Episode 34 - Why Kanye and John Legend Are Watching Different Movies
Hey everybody, it's time to get in here. We're gonna do a little whiteboard talk on our favorite topic. Try to ignore the sounds of gardeners outside.
View segment →Today I'm going to talk about the disagreement between Kanye and John Legend. If you're following the news, you know that Kanye has expressed some love for President Trump as a person. No discussion of policies, just that it's okay for him to like him. John Legend has weighed in publicly on Twitter…
View segment →And let me explain it. Now, the normal world, as you know, it's quite common. In fact, it's universal. It's not just common, it's the universal way that human beings look at things. We have confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, and we imagine that we're rational creatures, but we're not. Now…
View segment →But let me run through a couple of different pieces of confirmation bias. And I picked the two most frequently noted ones. There are lots and lots of them. And I think John Legend would be the first one to point this out. It's like, okay, you only mention two things, but look, I've got a long list.…
View segment →But here's another set of facts that also fit, and I would argue that they fit a little better. And I did it with a Venn diagram. So here you've got, let's say the topic is stricter immigration, President Trump's preferred immigration policies. So that's the topic. If you do the Venn diagram, I thi…
View segment →Let's talk about this Charlottesville hoax. This is usually at the top of the list when people say, well, you know, it's no longer in doubt the president is definitely a racist because of the Charlottesville situation in which he referred to people who were at the event as, quote, "fine people." No…
View segment →For the record, I completely disagree with keeping the statues. The statues are not history. The statues are decorations. You would not decorate your own house in a way that offended half of the country or even 20 percent of your neighborhood. You just wouldn't do it, right? Because you'd be kind of…
View segment →So the president is on the other side of me on this issue. He said he thinks the statues are fine, wants to keep them, doesn't think that's racist. It's just a reflection of history. His comment that there were some fine people there, isn't it a little more likely, given the history of this preside…
View segment →So recapping the Kanye versus John Legend. John, if you're looking at this, and somebody will probably tweet it to you, I hate to take your time, but I want to promise you that I've spent a lot of time with Trump supporters and I don't see this. I just don't see it. I believe you see it. I believe y…
View segment →So that's what I wanted to talk about today, and I hope this helps. And for the rest of you, have a good day.
View segment →Hey everybody, it's time to get in here. We're gonna do a little whiteboard talk on our favorite topic. Try to ignore the sounds of gardeners outside.
Today I'm going to talk about the disagreement between Kanye and John Legend. If you're following the news, you know that Kanye has expressed some love for President Trump as a person. No discussion of policies, just that it's okay for him to like him. John Legend has weighed in publicly on Twitter and said, hey, you know, he's not happy about this because it seems to be validating who he thinks is a racist, which is President Trump.
And then it got more interesting because Kanye this morning sent a screenshot of the text exchange between them. John Legend had contacted him by text and made an impassioned and genuine request that Kanye rethink his support of President Trump because it's harmful, in John Legend's opinion.
Let me start by saying both of these people, John Legend and Kanye, are trying to help. So all credit to them, because both of them are absolutely putting their reputations on the line. They're putting some skin in the game. They both have completely positive intentions.
But here's the interesting thing. They're looking at the same set of facts but seeing two completely different movies. And I wanted to give you just a brief explanation of how these two smart, accomplished, well-informed people can look at exactly the same stuff but see completely different things. John Legend sees, you know, what kind of monster Trump is, a racist. Kanye sees it differently. How can that be? They're both smart, well-informed, and I'm pretty sure Kanye is not crazy, at least in this sense. So how can that be?
And let me explain it. Now, the normal world, as you know, it's quite common. In fact, it's universal. It's not just common, it's the universal way that human beings look at things. We have confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, and we imagine that we're rational creatures, but we're not.
Now if you said to both these people, hey, John Legend, have you heard of these concepts, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias, I'll bet both of them would say yes, and that they would know essentially what those mean and that they're common things. I think Kanye might be a step ahead in the sense that even if you know what these things are, there's a second trap. And the trap is that you believe that these are the things that happen to other people.
If you understand what they are but you've only gone so far as to believe that this is something that happens to the dumb people, it's certainly not something that happens to you because you would recognize it and you would immediately not do it. If you think that's what these mean, you're not quite understanding them. And I believe Kanye's probably operating at a little bit higher level of comprehension in the sense that I think he would understand that these are universal traits and that you can't tell which of you is wrong.
And I applied this to myself. So in everything I say, I would not know if I'm wrong. I would have no way to know. Now, there's some ways you can check stuff, but you can't ever really know if you're the one who's in the wrong movie.
But let me run through a couple of different pieces of confirmation bias. And I picked the two most frequently noted ones. There are lots and lots of them. And I think John Legend would be the first one to point this out. It's like, okay, you only mention two things, but look, I've got a long list. What about everything else on the list? In the interests of time, I'm only going to make the point with two of them, even though I know the list exists. Because if I can debunk the two most common ones, then at least it opens your mind to say, wait a minute, maybe that other stuff on the list isn't exactly what I thought if those two have been debunked.
All right, so let's do that. So the one thing that people like to say is that why is it that essentially I think a hundred percent of the out-of-the-closet racists support President Trump? That's very worrying, right? Like if that's the only thing you knew, is all the racists are voting for the same candidate, your hair catches on fire and you say, ah, that's not good. I don't like this guy. If the racists like him, I don't like him. That's pretty reasonable. It's pretty reasonable, right? That should be a gigantic red flag, right?
So the fact that African Americans, more than half of the country, sees that gigantic red flag, that's normal. They should see that this situation is a big red flag. So how do you explain it? Well, the one movie says, well, it must be that they can hear the secret racist whistle and they feel correctly this would be one movie's version, that the president's a big ol' racist. And so their supporting that fits all the facts that we see in evidence, right?
But here's another set of facts that also fit, and I would argue that they fit a little better. And I did it with a Venn diagram. So here you've got, let's say the topic is stricter immigration, President Trump's preferred immigration policies. So that's the topic.
If you do the Venn diagram, I think the GOP mainstream, the people who are not racists, would be saying, yeah, we like more immigration control at the borders because it's good for American jobs, that might lower crime, it's good for economics in general. The racists would also like all that stuff. Yeah, who doesn't like more jobs, better economy, less crime? So everybody agrees on that stuff, right?
But they additionally want fewer brown people. Okay, that's what makes them racists. If they wanted more brown people, they wouldn't be racist, or at least they wouldn't be white supremacist racists. So how can it be that all of these racists are supporting Trump? Well, it's easy. He's got the only policy which, in their opinion, would result in fewer brown people. But that doesn't say anything about these guys, nor does it say anything about President Trump, because his policy is about jobs and crime and economics.
The fewer brown people is, wait for it, probably not exactly what the racists were hoping for. Because remember, President Trump's preferred immigration strategy is that we take the most qualified people from every country that has good government systems so that we can identify them. The whole point of the seven-country ban is that those countries are not even all Muslim. I think North Korea is on there. But the point of it is that they don't have good systems for identifying their own citizens, so then we can't tell who we're getting.
All right, so President Trump's preferred system would take the best people from wherever they come from, as long as, in this context, the best means economically they can take care of themselves and also add to the country so they're not bringing in problems. Most of them are going to be brown. Here I say brown to cover everybody who's not a classic generic white person. So that would include all of Asia, all of India, and all of Africa, every country that's in play.
So I don't think the racists would get what they want. But here's the thing: immigration is just sufficiently complicated enough that people default to their biases because it's a little hard to follow. Most of us don't know the details of who wants to do what and if this policy would change what by how much. It's a little hard to follow. And so whenever you have complication, people default to bias. Racists say, well, I don't understand this whole thing, but it seems like less immigration. That would get fewer brown people. That must be good if you're a racist.
So it makes perfect sense that racists would vote Republican, but for different reasons. By analogy, criminals have guns and police have guns, but that doesn't make criminals police, right? People can like things for completely different reasons. A criminal likes a gun for making crime. Police like guns for stopping crime. Same gun. All right, President Trump is one gun. Terrible analogy, and I know, forgive me for this analogy. He's one gun. The criminals can use him. The good people can use him for different reasons.
Let's talk about this Charlottesville hoax. This is usually at the top of the list when people say, well, you know, it's no longer in doubt the president is definitely a racist because of the Charlottesville situation in which he referred to people who were at the event as, quote, "fine people."
Now, the people who were trapped in their mental prisons say, my God, there's more evidence of what we already believed. How can he call these Tiki-torch-carrying racists, who have self-labeled themselves? They've labeled themselves as racists. You don't even have to wonder if they're racist. They are self-labeled. They're marching. They're out. And then the President of the United States gets on TV and says there were fine people there. Ah, head exploding. He must be a racist. Now it's proven.
Well, there are two explanations that fit the facts and evidence. One of them is the one I just said under this movie. And there are some problems with this movie. But here in this movie, the President of the United States is a giant racist. And although he's a very capable person who made billions in real estate, conquered the reality TV show world, won the nomination, became president, is making progress with North Korea where nobody else has, juiced the economy, he's done a lot of things that feel like the sort of things that only really smart, capable people can do.
But how would that explain how this person, who is so smart and so capable over decades, would decide that it was a good idea to go on national television as a sitting president and say, you know, I think I'll side with the people marching with Tiki torches for racists? In order to believe that he did that, you have to believe that he decided to go against his own family. Because remember, the Tiki torch people were doing anti-Semitic chants. His daughter has converted to Judaism. His son-in-law, who's in the administration, is a Jew. His grandkids are Jews. His main advisers, lots of them are Jews. Netanyahu loves him. Israel loves him. He's moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
So you would have to believe, in order to believe movie one, where the president is a racist and he has called the racists in Charlottesville fine people, you have to believe that he went against his family and that he decided that it would be a good idea to come out as a racist on national TV while president. Maybe. You know, but we've seen strange things happen, right? Maybe.
But let's compare it to the other movie, and then you can decide which one seems to fit the facts a little better. So movie two says the president believed, incorrectly, that there might have been some people there protesting the removal of statues. Remember, the whole event was around whether the Confederate statue should be removed. And the president is for keeping the statues, and he thinks, he's not a racist. Well, I don't want to get in his head, so let me retract that. I always mock people for imagining they can imagine what other people are thinking. So let me back off that.
Let's just say that he's in favor of keeping the Confederate statues for historical reasons. And there are a lot of people in his space who agree. For the record, I completely disagree with keeping the statues. The statues are not history. The statues are decorations. You would not decorate your own house in a way that offended half of the country or even 20 percent of your neighborhood. You just wouldn't do it, right? Because you'd be kind of a dick if you did that.
So the statues, while I understand the argument that it's part of history and you don't want to change history, the history is still with us. It's in the internet. It's in the history books. No one's going to forget it. Moreover, nobody ever learned history from a statue. Throughout history, not many people ever learned something from a statue. So I call the statues decorations. And in my opinion, if somebody on my team is offended by the decoration, that's a good reason to change a decoration. Because it's just a decoration. The point of a decoration is to make people feel good. If your decoration makes people feel bad, get rid of it. Let the history go. Put it in the books. Put it in the internet. It's a decoration. You just don't need it.
All right, so that's my view. I only give you that as an aside so you can kind of put it in context with this discussion. So the president is on the other side of me on this issue. He said he thinks the statues are fine, wants to keep them, doesn't think that's racist. It's just a reflection of history.
His comment that there were some fine people there, isn't it a little more likely, given the history of this president, that he wasn't well informed about who was there? If somebody told you there was a protest around Confederate statues, who would you assume was there? You would assume that there were people who say, hey, that's racist, get rid of those statues. And you'd be right. And you would assume that there would be some just ordinary Republicans who say, hey, don't change my history. I like it there. Because even though I don't like slavery, I don't like what that represents, it's just part of history. Why change the history? Those would be good people that you disagree with, right?
So the president made an assumption, or let's say under movie two scenario, he just didn't know who was there exactly. He knew that there were some racists there. He knew that there were anti-racists there. A reasonable person would have assumed, and I'm saying that because that's what I assumed. I'm pretty reasonable. I assumed that there were people there just saying that we want to keep the statue but we're not racist.
Now, it turns out that there were people like that, but there weren't many of them. So it doesn't really help the argument to say, well, there were 25 of them there, because that's not really enough to make a difference. They were there, but there weren't many of them.
So what is more likely? That a president who is competent enough to be in this position had suddenly decided, yeah, I think I'll just go full racist on TV and insult my family and all of my closest advisers and make problems with Israel? Is that likely? Does that sound like a good explanation of what happened? Compared to movie two, where the president didn't know all the facts about a situation that was still sort of evolving, and there's a little bit of a fog of war there, and he assumed the most reasonable thing.
Let me say it again. The most reasonable thing you could ever assume about Charlottesville is that there were some non-racists who just thought they would prefer keeping the statues. If you have a protest and a counter-protest of keep the statues and get rid of the statues, you're gonna attract people who just like statues and it's not a racial thing. They just like their history, even though I disagree with them.
So Charlottesville was picked up by the mainstream media, and they hammered on it forever, trying to sell you on movie one. Most people bought movie one if they were already inclined to believe it. All right, if they were inclined to believe that, movie one looked totally reasonable. They're like, yeah, I guess he just threw his entire family under the bus.
And now the time has gone by. It gets harder to explain movie one, because why is it that Netanyahu wasn't bothered by this? That's hard to explain. Why is it that his Jewish family members, his daughter, son-in-law, why haven't they quit or at least sent a tweet saying, hey, don't throw us under the bus? Maybe they wouldn't, out of loyalty or whatever, but it doesn't really fit too well versus movie two. The president, who never has a command of all the facts, once again, just like every other time, made an assumption and didn't have all the facts. How ordinary would that be? If you've seen it basically a hundred percent of the time on every single topic, he is always dealing at a sort of conceptual level, which by the way I think usually works, and he doesn't have every single detail about a complicated situation.
I'm not sure, but this would be the most typical situation. I call the Charlottesville a hoax, very similar to the Russia collusion story. Russia collusion looked really, really convincing to a lot of people for a year and a half. And now they're gonna have to grapple with the fact that nobody could find this collusion. They could find people associated with Trump who did illegal things, who lied about things, and they need to be dealt with. But the actual collusion, the very first thing, how many people believe that? Well, the people who were not inclined to believe it didn't and saw plenty of reason not to believe it. The people who were inclined to believe there's something wrong with this guy, he must be colluding, they did believe it. And we're looking at the same set of facts.
So recapping the Kanye versus John Legend. John, if you're looking at this, and somebody will probably tweet it to you, I hate to take your time, but I want to promise you that I've spent a lot of time with Trump supporters and I don't see this. I just don't see it. I believe you see it. I believe you actually see it. Well, I don't see it. And I think if you were to actually gather up some Trump supporters, put them in a room, spend an hour with them, see if you can see it. Because that's not the sort of thing people can hide. You could tease that out of somebody over the course of an hour. Maybe you've got to give them a drink or something, but you're not gonna be able to miss it if you think it's there. Gather some Trump supporters. See if you can find it. A year and a half. I don't see it.
All right, I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I voted for Bernie, even though the media has labeled me as alt-right this week again. Well, here's a good example. If you're wondering how easy it is for people to be completely wrong, look how many people labeled me alt-right and a men's rights advocate this week, and also a Holocaust denier this week. Just this week. These are major publications who could have easily just googled to find out it's not true. I was also called retarded this week. Somebody has called me a former cartoonist. If you look at all the things that were just said about me this week, with all of the facts just in public to dispute it and to debunk it, we don't live in a world where the facts are guiding us these days.
So Kanye has opened a window, a door, maybe a crack in the universe. And it's gonna be hard for people to make their way to the other side of the hole, but it's happening. It's happening. You can feel it. Let me ask you this. Just say yes or no to this question. How many of you feel it? How many of you feel something really good that's about to happen? Maybe it's already happening. Say yeah. The essence, you can feel it before you can see it. You can feel it before your logic catches up to it. And that's where it all starts, right? Change starts with the feeling. It doesn't start with the facts. Because we saw the facts. The facts just don't convince people. Nobody gets talked into something by a fact. We think we do. We want to. We would like our facts to convince other people. And then we say, hey, why didn't my fact change your mind? Well, the same thing's happening the other way. They're giving you facts and it's not changing your mind either.
So why is this different? I'll tell you why this is different. Because it's not fact-based. The racial divide was always at least in large part, I'm not going to say that racism doesn't exist. I'm not going to be the guy that says we're post-racial, racism doesn't exist. Plenty of stuff to fix. Plenty of stuff to fix. But the way we're feeling about each other is a little bit ginned up. So it's a little bit a product of the election cycle we went through and top-right influencers on both sides selling a version of reality that a lot of people bought into. And they bought into it because they could feel it, right?
So the competing versions of reality were not really fact-based. They were there to take our emotions somewhere. And two paths were formed. These emotions and these emotions. What you're feeling now, and this is all Kanye and Candace, anytime I give credit to Kanye you should in your mind interpret that to include Candace Owens, who was sort of the brave voice that got things going. But the two of them have just changed how we feel. Right now, so far that hasn't spread to John Legend. It's not gonna be that dramatic. It's not like turning a switch.
But I gotta tell you, John, you look for it yourself and see if you can find where the Trump supporters, the ones you think want fewer brown people, see if you can find in any of this, Kanye, Chance the Rapper, Candace Owens, see if you can find it with any of these people, rank-and-file normal Republicans, who are saying racist things about them or indeed not totally supporting them completely. Watch how easily, how effortlessly, and more than that, watch how enthusiastically Trump Republicans are embracing Candace, Kanye, and Chance the Rapper didn't embrace Trump but he simply said hey, you don't have to be a Democrat, which felt like a civilization-changing concept. It shouldn't, but it feels like it.
So just watch. It's all real. The feelings, the good feelings that you're seeing about the folks who were breaking a hole in reality, that's real. No, that's not pretend.
So that's what I wanted to talk about today, and I hope this helps. And for the rest of you, have a good day.
do pom-pom hey everybody it's time to get in here we're gonna do a little whiteboard talk on our favorite topic try to ignore the sounds of gardeners outside so today I'm going to talk about the disagreement between Kanye and John Legend if you're following the news you know that Kanye has expressed some love for President Trump as a person no discussion of policies just that it's okay for him to like him John Legend has weighed in publicly on Twitter and said hey you know he's not happy about this because it seems to be validating who he thinks is a racist which is President Trump and then it got more interesting because Kanye this morning sent a screenshot of the text exchange between John Legend who contacted him by by text and made a an impassioned and genuine request that Kanye rethink his support of President Trump because it's you know harmful in John Legend's opinion let me start by saying both of these people John Legend and Kanye are trying to help so all credit to them because both of them are absolutely putting their their reputations on the line they're putting some skin in the game they both have completely positive intentions but here's the interesting thing they're looking at the same set of facts but seems two completely different movies and I wanted to give you just a brief explanation of how these two smart accomplished well informed people can look at exactly the same stuff but see completely different things John Legend sees you know what kind of monster you know Trump is a racist Kanye sees it differently how can that be they're both smart well-informed and I'm pretty sure Kanye isn't is not crazy at least at least in this sense so how can that be and let me explain it now the normal world as you know is it's quite common in fact it's universal it's not just common it's the universal way the human human people look at things human people human beings we have less of confirmation bias and lots of cognitive dissonance and we imagine that were rational creatures but were not now if you said to both these people hey god Danny hey John Legend have you heard of these concepts cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias I'll bet both of them would say yes and that they would know essentially what those mean and that they're common things I think Kanye might be a step ahead in the sense that even if you know what these things are there's a second trap and the trap is that you believe that these are the things that happen to other people right if you believe if you understand what they are but you've only gone so far as to believe that this is something that happens to the dumb people it's certainly not something that happens to you because you would recognize it and you would immediately not do it right if you think that's what these mean you're not quite understanding them and I believe Kanye's probably operating it at a little bit higher level of of comprehension in the sense that I think he would understand that these are universal traits and that you can't tell which which of you is wrong right and and I applied this to myself so and everything I say I would not know if I'm wrong I wouldn't I wouldn't have no way to know now there's some ways you can check stuff but you can't ever really know if you're the one who's in the wrong movie but let me run through a couple of different pieces of confirmation bias and I picked the two most frequently noted ones right there are lots and lots of them and I think John Legend would be the first one to point this out it's like okay you only mention two things but look I got a long list what about everything else on the list in the interests of time I'm only going to make the point with two of them even though I know the list exists because if I can debunk the two most common ones then at least open your mind to say wait a minute maybe that other stuff in the list isn't exactly what I thought if those two have been debunked all right so let's do that so the one thing that people like to say is that why is it that essentially I think a hundred percent of the you know out of the closet racists support President Trump that's very worrying right like if that's the only thing you knew is all the racists are voting for the same candidate your hair catches on fire and you say ah that's not good I don't like this guy if the racists like them I'll like them that's pretty reasonable it's pretty reasonable right that should be a gigantic red flag right so the fact that African Americans have more than half of the country sees that gigantic red flag that's normal they should see that this situation is a big red flag so how do you explain it well the one movie says well it must be that they they can hear the secret racist whistle and they feel correctly this would be one movies version that the president's a big ol racist and so they supporting that fits all the facts that we see in evidence right but here's here's another set of facts that also fit and I would argue that they fit a little better and I did it with a Venn diagram so here you've got let's say the the topic is stricter immigration president Trump's preferred immigration policies so that's the topic if you do the Venn diagram I think the GOP mainstream the people who are not racists would be saying yeah we like more immigration control the entire borders because it's good for American jobs that might lower crime it's good for economics in general the racists would also like all that stuff yeah who doesn't who doesn't like more jobs better economy less crime so everybody agrees on that stuff right but they additionally want fewer brown people okay that's what makes them racists you know if they wanted more brown people there wouldn't be racist or at least they wouldn't be white supremacist races so how can it be that all of these racists are supporting Trump well it's easy he's got the only policy which in their opinion would result in fewer brown people but that doesn't say anything about these guys nor does it say anything about President Trump because his policy is about jobs and crime and economics the fewer brown people is wait for it probably not exactly what the races were hoping for because remember president Trump's preferred immigration strategy is that we take the most qualified people from every country that has you know good in let's say good government systems so that we can identify them right the whole point of the seven country ban is that those countries are not even all Muslim right because I think North Korea is on there but the the point of it is that they don't have good systems for identifying their own citizens so then we can't tell who we're getting all right so president Trump's preferred system would take the best people from wherever they come from as long as in this in this context the best means economically they can take care of themselves and also add to the country so they're not bringing in problems most of them are going to be brown here I say Brown to cover everybody is not you know a classic generic white person so that would include all of Asia all of India you know and all of you know all of Africa every country that's that's in play so I don't think the the racist would get what they want but here's there's the thing immigration is just sufficiently complicated enough that people default to their biases because it's a little hard to follow you know most of us don't know the details of who wants to do what and if this policy would change what by how much it's a little hard to follow and so whenever you have complication people default to bias racists say well I don't understand this whole thing but you know it seems like less immigration that would get fewer brown people that must be good if you're a racist so it makes perfect sense that racists would vote Republican but for different reasons by analogy criminals have guns and police have guns but that doesn't make criminals police right people can like things for completely different reasons criminal likes a gun for making crime police like guns for stopping crime same gun alright President Trump is one gun terrible analogy and I know forgive me for this analogy he's one gun the criminals can use them the good people can use them alright for different reasons let's talk about this charlottesville hoax this is the usually at the top of the list when people say well you know it's not-it's no longer in doubt the president is definitely a racist because the Charla Ville situation in which he referred to people who were at the event as quote fine people now the people who were trapped in their mental prisons say my god there's more evidence of what we already believed how can he call these Tiki carrying racist who have self labeled themselves they've labeled themselves as racist you don't even have to you don't even have to wonder if they're racist they are self labeled they're margin they're out and then the President of the United States gets on TV and says there were fine people there ah I had exploding he must be a racist now it's proven well there are two explanations that fit the facts of evidence one of them is the one I just said under this movie and there are some problems with this movie but here in this movie the president of United States is a giant racist and although he's a very capable person who you know it made made billions in real estate conquer the the reality TV show world won the nomination became president is making progress with North Korea where nobody could has goose the economy he's done a lot of things that feel like the sort of things that only really smart capable people can do but how would that explain how this person who is so smart and so capable over decades would decide that it was a good idea to go on national television as a sitting president and say you know I think I'll side with the people racing you know marching with tiki torches for racists alright in order to believe that he did that you have to believe that he decided to go against his own family because remember the tiki torch people were doing anti-semitic chance his daughter is converted to Judaism his son-in-law who's in the administration is a Jew his gran grandkids are are Jews his main advisors lots of them are Jews Netanyahu loves him Israel loves him he's moving the embassy to to Jerusalem so you would have to believe in order to believe movie one where president is a racist and he has called the the racists in charlottesville fine people to believe that set of facts you have to believe that you went against his family and that he decided that it would be a good idea to come out as a racist on national TV wall president maybe you know but we've seen strange things happen right maybe but let's compare it to the other movie and then you can decide which one which one seems to fit the facts a little better right so the movie too says the president believed incorrectly that there might have been some people there protesting the removal of statues remember the whole event was around whether the Confederate statue should be removed and the president is for keeping the statues and he thinks he's not a racist well I don't want to get it in his head so let me let me retract that I always I mock people for imagining they can imagine what other people are thinking so let's let me back off that let's just say that he's in favor of keeping the Confederate statues for historical reasons and there are a lot of people in his space who are great I come for the record I completely disagree with keeping the statues the statues are not history the statues are decorations you would not decorate your own house in a way that offended half of the country or even 20% of your neighborhood you just wouldn't do it right because you'd be kind of a dick if you did that so the statues while I understand the argument that it's part of history and you know you don't want to you know change history the history is still with us it's in the internet it's in the history books no one's going to forget it moreover nobody ever learned history from a statue probably in you know throughout we history not many people ever learn something from a statue so I call the statues decorations and in my opinion if somebody on my team is offended by stat the declarations that's a good reason to change a decoration because it's just the decoration the point of a decoration is to make people feel good if your decoration makes people feel bad get rid of it you know let the history go you know put it in the books put it in the internet it's a decoration you just don't need it all right so that's my view I only give you that as an aside so you can you know kind of put it in context with this discussion so the president is on the other side of me on this issue he said he thinks the statutes are fine wants to keep him doesn't think that's racist is just you know a reflection of history his comment that there were some fine people there isn't there a little more likely given the history of this president that he wasn't well informed about who was there if somebody told you there was a protest around Confederate statues who would you assume was there you would assume that there were people who say hey that's racist get rid of those statues and you'd be right and you would assume that there would be some just ordinary Republicans who say hey don't change my history I like it there cuz you know even though I don't like slavery I don't like what that represents it's just part of history why change the history those would be good people that you disagree with right so the president made an assumption or let's say under movie 2 scenario he just didn't know who was there exactly he knew that there were some racists there he knew that there were anti races there a reasonable person would have assumed and I'm saying that because that's what I assumed I'm pretty reasonable I assume that there were people there just saying that we want to keep the statue of you but we're not racist now it turns out that there were people like that but there weren't many of them so you know it doesn't really help the argument to say well there were you know 25 of them there because that's not really enough to make a difference they were there and just were many of them so what is more likely that a president who is competent enough to be in this position had suddenly decided yeah I think I'll just go full races on TV and insult my family and all of my closest advisers and make problems with Israel is that likely does that sound like a good explanation of what happened compared to movie 2 where the president didn't know all the facts about a situation that was still sort of evolving and you know there's a little bit of a fog of war there and he assumed the most reasonable thing let me say it again the most reasonable thing you could ever assume about Charlottesville is that there were some non racists who just thought they they would prefer keeping the statues if you have if you have a protest and a counter protest of keep the statues and get rid of the statues you're gonna attract people who just like statues and are not it's not a racial thing you know they just like their history even though I disagree with them so Charlottesville was picked up by you know the mainstream media and they hammered on it forever trying to sell you on movie one most people bought movie one if they were already inclined to believe it all right if they were inclined to believe that movie one looked totally reasonable they're like yeah I guess he just threw his entire family under the bus and now the time is gone by it gets harder to explain movie one cuz why is it that Netanyahu wasn't bothered by this that's hard to explain why is it that his you know his Jewish family members his daughter son-in-law why haven't they quit or at least sent a tweet saying hey don't throw us under the bus maybe they wouldn't and loyalty or whatever but it doesn't really fit too well versus movie to the president who never has a command of all the facts once again just every other time made an assumption and didn't have all the facts how ordinary would that be if you've seen it basically a hundred percent of the time on every single topic he is always dealing as sort of a conceptual level which by the way I think usually works and he doesn't have every single detail about a complicated situation I'm not sure Anissa but this would be the most typical situation I call the Charlottesville a hoax very similar to the the Russia collusion story Russia collusion looked really really convincing to a lot of people for how long a year and a half and and now they're they're gonna have to grapple with the fact that nobody could find this collision you know they could find people associated with Trump who did the illegal things who lied about things and they need to be you know dealt with but the actual collusion the very first thing how many people believe that well the people who were not inclined to believe it didn't and saw plenty of reason not to believe it the people who were inclined to believe there's something wrong with this guy he must be including they did believe it and we're looking at the same set of facts so recapping the Kanye versus John Legend John if you're looking at this and somebody will probably tweet it to you I hate to take your time but I want to promise you that I've spent a lot of time with Trump supporters and I don't see this I just don't see it I believe you see it I believe you actually see it well I don't see it and I think if you were to actually you know gather up some Trump supporters put them in a room spend an hour with them see if you can see it because that's not the sort of thing people can hide right you could you could tease that out of somebody over the course of an hour right maybe you got to give them a dream you know something but you're not gonna be able to miss it if you think it's there gather some Trump supporters see if you see if you can find it a year and a half I don't see it all right I'm not a Republican I'm not a conservative I'm left to Bernie even though the media has labeled me as alright this week again well here's a good example if you're wondering how easy it is for people to be completely wrong look how many people labeled me alt right and a men's rights advocate this week and also a Holocaust denier this week just this week these are major publications who could have easily just googled to find out it's not true I was also called retired this week somebody has called me a former cartoonist if you look at all the things that were just said about me this week with all of the facts just in public to dispute it and to you know debunk it we don't live in a world where the facts are guiding us these days so Kanye has opened a window a door maybe yeah a crack in the universe and it's hard it's gonna be hard for people to you know kind of make their way to the other side of the hole but it's happening it's happening you know you you can feel it let me ask you this just say yes or no to this question how many of you feel it how many of you feel something really good that's about to happen maybe it's already happening say yeah the essence you can feel it before you can see it you can you can feel it you know before your your logic catches up to it and and that's where it all starts right change change starts with the feeling it doesn't start with the facts because we saw the facts the facts just don't convince people nobody gets talked into something by a fact we think we do we want to we would like our facts to convince other people and then we say hey why didn't my fact change your mind well the same things happening the other way they're giving you facts and it's not changing your mind either so why is this different I'll tell you why this is different because it's not fact-based they're the the split you know the the the racial divide was always at least you know in a large part I'm not going to say that racism doesn't exist I'm not going to be the guy that says we're post-racial racism doesn't exist plenty of stuff to fix plenty of stuff to fix but the way we're feeling about each other is a little bit ginned up you know so it's a little bit a product of the election cycle we went through and and top right influencers on both sides selling a version of reality that a lot of people bought into and they bought into it because they they could feel it right so the the competing versions of reality were not really fact-based they were there were to take our emotions somewhere and and two paths were formed these emotions and these emotions what you're feeling now and this is the this is all Kanye and Candice you know I anytime I give credit to Kanye you should in your mind interpret that to include Candace Owens you know who was sort of the the brave voice that that got things going but the two of them have just changed how we feel right now so far that hasn't spread to John Legend's you know the it you know it's not it's not gonna be that dramatic it's not like turning a switch but I gotta tell you John you what look for it yourself and see if you can find where the Trump supporters the ones you think won a few or brown people see if you can find in any of this Kanye chance the rapper Candice Owen see if you can find in with any of these people rank-and-file normal Republicans who are saying racist things about them or indeed not not totally supporting them completely right watch how easily how effortlessly and more than that watch how enthusiastically Trump Republicans are embracing Candis Kayne you know and chance the rapper didn't embrace Trump but he simply said hey you don't have to be a Democrat which which felt like a you know like a civilization changing concept it shouldn't but it feels like it so just watch it's all real you know the the feelings the good feelings that you're seeing about you know the folks who were breaking a hole in reality that's real no no that's pretend so that's what I wanted to talk about today and I hope this helps and for the rest of you have a good day
do pom-pom hey everybody it's time to
get in here we're gonna do a little
whiteboard talk on our favorite topic
try to ignore the sounds of gardeners
outside so today I'm going to talk about
the disagreement between Kanye and John
Legend if you're following the news you
know that Kanye has expressed some love
for President Trump as a person no
discussion of policies just that it's
okay for him to like him John Legend has
weighed in publicly on Twitter and said
hey you know he's not happy about this
because it seems to be validating who he
thinks is a racist which is President
Trump and then it got more interesting
because Kanye this morning sent a
screenshot of the text exchange between
John Legend who contacted him by by text
and made a an impassioned and genuine
request that Kanye rethink his support
of President Trump because it's you know
harmful in John Legend's opinion let me
start by saying both of these people
John Legend and Kanye are trying to help
so all credit to them because both of
them are absolutely putting their their
reputations on the line they're putting
some skin in the game they both have
completely positive intentions but
here's the interesting thing they're
looking at the same set of facts but
seems two completely different movies
and I wanted to give you just a brief
explanation of how these two smart
accomplished well informed people can
look at exactly the same stuff but see
completely different things John Legend
sees you know what kind of
monster you know Trump is a racist
Kanye sees it differently how can that
be
they're both smart well-informed and I'm
pretty sure Kanye isn't is not crazy at
least at least in this sense so how can
that be and let me explain it now the
normal world as you know is it's quite
common in fact it's universal it's not
just common it's the universal way the
human human people look at things human
people human beings we have less of
confirmation bias and lots of cognitive
dissonance and we imagine that were
rational creatures but were not now if
you said to both these people hey god
Danny hey John Legend have you heard of
these concepts cognitive dissonance and
confirmation bias
I'll bet both of them would say yes and
that they would know essentially what
those mean and that they're common
things I think Kanye might be a step
ahead in the sense that even if you know
what these things are there's a second
trap and the trap is that you believe
that these are the things that happen to
other people right if you believe if you
understand what they are but you've only
gone so far as to believe that this is
something that happens to the dumb
people it's certainly not something that
happens to you because you would
recognize it and you would immediately
not do it right if you think that's what
these mean you're not quite
understanding them and I believe Kanye's
probably operating it at a little bit
higher level of of comprehension in the
sense that I think he would understand
that these are universal traits and that
you can't tell which which of you is
wrong right and and I applied this to
myself so and everything I say I would
not know if I'm wrong I wouldn't I
wouldn't have no way to know now there's
some ways you can check stuff but you
can't ever really know if you're the one
who's in the wrong movie but let me run
through a couple of different pieces of
confirmation bias
and I picked the two most frequently
noted ones right there are lots and lots
of them and I think John Legend would be
the first one to point this out it's
like okay you only mention two things
but look I got a long list what about
everything else on the list in the
interests of time I'm only going to make
the point with two of them even though I
know the list exists because if I can
debunk the two most common ones then at
least open your mind to say wait a
minute maybe that other stuff in the
list isn't exactly what I thought if
those two have been debunked all right
so let's do that so the one thing that
people like to say is that why is it
that essentially I think a hundred
percent of the you know out of the
closet racists support President Trump
that's very worrying right like if
that's the only thing you knew is all
the racists are voting for the same
candidate your hair catches on fire and
you say ah that's not good I don't like
this guy if the racists like them I'll
like them that's pretty reasonable it's
pretty reasonable right that should be a
gigantic red flag right so the fact that
African Americans have more than half of
the country sees that gigantic red flag
that's normal
they should see that this situation is a
big red flag so how do you explain it
well the one movie says well it must be
that they they can hear the secret
racist whistle and they feel correctly
this would be one movies version that
the president's a big ol racist and so
they supporting that fits all the facts
that we see in evidence right but here's
here's another set of facts that also
fit and I would argue that they fit a
little better and I did it with a Venn
diagram so here you've got let's say the
the topic is stricter immigration
president Trump's preferred immigration
policies so that's the topic
if you do the Venn diagram I think the
GOP mainstream the people who are not
racists would be saying yeah we like
more immigration control the entire
borders because it's good for American
jobs that might lower crime it's good
for economics in general the racists
would also like all that stuff yeah who
doesn't who doesn't like more jobs
better economy less crime so everybody
agrees on that stuff right but they
additionally want fewer brown people
[Music]
okay that's what makes them racists you
know if they wanted more brown people
there wouldn't be racist or at least
they wouldn't be white supremacist races
so how can it be that all of these
racists are supporting Trump well it's
easy he's got the only policy which in
their opinion would result in fewer
brown people but that doesn't say
anything about these guys nor does it
say anything about President Trump
because his policy is about jobs and
crime and economics the fewer brown
people is wait for it probably not
exactly what the races were hoping for
because remember president Trump's
preferred immigration strategy is that
we take the most qualified people from
every country that has you know good in
let's say good government systems so
that we can identify them right the
whole point of the seven country ban is
that those countries are not even all
Muslim right because I think North Korea
is on there but the the point of it is
that they don't have good systems for
identifying their own citizens so then
we can't tell who we're getting all
right so president Trump's preferred
system would take the best people from
wherever they come from as long as in
this in this context the best means
economically they can take care of
themselves and also add to the country
so they're not bringing in problems most
of them are going to be brown here I say
Brown to cover everybody
is not you know a classic generic white
person so that would include all of Asia
all of India you know and all of you
know all of Africa every country that's
that's in play so I don't think the the
racist would get what they want but
here's there's the thing immigration is
just sufficiently complicated enough
that people default to their biases
because it's a little hard to follow you
know most of us don't know the details
of who wants to do what and if this
policy would change what by how much
it's a little hard to follow and so
whenever you have complication people
default to bias racists say well I don't
understand this whole thing but you know
it seems like less immigration that
would get fewer brown people that must
be good if you're a racist so it makes
perfect sense that racists would vote
Republican but for different reasons by
analogy criminals have guns and police
have guns but that doesn't make
criminals police right people can like
things for completely different reasons
criminal likes a gun for making crime
police like guns for stopping crime same
gun alright President Trump is one gun
terrible analogy and I know forgive me
for this analogy he's one gun the
criminals can use them the good people
can use them alright
for different reasons let's talk about
this charlottesville hoax this is the
usually at the top of the list when
people say well you know it's not-it's
no longer in doubt the president is
definitely a racist because the Charla
Ville situation in which he referred to
people who were at the event as quote
fine people now the people who were
trapped in their mental prisons say my
god there's more evidence of what we
already believed
how can he call these Tiki carrying
racist who have self labeled themselves
they've labeled themselves as racist you
don't even have to you don't even have
to wonder if they're racist they are
self labeled they're margin they're out
and then the President of the United
States gets on TV and says there were
fine people there ah I had exploding he
must be a racist now it's proven well
there are two explanations that fit the
facts of evidence one of them is the one
I just said under this movie and there
are some problems with this movie but
here in this movie the president of
United States is a giant racist and
although he's a very capable person who
you know it made made billions in real
estate conquer the the reality TV show
world won the nomination became
president is making progress with North
Korea where nobody could has goose the
economy he's done a lot of things that
feel like the sort of things that only
really smart capable people can do but
how would that explain how this person
who is so smart and so capable over
decades would decide that it was a good
idea to go on national television as a
sitting president and say you know I
think I'll side with the people racing
you know marching with tiki torches for
racists alright in order to believe that
he did that you have to believe that he
decided to go against his own family
because remember the tiki torch people
were doing anti-semitic chance his
daughter is converted to Judaism his
son-in-law who's in the administration
is a Jew his gran grandkids are are Jews
his main advisors lots of them are Jews
Netanyahu loves him Israel loves him
he's moving the embassy to to Jerusalem
so you would have to believe in order to
believe movie one where
president is a racist and he has called
the the racists in charlottesville fine
people to believe that set of facts you
have to believe that you went against
his family and that he decided that it
would be a good idea to come out as a
racist on national TV wall president
maybe you know but we've seen strange
things happen right maybe but let's
compare it to the other movie and then
you can decide which one which one seems
to fit the facts a little better right
so the movie too says the president
believed incorrectly that there might
have been some people there protesting
the removal of statues remember the
whole event was around whether the
Confederate statue should be removed and
the president is for keeping the statues
and he thinks he's not a racist well I
don't want to get it in his head so let
me let me retract that I always I mock
people for imagining they can imagine
what other people are thinking so let's
let me back off that let's just say that
he's in favor of keeping the Confederate
statues for historical reasons and there
are a lot of people in his space who are
great I come for the record I completely
disagree with keeping the statues the
statues are not history the statues are
decorations you would not decorate your
own house in a way that offended half of
the country or even 20% of your
neighborhood you just wouldn't do it
right because you'd be kind of a dick if
you did that so the statues while I
understand the argument that it's part
of history and you know you don't want
to you know change history the history
is still with us it's in the internet
it's in the history books no one's going
to forget it moreover nobody ever
learned history from a statue probably
in you know throughout we history not
many people ever learn something from a
statue so I call the statues decorations
and in my opinion if somebody on my team
is offended by stat the declarations
that's a good reason to change a
decoration because it's just the
decoration the point of a decoration is
to make people feel good if your
decoration makes people feel bad get rid
of it you know let the history go you
know put it in the books put it in the
internet it's a decoration you just
don't need it all right so that's my
view I only give you that as an aside so
you can you know kind of put it in
context with this discussion so the
president is on the other side of me on
this issue he said he thinks the
statutes are fine wants to keep him
doesn't think that's racist is just you
know a reflection of history his comment
that there were some fine people there
isn't there a little more likely given
the history of this president that he
wasn't well informed about who was there
if somebody told you there was a protest
around Confederate statues who would you
assume was there you would assume that
there were people who say hey that's
racist get rid of those statues and
you'd be right and you would assume that
there would be some just ordinary
Republicans who say hey don't change my
history I like it there cuz you know
even though I don't like slavery I don't
like what that represents it's just part
of history why change the history those
would be good people that you disagree
with
right so the president made an
assumption or let's say under movie 2
scenario he just didn't know who was
there exactly he knew that there were
some racists there he knew that there
were anti races there a reasonable
person would have assumed and I'm saying
that because that's what I assumed I'm
pretty reasonable I assume that there
were people there just saying that we
want to keep the statue of you but we're
not racist now it turns out that there
were people like that but there weren't
many of them so you know it doesn't
really help the argument to say well
there were you know 25 of them there
because that's not really enough to make
a difference they were there and just
were many of them so what is more likely
that a president who is competent enough
to be in this position had suddenly
decided yeah I think I'll just go full
races on TV and insult my family and all
of my closest advisers and make problems
with Israel is that likely does that
sound like a good explanation of what
happened
compared to movie 2 where the president
didn't know all the facts about a
situation that was still sort of
evolving and you know there's a little
bit of a fog of war there and he assumed
the most reasonable thing let me say it
again
the most reasonable thing you could ever
assume about Charlottesville
is that there were some non racists who
just thought they they would prefer
keeping the statues if you have if you
have a protest and a counter protest of
keep the statues and get rid of the
statues you're gonna attract people who
just like statues and are not it's not a
racial thing you know they just like
their history even though I disagree
with them so Charlottesville was picked
up by you know the mainstream media and
they hammered on it forever trying to
sell you on movie one most people bought
movie one if they were already inclined
to believe it all right if they were
inclined to believe that movie one
looked totally reasonable they're like
yeah I guess he just threw his entire
family under the bus and now the time is
gone by it gets harder to explain movie
one cuz why is it that Netanyahu wasn't
bothered by this that's hard to explain
why is it that his you know his Jewish
family members his daughter son-in-law
why haven't they quit or at least sent a
tweet saying hey don't throw us under
the bus maybe they wouldn't and loyalty
or whatever but it doesn't really fit
too well versus movie to the president
who never has a command of all the facts
once again just
every other time made an assumption and
didn't have all the facts how ordinary
would that be if you've seen it
basically a hundred percent of the time
on every single topic
he is always dealing as sort of a
conceptual level which by the way I
think usually works and he doesn't have
every single detail about a complicated
situation I'm not sure Anissa but this
would be the most typical situation I
call the Charlottesville a hoax very
similar to the the Russia collusion
story Russia collusion looked really
really convincing to a lot of people for
how long a year and a half and and now
they're they're gonna have to grapple
with the fact that nobody could find
this collision you know they could find
people associated with Trump who did the
illegal things who lied about things and
they need to be you know dealt with but
the actual collusion the very first
thing how many people believe that well
the people who were not inclined to
believe it didn't and saw plenty of
reason not to believe it the people who
were inclined to believe there's
something wrong with this guy
he must be including they did believe it
and we're looking at the same set of
facts so recapping the Kanye versus John
Legend John if you're looking at this
and somebody will probably tweet it to
you I hate to take your time but I want
to promise you that I've spent a lot of
time with Trump supporters and I don't
see this I just don't see it I believe
you see it I believe you actually see it
well I don't see it and I think if you
were to actually you know gather up some
Trump supporters put them in a room
spend an hour with them see if you can
see it because that's not the sort of
thing people can hide right you could
you could tease that out of somebody
over the course of an hour right maybe
you got to give them a dream
you know something but you're not gonna
be able to miss it if you think it's
there gather some Trump supporters see
if you see if you can find it a year and
a half I don't see it
all right I'm not a Republican I'm not a
conservative I'm left to Bernie even
though the media has labeled me as
alright this week again well here's a
good example if you're wondering how
easy it is for people to be completely
wrong look how many people labeled me
alt right and a men's rights advocate
this week and also a Holocaust denier
this week just this week these are major
publications who could have easily just
googled to find out it's not true
I was also called retired this week
somebody has called me a former
cartoonist if you look at all the things
that were just said about me this week
with all of the facts just in public to
dispute it and to you know debunk it we
don't live in a world where the facts
are guiding us these days so Kanye has
opened a window a door maybe yeah a
crack in the universe and it's hard it's
gonna be hard for people to you know
kind of make their way to the other side
of the hole but it's happening it's
happening you know you you can feel it
let me ask you this just say yes or no
to this question how many of you feel it
how many of you feel something really
good that's about to happen maybe it's
already happening say yeah the essence
you can feel it before you can see it
you can you can feel it you know before
your your logic catches up to it and and
that's where it all starts right change
change starts with the feeling it
doesn't start with the facts because we
saw the facts the facts just don't
convince people nobody gets talked into
something by a fact we think we
do we want to we would like our facts to
convince other people and then we say
hey why didn't my fact change your mind
well the same things happening the other
way they're giving you facts and it's
not changing your mind either so why is
this different I'll tell you why this is
different because it's not fact-based
they're the the split you know the the
the racial divide was always at least
you know in a large part I'm not going
to say that racism doesn't exist I'm not
going to be the guy that says we're
post-racial racism doesn't exist plenty
of stuff to fix plenty of stuff to fix
but the way we're feeling about each
other is a little bit ginned up you know
so it's a little bit a product of the
election cycle we went through and and
top right influencers on both sides
selling a version of reality that a lot
of people bought into and they bought
into it because they they could feel it
right so the the competing versions of
reality were not really fact-based they
were there were to take our emotions
somewhere and and two paths were formed
these emotions and these emotions what
you're feeling now and this is the this
is all Kanye and Candice you know I
anytime I give credit to Kanye you
should in your mind interpret that to
include Candace Owens you know who was
sort of the the brave voice that that
got things going but the two of them
have just changed how we feel right now
so far that hasn't spread to John
Legend's you know the it you know it's
not it's not gonna be that dramatic it's
not like turning a switch but I gotta
tell you John you what look for it
yourself and see if you can find where
the Trump supporters the ones you think
won a few or brown people see if you can
find in any of this Kanye chance the
rapper Candice Owen
see if you can find in with any of these
people rank-and-file normal Republicans
who are saying racist things about them
or indeed not not totally supporting
them completely right watch how easily
how effortlessly and more than that
watch how enthusiastically Trump
Republicans are embracing Candis
Kayne you know and chance the rapper
didn't embrace Trump but he simply said
hey you don't have to be a Democrat
which which felt like a you know like a
civilization changing concept it
shouldn't but it feels like it so just
watch it's all real you know the the
feelings the good feelings that you're
seeing about you know the folks who were
breaking a hole in reality that's real
no no that's pretend so that's what I
wanted to talk about today and I hope
this helps and for the rest of you have
a good day
