Episode 701 Scott Adams: Loserthink in the News Today, From Turkey to Impeachment

Date: 2019-10-22 | Duration: 35:10

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK goes on sale 11/5. Pre-order: https://bit.ly/2NRammu Examples of Loserthink in todays politics and hot topics Impeachment, transgender athletes, rent control, gun control, Hillary’s trolling, Russian assets The faceless whistleblower attack is falling apart War on the Rocks Eric Stein points out an example of Loserthink Pulling out, forcing Kurds, Syria, Turkey to work it out New 3D printer so fast it can print a human-sized object in hours

Rough Transcript

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

Transcript

[0:12]

hey everybody I didn’t see you coming in well it’s good to see all of you grab a seat lots of seats up front you know you are just in time for coffee with Scott Adams the best part of your day doesn’t take much to participate all you need is a cup or a mug or glasses if there’s time jealous tank crew thermos last canteen Grail goblet vessel of any kind fellow with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better the simultaneous up coming to you today from the real news just the real news which you should be following by the way on Twitter at head snipe zero one one at head snipe HEA TSN IPE 0 1 1 I think I got that right it’s a news directly from the government

[1:12]

it’s a news directly from the government without the opinion stuff you can use join me now simultaneous up go oh yeah that’s a good sipping good stuff I’m gonna give you some examples of loser think today loser think no coincidence the name of my new book that people are just loving already and that’s just people who have the the advance copies you can order yours right now and it will be there in a few weeks all right and please do I would appreciate it if you did so here’s some examples of loser think and this is the laundry list persuasion example so the Democrats are wondering about the best approach to impeach the

[2:13]

impeach the and they have two basic paths one path is to take their best their best case something about the phone call with the Ukrainian president and just take what they have for that one limited situation and try to impeach the second path is that they just keep investigating every little every little thing until they have a whole laundry list of things that are not necessarily related to the Ukrainian phone call but a whole bunch of things that they think individually would be impeachable but together they’re more powerful so if they go with get everything it’s gonna take them a while but they’ll have more evidence if they go for the clean shot you know that the the head shot where you just basically take your best situation well it might be faster but maybe it’s not as persuasive here’s what you do and I recommend in my book clues to

[3:15]

and I recommend in my book clues to think if somebody brings you the laundry list of reasons you ask them hey you know in the interest of time we can’t talk about everything out of your laundry list but why don’t you agree to this give me your best reason on the list just give me your best one if you have time you could do two or three but give me your best one and would you agree that if I can debunk debunk your best reason then you will rethink your other reasons so that’s the technique because often you can debunk the first one and it’s their strongest reason and then you say well if I just debunked your best reason do I really need to see the other ones alright so here’s what you can infer from the fact that the Democrats are considering this question do we go with what we already have or do we keep getting evidence of unrelated

[4:16]

we keep getting evidence of unrelated obstructing justice and abusing his power until we’ve got this big package do you know what that tells you tells you they don’t have anything if they had something with their best case absolutely that’s the way to go you don’t need to dig into the the weeds if you’ve got a good case why complicate things why wait just take your best case presented to the public BAM impeach that guy they can’t because their best case obviously is not persuasive if it were persuasive I think we’d agree they’d say well this is persuasive we don’t you know we can look at the other stuff but we don’t need to let’s just go right to the impeachment vote they don’t have anything their best case is obviously not sufficient you you’ll see this over

[5:19]

not sufficient you you’ll see this over and over again that the best argument by itself is not sufficient and what would you make of the fact that they might have lots of arguments for impeachment any one of the arguments is not sufficient what’s that tell you about each of the arguments tells you that you’re multiplying zero times a lot well this one’s not impeachable but it feels like it sort of reminds me of something that would been to be in the neighborhood of impeachment all right but so by itself it’s not persuasive but let’s look at the 20 other things that also by themselves are not impeachable it doesn’t matter how many of those you have they’re all unimpeachable minor complaints all right so that’s your first bit of loser think is imagining that a laundry list should be more persuasive than whatever is the best thing on the list here’s another one

[6:21]

thing on the list here’s another one dan Rather and Sam Donaldson who you might know as two very aged news people from the past I don’t know what their ages are 80s maybe 80 ish but see see brings them on together in this case and they say that so this is dan Rather and Sam Donaldson say the president Trump is dangerous for the country because Trump is only interested in protecting himself this is an example of the mind-reader illusion do you think those Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather can look into the mind of the president and see something that you and I can’t see no because they’re not mind reader’s do you think anybody can look into a stranger’s brain and say they’re only interested in protecting themselves let’s take that to

[7:23]

protecting themselves let’s take that to the next level what would be an example of something a president could do there was only good for the president and not good for the country nothing because assuming that everything is discoverable and transparent and when you’re president everything’s pretty discoverable and transparent you couldn’t I had anything if you wanted to you know we’ve seen that a million times so if the president tried to do something that was literally only good for him and let’s say it was bad for the country we’d know it in the harpy and therefore it could not be good for him so it’s an illogical assumption that a president who’s so fully transparent whether he wants to be or not pretty much everything is discovered will be discovered could be discovered that president can only help himself by helping the country because everybody’s

[8:25]

helping the country because everybody’s watching so if the president does something to help I don’t know is that so he can get reelected is it only about the president or is it also coincidentally good for the country well of course it’s good for the country so when you see Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson brought on it’s because they they’ve run out of argument and they just need a couple of very old people - imagine they can read minds so that’s what that’s all about here’s another one the fairness argument do you know why you can’t have an argument about what is fair because nobody agrees you can’t get two people to agree what is fair in any situation let me give you the best example transgender athletes this is another story about a transgender athlete who’s came in first place in some bicycle race and everybody’s mad because the transgender athlete has some

[9:25]

because the transgender athlete has some testosterone advantage so why do they say that this is wrong they say it’s wrong because it’s not fair it’s not fair who gets to decide what’s fair because in my opinion if this trans and gender transgender athlete could not compete then that athlete could not win the gold medal how is that fair now that some of you are just coming out of your brains right now you’re saying don’t you understand Scot they are physically different physically different Scot do you not understand that a transgender athlete has testosterone and muscle development they are not the same Scot don’t you understand yeah I understand it just doesn’t matter because I can’t play in the NBA no matter how hard I try does that fair no it’s not fair that I

[10:27]

does that fair no it’s not fair that I can’t play in the NBA I will never be able to compete for like a Super Bowl ring or the NBA so what do I think is fair I think what’s fair is that the transgender athlete get to win a win Amell and otherwise did not have any way to win a medal did that cause a one woman do not win a medal who otherwise would have yeah it did it did so somebody got something somebody didn’t get something if you reverse it somebody got something and somebody didn’t get something it’s exactly the same anyway you do it somebody’s to complain it’s unfair now the fact that you and I disagree about what’s fair is my point all right here here’s how I’m going to win win the debate for all of you who are disagreeing with me in your mind right now you’re saying Scott it’s not

[11:27]

right now you’re saying Scott it’s not fair it’s not fair to which I say you are entitled to that opinion but I’m also entitled to mine right it is my legitimate opinion I’m not being argumentative it’s an actual opinion that it would be fair for to have one winner and one loser no matter who they were I don’t care who it is could be a woman it could be a transgender athlete who is a woman I don’t care now whose sense of fairness should win should yours win or should mine win because they’re different you’re a reasonable person right you’re a smart educated reasonable person who has a good sense of the world you have looked at this situation and decided this is fair and this is unfair I’ve looked at the same situation I’m educated I’ve seen the world I’ve been around I’m looking at exactly the same

[12:27]

around I’m looking at exactly the same facts and I say no my sense of fairness is different they’re both fair either way is fair that’s my only point my point is not that I want to convince you to change your opinion or for it’s fair to my opinion I don’t want to do that I simply want you to acknowledge that I’m a reasonable adult with a functional brain and I have a different opinion of what constitutes fair do you agree with just that don’t let’s forget about the question of sports and athletes for a moment just agree with this minor point that I’m a reasonable person with a real opinion I’m not making it up for a fact I’m not doing it just just to you know troll the internet or any that’s my actual opinion would you agree that I have an opinion that’s different from yours and that both of our opinions are based on the concept of fairness my

[13:29]

are based on the concept of fairness my only point is that you can’t use fairness as a standard because I won’t agree with you was fair and I never will and if you put a hundred people in the situation and said all right everybody tell us what’s fair they would have different opinions so here’s my opinion on transgender athletes if your entire thing comes down to what is fair you don’t have an argument that’s not an argument because fairness is not an objective standard you can’t argue that and I’d still say that your being a rational human you could certainly say what you think is fair as I did and as all of you did but if we disagree it’s just not a standard you can use that’s my point all right that’s the only point on that here’s another interesting case of loser think there’s an article about California are trying to deal with the quote homelessness problem which as you

[14:31]

quote homelessness problem which as you probably know is not really a homeless problem it’s only something that people who are in a bubble believe is a homeless problem it is primarily a drug problem drug addiction problem and a mental health problem if you take away the people who are on addicted to drugs or have mental health problems if you take them ahead of the equation everybody else can find a place to live it turns out it turns out if you subtract those two problems yeah people can find a place to live they can get a roommate they can move they can find a place to live so California is of course working on the wrong problem because they’re they’re locked in they’re in this little bubble right here they’re in a little bubble where they don’t have access apparently to information that would tell them they’re working on the wrong problem but here’s here’s a little bit from this article that I want to call out as loser think so the writer of this article doesn’t matter who

[15:32]

this article doesn’t matter who said if read control helps reduce homelessness why is the problem so prevalent in the various cities that already have it so this person is saying wait a minute there is read control in the various cities that don’t have adequate housing so how how is San Francisco going to help their problem by rent control because the places that have rent controls still have the problem so it’s pretty obvious that rent control does not solve the problem what’s wrong with that thinking what is wrong with that thinking it’s the same problem where the people who say that and you’re not gonna like this it’s the people who say that there’s too much gun or that there’s a lot of gun control in Chicago and yes Chicago has one of the highest murder rates so people say well gun control obviously doesn’t work because you’ve

[16:33]

obviously doesn’t work because you’ve got all this gun control in Chicago but you have tons of murders so it doesn’t work what’s wrong with that same thing that’s wrong with the homeless thing here’s here’s the problem the reason that Chicago has stricter gun laws is because they had a lot of murder if you have a lot of murder you got you’ve got to try something so they tried a bunch of strict gun laws you should expect that wherever there’s a problem somebody’s gonna try a solution so of course the places with the greatest murder should have the most gun control you couldn’t imagine it any other way because hey we got a lot of murders here we’d better do something how about gun control now is gun control working you don’t know you have no way to know because you don’t have a Chicago

[17:33]

to know because you don’t have a Chicago with no gun control you only have one that has gun control would the murder rate be higher if they didn’t have gun control well I don’t know neither do you because there’s no there’s no comparison there is no Chicago that doesn’t have gun control to compare to the chakras Chicago that does in 2019 you could probably find historical ones but they don’t count so so without getting back to the homeless example why is it that there’s rent control where there’s also a lot of homelessness well because if you have a lot of homelessness you do what California did you say we got to do something we don’t have any good ideas let’s try rent control so of course wherever there’s a problem it will be paired with what somebody thinks is a solution that doesn’t mean it didn’t work it only means that they are often paired together now red

[18:33]

are often paired together now red control is a little different than the gun example in the sense that economic theory would tell you it doesn’t work like there’s an actual cause of the fact there’s some history to it and you can see that this always leads to this so in that case the housing situation is a little different because you probably can tell it’s a bad it’s a bad idea to have already control but it is not legitimate to say that rent control doesn’t work because there’s lots of homelessness wherever they have it that’s not the right cause of the fact because it’s probably the opposite probably there’s lots of homeless so we need some rent control even if it’s a bad idea are you gonna do it anyway probably all right there’s a New York Times did some kind of a puff piece on Hillary Clinton in which the the reporter Lisa Lehrer questions whether

[19:33]

reporter Lisa Lehrer questions whether Clinton was trolling us so Clinton speaking recently about you know Tulsi Gabbard and saying lots of things about the president Trump of course at the same time that she is doing a new book door so Hillary has a new book with Chelsea I believe and so the times are saying we wonder if she’s just trolling us us would you like the answer to that question yes yes Hillary is trolling us and doing a really good job I would say does Hillary believe everything she says lately about Russian assets and Trump and all that well I don’t know doesn’t matter she’s gonna say it anyway because it’s trolling Lee perfect do you think that she got more attention for her book by saying that tulsi gabbard might be a Russian asset of course she did

[20:34]

Russian asset of course she did is it flat-out crazy no it’s not it’s not flat-out crazy it’s just I / bleah and here’s the hyperbole of it to say that tulsi is a Russian asset is a saying and there’s no evidence to support that but there certainly is evidence that Russia may have preferences now and then for certain candidates and if tulsi ran for the third party it would have some effect on the outcome so in a sense in more of a generic way it’s true that Russia might at some point say hey how about tulsi she might she might ruin the situation in America that might be true but that’s very different from grooming her it’s different from having meetings and saying all right tulsi will do this you do this and we’ll we’ll destroy the

[21:37]

you do this and we’ll we’ll destroy the United States together nothing like that’s happening so she so Clinton uses a little hyperbole to put you know intention on on tulsi in a way that no intention is is in evidence it gets her a lot of attention it totally works do I think the Hillary Clinton has suddenly lost your mind and sees Russian assets everywhere probably not it looks like just productive trolling to me that’s all I see see but interestingly those people who do not have a sense of humor the same 1/3 of the country who have been scared to death of Trump and and every time he Trump says something that’s non-standard which is most of the time the people would no sense of humor say my god he’s lost it how can he say that that’s not hyperbole he really means that so the same people who don’t understand

[22:37]

same people who don’t understand anything that Trump does because they don’t know he’s doing it tongue-in-cheek he’s doing it for a fact you know it’s intentional hyperbole the people don’t understand any of that have to deal with the fact that Hillary just started acting the same way with the hyperbole and the you know going a little bit too far so what do they say do they say well when Trump does it he’s crazy but when Hillary does it she’s just just having fun I know I think at least a third of the country the ones who don’t have a sense of humor looking at Hillary and saying I have no other explanation other than cheese must be crazy now but there is another explanation which is she’s just trolling and she’s selling a book and she’s doing a good job of it let’s talk about the whistleblower situation so the whistleblower situation what I find interesting about that is that it’s

[23:40]

interesting about that is that it’s getting too boring and complicated and there’s no face to it now there are people who have been asked to testify who do have faces but there’s sort of obscure characters that we don’t care about you know the the ex diplomat for Ukraine I don’t know what’s he look like I don’t know so if you have a story that has lots of moving parts it’s complicated and and you can’t put a face to it like an actual personality that everybody knows like Trump for example you don’t have much so it seems to me that this whole whistleblower thing is just sort of falling apart it’s falling apart for lack of I don’t think the I feel like the public doesn’t care at all about any of this and I and as no no starpower so it seems like it’s just sort of dying we’ll see if anything comes out of that but at the moment I would say the Democrats are losing the public opinion

[24:43]

Democrats are losing the public opinion to war even though surprisingly the polls say that there’s a lot of support for impeachment I don’t think that’s the support you think it is I think a lot of Republicans are supporting impeachment just just to give the Republicans subpoena power so that they can rip the Democrats apart I’m not sure that they’re really in favor of impeaching the president so much as they’re in favor of you know a cage match which is fair all right there’s a great article I think it’s based on the book maybe called a war on the rocks and there’s a website of the same name war on the rocks by Aaron Stein and he’s got he’s got an article there that I think is just sort of perfect and it’s another example of loser think that he’s pointing out so in this case Aaron Stein is not falling for a loser think rather he’s pointing it out in other people and

[25:45]

he’s pointing it out in other people and I will do the same so it goes like this that no one should have been surprised certainly not the military certainly not the curt’s when President Trump said you know let’s get out of that safe zone and pull back and let Turkey and Kurds work it out and the reason that nobody should be surprised is that the president has been saying some version of this consistently for three years and has been asking for plans to make it happen in the best way now do you think the president Trump was receiving plans from his underlings that were good plans for Houck we could you know safely and smartly faze ourselves out of the serious situation while making sure that our interests were maintained you know keep keep Isis and protect the Kurds and protect the oil wells etc do you think do you think that anybody gave the president that plan I doubt it

[26:46]

doubt it now do you think the president asked for it yes do you think he asked for it repeatedly I’m guessing yes since there was a major campaign promise and he’s been making noise about it consistently I would guess he’s asked his people for a plan probably lots of times do you think that his people ever delivered a plan to get out of there in a in a right way way nope I’ll bet they did not and if you have experience in the corporate world you’ve seen this a million times how many times have you had a boss who asked you for something that you knew is a terrible idea but you couldn’t overrule your boss so instead of saying hey boss you’re being real dumb I’m not even gonna work on that it’s a complete waste of time you say sure I’ll work on that and then you get busy and then you don’t

[27:47]

and then you get busy and then you don’t work on it and then when your boss says where’s that plan you say oh oh yeah yeah yeah I got I got a phone call in I’m talking to Bob we’re gonna have a meeting tomorrow yeah I’m gonna get right on that then a few more weeks go by and your boss says well where’s my plan you say you know Joe never got back to me I’ve got a few offenders I want to talk to I’m working on this but you know have these other priorities I’m working on those two I’m gonna get this plan to you and what you do is effectively you take the decision away from your boss because your boss can’t do the work he’s asking you to do which is the detail work he just doesn’t have that option because he’s got to do his boss job and if you won’t do it or worse yet you say you will do it and then you just continued not to you can actually just time him out you can just make him run out of time you can make him you know something else comes up and it’s a bigger priority and he just forgets for a while so it’s very common for your

[28:49]

a while so it’s very common for your subordinates to try to manage you simply by not doing the things you want to be done what do you do if you’re a bad leader and you’re a weak and you can’t get past all these people well maybe you could fire one or two do you think that would make a difference I don’t because I don’t think there was anybody who thought it was a good idea to get out at least anybody in the military so I don’t think he could have even fired people and changed the result so what did this president do after three years of not getting a plan to leave he just tweeted were in here oh we’re out of here and he just said all right you don’t have a plan do it anyway figure it out now that is leadership and you saw the president say directly I think it was yesterday you know press event he said directly than if he had not if he had

[29:52]

directly than if he had not if he had not shaken the box though those are my words but if he had not done what he did and it did not lead to people getting killed nothing would have ever happened does that sound credible and reasonable does it pass the sniff test for you that if he hadn’t done this and caused immediate mortal danger to the players and actually probably some people got killed we don’t know the details yet if he had not done that do you think anything would have happened I don’t think so yeah that that totally passes the sniff test for me with would not even a slight bit of hesitation I don’t believe his team was on his side I believe he made a promise to the voters the voters voted him in and I think he just said eff it at some point and said we’re getting now now you’re gonna have to figure it out I gave you time to figure it out the easy way and that didn’t work now figure it out the hard way while the bullets are flying

[30:53]

hard way while the bullets are flying you know it’ll maybe focus you for a little bit that’s like a super adult decision you know he president always gets accused of being impulsive and you know acted as if he doesn’t think these things through which is clearly the opposite of what’s happening in this case he’s been working on this for three years so there’s no impulsiveness there but I think he finally just said all right I’ve tried all the ways to make the children coordinate there’s no way to make the children do what the children need to do or at least what I’m asking them to do so I’m just gonna make an adult decision so people are going to get killed now I’m gonna make that decision and people will die and we’ll get to we’ll get to a better state of things if this works out so here’s the loser think angle there if you did not have experience in a big organization where you saw people managing their boss

[31:54]

where you saw people managing their boss and sort of denying the boss the things that the boss asked for because that they don’t want to directly say no that’s a bad idea they just don’t want it to happen so if you’ve not experienced that you would have a blind spot and you would say to yourself I don’t understand why the president acted impulsively when he could just ask his staff to come up with a reasonable plan and then he can look at the reasonable plan and socialize it and get our get all our allies on board why didn’t he do that is he a dope because it’s so obvious to me that he should just ask his people to make a plan and then sell it to the Allies and then sell it to Turkey and sell to the Kurds no it’s all good why did somebody have to get killed well if you’re thinking like that you have no experience in any big organization in all likelihood he tried that it didn’t work it wasn’t ever gonna work and so he just grabbed the box and he said all right watch this

[32:55]

he said all right watch this shoot the box and now people are talking peace I hate to say genius but it might be will say nobody knows how these things work out until years later so us engineers have developed a 3d printer that’s so big and so fat it says they can print an object the size of an adult human in just a couple of hours now I don’t think they’re actually printing adult humans but something that big in a couple hours so what does that tell you about the future of home construction if you had if you had a big big old 3d printer maybe you don’t own it maybe it just gets shipped in to build your house and a big ol of that of whatever the materials are for the printer and you just started printing you know snap together pieces I feel like you could build your own home

[33:56]

feel like you could build your own home with snap together pieces I don’t like the idea of the 3d printer making the entire haul with permanent walls I like the idea of making bricks that are like Legos that can snap together and you’ve got different Legos for you know say corners and special ones if you want to put in a window or a door or run some cable or something but it should be dead simple you should be able to have an app that you follow the directions one step at a time on your app to build your own home and it should be able to meet all building codes etc I believe that’s all coming yeah they’ve already built a printed house but that’s not I don’t think that’s gonna be the future I don’t think those fully printed 3d houses are good enough it’s a good start it’s a good experiment but I think they need to get to the point where they can make bricks that you can just put together any way you want there’s an invisibility

[35:00]

any way you want there’s an invisibility cloak story on Drudge somebody says interesting all right that’s all I got for now I’ll talk to you later bye for now