Episode 1459 Scott Adams: News, Persuasion and Coffee

Date: 2021-08-05 | Duration: 39:55

Topics

Find my “extra” content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com

Rough Transcript

This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

Transcript

---

• Governor DeSantis, a G-Rated President Trump

• Emergency Use Vaccine vs FDA approved vaccine

• Slow vaccination rate = end of civilization?

• STILL no widely available rapid testing?

• Monoclonal antibody shots whacks COVID

• CA recall election, vote-by-mail

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.
---
[0:07]

well everybody on youtube and locals today i started the stream at the same time uh i had been trying to start the local stream a little early to give you a little extra but i find that it it it it detracts from the the let's say the crispness of the beginning of the show
so it was started at the same time but for locals people i'll stay a little bit after and look at your comments and answer some questions but how about everybody else would you like to make this one of the best days ever because it's starting to shape up that way i mean already it's looking like one of the best days and all you need is a copper mug or glass a tanker gels or steiner canteen joker flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine of the day the thing that makes everything better yeah you know what it is
is it's called the simultaneous step it happens now go

[1:13]

happens now go oh that's some good stuff well here's the weirdest thing about me and it's a long list but here's here's one of the weirdest things about me for all of my life i've seen glimpses of my future sometimes decades before that future happened for example i saw myself as a famous cartoonist i saw myself talking to lots of people in some context i didn't know i saw where i was going to live i saw the house i was going to live in i saw a lot of stuff that happened exactly like i imagined it but some of it you say to yourself well that's just because you worked hard at your goal and you knew what you want you wanted and you got it but some of them were really weird like one of them was that i would someday be invited to the white house to chat with the president right and then that happened i actually got invited to the white house to chat

[2:14]

got invited to the white house to chat with the president now did you see that one coming i didn't but there was one there's one thing about my future that was this really clear vision that was ridiculous and it just happened just ridiculous and i realized that it already happened actually it happened some time ago but it's happening again right now and here's what it is keep in mind that i have no musical ability let's let's all agree with that i've been trying to teach myself to play drums and i have a drum teacher now and i think my drum teacher would agree that i'm nowhere near being able to play a whole song or having any any real musical talent whatsoever none but despite that i've always had this vision in my head that i would be a song lyricist maybe not writing the melody or stuff but

[3:15]

but it doesn't make any sense because i have no experience in the in the realm but it turns out i'm already a song lyricist and i didn't do anything didn't take any work so akira the dawn some of you know him from twitter creates music by taking um people who do podcasts you know you're jordan peterson's people like me and then turning their their language that they use in their live streams or their podcast basically exactly what i'm doing now and he takes samples out and turns it into the the vocals that accompany the music and he just came out with a whole bunch of new ones they're not they're not released to you yet but i got to preview them and i'll be damned he's invented a whole new genre it's it's it's a legitimate entirely new genre and i feel like it's going to get bigger because almost everybody i know has heard it likes it it's

[4:16]

likes it it's just really sort of good stuff so what he does is he tries to take and by the way this is the same technique the beatles used i'm a big student of the beatles yeah meaning wave is where you'll find it um i'm a big student of the beatles because of their work process how is it that they got such consistently great results and other people didn't i'll tell you what the first trick was they didn't have any rules about what was in and what was out
out if something sounded good it was him that's it they a lot of the music wasn't even musical instruments it was distorted sounds and putting microphones in the wrong place in the piano and you know adjusting things so they didn't sound like they normally did using the feedback instead of the music so a lot of a lot of what the beatles did was they'd come in and they say all right this is my beatles accent all right do you have any ideas for a song and then one of them would say yeah i've

[5:16]

and then one of them would say yeah i've got this a little bit it'll be you know several lines and and some music and they say that's all i got i got this little bit and then somebody else would say well i've got this little bit and my bit has nothing to do with your bit musically but let's put them together because then you'll have two bits that we like and then they would put together a whole song that was basically nonsense made up of just parts you like and then it sounded great and uh in in one way akira the dawn who does these meaning wave things he's doing the same thing because he's taking the good bits and of what people are saying in podcasts you know both me and other people and putting in them and putting them to music and should they i mean the the words were not written to be in the song but if it sounds good why not so i think he's sort of borrowing a system from the beatles in the sense of if it sounds good it's music

[6:18]

if it sounds good it's music so there you go one of my lifelong uh i guess you'd say visions of something that would happen in my life the least likely thing that could ever happen in my life is happening that's happening in a big way
way it's just weird
meanwhile ron desantis is doing the best impression i've ever seen of a g-rated donald trump imagine if if trump didn't say you know things like and stuff in public and you imagine that he was just toned down to be the g-rated version well he'd be ron desantis uh here's what ron de santa said about biden biden wanting i guess passports or whatever for vaccinations and desantis said i don't want to hear a blip about coven from you until you do your job and secure the border that's right i don't want to hear a blip from you

[7:18]

from you in fact if i could extend this thought ron
ron uh desantis governor desantis i don't think you'll mind if i extend your thinking a little bit and say if if you don't secure the border you can uh take your bip and just shove it up your bip you can suck my bip and uh i hope you stop and bimp so go bip you nip everybody who looks like you and bip the horse you came in on bip all of you
you so that's the g-rated version of trump and uh it makes me wonder do you think the g-rated version of trump can get elected president because in a weird way it's what we all want right didn't you all say damn it if we could just get the good parts of trump you know the parts you voted for without all the controversy wouldn't that be good well maybe not maybe not maybe maybe there's a it's a package

[8:18]

package for a reason it could be that all that non-g-rated stuff all that provocation is part of the show but the show is part of the the work you got to put on the show to get the work done sometimes and that's something that trump knew better than anybody all right i would like some t-shirts uh don't send me these t-shirts this is just for fun um i would like one t-shirt this simply has this message written really big and i want a bunch of them so that i can wear them every day and they should say my face does not indicate my mood you've heard of something called resting face where some people just look like they're unpleasant with their normal face well i have some some version of that apparently where uh no matter what relationship i'm in or where i am somebody's gonna ask me if i've got a big problem who died uh why am i so angry

[9:20]

who died uh why am i so angry what made me so upset today and usually i say something like this what i'm in a good mood today just like yesterday and the day before i'm actually usually in a good mood but my face doesn't know it apparently there's some miscommunication with my face because from you know face down everything seems pretty good it's pretty pretty good um so i want that one i also want uh one shirt that has nothing but the message you are misinterpreting my opinion again that's it just you are misinterpreting my opinion again i'll just wear those every day i i don't think i would wear anything else i'll wear them to the store i'll wear them i'll wear them on live stream all right now there's probably nothing you want more than for me not to talk about anything involving the pandemic right

[10:26]

um somebody says move your phone away from the speakers
but i don't have any speakers on and i don't think that's um i don't think you mean that all right but there are some really interesting things that have happened recently that uh so here's the thing i'm not going to talk into wearing masks or vaccinations i i think i'm pretty much with my audience at this point so as of today but maybe for different reasons i think many of you who are watching this would say don't make us wear masks because masks don't work whereas i say don't make us wear masks although they probably work a little bit and in some cases you probably want them if you're around old people or something so we may disagree about whether mass have any effectiveness whatsoever but i don't think we disagree at this point that you know if you're vaccinated at least you're kind of done with it

[11:27]

you're kind of done with it and if you're not vaccinated and you have the chance to get vaccinated i don't care if you wear a mask why do i care you know and and i also think that the sooner i get the virus the better because i'm vaccinated so i'm at my peak resistance right now and i feel like i'll probably get it anyway so you know my my chance i think my lowest odds of having long coveted or if i get it now so that's where i'm at so i think i'm i agree with most of my audience at this point but for different reasons right we just got here a different way but here's other things that are new um did you know what's the difference between an fda approved vaccine and an emergency use vaccine anybody anybody how many of you knew the difference because one of the big complaints and it's a good one is that the vaccinations are not fda approved that means something right doesn't that

[12:27]

that means something right doesn't that mean something so what's the difference between fda approved and what we've had so far well dr sanjay gupta answered that question on cnn um and if i can be if i can be objective for 15 seconds this is really good so cnn did good work here via sanjay gupta who often does good work and so i'd like to give him a shout out this is the first time i've seen this so this is like news that i wanted to see i was actively asking this exact question and he answered it it goes like this so the difference between emergency use and fda approval is two months of data for the emergency use versus full approval would be six months now don't you want to see six months you do right but let me ask you this um if you had six months of data

[13:30]

if you had six months of data would you feel comfortable with that
because i guess the fda is okay with six months would that be enough because the six months tell you that the long-term risks are uh are fine do you let me uh block a few people here anybody who's talking about moderate audio is going to get blocked hide that user do give me give me more moment just gonna hide some more users okay um so i think that the fda approval is useful because six months is probably a lot better than two months but how much difference do you think there would be between the two month data and the six month there we go there's another one hide this user yeah everybody who's using the word crackling and the audio we're just blocking you all and i know it's true i'm not arguing whether it's happening or not i'm just blocking you for saying

[14:32]

or not i'm just blocking you for saying it anyway because it's ruining the show so anymore anybody else want to get blocked i'm just blocking people on youtube now anybody else okay we're good for a while um so here's the other stuff apparently there's a whole bunch of paperwork and lawyer stuff uh and then there's review of manufacturing facilities which i imagine would be easy because they're already manufacturing um discussions about how it'll be marketing et cetera so a lot of it is paperwork and lawyers but there's also the six month thing now we've already had six months right don't you think that we have um
don't you think that we have enough information that the fda should at least have all the data right do you think that if the fda had seen six months of data which they've certainly seen by now don't you think from from the real world uh if they saw a problem we'd know about

[15:33]

uh if they saw a problem we'd know about it right they wouldn't wait for the full cycle to go through they say wait a minute wait a minute our six-month data shows a problem i need a confirmation on that but let me just put out the thought that we already know if the thing is safe for six months so can somebody fact check me on that send me a tweet or something do we have six months already because the vaccines have been out and would the fda have already told us if that data showed problems i feel like we're already there so the question the the part where people say hey we need fda approval you're waiting for lawyers i need a fact check on that right please but just fact check this if you're waiting for fda approval the only thing you're waiting for is lawyers has nothing to do with safety anymore give me a fact check on that i think

[16:33]

give me a fact check on that i think that's true that you you think you're waiting for the fda to approve it but you're actually just waiting for lawyers has nothing to do with safety at this point so if that put that factor into your variables i tweeted this because i feel as though the united states is on a a strategy that can only end in disaster and knows it but doesn't know how to get out of it and it looks like this there they're so i said there are two things the best way to beat the virus and the variants is a rapid pace of vaccination so if you could imagine that you could snap your fingers boop and everybody was vaccinated but it's impossible of course but if you could would that stop the virus and all the variants and the answer is yes yes if everybody got vaccinated by magic all at once the variance of the virus would be stopped but the best way to destroy civilization

[17:35]

but the best way to destroy civilization might be a sluggish vaccination pace in other words vaccinating slowly might be the very worst thing or too slow if you vaccinate too slow there's some thought and there's also some disagreement on this but that that alone would would spark evolution of variance so correct me if i'm wrong the ideal is that the government wants to vaccinate fast which might work the reality is that they're vaccinating too
too slow because there's resistance to vaccinations so are we not on a path that largely guarantees the destruction of civilization itself if things went the way it looks like they're going is that really a strategy and is the only hope of beating this persuading more people to get the vaccination like really really fast is that is our only hope persuasion for you know at least in terms of the strategy

[18:37]

strategy now let me let me ask you a question let me ask you a moral and ethical question and i'm going to use your opinions to guide my actions are you ready for this i don't believe that good persuaders have worked on the question of vaccinations i think it's mostly scientists and and politicians and stuff doing the best they can to persuade people but i don't believe anybody good has worked on it you know somebody who really has deep skills of this but i have some skills if we got to the point where we knew for sure this was true that fast vaccinations would end the pandemic but slow vaccinations the path were on would destroy civilization i'm exaggerating a little bit but it would just be the worst case scenario um i'm not exaggerating a little bit i'm exaggerating a lot but just say it's the worst case scenario is there a point is there a point where people like me who could be more

[19:38]

where people like me who could be more persuasive especially with a platform when does it become my responsibility an obligation to talk you into it does that ever happen that's a serious question because it's a question that i'm gonna have to deal with and it's life and death right it's literally life and death
okay karen karen you will be deleted from the channel um
her name was actually karen that's funny um
um so so here we go we've got we've got this situation where um i've got an ethical dilemma because you know there's a spider-man problem with the more influence you have the more responsibility of so i i'm sort of accidentally in a responsible position that i didn't want because i don't want to be responsible for your health

[20:40]

to be responsible for your health not even a little bit do not want to be responsible for your decisions or your health that's the last thing i want but if we're on a path to destruction and the only thing that looks like he could stop it is talking other people into getting vaccinations really fast what the hell am i going to do it's really a problem yeah i and and i'm certainly sensitive to the arctic to the argument that under no circumstance is it persuasive but here's the counter argument are you ready for the counter argument if we accept and i think everybody does that talking somebody into getting a medical procedure is kind of unethical they need to make their own decisions you don't want to influence that too much if you're not a doctor but at the same time here's the counter argument you're all being persuaded all the time you're not really making up your own decision it just feels like that your decision is the product of the

[21:42]

your decision is the product of the forces that are influencing you and a little bit about your brain architecture and experience but mostly it's about your influences i would say at this point maybe 80 is influences so you're being persuaded so if i persuade you you're still being persuaded if i don't persuade you you're still being persuaded so it could be that the unethical thing happens no matter what you do because you're not really making up your own decisions news is persuading you social media your friends you're basically being talked into it you just don't know it so if i persuaded you you'd know it and then it would be my fault right so i i would have to live out my days knowing that i had killed people because you know nothing is so safe that somebody isn't going to die from it somebody's going to be telling me that you know their daughter or son died because of some damn thing that i talked him into

[22:43]

talked him into all right so that's just the dilemma i'm dealing with right now let me ask you this question i asked this on twitter um if you are currently unvaccinated so this is only a question for unvaccinated people would you agree to get vaccinated if biden agreed to secure the border as part of the deal now you can answer this question in the comments as well but the way it was answered by just my twitter followers so very unscientific and biased poll 28 when i checked last said yes 28 percent said yes do you believe that now of course it's again it's very unscientific it's my followers etc but that was way more than i expected did you think it would be that high that's close to 25 okay you're funny you're funny but you maybe you're not wrong we'll see um here's how i take this

[23:46]

um here's how i take this one of the big lessons about persuasion and one of the things i try to do in these live live streams is always teach you something about persuasion because if you if you're picking that up just sort of by watching this content you're going to be way ahead in life so here's a lesson on persuasion um it takes a different approach for every person right people don't get persuaded by the same approach all the time if you want to if you want to persuade 100 people you might need 10 different techniques you know you're lucky if you can get 10 people with a technique so if you were trying to convince people to get vaccinated it looks like there's a substantial pool of them who would respond to a deal they take a deal because you've got this weird situation where you're asking people to take a personal risk like so here's the framing where it all makes sense um wait there's somebody else to block here

[24:53]

all right hide that user all right and your mic is not your shirt yeah my mic is on my shirt i'll get rid of you
so here's here's how i would frame this uh in the context of the pandemic the government is asking you to sacrifice for the collective am i right so the argument is not just it's good for you but that it's good for society that's why you should get vaccinated even if you're not worried about yourself it's good for society what argument does that sound like
audio is breaking up will hide you oh let me get my sign out sorry hold on

[25:57]

there you go so i know that i know the audio is not fine for some of you but i'm not going to do anything about it
it i'm not going to do anything about it because whatever it is it's not something i control um so here is the the lesson i keep getting interrupted by every wants to talk about the audio i know you're trying to help me please stop just stop um
i'm just so pissed off i can barely even talk
do you know some problems yeah i'm starting to heat up because there are some problems that are not big problems but they are so persistent that the little problem you know just gets just gets out of control so oh that's a good that's a good idea somebody says just turn off youtube that would solve my problem

[26:58]

youtube that would solve my problem all right so the point is that you're being asked to get your vaccination for society not necessarily for yourself that is socialism it's socialism am i right do you think that there it's a coincidence that a lot of republicans don't want the shot some of it is they don't trust the government don't trust whatever that's fine but don't you think that on some level getting shots for the benefit of other people is socialism doesn't it feel like that and you're seeing all the democrats it seems like tell you you should do it because they like their socialism doing things for the collective and the republicans just have sort of a just a natural aversion to not taking care of yourself first which by the way is a way better system take care of yourself first and that that's usually the best thing for other people this might be an exception it might be

[27:59]

exception it might be but here's why i think making a deal for closing the borders in in return for vaccinations could could actually convince maybe 20 or 30 percent of republicans why because it's a deal it's no longer uh it's no longer just socialism it's a deal and how many republicans really really really want the border to be closed and does it seem fair that you should be sacrificing for the collective while the borders open how can you ask me to sacrifice for the collective when you're not i need you to sacrifice for the collective a little bit then talk to me right if your government isn't doing the most basic hygiene for the country don't ask me to sacrifice for the country if you're not even trying you know we need to be in this together so that's why the idea of a deal

[28:59]

so that's why the idea of a deal where biden just says all right all right if the only way we're going to get past the pandemic and get enough people vaccinated is for me to close the border tight i hate doing it it's against everything i believe but i got to do it would you get vaccinated then a lot of people said yes that's never gonna happen but it's an interesting persuasion lesson i think all right here's something that pisses me off a lot
yeah so i'm hearing that there's static on youtube but it's clear on locals looks like something on my end but it's probably not all right um
i know if if you have my phone number and you want to text me in the middle of the live stream it does help me and it really pisses me off at the same time so thank you for helping me you really

[30:01]

so thank you for helping me you really pissed me off at the same time but thank you i mean i appreciate it um rapid testing so a year ago the smart people were saying that if we had rapid testing even if it was less accurate it would squash the virus because we could just be testing the hell out of it and um and then we could uh you know even if it wasn't accurate as
as as accurate as other tests we'd still get on top of it now it's a year later and the vaccinations don't seem to be enough where is my rapid test i know somebody who has coveted symptoms who has to wait three days for a result three days hey youtube um we're done with you too many people complaining about the sound if you want to go over to uh the locals platform for the rest of this uh go to scottadams.locals.com or see my tweet where there's a where

[31:01]

or see my tweet where there's a where there's a link and you can go over to locals normally it's a subscription service but i opened it just for this video so you can see that with no n without any commercial content and apparently with uh without whatever audio problems you're having so goodbye to youtube
all right youtube's gone um so uh somebody needs to go to jail
let me say that again as clearly as possible somebody needs to go to jail for the fact that we don't have rapid testing because maybe there's something completely legal that happened that's keeping this from being widely available but i don't think so
so it almost has to be something illegal to have stopped something so obviously useful from happening it's doable it's useful it would stop the biggest problem in the world we know how to do it it's straightforward

[32:01]

straightforward there's no real argument about the math of it and we don't have it tell me one reason that doesn't have to do with illegality bribes pharmaceuticals preventing it whatever tell me one reason that we don't have that it's not because of crime it's got to be crime somebody needs to be in jail and i'm talking about like serious jail i'm talking about you know 30 years because somebody is doing something that is killing hundreds of thousands of us and crushing the economy and it's got to be somebody doing it for money because nobody's going to do it for any other reason right even incompetence can't get you there it can't be explained by incompetence politics can't be explained by science can't be explained by money it's got to be crime and why is there not even a story about it you know where where is the press doing the story about how we would be past the problem already or at least we'd be handling it much better if we had rapid testing and we don't

[33:05]

if we had rapid testing and we don't where's the news why am i asking this question all right here's the maybe good news monoclonal antibodies we now know that a subcutaneous shot which would be a really tiny needle so it just gets it into your skin it doesn't have to go too deep into your arm or anything so unlike the regular shots it would just be a tiny little a little prick let's say uh and i guess the results are just amazing it just really just knocks out the the covet if you already have symptoms it just whacks it out and your odds of being hospitalized if you get that in time within 10 days i guess your odds of being hospitalized just drop to practically nothing now here's my question for those of you who are afraid of getting the vaccine
would you be afraid of getting the monoclonal antibodies and why would one be different is it

[34:05]

and why would one be different is it because it's different technology is it because the monoclonal antibodies have been around longer and used in different contexts because my understanding is it would be a cocktail it would be at least two of them i think maybe two of them mixed together or something like that and
isn't that something that's never been used for this
i need to look into it first yeah so my question is how many people who would not want to get a vaccination are going to end up infected and then when the doctor says well you're infected our best treatment is these monoclonal antibodies are you going to say to them whoa i didn't get the vaccination because i wasn't so sure about them you better not give me the monoclonal antibodies either i'll bet zero people will say that about zero people will say that about almost every person who said no to the vaccination will just sort of routinely say yes to what the doctor

[35:05]

routinely say yes to what the doctor says you got to do now if you're actually sitting in the doctor's office with covent that's been tested and the doctor says if i put this in your arm your wrist goes to zero if i don't you're gonna have a really hard time and maybe you might die are you gonna have them put the uh the monoclonal antibody in you yeah you are yeah you are ever every fear you had about the the vaccination will just go away and then they'll give you this other thing that also hasn't been approved by the fda for this it's been around long enough that i wouldn't worry about it but it's kind of the same question if you've got six months of data on the vaccinations which we do because it's been used for that long it would have been great if we had six months before we started to use them at all but we have six months now and if the fda isn't stopping it with the data they've already seen i would say that the vaccinations and

[36:07]

i would say that the vaccinations and the monoclonal antibodies would be roughly similar risk would you say they're both things that have been around long enough that if there were problems we'd know it and
and they're still kind of newish for this application seems like a fairly similar risk to me all right california recall election for the governor is going to have mail-in ballots
can we have an election without covid please please can we have an election without any pandemic just wants please well um i don't know what that's going to do to the california election but let me make a guess if gavin newsom wins which i think most people expect he will will the republicans feel that the election was held fairly huh let me predict the future

[37:15]

no they think it's unfair so we're basically creating just recreating the the big lie situation as the democrats like to call it
all right that's all i've got for today um i will uh figure out what the hell is wrong with my audio situation
i will tell you that i have two separate systems yeah somebody's saying it's the splitter it's really the only common system but do you really think the splitter is the problem do you somebody says it sounds like rf interference you know one thing it could be oh you know let me test it i'm gonna test it on you right so i've got my phone here um let me tell you see if i put it somewhere if i can create the problem all right so i'm going to put my phone right next to possibly low battery now i don't have a low battery on anything everything's plugged in except my phone

[38:16]

everything's plugged in except my phone and that's fully charged so you don't hear anything if i get near you with the phone right turn the phone off somebody says well the sound is good right now um the reason i'm using my phone is because my none of my printers in the house work too loud
next time it happens turn off the phone i can't because i don't have any printers in the house they all stopped working and it's the only way i can see my notes so impedance matching is not good with a splitter well i'm um my impedance is the same it goes to the same equipment
yeah the most obvious thing to do is i'll just use two microphones and if that's a problem i'd be surprised i don't think i have a loose connection because i've got these high-end ion connections i've checked them all

[39:24]

so the crack was only on youtube swap the mics well there's one mic going to both systems but i'll do two mics tomorrow
i wonder if has to do with which system turned on first that could be it uh swap the outputs
well it's got to be something that's common to both systems all right that's all for today and i will talk to you tomorrow