Episode 980 Scott Adams: I Create a Bubble Reality of Positivity For You Until a Least Monday

Date: 2020-05-17 | Duration: 58:39

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: A devastatingly insightful criticism helped make Dilbert successful General Flynn may NOT have been unmasked? “Masking” is a fairy tale LDH and coronavirus A bubble reality of positivity

If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.

> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:12]

well it's the best part of the day yeah it's the best part of the day it's called coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip and if you have not discovered already how much better your day is when you do this well you're in for a good surprise aren't you and in order to enjoy today this will be one of the best one of the best all you need to enjoy it is do you know do you already know I think you do it's a cup of outdoor glass a tanker chalice or Stein they can't interpret 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 heat of the day the thing that makes everything better including the damn pandemic it's called the simultaneous F and it happens now go

[1:13]

well as I promised you on Twitter and in the title of this periscope today I will create a bubble reality around you this will not be reality itself we don't have access to that but I will create a bubble around you that will make you feel better all day will it last we don't know might last Monday might last longer but your little bubble reality will be based on the following concept are you ready I'm going to create a bubble reality entirely out of the process of imagining that the news is true that's it instead of imagining that the news is fake I'm just going to tell you the actual news and at least for today we're just going to pretend it's true and when I say the news I mean any news about studies could be news that comes through the Internet could be just a rumor but

[2:16]

the Internet could be just a rumor but we're gonna treat it like it's real just for today and I want to create a little bubble reality in which things are gonna be really good you ready first I'm going to teach you a new skill now this is a continuation of a skill that you've been taught before so we're going to start out with something useful and you're going to say to yourself wow that was kind of useful I've already gotten something good out of today it goes like this I've taught you the six dimensions of humor and if you need a brush-up just google my name and six dimensions of humor and you'll see the six dimensions and the idea is that you have to use any two of the six to make a joke so while I've taught you that and it doesn't matter which two and it's better if you use more than two but two is enough so the dimensions are and I can never remember who off the top of my head but it's like cute recognizable

[3:18]

my head but it's like cute recognizable clever bizarre naughty there's a six one but the the idea is you want to use as many as you can and I did a tweet in which it will teach you exactly what that looks like so here's the tweet and then I'll tell you the technique behind it because it's it's already got 40 F 4.25 thousand retweets which in my world it would be a lot so the tweet was s I like it when Congress wears masks most of them should be ashamed to show other faces and if they if you plan to rob the public it helps to dress for the part now the first thing you need to know about this joke is that I almost didn't write it because I thought of it and then I wrote it down and I looked at it I said you know this is not really edgy it's just sort of it's sort of just write down that fat middle where I'm

[4:19]

write down that fat middle where I'm just saying what people want to hear you know and I thought to myself I'm a professional I feel like as a professional I could do better than this joke and then you know what happened and then I thought back to a moment in 1990 when I was giving a presentation to a bunch of newspaper editors and I was talking about the new Dilbert comic that was relatively new at the time and now was in 1990 it was yeah was about 1990 and I was telling them you know how great Dilber was so that they would add it to the newspaper so basically it was like a marketing event for me but I was a speaker at an editor's event I was just making sure that they knew who I was and at the end of my presentation a man I didn't recognize stood up at the in the question period and instead of a

[5:20]

question period and instead of a question he had a comment and his comment was that my cartoon the samples that I'd shown him up front he said what you have there is a cartoonists cartoon and he went on to explain he said it's a cartoon there would only that would only appeal to other cartoonists can you imagine that I'm standing in front of all of my customers and a guy gets up and tells me that I have a cartoon that would not appeal to anybody in the audience the only people would appeal to there's another cartoonist said that in public while I stood in front of a roomful of my customers now I of course did not appreciate this when it happened and afterwards I went to my editor and I said was it my editor of somebody was in the room I said can you tell me who that guy is who is that guy because I don't

[6:21]

guy is who is that guy because I don't like that guy that guy did not make my day good and she said that's bill kiehn bill Keith you ever hear that me it was the creator of the Family Circus one of the most successful comics of all time so he was a legend in the industry now whether or not you you care for his comic or not is irrelevant to the point and then I realized that I had not just been insulted in front of an entire roomful of my customers but that I had been insulted by the one of the most famous cartoonists in the history of the planet Earth in front of all of my customers now what I learned who he was I said to myself that for this bite this this is not a good guy he's not a good guy
guy however as criticism goes I learned what

[7:23]

however as criticism goes I learned what he meant so I came to understand what he meant when I said I had a cartoonist cartoon what he meant was and here's the fun part I count this as the best advice probably in the top three of the best advice I've ever gotten indeed that day bill keen made my career he actually turned me into a successful cartoonist that day because that advice stuck with me and and it never left and I'm going to tell you how it plays into this tweet in the moment and the advice was this if I write cartoons that appeal to me as a cartoonist I've lost the fact that I'm not like other people whatever it is that made me the cartoonist probably also made my sense of humor develop in a slightly different way than most of the public so if I'm creating a product for the public as

[8:24]

creating a product for the public as opposed to creating something to amuse myself I should not be creating it with all the elements that are designed to abused myself and as a professional cartoonist he could see it right away he could see in my cartoons that I'd written them for myself and I had it was the most insightful thing I've ever heard I've never had anybody say anything that devastatingly insightful about the nature of what I was doing and when I realized fully what that meant that I'm developing a product for other people and then my ego was in the way it's an ego problem my ego made me draw comics for myself because I said to myself you know essentially well if I like him anybody's gonna like him right once I got that and I also realized that the customers the you know the readers were

[9:24]

customers the you know the readers were asking for Dilbert to be more in the office and at the time he wasn't he wasn't spending much time in the office it wasn't really an office place comic too much so I said to myself you know I don't really love it when he's in the office because that's actually my day job I still had a day job and the last thing I wanted was to have a comic that was sort of my mental escape to be the same as my day job because that's what I was escaping from but it's not what the customers want what the customers wanted was my shared let's say my shared pain of being in a cubicle because I still was and that's what they wanted they want to say hey I'm in a cubicle you're in a cubicle let's talk about that and so when I managed to take bilkins advice eventually and managed to start writing for the audience I realized that I wasn't writing stuff that would necessarily be exactly what I'd want and this tweet that I sent out that as I

[10:24]

this tweet that I sent out that as I said went viral I almost didn't write it because I said to myself you know it's not the tweet that I would like do you know how hard it is as an artist to create art and I'm gonna say that a tweet or anything you write if you're an artist is art in a sense do you know how hard it is to create art that you don't like do you know how hard that is it's very rare and I just did that so this is a tweet this tweet I personally dislike but because of experience and because of the I will say the gift that bill can get bill kiehn gave me I was able to do it so I was able to say alright here's my ego but I'm not writing the tweet for myself I'm writing it for other people so I'm gonna write a tweet that I know

[11:25]

so I'm gonna write a tweet that I know other people will enjoy I wrote it BAM four point five thousand retweets let me give you the end of the story about Bill keen so I was of course I was one of the you know the young cartoonists at the time who made fun of family the Family Circus for being I always say circle is a Family Circus Circus right I would make fun of it because it wasn't cool and I thought hey I'm a I can make these edgy cartoons why can't bill Keene why can't he make you a cartoon this edgy and cool the way I would like it and then you look at his sales one of the top cartoonists and the whole freaking world number of clients all over the world he drew cartoons for other people and when I got to know him a little bit because he was Iran there was a big cartoon society and he was big in that and he was the host of all the cartoon

[12:25]

and he was the host of all the cartoon events that were like the Oscars and so I got to know him a little bit and realized that he wasn't anything like the person who stood up in other words he wasn't a dick he was actually a really nice guy like a really nice guy and and I guess it was tough love basically it was the most useful advice I've ever gotten but it turns out that his own personality his own sense of humor wasn't anywhere close to the product he created he had learned to create a product for his customers that I'm pretty sure he didn't like himself yeah once you got to know him you would see how different his sensibilities were than his actual product and then I'd say oh I get it now you learned to make a product for other people I get now I see how this works so and then and then the at the end of the story Dilbert became you know financially successful and got a lot of attention

[13:26]

successful and got a lot of attention and the mid-nineties and there was this one event called the Reubens and the Reubens were like the Oscars for cartoonists and I'd never won anything as a cartoonist and I think I'd been nominated and lost once before and so one day I get I get nominated for the two top awards so within my category the top awards would be the best comic strip so that would be the top of the comic strips but then there's an award above all the other cartoonists Awards so then you're also could get an award for the the best of all cartoons of any kind so those are the two best awards so I got nominated for both in the same year the two top awards and I wasn't gonna go because by that time I was like ah you know I got nominated last time I I rented a tuxedo I took my ass across the country spent two days at this event and then I didn't win it's just sort of depressing so I

[14:29]

win it's just sort of depressing so I decided I wasn't going to attend because I just didn't care that much at that point and Bill Qian calls me home so that so now we're gonna complete the story here so it's years later I'm now a famous cartoonist one of the most famous cartoonists in the country this is years after Bill kiemce you know insulted me but gave me the best advice I've ever gotten and yet he calls me at home and he says now by this time you also have to know that we'd done a cartoon trade where we had also communicated and we he drew my comic for a day and I drew his comic for a day it was part of a big national thing so we already knew each other and I had come to like him as a person because I got to understand them a little better and then I was like okay I get it now and he calls me at home he says you know you've been nominated for the two top awards in cartooning the you know the greatest honors you could ever have in

[15:30]

greatest honors you could ever have in cartooning and we understand you're not going to attend and I told him why I go yeah you know I was just disappointing last time and yeah I'm busy that's just doesn't matter I just don't want to do it and then bill Keane said this is one of the coolest things anybody's ever done he said that you know there's this guy I forget who it was he goes and he got nominated and he also didn't go and then when he didn't go he ended up winning and and he always would fell bad because he went and he didn't win and of course I knew that I mean I knew if I went and I wond which I wasn't expecting you know I do I'd feel bad but I figured I can't that much and then bill Keene says this he goes you've been nominated for the two top awards if you don't come and if you want you might be twice as unhappy as he

[16:33]

want you might be twice as unhappy as he was and I said what and he said you might be twice as unhappy and I said got it okay got it in other words bill kid already knew that I had won and he knew that I had won both awards and he was making damn sure that I did that I didn't miss it okay so so that was the that was the sort of the wrap up of that so bill Keene he came through so that's that here's a question for you here's a suggestion for you did you ever wonder about your digital assistants listening to you all day so your digital assistants are you know listening to all your conversations allegedly or are they actually listening

[17:37]

allegedly or are they actually listening is your phone listening to you is my Amazon digital assistant listening to me right now well you're worried about that don't you so here's my recommendation to you here's what I do randomly during the day I confess to crimes that I didn't do because if I could get enough body of work into the digital assistant then someday when it finds it accuses me of a crime I did do and they check the records and they say look right here we were recording you the whole time and that we found this record and it says you you did kill you did kill that guy and I'm gonna say really oh really you believe that because I set it in the room and it got picked up on my digital assistant well if you'll go back and check the records I believe you'll also find my confession for killing JFK I believe you'll also find my statement that I have DNA for

[18:39]

find my statement that I have DNA for Bigfoot you will also find that I went fishing and caught the Loch Ness monster so let's put them in context shall we so that's my advice to you all day long you should just admit to crimes occasionally you should scream as though you're doing on a domestic abuse situation you know you should you should stage every possible crime then you might later be accused of so you've got a big body of fakes and then somebody says well it's right there on your own in your own voice oh yeah let me show you something else that's in my voice yeah contacts all right
there is some breaking news the the epic times apparently has an article on this it turns out that speaking of surveillance it turns out that maybe

[19:41]

surveillance it turns out that maybe Flynn was not unmasked what yeah it turns out that maybe Flynn was not unmasked according to the transcripts there's some indication that they got the Flynn transcripts directly from the NSA you know the NSA that's sucking up everybody's conversation everywhere allegedly well turns out if you get it that way there's no unmasking to do because nothing is math that's right you can just apparently if you're in the government and you've got you say you've got a reason apparently somebody has access to raw unmasked footage of every American in every conversation presumably and they just had to ask for it do you believe that do you believe that this whole time that we've been

[20:42]

that this whole time that we've been lied to I'm gonna say lied that we've been lied to about the idea that our government would be so guarded with our privacy that the government itself had put up rules so that even the government couldn't look at who the people were unless they had you know special legal process to do it turns out none of that was true sure how hard would it be if you if you wanted to know who the masked person was apparently you can just go to the NSA and just say well I don't want to go through the Basking process just tell me just give me the give me the transcript somebody says that is it Snowden's book well we certainly know we knew from Snowden that everything was being collected here's the part I didn't know I didn't know how easy it was for the government to get access to it meaning that I didn't know what situations

[21:42]

that I didn't know what situations would present themselves I thought it was more of a terrorist kind of a situation I assumed it was more of a people we thought were pretty guilty situation you don't really think of it in terms of as sort of a political situation do you so if you haven't lost all trust in your government yet that should do it so I think we should treat as a fairy tale the idea of masking should we should we as citizens we're now informed to citizen's right as informed citizens should we even act like masking is a real thing because it's not I mean apparently it's not we've we've been completely lied to this whole time so let's watch that story develop all right so I promise you I would create a bubble reality in which you can live in it happily the bubble reality will last at least today and I'm going to build

[22:43]

at least today and I'm going to build this bubble reality using nothing but the news including stuff that comes across the internet and I'm just gonna treat it all like it's true okay just gonna treat it all like it's true and watch this bubble reality form around you it might not be permanent but you'll like it today number one have you noticed that for every business that is actually open and of course that isn't that many doesn't seem like a lot of the businesses that are open have more demand than they can handle think about it if you were to open a restaurant today in my town you would have way more demand than you can handle because there aren't that many open that is really good news the pretty much everything this open has plenty of demand so as long as the demand is driving reopening that's good news and as I've said half of the country or something like it didn't actually lose

[23:44]

something like it didn't actually lose money something like half of the country made money somehow because they still got paid but they didn't have much in the way of expenses for three months so weirdly half of the country is ready to spend and I feel what like when when business is reopened they're going to be surprised were you surprised that the cruise ships are already over booked for next year the cruise ships if you were to guess one thing they should not be overbooked for next year top of my list would be cruise ships but even they are booked people have money you know not everybody it's like half half the country but the half that has the money they're looking to spend that money that's good news so that's the first part of your bubble I'm going to form the first part is that the recovery it's looking pretty good it's looking pretty good yeah you know the potential recovery the

[24:45]

yeah you know the potential recovery the other thing is weren't you panicked about all this money we're printing hey we can't just print trillions of dollars but the more I hear from experts who sort of understand that world of printing money in monetary policy and debt it turns out that maybe we can it turns out that in this very unique situation which is unlike any other situation it might be the only situation where you can actually print trillions of dollars so we did ya have you noticed what's missing here's a dog that's not barking where's the dog barking on television where there's an economics expert in The Economist who's saying yeah I know it's an emergency and we printed all this money but we're definitely doomed because of that where is that guy where's that woman right isn't that conspicuously missing it's conspicuously missing because every

[25:48]

it's conspicuously missing because every situation has a person on the other side name one other situation in the news that doesn't have an expert on the other side saying that you know it's all doom you can't do this it's a big mistake have you seen one economist an actual qualified person go on the news and say look I got to raise my hand all this printing of money boom six months from now we're doomed or whatever it looks like when somebody says Peter chef well I'm gonna reserve my comment about that but well no I'm gonna give a comment about that well you have to watch out for if somebody who's famous for making a right call in the past right if somebody's made the correct call in the past they have an incentive to try to get another big one right so I'm always a little distrustful of the person who got that big call in the past right and became famous for it

[26:50]

the past right and became famous for it you know it's sort of the person I trust the least now watch out for the people also who don't know the difference between printing money and debt everybody says Peter chef yeah Peter Schiff is mr. doom so I haven't seen him on television as he did on CNBC so anyway my since we're building a bubble reality we're gonna ignore Peter Schiff and I'm gonna say that it does seem to be to me that the majority of economists are not panicked about it otherwise you'd see them on the TV so the first thing is we probably can print money it'll have some costs later but looks like it you know at the moment it looks like we can handle it we'll have plenty of demand we've got plenty of people ready to spend here's the other good news there has been a burst of entrepreneurial energy that you're really going to see coming to fruition you can already see all the seeds but people have rethought

[27:51]

seeds but people have rethought everything that from from the bottom up people have rethought you know how do we commute learn to online education everything and there's going to be a burst of entrepreneurial energy maybe like we've never seen maybe since the internet was new but even that was slower than what we're gonna see the this might forever be referred to as some great entrepreneurial wave you know I think historically we'll look back and say something happened in 2020 that wasn't just the virus there was something about the whole way we think about risk the whole way we build businesses the whole way we we operate as a civilization and that is going to drive amazing amount of economic activity now let's talk about the health parts alright so so so far I've made my

[28:51]

parts alright so so so far I've made my argument that the economy is actually going to be not just good but if I had to put a bet on it it'll be good in a way we've never even seen it that good I believe that the golden age is about to be unlocked and that this is the third act to the Golden Age it's the thing that made you say my god I don't know if we can get there everything just fell apart but it didn't because we can actually rebuild this and pretty quickly and all the parts are there so let me talk about the health part and here's the fun the fun part oh and also I'll throw on to the economic part that will certainly be pulling our supply chains back from China the the pulling of the supply chains back and they're the reinvigoration of manufacturing in this country is guaranteed to be a long-term economic benefit I mean it's really it's almost certain that that's gonna be a

[29:52]

almost certain that that's gonna be a good thing so you got that going - all right here are some things I've seen today so I saw a thread that I tweeted you can take a look at it's of my Twitter future in which the there was a recent study that said hydroxychloroquine didn't make any difference and this individual I don't know much about him but he dug into the study and found out that you had to really try hard to make it look like it didn't work and the trick that they used I don't know why but the trick they used to make the hydroxyl chloroquine look like it didn't work was they lumped together two types of different comes people who got put on ventilators and then people who actually died so people who went on ventilators and didn't die were added together with people who did die what why would you add together people who didn't die with people who did die ever try to come up

[30:53]

people who did die ever try to come up with the result now remember if somebody else looked at this critic they might say well no the critic is wrong the study was right the way they did it but that's not what we're doing today today what we're doing is I'm forming a bubble reality in which this is true so what's true just for the bubble reality not the real reality we can't see that one but the bubble reality for today is that the studies saying hydroxychloroquine don't work are bogus and here's a perfect example because these the study itself clearly shows it did all you have to do is take the ventilated part out leave the people who died and suddenly you compare it and 89% of the people without hydroxychloroquine died but only 60 percent who had it died 60 percent versus almost 90% and that's in the

[31:54]

versus almost 90% and that's in the study this says hydroxychloroquine doesn't work and solely because they did this weird thing of adding together people who lived with people who didn't live what what why would you do that well apparently people who know what they're doing have an argument for why that might have sort of made sense but other people are gonna say it doesn't so so let us accept in our bubble reality the hydroxychloroquine does work and this study actually was the worst situation which is they waited until people were already in bad shape so this was only for people who were in bad shape and the whole point of hydroxyl chloroquine is that use you add it to the zinc you give it to people early and they don't get bad in the first place so the first part of the bubble i'm gonna say that hydroxyl chloroquine reduces deaths by 30 that is that true doesn't matter because this is a bubble reality does it seem like it could be true I'd say absolutely

[32:56]

like it could be true I'd say absolutely yes if you told me that that the truth is a hydroxyl chloroquine if administered early on reduced ultimate deaths by 30% I would say I would say to you that feels true it's not proven true by science and that's what you have to wait for but we're in a bubble reality today we're just going to feel good for today so it's true for today all right so that's 30% benefit right off the top there then another study out of Northwestern University researchers looked at data from 10 countries and they found this correlation turns out that wherever there's low vitamin D they have bad outcomes so if you ever heard that before that's right turns out that there's another study showing a very strong correlation and in fact the correlation is so strong it's something like 50% more likely to have trouble if you've

[33:58]

more likely to have trouble if you've got low vitamin D 50% now again you have to watch out for the correlation versus causation so just because people had low vitamin D it doesn't mean that's what caused them to have problems it could be a correlation but given that we know vitamin D is so so in what is it implicated in your entire immune response and good health in general I'm going to accept it as true so now we have two things we're accepting is true for today anyway one is a if you if you boost your vitamin D and I expect all of you have done that by now all of you should have looked at your vitamin D said what's my situation is my skin light or dark am I in the Sun where do I live can I supplement you should have all done that by now so you've all taken your vitamin D by now or you'll do it by the end of today

[34:58]

or you'll do it by the end of today and you've lowered your risk by 50% does the science say that no no the science does not say that but it's suggesting it it's sort of hinting maybe it might be in that direction so now we've got a 30% reduction from the hydroxychloroquine we've got a 50% reduction in risk from just vitamin D to cheap widely available things all right how's your bubble so far you've got an economy that almost certainly will recover in ridiculously well I mean I think 2021 is going to be for the history books honestly I'm very much with Trump on that all right here's another one turns out that there's a blood test you could do and if you if you find the people have a certain kind of blood

[35:59]

people have a certain kind of blood situation I guess it's there there LDH with 90% accuracy you can study people's LDH and their I don't H s CR P it's another another marker in your blood and with 90 percent effectiveness they can tell if you're gonna have a bad outcome 90 percent effectiveness they can test your blood ahead of time before you even have the coronavirus and they can tell if you're in the 10% who's going to have that bad problem now how hard is it to test your LDH probably most of you already have that test right so somebody says LDH is indicative of comorbidity well I don't know about that certainly could be true but suppose it's true remember today is bubble reality day we accept all studies as true just for today let's say it's true that

[36:59]

just for today let's say it's true that we have a simple blood test which in fact I think most people have already taken I think I could get on I think I could log on to my healthcare account and see my LD age right and I know it's in a good range so I'm not worried about so now you have your LD H which which even if changing your LD h doesn't change your risk it tells you if you have risk and then allow oh look at my Twitter feeds so if you're looking for these studies or anything that the ones I'm mentioning I tweeted today so it'd be toward the top of the Twitter feed so you got that alright so you've got vitamin D cuts the risk in half you've got hydroxychloroquine maybe cuts the risk of risk by 30% you've got these new blood tests we're gonna imagine that they work even if they don't we're gonna say that they won't that won't tell you what to do I'm not suggesting that if

[38:00]

what to do I'm not suggesting that if you improve your LDH you'll have a better outcome that's that's not demonstrated by anything but it could tell you if you have a risk so it could tell you who to hide and who can go back to work imagine if you could know with 90 percent effectiveness who can go back to work big difference right how about this there's another study that came out and again all studies are true just for today this said Universal mask-wearing would reduce the transmission by eighty percent which would make sense for why as some Asian countries did so well right turns out that the let me make I'm gonna make a generality that is unfair and racist I'm gonna do it anyway you're okay with that everybody okay I'm gonna say something this sounds racist just see if you could deal with it okay

[39:06]

Asian countries my guess and I'm looking for a fact check here so if you want to just say Scott Scott Scott what kind of an idiot are you that's just a racist stereotype that's not true at all so fact check me on this culturally speaking would it be as comfortable for somebody in let's say Japan or Singapore or Hong Kong would it be as comfortable for them to go in public without a mask as it would for an American because I'm thinking not right I'm thinking if you went outside today in South Korea or you went to some public place without a mask I don't know how long you're gonna last because I would think that the social pressure would be so extraordinary that their compliance with mass is very high now that's the racist part right because like why you know why would I say that about this so my statement is more you should be taken as cultural not racist I'm hoping you're all adult enough to know the difference but the American

[40:09]

know the difference but the American character by you know a historical norm the normal American when they hear that the the law or the rule is you have to do something what does every American instinctively want to do the day they're told they can't do something the moment you hear that you're not supposed to do it if you're an American you say I'm gonna do some of that I'm gonna do that what do you mean I can't do that have you heard of freedom have you heard of the Constitution what do you mean I have to wear a mask how about I'm not gonna wear a mask because you told me I have to how about that how about I'm not only going to not wear a mask I'm gonna go on TV without my mask I'm gonna tell other people not to wear a mask I'm gonna will I die yeah I might yeah it might kill me might actually be dangerous for other people too but freedom but freedom so am I am i right

[41:11]

freedom but freedom so am I am i right to say that the American character just automatically rejects Authority and so you wouldn't expect a good you know as good a uptake of masks all right let's put it together so American certainly can wear masks if we decide we want to our UN Americans will reject being told by their government to do anything just automatically we reject it but we certainly will do things we think are good ideas right if our government just told us something that's a good idea and we looked at it and said well that's just a good idea we'll do it even if it's hard here's another thing that's part of the American character I'd like to say and nothing's universal right but it's part of the American character if you say Americans you're gonna have to do something that's really hard but you have to do it because it's the only way to get by it's really hard

[42:13]

to get by it's really hard what do Americans do they say can we do it right away it's really hard people are gonna die can we get started now we've never run from this stuff right Americans go at danger you tell an American that there's a problem we run at it if you tell us something's hard we say can we start now if it's hard we should start right away get it over with so put it all together masks 80% effective let's say American public buys into the truth of it and now it's not the government telling them to wear a mask that's different government tells me to wear a mask mmm maybe yes maybe no but if the data tells me to wear a mask and it's hard I'm gonna wear a mask I don't care it's hard I'm an American yeah if it's hard I'm gonna do it anyway I'm gonna do is sooner because it's hard all right so you got your

[43:16]

it's hard all right so you got your hydrochloric weaned takes 30% off allegedly you got your vitamin D 50% off you got your blood test they'll tell you 90 percent likelihood you got your mass that'll be eighty percent effective you've got your social distancing you've got your reopening what's happening you've got your New York's New York just look at that Memorial Day Memorial Day is 12 days away thirteen days away can you make it two more weeks can the public make it two more weeks without everything breaking we can we absolutely can I'm very much a big fan of what I would call the productive friction in in society the most productive friction you've ever seen is the conversation between going back to work sooner and not going back to work sooner what I see people fighting hard on both sides of that you

[44:18]

fighting hard on both sides of that you know really digging in to make their argument for both sides that makes me happy if you're saying to yourself oh I wanted one side to win I don't think that's your most enlightened view your best situation is that those two sides are fighting it out in public and and and you're slowly moving in the direction that makes sense you want you want a productive friction there you want people on both sides of that argument and you want really capable people arguing both sides that's what we need you don't need a winner you need a fight because when this is done you want to know that you want to know that this was totally you know rinsed out turned around and turned inside out you want to know that we fought over it you want to know that the you know the best people were involved you want to know that we disagreed you want to know that we turned over every rock you want to know that we really fought over this then

[45:23]

that we really fought over this then then if we fought over it it's more credible even if we got it wrong you know we'll always argue that we should have done it in different way it's our that's also a part of our national character will always argue that it was wrong but the fighting is what makes it credible and I would argue that the the fighting if you will has been really a credit to the population I would say that the way let me give you some context early on when this when this situation was breaking a very smart person in my was telling me this could go to the point where the the military is just running the country a complete breakdown of society could have happened it was entirely possible that the direction this would go was a complete breakdown of civilization that was not Anna the

[46:24]

of civilization that was not Anna the question but how did let's just talk about Americans because I just have more knowledge of that group let's talk about Americans how did Americans respond when put in the situation than if they had acted wrong civilization would have been destroyed they had protests how many how many people fired their weapons at protests so far the protests about opening up zero zero zero people how much how many stories of something like violence have you heard from a protest itself not now from individuals being arrested in ways that you wish you'd never seen but at the protests about zero how many people have gone hungry because other people were not willing to

[47:24]

because other people were not willing to do whatever they needed to make sure that the hungry got fed zero zero have you heard of anybody who starved because the people were not starving did the right thing they said whoa hold on we've got a whole bunch of people of my starve drop everything we got if we got to feed people and we succeeded if you look at the at each challenge that this is presented can you get enough ventilators can you get enough PPE can we get money to people can we feed them can we keep them alive can we keep the can we keep the hospitals from crashing guess what we succeeded on every one of those things every one of those things we succeeded it handily we succeeded with room to spare on everything now of course testing you know just

[48:26]

now of course testing you know just takes a while to to get up and running I don't I'm not going to be the guy who says that we failed at testing its it is unambiguously true there should have been more you should have been in terms of we wish there had been more I'm not gonna say should have been because you just some things just take a while and I would guess that the things we're doing for testing are are incredible and I would say that when this is done I we are close enough to the endgame now where I'm going to make you a prediction that I will live and die by and I feel completely confident in this we're close enough to the end the end line with enough stuff opening up and something that looks like a plan we're close enough that the odds of civilization just going to hell now in these last few weeks zero zero our risk of total collapse in

[49:27]

zero zero our risk of total collapse in my opinion had just reached zero and the reason is we're too close to the end line nobody nobody gives up the race when they're a few steps from the finish line because they're yeah we have we have plenty left in reserve we're not even close to beaten yeah well I mean we're basically climbing on top of this virus like nobody's ever climbed on top of anything you know I mean we're we're you know we're getting on top of this thing and it's working so here's the thing I declare that the economy as a hundred percent chance of recovering in a spectacular way 2021 will be the the time that we see the tech that comes true I declare that the combination of all these little things we're doing to beat the virus are right at the point where we're just going to climb on top of this freakin thing and and and I think that I think that the you know once once were on top of it

[50:30]

once once were on top of it it's gonna look good alright so that is my bubble reality economy made it I'm declaring I'm declaring this is a big deal by the way if this doesn't make you feel good you know you're not in the bubble yet but getting the bubble with me it is my opinion that the risk you know the catastrophic risk to the economy is actually over it's actually over certainly a risk to how quickly we come back tons of risk for individuals who need to be you know we need to do what we can to make sure everybody who who got the worst of this it gets a hand up but do we know that we are those people have we learned that we will take care of each other yes we have we have learned that if people need this ongoing help we have learned unambiguously that

[51:31]

help we have learned unambiguously that the rest of the country the rest of the world apparently will do what it needs to do so your risk of starvation is zero your risk that the economy will be catastrophic ly damaged I put it zero the risk that we won't open up in some kind of a staggered faltering fashion over the next three months zero we are going to open up and I would say unambiguously and this is the part that'll add that science has not caught up to me so I'm gonna get ahead of science here right those of you want to stay outside the bubble you're welcome to it and outside the bubble you'd say oh I need those I need those reliable clinical tests where I really know what therapeutics work okay but there are enough things happening from who knows maybe the Sorrento cure is real you know

[52:32]

maybe the Sorrento cure is real you know probably not but there are enough things going on that I think we're gonna have it now I'd like to say again because I just can't get this out of my head the president has promised you know this this warp-speed project to get to a vaccine and while I have great great doubt about whether a vaccine is possible the fact that all of the experts are seem to be so so optimistic about it for today's purposes I'm going to say you couldn't have that many experts tell you that we're going to have a vaccine with so many people working on in so many different flavors of it it's very unlikely we're not going to have something like a vaccine so I'm going to for the purpose of your feel-good bubble say there will be a vaccine and that this warp-speed thing does look like exactly the right thing every now and then your government does

[53:34]

every now and then your government does something where you say to yourself hey you should okay that's exactly what you should have done and this warp-speed project is exactly what we should be doing I like it a lot but the best part I like here's the part that Trump understands better than any president has ever understood it he knows the show he understands that our psychology is what drives the economy and that the show in other words that everything the spectacle he puts on is part of what drives our psychology which is what drives our economy so if you want a good 2021 how do you want the public to feel well you want to feel positive you want to feel optimistic you want to feel patriotic you want to feel like you're building like your your your coming back from something you want to feel victorious so what does the president come up with that the the day we have

[54:36]

come up with that the the day we have enough of this vaccine let's say we get the vaccine we're going to say it does happen because this is optimism day he's going to use the US military to deliver it using every plane train not train but every plane boat and truck now what will that do to your psychology how will you feel watching the US military deploying to you know every town and city in the United States with life-saving vaccines that are designed for the the most vulnerable first taking care of the seniors first and vulnerable populations how will you feel when that's the news because the news it's going to be very visual which is what the president does best I mean he knows visual gee he's just so good at that how are you gonna feel about that somebody

[55:39]

are you gonna feel about that somebody says I feel the country is broke mmm I'll bet you wouldn't because the the country is even the news will frame this as a positive development I've got a feeling that you are going to feel so good about this that that good feeling will actually boost the economy there will be that effective rarely rarely could you ever imagine there could be a will say an event or a spectacle or something they could have that much effect on the national mood but that you know whoever came up with the idea of the military delivering this it's just brilliant it really is I'd like to think it was Trump because it's right in his wheelhouse
all right so that's that is what I wanted to tell you today all right how many of you feel happier because at

[56:41]

many of you feel happier because at least at least now you've got a little optimism
do I think that zoom records all conversations like the NSA well I don't know if it records all of them but it wouldn't be hard for it to look for keywords and recorded the ones that had the right keywords so I don't know but any and and I think that zoom is trying hard to get it to get their product to not go through any Chinese servers so by now maybe they've accomplished that I don't know so it could be the zoom is turning things around we'll see I hope so because oome zoom is one of the just coolest American companies if I'm being honest if you had to look at just the product if you say to yourself alright zoom as a product it's really really good I gotta say because I use it quite a bit and if you if you've used any

[57:43]

a bit and if you if you've used any other thing you know like Skype for example Skype is pretty good skypes good zooms better oh good I'm looking at your comments and it looks like many of you are enjoying the bubble reality good good good well looks like that worked alright that I think what I'm going to do is leave it on the positive note somebody's asking me if I can tell you a dirty joke I can but I'm not gonna do it today and I'm gonna leave it there take that good feeling into the rest of your day
day be aware that you've created a subjective reality but you can enjoy it for today because what were you gonna do about the coronavirus today anyway might as well enjoy your day that's all for now I'll talk to you tonight