Episode 917 Scott Adams: Let’s Talk About That Trump Reopening Plan

Date: 2020-04-17 | Duration: 47:31

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: The 3 phase back-to-work process Remdesivir versus Hydroxychloroquine Governor Cuomo hires consultants The scapegoat circle Marco Rubio, China decoupling czar Bill Gates haters and rumors

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

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## Transcript

[0:12]

oh yeah it's time for the evening edition of coffee with Scott Adams featuring no coffee it was now normally at this time you would see me swaddled in my soft blanket but the time for swaddling is transitioning to a different time yes yes there was a time working on our fear and figuring out how to get through this and understanding it all was the thing to do but I declare that these swaddling time is over we are now in a post a swaddle world you don't need your blanket anymore you don't need to worry about your nerves you don't need to worry about your stress we're we're gonna go on offense now it's time now I don't mean necessarily tomorrow it's time to reorient our mindset this

[1:14]

it's time to reorient our mindset this will become more clear to you as I go through my fascinating presentation of today's events all right so first of all I broke my own does social isolation today again you one trust the government as long as the government is doing what seems credible to you I'm pretty forgiving about mistakes if they fix them but I'm not entirely pleased with what the government is doing in terms of guidelines and so I've decided to loosen up my own guidelines so I'm not doing anything crazy but let's just say it really felt good to loosen my social isolation that's all I'm going to tell you about that so my day is going well anyway let's talk about the president's guidelines you probably all saw the news the president came out with these three

[2:15]

the president came out with these three three phases and the approach that the president is taking is kind of brilliant kind of brilliant there's a there's a bad side here so I'll start with the good news so the good news is and I've said this before I believe that the federal government and specifically the president should always come down on the side of preserving the most life even if it's irrational because I think the the number one person in the country should never be in a position to decide who lives and dies in the country now if it's war of course he's going to decide who lives and dies in other countries but you know what the top person in the country to make those decisions about who lives and dies instead you want that to be pushed down so for example I like the fact that the states get to make most of the decisions about abortion

[3:15]

most of the decisions about abortion they get to make decisions about the death penalty so the states get to make a lot of decisions that really do determine who lives and who dies and that's the better place for so if you looked at the President and foul and dr. Burks there the recommendation today it didn't really look like a practical recommendation I don't know if you had that feeling it looked like I don't want to say political because if you do something that that you should do I'm not sure that you should call that political but you know what I mean so what they did is it looked to me that the plan is the most compatible with the let's say the medically the medical dominant opinion meaning that when I looked at those guidelines it seemed to me that if there were economists in the room and doctors in the room when that when they came up with that it feels like the doctors had more more say did

[4:18]

like the doctors had more more say did it feel like that to you did it feel like the federal government's rules were really biased toward keeping the most people alive because it really puts a pretty high hurdle on a lot of these states to to open up so the federal government putting a high hurdle on the states but not requiring it interestingly this is where the magic is so the federal government says this is what we prefer but it's a little impractical and of course every state needs to adjust for their situation and here's why I don't think anybody knows no expert no modeler no doctor no fire ologist I don't believe anybody knows the right time to start up I believe there's sort of an expert hunch best guess now of course it's informed by as much data as they can collect but do you think that they can collect enough data that that alone

[5:19]

collect enough data that that alone would tell them when is the exact right time to do anything not really not really there's no such thing as that kind of data or that kind of model I think that the medical professionals who of course probably would prefer airing you know by training by personality would prefer erring on the side of protecting the most life even if it's a little expensive and maybe even if the lives that are lost later because of the economic issues well maybe they don't have names and it's not so obvious why they died so you would expect that whatever came for the federal government if they do it right would would feel a little impractical because it's weighing it's biased a little too much toward saving life because that's exactly where the federal government should be so the magic is that the states who really are the more appropriate designers of life and death in their state that's the most credible place to do it now now the

[6:21]

credible place to do it now now the federal government has given them that space so that part brilliant I don't I don't think you I don't think that you could improve on that specifically the idea of pushing that responsibility down that's just perfect
yeah no I don't have the coronavirus I just have swallowed some spent so but so the real way to judge this is by whatever the states do so if the states go ahead and do dumb things it doesn't matter what the federal government said you know assuming they don't stop them from doing their dumb things and there's nothing that the federal government is doing that would stop the states from doing smart things so the states do have the right kind of flexibility but here's the problem I hope the states don't take the same model as the federal government because

[7:22]

model as the federal government because it seems like the federal government has sort of a geographic bent you know sort of like okay you're a state figure out what your state is going to do we don't know yet if the state will make finer decisions within the state presumably they'll they'll make a difference between let's say LA and the rural area but will they make decisions about individuals that's the part that's missing right because the federal government just says if you can get your what is it something about the stabilizing for two weeks or dropping your severity for two weeks then you can go to the next level but until you've got two weeks of dropping it you can't do it and here's the problem with that are you telling me that a 25 year old going back to work is gonna blow your whole deal because the 25 year old might get sick but probably they're not gonna die and so wouldn't it be smarter to you

[8:26]

die and so wouldn't it be smarter to you know once you've got your geographic decisions you know that the states make their own decisions wouldn't it be started as smarter to also have a individual filter that comes after that in which you decide okay even though we're not quite as phase one you can certainly go to work so make decisions based on individuals here's a an approach that comes from at all so if I can find it so he points out I'll try to summarize it you could pick an age and say people his example is people below the age of 45 so you could pick that age to make the death rate that we anticipate equal to the regular flu so for example if you said only people under 45 and I think he means people without any complicating health conditions otherwise if they go back to work there will be extra deaths but it will be almost exactly the same

[9:28]

but it will be almost exactly the same as a regular flu so so if that's what society can tolerate the regular flu then maybe send back young enough people so that that's the result you get so I like that idea according to involves back-of-the-envelope calculations you would get a lot more illnesses but if you're sending young people and you wouldn't get that many more deaths and that's that's gonna be the far more impactful thing so I would say that the federal government did a real good job of determining the field but everything will depend on the states if the states take a similar similar approach where they just say okay you know if you're in a high-risk category you stay home if you're not and they don't they don't sort it any better than that that might be a problem so we'll see what the states come up with I'll withhold my

[10:30]

states come up with I'll withhold my judgment so I don't know what to believe on this so today there are all these stories about Reb des aver that gilead mix is anecdotally showing great results in these studies that don't have a control so the studies have been written up and they don't have a control which means that they're not reliable in the way that we want things to be reliable but there's all kinds of press that they this thousand dollars a treatment drug that you can only take in the hospital and it's you know by IV and a thousand dollars that this is the thing and it's saved all these people etc do you believe any of that do you believe any of that and somebody funny on Twitter said oh so it looks like it looks like

[11:32]

looks like it looks like hydroxychloroquine is for Republicans and REM des Avira's for Democrats and it kind of looks like that it kind of looks like half of the country once REM does appear to be the thing and half the country wants hydroxychloroquine to be the thing because there's a political implication you know that nobody wants at least the Democrats don't want Trump to be right so they don't all hydroxychloroquine to be the one and I don't know so here's here's my personal opinion is that it doesn't work so I'm leaving kind of heavily toward neither REM desert here nor hydroxychloroquine work and I use the same the same thinking in both cases we would not be at this point without knowing if it worked really dramatically you know if it really made a difference we didn't know it by now and I don't think we do

[12:33]

know it by now and I don't think we do so if it worked as well as we you would want it to work to be a game-changing drug I think you'd see it even without the tests even without the trials and you'd have people saying and so I'm 60/40 that neither than work 60% that neither than work but there are parent doesn't of things being tested so yeah maybe maybe one of those works I got a bunch of trolls coming in and we're getting really angry and hurling the f-bombs ABI and telling me that they want to urinate on my grave just a sort of normal day on Twitter and just for fun I started clicking on their profiles to see what jobs they have and it is so freaky how often they are artists the artists of the ones who can't understand that whatever decision we make about going back to work somebody dies they act as though if you

[13:36]

somebody dies they act as though if you if you pick a direction which is what they were complaining about I was saying that people are ready to go back to work because people not me specifically but that people seem to be willing to take a few hundred thousand deaths to get back to work and how does anybody not understand that no matter what you do whether you kill people by crushing the economy or you kill people by the flu we only have a choice of killing people and they came in and acted like I was the devil because I suggested one of the two paths both of which kill people and we don't even know which one kills more if we did it would be obvious right if we all do which was the one that kills the fewest people what debate would there be so seeing and and most of the artists were writers authors blonde a lot of sci-fi writers it's so consistent that it's really worth noting because it tells you what a good experience will

[14:38]

tells you what a good experience will get you and if you don't have it well alright so andrew Cuomo has tapped consultants McKinsey to develop what they're calling a trip proof economic reopening plan now most of this week people have been telling me that I'm talking about things that are that are not by the area of expertise and indeed that's true not my area of expertise the amount I know about biology would fill a very small nothing but when it comes to the question should New York City hire McKinsey consultants to help them come up with a plan well now you're in my now you're in my wheelhouse you're in my wheelhouse now and let me tell you my experience with McKinsey consultants might have been bathed it

[15:38]

consultants might have been bathed it was one of them so they're the the big management consultants are very similar so I at the moment I think it was McKinsey but we also worked with Bain so it was one of them but they had this that they have a similarity so you could replace either name and the story would still work so I was working at Pacific Bell and we had some big strategic decision to make and our management decided to hire one of these big consulting companies now the way that works is the consulting company sends in a high-level partner and that high-level partner sits with our management and have the management thinks to themselves at the end of the meeting Wow this consultant person is really really smart and do you know why they think that it's true that meant those consultant people are just like super smart so they're recruited in the top schools and you know they're gonna work around the clock

[16:39]

know they're gonna work around the clock and they're almost like superhuman so the so it is true that the people who commanded these consultant companies they're not like you and I honestly they are really really smart so that part's just true but here's here's the fun part so Pacific Bell says yes we will hire you damn I've never even seen anybody as smart as you just just the ideas that you threw out in the room here are so good it's like wow you are worth a few million dollars so we hire them and then the smartest person the consultant partner says and I'll send my team in to work with you you know there's four of them and they'll be coming in though and they'll actually work in your office so they'll have you know desks with your office and you know phones just like employees they'll just be embedded they'll just work and and then then I say oh wait a minute wait a minute what's happening here didn't we just hire you

[17:39]

didn't we just hire you because you the person who's the the principal in the company is so darn smart well yes that's true and did you just tell me you're not gonna be here instead you're gonna send some people who just got out of college to tell us how to run our business we've been running for 30 years is that why you just proposed yeah yeah but they're really smart okay okay they're really smart but let me just clarify this they don't know anything about our business right they have never been in telecommunications is that you don't worry we have a process so they'll just follow the process it's our patented process and they can solve pretty much any situation so they don't really need to be experts because you'll tell them how to fill in their process to which I say yeah you know but I think we could figure out a process we can look at the costs and the benefits we know how to do spreadsheets we know

[18:40]

we know how to do spreadsheets we know to predict things it turns out we have all of those same skills why are we hiring somebody for millions of dollars who's sending somebody who is not even the guy we wanted to hire who are going to learn the business from us and then tell us what to do and by the way do you know how do you know what recommendation comes out of it do you let me tell you the recommendation that comes out of the these young experts is whatever the staff wants it to be because the staff is training them and teaching them what they need to know to fill their models so the staff has an opinion so we just make sure that all the data that the consultants get just happens to conform to our opinion do you think the do you think the consultants would know if there was something you didn't tell them probably not they're not experts of the

[19:42]

probably not they're not experts of the business so if you only tell them half of what they need to know to bias them toward whatever it is you think should have been done anyway they're not going to know the difference they only know what you tell them so they make complicated spreadsheets and charts and you know gigantic reports and and especially especially graphs and they present them and then you learn the whole real reason why any of this is done because at the end all this happened is the consultants have recommended exactly what the staff would have recommended if you just ask them and you find out that your boss is just covering his butt because if he took his own staffs recommendation and it was bad that would be his fault but if he spends millions of dollars on a top management firm who puts together this killer presentation and then takes the presentation to your boss you don't even have to do it you don't even have to sell your own boss you don't have to

[20:43]

sell your own boss you don't have to convince your own boss because that's what the consultant does you just say hey boss you know you got it got a few minutes my consultant it's gonna give you this really complicated presentation you're not going to understand most of it really you're not going to stay in any of it but you'll understand the summary and you'll think that we're really smart and we must have gotten something for our money and it's good way to cover your butt because even if it goes wrong you can say smart consultants anyway Cuomo hiring these consultants is should be seen as primarily a covering your but to move the consultants will come up with whatever the people paying the bills want them to come up with here's what the consultants are not going to come up with the opposite of what the people who pay the bills want them to come up with you can bank on that so they're not adding value except to convince people that it wasn't Andrew Cuomo who made the decision by simply pulling you that of his ass but he's

[21:47]

pulling you that of his ass but he's gonna pull it out of his I asked collectively I mean you won't make the decision in a vacuum but the the people closest to it the politicians you're gonna have to make a decision without data because we don't have all the data we need to really be certain so he'll do what he can and his consultants will cover for him now if you've noticed our leaders have created a perfect situation President Trump has experts which you can see he's closely following their advice so if it's wrong who do you blame well you sort of blame the experts right so president Trump has a scapegoat now the experts also have come up with this framework but they say but the real work has to be done at the states so the experts also have set up a scapegoat which is the governor's because the president could say I listen to the experts the experts can say the government the governors did implement

[22:48]

government the governors did implement it correctly so everybody's got a scapegoat and then the governors if they're smart we'll find other scapegoats as in andrew Cuomo which is the consultants so the president will blame the experts the experts will blame the governor's the governors now have consultants they can blame the consultants and who all the consultants blame China don't blame China anacott because China gave us bad data and our you know our models could have been better or whatever now at this point maybe they don't use any Chinese data but the the consultants are gonna have to find somebody to blame they're at the bottom of the thing there they'll probably blame bad implementation I'm starting to think that Marco Rubio would be the perfect choice for what I'll call the Secretary of decoupling from China so Rubio is doing some interviews and here's what I like about it but I like that he's the same party as Trump which

[23:50]

that he's the same party as Trump which means you know he could he could be nominated for something reasonably and he's he's appropriately tough on China and seems to have a good grasp of the whole thing so don't we need somebody at that level to get things going because we might end up doing what Japan is doing which is paying companies to move stuff back but we China we've got you know bigger problems you've got all that yeah everything from the we Gers to the tell telecommunications there's still stuff the IP it's a big big complicated thing and you could argue and be one of if not the biggest economic variable of our future so just just put that in the back your mind maybe Marco Rubio needs our promotion to one it would be one of the biggest jobs of all time I was think all right let's talk some more about

[24:53]

all right let's talk some more about because I know you want to a follow up on Bill Gates so as you know I'm having a this ongoing debate on the internet about whether Bill Gates has done a whole variety of horrible things which is accused of by conspiracy theorists or it's all just made up now of course on the side of it's all obviously just made up I mean you just look at if you go that didn't happen and so of course I've gone through the list of all the all the reasons that Bill Gates is not the devil I'll just give you one example so you can see how it goes people said hey Bill Gates supports the World Health Organization and there you know evil as we know to which I say so does the United States so and and does the United States what exactly what Bill Gates wants from the World Health Organization yeah of course both of them want different leadership but we both know that if it had good leadership it would probably be a really good thing so is

[25:55]

probably be a really good thing so is there really any difference between Trump and and Bill Gates when it comes to the World Health Organization nope there's no difference Trump is holding the funding as leverage and to negotiate Bill Gates is just as a different job but somebody has to hold them to be accountable you don't think that Bill Gates wants the World Health Organization to not be accountable right so it's just bad thinking and a weird conspiracy theory to think that Bill Gates is a bad guy because he supports a functional World Health Organization it should be understood that he wants competent management as do we all so that so you can see from that example that's just one where you can sort of take all these weird accusations and go yeah but you're just thinking about it wrong and it kind of came down to this he spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein so it turns out you know maybe

[26:56]

Epstein so it turns out you know maybe after all these complaints of his horrible things he's done allegedly it might come down to well but we got a picture of him standing next to Jeffrey Epstein and how do you explain that and I don't explain what you know whatever Bill Gates is thinking or why he did what he did nobody could do that but I'll give you some context I reject anybody who says you can't hang out with and talk to anybody you want anytime you want for any reason you want and that's the way I lived my life if you were to judge me by the people that I've spent significant time with well you would you would want the death penalty for me moreover if I could judge other people by the same standard I would want the death penalty for half of the people I know because we've all spent people we've all spent significant time with some bad people and sometimes we do it and sometimes we didn't I don't

[27:57]

we do it and sometimes we didn't I don't think there's an exception yeah it was there any of you who haven't spent time with somebody who's done some really bad stuff and you knew it or you suspected it maybe didn't approve but you kind of kind of thought about it let's let's try to be a little bit adult people spend time with all kinds of people and the thing that bugs me about that is that when you see the Gates was hanging around with Epstein the thing that everybody says is well doesn't that mean there's something about Epstein either his lifestyle or whatever was sort of bleeding off onto gates like does the badness of Epstein sort of just staying gates to which I say why does that have to work that way where's what the thinking behind the assumption the influence works one way why wouldn't it be true that Bill Gates was making Epstein a better person because if Bill Gates was hanging around with Epstein to

[28:59]

Gates was hanging around with Epstein to get money from Epstein for charity and apparently that is what they were talking about right they were talking to get money for charity so if Bill Gates was hanging around was somebody who is super sketchy like his sketchy as you could possibly be but he thought that maybe he could get a charity going and it would help the world do you care now it's up to the the legal system to take care of you know your your Jeffrey Epstein's and it's not really Bill Gates job if somebody if somebody's you know serve their time even if you don't think it was the right sentence it's not really our job to make them serve time again right if the legal system lets somebody out I'm just not going to be the one to say now I can't talk to you because you should have served the longer term I know so here's my I'll give you my personal rule of course these are all personal decisions I've said this many times but I will declare

[29:59]

said this many times but I will declare it as many times as I need to I declare my complete and total right to associate with lost your respect don't worry I'll block you I I maintain the complete right to associate with anybody good or bad under the theory that associated with me would make them better people because do you think that if I hang around with a bad person that that person is going to make me bad or do you think they hang around with me maybe they'd pick up some pick up some things that would make them better do you really want no good people to ever to associate with bad people according to you whoever is good and bad so you can do whatever you want and yeah I certainly I know I understand the point it's not like I don't

[31:00]

the point it's not like I don't understand the point of doing something that you know boosts or supports bad people but keep in mind when it was brought up to Bill Gates that working with this person for I'm sure what Gates thought was some productive reason in the charity world because that's what's reported right it's reported that the reason they were talking is about Epstein raising funds from other people apparently yet good ways to do that etc and I think Bill Gates just said your personal life is your personal life I'm not here about that and I'm always going to be okay with that now you don't have to like Bill Gates that's fine but I would at least like you to think about it clearly you know if you think about it clearly and still decide you don't like it well that's fine yeah you're certainly welcome to the opinion but I think I can help you at least clear up what's ridiculous conspiracy theory and what is a

[32:00]

conspiracy theory and what is a reasonable thing so somebody whose comments comments says the Bill Gates apologized but he's generally socially stupid let me let me take offense at that I don't really take offensive things so I'm taking offense on behalf of someone else have you seen Lee def licks special about Bill Gates one of the things that I would say is fairly obvious and I don't know if he would deny this and I'm not a medical doctor but so I'll just give you my opinion it does appear that he's somewhere on the spectrum you know in the in the Asperger's kind of a way and the the tells for that would be ability to deeply focus and you know really be able to like dive down on a topic in the way where ordinary people can't and that's exactly who Bill Gates is he carries this big you know bag of books around on topics from you know you know biology

[33:01]

topics from you know you know biology and you know physics and stuff things that you and I wouldn't want to spend too much time reading but he can and he get that he can just go off in the woods with his bag of books and do these deep dives but do you think that his social let's say awareness is the same as everybody else's I don't think so
so I feel like maybe that's just not the area where his you know his brain is optimized so could it be that he literally just had a blind spot for how it would look to other people and I think maybe maybe you might have just had a blind spot anyway we haven't heard his side of the story so we don't know
wish you'd speak about your views Oh Courant don't know what you mean I mean I know what the sentence says but I don't know what you use you're talking about so somebody is sarcastically

[34:10]

about so somebody is sarcastically saying I have nothing like my friends I don't know if it's sarcastic to know am I on the spectrum well many people have suggested that I am apparently I have enough tells that it's at least a hypothesis I my personal opinion is probably not but I wouldn't doubt it if some expert told me I was what about Texas oil production limits I don't know about that story actually and no more food coming tonight for me if the virus from the lab was obvious yeah at some point it became obvious they mind-read me
me sometimes they do did you break isolation say only only with Christina

[35:14]

yeah I'm not gonna do anything crazy but I've decided to take more control of my personal situation in my personal risk
MSNBC was biting to activate a shadow government to counter Trump did you see the latest clip of Joe Biden not being able to get out of sentence and he was sitting there with his wife Jill on camera and I asked myself why is his wife on camera with him because she wasn't talking it was like she was just saying there to be supportive or something and made me feel like Maura she was more tempting him be it do you know what I'm talking about it felt like maybe his wife was there just to take him off camera or nudge him or something yeah if it needed to be done I don't know
Turkey uses high jakszyk low clean and has the death rate has what death rate is it good or bad have you heard of a

[36:17]

is it good or bad have you heard of a memory hole I've heard of it
Pelosi admitted to strategy of smear to get press to report to use press as proof well okay I don't know what that's about and he thoughts on Roger stone not getting a second trial well doesn't that open up the possibility of a pardon or whatever you call it yeah pardon so they would not surprise me to see that Roger stone might get pardoned if there are if there's no more legal process to run out I'd kind of expect it what happened I'd be surprised if they didn't do you agree with Bill Gates that we need to depopulate really do you think that Bill Gates said we want to reduce the population of Earth now I don't have to go Google that to know that didn't happen Bill Gates with no research I'll do no

[37:20]

Bill Gates with no research I'll do no research whatsoever and I'll state with complete confidence that only a jerk like me could have in this situation Bill Gates never said anything about depopulating the earth let me say that with complete confidence with it with no research whatsoever now this is an example of when I talk about what I say there are some things that you don't have the research you don't have to research whether that was a true thing you just can look at it the same way you look at Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny some things are just obviously not true and it's obviously not true that Bill Gates is promoting depopulating the world do you really believe that all right

[38:20]

odds on hydroxychloroquine I said that earlier I think both the room does severe in the hydroxychloroquine I give them well actually I think I I accidentally misspoke earlier in this periscope so let me say it this way I think there's a 60% chance that neither of them work does that work the same if it's a 60% chance for each of them I think it's the same right I think there's a 40% chance if you looked at them individually that they they'd work in some big way somebody says he did look it up no he did not say that you did not say that I'm not going to look it up you're not going to trick me into looking up Santa Claus I'm sorry
comments on Jedi contract snafu with Amazon I don't know what that's about

[39:25]

gate supports around up GMO masamune injections and I yeah I you'd have to make a point before I could comment on it
it do you blame cable TV news for the seething division in America today I don't know if it's it's a combination of social media and News but certainly it's the media landscape which is causing the division for sure is your sense of zeitgeist confirmation biases it could be that's how confirmation bias works if anybody tells you that their opinion is not confirmation bias it just means they don't understand what confirmation bias is if it if you are the one who hasn't you're the only one who can't tell if it's confirmation bias otherwise it wouldn't be confirmation box if you could tell the difference it wouldn't be a thing

[40:30]

DoD ordered a bunch of REM des Vere yeah it makes sense that people would maybe stock up on it just in case
yeah it's like when bill polti tried to give away his own money and all the haters came out oh what's that all about so a rich guy literally just tries to give his money way to lots of different people with no strings attached and and he's treated as the devil there's no good deed that goes unpunished God's debris part - there is a part - there is a sequel to God's debris it's called the religion war are you and Morning Joe buddies no you know I I did one appearance on Morning Joe it happened to be the one morning he didn't come to work I saw me the hallway from a distance but for whatever reason he wasn't on camera that day he had something going on but mica was there

[41:36]

somebody says it's a 36% chance that neither will work if each has a 60% okay good thank you for that clarification oh I'm going to make you a very bugged a non-standard prediction are you ready you like my contrarian predictions because if I make a contrarian prediction to this raw guy real I look really stupid but if I get it right I look like smartest guy ever so okay here's the most contrarian prediction that you're gonna have I predict that the number of suicides will be lower than normal now all the experts are saying higher right and apparently there are lots more calls to suicide lines and the real reasons the the argument that doubly more of them is pretty compelling and then there's also the the correlation with unemployment if the unemployment goes up it's like an extra 5,000 suicides for every point or something like that so the argument the suicides

[42:38]

like that so the argument the suicides will go up is solid gold when do you agree I mean all of your common sense says it's gonna go out if there's anything that would make suicides go up it would be this right so that's why my prediction is contrarian and it goes like this this crisis gave everybody meaning meaning that you know if you weren't happy with your life sometimes it's because you don't have like a purpose so there are a lot of people who just realized oh if I do this now my grandmother has two problems instead of one you know if I do this now I don't know if my family can eat you know otherwise maybe wouldn't have been so big and the other thing the other thing is that people are going to be with people in small spaces I think you need a certain amount of privacy to do suicide and maybe people are just going

[43:41]

suicide and maybe people are just going to be a little too on each other stuff for a while so there's something about this psychology of this that first of all the the thing about unemployment causing more suicide we've never had a situation where the unemployment was presumed to be not your fault so that's the first thing do you kill yourself if something happens to you that appears to be temporary not your fault because of that you don't really blame yourself you don't think I'll I'm a loser because it happened that same thing happened everybody so there's there's something about the the largeness of the situation that I think will make people more connected to the world yeah I was telling you the other day that I feel connected to everybody in a way that I don't normally if I'm just going about my business because every everything that we're gonna do to get out of this affects all of us and I'm at about the same time in very similar ways so if you feel connected to

[44:43]

similar ways so if you feel connected to the world are you as likely to kill yourself probably not i I think that people's the situation will change and they will go into a revaluation mode which is they're gonna say they're going to say yeah everything was terrible but there's a lot of stuff happening that makes me wonder if something might be different you know maybe maybe I'm not looking at you know this straight line of just more of this thing that made me want to kill myself maybe instead I'm looking at the whole you know the boxes been shaken I don't know maybe I just want to see where it goes just want to see where it goes curiosity I've often said is the most underrated motivation here's a little trick for you you want you want to have a trick for a really bad day instead of saying oh it's a bad day coming up I

[45:44]

saying oh it's a bad day coming up I hope it's a good day but it's probably going to be a bad day and stress and stress and stress and you're worried that some bad news will come and it might go this way and it might go that you know just the normal thing the global thing that all of us feel all the time instead move your brain into curiosity mode and say this it's like a movie or it's like a simulation and you're in a video game and just ask yourself Kevin all this happening right now what is going to happen and just and activate your curiosity and say to yourself you know I kind of really need to know what's going to happen if I were watching this as a movie I'd want to know how does it end and so I find that I can actually do a brain hack you should try this at home it's actually it works pretty well you can do a brain act where you change your frame of reference from oh no oh no it's all bad news and 100-miles the bad news coming - I won't know what's going to happen yeah wonder I wonder how this is

[46:47]

happen yeah wonder I wonder how this is going to turn out and it just it just occupies a different part of your brain and usually uses a little different process and you know a different chemistry and sometimes it's just enough of a switch they can get you off whatever it was whatever was bugging you the other way so try that it's a good little trick the suicides often occur when things are objectively improving but not fast enough somebody sounds like they've researched this so so that's my prediction my prediction is fewer suicides than a normal year during this time complete opposite of what all the experts would say is true that's it for me and I'm gonna go do something else and I will talk to you in the morning