a pretty basic part of free speech so where I am on all of this stuff is that you should all diversify so if you haven’t already opened alternative alternative social media accounts I would recommend you do that that doesn’t mean quitting the traditional ones that have all the traffic and you know you’ve got all the the energy over there don’t quit them but make sure that

[19:51]

don’t quit them but make sure that you’ve got to back up and make sure you’ve diversified across the platforms it is the best you can do and that’s the same time and that to save time and by the way for those of you who would get angry at me because I’m not going to I’m not going to risk it all to defend steven crowder or any other individual gets banned you have to think about this a little bit more strategically if if everybody goes off and gets themselves banned because somebody else did something that advertisers don’t like I don’t know if that’s the fight you want to be in you know and I having watched the clips that got steven crowder kicked off of monetization anyway I looked at them and I said to myself okay that’s not a slip of the tongue it’s a it’s a repeated behavior he you know he did the same thing that anybody would have known would have been a problem anybody who did what he did should have known this

[20:54]

did what he did should have known this would get him in trouble on the platform know why he didn’t I am NOT a descent I have no idea why he did what he did don’t know but it’s not for me to defend his actions or you or YouTube’s alright but I’m gonna keep watching this because there’s a real issue here and but I don’t want to confuse it with things that are just business because that’s not a problem all right let us talk about the coming to the coming Golden Age I’m gonna call it a nuclear age so I’m gonna give you a new term I believe we are entering the nuclear age now I know you’re saying oh how can we be entering it we’ve been in it forever we’ve had nuclear power forever and decades and decades what do you mean we’re through it well here’s my argument I’m going to start with a general a general concept and the general concept looks like this for a technology it’s

[21:56]

looks like this for a technology it’s often it’s often common that a technology would start off as not being useful and then we would develop it and develop it until it became useful so we’re across the line into being useful but if you further develop it and you keep going you might reach a point where you you have another turning point where it doesn’t become just useful it actually transforms society let me give you an example telephones telephones started out you know the day they were invented there was nobody to call what good was the telephone what only a hundred people in the world had not much good but they kept improving improving and more people got them and then you started to have flip phones you know you had a you had a phone that didn’t have a screen on it but was a little flip phone you could make a call anywhere you could be anywhere and still make a call well not anymore you had to be nearest say they e you had to have coverage but it was a pretty big deal when we weren’t from landlines to cell phones that was

[22:59]

from landlines to cell phones that was that was a big change into the the useful zone now you could say we were useful with landlines and it just got better and better with the flip phones but then smart phones came along smart phones are not just a better telephone it’s a complete rearrangement of society because now everything’s that have the things I used to call I could do on an app you know with the the fact that as a screen and then they could do so many functions it’s barely even a telephone the the thing I do least with my smartphone is make a phone call that’s the thing I do least so phones went through a few stages where there were long there were long phases where they they were getting a little bit better but then would they reach some turning point where I was like changes everything it’s possible that when we get g5 everywhere the faster speeds that it might do this again I mean there might be a whole other level where you’ve got enhanced

[24:00]

other level where you’ve got enhanced reality and you’re in your glasses and all kinds of stuff now let’s get to nuclear nuclear energy started of course the the first day the first nuclear energy was designed in the first nuclear plant let’s call it generation 1 whatever that was wasn’t that useful to the world it had to get a lot better generation 2 was better generation 3 so we’re sort of here on new except people will say wait a minute it’s been decades and decades and nuclear plants are you know some of them are closing it doesn’t seem like we have any momentum what’s up with this well the problem is that you couldn’t iterate nuclear energy technology easily because it was hard to build a nuclear plant and then see if it worked and then oh how can we improve this and then build another one but we are very close to an inflection point with nuclear energy that would be the generation for plants I would say the generation 3 and 4 are

[25:02]

I would say the generation 3 and 4 are right around this corner this is about where we are so what’s going to happen when we have lots of small generation 4 or maybe someday fusion but we can just talk about more standard fission nuclear for now I think we’re approaching a another point what happens when nuclear energy is widespread and they figured out how to standardize the designs so that you can lower the cost and get again approval more easily now keep in mind shrinking them and standardizing the design fixes a lot of stuff it fixes the economics because you’re always making the same nuclear plant it fixes training because it’s the same plant you’re just reproducing it and it makes a lot easier to get approval because the approval is the same as the last time you don’t have to look at a whole new plan you say oh it’s the same same as

[26:04]

plan you say oh it’s the same same as last time so was put another one in a new place so there’s a lot going on in terms of the ordinary engineering of nuclear now let me give you another analogy I worked at the phone company back in the days when it was landlines and and the first cell phones were developed and then I was also in the in the group within the phone company there was first developing the smaller cell phones which became the flip phones and the little little regular cell phones during that time one of the things that the engineers explained to me is that there was nothing stopping us from going where where we were with landlines to a point where everybody had a phone in their pocket and could call anybody from anywhere they told me it is purely an engineering problem meaning there’s nothing that needs to be you know invented out of nothing it’s it’s known engineering problems and iterating

[27:04]

known engineering problems and iterating to find the best of them until you get something great all of the engineers who worked in this field said there’s nothing that’s going to stop this from happening it’s just time and iteration likewise with nuclear energy if you talk to the people in that field they will tell you there is nothing that’s gonna stop this from happening the slow improvement in nuclear is going to have an elbow and it is going to go crazy we don’t know when it could be in ten years it could be in twenty years but the odds that are happening are more like a hundred percent unless yeah I suppose if aliens visit and bring us a new technologies you know and energy source could make a difference now here’s why this matters I’m gonna make a statement that will haunt you forever the statement is this money is simply a way to store energy

[28:05]

money is simply a way to store energy that that’s the thought that will haunt you for a while money you know currency and bank accounts and credit cards and all those anything is money there’s a way to store energy and that everything that we care about and need to do is about moving energy everything you build is focusing energy somewhere everything you move is energy everything you do requires energy the world is energy that’s being rearranged and moved and focused that’s what it is if you think about that then you understand that when we get to the elbow where energy becomes way way cheaper everything changes we’re not talking about with small improvements when you get to the point where we’re putting let’s say generation for smaller nuclear online and we’re just cranky amount boom-boom-boom-boom as the cost of energy goes down which is what would happen you get all these transformative

[29:06]

happen you get all these transformative benefits that are not in here’s my cat coming through these are not incremental changes sorry about the she’s not in the screen right now you don’t give incremental changes let me give you some examples the reason that we don’t like to grow food indoors is because you have to use a lot of energy it takes energy to move the water there it takes energy for the lights and that’s actually a lot of energy to to artificially light light it you need energy for desalinization depending on where you are and if you were shipping food you need energy for that so growing food is sort of an energy problem not a hundred percent but very much an energy problem if you have cheap energy you have cheap food you’ve got desalinization you’ve got water everywhere you’ve got heating and cooling is cheaper so you don’t have to worry about staying warm or staying cool you’ve got irrigation because that requires energy and even construction

[30:07]

requires energy and even construction every every component that goes into building your house from the the bricks to the walls to the everything required a lot of energy expense to create it in the first place you know to dig it out of the ground to manufacture it to create it to ship it to your place to put it in in into the construction all energy you take energy and of the equation or you take it down from you know what it costs now to ten percent of what it cost now let’s say in best-case scenario suddenly you don’t just have a slightly better gas bill or energy bill I’m not talking about a my electrical cost went down or hey is it great to some extra people in the third world country got electricity it’s way bigger than that that we’re talking about making making it basically cheap enough for somebody who doesn’t have a job in one state to simply get in a

[31:08]

one state to simply get in a self-driving car and drive to the other part of the country fairly cheaply because the energy cost would be approaching zero so here’s the big picture in the future it will be impossible to simply tax our way to a fair and just society because there won’t be enough money people making money to tax them so heavily that you wouldn’t crush capitalism in the service of trying to provide for the poor so taxation under the current set of variables can’t get us there but if you can reduce substantially the cost of a good quality life such that instead of costing a hundred thousand dollars a year to have a family of four in a you know in a suburban area maybe it costs and even that’s low but maybe it costs fifty maybe it costs twenty-five you know you should be able to get the cost of a good life way way down simply by starting with energy so I

[32:11]

down simply by starting with energy so I propose that we are entering a golden age in which nuclear energy will drastically reduce the cost of most of what we do so that most of what we do completely transforms into a far better world so that’s the thought money is just a way to temporarily store energy that can be released again when you give somebody else your money for them to do some work so that’s the that’s the situation so here consider if you will the people on both sides of the aisle from AOC and Biden two to Rick Perry and the Energy Group and the Trump administration pretty much everybody’s on on plan right now that iterating nuclear technology and and getting serious about it is the way to go it is the way to deal with climate change it is the way to deal with our national debt because again you’d be making

[33:13]

debt because again you’d be making things cheaper for people you don’t need to tax as much if everything becomes less expensive so even things like health care become way more affordable if you don’t have to pay so much for the other stuff so nuclear energy could be the biggest transformative change in civilization in the coming few decades and everybody’s on board I don’t see anybody who’s against it who’s actually looked into it so even the politicians are on the same side so we’re looking at you’re looking at a situation forming there’s one of the most positive things that civilization has ever seen and here’s the fun part there’s almost nothing that can stop it from happening because remember it’s just engineering we don’t have to do much differently you know maybe maybe the lawmakers need to make things a little easier and maybe get rid of some regulations but it seems to it seems

[34:13]

regulations but it seems to it seems there’s some will to do that so there doesn’t seem to be any problem to get from where we are to way less expensive energy and widely available and completely transforming society because of it it’s going to happen 10 years maybe 20 years nothing’s going to stop it I think I will leave it on that high point and I remind you if you want to see this in replay you can just go to youtube and google real coffee with scott adams it’ll pop right up and that’s all for now I will talk to you later