Episode 655 Scott Adams: Decoupling, Rehab, Food and Healthcare, More Fun Than it Sounds

Date: 2019-09-07 | Duration: 29:16

Topics

China COULD stop sending Fentanyl to America… …but they choose to continue A “credit score” for China and other trading partner countries? Bill Maher’s comments on people eating themselves to death Successful rehab numbers are pretty low Can DNA predict who has drug addict potential? Bill Pulte’s internet philanthropy Q followers suspicious, researching Bill’s motivations Anybody have suggestions for a different, better method?

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:10]

hello everybody good morning happy weekend what a terrific day it's a terrific day to be alive and to be joining me for a coffee with Scott Adams and the the amazing amazing simultaneous sip it's the best thing ever it's the way to start your day get your dopamine running are you ready oh you use a cover of our glasses time to tell us the tanker to thermos a flask a canteen of vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid get ready for the dopamine hit here it comes go let me tell you my best idea that I haven't tested yet I have an idea for dealing with snoring now it's for people who don't have let's say some physical issue and it combines technology with hypnosis are you ready I don't know if this will work but it's

[1:12]

don't know if this will work but it's based on so you've seen the ear the ear what are they called ear buds from Apple and they're a great little product so my idea uses a product like an earbud it can actually be the ear buds but let's say is optimized for sleeping so this one's not too good for sleeping because if you put your head on it it can fall out and might not feel comfortable so imagine something like an air bud that's built to figure ear comfortably and you can sleep on the pillow it'll be fine and all the ear bud will do is listen for the sound of your snoring and when it detects it here's the cool part your ear bud will whisper into your ear a pre-recorded voice that is your own telling you what to do so it might say turn on your side just very softly turn on your side and it would be you talking to yourself while you're half asleep or

[2:12]

to yourself while you're half asleep or mostly now what would happen in the long run now the first few times it happens it would probably wake you up because you adhere roll on your side you'd be like well you know wake you up and you'd like okay and you'd roll on your side what happens after the hundredth time that your own voice whispers in your ear Scott roll on your side after the hundredth time this is my hypothesis after the hundredth time your own voice in your own head whispers to you to turn on your side it won't wake you up anymore but you'll still turn on your side now it's a hypothesis and it could require some some different sentences so maybe it's something like your stop snoring maybe it's something like breathe maybe it's something like breathe through your nose but whatever the messages are and you might have to experiment with the one

[3:13]

might have to experiment with the one the theory is that you would effectively hypnotize yourself that the trigger you heard which is your own voice the most compatible thing you'll ever hear is you're yourself talking to yourself you'll find this very persuasive one of the ways I discovered this is by listening to my periscopes on playback I gotta tell you that listening to the sound of your own voice if you're talking about something that's interesting is more fun than it should be
be because we love ourselves when we listen to ourselves talk we're also we're saying things that sound brilliant to us and it's very compatible with us now this is based on the concept of pacing and leading in hypnosis and in persuasion if you want to persuade somebody first you match them you might match their breathing you might match their body language you might match the types of words they use you might match the style that they

[4:13]

you might match the style that they speak you know so you look for as many things as you could match especially their opinion you match their opinion and then once you've done enough matching called pacing you can start saying things that they don't or I feel or believe and they're more likely to go with you because you've matched them so far so this is taking that concept to yourself just putting the the message in your gear a pre-recorded message from yourself what to do and I think it would translate him to staying asleep and still still reacting so that's the test I give that away to the world for free if somebody wants to make that and you could probably make it out of an earbud and an app on the phone and you don't even need a new piece hardware if you're willing to sleep with an earbud in alright next topic I'm going to give you my opinion of the three most credible voices in the world on politics all right so here are the three most

[5:13]

right so here are the three most credible people in the world in my opinion on politics number one Joe Rogan number two Dave Chappelle number three Whoopi Goldberg why do I say that I say that because the three of them clearly are willing to listen to data and information and they're clearly willing to go against their own team when it's obviously a good idea so I'm not saying that you should believe what any of those three say so I'm not I'm not suggesting that you should match their opinions I'm saying that they're credible meaning that even if you don't like their opinion they have the ability to go against their own team it's very rare and when they go against their own team that comes off as authentic and it comes off as credible and in the case of

[6:14]

comes off as credible and in the case of Joe Rogan I don't even know if you could say he has a team I mean he's he's so he's so intellectually I would say high grounded I don't know I don't even know a word for him so he sort of you sort of occupies the high ground pretty much all the time which makes it impossible to identify him with a with a specific politics because there's always a high ground and that's a little bit above both those he just lives there so does dave chappelle dave chappelle just lives in the high ground he's willing to call out his side he'll call out your side he doesn't care and he seems about equally willing to go either way and then Whoopi Goldberg sort of caught my attention by going against Debra Messing and calling that out is just a horrible idea so I just like to give them a little a little respect for being the three most credible voices in the world some but I saw somebody mentioned Tim Poole and he would be up at the top of the list - have y'all

[7:18]

at the top of the list - have y'all heard the hashtag decoupling it's it's not a Hollywood term for a divorce although it's sort of this but decoupling refers to discontinuing trade with China and so I think you're gonna see that hashtag decoupling more at the moment the three people that I know who talked about it the most are Gordon Chang who was an expert on China Lance Bass who was really a you I think he's China's biggest enemy right now I guess he's a hedge fund guy and me they're probably other famous ish voices speaking out against China but the three of us I know are actively saying let's cut the cord but I'm going to add something to that because you know China has their famous Social Credit System and that seems like a well if that's a good idea how about this China how about if we

[8:22]

how about this China how about if we take your idea of a social credit score and say well that's good how about the world creates a trade credit score in other words how about a score - to measure the trade worthiness of other countries why not it doesn't already exist because it might already exist right maybe it needs a little attention if it already exists but a decoupling if you're coming in late refers to just discontinuing trade with China because China is a an enemy and not a trading partner we know this because the fentanyl they're shipping here killing 50,000 people a year in this country we know it from stealing our IP we know it from the bad trade deals we know it from their cyber attacks and their military you know emphasis at the moment so so that's what do you couple gets me so here's my suggestion

[9:23]

here's my suggestion let's take China's idea and if somebody's already doing it maybe we just give them some attention but the idea is to give our trading partner countries a score for their there's trading worthiness and we would measure such things as are you at war with our country that would be a checkbox now there's sending enough fentanyl our way from China through Mexico to the United States that I would say yes China is at war with the United States because they could stop it they choose not to we don't need to know why they could stop it they choose not to that's the end of the story you don't need to know the details they choose to send weapons of mass destruction in the form of fentanyl to our country they could stop it they just choose not to that would be a failing grade so no matter what else you were doing right that would be a failure so I would imagine our checklist for

[10:24]

so I would imagine our checklist for trade worthiness the trade credit score would have a number of things like do you steal IP do you have intellectual property protections do you have a court system that can adjudicate things in the business context do you have a tariff system which is fair are you doing dumping on our shores so it'd be that sort of questions my guess is that China would be deemed unworthy if we just did an objective a trade and I think that that would be so devastating to them in in terms of intellectual not inflectional international commerce that i
i let's do it let's put a little pressure on them let's rank our countries you know who do you want to do business with Japan a plus right who do you want to do business with the Great Britain a plus trance a plus you know

[11:25]

trance a plus you know Amsterdam you know Holland Netherlands a plus Norway a plus Sweden a plus China F all right let's talk about sharpie gate sharpie Gate has to be the dumbest of all scandals controversies I don't know what it is it's so dumb here's the thing so the president has tweeted out a CNN clip where their weather person calls out Alabama as being at risk CNN on the air said Alabama was at risk from the Dorian storm that's what Trump said right now I guess no I first said no but now they they've come out with a new statement today or yesterday this says well we should not have said that Alabama is not in danger we should have stated it as more of a you know a statistical risk which would

[12:28]

you know a statistical risk which would allow that there is some risk that's bigger than what we're saying will happen that's what I said so what did I say when I looked at the controversy without even digging into it I said that if if if you're forecasting can't tell the difference between the storm is going this way or the storm is going that way then it's certainly fair to say that Alabama is at risk because you don't know where the storm is going and it's certainly somewhere within that larger your risk statement so the president was a hundred percent in my opinion a hundred percent directionally accurate when saying that the risk extended to maybe Alabama at one point and now NOAA has confirmed that so it doesn't matter who drew on it with a sharpie it's the least important thing we'll talk about I can't think of anything less or bloomin but I guess that's good Bill Maher made a big point about how the

[13:29]

Maher made a big point about how the Democrats keep talking about health care but they don't talk about the American diet and doing something to reduce the number of people who are eating themselves to death I got a I got a go with Bill Maher on this now at the same time that I'm willing to say you know we don't live in the country where the government tells you what to eat but we do sort of live in the country where the government tells you what to eat they kind of do it's just not a law the government gives you the nutritional pyramid which may or may not it's no longer a pyramid I think it's something else now but they do have nutritional guidelines that people largely ignore and they do require food labels which people largely ignore so I don't know what else the government could be doing except education perhaps you know if if the government said we were going to start educating let's say

[14:30]

were going to start educating let's say preteens on how to eat properly you know we're gonna make that part of the school curriculum I would say pretty good idea pretty good idea but if it goes beyond education that would be a problem all right let's talk about rehab so I tweeted an article that suggests that rehab doesn't work that well meaning that the success rate of rehab is pretty low and there are different ideas for why that is but I'm gonna I'm gonna add an idea to the mix so here's the question can you determine from DNA whether somebody has addictive possibilities in other words if I were to test everybody's DNA on this periscope could I tell with a fair level of certainty from the DNA which of you have the potential to become drug

[15:30]

have the potential to become drug addicts or which of you are unlikely to become jack drug I believe the answer is yes I believe the answer is that we can tell now let me suggest this if you're a drug dealer and you were to sell what are these illegal drugs to someone who had tested their DNA and had communicated to you in some fashion I don't know if it's just imagine this as a thought experiment and somehow you knew it could be because they you know they were a pin on their chest that said you know my DNA makes me an addict could be because they've told all their friends and you happen to know so let's say the situation is the drug addict knows that they're selling a drug to somebody who has addictive personality based on their DNA should that not be the death sentence for the dealer because if you sell if you're a dealer and you sell a drug to somebody whose DNA makes it some more optional

[16:31]

whose DNA makes it some more optional whether they become a drug addict and that person goes ahead and takes too much your drug and dies I would say well that was a drug dealer and a drug user who were using something like free will and choice and they did something they that was a bad choice and somebody died well I think the drug dealer still needs to you know answer to the law in that case just for dealing drugs that are illegal but I don't think that's the death penalty seems to me that if they unknowingly sold the drug to somebody who had that DNA structure well it was a bad risk but everybody knew what they were doing it's still illegal but if you're a drug dealer and you knowingly sell your drug to someone who has addictive DNA is that the same because that's a lot like killing somebody I think that should be treated as attempted murder and should be charged that way because if you give a drug to

[17:32]

that way because if you give a drug to somebody who has addictive personality and you know it it's sort of an attempted murder all right so I'm going to throw that out there I think we need a lot more a lot more knowledge about wise why rehab works with some people and why not I'll tell you what my hypnosis professor taught me which is one of the probably the most useful lesson you will learn anywhere at any time and I'm going to share it with you are you ready for one of the most useful lessons about human beings you'll ever hear my hypnosis instructor was overweight and people asked him about using hypnosis to quit smoking and to lose weight and the instructor said here's the deal paraphrasing hypnosis does work for losing weight and it does work for quitting cigarettes and it works in exactly the same ratio as every

[18:34]

works in exactly the same ratio as every other method in other words and this is how we further explained it if somebody has decided to quit smoking or they've decided to quit wait and the key word is decided not wants to not desires do not has a goal of but is decided once the person is decided there are a lot of methods that work hypnosis is just one of the methods you could use you're chantix and you're your weight loss your Weight Watchers if you've made the decision you're gonna poke around until you find a method that works and you're probably good you'll probably get some good results if you have not decided but rather you think that the technique you are going to select will change your mind for you there's some how the process of I don't chewing the nicotine gum or the process of going to rehab or the process of joining Weight Watchers

[19:35]

the process of joining Weight Watchers if you think the process of doing those things is going to put your mind a decision about it it's not it's going to remove the decision from you because you're going to say well I'll just go through these steps and I guess something how good will happen I haven't really decided but I've just decided to go through these processes so that's probably the single biggest thing somebody has to decide that the getting off the drugs is better than being on the drugs and that's a tough sale let me tell you from my stepsons example my ex and I tried to get him into rehab it did get him into rehab a few times so rehab of course didn't work for him and he went along with it because he was a minor at the time and he sort of had to do what he was told but he made it clear from the moment he went in then he wasn't planning on stopping you know he would say some words like oh yeah I want to stop doing the hard stuff but I'm

[20:37]

to stop doing the hard stuff but I'm certainly not going to stop drinking I'm certainly not going to stop you know smoking marijuana because I don't want to be alive and not be able to party and he said that directly and often he said I prefer death to a life where I can't hang out with my friends have some beers smoke some pot he said it often and he said it credibly and he never he never got off of that and every time that we took him someplace where he could get clean for a while he would tell us directly when I come back of course I'm gonna be drinking and of course I'm gonna you know probably smoke cigarettes and of course I'm going to smoke marijuana because those things are so bad and everybody does that and that's just being a normal normal young person and of course everybody tried to convince him that that's addict talk that if he doesn't understand that doing

[21:38]

that if he doesn't understand that doing those other things guarantee you will do the harder stuff if he doesn't understand that no rehab can help you you know you're basically on your way to death so his death that came as unfortunately no surprise because he told us a system and a strategy that didn't guarantee he would have an overdose but it made it very likely and that's the path he went somehow we have to get past the deciding to do it and I don't know how to do that okay here's the controversial thing that's happening at the moment some of you are watching that bill polt a who's been doing the internet philanthropy and as well as the blight Authority stuff doing good work for the public he's made his money he's trying to give back he's trying to promote this idea of giving on the Internet by creating example building up his his

[22:38]

creating example building up his his Twitter followers and trying to make it more of a robust you know national thing and I've been helping along the way and apparently a bunch of queue followers have started digging up just crazy conspiracy theories it seems to be mostly the queue people and and they they're imagining that he's being funded by Soros crazy yeah there because I guess Soros may have some investments and Polti homes which bill is not even directly involved with at the moment but everybody can invest in a public company right investing in a public company is just business as usual so I'm going to give away a thousand dollars of bills money so he's agreed to let me give away a thousand dollars and the way I'm going to do it is in the spirit of experimentation all right so I'm going to experiment and I haven't quite

[23:40]

to experiment and I haven't quite figured out what angle I'm gonna take how to do this it's just an experiment now one of the things that people complained about and I get I guess what they're saying is they they found it unpleasant to see people competing competing to get the money and so all look for some suggestions so before I make this public before I tweet about it if anybody has this just a suggestion of what would be a way to give away a thousand dollars again just an experiment see what happens what kind of reaction you get oh yeah the other crazy cute conspiracy thing is that it's all a big data mining operation and all he's doing is trying to collect a name to sell or something nothing like that's happening alright I know bill personally we've talked a million times before before and during the internet philanthropy has nothing to do with George Soros has nothing to do with data mining these are these are pretty crazy things so I thought I would add my voice

[24:43]

things so I thought I would add my voice to it in case anybody is wondering I've looked at I've looked into it probably more than most of you have and so I can assure you that as far as I can tell it's exactly what it looks like in the surface a rich guy who wants to figure out what the best way to give back and he's experimenting if you don't like the way it's gone that's what experimenting means you know there's no point maybe testing things if you think it's going to work on the first try or that it won't have any problems on the first try everything's got a risk everything's got a problem so we're experimenting we'll see what happens so what would be a good alternative for giving away a thousand dollars to somebody who could be helped without causing other people to feel like they're competing for it in in some way that you should listen appropriate so I will take your suggestions and then we'll experiment see what we can do all right he is giving is inefficient well

[25:47]

right he is giving is inefficient well it depends what you think is the goal if you think that the goal is for bill to efficiently give away his own money then I would agree that the Twitter stuff is inefficient but that's not the entire goal the giving the way you know his own money I think he's he's sent a million dollars he'll give away the giving away of his own money is part of the larger exposure to the idea of trying out the model of internet giving trying to see if it can become more viral and just see if it becomes a more robust system so the point event is growing his Twitter followers so he has more of a footprint more notice ability to make the philanthropy more noticeable so that's what I'm helping with and that's all I don't get the problem it's like any scholarship not everyone who wants one gets it right you know this is more of the it's it's one of the things that makes me sad about human beings because

[26:50]

makes me sad about human beings because the people who are complaining about this and I understand that you don't want people who are struggling to have to be you know like you know monkeys in a cage you know dancing for a peanut or something and again remember I used monkeys in a generic sense it does not refer to any particular particular group anybody can be monkeys in my world alright so so I'm sensitive to that but if anybody has a better idea I'd like to hear it alright I'm going to tease something that's coming up I will be involved in another charitable giving and I'll tell you more about that because you're gonna your head will explode when you feel when you hear who I'm what I'm doing it with and I hope that's part of the fun all right I'm just looking at your comments here

[27:59]

yeah you know the the ideal way to give money and the way I've typically done it be in in my own past is you know if you have money a lot of people ask you for it and there are some situations where it makes sense but I prefer to give money in a situation where somebody has a temporary problem and they have a plan so if they have a temporary problem and they have a plan to get to their job or you know they could go to a job interview if they get this solved so if they've got a plan then far more likely to give it to them I'm less likely to give money to someone who just can't can't pay their bills all the time because it's not going to make a difference except for you know today and tomorrow all right
medic bill fund yeah we'll just find something that's good leverage so let me maybe maybe the way I'll do it is that I want to look for the thing that has a greatest leverage not the greatest need

[28:59]

greatest leverage not the greatest need but the greatest leverage there's the small amount that could make the biggest difference so tweet at me if you've got an idea and I'll think about this today and all I'll tweet something later and that's all for now and I will talk to you later