Episode 771 Scott Adams: Confused Artists, Hoaxes and your Question

Date: 2019-12-29 | Duration: 59:56

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a The Afghanistan war is a giant fraud…a HOAX The Douma Syria gas attack…was a HOAX Joe Biden’s subpoena position, above the law? Impeachment…when the news stops talking about it Artists (in general) seem to be more susceptible to HOAXES President Trump should visit TerraPower, spotlight the topic Bill Gates nuclear reactor design company Viewers AMA

If you would like my channel to have a wider audience and higher production quality, please donate via my startup (Whenhub.com) at this link: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays

> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript

[0:05]

pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in here it's time for coffee with Scott Adams and I'm Scott Adams and you're here for coffee and as you're streaming in preparing do you notice the little ASMR de noise I make some of you are only gonna listen to this on audio without watching but watch how comforting it is to hear this this is being organizing my papers that's right there's a whole industry of people who listen to little sounds like that to fall asleep true story it's called ASMR but that's not why you're here no nope I know I hear you're here for the simultaneous epital you need is a cup or a bug or glass a tank or chelators tine a canteen jogger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day thing that makes everything better

[1:05]

everything better the simultaneous hip go ah ha ha ha ha that's hittin the spot isn't it all right how many of you when 7 o'clock yes and you get you're a little alert go running for your cups and vessels and mugs probably a lot of you I hope you do alright you may have noticed that because it's the holidays all the news just sort of stopped have you noticed that the only news that happened seems to be the news that nobody wants you to talk about so as a jak post avec pointed out on the tweet that in the last week or so we've heard that the Afghan the the war in Afghanistan was basically a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the American public because we imagined that we were doing something useful there and

[2:07]

we were doing something useful there and apparently we were just killing people and getting killed so so now it's been revealed that at least privately or military didn't think they were doing anything useful which really puts President Trump in a good light there are some reports that he has to talk to the the military enlisted people without the officers there so they get a real idea what was happening in Afghanistan which put submit a really good light I got to say because I haven't seen anybody questioned the report so the report is they totally is the generals and the officers to stay out so he could talk to the people actually did the fighting and get a real real honest unfiltered opinion for the first time but also we heard evidence I don't know if anything has ever confirmed these days you know you you think you hear something that's overturning something else or confirming something else you just never know but what we're hearing that the alleged

[3:10]

what we're hearing that the alleged chemical attack in Syria that happened I guess a couple years ago that President Trump responded to militarily was probably a fraud how many of you remember that when the gas attack first happened that I and I'm not alone there were a number of skeptical people who said the same thing but I like to keep score I like to keep score when my predictions are right and when they're wrong because that will give me an idea if there's some kind of predictions I'm good at some kind of not the ones I tend to be good at have some kind of element of persuasion or psychological blind-spot I tend to now I haven't rigorously tested this but it does seem that whenever there's a psychological element my impression which could also be off is that I'm better at that so

[4:10]

be off is that I'm better at that so when the gas attack happened I said well from a psychological perspective wouldn't it make perfect sense for them to fake the attack because it would be easy to fake people would believe it could change that the fate of the war and it's people who don't have access to a lot of different kinds of weapons and defenses they have a pretty small set of things they can do and one of the things that they could do is try to bring in foreign powers with fake stories so if you've read my book win big Li you know that I'm famous for saying then whenever there's a situation where people can get away with something and there's a huge upside upside advantage and there are a lot of people involved that in that situation bad behavior will happen every time now the context I usually say that isn't financial so that the general rule is this if there's a lot of money

[5:12]

is this if there's a lot of money involved but let's say upside in military situations the upside is that you survive and your side wins so whether there's a lot of money to be gained or there's a military victory to be gained or just living there's a lot to be gained so whenever you have the situation that looks like this there's a lot to be gained the risk of being caught is small let's say the people who faked the gas attack were did it were detected no penalty you don't go to jail for that right it's a war zone you can fake a gas attack get caught no penalty there's literally nothing bad that would happen to you for doing it so you've got this enormous potential game which is your life may be the life of your village you know if you can change the course of the world and it's trivial to do faking the gas attack turned out to be kind of easy you just put some canisters here you have some people say

[6:15]

canisters here you have some people say oh I'm suffering from something you film them selectively with your camera it's literally the easiest thing you could ever fake and by the time anybody found out you had faked it the damage is done you've already created a situation so here's the setup whenever you have an enormous thing you could gain you've got lots of people involved so at least some of them are gonna have the bad idea it helps to have a lot of people involved if there's only one person in this situation well you might get a situation where that one person is virtuous and they won't take the take the opportunity to do evil but if you have a lot of people involved it's guaranteed guaranteed that one of them is gonna say hey are you telling me that I could change the course of the war maybe there's no penalty and it's easy to do it should happen every time remember as soon as the the turks

[7:15]

remember as soon as the the turks started taking over the territory for the kurds the most recent stuff immediately you heard stories of atrocities and immediately i said could be true but if the kurds are not inventing fake atrocities why aren't they it's the obvious play somebody in that big Kurd community is gonna say wait a minute if I faked an atrocity it could help and it could help a lot but if I got caught faking an atrocity no penalty there's no penalty at all in fact if we found out that some Syrian or some occurred had faked an atrocity for the purpose of helping their own people survive I wouldn't even feel bad about it I mean I wouldn't even have a bad opinion of the person who did it because indeed let me say as clearly as I as I can if you put me in that situation and you said

[8:16]

put me in that situation and you said Scott we're being surrounded by you know enemies and we might all die but you could do this fake gas attack Scott might change things would I Scott do a fake hoax gas attack if I thought it would work yeah of course in the heart beat would you it's war all right that Joe Biden has painted himself in a corner where it got painted for him I'm not sure but you can't not love the fact that the whole reason the print will a big reason that the president is being impeached is that he refused to comply with Congress's subpoenas he refused to let his people go testify and now Joe Biden is doing the same or saying he'll

[9:17]

Biden is doing the same or saying he'll do the same but he wants to be really clear that this is different and here's how it's different it's different because if the Senate asked Joe Biden to testify which they threatened they would do that that would not be legitimate so it's different because Joe Biden in his opinion says that asking the president's people to testify would be legitimate so therefore it's a problem when he didn't do it but joe says of course I would comply with any legal request unless it was illegitimate and it would be illegitimate to ask me to go in and testify to which I asked the obvious question who gets to decide what's legitimate because if Joe Biden gets to decide what is legitimate he's putting himself above the law I mean literally literally as literal as anything could be you can't get more literally above the law I mean not in the distance above

[10:20]

the law I mean not in the distance above sense but in terms of putting yourself as more important of a decision-maker than the law than to say is your decision whether to obey it is your decision if a law is legitimate do we all get that do I get to kill somebody and say well oh I know what you're thinking yes yes I didn't murder my my neighbor that's true but you have to look at how legitimate it was I mean have you seen this guy he's loud he's obnoxious oh yeah yeah murder has to be illegal for most situations but can we make an exception I mean seriously have you met did you know my neighbour I think you have to say it was pretty legitimate if you knew this guy you deserve to get killed so don't be arresting me for this murder thing that's you know the generic law

[11:20]

thing that's you know the generic law you got a look at the specifics the specific is sure I killed him because he was annoying but he was really annoying it was legitimate this time so Joe Biden has blundered into probably the worst argument you could ever have which is this time he gets to override the Congress or the law subpoenas the courts I mean it's I don't know what to say about it except that it's funny it's just sort of funny that he trapped himself so completely I don't think it'll make any difference to anything because we're at that point in politics and society where I maybe just doesn't matter what you say or what you do or what you think I don't think any of it matters are you having the same feeling about impeachment that I am after after several days of being in sort of holiday

[12:22]

several days of being in sort of holiday mode and the news just sort of stopped talking about it does it feel that any of that stuff was ever important have you noticed that as soon as the news stops talking about Russia collusion and impeachment and stuff I mean they still you know they they tease it a little bit but basically they've stopped talking for the holidays that as soon as they stop talking it didn't matter think about that as soon as the news stopped talking about it it also stopped mattering in every way that anything could matter none of it matters it's one of these little moments where you should step back and say hey wait a minute it's the problem what the Congress is doing or the president is doing or is it the way we talk about it because as soon as we stop talking about it I don't know my life's the same nothing hurt me I'm not worried about something it's all fine everybody just stop talking about it so

[13:27]

everybody just stop talking about it so there's gonna be you know a lot of people predicted that's the after the holiday break that the public would just be exhausted and totally over the impeachment stuff and the more they talk about it the more we're going to get bored and annoyed with it and it's not going to be productive not that it was ever productive so I've been having this fascinating experience that since my book there's a thing came out incredibly successful you should have it everybody's talking about it actually everybody is talking about it not everybody of course but a lot of people are using the quotes out of the book a lot of people are using the title and a lot of the concepts so it's definitely making a dent in the national consciousness as I hoped but one of the things I wrote in there is that that artists would have different world views and let's say economists or scientists

[14:28]

and let's say economists or scientists or engineers or lawyers or whatever and that each of them might be great in their own way but unless you have a little bit of experience in different fields it's hard to get a really good view of the world and in particular I I've called out artists of all types whether it's visual or writing or or music or whatever as being unusually and obviously less capable of understanding their world now let me be as careful as I can there are lots of artists that are not all the same there are some artists who also take a real interest in let's say critical thinking and philosophy and things and so they they probably are just well-rounded so in those cases they're artists but they're also lots of other things the people who tend to get stuck the ones who have not broadened their horizons and and so it seems that there

[15:30]

horizons and and so it seems that there are two kinds of ARS those who have a fully rounded view of the world and they can have opinions anywhere but the ones who are sort of stuck in artist mode if you will they seem to be universally pulled in by all the hoaxes you know they'll believe that the fine people hoax they believe that the president mocked a disabled man with an arm and in some cases let's say let's say the person is an engineer and they believed one of those two things so you're an engineer and you believe that the president called the neo-nazis fine people so you say well I believe it I mean I saw it in the news that's what they reported not just one news I saw reported on multiple news stations that the president did that but if you're an engineer you just need one fact that you believe that will change your mind so you send the engineer the the transcript you say oh here's the part they cut out they show you the first part and it reverses the meaning now you

[16:32]

part and it reverses the meaning now you see the whole thing you can see that he didn't say that he said exactly the opposite you do that with an engineer do you know what the engineer will say okay good point I have these other things to complain about but you know we're done with that one point made evidence evidence given none but that doesn't work with artists more often than not again there are lots of different artists but the correlation is today for example I told you before that all the professional trolls seem to have disappeared for the holidays you notice that so the people who would just come in and insult me or bring up some some hoax about me from the past to do nothing but cause trouble they're all on vacation they're just all gone and Twitter has become this kinder more gentle place so when people disagree with me this week because the professional trolls are on vacation

[17:32]

professional trolls are on vacation they're actually real people and it's the first time you it's just obvious that the people who have been engaging with me lately are real people with real jobs they're not trolls and what I noticed is that almost a hundred percent of them who are disagreeing on the hoax stuff are artists according to their own profiles so one of the odds and what is causing this is it just lack of exposure in one case so there was an artist who was arguing with me that the president mocked the ban with the bad arm and I said well why don't you just google it and you'll see the compilation clips of the president using a similar gesture for lots of different people and then you'll know it in context so you know that's likely not what he was doing and she argued and said well you know if you

[18:35]

she argued and said well you know if you had a link for that you would have said it to me and I'm like all right so I google it I send her a link and then she looks link and it's clear as day that he's mocking other people with the same gesture and then she says yes but he was a little more animated and his gestures were bigger what he was talking about the man who had the actual bad arm when he talked about the other people it was a similar gesture but it wasn't as wasn't as big to which I say so that means nothing because the clips show that he does the gesture in a variety of different ways sometimes bigger sometimes smaller it's very clear you could see it throughout the clip sometimes he would go big sometimes he'd go not so big so the fact that one of them was extra big doesn't mean anything because one of them was going to be bigger than the others so the critical thinking involved from the artist is

[19:38]

thinking involved from the artist is shockingly lacking but they see you still seem confident you know here's my speculation my speculation is that when you work in the arts everything matters that is to say if you were reading a novel and in the first chapter there was something about the hero of the story playing with their expensive watch you could reasonably assume that later in the story that watch will be important because in the world of art whether it's music photography writing you don't put something in the art unless it matters in fact art is about getting rid of all the things that don't matter so when you look at any artistic world there's no such thing as coincidences because they're all engineered out you live in a coincidence free world when you're an artist or and you're trying to make it that way the real world is all coincidence it's just things happening

[20:40]

coincidence it's just things happening randomly that you don't know why all the times not all coincidence but it's it's rife with coincidence so when you see something like this very example when she says well is it a coincidence could it be Scott a coincidence that what he's talking about the actual guy with the the bad arm that he goes a little bit bigger in his gestures is that a coincidence to which I say yeah that's how coincidences work that's exactly a coincidence there could be no better example than that that's the perfect example of a coincidence but the artist says now this kind of means something because everything means something and so they pull they pull these coincidences into their world where everything means something and it's hard to get them off that but the engineer the scientist the lawyer they live in a world where coincidences are probably coincidences at least as often as they're meaningful so they're all on

[21:42]

as they're meaningful so they're all on they're all on the alert for a coincidence being over interpreted artists probably not probably the opposite all right anything else happening to my coincidence that Mike is it my imagination that not much is happening
what is the best path for rapid us development of Jen for nuclear I here's what I think it is so the Energy Department has already set up a test test site to rapidly test different nuclear fuels which would get you closer to the generation 4 technology I think what we need is more leadership at the top now what I mean by that is President Trump in my opinion and every time I criticize the president for not doing

[22:43]

criticize the president for not doing enough or doing something wrong I like to call it out because for some reason people can watch me forever and come to the impression that I've never criticized anything Trump did which is look so completely wildly wrong that I call it out so I think nuclear is one of those cases now when I say wrong I mean not enough I believe that everything that Trump has done has been really really good because you know Trump's the boss his Department of Energy has been quite aggressive under Perry helping to develop a nuclear but probably not nearly as aggressive as it could be for example yeah I always talk about Bill Gates and terraPower one of companies he's funded is trying to build the new generation of nuclear energy and the main thing that they need is places to test it now maybe they have that you know maybe they had a playoff

[23:43]

that you know maybe they had a playoff on that but I would think that the President of the United States should be visiting terraPower should actually take a day and go there so that the rest of the country can be informed because if you can inform the rest of the country that there's this good thing happening that you know technology to eat existing nuclear waste and turn it into fuel is being developed that shouldn't just be a little blurb in you know Wired magazine that shouldn't be like a little thing in the New York I'm say there's some other technologies you know we think they could be good whatever that should be the President of the United States taking the day off meeting Bill Gates and having Bill Gates walk him around the test facility and then maybe do it a few more times that I think new scale there there are other companies in this this business but the president has this gigantic spotlight the hidden spotlight on anything and if

[24:44]

the hidden spotlight on anything and if he spotlighted nuclear energy he would take the high ground on the climate change debate now imagine being able to take the high ground on your opponents maybe one of their strongest arguments you could actually take it away from them so how can I not call that a mistake on the president's part right because it's a mistake when you do something that's you know an error but it's also a mistake when there's this big teaming obvious thing to do that would be positive and you don't do it you know if you're not taking the the opening that's given that's a mistake and on the nuclear stuff while Trump has been I think a plus in terms of policy he's been completely missing in action in terms of persuasion and it's a persuasion problem you know it doesn't help the country to have a good technical direction if there's no persuasion backing it up to to get people you know moving in the same

[25:46]

people you know moving in the same direction so I criticize the President on nuclear persuasion but not nuclear policy I think the policy is probably pretty clean anyway says Scott maybe you're just out of the loop well I don't know how that comment makes sense because the loop I'm talking about is public exposure and I watched the news a lot so I doubt I would have missed it if the president was strongly persuading them on nuclear power he heard himself the windmill stuff you know what's funny about it is people mock him for not understanding windmills but if you see him talk about it he's he drops it enough facts about windmills that it's obvious he does know about windmills so he knows enough about windmills pluses

[26:47]

he knows enough about windmills pluses and minuses to be able to riff on it you know he's no expert on green technology but he does know what he's talking about he does know they kill a lot of birds he does know that if the wind isn't blowing you're gonna have to do something those are the big points
I think 2020 might be the the year the Trump goes hard at it now there must be some political or other reason why he hasn't done it so far my guess is that it just doesn't feel safe to do it maybe as a political strategy maybe the polling is so anti-nuclear that maybe it just doesn't pay to be vocal about it but I think that would be leaving the entire civilization of the world at peril you know if the reason you're not talking about nuclear energy is because it's politically inconvenient then you're you're literally allowing

[27:48]

you're you're literally allowing civilization to be at risk for a political point I mean that's a pretty big trade-off it contradicts his coal promise now doesn't because the the coal promise was about jobs the way I saw it the coal promise was not coal is the only way to make electricity the coal promise is totally about jobs and pushing hard at coal while we still need it and creating jobs is actually I would say a respectable trade-off even if you wouldn't do it meaning that letting unemployed people have jobs is pretty important and if what that cost is a 1/100 of a degree over 50 years of extra temperature or whatever it is because American coal miners you know the the extra the little bit of extra America coal mining that might happen because of job what's that one one thousandth of a

[28:51]

job what's that one one thousandth of a degree of temperature over fifty years I don't know if this be even could we even measure it so if if it's creating jobs and having a trivial effect on the on the world so it's not a that's not a disrespectful trade off people need jobs to who drops out of the Democratic race next I don't know Cory Booker's gonna have a tough time holding on I think free energy is the near future could be somebody says nuclear is net inefficient well depends what you mean by inefficient if you mean for the price then I would say that you can't determine that because the price of nuclear is if you look at it historically it's all distorted by politics of the fact that the technology was legitimately dangerous in the beginning so you've got a lot of factors

[29:52]

beginning so you've got a lot of factors that just wouldn't exist if you build smaller modular generation four because then you can standardize the parts you can make them smaller you could have the engineering and approval sort of canned sides so that instead of starting from scratch on a new design for nuclear you know if you're looking at a new plant that's never been built before even if it uses some parts of technologies that exist it's still a new plant so getting approval and then sign off on new technology for nuclear is just the hardest thing you could possibly do but then the future is these small modular ones where once you've decided that one of them works you just build another one like it and then the second time they go okay it's one of these so easy much easier to approve and therefore the car the cost will come way down

[30:55]

oh here's a good question from gay Kevin say which topics do you purposely manipulate the nuanced well would you say manipulate the nuance to be persuasive yes that's a question because I believe I I tried to persuade on anything important so the word manipulate gets to intentioned so I usually try to stay away from that word so I don't manipulate for bad purpose but everybody who communicates tries to communicate effectively and that means you know emphasizing this over over something else so maybe always I'm not sure I can turn off the just the communication habit of emphasizing what I want to emphasize I'm not sure I can turn that off but I think your question was a good one maybe I can

[31:55]

your question was a good one maybe I can think of an example but doesn't come to mind will Dilbert dip into the political discussion in 2020 not in the Democrat versus Republican sense but I might have Dilbert more involved with topics so I've had climate change interfere with the with the Dilbert world but without making much of a political point just it exists it's part of the conversation you know so it made sense that it would overlap at some point let's say do you ever laugh of course I do you see me laughing here can Democrats higher persuasion experts to coach their candidates will they have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both had persuasion experts coaching them and and all the political professionals should

[32:56]

all the political professionals should also be persuasion experts of a different type
Harris has worried that you were manipulating him during the podcast well what does that mean see it's that word manipulating that throws everything off what if he just said that I'm persuasive what's the difference if you say somebody's persuasive you take the the evil intention out of it if you say hey he's manipulative what if you're just persuasive because you can persuade in a positive way yabba nip Y elation is not the right word because that gets to intention as opposed to the tool
what is one online self-promotion advice you would give a writer well some of the best advice I saw came from writer Stephen King he wrote a book called on writing so that's the title of the book

[33:57]

writing so that's the title of the book on writing and one of the pieces of advice he gives which is spot-on in my opinion is that it's actually easy to get published people don't realize this but if you decide I'm gonna be a writer tomorrow and you've got a little bit of writing talent you can get published by the end of the week but where you can get published by the end of the week is in a small local publication or maybe some kind of online thing that takes guest artists or something something small then maybe you get a lot of retweets or clicks maybe maybe the local newspaper or publication so though we like it give us another one so you build up a body of work that you can take to the next level up now the next level up if you've been writing articles for small newspapers might be larger publications might be blogging might be a guest blogger on Huffington Post or something but what you do is you just keep creating a body of work that

[35:00]

just keep creating a body of work that becomes your resume for the next up until until you're a popular columnist and then a publisher says hey if you're good at writing these popular columns maybe you could write a book so basically you take advantage of the fact that pretty much every writer can get published it's one of the easiest fields to break into as weird as that sounds now it's almost impossible for any one person to become a best-selling author and that's hard but becoming a working published author very easy I always tell the story back when I was in my corporate days at a big bank and one of my employees I was a supervisor one of my employees decided he wanted to write an article for a spreadsheet magazine there was a magazine that just did tricks and tips for people who use spreadsheets he'd never written anything never been

[36:02]

he'd never written anything never been paid for anything anything hadn't been asked to write anything he just saw this industry publication he thought oh I have some ideas that I should submit them maybe they'll pay me so I worked with him a little bit he wrote up an article it was not really good and they got published they actually rewrote most of the article and paid him they rewrote his bad writing because his idea was was fresh and they liked the idea and then he said wow I got paid I got paid for being a writer and it was actually pretty good money it was like $1500 30 years ago and so he gets paid and he's like well we'll all right another one so he writes another article it's also not that good they rewrite you know half of it but not all of it this time it gets published he gets paid my the guy who was my boss at the phone company saw me saw me succeeding with

[37:03]

company saw me saw me succeeding with Dilbert and he said hey I'll I think I'll try to write a book basically random guy in a cubicle decides to write a book now what are the odds that random guy in cubicle my boss who had no writing experience no writing experience whatsoever what are the odds that he would publish his book he published a freaking book it's an actual book he wrote a book about his father had been captured by the Japanese in World War two and executed and you know he had the whole story from the war crimes records and stuff and so he writes a book about it it was actually a really interesting book no experience gets paid and the book did well enough I think that if he had had a second book in him I don't think he did but he would have been able to write a second book so writing is actually probably one of the most accessible fields you'll ever get into but only to start you know it's that

[38:04]

but only to start you know it's that that bottom entry is just really easy then then you have to build usually your way up the by the way the the Dilbert 2020 calendar end of the year as the number one calendar I think it was a number one calendar on Amazon it was ranked in terms of all books on Amazon and imagine how many books are on Amazon millions and millions books I think it ended at the rank was 34 so out of all the the books and calendars that were sold on Amazon the Dilbert calendar was 34 I think that might be one of the best performances yet so that's 30 years the Dilbert it has been out and the calendar just came in number one it's not bad that's got legs yeah somebody says who the hell still uses calendars so they're used almost entirely as a gift item and something that people put on their desk

[39:05]

something that people put on their desk just to have a joke so I don't know that anybody uses a Dilbert calendar for the calendar part it's more of a it's more of a I know I it's almost a tradition people been giving it to their father forever and they just keep doing it
somebody says Lucy uses one I'll give you some when hub updates after the the new year somebody says I love that you're so happy thank you I am pretty happy any advice for fine artists let me tell you a story somebody has to stop me in case I told you this story because I feel like I was planning to tell it and maybe maybe I did but I don't think I did so a few weeks ago I got I got a message from a young man who was who had been part of my let's say extended social circle I'll be I'm gonna be a

[40:07]

social circle I'll be I'm gonna be a little bit nonspecific here for privacy purposes so it's a young man who several years ago I had asked for my advice on what to do with his life he was smart ambitious but he didn't have a direction and so I started telling him my talent stack concept now the idea was to start with whatever talents he had and then intelligently pile on new talents until he had something strong and I said it was just sort of brainstorming what I would do if I were him you know if we had switched places and I had to use my strategy but starting from his starting point what would I do I said I'll tell you what I do I would he was he was a good graphic artist so he already had a base for the artistic you know mindset and I said if he also had a good mind for technology and other stuff so I said I would learn to program and I would learn to design user

[41:08]

and I would learn to design user interfaces because if you have artistic talent and you know how to design a user interface those go really well together you know the artistic sense and the user interface design if you've got both of those that's strong but on top of that if you could actually if you could actually code it you could you could visualize it you could visualize it well because you're an artist and then you could code it yourself with a variety of languages so I said that's what I would do I I would take classes until I could do user interface graphic design and I could code it all up and tell anything I wanted and he so so I give this advice baby I know years ago and I was aware that he started taking classes in that realm and he just he just emailed me I think it was email the other day I think maybe was a text message and he told me that

[42:08]

was a text message and he told me that he wanted to let me know that he just got a job in the field with Apple Computer in their user interface group now some of you who understand what I just said for the rest of you let me explain it if you were trying to get a job in the field of designing user interfaces there's one place that's the best places in the world and then there's every place else the best place in the world unambiguously is Apple Computer Bay Area user interface that's the job he just got this was after probably five years of extreme poverty meaning that he was a starving student you know living out living with a grandparent I think and you could barely make it to school like if he had car problems that day he couldn't go to school you know so he was just just

[43:11]

school you know so he was just just scraping by you know with physical resources and he put his talent stack together created a strategy and nailed it made me feel really good I gotta say made me feel really good all right name one podcast you recommend you know I have to say I don't spend time listening to podcasts but I will give you a few that I can recommend any way anything that Tim Ferriss does anything that James Altucher does anything that Joe Rogan does that would be a good start I know I'm forgetting some people yeah it depends what you call a podcast anything that Mike Serna does is always interesting if you call that podcasting I don't know live streaming I guess so those those would be the ones that I'd look at it does Byron New York have a podcast i yeah i would say jordan

[44:15]

a podcast i yeah i would say jordan peterson but i don't know why he's doing lately did scott tell the engagement story i will tell you the engagement story so the engagement story goes like this I convinced Christina that we should open one gift the night before Christmas and I had prepackaged some package of C's candy that was gift-wrapped but one of the candies in the middle had been replaced with engagement ring so I said yeah we should just open one thing and I'd already bought her or a gift earlier so her Christmas gift was already taken care of and there was a piano so she got a piano for Christmas again but it had already been delivered a month ago and so so I said for Christmas itself I'll just give you something small so I kept telling her to reduce her reduce her

[45:16]

her to reduce her reduce her expectations for Christmas Day presents because it's just gonna be something small but of course the whole time I knew there's something small meant the diamond ring so she opened it up saw the ring I asked her she said yes and that's that's the basic story
oh yeah the Adam Carolla and anything with dr. drew or great podcast to somebody is reminding me here in the in the comments I think Adam Carolla is one of the most popular podcasts actually in the world
how has chai I tried to economically punish you for your comments I have not I've not yet detected any problems that would be coming from China now like I said all of my trolls are on vacation like actually literally on vacation and I've always just suspected that maybe

[46:19]

I've always just suspected that maybe some percentage of them are Chinese if you were China and you were trying to control things in the United States and why wouldn't you you would have some trolls and you would assign those trolls to various voices that you didn't like so that they could be tamp down and and argued with I haven't seen evidence that China has done that there there are no trolls which just jump out as being Chinese agents or anything like that but baby maybe so but he's mentioning the Sam Harris podcast yeah the Sam Harris podcast is always going to be interesting that's actually I've probably have listened to more Sam Harris than anybody else because he's always interesting what's your view on the societal pressure for a diamond engagement ring that needs to spend two months salary you know all of this marriage stuff it's

[47:21]

you know all of this marriage stuff it's just a struggle because it's one size that doesn't fit all so you're always struggling to figure out okay I know what I'm supposed to do but aren't I different this is this a different situation oh yeah there's no agenda the no agenda podcast excellent podcast all right you want 2020 predictions well I've made some predictions I don't want to rework those
had you not proposed do you think you she ever would have did you see the story about Lindsay Vonn was it Lindsay Vonn who proposed to her boyfriend the answer is no I don't see any circumstance in which Christina would have proposed and but only not because you wouldn't want to I mean not because she wouldn't want to be married but rather that would be so far and of

[48:22]

but rather that would be so far and of her expected behavior didn't back if he inspire me to get married now he did not
somebody says how do I handle my sister-in-law becoming gender-neutral why do you care what why in the world do you care if your sister-in-law is gender-neutral what what's that got to do with you so everybody wants to ask you if I was on bended knee and the answer is now and and it was conscious I don't believe in starting a relationship with one person on their knees maybe it's just me but if there were one thing that if there were one thing to get rid of in the tradition of marriage I don't think anybody should get on their knees as the first start of a relationship

[49:22]

as the first start of a relationship that would be the exact opposite of what anybody should do so not only did I not we were just sitting together on the couch I don't think anybody should I
bend a specially bothered by that particular thing now if you look at the tradition of it I believe that the tradition of it is that when the the gender balance was so unequal that is sort of made sense because the guy was the guy was dialing down his power as a male in society for this specific purpose you know to show that you know that the love is there etc but in today's world where the genders are you know will will always argue about who's exactly you know getting the advantage but we're a lot closer to even right you know there's a reasonable argument on both sides that one gender or the other has the advantage depending on the

[50:23]

has the advantage depending on the category you're talking about but into in today's world I think we should come at it as something closer it appears so that's my take on all right just looking at your questions here somebody says well Christina be a trophy wife I like to think so in all the good ways you know there's nothing wrong with a trophy I like trophies but obviously the we wouldn't get married unless the the relationship was real we've been together three years so we don't have any illusions and I have to tell you three years into it it's better it's absolutely better three years into it we're we're closer than ever big wedding or small wedding haven't even talked about it but not big

[51:37]

we're not planning on children prenup I can't believe anybody would even ask that somebody's asking me if I loved a prenup I'm an economics major what do you think can you tell us about the mental prisons that you escaped and said we're very weird and you didn't write hmm I'm not sure I exactly understand the story but in my book loser thing and also in my book win big Lea I do talk about bubbles that I've been in that I got out of so I think that's your question but it's better you want to see the long version in the book it's more entertaining
how can one third of people not have a sense of humor well so that's I've been famously saying that a third of the public doesn't have a sense of humor and also it doesn't know it because if you don't have it you don't know you're missing it you think to yourself well I laugh at things other

[52:38]

to yourself well I laugh at things other people laugh at things like I have a sense of humor but you can see it in the wild where people will just not even recognize a joke necessarily unless other people are recognized at first will you write a book regarding your relationship and road to marriage now you know one of the tricks of writing is that you have to write about other people I learned this the hard way you you can imagine that if you're a big celebrity you can write a you know your own biography and people care because you're a famous celebrity but people mostly care about themselves so when I write I'm saying to myself ok who's who's the consumer for this and what's good for them like how could I make their life better by something I've written it's it's got to be relating to them and it's got to be about them that's my personal writer personal

[53:39]

that's my personal writer personal writer philosophy are the one third without a sense of humor bitter and unhappy I don't know I haven't noticed that they're less happy they might laugh less it I feel as though having a sense of humor is sort of it's almost an unfair advantage in life because there are times when things are going really poorly when I can't stop laughing have you ever had this the situation where something goes so wrong that it becomes hilarious and you're actually genuinely entertained and you can't stop laughing because something's just so wrong now I have that and I always think what if when things went wrong you just felt bad what if you were one of the people who you get some bad luck and it just makes you feel bad I thought that sounds terrible because when I get bad luck unless somebody's hurt you know unless

[54:40]

unless somebody's hurt you know unless it's like a real problem but most problems are just you know BS problems but most of them just made me laugh I cannot tell you how many times I've been busted in a in a personal relationship for laughing at something that I'm not supposed to laugh at it happens a lot I will laugh anything that's wrong which sometimes is good but sometimes your laughing is something that's wrong and for other people who don't think that's so funny so it's a problem somebody's saying that assertive itchin is covering the Jewish stabbings in stabbing in New York City you know I'm seeing headlines and stories suggesting that anti-semitism is on the rise now I don't know if that's true because it's exactly the category of things that could be reported as true

[55:42]

of things that could be reported as true without being true I worry that it's true and I would certainly say it's in the category of a big problem that we need to treat as seriously as possible but it's the sort of thing they have to ask yourself how is it measured before how's it being measured now is it the measurement that's different or is it really more or is it really not more but it feels like more because the way it's being reported I would say I have great questions on this category but questions aside it has to be treated like it's I mean it only makes sense to treat it like it's one of the most serious things in the world because this likewise since it's the holiday season and I'm full of love for my fellow humans there's a tweet I retweeted from Judd Apatow now if you don't know Judd Apatow a super talented director of many hit movies you

[56:44]

talented director of many hit movies you know the including including a whole bunch of funny hit movies you know about the hangover 2 etc and he's super anti-trump super anti drama and so he'll he's got a pretty harsh Twitter feed when it comes to Republicans Trump but he tweeted I think it was yesterday there why is it that China has concentration camps for the weaker minorities and we know it and we're sort of not talking about it so I'm paraphrasing you know very poorly the Judd Apatow plenty of view that how could it be how could it be and by the way I don't know if Judd Apatow is Jewish but that would be important in this story because anybody who has the Holocaust as sort of a an informing history for themselves I think have to ask some extra questions here you gotta ask some extra questions if the

[57:45]

ask some extra questions if the Holocaust is part of your history and I don't know if that's the case with Judd Apatow but if it is he's asking the most respected question that you'll ever see on social media and so I'm seeing people saying that that he is Jewish but whether he is or not that shouldn't be too relevant to my next point which is I can't think of an opinion I would respect more than somebody with a Jewish background who's got a lot to lose right a public figure going in public and saying you know what's up with concentration camps in China how the hell are you ignoring this all right I respect that pinyin I really respect that opinion because that is consistent it is moral it's right it's everything it's everything you want in an opinion so i retweeted it with support for that opinion and i like the fact that at

[58:48]

opinion and i like the fact that at least on this issue Judd Apatow and I would be an almost polar opposites for a lot of political stuff but on this issue there's just nothing to discuss on this issue Judd Apatow is a hundred percent right what's wrong with it why are we ignoring this like it's a small business it's not small business it's a million people in a concentration camp because of their religion sound familiar
right big difference between uh alright yeah I want to get too far into that but uh just looking at your comments here in case it gets quiet if you're listening to this is the podcast when I go quiet it's because I'm reading all right it looks like we've extended our that we've

[59:48]

looks like we've extended our that we've uh we've done everything we can do for now so I will talk to you later