Episode 1054 Scott Adams: My Digital Bill of Rights, Talk About Roger Stone, Mock AOC, China Threat

Date: 2020-07-11 | Duration: 36:12

Topics

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Rough Transcript

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Transcript

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• AOC complains about “cancel culture” complaints

• China’s misbehavior is worse than imagined

• Amazon’s Tik Tok memo

• Roger Stone’s sentence commutation

• A digital bill of rights

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[0:12]

hey everybody come on in gather round there's plenty of space yes it's time for a coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous sip now world renowned people all across the globe are enjoying the simultaneous it and you know why yeah it's the best part of the day every single time this will be no exception and all you need is a cup or a mug of glass a tanker chelators tiny Canty injector 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 hit of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called the simultaneous hip and it's gonna happen now go yeah yeah everything's improving mm-hmm it feels better now well let's talk about some of the news is everybody buying their Goa

[1:15]

the news is everybody buying their Goa products you you know the company's CEO who said something nice about President Trump and now he's gonna get boycotted I think a lot of people are buying a little extra Koya products so I hope that turns out in turns into a plus for Goa anyway here's some crazy things I love the fact that mayor de Blasio is not even trying to be any kind of a credible figure anymore so he's he's banding all larger gatherings except for a black lives matter of protests also known as the largest gatherings now I suppose that he's in favor of free speech so that would be a good reason to make an exception because there's a constitutional constitutional right to free speech but there's also a constitutional right to religious expression so so that's I

[2:20]

to religious expression so so that's I usually don't like to talk about the hypocrisy stuff because it's too boring but that that one's just sort of weird and funny are we in a weird situation where the virus infections are running out of control correct me if I'm wrong is it not obvious to everyone that the reason or the infections are increasing is because the lockdowns are over we all know that right because I when you watch the commentary it's almost like some people still don't believe that social distancing works which is weird at this point isn't it but am I wrong that some people still think social distancing doesn't make any difference when the data is now overwhelmingly obvious that it does I don't know about that it looks like it looks like there's still doubt on masks and everything else it's a it's

[3:24]

on masks and everything else it's a it's an amazing world that there's no amount of information or experience that can change people's minds you can't be changed with data you can't be changed with observation reason people just don't change their minds it's just another thing IOC had the one of the most annoying quotes of her life tweets anyway she's complaining about the complaints about canceled culture now of course she has to cancel the complaints against canceled culture cuz canceled culture works for her side so here's what she said she said the term canceled culture comes from entitlement okay cancel culture comes from entitlement alright this is gonna be an insightful a point that follows because I don't get it yet and she says all right so cancel culture comes from entitlement as though

[4:24]

culture comes from entitlement as though the person complaining has the right to a large captive audience and one is a victim if people choose to tune you out I will think that's what people are complaining you've happened AOC seems a little bit off point I think people are complaining about losing their jobs losing their jobs for having an opinion that's that's a cancellation losing your job but beyond that the real complaint is that the people getting cancelled are being cancelled for reasons that are not appropriate it doesn't it has nothing to do with entitlement that's such a weird take and then she says odds are you're not actually cancelled you're just being challenged held accountable or unlike well all of those things are true and then she goes on to

[5:24]

things are true and then she goes on to paint herself as a victim of many complaints it's just the most confused opinion of all time is canceling good is it bad we can't even tell what she wants all right I tweeted it out to a speech that was captured in text from director ray the FBI talking about all of the ways China is stealing intellectual property from the United States and I got to tell you even though you knew it was bad you know you've been hearing it China is stealing our intellectual property China's spying on us you know China is interfering well until you hear him do the whole list with all the examples of China the things that China is doing right now we're not talking about things they have done in the past although some of that's there but the things they're doing right now it's a full-out war it's a full-out digital war with China

[6:25]

it's a full-out digital war with China which even I was surprised at the extent of it so apparently it's it's a hot war it's actually a hot war and they're just trying to steal our stuff you read that and you can't even you can't even now a little bit that we you know we just can't do business which I know you just can't it can't be done so the decoupling I think is guaranteed if you think that tick tock app is gonna last I think you're gonna be surprised the Tic Tac app is definitely going to be banned in the United States in my opinion I don't think there's a slightest chance that that could remain you saw a news item that was yesterday that was weird there was a initial report that was immediately retracted or fairly soon but the initial report was that Amazon sent onto menu memo telling people to take tick tock off their phone if they were Amazon employees and they used a phone

[7:26]

Amazon employees and they used a phone for Amazon stuff I guess now Amazon immediately reversed that but I'll bet it was real at one point I'll bet it was real and I'll bet China complained no you think China complained and maybe that's why they reversed it no but it was I'll bet China actually has enough control over Amazon the Amazon changed its policy to allow spyware on their employee phones now I don't know if that's what happened it could be that it was just a you know fake memo or something anything's possible but kind of looks like that initially there was a study that said that people who complain about being victims are psychopathic manipulative and narcissist narcissist narcissistic and their frequent signalers of virtuous of victimhood says

[8:26]

signalers of virtuous of victimhood says a new study so in other words the people who complain about victims are psychopaths manipulative and narcissistic people that sound right I don't know if you needed to do a study for that just saying you know I think it makes a difference if you're the actual victim or if you're protesting on behalf of those victims if you're the actual victim or you probably have something real to complain about but if you're but others just like the the virtuous victimhood root apparently all right here is my new big suggestion for the day hey ready the news was all boring so there was nothing really to talk about except Roger stone so let's do that and then we'll get to the the big news so Roger stone got his sentence commuted which means that he can still battle in the legal system to have his name name restored but he doesn't have to worry about jail from this latest offense now of course the anti-trump errs are saying

[9:27]

of course the anti-trump errs are saying it's an abuse of power my power is abused and he did all these terrible crimes and of course the Trump administration says well the only reason these crimes happened was because of this fake Russia collusion hoax and he got sort of you know pushed into a place where a person who was likely to be let's put it this way if you were known as a fabulist a person who makes up stuff and you were forced into a saying things on the record you're probably gonna get in trouble it's the same reason people don't want President Trump to testify under oath you could see some trouble couldn't you so in my opinion the pardon of Roger stone is the cleanest pardon you'll ever see in my opinion I suppose it could be but not a part of Nate commuting of a sentence I think it's the cleanest one I've ever seen because the

[10:29]

cleanest one I've ever seen because the situation was caused by bad actors in the government and I don't think you can ever have you can never feel right about your government if somebody went to jail because of bad behavior by the government now you're gonna say about wait the government didn't force him to lie under oath the government didn't force him to hide emails or whatever he's accused of doing now the government didn't force it they simply put him in a position where it was likely to happen if you put somebody in a position to where they're likely to commit a crime and they could not have been in that without any other outside force that's not exactly the situation's we're looking to punish people for if the government forces him into that even though there's free will and blah blah blah anyway so the I think the Roger stone I think commuting the sentence has more power than just the Roger stone story

[11:32]

power than just the Roger stone story and here's the larger narrative that it fits into you ready a lot of people have been complaining the president Trump has not aggressively protected his base in other words he's not doing enough to protect people from getting cancelled from being beaten in public for being you know fired for their views you know whole host of things that Republicans think is happening to their base and are and they think he's not doing enough but when you see the Roger stone commutation you say to yourself oh wait maybe the president is willing to do some things which are not necessarily politically great for him but they do show that he's willing to take some risk to protect at least some people have been you know loyal to his cause so in terms of how it feels to the base really right the way it feels is really

[12:35]

really right the way it feels is really right it's the first time I I would be hard-pressed to come up with another example maybe you could in which Trump supporters won one can you think won maybe I'm just having a selective memory but it seems like Trump supporters are almost always on the wrong end of all of this stuff you know they're the ones getting fired getting beaten up it just feels like it's always on the wrong end it's probably just a selective memory all right here's my big guy thought for the day when the original Constitution was written and the Bill of Rights we were a primitive society the founders of the Constitution were literally pooping in two holes in the grass and trying to create a system for all time now that's tough because they didn't know the internet would come along and lots has changed so I'm suggesting that there should be wait for it the big idea coming a digital Bill of

[13:37]

it the big idea coming a digital Bill of Rights a new set of rights that have not existed before that are only necessary because of the digital age now I'm going to read you my first draft of things that would at least be considered so don't assume that everything that I say needs to be on a bill of rights a digital Bill of Rights but assume it could be in the conversation and I'll just run through them quickly so we don't you know spend too much time in anyone and some of these are designed to be provocative all right here's number one probably the most provocative one video evidence of a crime is not admissible in court unless both the prosecution and the defense agree that they shows what happened in other words either the prosecutor or the defense could say that a video cannot be shown in court why because we now know that

[14:39]

in court why because we now know that videos are more misleading than clarifying we know that because the fake news as has proven that a million times by editing out the beginning or the end of a video so that what you see is out of context likewise a video is by definition let's say an editorial because it shows one angle of a thing and it can't by its nature show all the other angles so in the same way that a lie detector is not admissible in court and yet is widely used in the real world why is it that a lie detector test is not admissible in court right the reason a lie detector test is not admissible in
court is as science shows it doesn't work but does work well enough that private industry uses it all the time so there is a different standard for the law than

[15:40]

is a different standard for the law than there is for for just daily life and the law says that a lie-detector test is not reliable enough to put somebody in jail over it I would like to add to that that video evidence photographic evidence and audio evidence by themselves should never be the basis for a prosecution of any kind alas the defense and the prosecution both agree that whatever is on these digital reproductions is accurate enough for the purposes now you might say to yourself my god Scott if you take video evidence out of it a lot of people are going to get away with a lot of crimes to which I say this is just for discussion maybe the only thing you use video evidence for is to determine who was involved in other words maybe you'd say the only thing you can get from the video is that we can confirm these people were there and that

[16:42]

confirm these people were there and that these you know these items were involved just throwing it out there it would be immense problems either way it goes so I'll be honest about that how about this a maximum five year ban from any digital platform regardless of your offense in other words in other words somebody says it's a dumb idea already handled by the court but that would be true for lie detectors too yeah if something is not accurate and you know in advance is not accurate can you depend on the court to sort out what was accurate about it and what was not I think you could have a deeper discussion on that but but I do acknowledge that it could go either way all right so a maximum five year ban from any platform let's say YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or somebody kicks you off the platform for a bad behavior which you totally had coming alright so

[17:45]

which you totally had coming alright so and this we're assuming that you're bad behavior was in fact bad behavior you violated the the requirements there should be some kind of a statute of limitations because these public platforms are too important for daily life to have somebody blocked forever but you still probably need some kind of a penalty so I would suggest and maybe it could be three years but a five-year ban and then you can come back if you do the same behavior you're of course banned again all right so that's another one how about this one and again these are brainstorming don't assume that these are settled proposals here's another one you have you must know the identity or you have the right to know the identity of your online accuser how about that if somebody puts a tweet up that says Scott Adams eats kittens I should have the right to petition Twitter through some normal process and

[18:46]

Twitter through some normal process and say can you unveil that person's name and identity right because in the legal system you have a right to know who accuses you why is that right restricted online why can somebody know my identity but I can't know their identity now if they're not doing anything that bothers me I don't care why would I need to know somebody's identity if they're not bothering me but if somebody makes an accusation which can change my reputation I have an absolute right to know who they are right away right away and I should be able to just send that tweet to some kind of decision-making body and say eight is this person talking about me because if they are I would like them unmask now of course this causes other problems blah blah blah I'm just putting these out here for discussion how about this one 48-hour rule for clarification so this wouldn't be a law per se but

[19:47]

so this wouldn't be a law per se but just a standard that if somebody puts something online and somebody says hey that thing online what about that thing online that you did you have 48 hours to say no no you it doesn't mean that it means this and we should accept the clarification because it doesn't make sense to believe a stranger's opinion of what your opinion is over me telling you my opinion I'm the only one who should have the right to tell you my opinion how about this one no guilt by digital Association and nobody can be guilty by digital Association what I mean by that is if you have a photograph standing next to the worst person in the world we just ignore it because simply standing next to or having your photo taken with the worst person in the world doesn't make you a bad person likewise if you're following somebody online there was a terrible person that

[20:48]

online there was a terrible person that doesn't make you a bad person if you retweet their content that doesn't make you like the person you retweeted we should have a complete right to not be branded by association no matter that Association so long as it is legal how about this one this one will be really controversial and it's and it makes sense today how about you cannot be blamed or lose your job for let's say anything you said under an anonymous context if somebody later finds out your real identity and you would have been in trouble for saying that under your real identity but you didn't you intentionally said something that you knew would get you in trouble and you did it intentionally anonymously they'll say used an anonymous account but later somebody uncovered it that can never be

[21:51]

somebody uncovered it that can never be used to penalize you in other words you can't lose your job because you said something inappropriate under an alias now I suppose if you're threatening somebody's life or it's a crime that's different so I'm not talking about a crime I'm talking about really unpleasant things and here's the reasoning for that I believe everyone says things that would get them canceled privately privately everybody says things that would get them canceled let me say it again privately if you think nobody's listening everybody says things that would get them canceled you know I make it an absolute so you can think there must be I'm sure there's a Puritan somewhere who doesn't do that okay yeah not everybody but you know what I mean it's just not a standard that we should have in this world light likewise you should not be blamed for any any digital reproduction of something that happened over 20 years ago you could argue about the 20-year part but I think we should just ignore

[22:53]

part but I think we should just ignore that photo from your yearbook that's embarrassing that that video for 20 years ago the audio from 20 years ago just if it's 20 years ago forget it that's my standard likewise you should not be canceled today for something that you did in the past that would not have gotten you canceled in the past so you should not be you should not be punished today because of something your digital ghost did when I say digital ghost I mean you don't your past doesn't exist you exist now and you probably will exist in the future but your past doesn't exist like you can't grab a handful of the past it's not a thing anymore so canceling somebody for what they did in their digital ghost past when they didn't get canceled in the past because in those days that wasn't

[23:55]

past because in those days that wasn't cancelable that should never ever cancel your real life body that's living today because your digital ghost did something that was fine 20 years ago 20 years ago nobody raised an eyebrow about it that doesn't mean is right just means you shouldn't be canceled for something that basically a digital ghost did all right how about this you do not need to respond this would be more like just a standard of be you do not need to respond to misrepresentations of your opinion online let's say you could simply just note them as misrepresentations now how useful would that be to you it's kind of useful isn't it because the sooner you get into a debate about I didn't say that yes you did I didn't say that well you said this other thing I didn't say that you can never really win with the people who are misrepresenting you you think you can because it seems so seductive it's like

[24:55]

because it seems so seductive it's like well you've misrepresented me watch me fix this just by putting up my actual opinion and then people can see my actual opinion from me they can see how you misrepresented me and then I'm all good right has never worked in the history of the of humanity it just doesn't work you can't make a misinterpret or stop misinterpreting they'll just remiss interpret you it's an infinite loop so instead you should just be able to say misrepresentation move on and anybody sees that that the person that they're talking about has labeled it misrepresentation could say ah well I don't know what the real story is here but obviously not true now again that would have lots of negative potential you know abuse possibilities but we'll just put these out here how about no single source reporting now this is more reporting than digital bill

[25:55]

this is more reporting than digital bill of rights but it feels similar because it's always reported digitally you know something will appear on my phone it'll be somebody who hasn't given their name a single source says the president is punching people in the Oval Office you should just not be able to report that it just shouldn't be allowed or or it should be labeled maybe self labeled you should be able to maybe you can report it because freedom of speech right so you can report it but you should have to self label it highly non credible information so anytime you see a single source report it always needs to be flagged no matter where it is as highly not credible information wouldn't I help as a let's say you're a twenty-something year old consumer you haven't seen how fake the news is yet you still believe that it might be true wouldn't it help you to see that little label highly non credible information

[26:58]

label highly non credible information still run the story but just label it non credible how about this rule any corrections to news reports have to be as prominent as the original story now it would be hard to do right but what I'm talking about is if there's a fake news story it'll get let's say thirty million clicks when the correction runs and says uh that was all fake you know we just found out none of it was real the correction will get ten thousand likes or eyeballs so the correction is always tiny compared to the fake news so could there be a digital bill of rights that says the correction has to at least be attempted you know a serious attempt to make it as prominent as the original story now what that looks like is pretty subjective but let's say if it was a headline story that something was true the only way you could correct it would be with another primetime headline story now maybe you don't have to do ten

[28:00]

now maybe you don't have to do ten headlines even though the original story at ten headlines what at least is comparable it's a headline correction to a headline story and maybe if you run it as a tweet you have to pin it until it gets enough clicks you know you could imagine a number of ways that you could get closer to that standard and by the way I'm not kidding myself that any of these would be easy to enforce or that they wouldn't have any negative consequences I'm just putting it out there that something like this should be considered now about this if you try to organize a boycott against any company your own identity and where you work must be public so even if you're on Twitter and you say yeah boycott that goya food company even if you're just a Twitter user the only way you can that is if someone else has access to know where you work for mutual as your destruction I'd also like to work know where you work in the future

[29:01]

where you work in the future say reason I don't think that people who call for boycotts against American companies should have the advantage of privacy when the target does not and the privacy is not just who your identity is because lots of times you do know the identity of the person online but you don't necessarily know where they work I want to know where they work who is paying somebody who's who is working to destroy another company I was reading a there's some kind of disagreement between the founders or co-founders of sleeping giants I've never heard of that so it's sort of an activist group it's very small mostly to people I guess and they would go to advertisers and say hey you're advertising on a bad place so they try to get rid of the effort has been for Tucker Carlson show I think they succeeded in getting rid of a lot of the ads on Breitbart so they're basically a company or a group that

[30:03]

basically a company or a group that exists to put other groups out of business and I'm thinking no I feel like we should know who's putting companies out of business something you ought to know for boycott lisa in the boycott sense all right how about this it should be illegal to show a video if you're a let's say if you're a news organization not an individual but if you're a news organization it should be illegal to show a video that's edited to change its context or meaning in other words if you showed the charlottesville fighting people speech of the president but you only showed the part before he clarified that he wasn't talking about the neo-nazis which he did in the second part of his statement because he wanted to make sure nobody would misconstrue him and think he was saying that the neo-nazis were fine people so he clarified directly no I'm not talking about the neo-nazis I'm talking about other people

[31:04]

talking about other people so that would just be illegal in the future because the news organizations would certainly be aware of what they're doing you know if you think if you think seeing them doesn't know that they're showing fake video when they cut it off the second part oh they know trust me they know so just be just be a crime alright so those are some of the things I've put it out there I think the larger point is that we probably do need some kind of a Bill of Rights or almost like a Ten Commandments you know the Ten Commandments are not necessarily tied to actual laws some of them are shall not murder for example but you could have a rule of etiquette or Ten Commandments a Bill of Rights some kind of a structure that says all right all right the world is a different place we have to deal with canceled culture and rumors and fake videos and and all that let's just come up with a new set of rules all right so I'm just

[32:06]

new set of rules all right so I'm just looking at your comments on this I see some of you like them I think you're perfectly right perfectly right to imagine that all almost everything I mentioned would be problematic you know you'd have to really work through the details most of them probably wouldn't work but some of them like somebody says potato Stelter would just say he didn't realize it was edited well I think it would be enough if the law required you to run the fully edited one and make the correction so I don't when I say that something should be illegal in the context of this proposed digital Bill of Rights I don't mean the illegal like you go to jail because most of these don't seem like go to jail kinds of problems I mean illegal as in you need to fix it so if you had let's say you wouldn't leak Lear uh nav IDEO that was edited to change its context the law would require

[33:06]

change its context the law would require that you run it in the same time space you know and correct it so maybe that's just the law which would be good enough all right that is about what I have today I've got some things I need to do today oh wow thank you for liking my broadcast and all of you I think it's hilarious and wonderful that the conservative Trump supporting public is also rallying around the CEO of Goya foods just to protect his freedom of speech basically protect his freedom of speech as well as our own so by some Goya foods by twice as much and somebody says 66% of Cova deaths are black people I don't think that's true I would do a fact check on that oh yeah

[34:10]

I would do a fact check on that oh yeah oh one other thing I'm gonna get married in a few hours so I thought you might like to know that now I won't be giving you details on that but you should obviously it will be very very small so it'll be the the world's world smallest wedding so we'll have the world's smallest the safest wedding I don't think you'll see pictures of it but I will do that tonight now I should tell you that getting married in the age of coronavirus is really really hard originally it was going to be in May and we said ah how about June and a couple of different dates in July but we decided on today June 11th because 7/11 is sort of convenience if you think about it the Wayfarer story doesn't interest me there's some fake news about Wayfarer that is just fake news so yes

[35:12]

Wayfarer that is just fake news so yes we'll be getting married later today I won't tell you the exact time but it'll be really really small the smallest wedding you could ever imagine very safe so we'll play it safe all right that's all for now and thank you those who are congratulating me by the way we Cristina I have been together for four years and we do have a pretty good idea that it works so in case you're worried
somebody's somebody's questioning my my v-neck here's the rule v-neck sweater means your your your wife where your girlfriend bought it for you v-neck t-shirt that's just a different thing I don't think v-necks are in anymore but I still have a few of them in my closet so that's enough for now and I will talk to you later