Episode 1063 Scott Adams: Cognitive Dissonance in Trump Haters, Mask Science, Protests

Date: 2020-07-19 | Duration: 43:20

Topics

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Rough Transcript

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Transcript

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• Analyzing critic complaints about President Trump

• Charles Barkley’s productive thoughts

• Roger Stone radio interview controversy

• My impression of Rachel Maddow and Alex Jones

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.
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[0:14]

hey everybody come on in gather around it's time for coffee with scott adams but you knew that that's why you're here for the best part of the day the part that makes everything better yeah now if you're new to this it doesn't take much all it takes is a copper bug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein a canteen jugger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the dopamine hit of the day the unparalleled pleasure the thing that makes everything better including the coronavirus the economy racism protests you name it it's all better with one sip go
my white blood cell count is climbing i can feel it well the biggest news in the world might be the rain in china

[1:16]

might be the rain in china because it's raining so hard that the so-called three gorges dam which uh is pretty big dam it's damn big might actually break which is a really big deal a super big deal so this would be a disaster uh on a level that would be hard to even calculate it looks like it might happen and one of the risks is that our the factories that make pharmaceuticals for this country are in the flood zone so there's a non-zero chance that the pharmaceutical industry will get wiped out this week so we got that to look forward to
to um but let's hope that doesn't happen i would guess that the chinese are working very hard to relocate anything that can be relocated so maybe they'll prepare in time

[2:21]

let's see portland it's the 50th night of protests with fires and big visual things check out cnn.com to find all the stories and the pictures the fires the protesters nothing if you look at the right hand column on cnn.com those are the stories they don't want you to see so it's over there is just one line of text portland protesters no picture so it's pretty clear that that at least cnn doesn't want you to see those pictures but i don't think that even fox news is playing it up so i think there's some kind of agreement not to show these protests and i would love to know the real story behind that all right uh i announced today that i'm going to start blocking anybody who argues that the science has proven face masks

[3:23]

that the science has proven face masks won't help against the coronavirus okay so don't say you weren't warned you could you could have your opinion and you can tell other people but here's here's my reasoning um i'm not a scientist and i can't tell you definitively whether masks work or make things worse but i can tell you
you that if you're also not a scientist and you go on and say definitively the sciences proof and mass don't work i don't want you in my world now okay because that just hasn't happened this is not true if it's true that you've never seen the studies including yesterday in the wall street journal showing that face masks make a gigantic improvement if you've never seen those studies then why not i mean i've seen both the ones that say they work and the one they don't and i've seen lots of them lots of studies that say they don't work

[4:24]

studies that say they don't work lots of studies to say they do if you haven't seen both you shouldn't have an opinion so i'm only blocking people who are not aware of half of the world i'm not i'm not blocking you because of your opinion i'm blocking you because it's been long enough right you know in the beginning it makes sense that you haven't been exposed to all the information but now there's no excuse at this point if you are not aware that major publications are reporting that face masks even the the casual kind do make a big difference even if they're wrong all right this is important even if they're wrong if you don't if you're not aware of it that's a problem all right so i just and i'm so bored by it uh i guess i'm bored that people think that if they send me yet one more study from the past to say it doesn't work

[5:25]

from the past to say it doesn't work that that will be the one study that that changes my mind and and makes me be irrational it just doesn't work that way all right so that was just my personal frustration probably had nothing to do with you so here's a question i've been asking just because the the answers are funny to me it goes like this after three and a half plus years of trump three and a half years i guess is right after three and a half years of trump we don't have to wonder what he'll do wrong because you've got three and a half years to look at it so i like asking people can you tell me what is the worst thing he's done wrong in your opinion and here's why it's so funny number one the answers are all over the place what if i taught you um that you should assume is true if there's one question

[6:25]

there's one question and people are all on the same side saying oh trump is bad trump is bad so in that sense they're very unified unified trump is bad now give me your top reason or top three or four and you'll see their top three or four reasons are first of all different which is weird because they're all on the same side wouldn't they all have the for the same top reason or maybe the top three would be sort of similar but in a different order but wouldn't people have the same reasons and here's what's funny the top reason at the moment is of course going to be his coronavirus response but let me ask you this didn't people have exactly the same idea about getting rid of trump before the coronavirus even happened their their opinions of why trump should leave are identical now to what they were

[7:26]

are identical now to what they were all they've done is changed the reasons whenever you see this situation where somebody keeps their point of view but the reason for it keeps changing it's not a real reason all right if they added new reasons then you'd have something it's like all my old reasons are true and i've added a few more but my top number one reason that hasn't changed it's always the same but i have added a few more things that would sound reasonable but if you're complaining that your number one thing is is coronavirus response even if it wasn't good you have to ask yourself wait a minute have they just added a new reason to something that was just they'd already decided and now they're just adding reasons you know the oh my new my new top reason is this happens to be in the news this week but i
i i started collecting some of the answers because they're they're funny in a certain way they're funny in a certain way in that

[8:28]

they're funny in a certain way in that first of all it got more attention than i thought it would uh and this morning uh people who weighed in on this question included brian brian stelter selter stelter you know from cnn so brian stelter weighed in with with the critics uh also uh dave isikoff weighed in and matt negrin who apparently has taken over on the
the msnbc and msnbc show hardball so all three of these people are sort of weighing in on the side of the people saying hey yes here are all the things that trump has done wrong all right so here's the list of things that trump has done wrong now remember this is a big decision it's a big decision to get rid of a president or to vote for a new president so here are the reasons he downplayed the risk of the coronavirus to increase his odds of a china trade

[9:29]

to increase his odds of a china trade deal he downplayed the risk of the coronavirus to increase his odds of a china trade deal so the first thing wrong with this analysis is that he puts it in some kind of a personal sense because i'm pretty sure that the president negotiating with china was sort of intended for the benefit of the whole country it's really not just something he did for himself and it's just funny to hear anybody talking about that way no the china trade deal wasn't about the country that was just about himself okay all right let's let's take that a little further and he uses and this critic uses word downplaying the risk did the president downplay the risk or did he balance the risk was he balancing competing interests by saying well the economy is important a trade deal is

[10:30]

the economy is important a trade deal is important and coronavirus are important too but it's not a case of one of them is the only thing that matters it's balanced so isn't the president's job to balance the risks but for this critic if you balance the risk you can call it downplaying the risk and all he did was substitute a word for my word and turned a reasonable thing into an unreasonable sounding thing even though it's the same thing let me state these two things with just different words my wording is the president balanced the risks of the economy the trade deals which are part of the economy and the health he balanced them when i use the word balance that sounds true right because he wasn't saying one of them is the only important thing he never said the economy is the only thing he never said the coronavirus is

[11:30]

thing he never said the coronavirus is the only thing he balanced them now did he balance him correctly well that's not really the complaint the complaint is he downplayed it all this critic did was replace my word balance with downplayed but nothing nothing was different it was still the same thing you can't you can't turn a good thing into a bad thing by changing one of the words that's not a thing but if you can imagine that this person is a professional writer for the atlantic maybe you understand what's going on here's the number two thing on the list of things that trump got wrong on the coronavirus he mocked the virus in february that's right he was mean to the virus he mocked it he mocked the virus what exactly did that cause do you remember when you were feeling good and then ow ow i've got a headache what's causing

[12:31]

ow ow i've got a headache what's causing my headache and then you find out it's because the president mocked the virus that probably didn't happen right or you went out to start your car
oh god my car isn't starting did the president mock the virus again there's no connecting tissue between the the biggest complaints about what what the president did and anything in the real world which is what makes it funny complete disconnect from the real world so that's the number two issue here's number three screwing up the european travel ban in march and then there was a detail given that uh there was a news article saying that by giving a two-day notice about the travel ban in europe it caused all the flights to load up and people quickly traveled to get ahead of the band and then and of course some of them had virus and brought it into the country now i ask you this what was the way he

[13:33]

now i ask you this what was the way he was supposed to do a travel ban do you think the people who quickly got on planes in that two-day window do you think that they were leaving the country that they lived in not knowing if they could get home or was it a case that people were simply going home because they knew they were going to be there for a while how exactly were you supposed to prevent people from going home how exactly was that going to work and moreover in what world are flights not already pretty much all booked have when before the coronavirus how often were you on a flight that wasn't pretty much fully booked it was kind of rare right so how much difference did two days make when the only difference was going from pretty much full to actually full and those people probably would have had to be repatriated to their countries anyway so i don't know that you could make a case

[14:33]

case that that could have been done better or differently i don't know what the better would look like if you don't say what would the alternative look like you haven't really criticized the very minimum for a criticism is to say you did x if you had done y you know and somebody else did y you could see that that was a better result but we don't have anything like that we just have people taking their best shot at stuff and maybe some of it was imperfect here's another one he sidelined the cdc in april what does that mean what does it mean to sideline the cdc was the cdc the ones who told us that well i won't go through the list but the cdc was not exactly bathed in glory during this and what does it mean to sideline them i don't know what that means refusing to advocate for mass in may or june what difference would that have made

[15:35]

what difference would it make because trump has never said masks don't work and he has allowed his experts to tell you that they do work so trump allows his experts to tell you they work and then he sort of leaves it to the states because that's the system of government we have if he had done more than what he did would he not be called a dictator right now because he's forcing the states to do things and the states didn't want to do it
it i don't know if he had that option did he have that option um i would agree that he could say more about masks but he's not he's not stopping his experts from telling you you should wear them have you ever seen that there's nothing like that he's letting the science talk and then he's telling you what he's doing could he do a better job of modeling behavior i would say yes but i don't know that you could necessarily say you'd notice the

[16:35]

necessarily say you'd notice the difference in what people did
and then something about blocking testing funding in july i don't know what that was but it sounds like fake news it sounds like when you hear somebody blocked of funding and then you dig down it's usually something more along the lines of it was supposed to be in another bill or this bill had some things in it that didn't belong or or you know we were going to do it a different way or something like that this is probably fake news i never even heard of that one but i don't think that we have a testing i don't think we have a funding limit on testing do we i've never heard that before anyway uh here's some other things that that are complaints he turned america from a shining hill of hope to a laughingstock do you do you feel that when you wake up do you wake up in the morning you're like

[17:36]

oh i just realized again i'm not on a shining hill of hope i did not wake up in a shiny hill of hope my country is a laughingstock what because justin trudeau was giggling at that that one meeting that time does justin trudeau not take our phone calls anymore if we call bulgaria and say bulgaria we want to do a trade deal do they say no you are not a shiny hill of hope you are laughing stock now i will not do a trade deal with you does that happen because i don't think any of this translates into anything real and here's another one uh oh so somebody else i get was this matt negrin who said right no one remembers why he was impeached somebody said that to me i don't know who it was so one of the things you'll notice is that when you ask what trump is doing wrong like what or

[18:36]

what trump is doing wrong like what or what has he done wrong you'll get sarcasm instead of reasons so here's a perfect example right no one remembers why he was impeached do you know what my first response to that was why did he get impeached something about ukraine or something the phone call and then i and i say to myself oh the thing that was so unimportant it barely barely held onto my memory and was completely political and was ridiculous and didn't matter anyway even if everything that had been claimed about the president were true what impact none there's really none that i can think of so anyway it's hilarious to ask people to name specifics oh then one of the examples was 11 unemployment rate to which i thought really somebody is criticizing president trump over the current

[19:38]

over the current unemployment rate that's like somebody who has never followed the news or something i don't even understand that so everybody who says sweden i might start but start blocking people who mentioned sweden because sweden is just different and we don't know why exactly so sweden is just different we don't know exactly why so if you're making a point with sweden you're not making a point that is really a point all you're saying is
is there's a country what about estonia i don't know what about estonia we don't know why it worked why it didn't what they exactly did we don't know sweden is no longer an interesting question they're just too many things different uh let me ask you this how many how many countries that regularly supplement with fish oil which has

[20:39]

supplement with fish oil which has vitamin d are having a bad outcome
sweden has heard immunity somebody says no it doesn't i doubt that's true i doubt it's true that they have heard immunity and i doubt they're even close could be i won't say that there's zero chance but it could be
so here's a viewpoint that i want to share with you somebody shared with this with me sincerely and because it was sincere i wanted to share with you and see if you feel the same and it goes like this that the wearing of masks while it might have a medical benefit or it might not so this is somebody who's you know at least open to it being beneficial but the larger point is that wearing mass could lead to the breakdown of society and the collapse of the country

[21:42]

and the collapse of the country so the point of view if i can i hope i can express it right because it was worthy of mention so the point of view is that if we're forced to wear masks we lose the thing that connects us as human beings and once you've lost that thing that connects you as humans because covering this much of the face really disconnects you from people that once you do that the social cohesion of the country will be diminished and there and the risk of complete civil war becomes bigger than it would have been now it doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to be a civil war because you wore mass that's not the claim the claim is that the odds of a civil war
war go up enough by wearing masks that that's a mortal risk and it's enough of a reason not to wear masks what would you say would you would you agree with that statement that wearing masks loses our humanity and our connection to each other sufficiently so that it could cause

[22:45]

sufficiently so that it could cause it would be one factor that might make it more likely for a revolution which would be gigantic expense i would say i don't buy into this at all not even a little bit but i wanted to see if anybody else felt that it feels like the smallest risk in the world
but i wanted to see if anybody had a a feeling that oh there's some people who are agreeing so somebody's saying yes i agree true empathy block others saying good grief uh no agree agree so so some people have some sympathy for that view now i don't know that uh that is something that could be tested but just because something can be expressed in words as a risk doesn't mean you should consider it a risk so i'm typically on the view of well you know there's no there's no such thing as zero risk you should at least

[23:46]

thing as zero risk you should at least put some odds on it but that would not extend to something that is so obviously not a risk that maybe you don't need to do the math
oh well there's enough of you who think there's something to it let me ask you this do you feel any different i know the people i care about tend to be the people that i see without masks anyway the people i would care about would be my family you know people were close to me i just don't have that feeling i just don't think it's a thing but some of you do so we'll leave it there that's all we can say charles barkley had a public statement on video that was a real echoing what kareem abdul-jabbar said which is uh he was encouraging black people to not be anti-semitic because it works so much against your self-interest because obviously does and and barclay says this directly

[24:49]

and and barclay says this directly we can't be prejudiced if we're asking white people to respect us and he says i don't understand how you beat hatred with more hatred so i'm completely on board with charles barkley but listening to him and also to kareem abdul-jabbar it it reminds me that the black community doesn't have a strong leader it's really noticeable isn't it that the black community has lots of concerns that are legitimate but they don't have sort of this one leader you know and you'd think it would be obama but he's kind of you know retired if you will but when i hear somebody like barclay or uh
uh korean abdul jabbar talk out in such a pretty productive way i mean i think this is exactly the most productive way that you could talk i asked myself why can't we get more charles barkley he

[25:49]

why can't we get more charles barkley he feel to me he feels like he's really good for the country i'd like to see him have more leadership role there's a new new controversy about roger stone so the controversy is this is the allegation and you can put your own odds of whether this is true and maybe by now we know because i've i turned off my computer a few minutes ago but the allegation is that he was doing a interview with a uh a black disc jockey whose name i don't remember and that allegedly roger stone said when he thought that nobody was listening uh i don't want to argue with this negro now that is allegedly what he said when he thought nobody was hearing on the phone but it was allegedly clearly heard and so when i heard that story i said wow i've got to hear this for myself i've got to hear this for myself so

[26:52]

i've got to hear this for myself so i clicked on the articles i'm looking for the the link where i can listen to it myself and it's not there so i go okay okay maybe there's some reason the new york times doesn't have the link so i go i google it i kinda gotta hear this for myself because it just that doesn't it sounds like the kind of thing that maybe didn't happen you know what i mean so i gotta hear from myself so i go from article to article to article including something by the disc jockey himself with a tweet and i'm looking for the link have has anybody heard it has anybody heard the actual audio because i don't know if we're gonna hear it don't they record all radio shows you think somebody recorded that right so here is my question to you although it is reported it is very clearly said on that audio

[27:53]

is very clearly said on that audio just remember all the times things have been clear on audio and video and just weren't true so you should have a really big dose of skepticism coming into that story and i would i would encourage this if you don't ever hear it with your own ears it didn't happen if you do hear it with your own ears and other people who are not crazy you say i'm listening to it too and i don't hear it
it it probably didn't happen
so i don't know will we ever hear that video it if it turns out to be a yanni and laurel thing where if you're thinking that you can hear it but if you're not thinking it you can't hear it probably didn't happen it was my guess probably not all right but i wouldn't say for sure nothing for sure there was an amazing campaign video that apparently was not made by the campaign in which a linkin park song was heard

[28:56]

in which a linkin park song was heard and the and i tweeted it because it was just one of the best campaign ads even though the campaign apparently didn't make it because it showed the contrast so there was lots of contrast between the the sparkling bright capitalism that the president promotes versus versus the uh you know the cities falling apart under the democrats it was a great contrast play but it got yanked because that copyright problem which is no surprise all right
um oh here's some more things that on the list of things that the president has already done wrong all right treason pandering to putin what was the treason exactly treason who saw treason that sounds imaginary pandering to putin what's the difference between

[29:57]

between being nice to dictators while you're you know you're attacking them with cyber cyber attacks and you're you're banning their banning their what what are they doing sanctioning them etc anybody who says that the president is pandering to putin is sort of the lowest level of understanding of your environment it's sort of the lowest level because if you don't understand the saying nice things to the dictator while you're negotiating with them while you're trying to make something work is just smarter it's just smarter to be polite to them and you show them a little extra consideration while you're also being tough with them if you don't understand that that's the best way to go you're not you're not much of an observer here are the other complaints nepotism corruption and profiteering what would be some examples of things that hurt you because of any of these imagined things

[30:58]

of these imagined things what was it that hurt you i can't think of anything nothing's hurt me uh destruction of institutions of democracy which ones what would be the institutions of democracy that the president destroyed have you noticed that all these complaints about the president are these weird generic hallucinations that don't even have any connection
i think the institution was the news do you think the president destroyed the news business is he the one that did that because it looks like the news destroyed itself with their own business model i don't see how you could see it any other way anyway
uh hillary's selling our plutonium to russia what's that called that's called just doing business if you believe that that hillary sold our valuable plutonium to russia then you did not understand what

[31:59]

then you did not understand what happened so first of all the plutonium mines were in the united states if the united states needed plutonium and the plutonium is in the united states in the mine would we care who owned it no we wouldn't care who owned it we just say oh okay you russians you have to sell us all your plutonium now you can't sell it to other countries the fact that they changed ownership didn't mean anything didn't make any difference because they're still in our country if they didn't sell it to us we just say all right you can't have it anymore we'll just take you back there was never any risk and our allies canada and australia they produce that stuff what was was australia going to stop selling us plutonium or whatever we need was canada going to stop selling it to us there was never a shortage that was always a fake just a fake fox news story

[33:00]

news story uh was it not pluto named uranium sorry i don't know my plutonium is for my uranium so erase everything i said about plutonium and put in uranium
so thank you for that correction with many exclamation marks uranium uranium uranium i hear you all right uh who do you want to moderate the debates i don't think it matters i don't think the moderators make any difference
uh she sold the plutonium for her personal interest well she may have had a personal interest but not that it matters
uh if china owns 35 of america no problem i don't know what you're talking about uh she took huge bribes when you say bribes you mean that

[34:01]

bribes you mean that the clinton foundation got some money possibly so but the problem is not the selling of the uranium the problem would be the taking of the bribe wouldn't it if if that's demonstrated to be true um the point is she got rich from the transaction uh i believe that the clinton foundation may have made some money that's different all right
uh russia ukrainian just looking at your comments i don't have much to say today
[Music] all right don't know your ass from your amium that's that's pretty funny uh imagine buying a psychology book from a guy who got a ba in economics in 1979 as expert well if i ever called myself

[35:01]

as expert well if i ever called myself an expert
i don't believe i have and have i ever recommended any form of persuasion that is not fairly routinely known by science to be persuasive i don't believe i have so reporting on something and being an expert are different the the people who call me an expert on persuasion that's their opinion that's not mine i'm just reporting what the what the experts say works and what my experience says works that's all i've ever called it if i ever call myself an expert on persuasion you should criticize me about that
please interview tony heller on heard immunity i don't think i will here's here's some things that i won't do so you should stop asking if you asked me to interview one expert

[36:02]

if you asked me to interview one expert on a topic in which i've done some deep diving and i have some information i might do it so for example when i talked about climate change with michael shellenberger and and also bjorn lomborg that was a topic i've done my own reading on enough that i knew i could ask the right questions but if i would have some other expert on an expert on i don't know some other thing if i don't also know enough to ask the right questions then i would be doing a disservice to you because having one expert blather is worse than having no expert so let me give you the order of of understanding your best situation would be two experts who have opposing views who have enough time to talk and maybe there's a strong moderator that can keep them on the right page that would be the best way to get information to experts battling it out within a time limit

[37:04]

battling it out within a time limit the next best in terms of understanding your world would be no experts so the second best situation from having two experts on different sides is no experts that's your second best situation your worst situation is one expert because that one expert just like one attorney will convince you that they make sense any expert can convince you of anything if you're not an expert in that field so if i were to bring on one expert i would be giving you disinformation because any time one expert is presented and there's nobody there to ask the right questions that's misinformation now it doesn't mean that it's always misinformation but it does mean you should put the lowest level of credibility on it which effectively makes it no information at all and since there's at least a good chance that is misleading or the expert is wrong there's a good chance of

[38:05]

is wrong there's a good chance of misleading people with no chance whatsoever of giving people credible information so anytime you say can you put this expert on to talk about let's say herd immunity what do i know about herd immunity
nothing some people say it's 10 to 20 percent some people say it's 60 to 70 percent that's it so if i have an expert on who says a bunch of stuff would you be informed well you would have new stuff coming into your head but i had no way to know that is right so is that a good thing to do it's a bad thing to do have i read michael shellenberger's new book on climate change yes i have i have read it and it's excellent
could you interview rachel maddow to identify the exact moment insanity begins when you watch rachel maddow does she look

[39:08]

rachel maddow does she look uh what's the right word saying i don't know if you have this uh impression now i'm not making a medical diagnosis of rachel maddow or anybody else this is just an impression because i'm sure that the people on the left have some kind of an analogous impression of people on the right and it probably looks like when they look at them they look like they're lying or stupid or something because they can't understand why their opinions would be different but when i look at rachel maddow she looks to be again i'm not stating this as to me some kind of fact because i don't know what's in her head but she looks to be hypnotized meaning she looks to be like someone who's dealing with a hallucination or a series of them as opposed to somebody who's grounded in the real world it's just an impression that does that mean i'm right no you should not take that as any kind

[40:10]

no you should not take that as any kind of credible anything i'm just telling you my impression but i'm wondering do you have the same impression when you see her when you see her talking do you say to yourself well there's a different opinion it's different from my own maybe different priorities she has different set of facts she's looking at does it look like just someone with a different opinion because it really doesn't it doesn't does it it looks like there's a phenomenon happening and it's not one that's good like there's something going on emotionally or psychologically that's not quite right and let me say again if you were to take you know take a an iq test and you were competing against rachel maddow good luck because she's going to clean your clock on an iq test if you're if you're trying to test your knowledge of the world historical or otherwise against rachel

[41:12]

historical or otherwise against rachel maddow good luck she's going to kick your ass because she knows a lot and her iq is really high so really smart really talented uh really knowledgeable and still and still i can't get past the fact that my subjective impression is that there's something else going on there just an impression um and i don't think she's alone in that by the way and and i think i could probably pick out some people on the right who strike me the same way but nobody jumps to mind
and blumps response somebody says does alex jones look crazy uh
that's a complicated question because alex jones presents himself as a sort of

[42:15]

alex jones presents himself as a sort of a character and the character he plays is a sort of a complete character no i don't know how close his character is to what he would be if you talk to him in person maybe it's exactly the same i don't maybe just you know attenuate it a little bit for tv but uh alex jones is trying to be alex jones so that feels like a different situation from somebody who's trying to be a more objective tv personality i don't know that you could say alex jones is anything except exactly himself which is all he pretends to be um somebody says is she smart yeah rachel maddow is super smart don't take that away from her all right that's all i got for now i'll

[43:15]

all right that's all i got for now i'll talk to you