Episode 658 Scott Adams: Oops, I’m Late. Coffee Time!

Date: 2019-09-10 | Duration: 30:56

Topics

“Science believers” believe in BOTH… …nuclear energy SCIENCE and climate SCIENCE SAFE Gen 3 & Gen 4 nuclear energy systems China and Russia developing SAFE nuclear energy systems If America does NOT pursue SAFE nuclear energy…not good Cory Booker and Andrew Yang are both pro-nuclear energy What do they understand that other Dems do not? Coincidence that the two highest IQ Dems support it?

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:06]

hey everybody come on in here let's get ready for one of the best coffees with Scott Adams you've ever experienced and that's saying a lot I mean how awesome is this for those of you exercising right now while you're listening to this good for you you have found a system that works because you love coffee with Scott Adams and it's gonna make you love your exercise if you combine them oh it works speaking of coffee you might want to join me for the simultaneous up and if you do all you need is a cup or a mug of glass this time to tell us the tanker to thermos Alaska Cantina festival of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee join me now for the simultaneous hip oh now sometimes I tell you that when I take the simultaneous if it's the best one ever but I think today

[1:07]

it's the best one ever but I think today might be a better argument for the best sip of coffee ever and here's why some of you know I was talking about this the other day I lost my sense of smell completely around twelve years ago I think and when I say completely I mean no sense of smell whatsoever under any conditions and I didn't know why I just figured maybe with some allergy meds unused didn't really care because I didn't mind not smelling all the bad smells in the world anyway but I discovered recently as I said a previous periscope then I've got some harmless little polyps somewhere in my eustachian tubes up in my sinuses and that's the probable cause of my lat lack of smell and so my doctor gave me some prednisone and some some antibiotics to kick it out and so the polyps are allegedly going to shrink because of the meds and the idea

[2:08]

shrink because of the meds and the idea was that I might be able to smell again I might regain my son the smell and I didn't know how likely that was but I woke up this morning and I fixed myself a big pot of coffee well a cup of coffee and I was sitting here in my office and I I started thinking what's that sensation that's happening in my head there's something happening and it's in my head somewhere it's like a sensation and then I realized it was the coffee and I wasn't just smelling the coffee because I got to tell you if you go 12 years without smelling anything you can smell a cup of coffee from across the room I mean I'm like a frickin blood blood down right now it was overwhelming I mean I can smell this coffee like it feels like in every pore of my body and that you know from the

[3:09]

of my body and that you know from the distance and I wasn't sure if it was a phantom sort of a sensation I thought to myself I wonder if that's the coffee and I actually didn't even I was having trouble recognizing the smell it had been so long since I had smelled coffee that I sort of forgotten what it felt like so I put my nose up to it and I went oh my god I can smell somebody's way ahead of me somebody says smell your girlfriend for their first time and then he leaves her yeah I guess that's the risk that is literally what I'm waiting to do so I'm waiting for Cristina to wake up and get going because we've been together now for what three years or something three and a half years and I've never smelled her think about that I've never smelled her

[4:09]

think about that I've never smelled her you know everybody has sort of her own smell in a sense I guess I'll find out what she smells like in an hour so let's talk about something else the news is all kind of boring there's some kind of probable thing he was going on about the Russian spy are you following that story I'm kind of only barely sort of paying attention to it because it just looks exactly like something that's not true and I believe the government has denied it but you know you can't really trust and I also know spy stuff I just don't think it's true that there was some spy that they were afraid that Trump's carelessness would get that spidey tected and it was somebody who could take pictures of Putin's documents really we had somebody in the Kremlin so deep that he could

[5:11]

in the Kremlin so deep that he could take pictures of Putin's documents and and that's being reported on CNN I don't know none of that sounds true to me it could be true it could be true but it doesn't sound true and certainly the credibility has to be questioned so we'll see I guess that's just a wait and see I want to talk about a couple of things yes some people are saying it was you know Brendan clapper propaganda thing yeah baby who does want to talk about two things number one is nuclear and number two is a student mentor app I was trying to come up with an idea let's talk about the app first I was trying to come up with an idea for combining some of my favorite things into one solution now I don't know how practical any of this is so I'm going to use you as my audience to be my my co designers this

[6:12]

audience to be my my co designers this might turn to nothing but maybe it's good if the idea is to create an app so that disadvantaged kids can get direct help from someone who's not their parent and you know not in their circle and it would be a an app well here I designed it started designing a little bit let's see if I can push this back little so you can see it bear with me bear with me let's get a little distance here so what I've started with is just the requirements you know the specs see if I could come up with something that makes sense so I'd be a student mentor app and it would have the following functions that's just a first start maybe it needs four one would be a video introduction by the student so you can see it's a real student and it's you know they you can see their passion you can see what their desire is and they would just put a little video in the app say a one-minute video that says hey I'm Bob

[7:13]

one-minute video that says hey I'm Bob I'd like to go to a charter school but I can't afford it or you know I would like to pay for my book supplies or ID and a laptop to do my homework something like that then you'd want you'd want an administrator here it is some kind of an administrator to vouch for the student ideally also a video somebody in this school let's say a principal just holds up his ID and says yes I'm the principal this school I know Bob he's real take a look at his that then the app would allow mentors to sign up either to give advice or funding so the funding would not go to the child the funding would go directly to the entity so the entity might be a charter school it might be they need some school supplies so the money goes directly to the school supplies so the child would never get money so you remove some of the opportunity for scams by making sure

[8:14]

opportunity for scams by making sure that the money goes directly to where it's needed in return for this generosity those mentors and or helping funding through those people would get the report card so you see how the kid is doing you would also to see all of his social media or her social media accounts so you could follow their life so the links to those accounts would be in the app so you could go directly from the app and check out your kids see how he's doing so you can see if he needs some advice etc you would also have some information potentially about the kid's lifestyle and health does the kid get enough sleep is the kid eating right because you'd only have some advice and that's domine as well and that of course mentors could offer advice if they think it is needed or the kid could ask for advice and also a good source for networking and job offers so here's how networking works people prefer people

[9:16]

networking works people prefer people they already work with right they prefer people they know that they've had some association with so if you were a mentor who had contributed money to a some kid let's say a high school kid or maybe a young college kid and you had watched their progress and you were happy with what you had done and then that person says well now I need a job wouldn't you help because it's somebody you know and presumably they've done the right things they've you know they've taken advice they've grown and if you watch this progress and you like it well you don't want to hire somebody you don't know this is somebody you sort of know by the time the time you follow them so even if you're not hiring you might know somebody who is and so you would through the app you would have developed a network that normally the Ivy League people get but is harder to get for other people yeah seven somebody's saying in the comments successful professionals like to help other people get started so if somebody

[10:18]

other people get started so if somebody was trying to become an engineer for example and you were an engineer you're probably more likely to be helpful you don't want to give them a leg up and give them an opportunity at cetera so here's the the fun part now everything I'm talking about is just brainstorming right this is not a real app yet I'm just saying it could be you could you could you could couch this in the let's say you could frame it as reparations and here's why now I know what you're saying to yourself what what why would this happy reparations because it wouldn't be limited to black people obviously the app would be available for anybody so why would you call that reparations and I'm gonna take really just the smartest thing I've never heard on the whole let's say what do you call me the

[11:19]

whole let's say what do you call me the whole situation of an of racism it's just one of the smartest things I've heard and it came from Hawk Newsom from black lives matter and what he said was it's you can't really help black people in this country unless you help everybody at the same time is sort of they're just too connected if you did something that was aimed and targeted helping the black community as long as it wasn't limited to the black community it would help everybody else who was in the same situation no matter what they were so they could be you know white or brown or any other color so suppose you took this happened you said we're going to design it so it's perfect for the african-american community who might need more mentors who might need more funding who might need more connections might need more advice might need more positive influences so you design it for

[12:19]

positive influences so you design it for one community and then is that not going to work for everybody else of course it would of course it would because that's exactly everything that a poor white kid needs that's exactly the same thing that a poor anybody needs but you could design it specifically to help black students and it would just happen to be good for other people that is exactly the way we do most things in this country most things we do just for the public it helps everybody so you could very cleverly get to a point where anybody who has the drive and a smartphone can get what they need because there is a tremendous untapped potential for humans helping other humans directly you're seeing this with you're seeing that sort of impulse in that instinct in Internet philanthropy so built what Bill Polti is doing is sort of proving proving the

[13:21]

doing is sort of proving proving the humans have this untapped desire to directly help a real person whose real face they can see which is different from just giving to a charity that goes into a big box and administrators administer it which is good - it's good - Oh somebody's saying not my kids I should I shouldn't mention that you'd probably need some parental monitoring to it so for example the app might have a feature where any messaging that goes into the app also is copied to a parent so that the kid can sign up unless a parent is on board and sees all the messages so there would be some risk and you would also want to limit it to maybe kids they're 16 or 17 you know you might want to have a age limit just so you're not exposing people too young to adults but again it should be monitored by the parents in all cases so that's the idea I put that out there who knows if

[14:22]

I put that out there who knows if that'll ever become useful I'd like to change the topic now to nuclear I'm going to my whiteboard to turn it around I tell you it was one of the best inventions in the world when I came up with my idea of the double-sided whiteboard hell yes double-sided whiteboard here we go I thought you were watching me but I had the camera all right on the question of climate change and nuclear power it seems to me that there are two sciences involved one is the science of climate change and as you know famously most scientists say the climate change is a big risk but a second science is nuclear energy and I would I would believe and this is subject to fact-checking but I believe this is a safe statement there people who are experts on nuclear power

[15:23]

people who are experts on nuclear power not just scientists in general but ones that are experts on nuclear power our pro nuclear power probably almost in the same percentage as people who are climate scientists are worried about climate change it's probably about the same percentage of support so though those are the two sciences you would be a science believer if you thought that climate change was a risk and you also thought that nuclear power was the the only viable solution so that would be a person who believes in science a half believer would be somebody like Elizabeth Warren who believes in climate change but doesn't believe that nuclear is the way to go to solve it and then there would be lets say a science denier who doesn't think climate change is a problem and also doesn't think nuclear power is a good idea so I thought it'd be helpful to say to just put this in the sense of who is compatible with science if your brand

[16:24]

compatible with science if your brand your personality the person you want to be is a person who is compatible with science this is the way to do it right otherwise you're a half believer which just sounds stupid or at least on educating let's just say it's uneducated and uneducated is actually too strong as well I think it would be better to say your your knowledge is out-of-date so if you had out-of-date knowledge you would think nuclear energy was too risky if you had up-to-date knowledge like Yang and Cory Booker you would be pro nuclear energy as they are so now I'm not taking a position on climate change by showing you this chart all I'm saying is that this is where science is right or wrong I'm not saying that the scientists are all right I'm just saying where they are so if you're if your brand is to be compatible with the scientists and the

[17:26]

compatible with the scientists and the majority now you know which box to be in I wanted to run by you something I've been working on here which is the best arguments for nuclear you want to hear let me give you my best arguments for nuclear number one consumer costs you can lower the cost of energy and that's like giving everybody a raise and it's especially good for poor people there very few things would help poor people more than cutting their energy bill in half so nuclear's the best fastest way to get that done makes your businesses more competitive because it lowers their cost so we can compete internationally better helps the environment it's the cleanest energy that we have in terms of pollution climate change as I said if climate change is a big risk nuclear is sort of the only known solution according to Bill Gates according to Andrew yang according to Cory Booker you know they

[18:27]

according to Cory Booker you know they would say it's a big part of the solution not not the one part but an essential part so even if you if you don't believe climate change is a problem it's still the right path because you still need cheap energy and and we have an increasing demand for it and you want it to be clean what people don't generally understand is that the risks of nuclear energy have dropped dramatically in in the last decades and that's a generation to three plants that are the common ones that are being built today have never had a major event never there's never been one all of the major events you know our earlier generations and the so-called generation for the stuff that's being developed now will be built failsafe so that if even if you lose power for an extended time it just sort of softly shuts down and doesn't cause any kind of a event

[19:29]

political risk I I learned this recently apparently there's a big risk if you get added the nuclear energy industry let's say the United States decided to get out of nuclear overtime to wind it down our nuclear energy industry would then not be able to support any other new country who wanted to go nuclear and you know there's going to be a lot of countries that once their own nuclear power Saudi Arabia for example is asking for it some other I think southern Gulf country is asking for it because even if you have you know a zillion gallons of oil right but deep beneath you you would still rather have nuclear for your own power you'd rather have nuclear for your own power and sell the oil to somebody else because you don't want to burn that all on your own in your own country so there's a huge risk if we left those new countries go into the let's say the hands of China and use their nuclear technology or Russia and use their new nuclear technology because that will bind those countries together in a way that you

[20:30]

countries together in a way that you can't break if if Russia becomes the primary let's say source for the nuclear technology in some other country they become sort of a an ally there's not much you can do about it those countries could be our allies at least or more of an ally if they were more dependent on us for their nuclear technology and we could make that happen what are the risks that I hadn't thought of until recently is that as we're militarizing space which is inevitable you know we'd all like to say oh let's not mill with dry space what we're doing it in anyway so you could talk about how you shouldn't do it but it's a waste of breath because we're gonna military space so space force is doing that China and Russia are both looking at it of course and here's the risk if China and Russia Russia our advanced nuclear nations let's say 20 years from now they're gonna control space because we're not going to be

[21:31]

space because we're not going to be racing around in space with windmills and solar power all right nuclear will be the the energy source for space competition and we don't want to our nuclear industry which would be important to developing the talent and and the resources for space so we'd be giving away space militarily if we wind down our nuclear resources in this country it's an indirect thing but it's it's pretty definite that it would happen and we would effectively be surrendering the country it's just that the surrender would be sort of a timed surrender so that 20 years from now you'd look up in the air and we'd be you know surrounded by
do we say well whatever you watch I know cuz we got nothing yeah well we'll shoot a windmill at you or something now I'm exaggerating of course it's not as dire as that but when you're looking at

[22:32]

as that but when you're looking at military risks you don't want to leave such a huge gaping hole that you know is a gaping hole you know you got to plug that hole so those are the main arguments and I would argue that it's the perfect time for the president to make a strong stand on nuclear because the Democrats are split on it so if President Trump goes that was strong on nuclear as the risk management approach to climate change he could actually say you know people disagree on climate change but it doesn't matter because nuclear energy is still what you should do aggressively no matter what if it fixes climate change great if climate change is not the risk we thought great somebody says Mike Shellenberger look him up yeah I'm talking to Mike so we're in conversation on this extensively in fact what I'm talking about now I'm

[23:32]

fact what I'm talking about now I'm gonna I'm gonna be sharing with him fairly soon so just make sure that I've got the facts right I want to want to have him give give me a fact jacket oh I'll run it by Mark Snyder too just to make sure I got my facts right so so I was watching President Trump's rally yesterday and I felt sorry for Democrats I really did I really felt sorry for him because you see him control a crowd and you see the energy he brings and how entertaining he is and how we into it the crowd yes and then you imagine any Democrat trying to pull that off all the Democrats are pouring but they seem about twice as boring compared to him the contrast is just brutal it is brutal so I don't know how much of a how much of a rout this is going to be but

[24:34]

of a rout this is going to be but let me say this as clearly as possible I feel confident that President Trump will win re-election no matter who he runs against etc unless there's some big surprise that comes up later and we can see CNN may be working on some surprises real real or not but climate change is the big issue right and guns seems to be those are the two ones here's what probably will happen before election number one I think the Trump administration will do something about guns probably with background checks you may have seen Joel Pollock's suggestion to trade more robust to background checks you know to to strengthen the background checks and make them more universal in exchange for allowing concealed carry across state lines I hope I got that right so the idea is that the gun owners would get a little

[25:34]

that the gun owners would get a little something which is the ability to take the rights they already have in their own state to do a concealed carry and just go to another state if they're visiting and keeping up while they're visiting that's not a big concession because remember nobody nobody gets the concealed carry unless they jump through a lot of Hoops so if somebody has jumped through some hoops they come across the line on vacation it's not the biggest risk in the world but in return maybe there would be more robust background checks seems like a good compromise now there might be some kind of other deal like that but I do imagine that Trump will do something and probably sign it Mitch McConnell is waiting for Trump to say why he would sign and that tells me there probably will be something he would sign this probably already been sort of hinted at so if guns become less of an issue because Trump does something

[26:36]

of an issue because Trump does something that leaves climate change is the other big one and like I said if if Trump goes strong on nuclear power and comes out really full throated it's gonna split the Democrats in half and it will force them to debate between now and Election Day the pros and cons of nuclear and here's what that will do the Democrats you're not going to get them all to like nuclear that's just not going to happen you're not going to get all Democrats to like nuclear power it can't can't be done it's just too big of an ask so if you get them to debate it you're going to split them in half because some of those Democrats are going to say okay you've got a pretty good point about this nuclear stuff and I have been saying for five years that that climate change is my biggest issue and the Republicans are offering the only solution to my biggest issue you know and and let's say Warren or Biden

[27:39]

know and and let's say Warren or Biden let's say Warren or Sanders are the nominee who you get a vote for if your biggest issue is climate change and the only person who's offered you a solution is Trump it's kind of a tough vote isn't it right now let's say it goes the other way let's say we're all surprised and yang or Cory Booker again nominated let's say they're the nominations they're pro-nuclear right so you're they're not going to be able to take your votes they're not going to be able to take Trump's votes and if he's also pro-nuclear so he would have a strength against the pro-nuclear people he would have a greater strength against the anti-nuclear people you can't possibly lose it's like the most winning play that there has ever been there's never been a more winning political play than to go strong on nuclear and here would be the angle the

[28:39]

nuclear and here would be the angle the angle is that the people who were against it have out-of-date knowledge why do you think Cory Booker and Andrew yang are in favor of nuclear as part of the solution for climate change and why do you think that the other candidates are against it is it because they've all looked into it and they all have the same information nope it's because YAG and Booker are two of the smartest people in the race Ward is very smart let's let's face it she's very very smart the others are pretty smart or two but a dragon Booker may be the smartest and there and they've looked into it and when your smartest people look into it and they update their knowledge and they say nuclear's the thing yeah let's let's do more nuclear that means your party's in trouble because if the only people who are against it have out-of-date knowledge and that seems to be the case

[29:40]

knowledge and that seems to be the case that it's not so much a difference of opinion it seems to be a difference of knowledge and what I'd love to know and here is like a key fact that I don't have but I speculate that the people who are experts on nuclear energy are all in favor of nuclear energy or at least as many are is in favor of that as there are scientists who believe climate change is a crisis so that's kind of fun isn't it let's see there was something else I was going to update you on oh so I did my first day of recording for loozer think yesterday and I'll tell you it is a tough day in the studio reading my own book all day the good news is I kind of like my book so so it's fun to remind myself what I wrote in there my voice sort of fails after a few hours I spread it over three days today is day

[30:43]

spread it over three days today is day two so I'm not going to go too much longer today because I want to save my voice I need to and that's all for now and I will talk to you all later