Episode 1200 Scott Adams - Don't Miss My Impression of Reporters Looking at the #Kraken, Section 230

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I would like to begin my program with an impression.

Now, I I'm not like an expert at impressions, so bear with me as I build my talent stack in doing impressions.

This first impression I call a mainstream reporter reviewing Cydney Powell's uh allegations which she's recently filed called the Kraken.

Let us let us refer to them as the Kraken.

And here is a mainstream reporter looking at her evidence for the first time.

Let's see what kind of baseless claims we got here.

Oh, typo.

Typo.

Another typo.

What in the world?

And that's just page one.

First page.

Two typos.

Can't take you seriously.

How many pages is this thing?

Um, seems to be almost you could almost say the allegations are widespread, but I don't think I can say that.

So, instead, I better look at the data.

got a lot of a lot of legal terms in here I don't really understand because I went to journalism school and all right so I don't understand the legal parts I'll skip those but what well there's graphs there's graphs and exhibits and math but I don't know anything about math so I can't tell if these are true or valid or not and I can't read the law exactly.

So, how am I going to summarize hundreds of complaints from different people, eyewitness reports, data?

I got it.

It's all baseless.

You know why?

I don't understand it.

I don't really have time to get into it.

So, I think it's all just baseless.

It's baseless.

And that is why I don't do impressions now.

You know, but let's talk about all the baselessness and stuff.

I'm going to jump around a little bit.

Let me ask you this question.

Has the news of the corona virus vaccination made you feel like you want to take more risks because you feel like help is on the way or do you feel like taking even less risk because you'd feel so stupid if you got the corona virus and you know had some lasting problem or you died when you only had to wait a few months.

Which way does it go for you?

because I found myself feeling the following and and it's I'll give you an analogy.

I always thought that if I were to die doing something stupid, I would hope that the death would be instant because I have this weird fear of knowing that I just did something that's going to kill me, but I didn't die right away.

So, I have to not only know I'm dying, but know that I was so stupid I shouldn't have done whatever it was that was going to kill me.

And for some reason, that that plays a big psychological role in my life.

Completely irrational.

I'm not claiming has any rational basis but my experience so far is that my willingness to accept uh social distancing and masks and lockdowns and a disruption in my life is much higher than it was.

I think many of you are going the opposite direction, saying, "Ah, help is on the way.

We can loosen up a little bit, you know, because we'll still get the vaccine, so we'll be we'll be okay in the long run." And I'm thinking the opposite.

I'm feeling as though because I'm I'm sort of in the uh the bottom half of the class of people who have to worry about the Corona virus because I've got a comorbidity.

I've got asthma and I'm over a certain age.

So, I'm in starting to get close to that range where it's dangerous.

And here's what I felt.

So, this is just my internal feeling.

I don't recommend it for you, right?

I'm not trying to influence you to think the way I'm thinking.

I just think it's useful to know how people are processing this situation.

And the way I'm processing it is I've never felt as much personal responsibility as I feel right now.

And what I mean by that is before I was willing to say, well, you know, it's my life.

I'll take a risk if I want to.

But of course, that's short sure shortsighted because it's not just your risk.

You're filling up an ICU.

You're causing problems for people who love you.

You know, you're using up resources, etc.

And so I've decided that the the most, let's say, defensible, morally defensible thing that I can do is to suck it up because what you don't need is for me to be sick, right?

Don't you want that ICU bed to be available?

Don't you want to not lose Coffee with Scott Adams?

Don't you want to, you know, make sure the resources don't get sucked up?

Don't you want to make sure I don't infect a frontline health care worker?

You want that, right?

My personal responsibility as a person who's in that vulnerable class, albeit at the low end.

I'm not I'm not highly vulnerable.

I'm sure I'd be fine as well, but I'm in the vulnerable class.

So, here's my commitment to you.

I'm going to be extra extra cautious and the only reason I'm going to be extra cautious is for really for your benefit because I'm in the dangerous class.

Now, at the same time, I don't care if you're not.

Now, can that be consistent?

Is it consistent for me to say I'm personally going to take more precaution because I don't want you to have to deal with me being sick?

But at the same time, I think I can be consistent by saying if you're just pick a number.

If you're 25, I don't care what you do.

I I just don't care.

You could take some extra risks if you want to because I'm going to be taking some extra precautions.

So, I'm hoping my extra precautions will compensate for your maybe a little extra risky behavior.

It's going to happen anyway.

It's not like it's up to me.

It's just going to happen anyway.

So, I'm just just interested how you process this.

I would like to see extra maybe a little extra caution on the vulnerable and maybe a little looser on everybody else so that we can have a real life.

One of the things that we consistently do wrong uh as a civilization is that um we tend to bucketize our topics because it's hard to talk about things until you can put them in categories.

But this ends up fooling us because we imagine that the category that we put something into just to make it easy to talk about it, we think it's meaningful.

But usually it's just a way to talk about it.

Now let me give you an example.

If I said to you uh there's a decision about uh co health but then the other variable is the economy and how the economy also translates through to health.

You need a good economy to have good health.

So we started out with people saying hey you're focusing too much on just the direct observable health care problem and you're not focusing enough on this other variable which is the economy which also affects your healthare.

Now I feel as if um collectively the the minds of the world have have indeed shifted so that now most of us I think are now capable of saying oh yeah I get it.

You can die in two different ways.

The economy could be bad or the virus gets you.

So you have to you have to have a smart balance of those things to get the the right result.

What's being left out?

So now you've done a good job.

You said, "Oh, wait.

My buckets, my health care bucket is not really separate from my economy bucket.

It's just that we put them in buckets because then you've got an economist who looks at the economy.

You got doctors looking at the health care.

It makes things easier, but it can mislead you because these are not separate buckets.

It's closer to being one bucket, but it's just easier to talk about it as two because of the way we separate our experts, right?

But what's missing?

That's two big variables, economy and healthcare.

What one's missing?

And and this will be your test for a blind spot.

In the comments, tell me what topic which is as big as those.

It's as big as a pandemic.

It's bigger actually.

It's bigger than a pandemic and it's at least as big as the economy in importance.

Somebody says freedom.

Uh that is a correct answer but not the one I'm looking for.

All right.

The freedom question is a little trickier.

So that's not what I'm going for.

But but you're correct, right?

So I'll give you full credit for the answer, but it's not where I'm trying to take you.

There we go.

Boom.

Somebody got the right answer.

Look at all the people who answered and only one person got the right answer.

Military safety, homeland security.

Why?

Because you can't have a military without a strong economy.

And even if you imagined that your economy still existed, but it took a hit, let's say your economy goes down 20%.

Will your military be as ready?

Not a chance.

Not a chance because most of your money has to go toward keeping people alive in the short run.

Your military is a little bit of a luxury and that's that's where your last, you know, your last dollar goes to that.

It's like, well, I got to do this, too.

You would imagine it could be your top priority, but living today is going to be your top priority.

So, here's the thing.

If you imagine that the military questions are this separate bucket, then you can ignore it, right?

Just ignore it.

It's that's another bucket.

We're not even talking about that.

I'm talking about Corona virus.

That's the bucket I'm talking about.

But if you don't look at this problem as a health care plus economy plus homeland defense, military essentially, you've missed onethird of the decision.

You know, I'm I'm speaking in very rough terms.

They're not really one-third, but a gigantic part of this decision is what are you doing to your homeland defense, right?

What does China does China get, let's say, uh like a a big gain and it catches up to us economically?

What would that do to your military preparedness?

If China pulls to parody with economy, you're in trouble, right?

The military is almost perfectly correlated with the strength of your economy.

You want to go a little bit further?

Let me go a little bit further.

We're looking at the climate.

When you look at the climate, of course, we made the mistake of saying, "Hey, this, you know, this climate could be dangerous and kill people, etc." But at least we're smart enough to say, "Oh, but there's also there's also this economic part.

It's not just about, you know, that you would be dangerously at risk healthwise if global warming is what the the scientists are telling you.

What's missing?

What's missing once again is your military.

Can you have a strong homeland security and a strong military in this day and age if you don't have energy independence and if it isn't carbon-based now nuclear-based is in there too.

You you got to have that.

Could you have an entirely green economy?

Let's say it was possible.

Let's say the numbers worked.

There's some breakthroughs in solar power.

So, you got you got a really good green economy.

You get rid of your oil.

You get rid of your coal.

What happens to you?

Well, you become conquered by China guaranteed.

Because if you're powering your tanks with electricity and solar panels, I mean, I'm using a ridiculous example.

You don't really have a military.

So when people are talking about the Green New Deal, sometimes they'll allow that there's an economic element to that.

They'll say it's positive, not negative.

I would say that if you don't have an oilbased or a carbon-based energy system with independence, you don't have a military.

You do not have a military if you have the Green New Deal.

What if you get rid of your nuclear?

If you get rid of your nuclear capabilities as uh let's say a domestic power source, you also get rid of your nuclear experts and suddenly you can't do nuclear for military either.

And you kind of need it for military because you're not going to power your, you know, your submarines, etc.

Now, what about space?

Is it possible to be safe if your nemesis controls space and you don't?

It is not possible.

It is not even slightly possible that you could be militarily safe if your enemy controls space above you.

It's just not even slightly possible that you could be safe from that.

All right.

You might have mutually assured destruction, but you'd be in a a big problem.

Now, what are you going to need to have a robust space force?

Nuclear power.

There probably isn't any alternative to that, right?

Eventually, space force will be nuclearpowered unless somebody invents, you know, warp drive or something.

I don't see that coming.

So, anytime that people have these conversations where they've simplified it to health versus economics, here's the recording that should play in your mind.

You left out the military because it's all connected.

And the military is not trivial.

It's it's necessary, right?

It's just not optional.

Now, we've lived, most of us have been born into a world where the United States was so dominant militarily that you have the luxury of not thinking about it as much.

It's like, well, we're militarily dominant, nobody's going to attack our homeland, you know, at least not a military force, just terrorists.

And I got a feeling that if you start messing with the uh the energy production, you might clean up the sky a little bit, but you're going to do at the risk of your military.

So, if you haven't included that, you're not really doing a proper analysis.

Let's talk about Facebook.

We're learning that Facebook had some kind of what they called a break the glass plan where if things were bad after the election, in other words, if society was starting to break down because of the election results, they were going to kick into uh into play uh a change in the algorithm that would spike in visibility the mainstream publishers such as, and I'm not making this up, this is the actual This is the actual list such as CNN, NPR and the New York Times and it would deemphasize Breitbart and some other site that I don't remember.

So what would be the justification for boosting CNN, NPR and New York Times but deemphasizing Breitbart?

Well, the word that they've injected into this is hyperpartisan.

So they've decided to label Breitbart hyperartisan while saying that CNN, NPR, and New York Times are not.

Now, is it just me or is that hilarious?

Let me let me just walk you through some examples.

Was it Breitbart that told you the Fine People hoax?

Nope.

Breitbart told you that it was a hoax, showed you the transcript, did it quite a few times.

Actually, Joel Pollock did that a number of times.

So CNN, NPR, and New York Times reported the Fine People hoax as true, which ripped the country apart and probably changed the election result.

Breitbart reported it accurately, but they're being called hyperartisan.

How about the uh hoax that the president suggested or noodled on the idea of drinking bleach, which of course never happened?

Not even close.

Did Breitbart report that the president thought about drinking bleach?

No.

They reported it as a hoax, which it was.

What did CNN, NPR, and New York Times report?

They reported the hoax is true.

Right now, I don't think they all used the word bleach.

CNN did.

They may have said injecting disinfectants you, which is the same story.

They just don't use the word bleach.

All right.

How about um do I really need to go down the list?

I don't need to go down the list anymore, right?

What was the last uh fake story you read in Breitbart?

I mean, I I usually for I consume the news based on links that people send me.

So, I don't read every word of any of these publications.

You know, I read the things that people say, "Hey, you should look at this." But I don't think that this characterization of hyperartisanship could hold up to even the smallest bit of scrutiny.

It's not even close to being an accurate framing of reality and it's pretty easy to prove.

You know, all you have to do is look at the hoax reporting.

Who reported the most hoaxes?

I don't think it's going to be close, but you know, I haven't looked into it, but I don't think it's close.

And so if Facebook can decide that one site that that reports the truth in terms of those hoaxes, that's the part I know about, and they can boost the ones that reported the lies and still are.

How do you say that Facebook is not a publisher?

Because this is the very definition of a publishing decision.

They've made a judgment call, a wrong one, a very wrong one, but you know, that's how judgment works.

You don't get them all right.

Um, it's a judgment call on what content you should see.

That is section 230.

That is a publisher.

It's not even close to being a communication platform.

We're not even in the same galaxy as being as being like the phone company.

When was the last time the phone company told you you couldn't couldn't make a phone call because the person you're calling was hyperartisan?

It's like, I'm sorry, we cannot connect this number.

You are dialing your friend who is hyperartisan.

Let us refer you to some Democrats who are more more less hyperartisan.

Does the phone ever do that?

I mean, I don't make many phone calls anymore because phone calls are for losers, but I feel as if that feature is not in my phone.

Am I wrong about that?

And and isn't the isn't the whole thing about whether they're whether they're editing content?

That's the whole question, right?

Why are we even talking about this?

Why is this even a question?

We're way beyond the fact where you can even wonder, "Huh, I wonder if they're making editorial decisions." Who is wondering that?

Who is so stupid that they don't see that this is 100% publishing?

It's not even slightly not publishing.

I have to admit this is, is this the first time I've talked about this topic?

Maybe the first time in any detail.

And the reason is I've I've sort of monitored this section 230 thing and I thought to myself, well, this is more of a lawyer question because as soon as you get into these gray areas, if you're not a lawyer, the gray is just gray.

And even if you are a lawyer, it's probably still gray.

And I thought, ah, this isn't really the topic I can add anything to because, you know, maybe it's hard to tell where do you draw that line between editorial decisions and and being a good citizen, which is getting rid of stuff that could be damaging, right?

I thought it's a little unclear.

It's not unclear.

Now, did you see what they did?

They just they just uh uh Twitter just suspended the website for the plot against the president, a documentary which is probably the most successful documentary uh of all of 2020.

And I think they may have forwarded some of Sydney's Powell's claims or something and they got suspended.

What the is that?

That's not protecting us.

That's editorial.

That's an editorial call purely.

It's not even close to not being an editorial call.

All right.

So, let us leave behind any notion that there's an some ambiguity in this decision.

That ambiguity is gone.

Let's talk about uh this racist called uh Obama.

So, he is in the news saying that uh one of the explanations he believes for why Trump got as many votes as he did is that he believes that somebody told white men that they're victims.

That's right.

President Obama thinks that uh white men have been brainwashed by someone into thinking that they're victims in this world.

Well, Obama, uh, that makes you a racist.

There's no other way around this because he just said, and I don't think this is I don't I'm going to put an interpretation on him and I'm going to summarize his thought.

I don't think that I'm using hyperbole.

All right?

So, I'm going to attempt to not make this superartisan slash, you know, exaggerated just because I can, right?

I'm going to try to play it right down the middle and you tell me if this is not a fair statement.

When Obama says that somebody convinced white men that they're victims, here's what I hear.

White men lives don't matter.

White male lives don't matter.

That's what you're saying, right?

Because let me explain this to you.

Could it be true that there's a difference in the average of the outcomes of white people and black people?

Of course, we all see that.

Nobody's questioning there's a different in outcome.

Could it be that the legacy of slavery, you know, is rippling into into the the current?

I say yes.

I say that's obviously true.

But having said that, we're talking about the average.

Do you think that the person who lost their job because the factory moved to China, do you think that person is unworthy of empathy?

Is that person not a victim?

Now, they're not a victim alone because there would be people in every group that would lose their jobs the same way.

But are they not victims if they lost their jobs for other people's decisions?

Um, are there not white men who were born as children into bad situations for which the baby is not responsible?

How is that different than a black child born in the United States through no fault of their own, they're born into a world that has a legacy of slavery which will affect them their whole life?

What about a a white male who was born into this world and doesn't have, let's say, a high IQ, right?

Are are you are you doing are you going to do are you going to do great if you don't have a high IQ in 2020?

Probably not.

Do you deserve some sympathy or empathy for being sort of in a tough situation?

I think so.

If you're born into a poor family, but you're white, is that not worthy of empathy?

I have empathy for that.

How could you not have empathy for a white person born into a bad situation?

Is it just because they're white?

Because I think that's what Obama's saying.

He's saying you could have all kinds of problems, but if you're a white man, doesn't matter because the there's something about the average that's different.

And the average is different, right?

Nobody's arguing that.

But it doesn't matter to the individual.

Do you know that when we vote, Mr.

racist Obama piece of Do you know that when people vote, they don't vote as a group?

I don't know if you knew that.

It's an individual thing.

An individual white male will vote or not vote.

They don't vote as a group.

When people vote, they don't say, "Well, what's my group doing?" Nope.

They might vote similarly, but they're voting for themselves and their own situation, and they absolutely deserve empathy if they were born into a bad situation.

How many white people are just killing it?

You know, just killing it in life.

Well, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's not most.

It's not most, you know.

I don't know what the number is, but even if half of white men are killing it in life, I doubt that's the number, but that leaves a lot of people who were just born into a bad situation or, you know, got there, however they did, but Obama says white men's lives don't matter in effect.

One of the that's probably the most racist thing I've seen a public official say.

Would you agree?

Have you ever heard any public official say anything that was even close, even in the range of being as racist as what Obama said and was reported by the mainstream media as just a just a comment.

That's it.

Just a comment.

Amazing.

So, Seth Mc.

Farland um you know him uh a brilliant entertainer and creator has created among other things the family guy and very successful guy.

But when he talks about politics, um, he is sometimes, let's say, his skill stack might might be a few a few pancakes short.

And I only mock him because he uh his TV show, Family Guy, has mocked me personally, meaning they've mocked Dilbert as a product.

So that's mocking me.

Had he never mocked me in public, meaning his property, not him personally necessarily, I would not bother with him, he would just be another person with an opinion.

And you know, sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't.

But he has very strong opinions on politics and he is unique and that he's a perfect example of what I write about in my book, Loser Think.

lose think uh which is you can be really smart and he is really smart but you could have blind spots if your talent stack does not have let's say you know uh economics engineering there are lots of things which you could have blind spots in and he's like the best example you'll ever see so he's talking about the Supreme Court decision that allowed the churches to uh operate during the pandemic and So Seth tweets us about Gorsuch.

He says, "Gorsuch, if you can't make the distinction between the risk level of a small business business like a liquor store and massive indoor gatherings like a church with regard to raging pandemic, you are more scientifically illiterate than the man who appointed you." Now, do you think that Gorsuch was making a scientific legal decision?

What the hell is wrong with with Seth Mc.

Farland?

The law and the Supreme Court is making a legal decision.

That's it.

It's a legal decision.

He's not making a scientific decision.

He's not ruling whether masks work.

He's not ruling whether uh social distancing works.

So, I tweeted back at him, "Was it a one variable problem?" because I'm pretty sure there's another variable which is freedom, freedom of religion.

You know, there are a few other variables in there, Seth.

And the court doesn't rule on all of those variables, just the one.

Uh here's a question I asked just to be provocative, just for fun.

So critics critics have been calling Trump a con man since the beginning since he was running for office.

It's the most common insult you hear, not counting Orange Hill, I guess.

So con man, con man, con man.

But they also observe that he apparently used those con man skills to become president of the United States.

So, do you think that the people who think he's a con man and used those skills and no other skills to get the most prized highest office in the entire United States?

Well, that would be successful, right?

So if you think it's con man skills and that's what he used and that it worked to get the highest land in the job running against the most qualified candidate they said uh in years.

Wouldn't you say that he's really good at being a con man if that was your frame?

It's not my frame.

But if you but my critics frame say he's a con man.

Wouldn't they also have to conclude that if they hate everything about why he's doing it, his intentions, even if all of that's true?

It's not.

But suppose all of that was true.

Wouldn't they still agree that he's good at it?

I think so.

Right now, if somebody is that good that they become president, would you call them an expert?

Do you think that if it comes to conning people, wouldn't you call President Trump, if you're one of his critics, wouldn't you say he's an expert at that?

I mean, he did become president.

I There are people who are writing books about his technique, including me.

It's, you know, talking about it all the time.

I'd say he's an expert at identifying For example, did he not correctly identify that the Paris climate accord, although well-intentioned, was ultimately a bunch of He did.

Right now, maybe those con man skills, according to his critics, came in handy there because he spotted a con that other people even still think is real.

How about uh comments on other things that look like How about when Kerry and all the experts said, "Hey, you can never uh create peace in the Middle East unless you get Iran on board and Palestinians first." And then apparently he's doing it.

So he's doing something that was impossible.

It seems to be getting it done.

I don't know how you could conclude given all of the examples that he's not an expert at being a con or or recognizing a con if you're his critic.

So here's the question.

If he's an expert and he's looking at the election and he says in my expert opinion effectively, this is obviously a con.

Why would you not listen to the expert?

President Trump's critics are obsessed with the question of listen to the expert.

I would I would say that they have deemed Trump an expert in cons.

He just called out the biggest con you've ever seen, which is the election.

Why wouldn't you believe him?

He is an expert at this.

Do you do you think that Rudy Giuliani is not an expert at identifying organized crime?

He is.

He is an expert at recognizing organized crime.

In fact, I don't know who would be better at it.

If you were going to pick one person in the whole United States that you had to trust to identify organized crime based on preliminary indications, you know, before it goes through court, who would you pick ahead of Trump and Rudy Giuliani?

I don't think there's anybody I would pick ahead of those two.

They're pretty much experts at this anyway.

Now, uh, somebody weighed in and said, uh, that the the reason you wouldn't trust Trump on this is because this, too, is another con, which was pretty clever answer.

Remember, I'm doing this just for fun.

I'm not trying to be too logical here.

But what I pointed out in return is that that's no different than your other experts.

Because if you can't trust Trump to be an expert on cons because he might be conning you about the con, how is that different from your financial adviser?

It's not.

You just think it is.

Your financial adviser wants you to buy uh financial products that the financial adviser gets a cut of.

Your financial adviser isn't trying to make you rich.

Your financial adviser is making him rich.

or her rich, right?

Financial advice is a con.

How about scientific advice?

Well, we're pretty aware that our scientists are either, you know, being paid by uh oil companies or they're, you know, they're wedded to the green deal and they'll they'll benefit if the green thing happens bigger.

It's all cons.

We don't have objective experts.

That's not a thing.

All the experts have something in it for themselves.

So if Trump is an expert on cons, but the problem is he's also might be doing a con.

That's exactly the same as every one of the experts that Biden tells you to believe.

Everyone.

They all have an incentive for the con, which doesn't mean they're all conning, but they've all got an incentive.

So, I wouldn't be so sure that your experts are any better than than Trump on any question.

Um, Trump tweeted that section 230 must be immediately terminated.

Let me give you some more examples of why that's true.

Um, Senator Mastrianiano, who organized that Gettysburg hearing on the election, alleged fraud, he his accounts got suspended by Twitter.

A senator suspended by Twitter.

And I'm pretty sure, I'm not I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure that whatever got him suspended was an opinion.

if he got it suspended for an opinion.

Now, it might have been wrong.

It might have been right, but that's not the criteria, is it?

It looks like um Twitter has decided that they will just judge what's true and what's not.

They will overrule a senator and they will decide that you, as somebody who voted for that senator, can't hear what he has to say.

Twitter decided that Twitter decide decided to disenfranchise you from your elected official and make sure that the most common way you could find out what he was thinking is removed from your toolbox temporarily in this case, but they can do it as many times as they need to.

All right.

How about uh so now you've seen the plot against the president removed.

You've seen Senator Mastriano being suspended and you've seen um Facebook's deal with promoting the so-called less hyperartisan stuff, which is If if ever there was a time to do this section 230 thing, now it's a slam dunk.

There really is no argument anymore.

It's gone, you know.

And and believe me, I I was completely I would say I was completely unconvinced one week ago.

I mean, I didn't have a decision either way.

I was just sort of monitoring it, trying to figure out if I could form a decision, but now I would say this as clear as it could possib Oh, also the links to Sydney Powell's uh documents, I think those were removed, too.

All right.

I asked this question.

Uh, is it technically possible to make a secure voting app?

I asked this because I think there's going to be a big difference in the opinions of people who know how to do stuff versus the people who don't know how to do stuff.

And I feel um, and this is more of a gut feeling based on experience that it's doable.

I think maybe it wasn't doable before blockchain.

I think maybe it wasn't doable before facial recognition, before you could take a fingerprint, before you could do lots of other stuff.

But I think at the moment we finally have all the pieces that we could build an app that would be at least way more secure than what we have.

Nothing's 100% I guess.

And I have seen people say, "Oh, you think blockchain's the answer, but somebody thinks maybe not." So, I don't know that it's a settled question, but like I said, somebody should build the app and then just run it in parallel for the next election.

And don't count the app.

Just run it in parallel and see what you get.

See if you learn anything.

But we should definitely be running one in parallel by 2022.

It doesn't take that long to build an app.

Let's see some prototypes.

We we should have a dozen different prototypes, different startups or whatever, and we should be able to run them all.

I would say the main thing that you need to get a fair election is that you can identify the the voter, which the app can do better than than a human can do.

And that um and that the voter can audit their own vote all the way to the end point and they can make sure that their vote got recorded the way they wanted it to.

Could the app be built to do that?

I say yes.

There's lots of ways to do it wrong, but I think you could do it.

Um CBS News is reporting and reporting is uh a stretch that Trump supporters are reportedly calling for a boycott uh on voting in the Senate election.

Now, do you believe that story?

Now, do you think that CBS News is really reporting this as news, because it's real, that Trump supporters might want to not vote in the Senate election?

Oh my god, this could not be more obvious propaganda.

They're trying to create this idea that Trump supporters would not vote on a principle.

There are no Trump supporters recommending a boycott.

This is disinformation.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't some one idiot somewhere who would say anything, but no, it's not true that Trump supporters are considering not voting in the most important election in their lives.

No, that is not.

Somebody says Ally was trying to push it.

No, he wasn't.

All right.

If you're telling me that Elliot Alexander was convincing uh Republicans to not vote in the Senate race, don't even Don't even try to tell me that.

Don't try to tell me that.

It can't be true.

Now, I know you're going to send me a tweet and you're going to think that it says that.

I'll bet it doesn't.

I I'll make you a bet.

So, all of you have seen the facts, right?

So those who are saying that it's real and that Ali Alexander is pushing it, I haven't seen it.

So even with no facts and no information, I will say with confidence it's not true.

I'll bet if you read it and if you ask him, you'll find out that you're misinterpreting something.

All right.

Somebody uh on Periscope, somebody's saying he retracted it.

Are you happy?

I guarantee Al Alexander.

All right.

And here here's why I guarantee it.

He's not an idiot.

You would have to be the biggest idiot in the world to be pushing that.

Now, if he played with it and retracted it, that's, you know, he may have some scheme going in there in terms of communication style, but there's no way he thinks that's a good idea.

All right.

Um, Trump said that he would leave office if he loses the electoral college.

Of course, that's a big if, I suppose, but I think at this point we should uh review our predictions.

If you predicted that Trump would lose in the electoral college and remain in office or even try to remain in office, you need to check your ability to predict.

I would say anybody who made this prediction that Trump would fight to remain in office even even at the risk of violence if the electoral college said he lost.

You really have to check your ability to predict because you're terrible at predicting.

If you had not predicted that Trump would get elected in 2016, I would say that was pretty reasonable.

Like you you're not a bad predictor if you got that one wrong.

I think you're probably a good predictor if you got it right, but there wouldn't be anything dumb or stupid about, you know, getting that wrong.

Right.

Likewise, in this this last election, no matter who you predicted was going to win, if you got it right or you got it wrong, it's not saying too much about your predictive ability because, you know, the odds are it was going to be close.

But if you predicted that the president would use violence to try to stay in office, you really have to ask yourself if you're good at predicting because you might be really, really bad at predicting.

I don't think there was anything more predictable than the fact that he wouldn't do that.

It's not even close to something that seems, you know, in the neighborhood if possible.

All right.

I still could be lo still could be wrong, right?

There's always a nonzero chance anything could happen.

But I think you really have to check yourself if you predict that.

All right.

Uh USA Today says this, uh nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

State officials from both parties as well as international observers have also stated that the 2020 election went well.

That is pure propaganda.

Let me break it apart.

They say nonpartisan investigators looked into the election.

Who is a nonpartisan investigator?

In 2020, the USA Today is trying to tell you, a thinking human being who lives in the world, that there exists such a thing as a nonpartisan investigator into our elections.

Okay, USA Today, we're not idiots.

There's no such thing as a nonpartisan investigator.

There might be somebody who lied to you and you're dumb enough to believe it.

There are no nonpartisan investigators.

None.

none.

They don't exist.

Uh and then they say, "Previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare." Did they?

Or did they simply find that they didn't find it?

All they know is that they didn't find it.

There are lots of things which exist which I can't find.

Does gold exist?

I think gold exists.

I looked in my backyard and I didn't find any.

So, does gold not exist?

Because I looked in my whole backyard and I don't think there was any gold back there.

So, every part of this statement just reeks of not even trying to be something like news.

Not even trying.

I think we need a high school class in spotting propaganda.

And I tweeted that and a few people said they actually have taken that course.

So apparently at le in at least one private school that I heard of, they do actually have a class or at least section of a class where they're asked to read uh headlines in the news and pick out the propaganda from the news.

Wouldn't that be a great uh class?

Wouldn't you want your own kid to have a class that taught them to look at headlines and then do a report on how it was really propaganda?

That's a good class.

All right, let's have some more of those.

Um, there's some fake news on net deaths which will fool many of you.

Probably has.

Allegedly there was some John Hopkins study showing that the rate of deaths is the similar to previous years which is what you want to believe right if if you want to be a corona virus I don't know denier or whatever don't you kind of want to believe that it's all just a hoax don't you want to believe that it's not really that bad and maybe it's just over if we just realize it's it's not that bad well it took about two seconds for people to call on that.

I called on it without research and I did it on the basis.

If this were true that John Hopkins had done a study and shown that there were no excess deaths, it would be the biggest headline in the country.

And if even if the mainstream media ignored it, it would at least be on the places that sometimes will give you real news.

it wouldn't be invisible and it wouldn't be only in this tweet.

So, one of the things I would teach my class, my high school class on spotting propaganda if it existed was that news that comes from one source and doesn't seem to spread to the other sources at the same time it would be the biggest story in the whole country.

That is a really good, you know, indicator.

So sure enough, the page that had that claim was deleted, you know, within hours.

It was deleted as being BS and denied.

So there is no there is no such thing as some evidence that the corona virus is not killing people at a higher level than if we had a regular uh economy.

Here's another dog that isn't barking.

So now for it's been over a day, right, that the Cydney Powell accusations have been out, the Kraken, if you will.

Lots and lots of claims in the I guess two different lawsuits and plenty of claims.

Now, I've seen lots of stories about the typos.

I've seen lots of stories talking about the people, you know, Cydney Powell, this or that.

Have you seen any mainstream media entity go through the accusations and attempt to debunk them or attempt to confirm them?

Shouldn't that be a really big story?

Isn't that kind of important to know?

Are those real?

Now, when I was doing my uh humorous uh impression of the reporters looking at that Kraken document with all those claims, they're journalists.

What are they going to do?

They can't judge any of those claims.

They don't have the skills.

And suppose they went and found an expert to help them to, you know, give some quotes and judge and judge the claims in the lawsuit.

How do you find that expert?

Who is it who has looked at those very claims?

I don't know.

Could you even find one?

So, you have this gigantic story that by its nature, the mainstream media just has to look at it and go, uh, I don't know what to do with this.

I can't talk about it because I don't really understand all these claims.

And I can't really find anybody that I would trust to give me an opinion because there are no such things as nonpartisan analysts.

Doesn't exist.

There are no nonpartisans in this country.

What's what's the journalist to do?

I think they just say, "Hey, it's not widespread.

It's not baseless.

Let's go to lunch, right?

So, the fact that that you're not seeing anybody go down the list and try to debunk it or not debunk it, that should tell you a little bit.

I had to look up the the word baseless because it keeps being used.

Marian Miriam Webster says that baseless is defined as quote having no basis in reason or fact.

Do Cydney Powell's uh allegations in the lawsuit, do they have no basis in reason or fact?

Well, there are claims and I would say that those claims, you could make a strong argument that they don't become fact in a way that matters until they go through the court and the court says there are facts.

So, could you say that the facts have not been established?

I think that's fair.

I think it's fair to say that the facts are alleged, but they're not established by, you know, a credible entity such as a court.

But that's the fact part.

Here's the definition again.

Having no basis in reason or fact.

Does it have to be fact-based to have a base?

In other words, could something have a good reason, but you don't have facts?

Let me give you an example.

Can you prove that there is no air in France today right now?

That there's no air.

Air doesn't exist in France.

Nope.

You can't prove that because you don't have any facts.

I mean, you could probably get them, but do would you do that?

Would you go to France with a little bottle and try to capture some air and prove to me that air does exist in France?

Would you do that?

Or would you just say, "Um, I'm going to use my reason.

France is not contained in a sealed bubble and air has this tendency to move wherever wherever there's not enough air to fill a vacuum.

So my sense of reason tells me I don't really need to look at the facts.

My sense of reason tells me, yeah, there's air in France.

Okay, don't need to check because the reason is so clear.

Let's take the election.

Does my analogy hold?

Well, I would say this that 100% of the time you have a gigantic incentive to do a thing.

Let's say cheat on an election.

So you have a gigantic incentive.

The motivation is off the chart.

You got lots of people involved.

And so long as you can control who witnesses what, you're not really going to get caught.

So how often do you get crime in a situation where the motivation to do the crime is off the chart?

The opportunity is observably easy because I think we could all agree that no matter what else is true, it is true that the witnesses didn't witness very much.

Even the people who say the election was fair, I think they would agree with that statement.

For example, has anybody witnessed the software working?

Has anybody audited the lines of code?

Is there anybody who has a chain of custody all the way from the vote to the vote counting and beyond?

No.

No, we don't have that.

So, if you were to look at what could be witnessed, a little bit was would you say 10%.

I feel as though based on the reporting, it would be fair to say that maybe 10% of the election pro process was witnessed.

Now the intention of course is to witness 100% of it but we saw that the witnesses were bullied and had to stand too far back and all that.

So no maybe 10% was witnessed.

So, if you've got 90% opportunity, just for conceptual purposes, I'm not measuring it, but 90% opportunity, motivation through the roof, because you want to stop Orange Hitler at all costs, right?

How often will there be massive cheating?

Not a little bit, but massive cheating under those conditions?

100% of the time.

You will never not have massive cheating when these conditions exist.

And these are the conditions we all observe exist.

There's nobody who would say, "Well, there aren't many people involved." There nobody who would say, "Well, they don't have the motivation." Nobody would say that.

Nobody would say they don't have the opportunity as of this week.

Last week, I was hearing that was no opportunity.

You couldn't do it and get away with it.

Well, we've got hundreds of witnesses that says they did it and they didn't get away with it, at least in terms of being observed or claims that they couldn't observe, which I think should be treated the same.

So, I think any decent any decent respect to what reason is would say that the claims of the election being fraudulent have a base.

That base, I agree, is not yet based on court certified, if you will, validated or verified facts.

But that's not the only definition of the word baseless.

If you have reasons such as reasoning that air exists in France, you don't need the facts because the reason is all you need.

And this is one of those cases.

So when they say baseless, that is propaganda.

If they had said that there are allegations that have not been proven in court, what would you say to that?

Would you say that that was propaganda?

Nope.

You'd say, "Oh, that's an accurate statement.

There are allegations which have not been proven in court to the extent that it would overturn the election." At the same time that you would also have to say there are hundreds of witnesses that if you look at their claims, they are big enough to overturn the election.

if true.

They can all be true.

Um, and so that is what I got for you today.

Somebody says, "The natural man, Scott, does not receive the things of the spirit, which is very limiting.

I am a spiritfree individual, says says the commenter." Okay.

Um, but Scott, was Rudy's fake hearing propaganda?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, one of the things that uh my bad critics often say is, "Ho, I got you, Scott.

If you think that's true, what about this?

Can you be consistent?" Yeah, I can.

It's so the the fact that you would even think that I could that I wouldn't be consistent on that.

Yes, Rudy was specifically and intentionally using persuasion that you could of course call propaganda, of course.

And it was uh clear, obvious, he wasn't hiding it.

And do you know what Rudy is?

He's something called an advocate.

Do you know what the job of an advocate is?

Advocating.

It's advocating.

Yeah.

His job is to persuade you.

If you want to call that propaganda, I'm okay with that.

So, I accept that.

We're fine.

That's his job.

Now, he also on top of that, you know, he's he's managing public opinion.

He is managing the opinions of maybe future judges and juries.

This is his job.

So, when somebody whose job it is to do propaganda does propaganda, isn't hiding it even a little bit.

It's right out there.

I'm an advocate.

I have a client.

Clients paying me.

That's pretty transparent.

So, I don't mind propaganda that's packaged as propaganda.

And that's what that was.

But if you're the news and you're selling me propaganda packaged as news, I've got a I've got a labeling problem there.

Um, you tried to convince the world that that was good propaganda.

That's right.

There's good propaganda and bad propaganda.

Um, again, somebody somebody's trying to catch me in some kind of inconsistency.

There's good propaganda.

Trump does it all the time.

When Trump says the economy is great, it's getting better, that's good propaganda because when he says that stuff, it causes people to invest and feel confident and then the economy is good.

When Trump says our military is like way, way better than it was before he took office, is it necessarily true?

I don't know.

You don't know.

None of us know what's happening in the military because they keep that secret, right?

But is it good propaganda to tell the world even more than he's telling the country?

He's telling the world, "We've got the best military you've ever seen, and it was pretty good before, but now it's even way better.

Is that good propaganda or bad propaganda?

Because it keeps you safe, right?

That's good propaganda.

So, just know that when an advocate, a politician is saying something, that's always propaganda, but it could be the good kind.

If your news is giving you propaganda instead of news, and they're selling it as news, that's fraud.

It's different.

All right.

Um, a poor economy would increase the number of military volunteers.

That's true.

But I don't think that matters in our technical wars.

I just don't see us having a war in which standing armies of China or Russia or the United States go at it with a with a with a tank war.

We're not going to have a tank war with China or a tank war with Russia.

That's not going to happen.

Any anybody who I mean, the reason it's not going to happen is that whoever moved a force of tanks against a superpower would lose all of their tanks in 60 minutes.

I'm not wrong about that.

Right.

Somebody says, "Go talk to Ellie and apologize." Um, I'm not going to apologize for calling him smart because that's what I call them.

So, I don't know what you're talking about.

When people call me smart, I usually say, "Thank you.

I do not require an apology." All right.

Uh, check Trump's most recent tweet.

Is it that good?

All right.

I usually don't like to do that because it slows down the uh the pace here, but let me do that anyway.

Trump.

Trump.

Trump.

Have you noticed that Trump doesn't come up first in your uh your your fill-in sometimes?

He does.

So, he comes out uh so Donald J.

Trump the the real Donald Trump uh thing.

It comes up fourth when I search in Twitter for Trump.

Donald Trump has 80 whatever million followers and he comes up fourth when you start typing in Trump.

Ahead of him is the pus account.

Perfectly fair.

Uh, then there's Trump Googling.

It's not even a blue check.

And then there is a blue check, but it's Tiffany Trump.

That's right.

Tiffany Trump comes up in the search before Donald Trump.

And And uh you're you're wondering if section 230 should be uh should be important.

Uh yeah.

All right.

So, now that I'm done ranting on that, um, okay, it's getting good now.

So, Trump just tweeted 11 minutes ago.

Biden can only enter the White House as president if he can prove that his ridiculous 80 million votes were not fraudulently or illegally obtained.

When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he's got a big unsolvable problem.

Oh, I tell you, Trump doesn't know how to not be provocative.

I don't think he I don't He doesn't know how to be boring.

He just He just can't be boring.

He just doesn't know how.

So he's now uh now obviously you can't prove a negative.

So he's said basically what he said is he's not leaving the White House which was how it will be interpreted because you can't really prove a negative.

So the so he's created a situation where uh the news will have to talk about his allegation that there's all this fraud and they hate talking about that.

uh they hate talking about it because if you just talk about the election fraud enough, it becomes true.

So here's here's the I don't know if he's thinking of it this way, so I won't I won't assume there's intention in this, but this is the way it's going to work out.

If you simply make the mainstream media talk about election fraud, even if they're denying it, it didn't happen.

It didn't happen.

Election fraud didn't happen.

Didn't happen.

Election fraud.

What happens to your brain?

Your brain says, "I heard a lot about election fraud." And even if every single thing you heard was also debunked, that's not how your brain is going to process it.

If Trump can simply make the news, do the thing they don't want to do, which is talk about the election fraud allegations, even if they debunk them, he wins.

And this is so provocative they have to talk about it because they're going to have to talk about it in the context of I think he just said he's not going to leave.

But that's, you know, he's a little more clever than that.

He's he's forcing them to be anchored to that tweet so they will sell his message simply by repeating election fraud, election fraud more times than they wanted to.

So I don't know.

That's that may be uh that may be one of his finest tweets in terms of strategy.

All right, that's all for now.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.

All right, Periscope is off.

Anything you You.

Tubers want to ask me while you got another minute here?

Uh I see there is somebody says that there's a new study showing that hydroxychloroquin with zinc and a zithramy uh works really really well in reducing hospital visits.

Do you know what's missing in that story?

What is missing in that story about the study that says hydroxychloricquin works really well?

Well, here's what's missing.

Uh the one of the authors is uh Zeleno the original hydroxychloroquin doctor and the study itself is a retrospective.

Now can you trust a retrospective study?

No you can't.

So it's a retrospective study.

Basically they're saying all right we're not going to study it.

We're going to look at what what happened in the past and see if we can figure out just by looking at some data from history whether we can judge that it works or not.

That is not the same level of credibility as a randomized controlled study.

So if you've got a randomized control study that would have to use those same chemicals and have to administer them in a similar way, not waiting until too late.

If you had that and it said it worked, I'd take that pretty seriously.

If you have yet another retrospective study, it just gets thrown on the pile with the other retrospective studies that seem to disagree with the randomized control studies.

So, if you don't see a randomized control study on hydroxychloroquin, I would ignore it.

Same with vitamin D.

vitamin D.

I think there's a strong argument that boosting your vitamin D could protect you because just because it protects you from things in general.

But if you see a retrospective study that says people with vitamin D did much better, you must be careful because those people might have been unhealthy in general and a low vitamin D level is a marker for low health in general.

So it could be that the vitamin D is telling you nothing but these are generally unhealthy people and if you were to boost their vitamin D that would still be just generally unhealthy people with vitamin D.

It might not make that much difference at all.

So be careful of correlation versus causation.

Uh is a slaughter meter still relevant?

Not really, because the situation became this weird two worlds where Trump could actually win and not be president.

So, you know, prior to the actual election day, I modified my prediction to the coin flip would come up edge, meaning that you'd have two winners and it would just stay that way.

And I think that's the situation.

I think Trump will make his case at least to the public and so the public will say uh yes it is true that he won the election.

It's also true that Biden took the job.

So I don't know what the slaughter meter means in that context.

But uh I still think that there's a 98% chance that he really won based on the electoral college votes if they had been voted if they had been counted accurately.

That's what I think.

All right, that's it for now.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Go shopping.

Hey everybody,

come on in here. Today it's big shopping

day, but more importantly, it's a big

day on Coffee with Scott Adams. And

aren't you glad you made it? Oh yeah,

you're happy you made it. It's going to

be rocking.

What a word. Rocking. Don't let me ever

say that again. Okay. And to enjoy this

day to its maximum, all you need is a

cup or mug or a glass of tank or gels or

da canteen jug or flask vessel of any

kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

Do you know what I like? I think you do.

It's coffee. Join me now for the

unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine hit

of the day. The thing that makes

everything better, even the Kraken.

It's called the simultaneous go.

I would like to begin my program with an

impression. Now, I I'm not like an

expert at impressions,

so bear with me as I build my talent

stack in doing impressions.

This first impression I call a

mainstream reporter reviewing Cydney

Powell's uh allegations which she's

recently filed called the Kraken. Let us

let us refer to them as the Kraken. And

here is a mainstream reporter looking at

her evidence for the first time.

Let's see what kind of baseless claims

we got here.

Oh, typo.

Typo.

Another typo.

What in the world?

And that's just page one. First page.

Two typos.

Can't take you seriously. How many pages

is this thing?

Um,

seems to be

almost

you could almost say

the allegations are widespread,

but I don't think I can say that. So,

instead, I better look at the data.

got a lot of a lot of legal terms in

here I don't really understand because I

went to journalism school and all right

so I don't understand the legal parts

I'll skip those but what well there's

graphs there's graphs and exhibits and

math

but I don't know anything about math

so I can't tell if these are true or

valid or not and I can't read the law

exactly.

So,

how am I going to summarize

hundreds of complaints from different

people, eyewitness reports,

data?

I got it.

It's all baseless. You know why? I don't

understand it. I don't really have time

to get into it. So, I think it's all

just baseless. It's baseless.

And that

is why I don't do impressions now. You

know, but let's talk about all the

baselessness and stuff. I'm going to

jump around a little bit.

Let me ask you this question. Has the

news of the corona virus vaccination

made you feel like you want to take more

risks because you feel like help is on

the way or do you feel like taking even

less risk because you'd feel so stupid

if you got the corona virus and you know

had some lasting problem or you died

when you only had to wait a few months.

Which way does it go for you? because I

found myself

feeling the following and and it's I'll

give you an analogy. I always thought

that if I were to die doing something

stupid, I would hope that the death

would be instant because I have this

weird fear of knowing that I just did

something that's going to kill me, but I

didn't die right away. So, I have to not

only know I'm dying, but know that I was

so stupid I shouldn't have done whatever

it was that was going to kill me. And

for some reason, that that plays a big

psychological role in my life.

Completely irrational. I'm not claiming

has any rational basis but my experience

so far is that my willingness to accept

uh social distancing and masks and

lockdowns and a disruption in my life is

much higher than it was.

I think many of you are going the

opposite direction, saying, "Ah, help is

on the way. We can loosen up a little

bit, you know, because we'll still get

the vaccine, so we'll be we'll be okay

in the long run." And I'm thinking the

opposite. I'm feeling as though because

I'm I'm sort of in the uh the bottom

half of the class of people who have to

worry about the Corona virus because

I've got a comorbidity. I've got asthma

and I'm over a certain age. So, I'm in

starting to get close to that range

where it's dangerous. And here's what I

felt. So, this is just my internal

feeling. I don't recommend it for you,

right? I'm not trying to influence you

to think the way I'm thinking. I just

think it's useful to know how people are

processing this situation. And the way

I'm processing it is I've never felt

as much personal responsibility

as I feel right now. And what I mean by

that is before I was willing to say,

well, you know, it's my life. I'll take

a risk if I want to. But of course,

that's short sure shortsighted because

it's not just your risk. You're filling

up an ICU. You're causing problems for

people who love you. You know, you're

using up resources, etc.

And so I've decided that the

the most, let's say, defensible, morally

defensible thing that I can do is to

suck it up because what you don't need

is for me to be sick, right? Don't you

want that ICU

bed to be available? Don't you want to

not lose Coffee with Scott Adams? Don't

you want to, you know, make sure the

resources don't get sucked up? Don't you

want to make sure I don't infect a

frontline health care worker? You want

that, right? My personal responsibility

as a person who's in that vulnerable

class, albeit at the low end. I'm not

I'm not highly vulnerable. I'm sure I'd

be fine as well, but I'm in the

vulnerable class.

So, here's my commitment to you. I'm

going to be extra extra cautious

and the only reason I'm going to be

extra cautious is for really for your

benefit because I'm in the dangerous

class. Now, at the same time,

I don't care if you're not.

Now, can that be consistent? Is it

consistent for me to say I'm personally

going to take more precaution because I

don't want you to have to deal with me

being sick? But at the same time, I

think I can be consistent by saying if

you're just pick a number. If you're 25,

I don't care what you do. I I just don't

care. You could take some extra risks if

you want to because I'm going to be

taking some extra precautions. So, I'm

hoping my extra precautions will

compensate for your maybe a little extra

risky behavior. It's going to happen

anyway. It's not like it's up to me.

It's just going to happen anyway. So,

I'm just just interested how you process

this. I would like to see extra maybe a

little extra caution on the vulnerable

and maybe a little looser on everybody

else so that we can have a real life.

One of the things that we consistently

do wrong

uh as a civilization

is that um we tend to bucketize our

topics because it's hard to talk about

things until you can put them in

categories. But this ends up fooling us

because we imagine that the category

that we put something into just to make

it easy to talk about it, we think it's

meaningful. But usually it's just a way

to talk about it. Now let me give you an

example. If I said to you uh there's a

decision about uh co health but then the

other variable is the economy and how

the economy also translates through to

health. You need a good economy to have

good health. So we started out with

people saying hey you're focusing too

much on just the direct observable

health care problem and you're not

focusing enough on this other variable

which is the economy which also affects

your healthare. Now I feel as if

um collectively the the minds of the

world have have indeed shifted so that

now most of us I think are now capable

of saying oh yeah I get it. You can die

in two different ways. The economy could

be bad or the virus gets you. So you

have to you have to have a smart balance

of those things to get the the right

result. What's being left out? So now

you've done a good job. You said, "Oh,

wait. My buckets, my health care bucket

is not really separate from my economy

bucket. It's just that we put them in

buckets because then you've got an

economist who looks at the economy. You

got doctors looking at the health care.

It makes things easier,

but it can mislead you because these are

not separate buckets. It's closer to

being one bucket, but it's just easier

to talk about it as two because of the

way we separate our experts, right? But

what's missing? That's two big

variables, economy and healthcare. What

one's missing? And and this will be your

test for a blind spot. In the comments,

tell me what topic which is as big as

those. It's as big as a pandemic.

It's bigger actually. It's bigger than a

pandemic

and it's at least as big as the economy

in importance. Somebody says freedom. Uh

that is a correct answer but not the one

I'm looking for. All right. The freedom

question is a little trickier. So that's

not what I'm going for. But but you're

correct, right? So I'll give you full

credit for the answer, but it's not

where I'm trying to take you. There we

go. Boom.

Somebody got the right answer. Look at

all the people who answered and only one

person got the right answer.

Military safety, homeland security.

Why? Because you can't have a military

without a strong economy. And even if

you imagined that your economy still

existed, but it took a hit, let's say

your economy goes down 20%.

Will your military be as ready? Not a

chance. Not a chance because most of

your money has to go toward keeping

people alive in the short run. Your

military is a little bit of a luxury and

that's that's where your last, you know,

your last dollar goes to that. It's

like, well, I got to do this, too. You

would imagine it could be your top

priority, but living today is going to

be your top priority. So, here's the

thing. If you imagine that the military

questions are this separate bucket, then

you can ignore it, right? Just ignore

it. It's that's another bucket. We're

not even talking about that. I'm talking

about Corona virus. That's the bucket

I'm talking about. But if you don't look

at this problem as a health care plus

economy

plus homeland defense, military

essentially, you've missed onethird

of the decision.

You know, I'm I'm speaking in very rough

terms. They're not really one-third, but

a gigantic part of this decision is what

are you doing to your homeland defense,

right? What does China does China get,

let's say, uh like a a big gain and it

catches up to us economically? What

would that do to your military

preparedness? If China pulls to parody

with economy,

you're in trouble, right? The military

is almost perfectly correlated with the

strength of your economy. You want to go

a little bit further? Let me go a little

bit further. We're looking at the

climate. When you look at the climate,

of course, we made the mistake of

saying, "Hey, this, you know, this

climate could be dangerous and kill

people, etc." But at least we're smart

enough to say, "Oh, but there's also

there's also this economic part. It's

not just about, you know, that you would

be dangerously at risk healthwise

if global warming is what the the

scientists are telling you. What's

missing?

What's missing once again is your

military. Can you have a strong homeland

security and a strong military in this

day and age if you don't have energy

independence and if it isn't

carbon-based

now nuclear-based is in there too. You

you got to have that. Could you have an

entirely green economy? Let's say it was

possible. Let's say the numbers worked.

There's some breakthroughs in solar

power.

So, you got you got a really good green

economy. You get rid of your oil. You

get rid of your coal.

What happens to you? Well, you become

conquered by China guaranteed. Because

if you're powering your tanks with

electricity and solar panels, I mean,

I'm using a ridiculous example. You

don't really have a military.

So when people are talking about the

Green New Deal, sometimes they'll allow

that there's an economic element to

that. They'll say it's positive, not

negative. I would say that if you don't

have an oilbased or a carbon-based

energy system with independence, you

don't have a military. You do not have a

military if you have the Green New Deal.

What if you get rid of your nuclear? If

you get rid of your nuclear capabilities

as uh let's say a domestic power source,

you also get rid of your nuclear experts

and suddenly you can't do nuclear for

military either. And you kind of need it

for military because you're not going to

power your, you know, your submarines,

etc. Now, what about space? Is it

possible to be safe if your nemesis

controls space and you don't? It is not

possible. It is not even slightly

possible that you could be militarily

safe if your enemy controls space above

you. It's just not even slightly

possible that you could be safe from

that. All right. You might have mutually

assured destruction, but you'd be in a a

big problem. Now, what are you going to

need to have a robust space force?

Nuclear power. There probably isn't any

alternative to that, right? Eventually,

space force will be nuclearpowered

unless somebody invents, you know, warp

drive or something. I don't see that

coming. So, anytime that people have

these conversations where they've

simplified it to health versus

economics, here's the recording that

should play in your mind. You left out

the military because it's all connected.

And the military is not trivial. It's

it's necessary, right? It's just not

optional. Now, we've lived, most of us

have been born into a world where the

United States was so dominant militarily

that you have the luxury of not thinking

about it as much. It's like, well, we're

militarily dominant, nobody's going to

attack our homeland, you know, at least

not a military force, just terrorists.

And I got a feeling that if you start

messing with the uh the energy

production, you might clean up the sky a

little bit, but you're going to do at

the risk of your military. So, if you

haven't included that, you're not really

doing a proper analysis. Let's talk

about Facebook. We're learning that

Facebook had some kind of what they

called a break the glass plan where if

things were bad after the election, in

other words, if society was starting to

break down because of the election

results, they were going to kick into uh

into play uh a change in the algorithm

that would spike in visibility the

mainstream publishers such as, and I'm

not making this up, this is the actual

This is the actual list such as CNN, NPR

and the New York Times and it would

deemphasize

Breitbart and some other site that I

don't remember. So what would be the

justification

for boosting CNN, NPR and New York Times

but deemphasizing Breitbart? Well, the

word that they've injected into this is

hyperpartisan.

So they've decided to label Breitbart

hyperartisan

while saying that CNN, NPR, and New York

Times are not.

Now, is it just me or is that hilarious?

Let me let me just walk you through some

examples.

Was it Breitbart that told you the Fine

People hoax?

Nope. Breitbart told you that it was a

hoax, showed you the transcript, did it

quite a few times. Actually, Joel

Pollock did that a number of times. So

CNN, NPR, and New York Times reported

the Fine People hoax as true, which

ripped the country apart and probably

changed the election result. Breitbart

reported it accurately,

but they're being called hyperartisan.

How about the uh hoax that the president

suggested or noodled on the idea of

drinking bleach, which of course never

happened? Not even close.

Did Breitbart report that the president

thought about drinking bleach? No. They

reported it as a hoax, which it was.

What did CNN, NPR, and New York Times

report? They reported the hoax is true.

Right now, I don't think they all used

the word bleach. CNN did. They may have

said injecting disinfectants you, which

is the same story. They just don't use

the word bleach. All right. How about um

do I really need to go down the list? I

don't need to go down the list anymore,

right? What was the last uh fake story

you read in Breitbart? I mean, I I

usually for I consume the news based on

links that people send me. So, I don't

read every word of any of these

publications. You know, I read the

things that people say, "Hey, you should

look at this." But I don't think that

this characterization of

hyperartisanship

could hold up to even the smallest bit

of scrutiny. It's not even close to

being an accurate framing of reality and

it's pretty easy to prove. You know, all

you have to do is look at the hoax

reporting. Who reported the most hoaxes?

I don't think it's going to be close,

but you know, I haven't looked into it,

but I don't think it's close. And so if

Facebook can decide that one site that

that reports the truth in terms of those

hoaxes, that's the part I know about,

and they can boost the ones that

reported the lies and still are.

How do you say that Facebook is not a

publisher? Because this is the very

definition of a publishing decision.

They've made a judgment call, a wrong

one, a very wrong one, but you know,

that's how judgment works. You don't get

them all right. Um,

it's a judgment call on what content you

should see.

That is section 230. That is a

publisher. It's not even close to being

a communication platform. We're not even

in the same

galaxy as being as being like the phone

company. When was the last time the

phone company told you you couldn't

couldn't make a phone call because the

person you're calling was hyperartisan?

It's like, I'm sorry, we cannot connect

this number. You are dialing your friend

who is hyperartisan.

Let us refer you to some Democrats who

are more more less hyperartisan.

Does the phone ever do that? I mean, I

don't make many phone calls anymore

because phone calls are for losers, but

I feel as if that feature is not in my

phone. Am I wrong about that? And and

isn't the isn't the whole thing about

whether they're whether they're editing

content? That's the whole question,

right? Why are we even talking

about this? Why is this even a

question?

We're way beyond the fact where you can

even wonder, "Huh, I wonder if they're

making editorial decisions."

Who is wondering that?

Who is so stupid

that they don't see that this is 100%

publishing? It's not even slightly not

publishing. I have to admit this is, is

this the first time I've talked about

this topic? Maybe the first time in any

detail. And the reason is I've I've sort

of monitored this section 230 thing and

I thought to myself, well, this is more

of a lawyer question because as soon as

you get into these gray areas, if you're

not a lawyer, the gray is just gray. And

even if you are a lawyer, it's probably

still gray. And I thought, ah, this

isn't really the topic I can add

anything to because, you know, maybe

it's hard to tell where do you draw that

line between editorial decisions and and

being a good citizen, which is getting

rid of stuff that could be damaging,

right? I thought it's a little unclear.

It's not unclear. Now, did you

see what they did? They just they just

uh uh Twitter just suspended the website

for the plot against the president, a

documentary which is probably the most

successful documentary uh of all of

2020.

And I think they may have forwarded some

of Sydney's Powell's claims or something

and they got suspended. What the is

that?

That's not protecting us. That's

editorial. That's an editorial call

purely. It's not even close to not being

an editorial call. All right. So, let us

leave behind any notion that there's an

some ambiguity in this decision. That

ambiguity is gone.

Let's talk about uh this racist called

uh Obama. So, he is in the news saying

that uh one of the explanations he

believes for why Trump got as many votes

as he did is that he believes that

somebody told white men that they're

victims.

That's right. President Obama thinks

that uh white men have been brainwashed

by someone into thinking that they're

victims in this world.

Well, Obama, uh, that makes you a

racist.

There's no other way around this because

he just said, and I don't think this is

I don't I'm going to put an

interpretation on him and I'm going to

summarize his thought. I don't think

that I'm using hyperbole. All right? So,

I'm going to attempt to not make this

superartisan slash, you know,

exaggerated

just because I can, right? I'm going to

try to play it right down the middle and

you tell me if this is not a fair

statement. When Obama says that somebody

convinced white men that they're

victims, here's what I hear.

White men lives don't matter.

White male lives don't matter. That's

what you're saying, right?

Because let me explain this to you.

Could it be true that there's a

difference in the average of the

outcomes of white people and black

people? Of course, we all see that.

Nobody's questioning there's a different

in outcome. Could it be that the legacy

of slavery, you know, is rippling into

into the the current? I say yes. I say

that's obviously true.

But having said that, we're talking

about the average. Do you think that the

person who lost their job because the

factory moved to China, do you think

that person is unworthy of empathy?

Is that person not a victim? Now,

they're not a victim alone because there

would be people in every group that

would lose their jobs the same way. But

are they not victims if they lost their

jobs for other people's decisions?

Um, are there not

white men who were born as children into

bad situations for which the baby is not

responsible?

How is that different than a black child

born in the United States through no

fault of their own, they're born into a

world that has a legacy of slavery which

will affect them their whole life? What

about a a white male who was born into

this world and doesn't have, let's say,

a high IQ,

right? Are are you are you doing are you

going to do are you going to do great if

you don't have a high IQ in 2020?

Probably not. Do you deserve some

sympathy or empathy for being sort of in

a tough situation? I think so. If you're

born into a poor family, but you're

white, is that not worthy of empathy? I

have empathy for that. How could you not

have empathy for a white person born

into a bad situation? Is it just because

they're white? Because I think that's

what Obama's saying. He's saying you

could have all kinds of problems, but if

you're a white man, doesn't matter

because the there's something about the

average that's different. And the

average is different, right? Nobody's

arguing that. But it doesn't matter to

the individual. Do you know that when we

vote, Mr. racist Obama piece of Do

you know that when people vote, they

don't vote as a group? I don't know if

you knew that. It's an individual thing.

An individual white male will vote or

not vote. They don't vote as a group.

When people vote, they don't say, "Well,

what's my group doing?" Nope. They might

vote similarly, but they're voting for

themselves and their own situation, and

they absolutely

deserve empathy if they were born into a

bad situation. How many white people are

just killing it? You know, just killing

it in life. Well, I don't know what the

percentage is, but it's not most.

It's not most, you know. I don't know

what the number is, but even if half of

white men are killing it in life, I

doubt that's the number, but that leaves

a lot of people who were just born into

a bad situation or, you know, got there,

however they did, but Obama says white

men's lives don't matter in effect.

One of the that's probably the most

racist thing I've seen a public official

say. Would you agree? Have you ever

heard any public official say anything

that was even close, even in the range

of being as racist as what Obama said

and was reported by the mainstream media

as just a just a comment. That's it.

Just a comment.

Amazing. So, Seth McFarland

um you know him uh a brilliant

entertainer and creator has created

among other things the family guy and

very successful guy. But when he talks

about politics,

um, he is sometimes, let's say, his

skill stack might might be a few a few

pancakes short. And I only mock him

because

he uh his TV show, Family Guy, has

mocked me personally, meaning they've

mocked Dilbert as a product. So that's

mocking me. Had he never mocked me in

public, meaning his property, not him

personally necessarily, I would not

bother with him, he would just be

another person with an opinion.

And you know, sometimes I agree,

sometimes I don't. But he has very

strong opinions on politics and he is

unique and that he's a perfect example

of what I write about in my book, Loser

Think. lose think uh which is you can be

really smart and he is really smart but

you could have blind spots if your

talent stack does not have let's say you

know uh economics engineering there are

lots of things which you could have

blind spots in and he's like the best

example you'll ever see so he's talking

about the Supreme Court decision that

allowed the churches to uh operate

during the pandemic and So Seth tweets

us about Gorsuch. He says, "Gorsuch, if

you can't make the distinction between

the risk level of a small business

business like a liquor store and massive

indoor gatherings like a church with

regard to raging pandemic, you are more

scientifically illiterate than the man

who appointed you." Now, do you think

that Gorsuch was making a scientific

legal decision?

What the hell is wrong with with Seth

McFarland?

The law and the Supreme Court is making

a legal decision. That's it. It's a

legal decision. He's not making a

scientific decision. He's not ruling

whether masks work. He's not ruling

whether uh social distancing works.

So, I tweeted back at him, "Was it a one

variable problem?" because I'm pretty

sure there's another variable which is

freedom, freedom of religion. You know,

there are a few other variables in

there, Seth. And the court doesn't rule

on all of those variables, just the one.

Uh here's a question I asked just to be

provocative, just for fun. So critics

critics have been calling Trump a con

man since the beginning since he was

running for office. It's the most common

insult you hear, not counting Orange

Hill, I guess. So con man, con man, con

man. But they also observe

that he apparently used those con man

skills to become president of the United

States. So, do you think that the people

who think he's a con man and used those

skills and no other skills to get the

most prized highest office in the entire

United States? Well, that would be

successful, right? So if you think it's

con man skills and that's what he used

and that it worked to get the highest

land in the job running against the most

qualified candidate they said uh in

years. Wouldn't you say that he's really

good at being a con man if that was your

frame? It's not my frame. But if you but

my critics frame say he's a con man.

Wouldn't they also have to conclude that

if they hate everything about why he's

doing it, his intentions, even if all of

that's true? It's not. But suppose all

of that was true.

Wouldn't they still agree that he's good

at it? I think so. Right now, if

somebody is that good that they become

president,

would you call them

an expert? Do you think that if it comes

to conning people, wouldn't you call

President Trump, if you're one of his

critics, wouldn't you say he's an expert

at that? I mean, he did become

president. I There are people who are

writing books about his technique,

including me. It's, you know, talking

about it all the time. I'd say he's an

expert at identifying For

example, did he not correctly identify

that the Paris climate accord, although

well-intentioned, was ultimately a bunch

of He did. Right now, maybe

those con man skills, according to his

critics, came in handy there because he

spotted a con that other people even

still think is real. How about uh

comments on other things that look like

How about when Kerry and all

the experts said, "Hey, you can never uh

create peace in the Middle East unless

you get Iran on board and Palestinians

first." And then apparently he's doing

it. So he's doing something that was

impossible.

It seems to be getting it done. I don't

know how you could conclude given all of

the examples that he's not an expert at

being a con or or recognizing a con if

you're his critic. So here's the

question.

If he's an expert and he's looking at

the election and he says in my expert

opinion effectively,

this is obviously a con.

Why would you not listen to the expert?

President Trump's critics are obsessed

with the question of listen to the

expert.

I would I would say that they have

deemed Trump an expert in cons. He just

called out the biggest con you've ever

seen, which is the election. Why

wouldn't you believe him? He is an

expert at this. Do you do you think that

Rudy Giuliani

is not an expert at identifying

organized

crime?

He is. He is an expert at recognizing

organized crime. In fact, I don't know

who would be better at it. If you were

going to pick one person in the whole

United States that you had to trust to

identify organized crime based on

preliminary indications, you know,

before it goes through court, who would

you pick ahead of Trump

and Rudy Giuliani?

I don't think there's anybody I would

pick ahead of those two. They're pretty

much experts at this anyway. Now, uh,

somebody weighed in and said, uh, that

the the reason you wouldn't trust Trump

on this is because this, too, is another

con, which was pretty clever answer.

Remember, I'm doing this just for fun.

I'm not trying to be too logical here.

But what I pointed out in return is that

that's no different than your other

experts.

Because if you can't trust Trump to be

an expert on cons

because he might be conning you about

the con,

how is that different from your

financial adviser?

It's not. You just think it is. Your

financial adviser wants you to buy uh

financial products that the financial

adviser gets a cut of. Your financial

adviser isn't trying to make you rich.

Your financial adviser is making him

rich. or her rich, right? Financial

advice is a con. How about scientific

advice? Well, we're pretty aware that

our scientists are either, you know,

being paid by uh oil companies or

they're, you know, they're wedded to the

green deal and they'll they'll benefit

if the green thing happens bigger. It's

all cons. We don't have objective

experts. That's not a thing. All the

experts have something in it for

themselves.

So if Trump is an expert on cons, but

the problem is he's also might be doing

a con. That's exactly the same as every

one of the experts that Biden tells you

to believe. Everyone. They all have an

incentive

for the con, which doesn't mean they're

all conning,

but they've all got an incentive.

So, I wouldn't be so sure that your

experts are any better than than Trump

on any question.

Um, Trump tweeted that section 230 must

be immediately terminated. Let me give

you some more examples of why that's

true.

Um, Senator Mastrianiano, who organized

that Gettysburg hearing on the election,

alleged fraud, he his accounts got

suspended by Twitter. A senator

suspended by Twitter.

And I'm pretty sure, I'm not I don't

know the details, but I'm pretty sure

that whatever got him suspended was an

opinion.

if he got it suspended for an opinion.

Now, it might have been wrong. It might

have been right, but that's not the

criteria, is it? It looks like um

Twitter has decided that they will just

judge what's true and what's not. They

will overrule a senator

and they will decide that you, as

somebody who voted for that senator,

can't hear what he has to say.

Twitter decided that

Twitter decide decided to disenfranchise

you from your elected official and make

sure that the most common way you could

find out what he was thinking is removed

from your toolbox

temporarily in this case, but they can

do it as many times as they need to. All

right. How about uh so now you've seen

the plot against the president removed.

You've seen Senator Mastriano being

suspended

and you've seen um Facebook's deal with

promoting the so-called less

hyperartisan stuff, which is

If if ever there was a time to do this

section 230 thing, now it's a slam dunk.

There really is no argument anymore.

It's gone, you know. And and believe me,

I I was completely I would say I was

completely unconvinced

one week ago.

I mean, I didn't have a decision either

way. I was just sort of monitoring it,

trying to figure out if I could form a

decision, but now I would say this as

clear as it could possib Oh, also the

links to Sydney Powell's uh documents, I

think those were removed, too. All

right. I asked this question. Uh, is it

technically possible to make a secure

voting app? I asked this because I think

there's going to be a big difference in

the opinions of people who know how to

do stuff versus the people who don't

know how to do stuff.

And I feel um, and this is more of a gut

feeling based on experience

that it's doable.

I think maybe it wasn't doable before

blockchain. I think maybe it wasn't

doable before facial recognition, before

you could take a fingerprint, before you

could do lots of other stuff. But I

think at the moment we finally have all

the pieces

that we could build an app that would be

at least way more secure than what we

have. Nothing's 100% I guess. And I have

seen people say, "Oh, you think

blockchain's the answer, but somebody

thinks maybe not." So, I don't know that

it's a settled question, but like I

said, somebody should build the app and

then just run it in parallel for the

next election. And don't count the app.

Just run it in parallel and see what you

get. See if you learn anything. But we

should definitely be running one in

parallel by 2022. It doesn't take that

long to build an app.

Let's see some prototypes. We we should

have a dozen different prototypes,

different startups or whatever, and we

should be able to run them all. I would

say the main thing that you need to get

a fair election is that you can identify

the the voter, which the app can do

better than than a human can do. And

that

um and that the voter can audit their

own vote all the way to the end point

and they can make sure that their vote

got recorded the way they wanted it to.

Could the app be built to do that? I say

yes.

There's lots of ways to do it wrong, but

I think you could do it. Um

CBS News is reporting and reporting is

uh a stretch that Trump supporters are

reportedly calling for a boycott uh on

voting in the Senate election.

Now, do you believe that story? Now, do

you think that CBS News is really

reporting this as news, because it's

real, that Trump supporters might want

to not vote in the Senate election?

Oh my god,

this could not be more obvious

propaganda.

They're trying to create this idea that

Trump supporters would not vote on a

principle.

There are no Trump supporters

recommending a boycott. This is

disinformation. Now, I'm not saying

there isn't some one idiot somewhere who

would say anything, but no, it's not

true that Trump supporters are

considering not voting in the most

important election in their lives. No,

that is not. Somebody says Ally was

trying to push it. No, he wasn't. All

right. If you're telling me that Elliot

Alexander was convincing uh Republicans

to not vote in the Senate race, don't

even Don't even try to tell me that.

Don't try to tell me that. It can't be

true. Now, I know you're going to send

me a tweet and you're going to think

that it says that.

I'll bet it doesn't. I I'll make you a

bet. So, all of you have seen the facts,

right? So those who are saying that it's

real and that Ali Alexander is pushing

it, I haven't seen it. So even with no

facts and no information, I will say

with confidence it's not true.

I'll bet if you read it and if you ask

him,

you'll find out that you're

misinterpreting something.

All right.

Somebody uh on Periscope, somebody's

saying he retracted it. Are you happy?

I guarantee Al Alexander. All right. And

here here's why I guarantee it. He's not

an idiot. You would have to be the

biggest idiot in the world to be pushing

that. Now, if he played with it and

retracted it, that's, you know, he may

have some scheme going in there in terms

of communication style, but there's no

way he thinks that's a good idea.

All right. Um,

Trump said that he would leave office if

he loses the electoral college. Of

course, that's a big if, I suppose, but

I think at this point we should uh

review our predictions. If you predicted

that Trump would lose in the electoral

college and remain in office or even try

to remain in office, you need to

check your ability to predict. I would

say anybody who made this prediction

that Trump would fight to remain in

office even even at the risk of violence

if the electoral college said he lost.

You really have to check your ability to

predict because you're terrible at

predicting. If you had not predicted

that Trump would get elected in 2016, I

would say that was pretty reasonable.

Like you you're not a bad predictor if

you got that one wrong. I think you're

probably a good predictor if you got it

right, but there wouldn't be anything

dumb or stupid about, you know, getting

that wrong. Right. Likewise, in this

this last election, no matter who you

predicted was going to win, if you got

it right or you got it wrong, it's not

saying too much about your predictive

ability because, you know, the odds are

it was going to be close. But if you

predicted that the president would use

violence to try to stay in office,

you really have to ask yourself if

you're good at predicting because you

might be really, really bad at

predicting. I don't think there was

anything more predictable than the fact

that he wouldn't do that. It's not even

close to something that seems, you know,

in the neighborhood if possible. All

right. I still could be lo still could

be wrong, right? There's always a

nonzero chance anything could happen.

But I think you really have to check

yourself if you predict that. All right.

Uh USA Today says this,

uh nonpartisan investigations of

previous elections have found that voter

fraud is exceedingly rare.

State officials from both parties as

well as international observers have

also stated that the 2020 election went

well.

That is pure propaganda.

Let me break it apart. They say

nonpartisan investigators looked into

the election. Who is a nonpartisan

investigator?

In 2020, the USA Today is trying to tell

you, a thinking human being who lives in

the world, that there exists such a

thing as a nonpartisan investigator into

our elections. Okay, USA Today, we're

not idiots. There's no such

thing as a nonpartisan investigator.

There might be somebody who lied to you

and you're dumb enough to believe it.

There are no nonpartisan investigators.

None. none. They don't exist.

Uh and then they say, "Previous

elections have found that voter fraud is

exceedingly rare." Did they? Or did they

simply find that they didn't find it?

All they know is that they didn't find

it.

There are lots of things which exist

which I can't find. Does gold exist? I

think gold exists. I looked in my

backyard and I didn't find any. So, does

gold not exist? Because I looked in my

whole backyard and I don't think there

was any gold back there. So, every part

of this statement just reeks of not even

trying to be something like news. Not

even trying.

I think we need a high school class in

spotting propaganda. And I tweeted that

and a few people said they actually have

taken that course. So apparently at le

in at least one private school that I

heard of, they do actually have a class

or at least section of a class where

they're asked to read uh headlines in

the news and pick out the propaganda

from the news.

Wouldn't that be a great uh class?

Wouldn't you want your own kid to have a

class that taught them to look at

headlines and then do a report on how it

was really propaganda?

That's a good class. All right, let's

have some more of those. Um, there's

some fake news on net deaths which will

fool many of you. Probably has.

Allegedly there was some John Hopkins

study showing that the rate of deaths is

the similar to previous years which is

what you want to believe right if if you

want to be a corona virus I don't know

denier or whatever don't you kind of

want to believe that it's all just a

hoax don't you want to believe that it's

not really that bad and maybe it's just

over if we just realize it's it's not

that bad well it took about two seconds

for people to call on that. I

called on it without research

and I did it on the basis. If this were

true that John Hopkins had done a study

and shown that there were no excess

deaths, it would be the biggest headline

in the country. And if even if the

mainstream media ignored it, it would at

least be on the places that sometimes

will give you real news. it wouldn't be

invisible and it wouldn't be only in

this tweet. So, one of the things I

would teach my class, my high school

class on spotting propaganda if it

existed was that news that comes from

one source and doesn't seem to spread to

the other sources at the same time it

would be the biggest story in the whole

country. That is a really good, you

know, indicator. So sure enough, the

page that had that claim was deleted,

you know, within hours. It was deleted

as being BS and denied. So there is no

there is no such thing as some evidence

that the corona virus is not killing

people at a higher level than if we had

a regular uh economy.

Here's another dog that isn't barking.

So now for it's been over a day, right,

that the Cydney Powell accusations have

been out, the Kraken, if you will. Lots

and lots of claims in the I guess two

different lawsuits and plenty of claims.

Now, I've seen lots of stories about the

typos. I've seen lots of stories talking

about the people, you know, Cydney

Powell, this or that. Have you seen any

mainstream media entity go through the

accusations

and attempt to debunk them or attempt to

confirm them?

Shouldn't that be a really big story?

Isn't that kind of important to know?

Are those real?

Now, when I was doing my uh humorous uh

impression of the reporters looking at

that Kraken document with all those

claims, they're journalists.

What are they going to do? They can't

judge any of those claims. They don't

have the skills. And suppose they went

and found an expert to help them to, you

know, give some quotes and judge and

judge the claims in the lawsuit. How do

you find that expert? Who is it who has

looked at those very claims?

I don't know. Could you even find one?

So, you have this gigantic story that by

its nature, the mainstream media just

has to look at it and go, uh,

I don't know what to do with this. I

can't talk about it because I don't

really understand all these claims. And

I can't really find anybody that I would

trust to give me an opinion because

there are no such things as nonpartisan

analysts. Doesn't exist. There are no

nonpartisans in this country. What's

what's the journalist to do?

I think they just say, "Hey, it's not

widespread. It's not baseless. Let's go

to lunch, right?

So, the fact that that you're not seeing

anybody go down the list and try to

debunk it or not debunk it, that should

tell you a little bit. I had to look up

the the word baseless because it keeps

being used. Marian Miriam Webster says

that baseless is defined as quote having

no basis in reason or fact.

Do Cydney Powell's uh allegations in the

lawsuit, do they have no basis in reason

or fact?

Well, there are claims and I would say

that those claims, you could make a

strong argument that they don't become

fact in a way that matters until they go

through the court and the court says

there are facts. So, could you say that

the facts have not been established? I

think that's fair. I think it's fair to

say that the facts are alleged, but

they're not established by, you know, a

credible entity such as a court.

But that's the fact part. Here's the

definition again. Having no basis in

reason or fact. Does it have to be

fact-based

to have a base? In other words, could

something have a good reason, but you

don't have facts? Let me give you an

example. Can you prove that there is no

air in France today right now? That

there's no air. Air doesn't exist in

France. Nope. You can't prove that

because you don't have any facts. I

mean, you could probably get them, but

do would you do that? Would you go to

France with a little bottle and try to

capture some air and prove to me that

air does exist in France? Would you do

that? Or would you just say, "Um, I'm

going to use my reason.

France is not contained in a sealed

bubble and air has this tendency to move

wherever wherever there's not enough air

to fill a vacuum. So my sense of reason

tells me I don't really need to look at

the facts. My sense of reason tells me,

yeah, there's air in France. Okay, don't

need to check because the reason is so

clear.

Let's take the election. Does my analogy

hold? Well, I would say this that 100%

of the time you have a gigantic

incentive to do a thing. Let's say cheat

on an election. So you have a gigantic

incentive. The motivation is off the

chart. You got lots of people involved.

And so long as you can control who

witnesses what, you're not really going

to get caught.

So how often do you get crime in a

situation where the motivation to do the

crime is off the chart? The opportunity

is observably easy because I think we

could all agree that no matter what else

is true, it is true that the witnesses

didn't witness very much.

Even the people who say the election was

fair, I think they would agree with that

statement. For example, has anybody

witnessed the software working? Has

anybody audited the lines of code? Is

there anybody who has a chain of custody

all the way from the vote to the vote

counting and beyond? No. No, we don't

have that. So, if you were to look at

what could be witnessed, a little bit

was would you say 10%.

I feel as though based on the reporting,

it would be fair to say that maybe 10%

of the election pro process was

witnessed. Now the intention of course

is to witness 100% of it but we saw that

the witnesses were bullied and had to

stand too far back and all that. So no

maybe 10% was witnessed. So, if you've

got 90% opportunity, just for conceptual

purposes, I'm not measuring it, but 90%

opportunity, motivation through the

roof, because you want to stop Orange

Hitler at all costs, right? How often

will there be massive cheating? Not a

little bit, but massive cheating under

those conditions?

100% of the time. You will never not

have massive cheating when these

conditions exist. And these are the

conditions we all observe exist. There's

nobody who would say, "Well, there

aren't many people involved."

There nobody who would say, "Well, they

don't have the motivation." Nobody would

say that. Nobody would say they don't

have the opportunity as of this week.

Last week, I was hearing that was no

opportunity. You couldn't do it and get

away with it. Well, we've got hundreds

of witnesses that says they did it and

they didn't get away with it, at least

in terms of being observed

or claims that they couldn't observe,

which I think should be treated the

same. So, I think any decent any decent

respect to what reason is

would say that the claims of the

election being fraudulent have a base.

That base, I agree, is not yet based on

court certified, if you will, validated

or verified facts. But that's not the

only definition of the word baseless. If

you have reasons such as reasoning that

air exists in France, you don't need the

facts because the reason is all you

need. And this is one of those cases. So

when they say baseless, that is

propaganda.

If they had said that there are

allegations that have not been proven in

court, what would you say to that? Would

you say that that was propaganda?

Nope. You'd say, "Oh, that's an accurate

statement. There are allegations which

have not been proven in court to the

extent that it would overturn the

election." At the same time that you

would also have to say there are

hundreds of witnesses that if you look

at their claims, they are big enough to

overturn the election. if true. They can

all be true. Um,

and so that is what I got for you today.

Somebody says, "The natural man, Scott,

does not receive the things of the

spirit, which is very limiting. I am a

spiritfree individual,

says says the commenter."

Okay. Um, but Scott, was Rudy's fake

hearing propaganda? Yeah. Yeah. So, one

of the things that uh my bad critics

often say is, "Ho, I got you, Scott. If

you think that's true, what about this?

Can you be consistent?"

Yeah, I can. It's so the the fact that

you would even think that I could that I

wouldn't be consistent on that. Yes,

Rudy was

specifically and intentionally

using persuasion that you could of

course call propaganda, of course. And

it was uh clear, obvious, he wasn't

hiding it. And do you know what Rudy is?

He's something called an advocate.

Do you know what the job of an advocate

is? Advocating. It's advocating. Yeah.

His job

is to persuade you. If you want to call

that propaganda, I'm okay with that. So,

I accept that. We're fine. That's his

job. Now, he also on top of that, you

know, he's he's managing public opinion.

He is managing the opinions of maybe

future judges and juries. This is his

job. So, when somebody whose job it is

to do propaganda

does propaganda, isn't hiding it even a

little bit. It's right out there. I'm an

advocate. I have a client. Clients

paying me.

That's pretty transparent. So, I don't

mind propaganda that's packaged as

propaganda. And that's what that was.

But if you're the news and you're

selling me propaganda packaged as news,

I've got a I've got a labeling problem

there.

Um, you tried to convince the world that

that was good propaganda. That's right.

There's good propaganda and bad

propaganda. Um, again, somebody

somebody's trying to catch me in some

kind of inconsistency.

There's good propaganda.

Trump does it all the time. When Trump

says the economy is great, it's getting

better, that's good propaganda because

when he says that stuff, it causes

people to invest and feel confident and

then the economy is good. When Trump

says our military is like way, way

better than it was before he took

office, is it necessarily true? I don't

know. You don't know. None of us know

what's happening in the military because

they keep that secret, right? But is it

good propaganda to tell the world even

more than he's telling the country? He's

telling the world, "We've got the best

military you've ever seen, and it was

pretty good before, but now it's even

way better. Is that good propaganda or

bad propaganda? Because it keeps you

safe, right? That's good propaganda. So,

just know that when an advocate, a

politician is saying something, that's

always propaganda, but it could be the

good kind. If your news is giving you

propaganda instead of news, and they're

selling it as news, that's fraud.

It's different.

All right. Um,

a poor economy would increase the number

of military volunteers. That's true. But

I don't think that matters in our

technical wars. I just don't see us

having a war in which standing armies of

China or Russia or the United States go

at it with a with a with a tank war.

We're not going to have a tank war with

China or a tank war with Russia. That's

not going to happen. Any anybody who I

mean, the reason it's not going to

happen is that whoever moved a force of

tanks against a superpower would lose

all of their tanks in 60 minutes. I'm

not wrong about that. Right.

Somebody says, "Go talk to Ellie and

apologize."

Um, I'm not going to apologize for

calling him smart because that's what I

call them. So, I don't know what you're

talking about. When people call me

smart, I usually say, "Thank you. I do

not require an apology."

All right.

Uh, check Trump's most recent tweet. Is

it that good? All right. I usually don't

like to do that because it slows down

the uh the pace here, but let me do that

anyway. Trump. Trump. Trump. Have you

noticed that Trump doesn't come up first

in your uh your your fill-in

sometimes? He does.

So, he comes out uh so Donald J. Trump

the the real Donald Trump uh thing. It

comes up fourth when I search in Twitter

for Trump.

Donald Trump has 80 whatever million

followers and he comes up fourth when

you start typing in Trump. Ahead of him

is the pus account. Perfectly fair. Uh,

then there's Trump Googling.

It's not even a blue check. And then

there is a blue check, but it's Tiffany

Trump. That's right. Tiffany Trump comes

up in the search before Donald Trump.

And

And uh you're you're wondering if

section 230 should be uh should be

important. Uh

yeah. All right. So, now that I'm done

ranting on that,

um,

okay, it's getting good now. So, Trump

just tweeted 11 minutes ago. Biden can

only enter the White House as president

if he can prove that his ridiculous

80 million votes were not fraudulently

or illegally obtained. When you see what

happened in Detroit, Atlanta, and

Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, massive

voter fraud, he's got a big unsolvable

problem.

Oh, I tell you, Trump doesn't know how

to not be provocative. I don't think he

I don't He doesn't know how to be

boring. He just He just can't be boring.

He just doesn't know how. So he's now uh

now obviously you can't prove a

negative. So he's said basically what he

said is he's not leaving the White House

which was how it will be interpreted

because you can't really prove a

negative. So the so he's created a

situation where uh the news will have to

talk about his allegation that there's

all this fraud and they hate talking

about that. uh they hate talking about

it because if you just talk about the

election fraud enough, it becomes true.

So here's here's the I don't know if

he's thinking of it this way, so I won't

I won't assume there's intention in

this, but this is the way it's going to

work out. If you simply make the

mainstream media talk about election

fraud, even if they're denying it, it

didn't happen. It didn't happen.

Election fraud didn't happen. Didn't

happen. Election fraud. What happens to

your brain?

Your brain says, "I heard a lot about

election fraud."

And even if every single thing you heard

was also debunked, that's not how your

brain is going to process it. If Trump

can simply make the news, do the thing

they don't want to do, which is talk

about the election fraud allegations,

even if they debunk them, he wins.

And this is so provocative they have to

talk about it because they're going to

have to talk about it in the context of

I think he just said he's not going to

leave.

But that's, you know, he's a little more

clever than that. He's he's forcing them

to be anchored to that tweet so they

will sell his message simply by

repeating election fraud, election fraud

more times than they wanted to.

So

I don't know. That's that may be uh

that may be one of his finest tweets in

terms of strategy. All right, that's all

for now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

All right, Periscope is off. Anything

you YouTubers want to ask me while you

got another minute here?

Uh I see there is somebody says that

there's a new study showing that

hydroxychloroquin with zinc and a

zithramy

uh works really really well in reducing

hospital visits. Do you know what's

missing in that story? What is missing

in that story about the study that says

hydroxychloricquin works really well?

Well, here's what's missing. Uh the one

of the authors is uh Zeleno the original

hydroxychloroquin

doctor and the study itself is a

retrospective.

Now can you trust a retrospective study?

No you can't. So it's a retrospective

study. Basically they're saying all

right we're not going to study it. We're

going to look at what what happened in

the past and see if we can figure out

just by looking at some data from

history whether we can judge that it

works or not. That is not the same level

of credibility as a randomized

controlled study. So if you've got a

randomized control study that would have

to use those same chemicals and have to

administer them in a similar way, not

waiting until too late. If you had that

and it said it worked, I'd take that

pretty seriously. If you have yet

another retrospective study, it just

gets thrown on the pile with the other

retrospective studies that seem to

disagree with the randomized control

studies. So, if you don't see a

randomized control study on

hydroxychloroquin,

I would ignore it. Same with vitamin D.

vitamin D. I think there's a strong

argument that boosting your vitamin D

could protect you because just because

it protects you from things in general.

But if you see a retrospective study

that says people with vitamin D did much

better, you must be careful because

those people might have been unhealthy

in general and a low vitamin D level is

a marker for low health in general. So

it could be that the vitamin D is

telling you nothing but these are

generally unhealthy people and if you

were to boost their vitamin D that would

still be just generally unhealthy people

with vitamin D. It might not make that

much difference at all. So be careful of

correlation versus causation.

Uh is a slaughter meter still relevant?

Not really, because the situation became

this weird two worlds where Trump could

actually win and not be president. So,

you know, prior to the actual election

day, I modified my prediction to the

coin flip would come up edge, meaning

that you'd have two winners and it would

just stay that way. And I think that's

the situation. I think Trump will make

his case at least to the public and so

the public will say uh yes it is true

that he won the election. It's also true

that Biden took the job. So I don't know

what the slaughter meter means in that

context. But uh I still think that

there's a 98% chance that he really won

based on the electoral college votes if

they had been voted if they had been

counted accurately. That's what I think.

All right, that's it for now. I'll talk

to you tomorrow. Go shopping.