Episode 1511 Scott Adams - Imaginary Whips, Who Started the Simulation, Alcohol is Poison

i'll even put on my microphone for you youtube people yeah that's the kind of guy i am well good morning and welcome to the place where i can't put my elbow on the desk because i'm too spazzed to even do that this morning but let me tell you your day is looking up i don't know how it started but pay attention to how it gets better starting now right you can already feel it can't you a little bit of a lift to your day just the moment you heard my voice yeah because you've been trained that this is a highlight of your day the simultaneous sip is the best thing that's ever happened all morning so far and all you need to participate is a copper mug or a glass of tanger chelsea stein the canteen jugger flask vessel of what kind any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better including kim's birthday happy birthday kim everybody it's kim's birthday over on on youtube um everybody for this is for kim simultaneous sip birthday edition happy birthday kim now i don't want to go out on a limb and say that kim who we just met here on her comment on youtube um might be the best birthday you're ever gonna have yep so next year a little bit of a disappointment but this year wow wow and you you kicked that off just right well so boo the cat update my loving cat boo should be coming home today she'll still have a little feeding tube that apparently i'm gonna have to stick her meds and her liquid food into her feeding tube for a few more days but she's apparently doing well uh i guess they give the feeding tube and the side of the neck so it's not like it's up to it's not in the cat's mouth or in its nose and i guess they put them to sleep and stick a little thing in their neck and then you can just shove food didn't medicine down it until they feel better and then take it out so amazing technology but i guess it works well we found out today that uh you know those uh those nasal tests that you get and they they take out the q-tip that's you know the the size of a baseball bat and they shove it up your nose until it hits your brain and you feel it like you know as you're getting tested you're like oh i think i'm forgetting my second grade experience ah i don't remember my friend bob from ah yeah it's basically giving you brain damage as you're getting no it's not no it's not i shouldn't even say that somebody's gonna believe it's true no it doesn't give you brain damage but it turns out that you can get the same results from gargling so apparently the other model that they could have done is take a swig or something and spit it into a cup so for a year and a half we've had sticks shoved up our nose to tickle our brains didn't eat it i didn't eat it just spit in a cup i would have done it too so thanks to adam dopamine on twitter for alerting me to that update so i saw a fascinating uh thread on twitter that i will call to your attention just look at my twitter feed to see it i just put it there today this morning so you'll find it and it's about africa and alcohol and it's a story that i had never heard now there's a little pushback on on twitter from um people who no i'm i have not read norms by autobiography you can stop asking uh so there's a little pushback about whether this is accurate or maybe it's just uh anti-european racism reverse racism kind of thing so i will uh i will say that i can't vouch for the historical accuracy of it it's presented by somebody who seems to know what they're doing but the idea was this that apparently the uh a lot of the colonists and i don't know how universal or essentially planned any of this was i don't think it was centrally planned but they would use alcohol to colonize parts of africa and they would they would do it a couple different ways one is that they would get the locals addicted they would just addict them to alcohol and then when you're trading your alcohol for their whatever they have you're going to get a good deal because they kind of have to give it to you because they're addicted so they actually turn to the locals into alcoholics but the second thing they did is since the locals did not have a culture and history of alcohol they would typically drink too much because you know what just wasn't part of their history and you know the knowledge of how to handle it right and they would you know get a little wild as people do on alcohol and then the colonists would use that reportedly as their excuse to take over because they'd say well look at these savages running around all drunk they can't run themselves they need a little help so part of the scheme for taking off over these places involved alcohol apparently the first factory in in africa it was a distillery now the pushback is maybe it wasn't some universal centrally planned you know white thing to get rid of black people or something it was probably just a bunch of people who realized it worked and so they did it but you don't realize the pernicious effect of alcohol in the whole history of humankind it's a way bigger deal that i think we appreciate how much alcohol and even you know uh poppies and stuff have changed civilization and so this conversation caused at least one person to find a study that suggests that moderate drinking of alcohol is good for you do you believe that how many people hear in the comments you've all seen the studies and they've been repeated number of studies said the same thing how many of you believe that moderate drinking is good for you actually it's actually not just neutral it's actually good for you how many of you believe it because the studies say that right how many of you have seen those studies that say a little bit of alcohol is good for you in moderation yeah why right do you believe it who did those studies yeah you're going to get really quiet here in a moment who do you think did those studies what do you think funded them just a guess what's your best guess about who funded the studies that says alcohol is good for you yeah just take a guess now are you aware let me just give you some context first are you aware that um there was a time in our history in which the advertisement said cigarettes were good for you are you aware of that just as context there was a time in our history where we were told that cigarettes were healthy they're good for you who do you think uh funded those studies or if even if there were studies i don't even know if there were well probably the cigarette companies right if you see a study that says alcohol is good for you somebody directly or indirectly probably with the alcohol industry had something to do with it now let me ask you this do the studies that say alcohol seems to be associated with better health do they show the causation in the comments do you believe that there's any science that demonstrates causation not just correlation because the correlation i think is pretty well established moderate drinkers do are healthier i i think that might actually be true but do you believe that science in any study has established that it's a cause nope even uh i i see somebody refer to resvetrol or whatever it is the chemistry that's in wine yes that has been shown to have a healthy benefit that one chemical but there's so little of it in the amount that you drink that it wouldn't have any effect even the science doesn't claim that drinking would give you that effect extreme moderation is good um oh um alien baby says uh i funded a study proving that giving to your husband extends your life your wife's life and the husbands i feel like that's science i'm a little skeptical about this alcohol stuff but this study now that's something i can i can believe so here's my prediction are you ready contrary prediction someday you will learn that alcohol in moderation is not good for you and then it never was and there was always here's the reason that it should you should expect studies would show a strong correlation between moderate drinking and healthiness because the people who are capable of moderate drinking are all healthier and they're the ones who have friends they socialize that's what the moderate drinking is socializing with their friends these things are all correlated with good health so yes of course it's correlated but there's no evidence of causation and the you know and i don't even think there's any reason to believe there would be so someday you will see that this uh prediction will come true that that was always always that alcohol is poison and it's just poison and it's not good for you at any amount it's fun i didn't say it wasn't fun it's just not good for you health-wise um question i got from many people is okay scott so you cleverly think that the simulation is really describing reality in that and that the math of it and the statistics are that uh we're probably a simulation not an original species now does that eliminate the possibility of god it does not because you could have a god who created the first species and then the first species created all the rest of these simulations of which we are more likely to be a simulation than an original because there will always be more simulations than originals right but somebody asked me well somebody had to get it all going right there had to be something first right so there had to be something before the simulation right nope you want to have your brain explode nope it is not logical that there had to be something first because time space time let's say space time to make it sound a little more sciencey but the time version of that is incident it's infinite how can you have something start when time is infinite there can't be there logically there can't be a beginning because there would have been something before that so i don't think that it's logical that something had to get it all going because it's not logical to think it ever started there probably was no start right if time is infinite it also didn't have a beginning so you don't need a god to get things going because things were always going now you're saying to yourself i don't know if that makes any sense at all right does it does does it sort of not kind of make sense that things could just always be here right that's the point your human brain doesn't have a chance of understanding infinity not a chance your brain doesn't have that capability it's like your brain can't mow the lawn it's just a brain you know unless it tells your body to get a lawnmower but your brain doesn't have the capability to understand infinity and stuff like that so when you say well logically there had to be a start nope nope logically the most likely explanation is that there's something that happens or happened or happening that you don't understand that's it just something you don't understand because your brain isn't built to do that but no it does not make sense that there had to be a beginning might have been doesn't have to be all right um biden is continuing to blame trump for some of his you know bad first-year performance and i feel like that was a pretty good play at one point right when biden first took over pretty good play to blame the previous president how long can you play that play like how many months can you get away we say well it's really just what was left by the last guy i'd say that time has passed right somebody says two years i don't know i feel our attention span has just shrunk too much and then at this point you know six months is a really long time in our lives but i have a feeling that biden blaming trump for any of the stuff like that the haitian haitians under a branch that wouldn't have happened with job right um it feels like there's just a whole bunch of problems that are specifically biden related you know the afghan afghanistan pull out could have been a lot better etc how in the world do you blame trump for that stuff but he's doing it and i feel as if it sounds a little bit ridiculous at this point doesn't it because it feels like it's just a defense by memory or something like biden is just saying oh yeah last time i said it was the previous guy so i'll just keep saying that it doesn't work forever and i i would argue that it stopped working already i feel like it just makes him look bad at this point in the beginning it was a reasonable claim but at this point too many months have gone by it just looks bad well as the uh as predicted the arizona audit has produced two entirely different narratives one nothing was found two plenty of stuff was found they can't both be true either the arizona audit didn't find enough to matter or if found so much that you have to throw out the whole election and both of those stories are in the news today just one is left associated one is right associated so what do you make of that was there any point in having an audit if we're just gonna decide yeah i did call it and by the way wasn't that the easiest prediction in the world was there anybody who thought the audit would give a result that everybody would agree with did you really think that we don't live in that world anymore here comes the spin it was spin you know uh i i guess i'm always insulted when people uh you know blame me of blame you for spinning because what is spinning other than a point of view what's the difference between spinning and having a point of view is there a difference no it's just a word that you use because you're an ignorant troll and you add nothing to the world also spin we'll see your spin thanks for nothing let's see your opinion we'll all call it spin well both politico and slate ran feature articles about me specifically my association with this weird matt gates story and my part of the my part of the story is is trivial but because i guess i'm the dilbert guy it became a major article but here's the part that i was involved in somebody i know from you know twitter associations primarily uh sent me a scoop on the matt gaysling jake novak and um and then that got into the news blah blah so but the part of what makes people curious is why why anybody would have told me that scoop does that make you curious are you curious as to why somebody would give me that scoop before i hit the news what do you think does that does that seem unusual so uh one of you says you're bi-curious okay i'll accept that i'll accept by curious in the context of this conversation um yeah there's there wasn't anything there wasn't anything even slightly unusual about that the most common thing that happens for those of us doing this political commenting is that other people who do political commenting tell us scoops before you hear it how many times have i told you that i hear stuff before you hear it it doesn't all come from jake novak it comes from everybody the most common thing that you know we newsy talking people do is share scoops before you see them in the news it's like one of the most common things but when you see just one of them you know plucked out of the out of that context you're like hey what's going on here maybe we need to dig deeper no no it's just the most normal thing that happens to people in our you know in our circle sharing sharing scoops um so anyway that's that's all there is to that still no bite in apology for uh throwing his own border patrol under a brass under under brush under a bus under a bus uh you know the story the allegedly there was a border patrol person on a horse who allegedly used a whip on a haitian immigrant but in fact it was the reins he used to his horse and he wasn't whipping anybody except he was using the reins the way they're meant to be used on a horse and now that everybody knows it's a fake news i don't think there's any anybody on the democrat side who still thinks it's true right is it i think it's so thoroughly debunked by the photographer who took the picture and 100 percent of the people were there there's no person who was there in a person who says it happened so we know it didn't happen where is biden's apology you know as the creator of the dilbert comic strip let me tell you the main theme for all these years in the dilbert comic strip there's one theme that you see over and over and over again in dilbert and that is that the boss has the power to create the problem and then assign the blame to an employee is the biggest problem in work that the boss causes the problem and then assigns it to you oh that was i guess you failed no i didn't fail you made it impossible by because of what you did right the most common problem and biden is doing that biden created the problem by imagining it literally imagining it and then he says this guy's going to be punished probably ruins this border patrol guy's life because people are going to believe that he whipped black people great try living with that um didn't happen so um i did a robust read news comic but it made me think of the best strategy for the uh border patrol agent here is what the border patrol agent should do you ready for this this is real advice right it's going to sound like a joke and it is a joke but it's also real advice it goes like this that border agent working with a lawyer from perhaps should issue a press release the press release should say that he takes a full responsibility for using an imaginary whip on an immigrant takes full responsibility for using an imaginary whip use those words yes i was the man who used the imaginary whip and then once you've uh once you've taken full responsibility for it offer in the interest of freedom in the interest of fairness offered to have a haitian immigrant whip him in return with the same whip it has to be the same whip the imaginary one and so actually stage put it on video this guy tied to a tree you know tying himself to a tree and have have a haitian get an actual haitian i'm sure you could find an actual haitian to do it right if you pay him get an actual haitian to stand there with nothing in his hand and pretend to whip him on video and just say i hope that this makes everything even i take full responsibility for my imaginary whip whipping and i now have been imaginary whipped in return and i think we're all fair now now we're all good now right now it sounds like a joke it's not i would actually literally do that because this poor border patrol agent just got by the president of the united states let me say it again because swear words are necessary for this story this border patrol agent trying to do his job trying to keep the united states safe just got by the commander-in-chief and the commander-in-chief knows it by now and he isn't apologizing and so this border patrol agent i hope takes the opportunity he has to joe biden back make him a laughing stock make him a joke unless he apologizes yeah an apology i think should be accepted in this case because it is an honest mistake i don't think that biden meant to misunderstand the situation it was an honest mistake if he gives him an apology i think he should accept it but if he doesn't apologize this border patrol agent should take the opportunity he's been given to just biden badly just embarrass the out of him in public because he can it's right there for the taking all he has to do is stage an event no he probably doesn't want the you know of course the border agent probably doesn't want to be famous for this so maybe maybe that's a bad idea maybe it's better just lay low all right as joel pollock noted in a tweet the wall street journal has an article about it turns out that while biden is saying that china is an adversary blah blah blah make things in america that his uh was it the secretary of commerce is yeah the commerce chief is trying to make more business with china so biden's commerce chief believes that the united states is best off by increasing the amount of business we do with china increasing it oh my god matt gates just tweeted at me um somebody says in the comments i'll take a look at that in a minute um let's see yeah so what are we supposed to make of the fact that biden says yeah we're gonna you know make stuff in america blah blah but his commerce chief seems to be doing the opposite well let's let's agree that our government is probably corrupt in terms of china and certainly incompetent we're watching it right in front of us this this is just ranking competence and so in those situations the public has to take take charge now there are very few things that i'm perfectly suited for for example if you said scott can you sit in with this band and play drums because i know you're you're learning the drums and i would say you know i'm really bad at that you really don't want me to try that if you said to me scott um i'd like you to let's say a place center for our basketball team i'd say to you hmm not your best choice of personnel i might not be your first choice to play center in the basketball but if you need somebody to embarrass the living out of some american corporation that would dare to start new business in china now call me call me all right pick somebody else to be your center on your basketball team pick somebody else to be the general contractor on your house pick somebody else to be your lawyer and your doctor i can't do that stuff but if there's an american company that wants to do new business in china i'm not talking about the ones that are already there they've got a different set of problems but a new company just let me know let me know i will take care of that for you i will personally make sure that that's a bad idea for whatever company announces it wants to do business in china so let me do that let me do that for you i will handle this for you all right it's a promise are you following the theranos is it if i'm pronouncing right theranos case this was the founder who basically was just a fraudulent company and they said they were going to do these cheap blood tests that would find all kinds of things easily um and apparently it was all fraud but here's the so that there's a legal case going on now about that but here's what is interesting james mattis invested 85 000 in this company was on the board james mad dog mattis now correct me if i'm wrong correct me if i'm wrong but uh didn't trump fire james mattis for being stupid that happened right i mean that's wasn't that give me a give me a fact check on here wasn't didn't trump say out loud that mattis was dumb he did right so mattis the guy that we trusted to make our most important military decisions invested in the biggest fraudulent company of i don't know last 20 years i don't think i have a lot of confidence in his generaling he feels like the kind of guy who might be duped into a trap kind of easily you think now to be fair rupert murdoch also was one of the largest investors so you say well if rupert murdoch got fooled you know he's a more experienced investor you you shouldn't be too surprised if somebody was a general and not really an investor shouldn't be too surprised if if a general gets fooled if a big investor like rupert murdoch could get fooled do you think rupert murdoch kicked the tires of this company himself do you think rupert murdoch you know visited met with the founder and did a deep dive into the financials no no oh i'm pretty sure that rupert murdoch has people who do startup investments for him probably mentioned the name at a meeting hey we're putting a little money into this one or that one or that one probably heard the name might have maybe maybe knew what the company did for a living but i don't think you can compare what murdoch did for a small investment like that apparently also david boyes the attorney you hear in a lot of stories also invested so i love seeing stories of smart people investing in fraudulent companies now have i ever invested in a fraudulent company have i ever have i ever put uh have i ever put way more than 85 000 into a company that turned out to be a total fraud yeah yeah i've done that do you remember a web van there was a company that was going to deliver groceries to your house and the uh the the managers were saying that the model was proven and you know it was already worked in one area and they were things were going great at the same time they were they're planning to close the company so i i got taken on that one but it's fun to make fun of uh other people who get taken but to be honest it could happen to any of us there's an article in cnn that i find amusing it says that voter suppression doesn't work basically because it suppresses white votes so if what you wanted to do was to suppress black votes you accidentally in the process of attempting to suppress the black vote you end up actually depressing the white vote two different ways number one i don't know why nobody ever brought this up before you all know that there are more poor white people than black people right now as a percentage there are more poor black people than poor white people but in terms of absolute numbers am i wrong that there are way more poor white people and why is it that the poor white people we imagine can go out and get an id no problem but the poor black people can't uh how racist are you to imagine that a poor person of one color can just go out and get an id and the poor person of another color can't do it can't figure it out well i'm here to tell you that that probably has more to do with being poor and where you live than what color you are right i don't think there's any indication that your color determines whether you can get an id anybody claim that anybody no it's your it's your socioeconomic situation that determines whether it'll be hard for you to get an id right everybody agrees with that right so logically won't there be way more white people who can't vote if you do anything to reduce the amount of voting shouldn't you have fewer white votes than black now as a percentage as a percentage maybe more black but we don't elections are not based on percentages based on how many votes you get well i mean ultimately it's a percentage against the competitor but you need to get the most votes so wouldn't it be better to get every white vote you could even if it cost you a few black votes you could have suppressed if you tried so weirdly cnn is taking both sides of the issue they're saying don't do any voter suppression because it'll be bad for black people and by the way it's not bad for black people nearly as much as it's bad for white people you gotta have it both ways right if cnn is reporting at least reporting in the sense of an opinion piece in this case the voter suppression doesn't work and it just makes republicans worse off i i guess the other part of it is that if you talk about the system being broken it it also causes less republican voting i don't i'm not sure i believe that but people are saying that so i guess i'm confused about whether voter suppression is good or bad for black people and it looks like cnn's not quite on you know one page about it it's either terrible for black people or it helps them it helps them because fewer white people vote which means that the percentage of black people would be relatively better no way am i doing the math right but it does seem to to me that uh we don't even know if it's good or bad for any particular group and yeah we're talking about like crazy well the taliban is bringing back uh public hangs and they're going to do amputations again so if you steal something they'll cut off your hand they're still not deciding whether they'll do the amputations in public because because the taliban are not the old taliban you know the old ones they were really cruel they would do your amputations right in public but i think they're going to maybe considering doing them not in public so oh yeah they're still doing the hangings in public they just did a bunch of hangings they killed some kidnappers and hung them from cranes in various cities as a lesson yeah they're still going to hang people in public i mean they're still the taliban let me give you some advice that will serve you better in your life than anything you've ever heard in your whole whole life it goes like this never trust what people say taliban said hey we're not the old taliban we're the new taliban we're not going to do these horrible horrible things yeah we're kinder we're gentler never trust what anybody says not just the taliban now here's the part that you know you probably said to yourself uh scott i wasn't trusting the taliban you're not adding anything no i'm saying don't trust the taliban don't trust their word anyway but also don't trust somebody else you know at work and don't trust your best friend or your spouse don't trust any of your friends or any of your family did i leave anybody out don't trust the word of any humans humans don't trust any of their words all right that's the first part of the advice there's a second part that will redeem me now you say to yourself scott i can't really live in a world where i don't trust anybody because i'm required to trust people no don't trust what people say here's what you can trust here's the payoff here's the reason you watch me on livestream this will change your life this little reframe pay attention carefully never trust what anybody says always trust that people will be the same as they have been it's different never trust what anybody says friends or enemies friends or enemies don't trust them you only trust that they are the same people that they were yesterday that's it that's it if let me take an example if i were to ask um either of my siblings to do something like you know i don't hold some money or something and and i would have to completely trust them because i wouldn't know if they stole any i wouldn't care what they said about it i wouldn't even wouldn't matter what i would trust is that my siblings are the same people they've always been which means they're not going to steal my money because they never have never will right they're the same people the taliban said they're going to do something different than what they used to do but it's still the taliban now it's a little different because maybe the members of the taliban have changed a little bit but i feel like the principle still stands it's still the taliban right at least in the short run it's still the taliban so watch how many times this rule works you can absolutely trust somebody to be the same way they used to be if they were a liar yesterday they're a liar tomorrow if they were honest yesterday and always were tomorrow's looking good too ignore what they say you're only the only thing you can know with any kind of uncertainty is that it's the same person it was yesterday that's it don't trust anything else now watch how often this works for you the first time you hear it you're thinking to yourself let me see if i can guess what you're thinking i don't know if that's such a difference right you're thinking i don't know i see what you're saying but it feels like the same thing trust the person trust what they say it's not it's not and when you start you start making that distinction life gets a lot cleaner and suddenly all your surprises go away suddenly no surprises never be surprised again all right um that is what i wanted to talk about i heard somebody say that matt gates tweeted at me we'll see if that's true or what that's about so you can watch this in real time let's see where would that be tweets let's look up matt we'll go to matt gates's page they'll find it easier all right um oh it's okay it's not all right so matt gates is just dunking on uh jake novak for a tweet that jake made and he just he just uh mentions me as being part of that story so it wasn't so much at me i was just included um all right so yeah i've told you before i i try to mind my own business and then i end up being in the middle of stories someday someday i'll tell you what stories i've actually been involved in i might have to wait for some people to die before i can do that but there are a lot of stories that you have no idea i had some involvement in and mostly i can't tell you about them but someday you know when enough time goes by i'll be able to tell those stories and uh it's going to be mind-boggling you won't believe any of it all right that's all for now and i will talk to you tomorrow

i'll even put on my microphone for you

youtube people

yeah that's the kind of guy i am

well good morning and welcome to

the place where i can't put my elbow on

the desk because i'm

too spazzed to even do that this morning

but let me tell you your day

is looking up

i don't know how it started

but pay attention to how it gets better

starting now

right you can already feel it can't you

a little bit of a lift to your day just

the moment you heard my voice

yeah because you've been trained that

this

is a highlight of your day the

simultaneous sip is the best thing

that's ever happened

all morning so far

and all you need to participate

is a copper mug or a glass of tanger

chelsea stein the canteen jugger flask

vessel

of what kind any kind fill it with your

favorite liquid i like coffee

and join me now for the unparalleled

pleasure the dopamine hit of the day

the thing that makes everything better

including kim's birthday happy birthday

kim

everybody it's kim's birthday over on on

youtube um everybody for this is for kim

simultaneous sip birthday edition happy

birthday kim

now

i don't want to go out on a limb and say

that kim who we just met here on her

comment on youtube

um might be the best birthday you're

ever gonna have

yep

so next year a little bit of a

disappointment but this year

wow

wow

and you you kicked that off just right

well

so

boo the cat update

my loving cat boo should be coming home

today

she'll still have a little feeding tube

that apparently i'm gonna have to

stick her meds and her liquid food into

her feeding tube for a few more days

but she's apparently doing well

uh i guess they give the feeding tube

and the side of the neck

so it's not like it's up to

it's not in the cat's mouth or in its

nose

and i guess they put them to sleep and

stick a little thing in their neck and

then you can just shove food didn't

medicine down it until they feel better

and then

take it out

so amazing technology but i guess it

works well we found out today that uh

you know those uh

those nasal tests

that you get

and they they take out the q-tip that's

you know

the the size of a baseball bat

and they shove it up your nose

until it hits your brain

and you feel it like you know as you're

getting tested you're like

oh i think i'm forgetting my second

grade experience ah

i don't remember my friend bob from ah

yeah it's basically giving you brain

damage as you're getting no it's not no

it's not i shouldn't even say that

somebody's gonna believe it's true no it

doesn't give you brain damage but it

turns out

that you can get the same results

from gargling

so apparently the other model that they

could have done

is

take a swig or something and spit it

into a cup

so for a year and a half

we've had sticks shoved up our nose

to tickle our brains

didn't eat it

i didn't eat it

just spit in a cup i would have done it

too

so thanks to adam dopamine on twitter

for alerting me to that update

so i saw a fascinating uh thread on

twitter that i will call to your

attention just look at my twitter feed

to see it i just put it there today

this morning so you'll find it and it's

about africa

and alcohol

and it's a story that i had never heard

now there's a little pushback on on

twitter

from um

people who no i'm i have not read norms

by autobiography you can stop asking

uh so there's a little pushback about

whether this is accurate or maybe it's

just

uh

anti-european

racism reverse racism kind of thing

so i will uh

i will say that i can't vouch for the

historical accuracy of it

it's presented by somebody who seems to

know what they're doing

but the idea was this that apparently

the

uh a lot of the colonists and i don't

know how universal or

essentially planned any of this was i

don't think it was centrally planned

but they would use alcohol

to

colonize parts of africa

and they would they would do it a couple

different ways

one is that they would get the locals

addicted

they would just addict them to alcohol

and then

when you're trading your alcohol for

their whatever they have

you're going to get a good deal

because they kind of have to give it to

you because they're addicted so they

actually turn to the locals into

alcoholics

but the second thing they did is

since the locals did not have a culture

and history of alcohol

they would typically drink too much

because you know

what just wasn't part of their

history and you know the knowledge of

how to handle it right

and they would you know get a little

wild as people do on alcohol

and then the colonists would use that

reportedly

as their excuse to take over

because they'd say well look at these

savages running around all drunk

they can't run themselves they need a

little help

so part of the scheme for taking off

over these places

involved alcohol

apparently the first factory in

in africa it was a distillery

now the pushback

is maybe it wasn't some universal

centrally planned you know

white thing to get rid of black people

or something it was probably just a

bunch of people who realized it worked

and so they did it but you don't realize

the pernicious effect of alcohol in the

whole history of humankind

it's a way bigger deal that i think we

appreciate

how much alcohol and even you know

uh

poppies and stuff have changed

civilization

and so this conversation caused at least

one person to find a study

that suggests that moderate drinking of

alcohol is good for you

do you believe that how many people hear

in the comments

you've all seen the studies

and they've been repeated number of

studies said the same thing how many of

you believe

that moderate drinking is good for you

actually it's actually not just neutral

it's actually good for you how many of

you believe it

because the studies say that right

how many of you have seen those studies

that say

a little bit of alcohol is good for you

in moderation yeah why right

do you believe it

who did those studies

yeah you're going to get really quiet

here in a moment

who do you think did those studies

what do you think funded them

just a guess

what's your best guess

about who funded the studies that says

alcohol is good for you

yeah just take a guess

now

are you aware let me just give you some

context first are you aware that um

there was a time in our history

in which the advertisement said

cigarettes were good for you

are you aware of that just as context

there was a time in our history where we

were told that cigarettes

were healthy they're good for you

who do you think uh funded those studies

or if

even if there were studies i don't even

know if there were

well probably the cigarette companies

right

if you see a study that says alcohol is

good for you

somebody directly or indirectly probably

with the alcohol industry had something

to do with it

now

let me ask you this

do the studies that say alcohol seems to

be associated with better health

do they show the causation

in the comments

do you believe that there's any science

that demonstrates causation

not just correlation because the

correlation i think is pretty well

established

moderate drinkers do are healthier i i

think that might actually be true

but do you believe that science in any

study has established that it's a cause

nope

even uh i i see somebody refer to

resvetrol or whatever it is the

chemistry that's in wine yes

that has been shown to have a healthy

benefit that one chemical but there's so

little of it in the amount that you

drink that it wouldn't have any effect

even the science doesn't claim that

drinking would give you that effect

extreme moderation is good

um

oh um

alien baby says uh i funded a study

proving that giving to your

husband extends your life your wife's

life and the husbands

i feel like that's science

i'm a little skeptical about this

alcohol stuff but this study

now that's something i can

i can believe

so

here's my prediction are you ready

contrary prediction

someday

you will learn

that alcohol in moderation is not good

for you

and then it never was

and there was always here's the

reason that it should you should expect

studies would show a strong correlation

between moderate drinking

and

healthiness because the people who are

capable of moderate drinking

are all healthier

and they're the ones who have friends

they socialize

that's what the moderate drinking is

socializing with their friends these

things are all correlated with good

health

so yes of course it's correlated

but there's no evidence of causation and

the you know and i don't even think

there's any reason to believe there

would be

so someday you will see that this uh

prediction will come true that that was

always always

that alcohol is poison and it's just

poison and it's not good for you at any

amount it's fun

i didn't say it wasn't

fun it's just not good for you

health-wise

um

question i got from many people is okay

scott so you cleverly think that the

simulation

is really describing reality in that and

that the math of it and the statistics

are

that uh we're probably a simulation not

an original species

now

does that eliminate the possibility of

god it does not because you could have a

god who created the first species and

then the first species created all the

rest of these simulations of which we

are more likely to be a simulation than

an original because there will always be

more simulations than originals

right

but somebody asked me well somebody had

to get it all going right there had to

be something first

right

so there had to be something before the

simulation

right

nope

you want to have your brain explode

nope

it is not logical that there had to be

something first

because time space time let's say space

time to make it sound a little more

sciencey

but the time version of that

is incident

it's infinite

how can you have something start

when time is infinite

there can't be there logically there

can't be a beginning because there would

have been something before that

so

i don't think that it's logical that

something had to get it all going

because it's not logical to think it

ever started

there probably was no start

right

if time is infinite it also didn't have

a beginning

so you don't need a god

to get things going because things were

always going

now you're saying to yourself

i don't know if that makes any sense at

all

right

does it does does it sort of not kind of

make sense

that things could just always be here

right that's the point

your human brain

doesn't have a chance of understanding

infinity

not a chance your brain doesn't have

that capability it's like your brain

can't mow the lawn it's just a brain you

know unless it tells your body to get a

lawnmower

but

your brain doesn't have the capability

to understand infinity and stuff like

that

so when you say well logically there had

to be a start nope

nope

logically the most likely explanation is

that there's something that happens or

happened or happening

that you don't understand

that's it

just something you don't understand

because your brain isn't built to do

that but no it does not make sense that

there had to be a beginning

might have been

doesn't have to be

all right

um

biden is continuing to blame trump for

some of his

you know bad first-year performance

and

i feel like that was a pretty good play

at one point

right when biden first took over

pretty good play to blame the

previous president

how long can you play that play

like how many months can you get away we

say well it's really just what was left

by the last guy

i'd say that time has passed

right

somebody says two years i don't know

i feel our attention span has just

shrunk too much and then at this point

you know six months is a really long

time in our lives

but

i have a feeling that biden blaming

trump for any of the stuff like that the

haitian

haitians under a branch

that wouldn't have happened with job

right

um it feels like there's just a whole

bunch of problems that are specifically

biden related you know the afghan

afghanistan pull out could have been a

lot better etc

how in the world do you blame trump for

that stuff

but he's doing it

and i feel as if it sounds a little bit

ridiculous at this point

doesn't it

because it feels like it's just a

defense by memory or something

like biden is just saying oh yeah last

time i said it was the previous guy so

i'll just keep saying that

it doesn't work forever

and i i would argue that it stopped

working already i feel like it just

makes him look bad at this point

in the beginning it was a reasonable

claim but at this point

too many months have gone by it just

looks bad

well as the uh as predicted the arizona

audit has produced two entirely

different narratives one nothing was

found two plenty of stuff was found

they can't both be true

either the arizona

audit

didn't find enough to matter

or

if found so much

that you have to throw out the whole

election

and both of those stories are in the

news today

just one is left associated one is right

associated

so what do you make of that

was there any point in having an audit

if we're just gonna decide yeah i did

call it and by the way wasn't that the

easiest prediction in the world

was there anybody who thought the audit

would give a result that everybody would

agree with

did you really think that we don't live

in that world anymore

here comes the spin

it was spin

you know uh i i guess i'm always

insulted when

people uh

you know blame me of blame you for

spinning

because what is spinning other than a

point of view

what's the difference between spinning

and having a point of view

is there a difference no it's just a

word that you use because you're

an ignorant troll

and you add nothing to the world

also spin we'll see your spin

thanks for nothing

let's see your opinion

we'll all call it spin

well both politico and slate

ran

feature articles about me

specifically my association with this

weird matt gates story and my part of

the my part of the story is is trivial

but because i guess i'm the dilbert guy

it became a major article

but here's the part that i was involved

in somebody i know from you know

twitter

associations primarily

uh sent me a scoop

on the matt gaysling

jake novak

and

um

and then that got into the news blah

blah

so

but the part of what makes people

curious is why

why anybody would have told me that

scoop

does that make you curious

are you curious as to why

somebody would give me that scoop before

i hit the news

what do you think

does that

does that seem unusual

so

uh one of you says you're bi-curious

okay

i'll accept that i'll accept by curious

in the context of this conversation

um

yeah there's there wasn't anything

there wasn't anything even slightly

unusual about that the most common thing

that happens for those of us doing this

political commenting

is that other people who do political

commenting

tell us scoops before you hear it

how many times have i told you that i

hear stuff before you hear it

it doesn't all come from jake novak

it comes from everybody

the most common thing that you know we

newsy

talking people do is share scoops before

you see them in the news it's like one

of the most common things but when you

see just one of them

you know plucked out of the out of that

context you're like hey what's going on

here

maybe we need to dig deeper no

no

it's just the most normal thing that

happens to people in our

you know in our circle

sharing sharing scoops

um

so anyway that's that's all there is to

that

still no bite in apology

for uh throwing his own border patrol

under a brass under under brush under a

bus under a bus

uh you know the story the allegedly

there was a border

patrol person on a horse who allegedly

used a whip

on a haitian immigrant but in fact it

was the reins he used to his horse and

he wasn't whipping anybody except he was

using the reins the way they're meant to

be used on a horse

and

now that everybody knows it's a fake

news

i don't think there's any anybody on the

democrat side who still thinks it's true

right

is it i think it's so thoroughly

debunked by the photographer who took

the picture

and 100 percent of the people were there

there's no person who was there

in a person who says it happened

so we know it didn't happen

where is biden's apology

you know

as the creator of the dilbert comic

strip

let me tell you the main theme for all

these years in the dilbert comic strip

there's one theme that you see over and

over and over again in dilbert and that

is that the boss

has the power to create the problem

and then assign the blame to an employee

is the biggest problem in work

that the boss causes the problem

and then assigns it to you

oh that was i guess you failed no i

didn't fail you made it impossible

by because of what you did

right

the most common problem and biden is

doing that

biden created the problem by imagining

it

literally imagining it

and then he

says this guy's going to be punished

probably ruins this border patrol guy's

life because people are going to believe

that he whipped black people

great try living with that

um didn't happen

so

um i did a robust read news comic but it

made me think of the best strategy for

the

uh border patrol agent

here is what the border patrol agent

should do you ready for this this is

real advice

right it's going to sound like a joke

and it is a joke

but it's also real advice

it goes like this

that border agent working with a lawyer

from perhaps should issue a press

release

the press release should say

that he takes a full responsibility

for using an imaginary whip

on an immigrant

takes full responsibility

for using an imaginary whip use those

words

yes i was the man who used the imaginary

whip

and then

once you've uh once you've taken full

responsibility for it

offer in the interest of freedom in the

interest of fairness

offered to have a haitian immigrant

whip him in return

with the same whip

it has to be the same whip the imaginary

one

and so

actually stage put it on video

this guy tied to a tree

you know tying himself to a tree and

have have a haitian get an actual

haitian

i'm sure you could find an actual

haitian to do it right if you pay him

get an actual haitian

to stand there with nothing in his hand

and pretend to whip him on video

and just say i hope that this makes

everything even

i take full responsibility for my

imaginary whip whipping

and i now have been imaginary whipped in

return

and i think we're all fair now now we're

all good now right

now it sounds like a joke

it's not

i would actually literally do that

because this poor border patrol agent

just got by the president of the

united states

let me say it again because swear words

are necessary for this story

this border patrol agent trying to do

his job

trying to keep the united states safe

just got by the

commander-in-chief

and the commander-in-chief

knows it by now

and he isn't apologizing

and so this border patrol agent i hope

takes the opportunity he has

to

joe biden back

make him a laughing stock

make him a joke

unless he apologizes yeah an apology i

think

should be accepted in this case because

it is an honest mistake

i don't think that biden meant to

misunderstand the situation

it was an honest mistake if he gives him

an apology i think he should accept it

but if he doesn't

apologize

this border patrol agent should take the

opportunity he's been given to just

biden badly

just embarrass the out of him in

public

because he can it's right there for the

taking all he has to do is stage an

event

no he probably doesn't want the you know

of course the border agent probably

doesn't want to be famous for this

so maybe maybe that's a bad idea

maybe it's better just lay low

all right

as joel pollock noted in a tweet the

wall street journal has an article about

it turns out that while biden is saying

that china is an adversary blah blah

blah make things in america

that his uh was it the secretary of

commerce

is

yeah the commerce chief is trying to

make more business with china

so biden's commerce chief believes that

the united states is best off

by increasing the amount of business we

do with china increasing it

oh

my god

matt gates just tweeted at me

um somebody says in the comments

i'll take a look at that in a minute um

let's see yeah so what are we supposed

to make of the fact that biden says yeah

we're gonna you know make stuff in

america blah blah but his commerce chief

seems to be doing the opposite

well let's let's agree that our

government is probably corrupt

in terms of china

and

certainly incompetent

we're watching it right in front of us

this this is just

ranking competence and so in those

situations the public has to take

take charge

now there are very few things that i'm

perfectly suited for

for example if you said scott can you

sit in with this band

and play drums because i know you're

you're learning the drums and i would

say you know i'm really bad at that you

really don't want me to try that

if you said to me scott um

i'd like you to let's say a place center

for our basketball team

i'd say to you hmm not your best choice

of personnel

i might not be your first choice to play

center in the basketball

but

if you need somebody to embarrass the

living

out of some american corporation that

would dare

to start new business in china now

call me

call me

all right

pick somebody else to be your

center on your basketball team

pick somebody else to be the general

contractor on your house

pick somebody else to be your lawyer and

your doctor

i can't do that stuff

but if there's an american company that

wants to do new business in china i'm

not talking about the ones that are

already there they've got a different

set of problems

but a new company

just let me know

let me know

i will take care of that for you

i will personally

make sure that that's a bad idea for

whatever company announces it wants to

do business in china

so let me do that

let me do that for you

i will handle this for you

all right it's a promise

are you following the theranos is it if

i'm pronouncing right theranos case

this was the founder who basically was

just a fraudulent company and they said

they were going to do these cheap blood

tests that would find all kinds of

things easily

um

and

apparently it was all fraud but here's

the so that there's a legal case going

on now about that but here's what is

interesting

james mattis

invested 85 000 in this company was on

the board

james mad dog mattis

now correct me if i'm wrong

correct me if i'm wrong

but uh didn't trump fire james mattis

for being stupid

that happened right i mean that's wasn't

that

give me a give me a fact check on here

wasn't

didn't trump say out loud

that mattis was dumb

he did right

so mattis the guy that we trusted

to make our most important military

decisions

invested

in the biggest fraudulent company

of i don't know

last 20 years

i don't think i have a lot of confidence

in his generaling

he feels like the kind of guy who might

be

duped into a trap kind of easily

you think now to be fair rupert murdoch

also was one of the largest investors

so you say well if rupert murdoch got

fooled you know

he's a more experienced investor

you you shouldn't be too surprised if

somebody was a general and not really an

investor shouldn't be too surprised if

if a general gets fooled if a big

investor like rupert murdoch could get

fooled

do you think rupert murdoch kicked the

tires of this company himself

do you think rupert murdoch you know

visited

met with the founder and did a deep dive

into the financials

no

no

oh i'm pretty sure that rupert murdoch

has people who do startup investments

for him

probably mentioned the name at a meeting

hey we're putting a little money into

this one or that one or that one

probably heard the name

might have maybe

maybe knew what the company did for a

living

but i don't think you can compare what

murdoch did for a small investment like

that apparently also david boyes the

attorney you hear in a lot of stories

also invested

so i love seeing stories of smart people

investing in fraudulent companies

now

have i ever invested in a fraudulent

company

have i ever have i ever put

[Music]

uh

have i ever put way more than 85 000

into a company that turned out to be a

total fraud

yeah

yeah i've done that

do you remember a web van

there was a company that was going to

deliver groceries to your house

and the uh

the

the managers were saying that the model

was proven and you know it was already

worked in one area and they were things

were going great

at the same time they were they're

planning to close the company

so i i got taken on that one

but it's fun to make fun of uh

other people who get taken but to be

honest

it could happen to any of us

there's an article in cnn that i find

amusing

it says that voter suppression doesn't

work basically because it suppresses

white votes so if what you wanted to do

was to suppress black votes

you accidentally

in the process of attempting to suppress

the black vote you end up actually

depressing the white vote

two different ways

number one i don't know why nobody ever

brought this up before

you all know that there are more poor

white people than black people right

now as a percentage

there are more poor black people than

poor white people but in terms of

absolute numbers

am i wrong that there are way more poor

white people

and why is it that the poor white people

we imagine can go out and get an id no

problem

but the poor black people can't

uh how racist are you

to imagine that

a poor person of one color can just go

out and get an id and the poor person of

another color can't do it can't figure

it out

well i'm here to tell you that that

probably has more to do with being poor

and where you live

than what color you are right i don't

think there's any indication that your

color

determines whether you can get an id

anybody claim that anybody no it's your

it's your

socioeconomic situation

that determines whether it'll be hard

for you to get an id right everybody

agrees with that right

so logically won't there be way more

white people who can't vote if you do

anything to reduce the amount of voting

shouldn't you have fewer white votes

than black

now as a percentage

as a percentage

maybe more black

but we don't elections are not based on

percentages based on how many votes you

get

well i mean ultimately it's a percentage

against the competitor but you need to

get the most votes

so wouldn't it be better to get every

white vote you could

even if it cost you a few black votes

you could have suppressed if you tried

so weirdly

cnn is taking both sides of the issue

they're saying

don't do any voter suppression

because it'll be bad for black people

and by the way

it's not bad for black people nearly as

much as it's bad for white people

you gotta have it both ways right

if cnn is reporting at least reporting

in the sense of an opinion piece in this

case

the voter suppression doesn't work and

it just makes republicans worse off

i i guess the other part of it is that

if you talk about the system being

broken

it it also causes

less republican voting i don't i'm not

sure i believe that but people are

saying that

so

i guess i'm confused

about whether voter suppression is good

or bad for black people

and it looks like cnn's not quite on you

know one page about it it's either

terrible for black people or it helps

them

it helps them because fewer white people

vote which means that the percentage of

black people would be relatively better

no way am i doing the math right but it

does seem to to me that uh

we don't even know if it's good or bad

for any particular group

and yeah we're talking about like crazy

well the taliban is bringing back uh

public hangs and

they're going to do amputations again

so if you steal something they'll cut

off your hand

they're still not deciding whether

they'll do the amputations in public

because

because the taliban are not the old

taliban you know the old ones they were

really cruel they would do your

amputations right in public but i think

they're going to maybe considering doing

them not in public so

oh yeah they're still doing the hangings

in public they just did a bunch of

hangings they killed some

kidnappers

and hung them from cranes in various

cities as a lesson yeah they're still

going to hang people in public i mean

they're still the taliban

let me give you some advice that will

serve you better in your life than

anything you've ever heard in your whole

whole life

it goes like this

never trust

what people say

taliban said hey we're not the old

taliban we're the new taliban

we're not going to do these horrible

horrible things

yeah we're kinder we're gentler

never trust

what anybody says

not just the taliban

now here's the part that you know you

probably said to yourself uh scott i

wasn't trusting the taliban you're not

adding anything

no i'm saying don't trust the taliban

don't trust their word anyway but also

don't trust

somebody else you know at work

and don't trust

your best friend or your spouse

don't trust any of your friends or any

of your family

did i leave anybody out don't trust

the word of any humans

humans

don't trust any of their words all right

that's the first part of the advice

there's a second part

that will redeem me

now you say to yourself scott i can't

really live in a world where i don't

trust anybody

because i'm required to trust people

no

don't trust what people say here's what

you can trust

here's the payoff here's the reason you

watch me on livestream

this will change your life

this little reframe

pay attention carefully

never trust what anybody says

always trust

that people will be the same as they

have been

it's different

never trust what anybody says friends or

enemies

friends or enemies don't trust them

you only trust

that they are the same people that they

were yesterday that's it

that's it

if

let me take an example if i were to ask

um either of my siblings

to do something like you know i don't

hold some money or something and and i

would have to completely trust them

because i wouldn't know if they stole

any

i wouldn't care what they said about it

i wouldn't even wouldn't matter

what i would trust

is that my siblings are the same people

they've always been

which means they're not going to steal

my money

because they never have

never will right they're the same people

the taliban

said they're going to do something

different than what they used to do

but it's still the taliban

now it's a little different because

maybe the members of the taliban have

changed a little bit but i feel like the

principle still stands

it's still the taliban

right at least in the short run it's

still the taliban

so

watch how many times this rule

works

you can absolutely trust somebody to be

the same way they used to be

if they were a liar yesterday

they're a liar tomorrow

if they were honest yesterday and always

were

tomorrow's looking good too ignore what

they say

you're only the only thing you can know

with any kind of uncertainty is that

it's the same person it was yesterday

that's it

don't trust anything else

now watch how often this works for you

the first time you hear it you're

thinking to yourself

let me see if i can guess what you're

thinking i don't know if that's such a

difference

right you're thinking i don't know i see

what you're saying but it feels like the

same thing trust the person trust what

they say it's not

it's not and when you start you start

making that distinction

life gets a lot cleaner

and suddenly all your surprises go away

suddenly no surprises

never be surprised again

all right um that

is what i wanted to talk about i heard

somebody say that matt gates tweeted at

me we'll see if that's

true or what that's about

so you can watch this in real time

let's see

where would that be

tweets let's look up

matt we'll go to matt gates's page

they'll find it easier

all right

um

oh it's

okay it's not

all right so matt gates is just dunking

on uh jake novak

for a tweet that jake made

and he just he just uh mentions me as

being part of that story so it wasn't so

much

at me i was just included

um

all right

so yeah i've told you before i i try to

mind my own business and then i end up

being in the middle of stories

someday

someday

i'll tell you what stories i've actually

been involved in

i might have to wait for some people to

die

before i can do that

but

there are a lot of stories that you have

no idea

i had some involvement in and mostly i

can't tell you about them

but someday

you know when enough time goes by i'll

be able to tell those stories

and uh

it's going to be mind-boggling you won't

believe any of it

all right that's all for now and i will

talk to you

tomorrow